The Next Time You Die

by Harry Hunsicker

  “What’s up?”

  “I dumped Larry last night.”

  “That’s good.” I raised my eyebrows slightly. “Right?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “What about the church and the caterer?”

  “Canceled it all.” She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “To think I was gonna marry that guy.”

  “To think.”

  “What’s the workload like right now?” she asked. “We’ve got a new case.” I tossed the empty bottle in the trash. “So far it’s about a pimp and a preacher.”

  “Good,” she said. “I wanna kick somebody in the balls today.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  We talked as I drove to the building where I had dropped off the preacher less than twenty-four hours before.

  I explained everything so far. The pimp and the streetwalker and the dead guy in the boardinghouse that morning. The strange man in the seersucker suit. Linville and the request to find the missing folder, followed by the two rednecks at the bar the previous afternoon.

  Nolan asked me why I hadn’t taken her along yesterday. I mentioned the meeting she was supposed to have had at that same time with her future sister-in-law and Larry’s only sibling, a woman named Brandi who had just got out of prison after doing eighteen months for passing bad checks.

  After a few blocks, Nolan broke her silence. “What are you leaving out?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were evasive,” she said. “When you were talking about the two guys at the bar.”

  Nolan could spot a hustle from across a pool hall. It must have been the psych background. Not much got by her, including me, whenever I tried.

  “They mentioned Billy.”

  Nolan sucked in a mouthful of air.

  “Said I had to answer for him.”

  She banged her hand on the dash. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s not your problem.”

  “Don’t be a dumbass, Hank.”

  The crack dealers weren’t out yet on Ervay Street. My guess was they probably worked different corners during the morning hours. I turned right on a side street and soon we were back in the interior, the houses and cars on blocks appearing even more dismal in the bright light of day.

  A block from Linville’s place two guys in ragged sweatpants and sleeveless T-shirts shared a quart bottle of Schlitz malt liquor. As we passed, one shot us the finger and the other grabbed his crotch.

  I made a couple of drive-bys and checked for surveillance of the redneck variety. Except for the occasional emaciated wino and the two guys drinking beer, the street was dead. No other people visible. No discernible activity in or around any of the houses. Nobody at the Quonset hut that housed the bar.

  “Here we are.” I stopped the truck across from the building Linville used for his ministry.

  “Think it could be a setup?” Nolan pulled a Para-Ordnance .45 automatic from the gym bag she had brought.

  “By who?”

  “This Linville guy. Or his people.”

  “Kinda doubt it.” I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “They could have done it last night. Plus, we’re dropping in unannounced.”

  “I dunno. Can’t be too careful.” She rammed a sixteen-round clip in the butt of the pistol. Then she pulled out a pair of matching Glock .40-calibers and began loading them.

  When I had first met Nolan a couple of years ago, her interest in firepower had been minimal: a snub-nose .38 stuck in her back pocket and she was good to go. As time passed and the quality of her dating choices declined, her interest in weaponry grew.

  Her last boyfriend, the one before Larry, had been a mobile home salesman a couple of counties south of Dallas. When she had caught him in the sack with a cocktail waitress from the local VFW lounge, she had gone out and bought a fully automatic M-16. I was more than a little worried about what she would acquire after the Larry fiasco.

  “Leave the Glocks in the truck,” I said.

  “But—”

  “Guy’s a preacher.” I opened the door and stepped onto the hot asphalt. “Not some gun nut.”

  “Like David Koresh?” Nolan hopped out, too.

  “Okay, maybe you’ve got a point.” I paused in the middle of the street. “Take a walk around back. See if anybody’s there who shouldn’t be.”

  She reached inside the truck and grabbed one of the Glocks.

  I chirped the alarm, and together we headed to the building where I’d dropped off Lucas Linville the day before. Nolan went to the left, to circle around back and meet me in front. I waited for her on one side of the main entrance. Three minutes later she emerged from the other side, sweaty and dirty and brushing leaves from her hair. She positioned herself on the opposite side of the doorway, nodded an okay. I knocked on the door.

