The Next Time You Die

by Harry Hunsicker

  “I ain’t that little.” Olson moved his right hand.

  Rundell swung the billy club at his face. Olson twisted, taking the impact as a glancing blow to the corner of one eye. He kicked a foot toward his attacker, connected. Heard a gasp.

  He lashed out with the knife. Felt the blade plunge into flesh. He heard a howl. Felt blood on his hand.

  Olson may have passed out; he wasn’t sure. A few minutes later he pulled himself up, tried to clear his vision. The bloody knife was still in his hand. The man with the shaved head was gone, a small pool of blood marking where he had stood. The gun store employee had died relatively quickly, for which his boss was grateful. He looked for his .45 and found it in the bushes behind the store before staggering to the Suburban.

  We left Legal Grounds. Nolan volunteered to bandage Olson’s arm and head. They went to Olson’s truck to look for a first aid kit. Tess and I wandered down the sidewalk, past a Chinese restaurant and a used bookstore. We stopped in front of my Tahoe.

  Tess leaned against the hood and crossed her arms under her breasts. “They looked at you funny, when Olson talked about his guy getting shot in the stomach.”

  “There was a guy that used to do that, to send a message.” I stared at the display window of the bookstore. They were having a special on Michael Connelly novels.

  “What was his name?” Tess came and stood beside me.

  “Billy Barringer.”

  “He was part of that family, right?” She leaned in and stared at a book. “But he died.”

  “Yeah.” I turned away from the window and looked across the parking lot.

  “What does he have to do with any of this?”

  “He was somebody I knew a long time ago. Beyond that, I have no idea.”

  Nolan had finished patching up Olson. They laughed at something as he pulled a wooden crate halfway out of the back of his Suburban. Probably selling her a surface-to-air missile.

  “You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who’s friends with the Tony Soprano of East Texas.”

  “We’d known each other since we were kids,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  Nolan and Olson walked our way.

  “I hear you.” Tess ran her fingers through her hair and turned to face the sun, eyes closed. “A lot of things are.”

  I rubbed my ear where the fat hood from yesterday had almost pulled it off.

  “Hank.” Tess put a hand on my shoulder. “I need to get home. I’m worried.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Your father’s best friend hired me. Other than that, no particular reason.”

  She paused for a few moments. “Go on.”

  “You’re safer here. If it gets really rough, we’ve got a half dozen places to hide. Lots of different people to keep an eye on you.” I neglected to mention the quality of the people or places.

  She crossed her arms again, a distant look on her face. “Okay. We’ll do it your way.”

  “Good.”

  Nolan and Olson stopped in front of us. We discussed the situation for a few moments and decided Nolan and Tess would take my truck and look for Reese Cunningham while Olson and I would pay a visit to Carlos Jimenez’s mother and then hit the street to try to get a handle on Jesus Rundell.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I headed north on Abrams Road. Maria Jimenez lived in an apartment near Park Lane and Greenville Avenue, in an area that had once been a hot spot for the swinging-singles scene of the 1970s. Now the low-rise buildings provided housing for the city’s most recent immigrants.

  Her complex was behind a small shopping center where men sat on the curb drinking beer from cans hidden in paper bags. They ignored me when I drove into the parking lot of Shady Acres Apartments.

  The woman I presumed to be Carlos’s mother lived on the second floor of the first building. Olson was looking a little woozy, so I told him to stay put. He nodded and leaned back against the headrest.

  Several children were playing in the patch of grass in front, two women who looked barely out of their teens watching them. I nodded hello but they ignored me, continuing to visit with each other in Spanish.

  Jimenez’s unit was in the middle of the walkway, overlooking where the kids were playing. I knocked and stood to one side. The blinds on the window moved. After a minute or so, I knocked again. More movement, then the door opened a crack.

  “Whatchoo want?” A man’s voice.

  “Senora Jimenez.”

  “Ella no está aquí.”

  “When will she be back?”

  The door shut.

  I knocked again, harder this time.

  It opened further, displaying the face of a young man in his twenties. He looked a little like the pictures of Carlos. A brother or cousin maybe. “Go away, por favor.”

  “No can do, amigo.” I shook my head. “Just need to ask her a few questions.”

  The man was clearly agitated, breathing heavily, trying to find the right words in English.

  “I mean no harm.” I raised my hands.

  “All you gringos say that.” His face hardened. “They’ve already been here. Go way.”

  “Who’s . . . quien?” I really needed to listen to those Spanish-language tapes I’d bought a couple of years ago.

  “El chino, el hombre loco, todos.” He spat on the ground at my feet. “Go away.” He slammed the door.

  I tried to translate what he’d said. A Chinese crazy guy didn’t make any sense. I started to knock again but heard a noise from the end of the walkway. I turned and saw three young men, all wearing matching denim jackets with the sleeves ripped off.

  “Hola.” I smiled and tried to look like a nonthreatening gringo.

  “Why you bothering Senora Jiminez?” The one in front pulled a sawed-off pool cue from behind his back.

  “Just asking her a few questions.” I started moving backward.

