The Next Time You Die

by Harry Hunsicker

I looked at Tess. She shrugged.

  Bunny gripped my hand. “When do you think Reese is gonna wake up?”

  “Real soon.” I stood and walked out of the room.

  Tess followed me into the cavernous marble foyer. I looked out the peephole and could see Nolan sitting in my truck. I pulled out my cell phone and scrolled through the address book, looking for the entry of a woman I had dated a few months earlier.

  “We can’t just leave her here,” Tess said.

  “We’re not.” I found the name. Cyndy, with two Y’s. A caseworker for the Dallas County Council on Mental Health. I pushed SEND and hoped she had gotten past all the bitterness and anger of our breakup. I tended to get that moving-on feeling when women started talking about bridesmaid dresses and wedding receptions on the third date.

  Cyndy was over it. She was now dating a former priest turned psychologist. I explained the situation to her. She said she would be up there within the hour. I hung up.

  “Now what?” Tess moved to the front door.

  “Lucas Linville gets a visit.” I stepped outside just as a yellow cab rolled to a stop behind the Bentley. Nobody but tourists or drunks took cabs in Dallas. Who would be arriving at the Cunningham estate in a taxi?

  The rear door opened and Larry Chaloupka, my partner’s exfinancé, stepped out. He wore the clothes of a successful used car salesman working the Saturday shift: a pair of lime green Sansabelt pants, a yellow short-sleeve dress shirt, and a burgundy tie.

  He pulled what looked like a small aerosol container from his pocket and squirted it in his mouth. The cab maneuvered around the Bentley and drove away.

  “Hi, Larry.” I waved at him from the front doorway of the mansion.

  He frowned, hitched his thumbs in the waistband of his beltless pants, and took a couple of steps toward me.

  I walked to the driveway. “What are you doing here?”

  “Nolan called me.” He smoothed back his thinning hair with one hand. He was in his late thirties. His face was ruddy from twenty years of beer and bourbon.

  As if on cue, my partner stepped out of my truck, ran to her exfinancé, and embraced him.

  “We’re working,” I said. “On a case.”

  “Playing at being a cop again, huh?” Larry said.

  “How long were you on the force before getting fired?”

  “You can’t keep us apart.” He ignored my comment and rubbed Nolan’s shoulders.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “That shit upstairs.” Nolan turned to where I stood. “It got to me.”

  “You’ve seen dead bodies before.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” She stamped her foot. “I’m not cut out for this. I need some time away.”

  “With him?” I tried not to sound too harsh.

  Larry pushed Nolan away and balled his fists. “You got the drop on me last time. Won’t happen again.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” I took a couple of steps toward him until we were only a few feet apart.

  “Hank, please.” Nolan put a hand on my arm. The sun hit her face at just the right angle, making her blue eyes sparkle. Her hair was shiny, her features those of a model. I asked myself for the hundredth time what she saw in a mutt like Larry Chaloupka.

  “Her leg still hurts sometimes.” Larry stuck his chin out.

  I didn’t reply. Everything was on the table now. During our first time working together, through my own stupidity, I had caused my partner to suffer a grievous injury, a bullet wound to the thigh.

  “Don’t go there.” Nolan turned to her boyfriend. “That’s ancient history.”

  “If I’d been around back then, Mr. Lee Oswald wouldn’t be such a tough guy.” Larry balled his fists again.

  I walked toward the Bentley.

  “I’ll leave your truck at the office,” Nolan said.

  I opened the driver’s-side door of the expensive automobile.

  “Hank, I’m sorry.”

  I sat behind the wheel. Tess was already in the passenger seat. “It seemed a little awkward out there,” she said. “I thought it was best if I waited here.”

  “Let’s go find Lucas Linville.” I turned on the motor.

  Billy Barringer and I were ten years old when we went to the state fair in Dallas for the first time. My mother drove us up from Waco in our wood-paneled station wagon.

