The World's Finest Mystery...

by Ed Gorman

  How I met Minnie Chaundelle Bazile was a phone call. She wanted her brother found.

  I always ask to see my clients first time face-to-face. She said she wasn't about to truck all over town no matter how nice a man I was.

  "What makes you think I'm a nice man?" I asked.

  "The word get around," she said.

  Gross Street, offa Dallas. There's a Corrections for boys on one side of Dallas and a school for the retarded. On the other side's a cemetery. No one comes there anymore, she said, not even to die. If I took the right road past the cemetery I'd see her on her porch. If I took the wrong road I wouldn't.

  * * *

  It was the first day after a hard rain and the sun was boomin' hot already. When I turned my key to lock up, the mosquitoes were spraddle-legged up against the siding of my house, stunned by the heat themselves.

  I stay in Neartown, about a mile from the heart of Houston. Gangstas and old-time politicians call it Fourth Ward. Despite a few bad apples, I like it here. From my office on the second floor I can see trees green as broccoli, and skyscrapers the color of turquoise, rust, chalk, and shined silver against a clean blue sky. At night I watch the moon play games between the towers, and when it's wet, their edges go soft in the rain-smoke.

  And from my perch I watch old men black as roof paper cross the road to talk to each other, hands in their pockets like they're countin' change. Or a kid on a bicycle hoppin' holes. I could afford better but I'd have to work harder, and then I'd own more things and things lock up your freedom.

  * * *

  I came in off Clay near a condo complex walled off like a fortress for folks who make more money than God. An old black dog with his tail drooped under ambled across the road, fixin' his eyes the color of pennies on me.

  Down the way were four wood-frame houses with plants spillin' off the porches. One porch had a line strung between its pillars holding cinnamon-colored work jackets pinned upside down, the arms danglin' like dead men hung up for show.

  I drove my old brown complainin' Plymouth easy over chuckholes worse than on my street. At the end was a lot filled with patches of water and weeds. Opposite were six tiny houses sunk down in the tall grass and so far gone of paint you could see right through to air. A baby carrier leaned against a tree stump in one yard, and in the next were so many rusted gadgets it made you want to come up and browse. There, at the next house, sat a woman on a porch swing, just as she said she'd be. I parked and got out and crossed a drainage ditch laid over with crunchy dirt.

  When I got a good look at Minnie Chaundelle, without hardly realizing it I sucked my stomach in before she got a good look at me. She was talkin' into a blue cell phone and wore a purple dress lit with orange embroidery, the skirt spread from one end of the bench to the other. On her feet were gold wove slippers Japanese ladies wear.

  "Miz Bazile?"

  "Catch ya latuh, Asyllene," she said, and punched off, then slipped the phone between her thigh and the side of the swing. From her heft and manner you could take her for thirty-five, but I knew from a source she'd just made thirty.

  I put my hand out. "Cisroe Perkins."

  "Minnie Chaundelle," she said and took it. Her skin was moist from the heat and had a glow like dark honey. She motioned me to sit on a barrel with a red cushion on top, and we talked there among her fern and trailing begonias. The air was thick with a sweet familiar scent. It mixed with that of a jasmine bush so happy by the side of the house it long ago turned itself into a tree.

  "My brother's name is Verlyn Venable," she said. "He's twenty-four years ol' and still don' know enough to hold his diapers offa his knees."

  I took out a notepad and made my face like I knew all things.

  "He had hisself a good job," she said. "Good job. I got it for him, fr'en o' mine. He was doin' perfect. Then he ups and ghostifies. They owe him a pay check, but they cain't trace him down. I call ovah his place, call and call. What kinda man don' know enough to catch gold nickels fallin' out the sky?"

  She was sayin' all these worryin' words, but her voice could calm a bobcat in a pepper field.

  "His boss been out to his place, been out there and back to Egypt. They took to him, like I say. But you cain't count on patience to live overlong."

  I asked when was the last time she saw her brother.

  Her thumb rubbed a finger like she was about to start a fire. "He drop ovah here las' week and tol' me hold sumpin' for him. I say, 'How long,' and he go, 'Oh a day or two.' Six days now I don't hear nothin'. Three days he ain' showed at work."

  Minnie flicked a dark thing off the armrest. It hit hard against the wall and landed in a white plastic U.S. Post Office bin people take home full after they've been on vacation a long time. Inside was what I made out as pecan shells. Then it come to me what comprised the strip of red dirt I walked on out front and what I smelled in the air: shells, and nutmeats maybe in a pie.

  I asked did she file a Missing Persons. She cocked her head and grinned like to say, What planet you from, boy?

  The button in the center of the cushion was biting into my bony behind. I shifted away from it and asked, "What was it your brother lef' off?"

  "Hode on. I need to know how long you think it take to find him befoh I know I can afford you."

  "I charge twenty-five a hour," I said, resting my arms on my knees. "If there's long-distance, faxes, fees for records, well, that's additional."

  "I be cookin' up a buncha nuts for that kine money. How many hours, you think?"

  "Sometimes I find people in a hour. Sometimes never. I'll give you a runnin' report of my time weekly or bi-weekly as you choose. You tell me to cease and desist anytime you want. Bi-weekly— that's twice a week."

