by George Wier
The body of Jimmy Atwell floated by past my window, but I noted that he had two legs. Somehow, he had grown new ones along the way, even though he was dead.
He looked up at me and said, “Don’t let them run you off the place when you get there.”
“Who are you talking about?” I shouted back.
“Weller. And Price.”
I thought to ask, “Who’s Weller and Price?” but Jimmy was already gone.
The names stuck in my head and went round and round.
And then I knew.
*****
I sat up in bed. It was still dark outside.
I checked the time on the alarm clock by the bed—the only source of light in the room aside from the dim parking lot lights shining onto the other side of the window curtains and somehow bleeding through.
It was 4:20 a.m. I’d slept for exactly one hour, to the minute.
It had all come to me in a twinkling, and it had all been as part of a dream.
I’ve always been more of a Go-With-The-Gut-Instead-Of-The-Head kind of fellow, and for this there can be no true pragmatism or syllogistic reasoning. There is, in fact, not a damned thing scientific about it. I’ve found that going with the gut works better in life. I’m not sure why this is so, but it could have something to do with the fact that life is organic, and inherent in all life forms there are patterns, from the shells of certain kinds of sea anemones with their damned perfect fractal patterns, down to the DNA strands that make up our bodies. And there is no pattern anywhere that is susceptible to thought. Only looking can detect a pattern, never the process of thinking, because in the final analysis—and again, what, exactly is analysis except thought?—thinking about something is forever and always missing one thing, and that one thing is decision. Once something has been decided, by God the storm has passed, and there is only calm in its wake.
I knew who had been behind the death of both James Atwell and his daughter, Virginia, and I knew why.
I turned on my lamp and began dressing.
“You’re going out again?” Jessica whispered.
“Afraid so,” I whispered back. “One last time.”
“What time is it?”
“Too late to ask and too early to mean anything anyway.”
“G’nite daddy,” she said.
“Goodnight,” said. I threaded her holster and gun back through my belt and snugged it into place, then transferred the star from my still damp and discarded shirt onto my fresh one. My shoes were still damp—hell, they might not even survive—but there was nothing for it, so I donned them anyway.
I transferred my wallet, snatched the car keys from my night stand, and took off once more.
Bill Travis, into the night that created him.
*****
I made my way by memory back into downtown and drove by the Nite Wing. There was a Jeep parked in front of it, so I stopped and left the engine to idle and walked up to the front door. The windows were covered—just as I had predicted—with four-by-eight foot panels of plywood, but the door, which had been steel instead of glass, was still dented by the patterned tracks of bullet sprays. Eventually, the door would need replacing as well.
I knocked on the door and waited.
The fierce wind came up, and with it the scent of rain. More would be coming up from the south.
I knocked again.
After a moment, a voice said, “Who is it?”
“Rick? It’s Bill Travis.”
“Oh. Hold on.” There was clear sound of a key turning in a lock and the scraping of a deadbolt.
The door opened outward.
“What time is it?” Rick asked.
“Either way too early, or way too late. What are you doing here?”
“I got through with the plywood about an hour ago. I got a friend of mine to bring me a bedroll and a pillow.”
“Protecting the place?” I asked.
“Yeah, although I don’t know why I should. I doubt it’ll ever re-open. I don’t even know who my boss is or if I’ve even still got one.”
“Can I come in?” I asked.
“Sure. Suit yourself. Wanna beer?”
“No. Maybe a coke. I could use the sugar right now.”
“Me too,” he said, and turned back in the direction of the bar. I turned the key in the lock and followed him.
At the bar, Rick got us a couple of cokes and brought them to the table we’d been sitting at the day before.
“So, what brings you down here?” he asked.
“I was wondering, did Jimmy ever say anything about having a will?”
“No, he didn’t. But I guess it stands to reason that he would have one.”
“Aren’t you curious about it?” I asked.
“Why should I be? I’m just one of the little guys.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. You sure stayed and made sure the fort was secured, even after all the Cowboys and Indians deserted you.”
“I had to. What am I gonna do, just walk away and let anybody waltz in and take whatever they want, liquor and all?”
“Good point.”
“I couldn’t do that,” he said. “I’ve worked for Jimmy for five years. I didn’t think he’d ever die. I thought he was like an elder god, or something. Like right out of mythology.”
“Shoot, I guess he could’ve been. So how well do you know Dale Horner?” I asked.
“I don’t know him at all. Oh, Jimmy liked to spend his time complaining about the man, but I wouldn’t know him if he walked in the door.”
“What about Jimmy’s daughter, which would also be Dale’s wife, Virginia?”
“I don’t know her either. Never once met her, or if I did, I didn’t know it. I don’t think they got along so well.”
“What about her son, Clark?”
“There’s another one I don’t know. This is a blues bar, Mr. Travis. You know who comes in here?”
“Tell me.”
“Mostly white folks who want to hear black blues singers and act like they’re somewhere over in Fifth Ward, all hip and cool and shit. Aside from the singers, like Cottonmouth and Phonebooth, we do get some black folks every now and then, but it’s mostly the family or friends of the singers, or their groupies.”