  An intercom buzzed. “Who is it?” The voice sounded like the Filipino man from the evening before.

  “Hank Oswald.”

  “Please. Go away.”

  Nolan and I looked at each other.

  “Need to talk to Linville,” I said.

  “He’s sick. Please leave.”

  “I found the file.”

  Silence for a few long moments. Then, “Stick it in the mail slot.”

  “No can do.” I banged on the door. “Open up or I go find the rich kid’s parents and tell them what’s going on.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Amen, brother.” I slapped the door again. “Now open up.”

  The intercom clicked off. A long silence followed. I started to sweat again. The two guys drinking beer wandered down the sidewalk and peered at us. One of them looked as if he was going to say something until Nolan pulled out the big Para .45 and pointed it at his crotch. He dropped the beer bottle, and they both turned and ran the other way.

  After what seemed like a long time, I heard the crackle of deadbolts. The thick wooden door opened a fraction. The face of the man from the previous evening appeared. I could see his features more clearly now. His hair, close-cropped all the way around, had horizontal hash marks every few centimeters on the sides, leading up to the top of his head, where it had been allowed to grow thicker. He looked like a rapper circa 1992.

  He said, “Give me the folder.”

  “Where’s Linville?”

  “He is, uhh . . . like . . . sick.”

  “Hangovers will do that to a body.” I put a hand on the door. “But we really need to talk to him. About Carlos.”

  That was the magic word. The man hesitated a moment and then stepped aside and let us in.

  I was nine years old when I began to understand Billy Barringer’s family business for the first time.

  Billy’s people lived on a farm a few miles east of my family’s place just outside Waco. The Barringers were as pure country as Hank Williams, John Deere tractors, and chicken-fried steak. Taciturn and tough. Wind-burned and hard drinking. Good workers, but at what I was never sure. Until later.

  One thing for certain, though, they never lacked for material possessions. The pickup trucks were always new and shiny. Billy’s toys were always the latest and coolest, as if they’d come straight from the Sears catalog. Billy’s mother drove a black Lincoln. She got a new one each year; that summer’s model had an eight-track tape player. She always gave a lot of money to the church, too, and to help foreign missions and stuff. Billy said his daddy got mad at her for sending his cash to all those damn gooks, but at least it kept her off his ass. His mother and father got mad at each other a lot, it seemed to me, even more than my parents. I had the hazy impression that Billy was at the center of their arguments, more often than not, but as a child these things were hard to understand.

  Because Billy was my best friend and because he had all that cool stuff, it was always fun to go visit. In addition to the toys, there were horses and cows and barns and acres of pastureland, all sorts of things for nine-year-old boys to enjoy. We swam in the stock tanks and played in the pecan or
chard behind the white clapboard house where Billy lived with his parents and three brothers.

  I was spending the Fourth of July weekend with them. After dinner Billy and I shot off Roman candles and bundles of Black Cat firecrackers in the back pasture. When all the fireworks were gone, Mr. Barringer asked us if we wanted to go for a little ride. His eyes were loopy and his words slurred. The whiskey in the mason jar he carried slopped out on his overalls when he walked.

  Billy and I climbed into the bed of his father’s pickup. Billy’s uncle sat up front with Mr. Barringer. We took a dirt road leading to the back of the farm and pretty soon we were deep in the woodlands growing next to the Brazos River. I still remember the sound of the water and the smell of tilled earth and cane pole.

  We came to a tin shack in a clearing. Ten or twelve pickups were parked on the packed dirt around the structure. I heard men laughing and shouting. Mr. Barringer got out and went to the front door. He talked to one of his other brothers, the one with the bum leg who had gone away for a while after his wife had disappeared.

  Billy grew quiet, not his usual boisterous self. I asked him where we were and what was going on. He didn’t reply.

