Gate 76

by Andrew Diamond

  I’m trying to get to the shuttle buses that go out to the rental lots, but there’s some commotion up ahead, and a huge knot of people just inside the doors. The crowd is pushing this way, with cops around the edges, and lights and video cameras in the middle. In the center of the cameras a cowboy hat sticks up high above the throng, and there’s the man himself: Jumbo Throckmorton. He’s got to be six foot eight and three hundred pounds.

  He seems to be pushing the whole crowd back by himself. He shakes hands with people while his security detail tries to keep him moving along. The cops in front of him look anxious as they scan the faces and try to clear the way forward. Throckmorton bends his head down to hear the words of an old woman whose hand he seems to be shaking. Then he throws his head back and lets out a booming laugh and says, “Well you tell him he can come say that to my face!”

  I’m in the thick of it now, trying to push through to the exit, while everyone else is going the other way. In a second, he’s right in front of me. I put out my hand instinctively to greet him. It’s not even a conscious action. It just happens. He’s got that kind of power. He takes my hand in a crushing grip and shakes it so hard I feel the strain in my elbow and shoulder. How does he greet women? He can’t go manhandling them like this.

  He mops the glistening sweat from his broad red face, and as he passes, a cop behind him reaches up to his shoulder and says, “Keep it moving, guv. El Paso’s waiting.” Throckmorton turns, and the smile he had put on for the voters disappears. “We are moving,” he says. He has a hardness in his look that politicians don’t show to the cameras. It’s the kind of hardness a cop develops over the years to deal with the kinds of people cops have to deal with. Throckmorton was in law enforcement after all, and worked his way up to the top of the ladder before becoming governor.

  The crowd pushes farther into the building, and in a few seconds, I’m past it. I go through the exit, into the warm Texas air, and look for the car rental shuttle.

  On the bus, I check my phone. Leon texted to say there’s something strange about Charles Johnston’s credit reports. Johnston, who paid for Anna Brook’s ticket to Hawaii. And there’s a text from Bethany saying she has inquiries out to a number of libraries. I don’t know what that’s about. I write back to say I’ll check in with them later.

  I pick up a rental, a white Chevy Malibu, and plug the Green family address into the GPS. In a few minutes, I’m heading east on 635, which looks like Dallas’s version of the Capital Beltway. After several miles, I turn northeast onto Route 30. Except for this place being a little flatter, and a lot hotter, this might as well be Northern Virginia, or the outside of any other city in the US. It’s Exxon stations and Subway restaurants, McDonald’s and Motel 6. Malls with big box stores and subdivisions behind high walls to keep out the roar of the highway. Seems like this whole country was built from a box of Legos that only had thirty different pieces.

  Who decided to put a city here, I will never know. There are no natural features in or around Dallas to warrant a city. No harbor or river for commerce, no intersection of major trade roads, no great mountain to admire, no magical oasis to provide shelter from the heat. It’s a hot, flat city in the middle of a hot, flat plain. The only things that rightly have a home here are mosquitoes and tornadoes.

  Route 30 goes across Lake Ray Hubbard, where men in sports boats plow white furrows through the glistening blue-green waters. I take a right past Costco, onto a road with traffic lights, then right again, past the golf club, toward the south end of the lake.

  This is a wealthy area. The homes are big, and the one I’m aiming at is one of the biggest. A giant brick colonial with a circular drive that goes around a big marble fountain. The house is fronted by thick white columns, a two-story front porch, and wings on either side that are bigger than most people’s entire homes. I park in front, behind a white Mercedes, walk up four steps and ring the bell.

  15

  Katie’s mother, Marjorie Green, answers the door herself. She’s wearing a floral muumuu and a sheer black scarf, like she’s vacationing in Hawaii and in mourning at the same time. She’s in her midfifties, with a streak of grey in her unbrushed black hair and a few extra pounds around her middle. A faint smell of alcohol wafts about her, and she has a slovenly, careless look, like her clothes just blew onto her and the next good wind might blow them right back off.

