Her mother was the tallest woman there and wore black: a pants suit with flowing white lace collar and equally flowing cuffs dripping down from the bottom of her narrow sleeves. The lace covered her hands but not the gleam of her rings. Her heels were so high she towered. There was no question that if Beltrán de la Cruz’s sister had been born a male child, the family could well have had two cardinals.
I always cry at weddings, relieved with my decision never to marry. Just the way I get misty-eyed when Delby brings her girls to the office on Bring-Your-Daughter-to-Work Day. They put their plastic barrettes in my hair. They keep me stocked in nail polish. I adore them. I also know I would no more consider lunching with children down in the day care center than going for a swim in the Potomac.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks and the ice cream off my chin with a Kleenex one of the maids passed along to me.
Much later that night when I woke up at 2 A.M. and didn’t have a tape of the news on me, I went back to the hotel bar. It was empty except for one of the ballplayers, who apparently hadn’t been in the mood to dance till dawn. I took a stool.
He said, “Whatcha drinkin’?”
I said I’d have a Grey Goose on the rocks and one of whatever he was having.
He said, “You like to mix and match, darlin’?”
“It’s a good way to get to know a stranger.”
He said to the bartender, “We’ll have a C.C. Manhattan and two Grey Geese on the rocks.”
He wanted to get to know me too. He was depressed. He was on the fifteen-day disabled list. After we’d enjoyed some conversation, laughed, we went to my room.
Disabled, my eye.
* * *
I woke up the next morning happy to find the ballplayer was no longer in my bed. He’d left a note on my pillow, though. Sometimes you get lucky and make a connection. Thanks. He was right. On the road, once in a blue moon, the night turns out to be not so lonely.
Before I got myself back to Gatesville, I called Delby to see if anything of note had come in.
“Found a big development soon as I walked in the door.”
“Go ahead.”
“That dispatcher from the Houston cops made an anonymous call to us last night about three A.M. Must think we’re ninnies. Told the office that the guy who called the Thirty-first Precinct twice on the night of the ax murders was the victim’s husband. Name, Gary Scott. Owns a dive called the AstroBar in Houston. When the murders took place he only worked there. Then it was called Pee-Wee’s. Think the dispatcher’s got the guilts?”
“I wonder. Or maybe he likes stirring up shit.”
She said, “Or office politics. Needs to get even with someone. We’ll never know, though. Thought you were coming back today.”
“I thought so too. Things have gotten interesting. I’m thinking I’ll visit the scene of the crime: Houston.”
“Wondered when you would decide it was time. I’m smellin’ progress. Good luck, boss.”
I got out my map. Three hours to Houston. I’d drive.
I opened my laptop and keyed in to Yahoo. Tried ASTROBAR. Nothing. Tried PEE-WEE’S. I got one response, an article in a Houston alternative weekly called Badass Houston. Three years ago Badass Houston hailed Pee-Wee’s as serving the most dangerous food in all Houston—in all Texas, they’d bet. The food column read:
We doubted the ribs we ate at Pee-Wee’s had been refrigerated before they were tossed on the grill. Tasted like wild boar, not that we’ve ever had wild boar. The charcoal grill was not vented to the outside, another reason we use the word “dangerous.” If the food doesn’t kill you, the fumes will.
The food critic suggested going to the bathroom after dinner, sticking your finger down your throat, and throwing up. Then he added a disclaimer:
Be aware that the bathroom is the outside rear wall of the bar with a spigot that’s two feet off the ground, unconnected to any water source.
He concluded by advising diners to drink their beer from the glasses rather than out of the bottles, even though the glasses were filthy.
We couldn’t help but notice the rain of mouse droppings stuck to the beer caps.
Definitely time for a foray into the Houston demimonde. Time to torment the puppeteer. Maybe Delby’s and my reactions were a combination of the dispatcher’s motive. Maybe the dispatcher felt the way I did, had a need to shake up a guilty party who had avoided getting his hands dirty.
