by Mark Gimenez
‘Was it dangerous for Renée?’
‘I guess she thought it was. But I always protected her.’
She sat silent for a moment then said, ‘You’re right.’
‘About what?’
‘I don’t get out much.’
‘You will as my intern.’
Nadine contemplated her sanitized hands.
‘Professor …’
She turned to him; she was that thirteen-year-old kid again.
‘… can you protect me?’
‘Yes, Ms. Honeywell, I can. And I will.’
‘Nothing personal, but you’re a law professor. And it’s a harsh world.’
‘I have skills.’
She regarded him a moment then finished rubbing her hands. She offered the sanitizer to Book.
‘I washed upstairs.’
The waitress returned. She placed their drinks on the table then handed a card to Nadine.
‘Text me.’
She winked again then walked away.
‘I attract lesbians,’ Nadine said. ‘And no, I’m not.’
Book emptied a sweetener into his iced tea, stirred, and took a long drink. Nadine sucked her root beer through a long straw.
‘You ever write a brief?’ Book asked.
‘In law school?’
‘Time you learned.’
‘What’s the issue?’
‘Search and seizure. Fourth Amendment.’
‘Who’s the client?’
‘Bobby Welch.’
‘That regent’s son.’
‘You don’t know who Elizabeth Taylor was, but you know who Bobby Welch is?’
‘Someone tweeted me that he got arrested for drug possession.’
‘That’s how you get your news? On Twitter?’
‘That’s how everyone my age gets the news.’ She shrugged. ‘No commercials.’
‘If I owned CBS stock, I’d sell.’
‘What’s CBS?’
Book sat back and reread Nathan Jones’s letter.
‘He said his client was contaminating the groundwater, but didn’t say who his client was. Said someone followed him home. Said his wife was scared. Said he had proof. Said he needed my help.’
Book blew out a breath.
‘How do I help a dead person?’
‘So what are we going to do?’
‘If you die from unnatural causes in a small town, there’ll usually be an article in the local paper. And an obituary. So, Ms. Honeywell, we’re going to find the newspaper office, see what we can learn there. Then we’ll ask around town, try to learn the identity of Nathan’s mystery client. And we’ll visit his wife tonight, see if she has his proof.’
‘And go home tomorrow?’
‘Probably.’
‘Probably?’
Book folded and replaced the letter inside the envelope then checked the postmark again.
‘He mailed this letter on the fifth, died that night.’
‘Coincidence.’
Chapter 7
His intern brushed and flossed her teeth after every meal to prevent cavities and gum disease, or so she had advised him. When she returned downstairs, they proceeded through the hotel courtyard, across Texas Street, and south on Highland Avenue past a row of renovated storefronts. The first display window featured a sleek wood desk; stenciled on the window was Evan Hughes, Furniture Design and Fabrication, and below that Marfa, TX – Brooklyn, NY. The next storefront sat vacant, but after that was a shop called Stuff that sold stuff. Parked at the curb was an old hearse painted in a Wild West motif with horses and cattle and gunslingers; longhorns had been mounted on the grill.
‘Odd,’ Nadine said.
She abruptly stopped and examined her arm then stuck her hand inside the canvas bag looped over her shoulder and came out with an aerosol can. She sprayed her arms and legs and neck.
‘Germs?’ Book asked.
She turned the can so he could read the label: OFF!
‘Mosquitoes. They carry the West Nile virus. It’s an epidemic.’
‘In April?’
‘You can’t be too careful.’
She offered the can to him, but he declined. She was now cleared to continue down the sidewalk. A white two-story adobe-style building with inlaid tile, elaborate wrought iron, and Brite Building 1931 in black print across the front façade occupied the next block. It housed a restaurant called Maiya’s behind a red door, the old Marfa National Bank, and the Ayn Foundation gallery. The featured exhibits were by Maria Zerres and Andy Warhol.
‘Let’s check it out,’ Book said.