  “You’re Mr. Ferguson,” she says with the kind of ill-fitting smile you see on someone who’s been on pain meds for too long. They don’t remember what actual feeling is like, and when they try to put it on, the absent look in the eyes doesn’t match the smile that’s trying so hard to be genuine.

  And speaking of eyes, her mascara is all smeared. It doesn’t look like she’s been crying, or that she’s aware of the mess. Maybe that’s just how she put it on. Three days ago.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am. I wish the circumstances were better.”

  “Oh, now, don’t you apologize,” she says. “Come in, come in!”

  “Thank you.”

  “Would you like some iced tea? Let me show you the house. Do you need to hang your coat?”

  It’s eighty-six degrees out. I’m not wearing a coat, but she doesn’t wait for me to respond. She walks back into the house, and I follow.

  “Clara, get the man some iced tea.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Clara is a light-skinned black woman wearing an apron. She smiles and gives me a little nod before turning and leaving the room.

  “John collects globes,” says Mrs. Green. She’s already on her way into the next room. “Let me show you.”

  I follow her to the south wing of the house, into a wood-paneled room with heavy green curtains, leather sofas, and a pool table. It’s freezing in here. “John collects telescopes,” she says. She touches one gently as she passes, and it turns on its swivel mount.

  Mrs. Green swishes around her husband’s million-dollar man cave in her flowery muumuu and somehow always manages to have her back to me as she talks. John collects guns and pool cues, bourbons, brandies, more guns, and Persian rugs. John is an avid sportsman, she tells me. He killed that buck himself. He can repair gunshot wounds almost as easily as he can inflict them. John is a surgeon at a hospital in Dallas, and very successful. She married an ATM with a prescription pad, and she’s damn proud of it.

  Clara hands me a tall glass of iced tea as we cross back through the main hall to the north wing. It’s so cold in here, I could warm my hands on this icy glass.

  The north side of the house seems to be Mrs. Green’s realm. There’s a television in every room, and they’re all tuned to different channels. Some people don’t like to be alone with their thoughts.

  Did I know David was in medical school? David! The youngest, who the teachers said wouldn’t go far. John Junior is a dentist, but there’s no shame in that. “You’ll be thankful for someone like him next time you get a toothache. Where is Clara with your iced tea?”

  I raise the glass to show her. “She already gave it to me.”

  “Oh,” says Mrs. Green. “So she did. Well where’s my iced tea?”

  Just then the clock strikes two, and Clara, on her way into the room, says, “Here it is, ma’am.” I get a whiff of it going by. It’s not the same kind I’m drinking. I pick up a photo of a beautiful young girl in a blue satin dress.

  “That’s Katherine at her debut,” Mrs. Green says. “Thank you, Clara. And now you want to talk about Katherine? Is that right?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Have a seat,” she says.

  The sofas on this side of the house have floral prints instead of leather. She sits on one couch, I take the other. There’s a coffee table between us. She sips her iced tea, then puts it down on a coaster, and puts on another empty smile for me.

  “She was a lovely girl, wasn’t she?”

  “She was,” I say as I replace the photo. “I’m sorry for your loss, ma
’am.”

  “I am too,” she says, still smiling. “You know, she was pulling her life together.”

  “Was she?”

  “Oh, yes. You should have seen the clothes she wore. Most women don’t have that kind of taste, or a husband who can keep them dressed like that. Not that her husband ever did anything for her.”

  “She was married?”

  “Hardly. She took care of herself. She earned every penny.”

  “What did she do up in DC?”

  “Why, she was a model, of course. Got snapped right up by a talent agency the minute she arrived in town. She used to Skype me from hotels all over the place. The Ritz in New York. From Paris even! She’d give me a video tour of the room.”

  “Did you know a friend of hers named Anna?”