  Like a lot of stereotypes, the old cliché about everything being bigger in Texas was rooted in truth. The saying certainly applied to the state fair, the largest such festival in the country.

  Carnies and cops, schoolkids and old people, bankers and plumbers; everybody came to the State Fair of Texas. The fair was loud. The fair was crowded. The fair was glorious. The fair was an assault on the senses; the dusty air under the steel-colored autumn clouds stunk from fried food and sweat and diesel engines used to power the rides.

  To my young eyes, the massive art deco buildings seemed like something out of an old-time Roman chariot movie, the front of each structure dominated by exotic statues. One had a bull that looked like a pagan god I’d once seen in a history book. Another had a twenty-foot-tall, muscled warrior drawing back on a bow, aiming an arrow skyward.

  In case you forgot and thought you were in some exotic land like Egypt, or maybe New Jersey, a five-story talking doll named Big Tex stood in the exact center of the fairgrounds, next to the Cotton Bowl. Tex wore mega-XL jeans and boots and a cowboy hat big enough to sleep a family of ten. Every half hour or so, his hinged jaw would drop and he would boom out the latest happenings for that particular day.

  To a couple of kids from the country, the state fair was as cool as Fonzie and mood rings. I arranged a meeting time and left Mom at the beer tent. Billy and I raced to the midway and gorged on Fletcher corn dogs, cotton candy, and Dr Pepper.

  We rode the Kamikaze and the Paraglider. We went to the House of Mirrors. We visited the freak show, which still had freaks in those days. We laughed and horsed around as the sugar high kicked in.

  At the Hammer Ride, the one that swung you in a big arc, up and down, the carny working the gate dropped his cigarette. When he bent to retrieve it, Billy coughed and leaned against the man’s high-top table as if he were dizzy. The spell passed after a second and we continued on.

  After they buckled us in, Billy prodded my knee with his and cupped his hand, displaying a wad of cash.

  I licked my lips. “Where’d you get all that dough?”

  “Shit-For-Brains shoulda been watching closer.”

  “You stole it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But that’s . . . wrong.”

  “Don’t be a faggot, Hank. It’s a man’s right,” Billy said. “Take what you need.”

  We stopped talking as the ride cranked up. Afterward we walked down the midway to a bench. Billy sat down, counted out the money, and stuffed a portion in his back pocket and the rest in his front.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Gotta give Daddy a cut.”

  I didn’t reply since I didn’t know what he was talking about. We continued walking. I stopped near a black girl sitting on the steps in front of the automobile building. She held the remnants of a grape snow cone; the sticky water dripping on her hand seemed to balance the tears running down her cheeks. She looked like she was in the first or second grade, about my sister’s age. No one else was near her.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  She didn’t reply, just kept on crying.

  “Shit, Hank.” My friend pulled me to one side. “What the hell you doing talking to some pickaninny?”

  I shrugged out of his grasp and turned to the child. “You okay?”

  The girl looked at me and stopped sobbing for a moment. She didn’t say anything. Billy walked to her side. He removed a twenty from his front pocket and gave it to her. “Go on. Get yourself a corny dog and anuther snow cone.”

  The girl sniffled once more and scampered away.

  “There. That make
you feel better?”

  “Guess so.” I nodded slowly.

  “Can’t do too much shit like that.” Billy shook his head. “These city folks gonna think we’re a couple of pussies just cuz we’re from the country.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  “Daddy says country boys need to stay in the country.”

  “I thought you wanted to live in the city sometime.”

  “Want’s a funny thing, ain’t it?” He turned and walked back to the midway.

  I followed. We rode some more rides, ate more cotton candy, but it wasn’t the same. Then it was time to go. We trudged back to meet my mother.

  “Why’d you give a shit about that little girl, anyway?” Billy said. “That’s like something my mama would do.” He said the last with a trace of disdain for his churchgoing mother.

  “I dunno. Guess I didn’t, really.” My stomach began to ache. I tasted corn and caramel and licorice. “We’re still friends, right?”