They entered the gallery. Displayed inside the bare space were three of Andy Warhol’s works based on Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. A large black-and-white sketch on one wall depicted Jesus at the Last Supper. On another wall was a color version of Jesus. Another had Jesus next to a bodybuilder with the caption, ‘Be a Somebody with a Body.’
‘Also odd,’ Nadine said.
‘What’s odd is an Andy Warhol exhibit in Marfa, Texas,’ Book said.
‘You’re doing it again.’
‘What?’
‘Making up names.’
‘I’m not making it up. Andy Warhol’s a famous artist.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘He is.’
They walked outside just as two young men bounced in as if entering a trendy coffee shop in SoHo; they carried iPhones and wore Keds, skinny jeans, white T-shirts—one had WWDJD? stenciled across the front—and porkpie hats like the cop in The French Connection.
‘They’re gay,’ Nadine said when they stepped onto the sidewalk.
They continued south and encountered similar young men engaged in their electronic devices and animated conversations. Book said ‘howdy’ to the next group and got a look in response. He tried ‘hidee’ on the next ones and got nothing. They wore black-framed glasses, mismatched clothing, fedoras and bowler hats, colorful hair that stuck out like porcupine quills, tattoos, and piercings. Boys walked hand in hand, about as common a sight in West Texas as cattle being herded down Fifth Avenue in New York City. The young men acted with the same aloofness the hipster creative types in the SoCo part of Austin displayed, as if trying too hard to appear endowed by God with genius; which is to say, they acted much the same as law students at UT.
‘Also gay,’ Nadine said.
‘Stop.’
‘Just saying.’
‘Don’t.’
She made a face.
Situated on the north side of the railroad tracks was the old Marfa Wool and Mohair Building. The sandstone-colored building had been converted into an art gallery featuring the works of John Chamberlain. They went inside and were greeted by a young docent wearing a pink T-shirt with Chinati printed across the front. He explained the layout of the exhibit then left them to tour on their own.
‘Gay,’ Nadine whispered.
Book sighed then turned to his intern.
‘Why do you do that?’
A perfectly innocent face.
‘What?’
‘Your gay or straight game.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s not a game. It’s a basic survival skill in San Francisco. For girls. You know, you get all gooey-eyed over this great-looking guy,turns out he likes boys. It can be pretty embarrassing, especially if you’ve already taken your clothes off.’
‘I would think so.’
‘You wouldn’t believe how many times that’s happened to me.’
‘Taking your clothes off?’
‘Romancing a gay guy. That ever happened to you?’
‘Romancing a gay guy? No.’
‘Romancing a lesbian and not knowing it?’
‘If I didn’t know it, how would I know if it happened?’
‘Sounds like a law professor’s answer. Of course, the odds of finding a straight guy in San Francisco are about the same as finding a gay guy in West Texas.’
She regarded the gay docent.
‘Or not.’
John Cham
berlain was not gay. He had four wives and three sons and was a renowned sculptor of automotive steel. Bumpers, door panels, fenders—he crushed and twisted the pieces into massive modern art. One of his sculptures had sold for $4.7 million just prior to his demise. Twenty-two of his works were displayed in the building in which Book and Nadine now stood. She stared at a mangled steel sculpture titled Chili Terlingua.
‘That’s art?’
‘Well …’
‘Exactly. Does this Chamberlain guy live here?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Figures.’
‘Marfa sits at the same altitude as Denver,’ Book said. ‘Hence, the cooler air.’
‘But Denver has a Starbucks,’ his intern said. ‘Hence, I’d rather be in Denver.’
They proceeded along Highland Avenue until they arrived at a storefront with The Times of Marfa stenciled across the front plate glass window. Taped to the window was a ‘Burn Ban in Effect’ notice.
‘Small-town publishers, they know everything about everyone—and they trade in information. You give them a little, they’ll give you a lot.’
‘Like my aunt.’
‘Is she in the newspaper business?’
‘The gossip business. If I want my mother to know something, I tell my aunt. Faster that way.’