  “You need to ask us first.” He bounced the business end of the stick against his palm a couple of times and started toward me. “Show some respect, understand. This is our complex.”

  One of the other guys produced a length of steel pipe.

  I pulled out my Hi Power and pointed it at the first one. “I’m leaving now. No need for this to get messy.”

  The three of them stopped and whispered to one another. I kept moving backward until I reached the end of the walkway. Then I took the stairs three at a time and raced back to Olson’s Suburban. He blinked his eyes open when I hopped in.

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, not too much.” I put the truck in gear and got us out of there as fast as possible.

  Connie the crack whore gave blow jobs for twenty bucks a pop in an alley behind Jefferson Avenue in South Dallas. To say Connie was plugged into the latest news of the street was something of an understatement. After the unproductive visit to Carlos’s mother, she seemed like a logical place to start gathering information on Rundell.

  Also, she owed me a favor or two since I had stopped a one-legged speed freak from almost beating her to death with his prosthetic limb a couple of months before.

  Not too many years ago Jefferson Avenue had been mostly vacant, boarded-up buildings punctuated here and there by a used furniture store. Lately, however, the main commercial street in the southern sector of the city had taken on a distinctly Hispanic flavor, dominated now by Mexican bridal shops and storefronts that specialized in arranging bus charters to visit relatives south of the border.

  I slowed as we passed the Texas Theater, a minor footnote in Dallas’s history, where the police had arrested Lee Harvey in the aftermath of the events on that fateful November day so many years before.

  Olson sat in the passenger seat and drank from his flask. I knew from experience that, when angry, he grew very quiet, nursing the rage and focusing his attention on revenge.

  He hadn’t said a word since we’d left Senora Jimenez’s apart
ment complex.

  A few hundred yards past the theater, I turned right on a side street and drove past the alley running behind Jefferson, where a panel truck blocked the narrow access point.

  I turned right again and stopped across from a Honda Accord with deep tinted windows and skinny after-market tires. Two tough-looking guys were leaning against the hood, staring down the street. I parked behind a Toyota pickup resting on its axles, the wheels missing.

  We got out. I locked the doors.

  “Do you know how pissed off I’ll be if my wheels get boosted?” Olson wobbled a little as he spoke.

  “We won’t be long.” I headed toward the alley, Olson staggering behind me, flask still in hand. Connie had a particular Dumpster behind which she liked to ply her trade. I moved past the panel truck and saw it belonged to a plumber.

  The rest of the alley was empty, except for a grocery cart resting on its side and a large metal trash receptacle about halfway down. I made my way toward the Dumpster but stopped after a hundred yards when Olson leaned over and vomited.

  “You okay?”

  He wiped his mouth. “Damn this cheap scotch.”

  I stared at him for a few moments.

  “Keep going.” He waved me away. “I’ll be all right.”

  I headed toward the Dumpster, turning around every few feet to check on my friend. He was back to swilling from the flask so I figured he was going to make it.

  I stopped a few feet from the Dumpster. “Hey, Connie, you back there?”

  A burly guy in a work shirt with a name tag sewn on the chest jumped out from behind the trash receptacle, zipping his pants. He had that weasel-caught-in-the-headlights look in his eyes. He stared at me for half a second and then ran in the opposite direction.

  A few moments later Connie appeared, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She wore a sleeveless T-shirt knotted across her belly and a dirty denim skirt that stopped about ten inches above her knees. The effect was to make her scrawny legs appear even skinnier. I knew she was in her late twenties, but life on the streets and the drugs made her look twice that age.

  She squinted at me. I waved. She took a hesitant step forward and then seemed to recognize me. She frowned and walked warily to where I stood.

  “Heya, Hank.”

  “Hi, Connie.”

  “I was in the middle of a date.”

  “Sorry.”

  “He hadn’t paid me yet.”

  I sighed and pulled out my wallet. I was getting tired of giving out Andy Jacksons to hookers.

  “Thanks.” She took the twenty. “Who’s he?” She pointed to Olson, who was swaying in the still air of the alley, an empty flask dangling from one hand.

  “Try not to pay attention to him. It’s better that way.”

  “Okay.” Connie placed a hand on my forearm and dragged her nails along my skin. “You want to go behind the Dumpster?”

  “Uh . . . no. Thanks.” I moved my arm. “Anything new happening I need to know about?”

  She frowned but didn’t say anything.

  Olson started to snore.

  I decided to try a different tactic. “You got a pimp?”

  “Hell, no.” She shook her head. “I’m a free agent.”

  “Anybody tried to recruit you lately?”

  She gave me an blank look. The cocoa leaves had fried one too many circuits.

  “Some new guys might be coming into town,” I said, “trying to take over.”

  “Whoa.” A hint of comprehension appeared in her eyes.

  “Yeah?”

  “These guys from East Texas.” She looked over her shoulder, peering down the empty alley. “It’s never been this way in Dallas.”

  “Talk to me.” I placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “My friend Becky.” Connie tugged at an earlobe. “She’s like upscale and shit. Got her own Web site.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “These dudes. They want a cut off the top.”

