Lake Charles

by Ed Lynskey

  I hoisted into the cab truck, and we departed. Tuesday had turned hot and muggy, but the warm air fanned through the open windows over us. Mr. Kuzawa captained the wheel. His wolflike eyes flashed between the mirrors, but I spotted no bogeys lurking in mine.

  “Sizemore grows his cash crop and pockets his profits,” said Herzog. “He keeps a raft of corrupt officials on his payroll. Do you see the odds you’re bucking, Brendan?”

  “It’s not all bad. Judge Yarrow granted me bail.”

  “As a maverick judge, she’s the rare exception,” said Herzog. “She’s on a medical leave of absence. Skin treatments, I heard, so we’ve got our work cut out for us. I’m not being funny either.”

  “Speaking of funny, here’s one for you,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “Last night a jangling phone woke me, and it wasn’t mine.” He angled a hard glance at Herzog.

  “There’s no phone in Room 7.” I joined in with Mr. Kuzawa’s glare.

  “Guys, I just left a message for my secretary to obtain a status update,” said Herzog. “She returned my call, and we talked for six minutes, maybe more. Stuff is perking at the office. For one thing, there’s Brendan’s case to consider. Her callback must be what disturbed you. My apologies.”

  My question went to Mr. Kuzawa. “Did you overhear what he really did say?”

  “No. Late at night he likes to mutter.”

  “Oh yeah? Whenever we talk, he speaks right up. What gives, Counselor?”

  “Use your heads. I lowered my voice because those walls are paper thin. Disturbing your rest wasn’t my intent.”

  “Who is your office help?” I asked.

  “You know Salem Rojos works for me. She’ll go into pre-law at my alma matter. Satisfied? Or do we stop at the next coin phone, and ask her to corroborate my claim?”

  My curt words beat down his stuffy defensiveness. “Yeah, I know Salem, but Herzog, I don’t like you. I never have since the first day Mama Jo hired you to be my lawyer.”

  “Brendan, you’re skating on thin ice. Mighty thin. Insult me again, and I’ll drop your case.”

  I bit my tongue. Lawyers were a necessary evil.

  Mr. Kuzawa felt no constraints. “Here on, you stay within eyeshot, lawyer. Another screwy move like last night and I’ll slit your throat with my Buck knife. Promise.”

  “Save your threats, Kuzawa. They don’t ruffle me. Working in criminal jurisprudence, I hear them daily. Vulgarity just goes with the territory.”

  “Hearing vulgarity and experiencing it is like apples and oranges,” said Mr. Kuzawa.

  The hangdog lawyer said nothing.

  * * *

  The majestic sycamores cast their pools of shade over our cruise. A part of me wanted to go off and lounge under them, fall asleep, and demand that the dreams reveal everything to me. Then a big “what if” fear raked me. What if my dreams refused to play out to the end? What if they balked at unraveling more threads to Ashleigh’s narrative? Where did that leave me? In the lurch, that’s where.

  Cobb had died for no sensible cause. The shadowy driver parked in the wine-colored sedan at the Chewink Motel hectored me. My manhunt to go after Ashleigh’s killer had hit a sand trap. Worst of all, we’d gotten no closer to reaching the wayward Edna. The base of my stomach fell free. I fished out her yellow parrot barrette from my pocket. The talisman offered me the physical proof that she’d been through the pot growers’ campsite. Re-establishing that link helped to rekindle my hopes.

  We had to be running on the right track. I recalled my thoughts last night before falling asleep at the Chewink Motel to delve into the pressmen’s strike and the involvement of a Sizemore. My chin tilt caught Mr. Kuzawa’s eye. He was one historical source to tap, but I also wanted to learn about the bigger picture.

  A sly smile prefaced my question. “Is your public library card valid?”

  “My library card?” Disgusted, he blew his nose on his handkerchief. “Do you own a damn yacht?”

  “I have a library card. What’s your interest?” asked Herzog.

  “To do some research on local history.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  It drove me up the wall, but some of Umpire’s old families still didn’t speak to each other twenty-five years after the strike. Imagine the raft of grudges fed over an entire generation. That’s how a nasty labor squabble had left a clannish, quaint Appalachian hamlet. The pressmen’s strike sucked out and destroyed our heart and soul. It all started when a few disgruntled pressmen invited Pierre Spartacus, an official with the International Printers Union or IPU, into town. From the get-go, Pierre was a mover and shaker. He went to work.