* * *
Front door to back, the AstroBar was maybe twenty feet long and not more than ten feet wide. There was the bar and the line of stools. One small table was jammed into a corner. A pair of unmatched chairs stacked one on the other were on top of the table. Line-dancing was out of the question in this Texas bar, and movie stars rode mechanical bulls elsewhere. I was actually hoping to see one in person, since I’ve always been fascinated by a twenty-year-old forensic mystery just recently solved—and by one of the geniuses I hired myself. Autopsies performed on Texas males from age eighteen and up have revealed a preponderance of healed and unhealed hairline fractures of the thumbs. That’s what happens from hanging onto a mechanical bull for dear life.
Besides the new name, no charcoal grill. Badass Houston needed to update. Food, I observed, was limited to the yellow sludge that plops out of a heating machine onto a cardboard nest of tortilla chips. On second glance I was wrong about that. The machine was unplugged. Didn’t work. Someone has to clean those contraptions now and again or they get gummed up. This one had been overloaded once too often. The cracked dried-up overflow of gunk, now orange, coated the outside of the machine as well as the surrounding counter space.
And Badass Houston never noted the supply of liquor behind the counter. The bottles lacked a single recognizable label. If I were drinking, I’d probably have been unable to resist Neck Oil American Whiskey. I did see vodka. The bottle’s simple green label read Potato Vodka. Amid the liquor sat a radio. Forced to identify the music coming out of it, I’d try easy country church.
The back wall of the bar was a tattered curtain. An otherworldly blue glow showed out through the rips and tears. A tanning bed had been installed in the bar’s storage room, and someone was using it. Cowboys who aren’t real cowboys, the ones who feel more at home in bars rather than where the deer and the antelope roam, pay a few dollars at places like the AstroBar so they can look like they’d just moseyed in from the range.
There were four of those men leaning on the bar, choosing not to sit on the stools. Only three had on cowboy hats, the other an old Houston Oilers cap. Didn’t accept the loss of the franchise. The heads didn’t turn toward me as I came in the door. It took them a few seconds before they registered an alien presence, and then their conversation stopped and they about-faced together. Their weapons weren’t concealed.
I got myself on a bar stool and I said, “Are any of you Gary Scott?”
First all four snickered. Then one said, “Nope,” two gestured toward the rear curtain, and the fourth called out, “Gary, you got a customer here.”
The blue light went out. A minute later a fellow parted the curtain while buttoning his shirt. He didn’t have on a hat. He had instead large hair, black, blown into the shape of either the Niña, the Pinta, or the Santa María, then lacquered into place in a patent-leather shine. He was very tan. He said something to me as he made his way behind the bar, but I had no idea what it was.
“Mr. Scott?”
Now I got just a grunt, but it seemed affirmative.
Gary leaned over directly into my face and smiled. Teeth, white and even. Not the originals. He spoke clearly now. “You’re the prettiest reporter so far. What paper you from?”
The cowboys and the nostalgic football fan watched intently.
I said, “I’m from the FBI. My name is Poppy Rice.”
I made sure my jacket fell open enough to reveal the black leather strap leading to my own weapon. “I’m looking into some irregularities concerning the prosecution of Rona Leigh Glueck.”
“You with the FBI?”
My stepfather used to have a pet peeve. When he was mowing the lawn the guy next door would make a point to come out and say, “Mowin’ the lawn?” It made him crazy. I’ve inherited a lot of my stepfather’s tics.
I slid the badge out of its case and held it to his nose. The men at the bar tried to see it too. I put the badge back and flipped the case closed.
Gary came out from around the bar, walked past me, untangled the two chairs, and dropped them on either side of the table. He said to the men, “Anybody comes in, get him what he wants.” And he said to me, “Ma’am, you can join me right here.”
I slid off the stool and joined him. He wasn’t going to ask if I wanted a drink. He took a pack of Newports out of his shirt pocket, shook one out, and didn’t offer me one of those either. He lit up and threw the match on the floor. Finally, he squinted through his smoke and he said, “Here’s about the only thing I got to say to you or anybody else about Rona Leigh Glueck. One week from today, when I’m settin’ in that jail they got up by Waco watchin’ her die, I’ll be experiencin’ the best five minutes a my life.”
He dragged on the cigarette and blew smoke out of the corner of his mouth, one small gesture of consideration, perhaps.