  "I may be beautiful, Mr. Perkins, but I ain' dumb."

  We smiled at each other as if there was more to the words than what hung in the air. My mind was wanderin' where it shouldn't. "I just like to clarify," I said.

  "Clarify all you want, Mr. Perkins. You a educated man, I c'n see that."

  "Cisroe."

  "Mr. Cisroe," she said, with that cat smile.

  "I had a couple years after the army, but I wouldn't say I'm educated, Miz Bazile." But I don't think she heard me.

  She put her elbow on the armrest and framed the side of her face with a thumb and a finger. The swing was carrying her toward me, then away.

  "Come to think on it, it's not gon' take all that long to fin' that boy. He either pokin' his nose where he oughtn'ta, hangin' in Slick Willie's Billiards down Sugahland, or…"

  I waited, one hand clasped on the other, notebook danglin'. That woman made the hairs on my chest snap and crackle. I was listenin', listenin' hard, but I was seein' her inside her house, invitin' me in for tea.

  "Or swimmin' with the mocs in the bayou," she said, and squeezed and unsqueezed the rope fixed to the porch swing. "He just a dumb baby, Mr. Cisroe. He think he Eddie Murphy. What I'm worried about: his hard head."

  * * *

  Minnie Chaundelle went inside to get what her brother gave her. She turned back and asked me did I want some tea. Just like that, did I want some tea. But it wasn't the time for me to offer a different tone, and I said yes with a right and decent attitude.

  I sat on there on the porch and ruminated on what I already knew about Minnie Chaundelle. I had placed a call to Stinger Gazway. Stinger drifts all over Fourth and Fifth Wards. If anyone knows anything about anybody, he does. He told me Minnie married a man named Sparrel Bazile six years ago, then laid him in the grave a year later. Sparrel was comin' home from work on the Katy at two A.M., same time a drunk was comin' home from a party.

  While I waited on Minnie's porch, the clouds were forming a dark blanket from the south. The air was thick enough to punch. I pulled the collar of my shirt away from my neck. Two white women with mismatched clothes walked by holdin' hands, their glasses half-down their noses and their hair cut straight across, and I could see they were short a few cards, maybe come from the school for the retarded do
wn the way.

  Minnie returned bringin' two iced teas on a tray with a high lip on it and sugar, lemon, spoons, and napkins from Whataburger. She nodded at a book with a marbleized cardboard cover like you buy for notes at school and said, "Here," and I took it off the edge of the tray.

  The label on front said Brickner Deposit at top, and on the bottom was the company name and an address on West Loop. I turned the pages and saw typing and charts and plot diagrams. Soon I figured out it had somethin' to do with a drilling operation off the Gulf's Terrebonne Bay.

  Minnie Chaundelle set the tray across the top of the postal bin and commenced asking me my tea preferences, then mixed and stirred. "That mus' mean sumpin' to some freak a nature," she said, glancing at the book. "But not t' me."

  "Uh-huh," I said, making myself out to be a thoughtful man. I took the glass of tea and swallowed deep but didn't drain it, not wantin' to inconvenience her. I asked if she showed the notebook to anyone, say, that friend of hers who gave her brother the job in the first place.

  "Verlyn tol' me don' show it to nobody, so I dint. Till you."

  "Sounds like maybe you don't trust your friend hired your brother."

  She glanced down like she was sorry for a sick puppy hid behind a chair. "It shunt be that way in this world, but I guess sometimes it is." Then she met my eyes and said, "Oh, well now, don't take me wrong. I just be steppin' on my own toes sometimes. Then again, you never know. Verlyn say, 'Anything happen t' me, you turn this ovah the po-lice.' I say, 'What you talkin' about?', but he don' ansah dat. Jes get in his car and go." She flapped the edge of her dress as if it got out of position, then moved inside it till she got comfortable. "He don' see me with no stickum sticker say 'Back the Blues.' Oh, cops ain' all bad. But enough o' them is." The swing went into motion lazy as a boat on a sea but Minnie's brow was scrunched up tight.

  "You don't go out to where he stays?"

  "One, I don' drive. Two, my fr'ens could take me, but time marches by and here it is, and you come highly recommended."

  She slid down me with her eyes. I slid up her the same way.

  I'd already decided Verlyn Venable was goin' to be found for about a hundred dollars.

  * * *

  The cemetery behind Minnie's house was dense and shadowed thick with pin oaks and two pecan trees Minnie said she took a rake to, then paid a little Mexican boy down the street a quarter a bucket to pick up the nuts. She candied pecans for people to sell in beauty parlors and gun shows at $7.50 per two paper-cones' worth. That, plus what she gets from the state for a bad back, is what she'd be payin' me from, she said. Bad back from bein' too much on it maybe— Stinger's the one told me this. But I don't judge what a woman with looks does to get by.

  I didn't much want to hit the freeway down to Sugarland to check out Verlyn Venable at four-thirty when traffic's all hinky. Instead, I swung over east a couple blocks to Kroger's grocery down on Montrose, thinking I might run into Stinger.