  The autocratic Jeb Longerbeam owned and ran Umpire’s printing plant. On the sly, Pierre slipped around and signed up enough membership to give his union some clout. It was a blueprint for catastrophe. Mr. Longerbeam, no champion of organized labor especially when Pierre presented their list of demands, blew a gasket, saying hell no. The IPU declared a work stoppage. No middle, neutral ground existed: you were either pro-union or anti-union.

  The loyal pressmen still reported to their jobs, and things turned rough. Crossing the picket lines enraged the strikers. Ugly curses escalated to head knocks. One striker unlimbered a Colt, and a file clerk took a fatal slug in the heart. Urgent calls went to the populist governor Frank G. Clements, and he ordered in the Tennessee State Police. The state troopers pulled double shifts to separate and cool off the unionists and scabs.

  The kicker was Mr. Longerbeam’s presses continued chugging along, in spite of the smaller work force. The no letdown in the productivity did much to undercut Pierre’s bargaining power. After a long, hot summer, both sides agreed to a truce, and the state troopers left Umpire and went home. But Pierre and the IPU had wangled no new concessions, and within days, their membership disintegrated.

  Mr. Longerbeam turned vindictive. Few, if any, of the union walkouts took back their old jobs. They went on to eke out a subsistence living on church welfare and joe jobs, or else they left town to stake out a new beginning elsewhere. I know Umpire and the surrounding vicinity including Yellow Snake were never the same again.

  After skulking down to the basement of the Yellow Snake Public Library, we learned of this local history. Our eyes glazed over from so much peering in at the old newspaper columns magnified on the fuzzy microfilm reader’s screen. Straightening with a grimace, Mr. Kuzawa reminisced.

  “Seeing this dredges up a lot. Each morning I ran the gauntlet and got swatted over the head with the picket signs.”

  “Not a union man, eh, Kuzawa?” said Herzog.

  “Don’t insult me. If the money got tight, we just took a second or third job.” Mr. Kuzawa pronounced each word with care approaching reverence. “Old Pierre swore the IPU would back the strikers no matter how tough it got. He’d have guaranteed them a slice of paradise, if they’d stick it out with him.”

  “Did he promise this before or after they coughed up their union dues?” I asked.

  Mr. Kuzawa’s caustic smile didn’t waver. “After, natch. The strikers never saw a penny. There at the end the IPU big shots wouldn’t give them the freckles off their ass, and I never heard of Pierre’s fate. The coward probably slinked out of town late one night with his tail tucked between his legs.”

  “Why is Sizemore’s affiliation with the strike so important?” asked Herzog.

  “Because my balls are on the block for a murder I didn’t do, and I’ve run out of ideas on how to get him,” I replied. “Look, Victor told us Ashleigh said her father raises huge amounts of pot at Lake Charles, and Edna disappeared from there.”

  “He’s our primary target,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “Press on.”

  We continued poring over the newspaper coverage on the strike. Nearest to the stairwell, I first heard the reedy cadences from the top of the stairs. My heart jolted a beat. I’d a memory of the same ominous voices. Pointing, I mouthed a warning to the others. “Sheriff’s deputies are upstairs.”

  Mr. Kuzawa drew out and
thumb-cocked his .44. He leaned and growled at Herzog’s ear. “Get rid of ’em. Fast. I’ll be watching. Capiche, lawyer?”

  Bug-eyed, he nodded. “I know the sheriff’s deputies from court. Go duck behind those stacks. I’ve got this covered.”

  “Make sure of it.”

  Mr. Kuzawa and I retreated to behind the tall bookshelves. I looked through a portal in the books at Wines and Ramsey trailing a witch-faced, snake-thin lady filing downstairs. The placard upstairs at her unmanned desk had identified her, “Mrs. Ada Zigler, Assistant Librarian.”

  “Are you taking a nap, Herzog?” asked Wines.

  “It’s a slow day, and I’m doing a little genealogical research,” replied Herzog in a friendly way. “My family is from Yellow Snake, and I’m researching the old newspapers.”

  His cover story struck me as screwy, but then he had the reputation of a screwball. I hoped the sheriff’s deputies didn’t check the microfilm reader’s screen to see what he had displayed.