“Mr. Scott, what will be accomplished through Ms. Glueck’s execution?”
He sneered. Picked off a bit of nonexistent tobacco from his tongue. “Wish all the questions I been gettin’ were that easy.” He dropped the cigarette to the vicinity of the match and squashed it under his boot. Decided not to let smoking distract him from his point. “Here’s what executin’ Ms. Glueck will accomplish. My little girl’ll get to give Ms. Glueck exactly what she got comin’ to her.”
The riff he’d developed for any media person who would listen to him had been worked out to its most dramatic potential.
“Melody, my wife, the gal whose heart that little bitch laid open, will be standin’ up there next to Saint Peter—and maybe Jesus too, if He can make time—just waitin’ on Ms. Glueck with an ax of gold. Before the devil can drag Ms. Glueck’s ass down into hell with him, Melody’ll chop her up from here to kingdom come. Then she’ll—”
“So you’re telling me that revenge and punishment are the reasons Rona Leigh should be executed.”
He said, “Excuse me, ma’am, but what other reasons might there be?”
“Deterrence, for one. Do you feel that the threat of lethal injection deters crime?”
“You mean would it’ve kept the bitch from cuttin’ anyone else if nobody’d caught her?”
Gary didn’t know the difference between deterrence and recidivism.
I said, “Not exactly. I mean the theory that executing murderers might make others think twice before killing someone. Warn them as to what would happen if they did. Scare them off. Would her execution serve to do that?”
Now he laughed. The guys at the bar, louder. Gary explained the theory away very carefully to be sure I understood. “Well, little lady, let me tell you the way that goes. See, when somebody gets your goat and you want to smash their nose on up into their brain, you don’t stop on it to think, Hey, I might get myself executed for killin’ this sacka shit. Damn foolish, is what I’d say. What do you boys say?”
He held up his hand as if leading a band and the cowboys responded with vigorous nodding, with the Oilers cap adding, “You got that damn right!”
I lowered my voice, but not low enough to exclude the cowboys from the conversation. “Melody was cheating on you, isn’t that right? I mean, on a regular basis, not just the night she was killed.”
In a single motion the enthusiastic men at the bar wiped the grins off their faces and turned away.
Gary said, “What Melody or me was doin’ would be no business of yours.”
“I mentioned I was looking for irregularities. Why was Melody sleeping with James Munter if she was married to you? I mean, shouldn’t I assume…?”
He leaned forward. “Assume nuthin’. And I don’t appreciate nobody takin’ a crap on my wife’s name.” I didn’t get a ma’am this time.
“It’s actually more a matter of understanding the connections rather than any intention on my part to insult your late wife. Was there a connection between you and Lloyd Bailey? How well did you know James Munter? And what about Rona Leigh, was she a friend of yours? What makes you so enthusiastic about watching Rona Leigh die for your wife’s murder when she was killed while in bed with the other victim? Some men might think a wife—”
“My wife wasn’t cheatin’ on me, you hear?”
“Melody and James were just having a sleepover the night they were killed?”
The cowboys hunched up like a row of vultures. Gary leaned forward. So did I. We were nose to nose.
“Now you listen up. We keep to different ways down here from what you tight-ass Yankees got. You ain’t got no right struttin’ into my bar like you was the goddamn queen of—”
I said, “You would agree with our former President then? That sex isn’t necessarily sex?”
I could smell his breath, that foul odor of tobacco with hints of Listerine. Drinkers like Gary love Listerine, as it’s nearly half alcohol. He said, “As a matter of fact that’s about the only goddamn thing I’d agree with him on. Gettin’ a blow job ain’t nuthin’ but showing a bitch who’s boss. A lesson you could stand yourself is something I’d lay good money on.”
I breathed back on him. “Then what about the woman deriving sexual pleasure through oral sex? From a man who’s not her husband. Would that be cheating on her part?”
He leaned away and folded his arms tight across his chest as if to contain the urge to smash my nose up into my brain. He stared into my eyes. He said, “Eatin’ pussy is for braggin’ rights. And about now, honey, you are beginnin’ to make me hot. Real hot. So how come talkin’ about fuckin’ don’t seem to bother you? It would bother a Texas gal. A Texas gal might be a A-One piece a ass, but she don’t try to talk the way a man talks. You want a chance to show me you’re as good as you talk?”
