by George Wier
Instead another voice echoed in my head, a voice spoken into a stillness where sounds bounce around and die, like men’s dreams: Blowing up... for Dick Sawyer.
Milo Unger’s T-Rex may have been Governor Sawyer.
I’d been trying to peek inside Sawyer’s head, a thing that couldn’t be done.
I got up from the table, paid my bill and even managed to talk the cashier into changing a ten dollar bill into a roll of quarters for me. Before anything else, it was time to find a pay telephone and feed it.
But who would I call? I thought on it. I definitely needed to hold off talking to any of my friends in law-enforcement, no matter how far back we may have gone together.
As I walked out into the mid-day sun, I started to get a few ideas.
*****
In a small Texas town such as Huntsville, a person is liable to run into practically anybody, which was how I happened to catch the latest bad news.
The streets were busy and the parking lots were more full than empty. People were out talking, walking, shopping. A few were in a hurry, jumping through lights at the last second on a yellow, or even a red, and I saw jaded patrol cops who acted as though they hadn’t seen the traffic code violations occurring right in front of them. Many years past, Huntsville had been my town, back when I was in undergraduate school. But it wasn’t Austin, and I had left small town life behind for good in what seemed like a lifetime ago.
I stepped into a stationery store and picked up a couple of writing pads and a deck of nice white linen envelopes. I also bought a couple of nice pens, a pair of scissors, some tape, a small stapler and some paper clips. That sort of thing. I guess I was thinking about Milo Unger’s box in my trunk. About what I could do with it. About how things could be copied and clipped and sent here and there. Maybe it was how Milo used to think. I sure would have liked to have gone fishing with the fellow and gotten to know him.
I paid cash for the stationery, successfully resisting the urge to use a credit card. Some habits are tough to break. How could I know who might be waiting to see what Bill Travis charged next? And where he charged it?
Outside on the sidewalk, I paused to take in more of the town. Just a few yards away was the front door to the main post office, and there I saw a man and a woman, both dressed in Texas prison-guard gray, talking to one another. The woman stood about a foot shorter than the fellow, but she looked thick and solid. I wouldn’t have wanted to wrestle with her. She could have taken me down hard. Suddenly, it was what they were saying that caught my attention.
“...Peterson found him like that. His tongue all hanging out. Said his face was blue,” the tall man was saying. He had his arms crossed, leaning back against a pole.
“I don’t understand it. But who knows about the mind of a killer like that? I swear they’ve got shit for brains. The way they look at you. Those Row guys.”
“Excuse me,” I interjected. “Did you say that someone on Death Row has died? I mean, not in the standard way?”
They looked at me. Two pairs of eyes full of judgment. I didn’t like either one of these people, and though probably it wasn’t anything personal to me in particular, I’d say the feeling was mutual. Also, I had interrupted.
“We were just talking shop,” the lady said. Her face did this weird thing; she went from animated and semi-interested in her own conversation, to rigid concrete. The kind of thing that comes with the job. Probably it was bred in the bone.
“If someone just died up at the prison it’ll be on the news at six o’clock,” I said. “So it wouldn’t be like you’d be letting out a big secret. Besides, I’ve got a client up there on Death Row.”
“Probably wasn’t yours,” the man said. “What’re the odds, ya know?”
“Yeah,” the solid lady said.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said, as if dismissing my initial notion as being too far-fetched. “So what happened? One of the murderers decided to take himself off Death Row, or did he have help?”
The concrete loosened, the rigidity faded. I could see it go and almost felt it.
“Oh,” she said. “He twisted up a sheet and tied it to the bars of the door to his cell, then tied his shoulders off against the stationary bars. All the cell doors open up at the same time, you know. So when recreation time rolled around, there he was with his neck stretched out like a giraffe.” Her body did a little shudder-shake at the thought of it. “Howell did it to himself.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Norman Howell could never have killed himself. He wasn’t the kind. I didn’t believe the kid was even able to see his actual self in a mirror. I was pretty sure that he saw something much different from the cold-blooded sociopath that his father had turned him into. Probably he saw himself as the real victim in the play of his life; a victim who was not only right, but thoroughly and completely justified.
The fellow who had defended him in court was a client of my partner by the name of Jasper Stevens, a criminal lawyer with a clear conscience.
Jasper had hated having to defend Norman Howell. He had told me all about that last day in court over lunch one time. What he had hated even more was having to go and listen to Howell rant and rave and justify himself against “those shitters on the jury.” During the appeals process, according to my friend, he might have gotten Howell off if Howell had kept his mouth shut and listened. I imagine that if he could have kept Howell bound, gagged and blindfolded during the entire trial process, he would have.
The way Jasper told it, during the prosecutor’s closing arguments at the trial, with Howell sitting quietly beside him and the prosecutor preaching to the jury, his voice raised, venom pouring from his mouth and eyes, he had turned and pointed at Howell and called him: “A murderer. A thing without conscience. A rabid dog. It’s your unfortunate duty to have to do something about him. Where I come from we shoot rabid dogs. It’s not a pleasure to have to do so. It is, however, your duty.”