‘Well, if you want to know what’s going on in a small town, you read the local paper. And if you want to stir the pot in a small town, you put a story in the paper.’
‘And do we?’
‘Do we what?’
‘Want to stir the pot?’
‘Yes, Ms. Honeywell, we do.’
‘That sounds dangerous.’
‘It can be.’
They opened the screen door—the inside door was propped open with a large rock—and stepped into a small office. An older man sat at a desk behind a waist-high counter with his head cocked back slightly, apparently so he could focus on the computer screen in front of him through his reading glasses. He glanced at them over his glasses then went back to his typing. After a moment, he stood and walked over. He looked like one of the Beach Boys on their fiftieth reunion tour; his hair was white, his eyes blue, and his shirt Hawaiian. He wore a red ‘MARFA’ cap. A toothpick dangled from his lips like a cigarette. He was the photographer at Nathan Jones’s funeral. He stuck a weathered hand across the counter.
‘Professor Bookman, I presume.’
They shook hands.
‘Sam Walker … owner, publisher, reporter, typesetter, printer, and delivery boy. I write the paper up front and print it out back. That’s what you’re smelling, the ink.’
‘John Bookman. And Nadine Honeywell, my intern.’
‘Welcome to Marfa.’ Sam Walker chuckled. ‘Boy, you really lit into McConnell and Schumer last Sunday. I like that—you don’t play favorites.’
‘I don’t have favorites.’
‘I expect not.’
‘How’d you know I was in town?’
‘Word travels fast from the Paisano. We know who’s in town before they get up to their rooms. We get all kinds of celebrities these days. Robert Redford was in town last week, flew in to see the art. And that Quaid boy—not the one that was in G.I. Joe—’
‘G.I. Joe?’
‘No, the other one. He and his wife moved here, bought a storefront on Highland next to Evan Hughes’s furniture shop, figured on fixin’ it up for their home, but then Hollywood hit men came gunning for them so they hightailed it up to Canada.’
‘Hollywood hit men?’
‘That’s what they said. Course, I’m not sure all the lights are on. Anyway, he defaulted on the purchase note, the owner foreclosed, and they had a sheriff’s auction on the sidewalk, sold all his stuff.’
‘Sounds like you know everything going on in your town.’
‘I’ve lived seventy-two years now, Professor, all but my four college years right here in Marfa and the last fifty right in this spot, observing and reporting. So I keep up with things. Course, it ain’t that hard, not when there’s only two folks per square mile in all of Presidio County. Only so much news those few folks can create.’
‘Is Marfa a better place now than when you started the paper?’
‘It’s different. Better is a point of view, not a fact.’
‘You sound like an old-style newsman.’
‘Well, I am old.’
‘This the only newspaper in town?’
‘In the county. Weekly. Next edition comes out tomorrow.’
Sam held up two mock front pages.
‘Slow news week, so I’m trying to decide on the lead story. I got one story about the roller derby returning to Marfa and another about a ton of marijuana found by the Border Patrol in a bulldozer blade. What do you think, Professor?’
‘Roller derby.’
‘That’s what I figured.’
‘Mr. Walker—’
‘Sam. So you folks come out to see Judd’s boxes and Flavin’s fluorescent lights?’
‘And a former student. Nathan Jones.’
Sam grimaced. ‘Boy, that was a damn shame. Married, about to be a daddy.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘Never heard of him till he died last week. Must’ve been low profile, for me not to know him. Bad accident out on Sixty-seven. Folks out here drive too damn fast. Course, when you drive a hundred miles for lunch, hard to drive the speed limit, even if it is eighty.’
‘Did you write an article about the accident or an obituary?’
‘Both. They’ll be in tomorrow’s paper.’
‘Mind if I read them today?’
Sam shrugged. ‘Sure. Why not?’
He walked over to his desk and returned with two short articles. He placed them on the counter. Book read the first article.
