The Man Offside

by A. W. Gray

  Sweaty sweated even more. He closed his eyes, and I figured he was seeing images of dollar bills, wings attached, flying away. Then he shook his head and started reluctantly toward the marshals’ office down the hall, muttering, “Jesus Christ. Half a fucking mil.”

  “No sweat, Sweaty,” I said.

  Norman Aycock paid me a visit just as Sweaty was posting bond. He said, “I’m going to tie you into this. Mark my words.”

  “That won’t be hard, Mr. Aycock,” I said. “Jack Brendy’s been my friend for a lot of years. I wouldn’t be much of a pal if I didn’t at least show up for his bond hearing. You know, give moral support.” Visible over Aycock’s shoulder, Sweaty was checking the bond form over, item by item. If there was a loophole, Sweaty would find it.

  “Buddies through thick and thin, eh?” Aycock looked like Moses on the mountain as he glared at me. “Oh, Bannion, are you ever going to be a hit at Leavenworth. They just love funny guys up there.”

  “Well, they might,” I said. “That’s why Jack shouldn’t go there. He’s not much of a comedian.”

  I didn’t see Jack and Donna again until I’d reached the Federal Building’s lobby. There was a pretty good crowd standing around them, five or six reporters, a harried-looking guy who was aiming a hand-held video camera, and the frosted-haired, curried and manicured dish who served as anchor for Channel 8’s evening news. The newslady and Jack faced the camera. She held a cordless mike between them, asked Jack questions, then showed Pepsodent whites to the cameraman while Jack did his best to give the answers. Donna stood by Jack and his arm was around her shoulders. I glanced at the newslady dish, then back at Donna. Donna was better looking, hands down.

  Sweaty followed me through the revolving door onto the sidewalk; sudden August heat battered us like a furnace. Sweaty really showed the temperature, the guy was a human thermometer. Now he looked like a guy taking a steam bath with his clothes on.

  He spread his chubby hands, palms down, like an umpire’s “safe” signal. “That’s it, Bannion. That is everloving it. You got any idea how much I’d charge somebody else for a bond that size? Way I figure, you owe me about six hundred skips free of charge.” To my left on Commerce Street, horns honked and buses chugged. Sunlight glinted from the mirrored walls of the Interfirst Tower, two blocks away. There was a big Park ‘n’ Lock lot across the street. I watched with sudden interest as a four-door Mercedes toured slowly to the lot’s exit, then paused as if waiting for someone. There were four men in the car, two in front and two in back.

  Jack and Donna were coming out of the Federal Building with Fred Cassel strutting between them. Jack looked better, as though a load had been lifted. Cassel halted in his tracks, said something to Jack, then went back inside the building as if he’d forgotten something. Donna rose on tiptoes and gave Jack a wifely peck on the cheek; as she did, Jack caught my eye and waved. Try as I might, I couldn’t shake a pang of jealousy. I returned my attention to the parking lot across the street.

  I’m not sure where the warning bell comes from, it just comes. Maybe it’s the result of too many nights in prison, sleeping with one eye open, but the warning bell is right a helluva lot more times than it’s wrong. The Mercedes moseyed out into traffic, then cut across three lanes, and angled to the curb right beside Sweaty and me.

  Sweaty was saying, “And if I have to pay off, you’ll owe me six million skips, you hear? I can’t take it, Bannion, I lose too much sleep. Half a million—”

  “Get a move on, Sweaty,” I said. “Haul ass out of here.” Even as I spoke, I was taking a long, running stride toward Jack and Donna.

  The Mercedes’s rear curbside door opened. I had a first impression, a crazy one, that the guy who got out didn’t have a face. But it was a mask, a makeshift job made from a bedsheet or pillowcase with eyeholes cut in the fabric. He wore a tan overcoat and a dark hat pulled low. Cradled in his right arm was a very real, very ugly Uzi submachine gun.

  I reached Donna’s side, folded her into my arms, and hit the cement rolling. My right shoulder, the one with the football scar, landed first and pain sliced into my collarbone. Donna gasped and her fast breath blew sweet and warm on my cheek. I rolled onto my back with her weight on top of me, firm flesh over vibrant muscle. I rolled again and shielded her. “Move it, Jack,” I yelled. “It’s the Mercedes.” I buried my face in Donna’s shoulder.