  A man dressed in a worn denim work shirt and faded jeans came through the door, almost as if he’d been pushed. He stood in front of Mr. Barringer. They talked for a while, the man raising his hands a lot, Billy’s father nodding with his arms crossed in front of him.

  The punch came unexpectedly. One minute the man in the denim shirt was talking, gesturing with his hands. The next he was on the ground, holding his stomach. Mr. Barringer stepped back and rubbed his knuckles. He kneeled down and spoke to the man.

  The noise inside the shack got louder, a rising tide of male voices, yelling like when my father and his friends watched football. From a long way off, I heard the woomph of a fireworks show; a few seconds later a starburst of red and blue sparkled faintly through the tops of the trees, followed by another muffled boom. Mr. Barringer reached into the man’s pockets and removed something. He stuffed it inside the front of his overalls and returned to the truck.

  The noise from the shack grew louder. Billy’s dad leaned into the back of the truck, where we sat, and looked at me. “Don’t you mind none of this, Hank.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “Just trying to collect what’s owed to me, you unnerstand, don’tcha?” He smiled and tousled my hair. “Tell your daddy I said hello.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We stepped into the vestibule of Linville’s building. Concrete floor, rough, exposed-brick walls. The room was lit only by a single, buzzing fluorescent light and was empty except for a Remington shotgun resting on a metal chair. A plain wooden door was on the far wall, leading to the rest of the building.

  The Filipino man wore a pair of baggy shorts, barely resting on his skinny hips. They were long, stopping about midcalf, a few inches above a pair of sneakers made out of what looked like smooth white plastic, not a lace visible anywhere. An iPod hung on his waistband, the ear buds dangling around his neck.

  “Yo, homey.” The man moved his shoulders from side to side in a rough approximation of a street strut. “What’sup?”

  “Vanilla Ice called,” I said. “He wants his haircut back.”

  “Huh?” The man frowned.

  “Where’s Linville?”

  “He’s sick, like I told you.”

  “We need to see him.”

  “Look, homey. I’ll give him the file.” The man quit wiggling his torso and folded his arms across his chest. “You mentioned Carlos?”

  “What’s your name?” Nolan asked.

  “Arthur.” The man seemed to notice her for the first time. “Who are you?”

  “What’s with the scattergun?” Nolan pointed to the Remington.

  “What?”

  “The shotgun.” She tapped the chair with her boot. “Why do you have one?”

  Arthur started to say something but I interrupted. “Don’t you want to know about Carlos?”

  “No . . . I mean, yes.” Arthur shook his head and blinked several times. “Why y’all messin’ with me, huh?”

  “It’s what we do when people are trying to scam us.” I smiled. “Now can we see Linville?”

  The Filipino man took a deep breath and put the earpieces from his music player in place. He turned and walked toward the door leading to the interior of the building. We followed.

  The first room was a large common area with groups of worn tables and Salvation Army chairs, a few bookcases, and an elderly television set in one corner.

  A half dozen people of varying ages, genders, and ethnicities were busy arranging a serving line on two folding tables set end to end. The group glanced up as we walked by, faces blank, eyes hollow and distant, with a look similar to that of soldiers I had seen suffering from combat fatigue.

  Arthur walked to a side door, opened it, and motioned for us to follow.

  We did so and found ourselves in a narrow hallway, our navigator hurrying along the poorly lit passageway. A metal door with a deadbolt blocked the end of the hallway. Arthur knocked once, fished a key out of his pocket, and turned the lock. He pushed it open and stood to one side. We walked in, and the door closed behind us.

  _______

  The wood-paneled chamber was dimly lit, illumination coming from a low-wattage bulb in an open closet and a desk lamp resting on a milk crate. The floor was covered with a brown shag carpet, circa The Brady Bunch with their highest ratings. Debris was everywhere: pizza boxes, soft drink cans, beer bottles, old newspapers, and other unidentifiable crap. The odor of rotting food and the sour stench of unwashed clothing filled the space.