  “Yeah,” Billy said. “We’re still amigos.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Tess opened the glove compartment of the Bentley and looked inside. She pulled out a stainless-steel revolver with a snub-nose barrel and placed it on the console. The weapon was the size of a thirty-ounce T-bone.

  “That’s a big-ass piece,” she said.

  “It’s one of Delmar’s car guns. He likes forty-four Magnums. Says they make a big hole.”

  “And who is Delmar?”

  “Olson’s . . . partner,” I said.

  “What does he do for a living?” She swiveled her head, taking in the plush leather and polished wood of the automobile.

  “If you don’t know, then you can truthfully say under oath that you have no knowledge of his business activities.”

  Tess stared at me for a moment and then returned to rummaging. A few minutes later she placed a pint bottle of Courvoisier XO cognac next to the stainless revolver. After more digging she produced a small package of waxed paper. She unwrapped it and held up a wad of grayish material, about the size of a golf ball.

  “What’s this? Play-Doh?”

  “Semtex. If I had to guess.”

  “Huh?”

  “Plastique. TNT. You might want to put that down, okay?”

  She carefully put the explosive back in the glove compartment and shut the door. “All I wanted was some gum.”

  We were on the Dallas Tollway, headed south to Lucas Linville’s place, my third visit in two days. As we passed the American Airlines Center on the northwest side of downtown, Tess pulled out her cell. She dialed a number, held the phone to her ear until we were south of the city center, and hung up.

  “No one’s at home,” she said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “There are no easy answers, are there?” She sighed and tugged on her hair. “If you could be anything in the world, what would it be?”

  I frowned for a moment. “Hugh Hefner.”

  She laughed. “Not who. What.”

  I shrugged.

  “I’d be a ballerina. In a country where the music never stops.”

  I didn’t reply.

  “What was your family like, growing up?” she said.

  “Like most, I suppose.” I exited the highway at Ervay Street.

  “Are you still close to them?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  I didn’t say anything. I thought about the man who sired me.

  “My dad worked all the time when I was growing up,” Tess said.

  “My dad gambled. And drank.”

  “Oh.”

  I turned off Ervay toward the worn brick building that housed the Linville ministry. More people than usual milled about, some standing in the middle of the narrow streets, moving reluctantly as we approached. They stared at the Bentley as it rattled over the potholes.

  The door to Lucas Linville’s building was open. I stopped the English automobile in front and got out. Tess followed me. I chirped the locks shut and pulled out my Browning.

  “Stay out here.” I racked the slide back.

  “No.”

  I ignored her and stepped inside the building. The next door, leading into the common room, was open, too. The area was empty, the furniture where I remembered it but no people sat there. The bookshelves had been overturned, drawers emptied. Papers littered the floor, most ripped into pieces as if to exert the maximum damage.

  Together we explored the remainder of the structure. Each room was empty. The door leading to Lucas Linville’s living area was open, too. The room appeared as I remembered it: tangled linens on the bed, empty pizza containers and beer bottles on the floor. With all the debris it was hard to tell, but it appeared to have been thoroughly searched, too.

  “What kind of preacher is this guy?” Tess picked up a quart bottle of Jim Beam with a half inch of amber liquid sloshing around the bottom.

  “Baptist.” I dug through a pile of papers sitting on the coffee table.

  “Really.”

  I heard footsteps from the hall and pushed Tess against the wall to one side of the entrance. I stood between her and the open door and waited.

  The footsteps got louder. I raised the Browning.

  The door moved toward us. Brown fingers grasped the edge of the wood. With my left hand I reached around and grabbed the wrist attached to the fingers and yanked, pulling the owner of the digits into the room.

  I twisted the wrist up and into the back of Arthur, Lucas Linville’s Filipino assistant. With my free hand I ripped the ear buds from the iPod out of his ears.

  “My arm,” he said. “You’re breaking it.”

  “Not really.” I raised his forearm a fraction of an inch. “This is what it feels like when it starts to break.”

