Lucky Town

by Peter Vonder Haar

  My other older brothers were already in the service at that point (Jim and Don both signed on after 9/11), and I had just finished college. And while Mom pleaded for all of them to resign their commissions, Charlie and I were persuaded not to enlist in the first place.

  “Promise me, you two,” she said, at my father’s wake. “Promise me you won’t join up.”

  We’d been hearing both Mom and my brothers bitch about military bureaucracy, REMFs, and mission creep since before we could walk, so we weren’t exactly enamored with the idea of a military career at that point (Charlie even less than me). Therefore, while we may have done so with exaggerated reluctance, it was an easy promise to make.

  Still, Mom and Dad had always impressed upon the Clarke kids the merits of public service. Charlie went into the Peace Corps after college, which earned her some gentle ribbing from her oo-rah older brethren. But if we’re being honest, helping provide network and Internet access to African villages seemed pretty worthwhile to me.

  Anyway, that promise wasn’t the one that led me to become a PI, but it was the reason I became a cop.

  Like I said: public service. I had a degree in Criminology from the University of Houston and thought I could make a difference in my community. And I like to delude myself that I did so for about four years as a patrolman and three as a homicide detective. Until I was shot in the line of duty.

  I woke up in the hospital (sound familiar?), only this time Mike and Charlie were there with Mom. People sent flowers, they talked about me on the local news for a few nights (the stories always accompanied by my none-too-flattering Academy graduation photo), and I was given the citation handed out to cops unlucky enough to get shot but fortunate enough to live.

  Mike, stateside by then, was at my bedside at 7:30 a.m. on the morning after my surgery. He had driven six hours straight from training with the Marine Corps detachment in Goodfellow San Angelo to Houston. When I asked him why he didn’t just catch a flight, he said the first one wouldn’t have gotten to Houston until 10 a.m. The gunshot in question, courtesy of a drunk who took offense at my interrupting him in the act of beating the shit out of his girlfriend outside a country bar called the Rhinestone Cowboy, broke a rib and punctured my lung. Non-lethal it may have been, but it still ended up killing my police career. Seeing the anguish on Mom’s face, I promised for the second time to make a (hopefully) less dangerous career choice.

  I’d been weighing my career options already at that point, but that’s a story for another time.

  Charlie had by then returned from the Peace Corps and was making a killing doing computer security consulting (what they call “white hat hacking”) for various energy companies. One afternoon, while clicking channels in my hospital bed, I happened upon a Magnum, P.I. rerun. Inspiration struck, and the rest is history, though convincing Charlie to sign on likely kept the whole thing from going under in the first year. Not only had she managed to hold her own growing up in a house full of boys, she was probably smarter than the rest of us put together.

  We were currently set up in an old house on the north side of town, in the quote-unquote “up and coming” Lindale neighborhood, where we maintained a steady if not lucrative practice running skip traces and taking surveillance photos of unfaithful spouses. Though, if we’re being honest, we caught people by their own dirty text messages about as often as with my long-range zoom lens. Use burner phones, people.

  Gumshoe work may not dovetail as neatly into the Clarke family’s proud tradition of public service, but at least I (usually) wasn’t getting shot at.

  My sister’s office was in the house’s converted master bedroom. She got the biggest of the three so she could have room for her computer equipment. Our electricity bill could support a house twice the size, probably with a pool to boot, but if her hacking into someone’s iPhone meant I didn’t have to take hanky-panky photos in the Houston summer sun while sitting in my Corolla with the twitchy air conditioner (remember what I said about “not lucrative”?), it was all good.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mike served with distinction in the Marines from 1996 to 2016. He earned a Silver Star and a Purple Heart in Afghanistan for a battle that no one was allowed to talk about (officially) and which he himself described as a “colossal shitshow.”