  The Uzi chattered and spat fire. Someone screamed behind me; it could have been a woman or a very terrified man. Donna whimpered. Bullets whined close overhead in rapid succession. A car door slammed and tires squealed. I looked up. The Mercedes careened into the middle lane on Commerce, sideswiped a Dodge pickup, made a squealing right turn, and disappeared.

  Jack lay spread-eagled on the sidewalk. One brown pants leg had ridden up to expose his calf and a long black sock. My gaze swept his body and my stomach churned. The top half of his head was missing.

  I cupped my hand behind Donna’s neck and held her face against my shoulder. “Don’t look, babe,” I said.

  Her body was heaving with her sobs. Right then I felt like letting go myself. It happens that way sometimes.

  7

  They buried Jack on a Saturday that began with the sky overcast and with sooty thunderheads lumbering across the horizon. The chapel at Park Cities Baptist Church was standing room only; Roger Staubach gave the eulogy to the solemn accompaniment of rain sweeping across the roof. By the time I’d followed a string of fifty or sixty cars—mostly Caddys, Lincolns, and Mercedes: Jack had run with a pretty blue-blooded crowd—to Hillcrest Memorial, stood off to one side and watched Donna’s filmy black veil move gently in the breeze at the short graveside service, the rain had gone and the clouds had disappeared. The grass was suddenly a brilliant sun-washed green and the flowers at Hillcrest sparkling shades of red and yellow and blue. Somehow the day didn’t seem any brighter because of the sunshine.

  I stood between Bobby Mitchell and Larry Morgan as a line of men with raincoats draped over their arms went by. The men escorted ladies dangling parasols by straps out into the parking lot to head for home. One sandy-haired man of forty was walking arm in arm with a girl of twenty, whispering just inches from her ear. As they passed, she winked at him and giggled. A natural amphitheater stretched out below us, formed by rows of clipped hedges and rows of white and pink marble tombstones. Donna was far down there, standing with her arm around Jacqueline’s shoulders. They were beside the oblong pit into which some men had lowered Jack’s coffin a half hour earlier. Their heads were bowed.

  “Sumbitch was a runner,” Bobby Mitchell said. “If you didn’t get your ass in gear when you was leading him, he’d run right up your backbone. Dude could hum it.” His skin was chocolate brown in color. He was wearing a powder blue sport coat, and his arms were folded across his chest. He owned a seafood restaurant near Six Flags Mall and he’d gotten way too fat.

  “Heady ballplayer, too,” Larry Morgan said. “Could think on his feet. I still remember one run he made in New Orleans. Wadn’t but five yards, but Jesus. Wadn’t another back on the field could have made an inch the way they were stacked up in there. Could pick his holes.” Larry was in real estate sales and wore dark brown snakeskin cowboy boots with a dark brown pinstriped suit. He rose on the balls of his feet, then sank back onto his heels. He weighed about the same as when he’d played free safety.

  “What movies did he like?” I said. “What kind of books did he read?”

  Larry cocked his head slightly to one side. “Huh?”

  “What was his favorite food?” I said.

  Bobby Mitchell chewed his full ebony lower lip. “Seem like he ate a lotta T-bone. Yeah, pregame meal he used to put away two of ‘em.”

  They’d never get it, either of them. Never in a million years. “Hey, guys,” I said, “great seeing you. Let’s all hope it’s for a happier occasion next time.” I walked away, went up on the crest of the hill, and stopped at the entrance to the parking lot for one last, faraway look at Donna.<
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  “I’m going out of town for a while,” she’d told me the day before on the phone. “I think I’ll take Jacqueline to Disney World. She’s never been and the trip will take her mind off of ... oh, Rick.”

  “You should, Donna. Keep moving, keep doing things.”

  There’d been a pause during which she’d uttered a tiny sob. Then shed softly cleared her throat and said evenly, “Rick?”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you be there for me?”

  I’d hesitated. It hadn’t seemed like the right time. “You know I will,” I’d said.