At the wooden table that day at the hamburger and beer joint just a half-dozen blocks from my office, my old buddy Jasper Stevens painted some not-so-pretty pictures for me of what happened in that courtroom.
At the prosecutor’s little sermon Howell turned his head slowly, met the gaze of the prosecutor for the first time where he was standing right in front of the jury, his long arm and crooked finger pointed directly at Howell, hovering in the air. Howell just looked at him, and his look had been one of abject hate. Jasper had said that he could feel it. The hair on the back of his neck and arms stood up and his skin prickled over his entire body, even while he was yelling at himself inside his head to nudge Howell, divert his attention, only do something and do it now! But instead of doing that, instead of breaking that moment in some way, Jasper told me that he was looking at a picture inside of his head. A perfect motion picture reel of Howell dismembering the prosecutor, taking him apart with his own hands and teeth, right there in the courtroom.
That look on Howell’s face had been exactly what the prosecutor had been attempting to evoke. Even his stance at that moment had been perfectly staged, because even while it was only the prosecutor Howell wanted to see dead at that moment, from where the jury was sitting each person on the panel was certain Howell was looking at them, and only them.
Jasper claims to this day that he could have gotten Howell a life sentence. But that day over Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and a perfectly made hamburger, I got a little bit of a glimpse into the soul of my friend Jasper Stevens.
“Bill,” he had said. “Sure. I could have gotten him life. I maybe could have gotten him off. His confession was initially beaten out of him, you know. But knowing that son of a bitch like I do now, I don’t think I could have lived with myself if I had.”
That was one thing that Jasper wouldn’t have to worry about any longer: a freed Normal Howell. Howell was dead.
Take his own life? Norman Howell? Never. Not in a million years. The Howells of the world never do that. And maybe that’s one of the reasons the state
has to do it for them. I’ve never been a proponent of the death penalty, but some truths — like the fact that both Howells were your basic monster — appeared to be self-evident.
No. Not suicide. He had been executed.
Like Milo Unger.
*****
My watch told me it was getting on toward 3:00 p.m.
Phone calls.
I found a Quicky-Mart with a couple of pay phones. One of them was occupied by a large, trucker-type fellow. I waited until he hung up, ten minutes, all told.
My first call was to the ranch.
“Hello.” It was Julie.
“Hey. You guys surviving out there?”
“Yeah. We had company a little while ago, though. They’re gone now.”
“Who?” I asked. I had that chill again.
“A couple of state troopers. Looking for you. They wanted to search the place.”
“They have a warrant?”
“Of course. We let ‘em look all they wanted to. Uncle Nat and Penny and I just sat and ate and watched them. Also, this fellow called. He was trying to warn me that you were in danger.”
“Did he talk like me, Baby?”
“You mean like when you get mad? East Texas?”
“Yeah. Like that.”
“No, Baby. This guy was just normal. I think he was for real. He said he ran across your name in connection with the Governor. Some men are after you, Bill. This guy sounds like a nice guy, but I don’t know.”
“I’ll be okay,” I said. “I promise.”
“I know. I gave him Hank’s name. I thought you might try to call Hank before you even called me.”
“You did right,” I said.
“Bill, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Darlin’.” There was a bit of a lump in my throat. Don’t know why. Maybe it was because of the distance. Maybe it was because there was a chance I’d never see her again.
“I love you, Bill,” she said. She didn’t wait for me to say it, even though I was about to. “Don’t get yourself killed.” Her voice sounded a little funny.
“I won’t, Baby.”
There was a long silence.
“Bill...” she said.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know how to tell you, so I’m just going to say it.”
“Okay.”
“You’re going to be a father.”
Well, of course, I thought. I always thought I might be a father some day. That was part of the whole game of life. One generation begat another and so on...
Then it hit me.
“What?”
Silence.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
There in the bedroom, putting on her jeans. No bra. Her breasts had looked fuller, bigger.
But what was important right then? My response!
“I love you, Julie,” I said. And meant it.
“I know. You can ask me now.”
Ask. Ask what? Oh! I thought.
“Julie, will you marry me? Be my wife?”
“Yes,” she said, and broke down a little. When she cried it did strange things to me. There was a weight over my chest, pressing. My cheeks ached. My eyes started to water.
“I’ve got to go, Baby,” I told her. “I don’t want to, but I have to.”
“I know.”
“Jules, watch what you say over the phone from here on out. There may be somebody listening.”
“Yeah,” she sniffed. “I thought of that. But I had to tell you. In case.”
“You did right.”
“Bye,” she said.
“Bye.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
I stood there for probably five minutes or so — really, I don’t know how long. I let it sink in. All the implications.
Care.
I must not get myself killed. But while I liked the idea of continuing to live and breathe and listen to good music and eat fine food and make love, I didn’t relish the idea of having to watch my step.