  “Oh, she had so many friends.” She lifts her glass from the coffee table and takes a sip. “I told John when she dropped out of college, this is just a phase, I told him. And that guy—oh, that loser! Just a phase. I told him she’d come around, and she did. Left him down in Dime Box and made something of herself.”

  “You ever go up and see her in DC?”

  “We were there three months ago. John spoke at a conference. He wasn’t the keynote, but the talk was well attended. People stopped him afterwards to say how well he had spoken.” She takes a hard swallow of her drink and puts her hand to her chest. “These were top surgeons. The very best. He’s very well respected, you know.”

  “Did you meet any of Crystal’s friends while you were up there?”

  “Crystal?”

  “Sorry, I mean Katie. Katherine.”

  “Well, yes. She knew congressmen and lobbyists and lawyers. She was very well connected. We went to the top restaurants after the conference. That’s where you see people up there. In the restaurants. Would you like another drink?”

  “No, thanks. I’m just wondering if she ever talked to you about a friend named Anna.”

  “Oh, she talked about a lot of people. What did Anna do?” She swirls her drink and puts on an attentive look that comes more from good manners than genuine interest.

  “She worked with Katherine,” I say.

  “Hmm. What did she look like?”

  “About five foot seven. Slim build. Blue eyes, fair complexion.”

  I can see she’s thinking. “What color hair?”

  “Probably blonde, but she dyed it.”

  “Oh, that one,” she says with distaste.

  “You know who I’m talking about?”

  “Yes. Anna. She was down here with Katherine a few months ago.” She drains off the rest of her iced tea and says, “I didn’t care for her. A pretty woman, to be sure, but some of them get into modeling for the wrong reasons, you know. They want a man’s attention, and that’s all.”

  “You have any idea where Anna might be?”

  “How would I possibly know that?”

  “I have a feeling she might be here in Texas.”

  “Well, we all have feelings, don’t we? When my daughter died, I was in shock. To be honest, I thought she was in the clear. A few years ago, I worried about her. She was smoking pot, you know. Marijuana. And she married that loser Seldin. I told myself girls go through their wild phase too, just like boys. There’s a reason all those romance novels have guys with tattoos and motorcycles on the covers. At a certain age, they’re exciting and attractive. Until you realize they’re never going to do anything for you. They’ll still be tattooed and motorcycled at fifty, with a beer gut and grey whiskers and a hangover. And some hourly job, if they’re lucky. I told her that. Imagine him at fifty, I said. Is that what you want to be stuck with? It took her a couple of years to figure it out, and thank God he didn’t ruin her. If he had had any meanness in him, he could have wrecked her for good. But he was just a shiftless drinker who happened to have looks and charm and knew all the right things to say to a wayward, inexperienced girl. Would you like another drink?”

  “Sure.” I’m not even done with the first one, but she keeps offering, so I’ll humor her.

  “So would I.” She turns toward the doorway where Clara stands, and yells as if she’s not in the room, “Clara!”

  “Ma’am.”

  She rattles the ice in her glass and says, “You know.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Green turns back to me and says, “She always stopped and saw him when she came home.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Katherine. She’d visit him when she came home. She’d take a couple of days and go down there.”

  “Down where?”

  “Austin. He must have given her some kind of comfort. They never officially divorced, you know. He went soft after she left him. Fifteen beers a day would make anyone soft. He never did have any ambition. But I guess she felt she could be herself around him. There couldn’t have been anything physical between them. Not if you see the guy now. But some people, I guess, are like a child’s blanket. They soothe you because they’re familiar and they’re tied in your mind to old memories and simpler times.”

  Clara returns with a tray, puts two iced teas down on the coffee table, and collects the empties. I smell my drink to make sure it’s not the same kind the old lush is having.

  “You say he lives in Austin?”

  “Just outside. Near a town called Dime Box, which from what I hear is just as exciting as it sounds.” She takes a sip of her new drink. “Suits him too. Shiftless beer drinker living in a dime box.”