  “I’m looking for info on the head cat. Guy with a shaved head, dresses like a GQ model.”

  Her face blanched.

  “You know who I’m talking about?”

  She gulped and nodded once.

  “Where’s he hang?”

  “That titty bar over on Industrial Boulevard.” She squinted at me and bit her lower lip. “Your last name is Oswald, right? Like the guy that killed Lincoln.”

  “Kennedy.”

  “You . . .” She shook her head as if to clear the dust away.

  “What?”

  She brushed my arm off her shoulder and started walking. When she was about ten feet away she turned around. “Remember at the end of The Godfather, when Michael has all the bad guys killed?”

  I nodded.

  “Dawg, get out of town.” She turned and ran down the alley.

  The summer after high school graduation, I punched my father in the mouth and told him never to lay a finger on my mother again. Then I drove to Waco to see some old friends, got drunk, and enlisted in the army.

  At about the same time I was signing the papers that put me under Uncle Sam’s benevolent control for the next few years, Billy got his first craps game to run, a weekly affair held in the back room of a Barringer-owned roadhouse on Highway 6.

  When my hangover had abated, I took a drive east and stopped by the cinder-block shack one hot July afternoon. Since my family had moved to Dallas a few years before, I hadn’t seen my friend in a while.

  Mr. Barringer was in the front, sitting at a table by the jukebox with a pouch of Redman chewing tobacco and a can of Falstaff beer in front of him. One of the black whores who worked in the trailers behind the bar sat on his lap. He pushed her off when I walked in.

  “If it ain’t Hank Oswald.” He leaned back and adjusted the battered straw hat perched on his head. “What brings a city boy back to the country?”

  “I came to talk to Billy.”

  “He’s in the back. Working.” Mr. Barringer jerked a thumb toward the rear. “Ever had any brown sugar, Hank?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “Ain’t nothing like it.” He laughed and grabbed the girl’s buttocks, giving one cheek a good squeeze through the tight pair of Daisy Dukes she wore.

  “Can I see Billy?”

  “You like to gamble, Hank?”

  I shook my head.

  “Go on.” He opened the packet of chewing tobacco and stuck a wad in his mouth. “Just don’t stay too long.”

  I headed toward the back room, past the bar where Billy’s brother sat reading a week-old copy of the Waco Tribune Herald. He moved his mouth silently as his finger traced the words on the page. I had always wondered if he had been born slow or his father had hit him on the head one too many times during his formative years.

  I went down a narrow hallway that smelled of sweat and beer. A plain wooden door, guarded by a large black man in overalls and no shirt, was at the end. As I approached, he moved out of the way and opened the door.

  The room was small and filled with smoke and people, all of them appearing to be local farmers and tradesmen.

  Billy stood at the head of the table, collecting money and working the stick. He hadn’t changed much, hair still thick and dirty blond. His nose was long, his face angular and handsome like that of a B-grade movie actor whose name seems to be on the tip of your tongue.

  He nodded once at me and then handed the stick to one of his other brothers, the mean one a few years older than us. He motioned me outside. I followed him out onto the packed earth behind the bar, where an oil drum converted into a cooker sat underneath a live oak tree, pouring out smoke.

  We shook hands and exchanged small talk for a few moments. He asked me what it was like, living in Dallas with all the girls and things to do. His tone was wistful until I told him to come on up and see. His voice got hard then.

  “Did like we always talked about,” I said. “I joined the army.”

  “I was going to. . . .” Billy turned away. He kicked an
empty beer can across the dirt.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”

  “You like fleecing farmers?”

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  I shrugged.

  “I read this book one time.” He stuck a cigarette in his mouth. “It was about destiny.”

  “Huh?” I shook my head.

  “Just bought a brand-new pickup. Paid cash for it.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Go back to Dallas.” Billy put an arm around my shoulders. “The Barringers’re kicking ass and taking names. You don’t want to get hurt.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  After one more furtive glance, Connie darted between two buildings and disappeared.

  We headed back. The Honda was gone as were the rims on Olson’s Suburban.

  “My wheels.” Olson pointed to the vehicle. “They stole my wheels.”

  “Guess we shouldn’t have left it by the other one.” I pointed to the Toyota. “At least they didn’t break in.”

  Olson leaned against the wall of the building at the corner of the side street and the alley. “I’ll add it to your bill.”

  We walked down Jefferson Avenue, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Under the circumstances, that was pretty tough. Olson was six-six with blond hair and a full-size .45 automatic barely hidden under his shirt. He looked like he’d been dragged for a couple of miles down a bumpy road. I was about three inches shorter and limping. We were the only Anglos on the street.

  A few blocks past the Texas Theater, we stopped at a steakhouse with a twenty-foot papier-mâché cow on the roof. The Chinese guy working behind the bar paid no attention to our condition. He poured us two cups of coffee like I asked and went back to polishing glasses.

  I pulled out my cell phone to call Nolan and find out if she’d learned anything about Reese Cunningham.

  The phone rang before I could call.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where are you?” Nolan said.

  “Remember Connie the crack whore?”