  He was sittin' in a booth by the side of the bakery, smearing mustard on a soft pretzel with a coffee stirrer. I asked if Minnie's brother was the type to mess with trouble. "Not that boy," Stinger said. "It don't fit, 'less he got mixed up with drugs down the way. He play Little League when my own boy was livin' here with his mama. Used ta, I'd see him drivin' Minnie Chaundelle the doctah when she had breathin' difficulties. They parents die young but dem two kep' they nose clean, I say dat. 'Course there's Minnie with her fellas. But hell, she give it away for free you real down and out. Used ta, anyways."

  Across the room in a Formica booth a man the color of summer grizzly was sittin' silent with his knees out into the walkway, his blond girlfriend opposite. She had a cut under one eye and on her cheek, surrounded in green and yellow. "Ain't that a damn shame," I said, nodding in that direction.

  Stinger looked over while he bit into the pretzel, leavin' mustard in his goatee. "Some women go outta they way to find somebody ta whack 'em," he said with his mouth full. He swallowed and said, "Ever' body got a choice wever to walk in dry socks or piss in they boots and whine about it."

  Stinger wasn't a low man but he was one to take serious.

  "Verlyn got a lady by Buffalo Speedway," he said. "I cain't tell you the address, but I c'n show you."

  * * *

  Stinger went to his pickup truck and unlocked the door, glancing right and left, then reached behind the seat where there's space enough for his paste bucket. He hunched his shoulders then, and I knew he'd slipped his .38 into his waistband under his loose shirt. He glanced around again, shut the pickup door, and headed my way. His top half was a sandy-colored shirt and a Rockets cap. His bottom half was brown pants and red sandals, and he moved like all his tendons had been stretched too long on the rack.

  How he came by the gun was one time he was drivin' home after a wallpaper job when a man was yellin' and wavin' a gun in the street with his own children lookin' on. Stinger pulls over, walks up to the goon and says, "I know you want to get rid of that piece, man." A woman who saw it said he held out his palm "like he ain't got no normal skin a bullet go through."

  While we drove to the street Stinger pointed out, the air was heavy and worthless from a storm comin' in off the Gulf. Lightning flickered like dyin' neon and low thunder rumbled, making promise the sky would rip open and relieve itself so we could breathe again.

  Halfway down the street we saw a girl in gray shorts and a black halter-top come runnin' barefoot toward us, wavin' her hands. "Uh-oh," I said, and slowed the car.

  "Tha's her," Stinger said. "Tha's Verlyn's stuff."

  Her hair was dark and curly and she had a light, fleshy look to her limbs when she came jammin' up to my window. A blue-rose tattoo showed on the rise of her left breast when she leaned in. "There's a guy with a knife! He's attacking someone!" she said.

  I told Stinger to get in the back so she could get in the front, and she hung onto the dash, pointing backwards as I smoked tires up to the outside pay phone at Popeye's Chicken. She hopped out and dialed, rocking foot to foot. Stinger said, "She get done, le's go take us a look." She came back, fear still in her face, and I told her to wait in Popeye's, where there's light.

  We found the apartments no sweat, and saw through a wire fence trailed in vine two lean men with no shirts standing by the pool smokin' cigarettes. The Cauc was wearin' black trousers. The other one had long beige shorts on and somethin' white wrapped around his shoulder and under his armpit with the pattern like a big red rose coming through. Stinger said, "Well, he's alahve but he's nicked."

  * * *

  All the while we talked, Verlyn smoked his cigarette and kept an eye on the breezeway. He could've been a golden panther, what with his hard jaw and yellow eyes.

  I told him I was a friend of his sister's. She was worried about him. He nodded but kept his counsel.

  There was a quiet but alert resolve about him, like he was just goin' to catch his breath before he took care of business. I'm like that myself sometimes. I once in a while get criticized over it, like by the woman who left me a few months ago. She took a bunch of things I called mine, but I didn't go after her when she very well knew I could hunt a whisper in a big wind. By the time I got through mulling it all over, she was askin' to come back, but my head was in a different place. It takes this cement a while to set, but when it does it's what it's going to be for a long, long time.

  The Anglo did all the talkin'. His hair was buzzed close so you could see the metal studs embedded in his scalp down to an arrow's point. I'm not squeamish but that did catch my attention.

  He said, "Me and Verlyn and Bitsy was kickin' it, watchin' the game, like that, this hype comes outta my room. Lucky he ain't stone dead, man." He laid off a bunch of rowdy names on the culprit while Verlyn stood there offering no contradiction, his eyes held steady on somethin' the rest of us couldn't see. I thought then that the only thing missin' in that young man's face was a young man's youth. Stinger and I bend the polar ends of forty, but the kid seemed worn ragged at the cuff
s.

  I gave out my card and said if they have any more problems to give me a call. Then I told Verlyn he might ring up his sister, too. A change came into his eyes at his sister's name. Softer. Younger.

  He said, "Keep this under your hat, okay?"

  "I got no problem with that," I said.

  Stinger and I left out the opposite side of the courtyard when we saw the baby-blue cars of Houston's finest because we'd as soon not waste everybody's time.

  * * *