  “You know if Anna ever met him?”

  “I’m sure she did. She went with Katherine to see him after they left here. Do you know he called to see if she had life insurance? Didn’t come to the funeral, but he wanted to know if he was going to get any money. They were still technically married. Did I tell you that?”

  “You did,” I say. “What’s his first name?”

  “Travis. And there was no life insurance. Who would think to take out a policy on a beautiful child of twenty-seven? A model, no less! It’s morbid. I’ll tell you what there might be though. There might be a lawsuit. What kind of doctor gives a girl that much oxycodone? John’s looking into it. John won’t stand for malpractice, or even a hint of negligence. Medical errors have real consequences. People trust their doctors. And just when her life was really getting on track…”

  It wasn’t oxycodone that killed Katie Green. It was heroin cut with fentanyl, injected by her own hand. It’s all right there in the coroner’s report.

  When I get out of that big frigid mansion and hit the highway, I keep the windows down to bring in as much fresh air as I can. Some people’s delusions are pitiful, some are cringeworthy, and some are just plain suffocating. When I first walked into that house, I couldn’t put my finger on what made it feel so smothering. But it hits me now. The icy air conditioning, the green velvet curtains, and the dark wood paneling—the place reminds me of a funeral home. Poor Katie, in her debutante’s dress, with her hopeful smile and uncertain eyes. What chance did she have, being raised by zombies in that icy morgue?

  The air rushing in through the windows is warm and thick, the sun beats down through the windshield, baking the seats, and when the big rigs pass by with their deafening whoosh, they suck all the air out of the car.

  There are plenty of ways to get to Dime Box. If you’re in Dallas with a reliable car, it’s a three-hour drive. If you’re a drinker with a reliable thirst, it’s just a matter of years. Travis Seldin lives on a narrow country road outside of town. It might still be light when I get there.

  16

  The first ninety minutes of the drive are uneventful. I stop in Waco for gas and a meal, and a quick check-in using the restaurant’s Wi-Fi, sipping coffee and running a background check on Travis Seldin while I wait for the waitress to bring a plate of brisket. The TV is on behind me, with the now-familiar voices of the gubernatorial candidates pressing their cases to the voters. Sometimes elections seem like the price we have
to pay to get these people to shut up.

  One of the other patrons asks the waitress to change the TV to a sports channel. She’s fiddling with the remote when she should be bringing my food. A man’s voice comes from the television: “Texas Highway Patrol intercepted a vehicle carrying over two million dollars worth of fentanyl this afternoon—” Click. “—a three and a half point underdog going into next week’s game against the Steelers.”

  “That better, hon?” the waitress says.

  “That’s more like it.”

  The results of the background check show up about two minutes before my plate of brisket. Think about that the next time you think there’s such a thing as privacy in the Internet age.

  Travis Seldin has had twenty-one address changes in his thirty-one years. His life has followed a southwestern drift, from rural South Carolina through Georgia and Alabama to Texas. He backtracked a couple of years ago to Mississippi, but that only lasted a few months. He’s been married once, seven years ago, to the late Katie Green of Dallas, Texas. Now he’s in a house on a country road eight miles west of Dime Box. He owns a 2004 Ford F-150 pickup.

  My food finally shows up, and I continue working as I eat.

  I have a text from Leon from several hours ago that I still haven’t followed up on. Something about Charles Johnston’s credit reports. Leon attached them to an email that he must have sent just after I landed in Dallas. And he sent another text a few minutes ago. Call me! There’s one from Bethany too, with the same words.

  I pull up Leon’s email and scan the reports. Charles Johnston, from Schaumberg, Illinois, purchaser of Anna Brook’s Honolulu ticket, is supposedly thirty-eight years old. He’s had four addresses in the past two decades, all in Illinois and Iowa. It takes me a minute to figure out what got Leon all excited.