  “Don’t go post office on me, homey.” Arthur stood on his tiptoes to relieve the pressure. “What do you want?”

  “The truth.” I let go and shoved him across the room. He tripped over the coffee table and fell between it and the stained sofa. He pulled himself up and sat on the worn divan.

  “Pastor Linville is gone,” he said.

  “No kidding.” I holstered the Browning. “Where’d he go?”

  Arthur pointed to Tess. “Who is she?”

  “I’m asking the questions here.” I sat down in a kitchen chair that was resting by the coffee table.

  “My name is Tess McPherson. That mean anything to you?” Tess found another chair and sat down, too.

  Arthur stared at her but didn’t respond.

  “Hey.” I snapped my fingers to get his attention. “What happened here?”

  “The bald man came.” Arthur rubbed the arm I had shoved into his back.

  “And . . .” I leaned forward.

  “He beat up Gary.”

  “Who?”

  “The man in the army uniform.”

  “GI Joe.” I remembered his show of bravado earlier. Jesus Rundell would have made mincemeat out of him.

  “Yeah. That’s the one.”

  “Where is everybody else?” I said.

  “The bald dude and his friends threw them out.” Arthur stared at the floor and fingered the thin white wire running across his chest from the music player attached to his waist. “They play for keeps, said they’re gonna put the hurt on anybody that comes back around.”

  “Linville?”

  “I haven’t seen him.” Arthur shook his head. “He wasn’t here when they came.”

  I stood up, grabbed the Filipino by his sore arm, and pulled him to his feet. I squeezed his bicep. “What’s in the file on Reese Cunningham?”

  “I don’t know. Linville never told me.” He wrenched free of my grasp and took a step back.

  I moved toward him.

  “I grew up on the streets of Manila. You really think you can do anything to me that hasn’t already been done?” He placed the buds from the player in his ears and did the shoulder-wiggle thing like a rapper in training. “You ain’t no better than Baldie.”r />
  I didn’t say anything.

  Tess stood up. “How is your friend? Will he be okay?”

  Arthur shrugged. “The man in the ambulance thought he would probably lose his eye.” He turned to me. “Pastor Linville used to preach at a place south of here.”

  “The Church of the Harvest?”

  “Yeah. In Pleasant Grove,” he said. “You might try there.”

  “What about you?” Tess said. “What are you gonna do now?”

  “Shit, bee-yotch.” He moved his shoulders from side to side and held one hand out, ring finger and pinkie pointed downward in a generic gang signal. “Quit acting like you care.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  We left the empty building and stepped into the late afternoon heat. Arthur stayed inside.

  Outside, three young men were making a big show of being very visible, standing in front of the Bentley. The oldest one appeared to be the leader. He wore a pair of baggy jeans with two inches of red boxer shorts visible above the waistband, a sleeveless basketball jersey over a white T-shirt, and a dozen or so heavy gold chains around his neck.

  I walked toward them and stopped about five feet away.

  Mr. Jewelry pulled a Beretta nine-millimeter from under his shirt and held it in front of his groin, muzzle pointing to the ground. “Clean ride, cracker.”

  I nodded and took a step closer.

  “Whatchoo doing here, anyway?

  I shrugged.

  “You lookin’ for some rock?”

  I shook my head.

  “Holmes here don’t chitchat too much, does he?” Jewelry spoke to his friends. They laughed. He looked over my shoulder to where I knew Tess was standing.

  “Juicy white girl you got there,” he said.

  I looked down like I was scared, raised my hands in a gesture of appeasement.

  He laughed. “I’m gonna fuck you up, white boy.”

  I kicked the Beretta straight into his crotch, aiming for a spot a foot or two behind his buttocks.

  He went down, mewing like a tabby caught in a garbage disposal. His friend on the left was quick. He had a pistol almost out from under his shirt when my foot connected with his head. He fell backward, his skull bouncing off the hood of the Bentley and leaving a dent. Delmar was going to be pissed about that.