LOCAL LAWYER DIES IN ONE-CAR ACCIDENT
Nathan Jones, 29, a lawyer with The Dunn Law Firm in Marfa, was killed in a one-car accident on the north side of Highway 67 nine miles east of town Thursday night about 11 P.M. Sheriff Brady Munn investigated the accident and reported that Jones apparently fell asleep, ran off the road, lost control of his vehicle, and crashed into a pump jack. The pickup truck’s gas tank ruptured and exploded. Jones died at the scene. ‘Speed was a contributing factor in the accident,’ Sheriff Munn said. Jones was returning to Marfa from Midland where he had business at his law firm’s offices. Thomas A. Dunn, senior partner at the firm in Midland, expressed shock at Jones’s death. ‘He was a fine young lawyer and a fine young man. We will miss Nathan.’
‘Good-looking boy,’ Sam said.
A photograph of Nathan accompanied the obituary.
JONES, NATHANIEL WILLIAM, 29, went to be with his Lord and Savior on April 5th. Nathan was born on February 12, 1983. He grew up on his family’s cattle ranch west of Marfa. He graduated from Marfa High School then Texas Tech University with a degree in English. He attended law school at the University of Texas in Austin and received his law degree in 2009. He was a member of the Texas Bar Association and was employed with The Dunn Law Firm in Marfa. Nathan is survived by his wife, Brenda, who is expecting their first child, and his parents, William and Edna. Funeral services were at the First Baptist Church with burial at the Marfa Cemetery.
‘Only problem with a weekly,’ Sam said. ‘Sometimes the deceased is already in the ground before the obituary comes out. Least he had a nice funeral.’
‘We saw you there. You went even though you didn’t know him?’
‘When there’s not but two thousand folks in town, one dies, it means something. Out here, Professor, folks aren’t fungible.’
As law students often seemed to be.
Book had lost contact with Nathan after he had graduated from the law school. He viewed his role as similar to a parent’s: to teach the students skills for life in the legal world so they could survive on their own. Consequently, the students leave law school and their professors behind; they get on with their lives and legal careers. They seldom have contact with their professors
except to shake hands at continuing legal education seminars. They return to campus for football games, and if they’re successful, to make a donation to the school. If they’re very successful, their firms might endow a chair. If they become fabulously rich, they might buy the naming rights for a building or space on campus. Hence, the law school had the Susman Godfrey Atrium, the Joseph D. Jamail Pavilion, the Jamail Center for Legal Research, the Kraft Eidman Courtroom, and the Robin C. Gibbs Atrium. His former intern had not become a rich and famous lawyer. He had not made a donation, endowed a chair, or bought a naming right. He had simply returned home to Marfa and gotten on with his life. And now his life was over. Book could not help but feel that he owed an unpaid debt to Nathan Jones.
‘And I took some photos of the funeral service,’ Sam said.
‘Why?’
‘A life ended. Deserves to be documented. So folks won’t forget.’
‘Do you have a photo of the guests at Nathan’s funeral?’
Sam again went to his desk and returned with a computer-generated photograph. He placed it on the counter in front of Book.
‘Who are these people?’ Book asked.
Sam pointed at faces in the photo. ‘She’s the wife … his parents … lawyers, I figure, who else would wear suits? … the sheriff … Sadie, the court clerk … other locals.’
‘May I have this photo?’
‘Sure.’ Sam’s eyes turned up to Book. ‘You looking into his death, figure maybe it wasn’t an accident?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Just hoping for a lead story better than the roller derby.’
‘Sorry to disappoint you.’
‘Then what brings you to Marfa?’
‘We came for the art, stopped in to say hello to Nathan, learned he had died.’
‘Same day the boy was buried?’
‘Coincidence.’
‘Myself, I don’t believe in coincidences.’
Nadine threw her hands up. ‘What does everyone have against coincidences?’
Sam picked up a digital camera from his desk.
‘Mind if I take your picture? For my wall.’
He gestured to the side wall on which photos of celebrities were hung. Book shrugged an okay. He figured Sam Walker might be a friend in Marfa—and he might need a friend. Sam snapped a few photos then held the camera out to Nadine.