  A bed was in one corner, tangled linens in a pile. A worn sofa and coffee table flanked the opposite wall. Pastor Lucas Linville sat in the middle of the swayback divan, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. He wore a pair of sweatpants and a dingy wife-beater undershirt. He was completely still. He didn’t move or say a word, just sat there. For an instant I wondered if he was breathing.

  “Linville.” I snapped my fingers.

  No response.

  “This place smells like ass.” Nolan waved a hand in front of her face.

  Lucas Linville looked up, his face cadaver pale except for the greenish tint around his eyes. He blinked several times and looked at Nolan. “Who are you?”

  “Carlos is dead.” I knocked a pizza box out of a high-back chair and sat down.

  “What?” More blinks.

  “Somebody slit his throat.” I nudged away the moldy remains of what looked like a bologna sandwich with one foot. “This is Nolan, by the way. We work together.”

  “Ever thought of hiring a cleaning lady?” my partner said.

  “What happened? Who . . . how . . .?”Linville’s face got paler.

  I pulled out the folder that was supposed to contain the case file for Reese Cunningham and placed it on the coffee table. The preacher grabbed it and looked inside. He stared at the empty pocket for a few moments before dropping it on the table.

  “Where can we find Reese?” Nolan said.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Linville stood unsteadily. He staggered to a cardboard box by the bed, reached down, and pulled out a quart bottle of Jim Beam.

  “Don’t drink that.” I stood also.

  Linville took a long pull of whiskey.

  “I meant for you to do that,” I said. “Reverse psychology.”

  He tipped the drink to his lips again, a four-second swig this time.

  I walked to where he stood and took the bottle from his hands. “Where is Reese?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “A man of the cloth shouldn’t swear,” Nolan said.

  “Reese won’t be able to help you.” He eyed the bottle in my hand.

  “Something in his case file was worth killing over.” I walked back to the coffee table and put the whiskey down. “There’s also a connection somehow to a dead man named Billy Barringer.”
r />   “You’re a piece of shit, Oswald.” The preacher’s face purpled with rage. “Just find the file. I paid you good money.”

  I didn’t reply, more confused than ever by his sudden anger.

  “Get out,” Linville said.

  “What do you know about Billy?”

  “He was a piece of shit, too.” Linville’s voice was slurred as he wobbled his way to the bottle of booze on the coffee table.

  He didn’t have much more time left in the land of sober-minded folk. I sat down on the sofa, removed the bottle from his hands yet again, and said, “I saw a man at Carlos’s place this morning. White, late forties.”

  Linville’s eyes rattled in their sockets like marbles in an ashtray. He didn’t say anything.

  “Guy was a clothes hound. Wore a seersucker suit, pressed just so. Shaved head.”

  The preacher took a deep breath. It sounded like a hiccup.

  “I’ve run across people like him before.” I placed the bottle on the coffee table, out of his reach. “The kind you get a bad feeling off of without them doing a thing.”

  “M-m-may God have mercy on your soul.” Linville was trembling now. “He’ll be the death of us all.”

  Nolan put one foot on the coffee table and leaned over. “What’s his name?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Nothing does anymore.” Linville’s voice was hoarse with emotion or whiskey. “This is a journey. And the road is fraught with many perils.”

  “Maybe you should quit stopping at the roadside taverns.”

  The older man’s torso spasmed, like a sigh gone wrong. He grabbed his stomach.

  I stood up. Cryptic, drunk preachers I’d had enough of. Nolan moved to the door. Linville’s face turned from cadaver cream to lemon yellow. He put a hand over his mouth.

  “The two guys at the bar yesterday.” I walked to where my partner stood. “Were they after you? Or me?”

  “Or both?” Nolan said.

  Linville didn’t reply. His faced shined with sweat. He swallowed repeatedly. Vomitus Preacherus was about to occur. Nolan and I left the room to the sound of retching.