  As I’ve said, Mom and Dad were big on public service, so when Mike retired from the Corps, he signed on with the Department of Homeland Security. The Port of Houston is the sixteenth-busiest port in the world, handling well over 200 million tons of cargo per year. It also provides smugglers, traffickers, and terrorists convenient access to the Gulf Coast in order to do Bad Things.

  Mike’s reasons for joining DHS weren’t entirely altruistic. Working at the Port also gave him some stability for his wife (he and Kayla got married right before his first deployment) and son (Tyler was ten), and helped keep him close to Mom, who was past 70.

  After talking about it, Charlie and I realized we weren’t entirely clear on what Mike did on a day-to-day basis. He was rarely in his office and spent the bulk of his day on the docks, inspecting shipping containers and the ships themselves.

  “Don says he hasn’t talked to Mike in the last three days,” Charlie said, “and you said Mom hadn’t either, so that burns up the sibling end.” Mike was the only one with an official spouse. Charlie, myself, and now apparently Don, were single.

  Jim, for all we knew, had multiple wives.

  I thought for a second, “His office ought to have a personnel listing on its site,” I said. “Can you pull up his supervisor’s name?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” she said, navigating to the DHS website and clicking through a succession of online menus. “Here’s Mike. He’s listed as a Technical Enforcement Officer.” She looked at me. “Sounds sinister.”

  I shrugged. “It’s basically a cop; he gets to kick down doors, testify in court, all that fun stuff. And at the end of it, he gets a government pension.”

  “There’s an address and a phone number,” she continued. “Supervisor is an Assistant Director David Hammond. Do you want to call him or should I?”

  “Neither,” I said, getting up. “I’m going over there.”

  “Want me to come with?”

  I said, “Tempting as the thought is, I doubt government security personnel are going to be very forthcoming when confronted by your Dead Kennedys T-shirt.” I took the blue sports coat that was perpetually draped over my chair and shrugged into it. I’d forgo the tie, since my recollection was that few Port of Houston guys wore them.

  Charlie affected a hurt look. “This is practically a classic. And what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You look like you got into a fight in the parking lot of a bar,” she said.

  I laughed. “These guys are law enforcement. All I have to do is add a few stylistic touches to my story and they’ll be offering to buy me beers after work.”

  “That’s just pathetic enough to be true,” she said. “I’ll see if I can find anything about what Mike was working on.”

  Grabbing my keys, I said, “I’ll be back. Text me that address.”

  She paused. “You’re taking your car?”

  I stopped at the door. “Yeah. Why?”

  She smiled. “No reason. But rather than worry about the reception my DK’s shirt would get, you should be concerned they’ll laugh you off the property when you pull up in that piece of shit.”

  I gave her a sincere finger and walked out to my car.

  I have a few talents. For starters, it turns out I’m pretty good at the detective stuff (I had the highest clearance rate of my unit when I was on the force), I can also — as my sister already pointed out — take a punch (and occasionally deliver one). What else? I also possess an almost encyclopedic knowledge of James Bond movies, and I have a pathological inability to let things go. It’s what Black Flag singer Henry Rollins once referred to as the “tenacity of the cockroach,” though referring to it as a “talent”
rather than a “mental defect” might be a stretch.

  One thing I still haven’t been able to let go of is my car.

  My 1998 Corolla is my first car. Bought when I was still in high school with the proceeds of countless hours spent bagging groceries and trundling them to cars in the sweltering southeast Texas heat. It spends nearly as much time in the garage as it does on the street. And yet it’s never (okay, rarely) occurred to me to go out and get another because I’m afraid to confirm my suspicion that the problem isn’t the car, it’s me.

  The heap started on the third crank of the ignition, which is about average. It belched out a cloud of black smoke that eventually ran clear-ish, as if it were exhaling a particularly powerful bong load, and settled into what could charitably called “idling” as the engine veered between alarmingly high revs and near-death sounds.

  Figuring it wouldn’t get any better, I reversed out of the driveway and tentatively gave it gas.