  I’d almost sent her money back that morning. Squaring accounts, I’d thought. As if any amount of money would even things with Jack after what Donna and I had done. But after thinking about it, I’d decided that the gesture would be far too corny. Besides, what was left of the five thousand dollars was all that stood between me and a curbside seat by the Salvation Army headquarters. I went into the asphalt parking lot of Hillcrest Memorial, and it took me a few minutes to locate the ‘Vette. Guess I had other things on my mind.

  The three guys who were lounging around my Corvette definitely weren’t sportscar fans. They were strictly four-door Impala candidates—AM-FM radio, power and air, and you could forget all of the other extras. The two who had hair wore fifties flattops, and the bald guy’s fringe was a half inch long. All were in shirtsleeves, slacks, and ties.

  The bald guy was leaning his rump against the ‘Vette’s driver’s side door. His hands were in his pockets. I said to him, “Show me a warrant or fuck off. My friend just died.”

  He gave me one of those wide, plastic smiles that said he was used to having people insult him. He had thin lips and a long nose underneath watery green, I’m-suspicious eyes. “I can show you the shield, Mr. Bannion, but I probably can’t get a warrant before Monday. I can hold you for questioning until then if that’s the way you want to do it.”

  He fished in his back pocket, snapped open a Naugahyde wallet, and held it in front of my face. Thompson. FBI. Dumm de dum-dum. He waited for me to start shivering. I didn’t.

  “This is Agent Whittington”—one flattop nodded—“and Detective Atchley, Dallas County. He’s helping us with—with this thing we’ve got going.” The county guy, the real cop, looked slightly embarrassed about the company he was keeping. I didn’t blame him.

  I gave Detective Atchley a friendly wink. “A cooperative task force, hey?” I said. “You provide the cooperation and do all the tasks, they provide the force. What a team.” Atchley’s lips twitched as though he wanted to laugh. The federal cops didn’t think I was funny.

  “The Dallas police department has been kind enough to provide us with a meeting room, Mr. Bannion,” Thompson said. “It’s at the Whiterock Precinct, just a ways up the road from here. You can ride with me and Detective Atchley if you would. Agent Whittington can follow along in your car, if you’d just give him the keys.”

  Agent Whittington’s flattop was blond. He wore a yellow tie and brown pleated slacks. A new recruit, not over a year or two out of college. I thought he looked like Troy Donahue, back when old Troy played on “Surfside Six.” He stepped forward and held his hand out, palm up.

  “Agent Whittington doesn’t look old enough to have a driver’s license,” I said.

  Thompson took a short stride in my direction, bent his elbows, and put his hands on his waist. “We’re not here to give you a hard time, Bannion. Now you don’t give us one, either. The keys, Bud. Now.”

  My upper body tensed the same way it used to during barked signals just before the snap. I said, “I know where Whiterock Precinct is, Bud. I’ll meet you there. But nobody rides with me and nobody lays a finger on my car. I can’t be seen riding with you guys. Hell, I’ve got a reputation to maintain.”

  Thompson studied me, and whatever he saw made him back off. He stepped aside. “Have it your way. Come on, men, we’ll follow him. And Bannion. Don’t get lost on the way, huh?”

  The three guys became five in the meeting room at Whiterock Precinct. One addition was Norman Aycock, glaring at me with a nearly maniacal gleam in his eye. He made me feel like Bob Cratchitt must have felt just before he asked old Scrooge for a raise. The other newcomer was a milder-mannered guy, late thirties, with thinning brown hair and a clipped mustache. He had a round, pleasant face and he’d spent quite a bit of time out in the sun. There was a yellow legal pad before him on the table, and he was taking notes with a gold ballpoint. He was wearing a dark green MacGregor golf shirt with “LAKEWOOD CC” stitched in gold thread on the sleeve. Middle-class club, probably just within the price range of a county prosecutor. If the guy cut a few corners.

  We were seated at a small, round conference table. There was one tall window in the room; outside, carpets of Bermuda stretched among sycamores, weeping willows, and elms. One adjacent white stucco wall of the building was visible, and some stone steps leading down from the building to a sidewalk. Whiterock Lake wasn’t in sight from where we were; it was behind us, across from the front of the station.

  “You can save us all a lot of trouble, Bannion,” Aycock said.

  “Why would I want to do that?” I said. Agent Thompson was on my left, Detective Atchley on my right. Agent Whittington, the Troy Donahue type, was directly across from me between Aycock and the guy whose name I didn’t know.