“Bluesmen have groupies?” I asked.
“The worst back street singer and guitar player’s got groupies. This place was made by Jimmy Atwell to service people like Jimmy Atwell—white as an uncooked flour cracker, but with the soul of someone born on the wrong side of the tracks. Or, at least, they tell themselves that.”
“Okay, Rick,” I said, and took a long pull on my coke. “I’ll let you get back to sleep. You camping out behind the bar?”
“Are you kidding? Of course I am. What if someone came along unloading their guns again? That bar will stop a howitzer.”
I laughed. “All right.” I got up. “I’ve need to go wake up some people. You want to lock me out when I go?”
“You’re damn right I do,” Rick said, and followed me to the front door.
“Keep holding off the Indians,” I said, and offered my hand.
Rick shook it. “Take care, Mr. Travis.”
“I’ll do that,” I said. “Most certainly I will.”
By the time I got out to my truck, the lightning was stabbing down in the narrow sliver of sky to the southeast. The rain was coming, and it looked as though it was going to be worse than before.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I drove away from the Nite Wing with my phone pressed to my ear.
“Do you ever sleep?” Gresham asked, by way of answering.
“Apparently not. Did you get anything back yet on the hand?”
“Andra called me five minutes ago. No on the hand, but yes on the, uh, other parts recovered from the dock and the land up above it.”
“I probably don’t want to know what else was recovered,” I said. “Any trace of barbiturates, or chloroform, or anything in general that would knock her out?”
<
br /> “How did you know?”
“A lucky guess. What was it?”
“This is preliminary, mind you,” Gresham said, “and Andra is running another test to make sure, but she thinks it’s a plain and simple chloroform. But whoever—”
“She was already dead,” I said. “They used too much.”
“That’s right.” Gresham sounded surprised. “Wait. You already know who killed her. And let me guess—it wasn’t her son.”
“Right.”
“Then who?”
I thought about correcting his grammar, and stifled it. I’d been working on my own grammar and syntax of late simply because I wanted the kids raised correctly, but people talk how they talk and it was sometimes hard to remember that.
“I’m not going to say, or at least not until I confirm it with him.”
“Where are you now?” Gresham asked. “It doesn’t sound like you’re in your hotel room.”
“Nothing doing. I’m burning up the streets of Houston.”
“Well, leave some roadway for the rest of us. Where are you going?”
“A couple of places. If I need your help, I’ll let you know.”
“Mr. Travis, please bring me somebody I can convict.”
“Oh, you’ll be able to get the death penalty on this one. Conspiracy to commit murder is like that.”
Gresham whistled.
“Say, anything on the Atwell’s will?”
“Oh, yes. I have it here.” There was the ruffle of papers in the background. The man was sitting at his desk downtown. “ ‘Sound mind, blah blah blah...disposition of remains, yackety yackety...here we go. Well damn. I should’ve read this when I got it, but I laid it aside for later. I’ve been busy.”
“What does it say?”
“Looks like the bar goes to Rick along with all but twenty million dollars. There’s a list of names of beneficiaries. But Rick gets most of it. I wish I had treated the old man better back in the day, gotten to know him.”
“That’s how it always works,” I said. “Listen, what happened with Peanut?”
“The dog? I don’t know, but I’ll ask about that. It’s probably going to have to wait until tomorrow morning. I suspect that the officers who went over there are off-duty now.”
“It’ll stick in my craw until I find out. All right, I’ll call you with an update in an hour or so.”
“Please do. I’m dying to hear about who did this.”
“I have to confirm it, first,” I said. “We don’t want to charge the wrong...persons.”
“This is true. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” I said, and hung up.
*****
Before I could make my next turn, headed east, red and blue lights came on behind me. I was being pulled over. Perhaps I’d been driving too fast. The downtown streets were mostly deserted.
I rolled down my window, put my left arm on top of the door and my right on the steering wheel; the officer should easily be able to see both of my hands.
A door closed behind me and a flashlight came on.
“Well I’ll be damned. If it isn’t Ranger Bill Travis?”
“Hello, Officer Whittaker.”
He laughed. “Call me Jack.”
“I will,” I said, “if you’ll call me Bill.”
“Working late tonight?”
“I am.”
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“How would you like to be my back-up?”
“Sure. Where are we going?”
“To chew bubble-gum and kick ass. Seriously, I need to go and make an impression on someone.”
“I’ve got my partner in the car with me. You’ll have two of us watching your back.”
“Then let’s go,” I said.
*****
I drove like a bat out of hell, and Whittaker stayed right with me. We crossed over Buffalo Bayou and made the appropriate series of turns until we entered the Atwell lot.
At night, the piles of dirt and rusted, disintegrating towers and silos gave the place a surreal, haunting aspect, as if the whole world had gone to ruin. It was like something out of Dante’s Inferno, or perhaps Tolkien’s Morder. I shivered.