  Contrary to expectations, the Port of Houston isn’t on the coast. Not exactly. The Houston Ship Channel runs from the Gulf of Mexico almost into downtown, and the Port proper is actually just off the east side of Loop 610, which is the innermost of the (now) three concentric freeway rings encircling our ever-expanding city.

  Charlie texted me Mike’s office address and I committed the cardinal sin of copying it and pasting into my phone’s map app while driving. A disembodied, vaguely feminine voice eventually guided me to one of a seemingly endless series of warehouse complexes off Industrial Park Road. The thoroughfare is mostly free of trees, which is both atypical for the city itself and par for the course for the Ship Channel area. And it’s hard to say whether this is a conscious landscaping choice or the by-product of the area’s proximity to dozens of refinery complexes.

  I parked in front of a building that was bigger than most, with a large American flag and new-ish letters indicating the agency’s name over the entrance. I deduced the sign’s age by noting it hadn’t yet been stained brown by the combination of rain and pollution that hovers over East Houston.

  The parking lot held a smattering of cars. Plenty of pickups, of course, and even an old H2 Hummer, the vehicle for the man with everything but self-esteem.

  Being a weekday, the door was open, so I walked in like I had business there (which was actually true, when you got down to it). I strode up to the reception desk, where a nameplate informed me the woman looking at me with naked suspicion from under a distressingly large amount of hair was named Dot.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, resigning herself to the fact I hadn’t wandered into the wrong office by mistake.

  I let loose with my biggest shit-eating grin, hoping it offset the black eye. “I certainly hope so, Dot. I’m here to see Dave Hammond.”

  She swiveled to look at her computer monitor, the distrust never leaving her face. “Do you have an appointment with Mr. Hammond?”

  “I’m afraid this is more of an unofficial visit.” I produced my wallet and flipped it open to my badge. “My name’s Clarke, and I have some questions about the murder of Bob Ramirez.”

  Before you say anything, the badge is fake. Since it’s a felony to impersonate a law enforcement officer, it’s a good thing I made no such claim. I turned in my HPD badge when I resigned from the force. The one in my wallet was purchased for $19.99 from a police supply store just a few blocks from where I’d gotten into an altercation last night. It says “Investigator,” which is technically accurate.

  I took an exam and everything.

  Dot ratcheted the glare back about thirty percent when she saw the badge, and she picked up her phone. “Mr. Hammond, there’s an Officer …” She looks at me.

  “Clarke, but it’s not officer, thanks.”

  A look of puzzled irritation crossed her face, but she continued, “… Clarke to see you. It’s about Bob.” A pause. “Yes, sir.”

  She waved me to a door behind her. “He’s right that way.”

  I rebooted my shit-eating grin as I walked past. “You’re a peach, Dot.”

  She responded with what may have been a human vocal response and buzzed open the door to Hammond’s office.

  Chapter SIX

  “Dave Hammond. Pleased to meet you.”

  My brother’s boss was a large man that authors of a certain vintage would have described as “florid” but was now best described as “pre-cardiac.” He pumped my hand with the kind of crushing grip affected by politicians with undisclosed sex scandals. I disliked him immediately.

  “Cy Clarke. Likewise,” I said, hoping my insincerity wasn’t too obvious.

  “That’s a hell of a shiner, son.”

  I touched my eye like it was a mostly forgotten inconvenience. “Aw hell, you should see the other guy.”

  Hammond laughed and motioned me to a chair opposite his desk. “Please, have a seat.”

  I did so. On a hunch, I said, “Hey, is that your H2 out there?”

  “It sure is,” he beamed.

  I liked him even less. “Hell of a vehicle,” I lied.

  He said, “I should tell you, I already told you HPD boys everything I know.”

  “Let me stop you right there,” I said. “I’m not HPD. Used to be, but … well, that’s a long story. No, I’m a private investigator. Mike Clarke is my brother.”