  Aycock pretended he hadn’t heard me and continued to bore holes into my chest with his gaze. He said, “I know you get a kick out of being a thorn in our side. Or thinking you are. But you’re not even worrisome enough to be classified a thorn. You’re more like a gnat or mosquito. You’re not ever—”

  “Let’s can it, Norman.” The mild-mannered guy in the golf shirt lifted a hand. “Look, this is Saturday and we’ve all got better things to do. So please carry on your personal campaign against Mr. Bannion on somebody else’s time.” Then to me he said, “These men are rude, Mr. Bannion, they haven’t introduced us. I’m Tom Pierson, D.A.’s office, and I don’t have any bones to pick with you. Not personally, anyway.” He glanced at Aycock, then back at me.

  Now Aycock turned one of his wild-eyed stares on Pierson, and I wondered if the old federal prosecutor was going to have a stroke. Aycock shut his eyes tightly and shook his head. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly before saying, “The case against Jack Brendy is history, but this investigation is still quite active. Brendy was involved with quite an extensive ring of smugglers, Bannion. Of course”—he smirked—“I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, am I? We intend to snare the others with or without your help. But if you’ll help us you can make it easier on us and you.”

  I scratched my cheek, doing a slow burn and trying to control myself. I hadn’t forgotten what Aycock had the power to do. I never would. “That’s not right, Mr. Aycock,” I said. “You know it isn’t. Jack might have been mixed up in a dope deal or two, but a ring? No way. That Skeezix, the man Jack was dealing with, he was your setup all along.”

  “I’m not going to discuss our case against Brendy,” Aycock said. “It’s closed. But there is a ring and your friend Jack Brendy was up to his ears in it. I want you to help us bag the others.”

  I was still hot under the collar, but now was getting puzzled as well. What others? And why in everloving hell did Aycock think for a minute that I was going to help him, ring or no ring? Thompson was leaning forward, one corner of his mouth upturned. Atchley, the county cop, was keeping a poker face. I decided to let Aycock have it regardless of what power the old goat had.

  “Well now, Mr. Aycock,” I said, “I can’t see as how I blame you for not wanting to talk about your case against Jack. Especially since it was a phony setup from the word go. I’ll tell you something. Skeezix—Mr. Herman Moore, you know—he’s not going to be much good to you as a snitch any longer. Everybody in town’s got his number, and five’ll get you ten he winds up crippled or dead. Of course, you don’t give a shit what happens to Skeezix, do you? Just another stoolie, hell, they�
��re a dime a dozen. Now I don’t know anything about any dope ring. But if I did—well, you’re talking like a truck ran over you, thinking I’m going to help you any.”

  Aycock’s brows knitted. “Bannion, I guarantee you I won’t like it any better than you do, working with a man of your stripe.”

  “Stripe? Well, what stripe are you, you—”

  “Shut up and hear me out,” Aycock said. “The group we’re talking about—and we’ve got a couple of names—they’re simply too sophisticated for our usual tactics. They have their own planes and their own money, so we can’t trap them that way. Phone taps are a joke—hell, for all I know they might be recording me. So we need somebody they’re going to trust, somebody that’s right down there on their own level. Which brings us to you.”

  Now I’d really heard enough. Their level, huh? I stood. “You gentlemen can collectively go and fuck yourselves,” I said, and turned to leave.

  Pierson, the county prosecutor, said, “I don’t think you’re going to like the alternative, Mr. Bannion.” His voice was calm and steady. Where Aycock came across like a ranting loony, this guy was cold steel. I sat back down. I didn’t say anything.

  Pierson tugged at his shirtsleeves, then folded his hands on the table. His right hand was a few shades browner than his left: lots of golf. “The feds are investigating drugs, Mr. Bannion. I don’t stick my nose in their business. But a man’s been gunned down on the streets of downtown Dallas, and that is my business. Plus the dead man’s lawyer is threatening to sue us for not protecting his client, even though the client had been a federal prisoner. He says the shooting happened on county property. Now, I don’t know how well you know Fred Cassel, but I suspect he’s blowing a lot of smoke. But he talks a lot to the papers, you know what I mean?”