I found the truck the two security agents had been driving when they first pulled up in front of Atwell’s trailer. It was parked on the side of the narrow roadway between two towers. The headlights were on, and the driver’s side door was open. I pulled up behind it and got out. Whittaker and his partner pulled up.
I unholstered my weapon, made sure the safety was off, and approached the truck.
The engine was running.
I stepped away from the vehicle as I drew up even with it, and kept my gun trained on the open doorway.
Price and Weller were slumped down inside the truck. Aside from exhaust fumes, I smelled burned gunpowder and blood.
“Shit,” I said.
“What is it?”
“Whoever killed them may still be here. Call and get some backup here, pronto.”
Jack’s partner—I couldn’t remember his name—spoke into his shoulder radio, while Jack came up and felt of Weller’s dangling wrist for a pulse.
“Yep. Dead as yesterday’s news,” he said. I waited as he went around to the other side, opened the door and repeated the procedure with Price. “Both dead.”
I looked down at my feet, but it was too dark for me to see. I motioned for Jack’s partner to come over, and he did so.
“Shine your light all around here, please. I want to see if there’s anything.”
“We’ve got a number of backup vehicles on the way. The Captain is coming down, and the coroner is en route as well.”
“Good.”
The circle of bright light from the flashlight revealed blood, and not a little of it.
“Follow it away from the truck,” I said.
It was a blood trail, and it led to one of the ruined silo towers and disappeared into the doorway.
“Let me have the flashlight,” I said. “Get Jack and you two follow me.”
I stepped inside the doorway of the silo, flashlight in one hand, gun in the other.
*****
I’d assumed that the silo had once been a grain elevator, but there was no way of telling that. Whatever grain had ever been there had been devoured by the rats. They scampered and skittered as quickly as they could to get away from the light.
The bottom floor had been divided into rooms at some point in the past, with steel walls welded into place in seeming haphazard fashion. The place was empty, however, of everything except trash. Old discarded lumber, stacks of rusted steel springs, and car and truck parts were littered around everywhere.
There was too much to draw the eye, and I had to fight the urge to be distracted. Instead, I concentrated on the small trail of blood at my feet.
I heard something; a small sound that echoed throughout the structure.
The trail turned a corner into a partially open doorway. When I touched the door, it whined inward in a high-pitched shriek.
I moved the light about the room quickly, trying to take it all in.
And found a man dying.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He tried to raise the gun, but didn’t have the strength. He was bleeding out, and he wasn’t long for the world.
“Johnny,” I said, and knelt and took the gun from his hand.
“I’m...I’m...thirsty.”
“I know.” He bled from a hole in the center of his stomach below his diaphragm. It ran out in runnels, rivulets, and spread out in a pool around him.
“I got...stupid,” he said. “Shouldn’t have tried...to take them both on.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, they’re both dead. Horner put you up to this?”
I was down on bended knee, with both officers behind me. Officer Whittaker spoke into his radio and requested an ambulance.
Johnny grasped my hand with his blood-drenched own. “Tell my momma...I’m sorry. She was right. I took...the wr
ong path.”
“Tell her yourself, Johnny. You might pull through this. Just hold on. Help is coming.”
“I’m—” he tried to sit up, and had a spasm of pain for his effort. He coughed and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. That’s never a good sign.
“Johnny,” I said. “I think if you’ve got something to say, now might be the time.”
“I tried to...do right.”
“Horner, Johnny? Was it Mr. Horner who put you up to this? Or am I wrong? Was it somebody else?”
He coughed then, and sprayed blood, and I shifted back from him until the fit passed.
“It was...” he began, but then he stiffened all over. His eyes bulged under the strain, and then he relaxed. And died.
“Shit,” Jack Whittaker said.
I stood, turned and walked out, even as Whittaker told his dispatcher to call off the ambulance.
As I walked out of the silo and into the night, the rain started again. I walked calmly to the Expedition and got inside and sat there.
*****
Whittaker took charge of the scene as more police officers arrived on the scene. I had to back up, forward, and back again, twisting my wheel all the way around both directions in order to get out of the narrow slot where I’d gotten the Expedition boxed in. Before leaving, I rolled down my window and spoke with Whittaker.
“You going to need any help where you’re going?” he asked me.
“One riot, one ranger,” I told him.
He nodded. “Take care, Mr. Travis,” he said.
I left, and as I did, I realized the odds were good that I would never see the man again.
Leaving Atwell behind me for I hoped the final time, I backtracked the route Jessica had driven us the previous day, with Willard ‘Cottonmouth’ Dalton up front giving her directions, despite the fact she had a perfectly functioning GPS computer in her dashboard.
I pulled up at the house on Harrington Street. Before getting out, I fished around in the hump between the two front seats and found something new and utterly novel: an umbrella! I decided to employ it.
It was still to early for any light in the sky, so it was with no small measure of reluctance that I knocked on the front door of Ms. Delphina’s boarding house. The sign above the door still said, PARKER PLACE, and I wondered about it.