  It was difficult to read the full spectrum of emotion running across Hammond’s face, but I’m pretty sure I caught relief, suspicion, and gradually, anger.

  “Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull …” He began.

  I held a hand up. “I’m just trying to find my brother, and to do that I need to know what he was involved with, or if there was anything going on at work.”

  Hammond’s expression softened somewhat, but I could tell he was still pissed off and defensive. “I’m sorry about your brother. And if I knew anything that would help find him, believe me, I’d have already told the police.”

  “Yes, they said you were very cooperative,” I lied, “but I was more interested in anything beyond the official record.”

  He seemed pleased by my bullshit. “Naturally I can’t speak about current DHS cases,” he began.

  “Naturally,” I said. I didn’t care. Charlie could find all that out for me.

  Hammond steepled his fingers in a way I’m sure he felt gave him extra gravitas. “Do you know what my division of Homeland Security does, Mr. Clarke?”

  “I do not.” It was true: I did not.

  “We’re one of many organizations attempting to put a stop to human trafficking in Houston. As you’re no doubt aware, Texas is second only to California in the number of people — mostly women and children — brought to our country illegally, and thanks to our proximity to the Port and the I-10 and I-45 corridors, Houston is a major hub. DHS is very serious about changing that.”

  I nodded. “I think that’s admirable, and I’m proud that my brother is part of that effort.” That much was true.

  “Well, we were — are,” he corrected himself, “very proud of Mike as well. What did you say your name was?”

  “Cy.”

  “Of course. Mike spoke of you often,” Hammond said, his eyes avoiding contact with mine. Even if Mike wasn’t my brother, I’d know he wasn’t telling the truth.

  “I know you can’t speak about current investigations with a civilian,” I said, “but can you talk about Mike? Did he seem himself in the last few weeks?”

  He leaned back, crossed his legs, and thought for a moment. “Now that you mention it, he was acting more preoccupied than usual.”

  There are at least a dozen physical cues indicating when a person is lying, and Hammond had demonstrated nearly half of them in a few short minutes. Might as well try for all of them, I figured.

  “Did he ever say why?”

  “No, he didn’t talk about his personal life all that much.”

  Except to sing his little brother’s praises, I thought.

  “Did he mention any problems with Kayla or Tyler? I
f he was going to confide in anyone, it would be you,” I said this knowing full well Mike was not the kind of person to spill his guts to anyone not in his immediate family. And even then …

  Hammond frowned. “Sometimes I’d hear him shouting at someone I assumed was his wife, but the door to his office was always shut.”

  “Why did you assume it was Kayla?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Who else do people yell at?”

  I didn’t feel like giving the guy an alphabetical list. Partly because I wanted to avoid the appearance of being a total sociopath, and partly because it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The day Mike Clarke yelled at his wife in front of other people would be the same day you could drive a Zamboni on the Lake of Fire.

  “Like I told the police, I didn’t notice anything off.” Hammond shrugged. “I wish I could help you.”

  Here goes nothing, “I don’t suppose I could take a look in his office?”

  “The police have already been in there,” he smiled, “and since you’re no longer with HPD, I’m afraid it’s out of the question.”

  I figured as much. This wasn’t going anywhere, and I needed to leave while I was still barely on his good side. “Mr. Hammond, thank you for your time.”

  He stood, unable to hide the relief on his face. “I wish I could’ve been more help.”

  Oh, you were, I thought; just not the way you were expecting.

  I left Hammond’s office and, on a whim, approached Dot’s desk again. Her expression would’ve daunted all but the most determined of suitors, but this was about my brother, dammit.

  “I trust your meeting went well?” she asked warily.

  I nodded. “Very well, thank you. Dave was very accommodating, I’m happy to say. In fact,” I reached into my coat, as if I’d just remembered something, “he asked me to give you this.”

  I handed her my business card. One hundred for eight bucks, and I still wasn’t sure it was a wise use of resources.