While I stood there peering into my own personal little crystal ball, looking off into a hopeful future with Julie changing dirty diapers and later me teaching our little kid, be it boy or girl, how to catch and throw a ball, I was shoveling change into the phone for my next call.
Hank Sterling.
Hank had put his life on the line for me and for Julie and had taken a bullet through a lung in the bargain back in the late spring. I guess you could say that Hank had become one of my closest friends.
The phone was ringing.
It was picked up on the third ring.
“Yallow.”
“Hank. It’s me. Bill.”
“Bill! Hell, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all day! Where are you?”
“I’m in East Texas, Hank. Why? What’s going on?”
“Bill, there’s a fellow that needs to talk to you. He keeps calling.”
“Does he have an East Texas accent?” I asked.
“I don’t think so. He sounds normal. Bill, this fellow’s name is Walter Cannon. He lives out West, around Fort Stockton. He says that there are some guys shot-gunning for you and to give you the heads up.”
“Yeah. Julie told me.”
“She’s a keeper, ain’t she? For awhile I wasn’t so sure.”
“I know. Me, too.” I paused, gave it a brief thought and then decided to tell Hank. “Julie’s pregnant.”
“Well all right! I was starting to wonder if that would happen. You two gonna get hitched?”
“Yeah. That is if I can live through a season in perdition.”
“Oh yeah? What kind of folderol have you stepped into now?”
“Remember last time?”
“Been trying to forget,” he said. There was a wheeze to his voice that wasn’t there before our last adventure. A wheeze that he’d never lose.
“Well,” I told him. “It’s all that multiplied by about a hundred.”
“Figured something like that. Hey! Wait a second,” he said, and then I heard him put the phone down. In the background I could hear voices. Hank’s television.
After a moment the voices grew in volume. Some reporter was talking.
“Shit, Bill,” Hank said.
“What is it?”
“Well it was kind of funny hearing your voice over the phone and then seeing a picture of you on TV.”
“Oh yeah? Why my picture?”
“Hold on.”
I waited. The voice was loud but muffled, like I was hearing it through a wall.
“Bill,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Get out of sight. You’re a wanted man.”
My stomach did a little flip. I could feel the blood draining out of my head.
“For what reason?” I managed to stammer out.
“Questioning. That houseboat that blew up on Lake Travis. You were visiting there the night before. Made at least one phone call to there as well before the place went sky high.”
“Hank. I was there. That was a good fellow, too. You would have liked him.”
“What’s going on?”
I got quiet for a moment. I needed a moment to think. The last time I had seen Hank he was keeping a portable oxygen tank by his kitchen table where he sat to watch the news. His condition had been pretty horrible. We had almost lost him. Since then he might have improved, but I had no illusions about his ability to help me out of the scrape I’d gotten myself into. In his present condition, there would be no pulling Hank into it with me.
“Hank. I can’t tell you. Not now. You rest easy. I’ll be all right.”
“Well. Lemme tell you something, Bill — the way these news people got it, you’ve closed your office and can’t be found. They’re painting it like you’re running from the law.”
“Which I am,” I said.
“Which you are. Just a second.”
Hank put the phone back on the table. I heard the slightest little grunt. He’d gotten back up. After a moment the TV was either turned off or down.
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“So who blew up that fellow?” he asked when he picked back up.
“It was the bad people, Hank.”
He laughed and wheezed a little while he did so. But it was a good laugh, and it did me good to hear it.
“Okay,” he said, chuckling. “All right. So tell me what I can do for you right here from my kitchen table.”
I thought on it.
“Hank. I can’t tell you much, but I can ask what you would do if you found yourself in East Texas with all your witnesses getting wiped out around you and the strong arm of the law coming down on top of you? What I mean to say is, if you were in a bad corner, what would you do?”
“You and me,” he said. “We’re a couple of bad-corner kind of people, ain’t we?”
“It sure as hell seems that way.”
“Yeah. Okay. What I would do is hit back. Hit back hard and fast and then duck like you’ve got sharp-shooters drawing a bead on you.”
“Goddammit,” I said. “I knew you were going to tell me something like that.”
“Exactly. That’s why you need to get in touch with this Walter Cannon fellow. He sounds pretty convincing to me.”
A recorded voice came over the phone, telling me that I could talk for the next four minutes only if I deposited a dollar and forty cents. I fished six quarters out of my pocket, jammed them in as quick as I could. Got a “Thank You” from AT&T.
“You there, Bill?”
“I’m here,” I told him.
“You’re at a pay phone, ain’tcha?”
“Yeah. Had to feed the kitty.”
“I guess a cell phone could be traced or pinpointed or some shit.”
“That’s the way I’ve got it figured.”
“Cannon says that there’s some group of fellows out in West Texas he’s investigating. And somehow your name came up a few days ago and he started doing some poking around. He found out who you were and where you were. By the time he called your office you were gone. He looked up Nat Bierstone and pulled up a phone number for the ranch at Marble Falls. Then Nat, or I guess maybe it was Julie, steered him to me. I called Julie back and talked to her and so here we all are.”