I stood up. “If ever you find employment with the FBI and, say, if someone kills me? Then you can go out and ask around if you want that information. I appreciate your time, Mr. Scott.” I grasped a straw. “One more thing, though. I’d like to ask you about where you found the money to buy this bar?”
He jumped up and knocked against the table. “You can just get the hell outa my establishment right now. I don’t have to take shit from you. Since you ain’t got your storm troopers with you, you heed my words or you’ll be wishin’ you never came within a mile a me.”
I was at least six inches taller than Gary Scott. It was plain why he’d changed the name of the bar. The blood that had risen to his face had turned his tan purple. I strutted out of his establishment like I was the goddamn queen of wherever.
I waited at the corner, three empty storefronts or so down from the AstroBar. I glanced at my watch every thirty seconds and kept looking impatiently up and down the street. Just an average everyday woman waiting for a ride. I don’t know if anyone noticed my performance since there wasn’t a soul to be seen and not a single car came down the dried-out edge-of-Houston road, where clumps of dirt and bits and pieces of litter blew along the gutters. There were only the five pickup trucks in front of, beside, and on the dirt in front of Gary’s bar. My car, which I’d parked around the corner, was out of sight.
I didn’t have to wait long. One of the cowboys came out of the bar. He got in a truck and headed my way.
Cowboys in Texas are basically blind. Either too much squinting into the sun or not bothering to wear goggles when stretched out on a tanning bed. This cowboy was directly in front of me when I stepped out into the road. He spotted the hundred-dollar bill I was holding at chest level just the way limo drivers at airports hold up their riders’ names. With the new bills, it’s much easier to spot Ben Franklin than it used to be. The truck scrunched to a st
op.
He leaned over to squint through the passenger window and smiled at me. He said, “Needin’ a lift?”
He threw open the door and I climbed in. The cowboy plucked the bill from my hand and stuffed it into his shirt pocket as efficiently as if he did this sort of thing every day of his life.
I said, “Why don’t we drive around a little, and then you can take me back to my car. It’s around the corner. I just want to talk to you about a couple of things I didn’t get from Gary.”
He said, “Fine by me,” and he shifted gears and rumbled down the road. His boots were red.
I said, “I’m going to name some people. I’d like you to tell me what you know about Gary’s relationship with each of them.”
“Shoot.”
“Melody Scott.”
“She’s dead.”
“I already know that.”
“She was Gary’s wife.”
“What about her?”
“She decided to marry one short, ugly, no-’count loser because it was the best way to show her daddy what she thought of him.”
“What did she think of him?”
“Figured he reined her in just a little too tight. If she married Gary, maybe he’d give it a rest. Worked just like she thought. Her daddy cut her loose. Melody was freed up.”
“Did Gary know her reason for marrying him?”
“Could a cared less. Pretty piece a ass at his beck ’n’ call was fine with him. ’Cept Melody was at everyone else’s beck ’n’ call too.”
“What about James Munter? And I already know he’s dead.”
“He was nobody. Melody picked up guys just to rile Gary. James was a retard. Couldn’t teach a hen to cluck.”
“Lloyd Bailey?”
He laughed. “Him too. Put to bed with a pick and shovel.”
“Right.”
“Lloyd was just one of a buncha guys, come in, buy whatever junk Gary’s got on hand. Till he met Rona Leigh. She recognized that Lloyd did okay for hisself. Lloyd was one of those people, dumb as a sacka rocks, couldn’t read or write, but he worked on vehicles, see? He could fix anything wrong with any truck, car, or bike you brought by him. And he was fast. Listen to your engine for five seconds, tell you what you needed by way of parts, then you bring him the parts plus your own tools and he fixes your problem. Right out on the street. People’d say if Lloyd crawled under your rig and then you looked under it, you wouldn’t see hide nor hair a him. He’d be wrigglin’ around inside the engine like a worm in a Snickers Bar.
Love Her Madly Page 9