  Mrs. Zigler’s eyes blazed on him. “I saw the light on down here. Can’t you read the sign we posted upstairs? This area is restricted to staff only. You lack the proper accreditation. I phoned my sheriff’s deputies to explain it to you.”

  Squinting over the mildewy encyclopedias, I didn’t like her snide tone.

  “Doesn’t your library maintain a reciprocal use agreement with ours?” asked Herzog.

  “We do but that’s not the point. You’re not the staff, and you shouldn’t mishandle the microfilm.”

  “Sorry.”

  Wines grinned at her. “Aw, dial it back, Ada. Granted Herzog might be a big, clumsy meatball, but he’s not hurting anything. He just blundered his way down here. No harm, no foul, eh?”

  “Maybe not but we librarians maintain rules for order.”

  Thinking of something, Wines scowled down at Herzog. “Where’s your client, Counselor?”

  He blinked innocent-like. “Can you be more specific, Deputy?”

  “Don’t play dumb. I mean Fishback the killer you got out on bail.”

  “As far as I know, Mr. Fishback is at home or work.”

  I shifted to get a better view and brushed against a misshelved encyclopedia. My hand whipped back in time to intercept its tumble to the floor. Just down the aisle from me, Mr. Kuzawa shook his head.

  “Fishback has been AWOL since Friday. His cab truck is gone. He didn’t call or report for work. His boss is a bit miffed,” said Ramsey.

  “Now I do recall he went fishing at Lake Charles,” said Herzog. “He must be on vacation. Maybe his boss pulled in every direction simply forgot.”

  “That alleged fishing trip is a crock. Our drive-by saw nobody at Lake Charles, and it reeks to do any serious fishing.” Wines shuffled their topics. “What scuttlebutt have you heard down your way on this gory stick up?”

  “Sorry, I’m a bookworm, and I don’t tune in the TV news,” replied Herzog. “What happened?”

  “Old Lady Simmons killed one thief before she took two of them prisoner,” replied Wines.

  “Amazing heroic stuff.” Ramsey sucked between his black meerschaum nubs for teeth. “She shoots better than I do.”

  “Fear and adrenaline,” said Herzog.

  I watched Wines hook his thumbs in his utility belt, and his taut face turn pugnacious. “I beg your pardon, Counselor.”

  As I worried if Herzog had overplayed it, I felt something crawling on my elbow and brushed at it. A sting—ouch!—jerked my eyes down to see a yellow-and-black mud dauber. I swatted it to the floor and crushed it under my boot. My jaws clenched as I endured the sting’s radiating pain. Tears broke into my eyes as the welt reddened. I brimmed to curse aloud, but I kept my teeth gritted.

  Herzog elaborated on his theory. “Fear triggers people’s adrenaline to the point where individuals in overwrought states perform superhuman feats.”

  “Are you bullshitting us, clown?”

  “Not at all, Deputy. Well, I know you’re busy, and other microfilm waits for me. If I see Mr. Fishback, do I advise him to contact you?”

  “Yeah, you do that,” said Ramsey.

  “If you’ve jerked us off, clown, I’ll kick your nuts up to hang off your ears,” said Wines.

  The modest Mrs. Zigler made a prim “ahem” noise.

  “Herzog, why don’t you get out of Ada’s hair?” said Ramsey.

  “As you wish it. I shouldn’t be playing hooky. I should be looking for work.”

  “A little strapped, are you?” said Ramsey.

  “August isn’t a terribly busy time. Or profitable.”

  Wines snorted. “You lawyers are rolling in dough.”

  “Not this one, I’m sorry to say.”

  As they re-climbed the steps, Ada lingered at the banister. Herzog thumbed the button to print out a last page. “Just put the reels of archival microfilm in that cardboard box.” Her sharp-nailed finger pointed at the top of the reader. “I’ll file them at the day’s end.”

  “Certainly,” said Herzog after her hurrying up the steps.

  My glance over the piles of paper bags overflowing with used books collected for the library’s next book fair saw an Exit sign. A smaller one under it read “For Emergency Use Only!”

  “Brendan, come read this.”

  I stepped over and Herzog gave me the page printed off the reader and still warm to the touch.

  The obituary of Baxter Sizemore reported that fresh out of law school he’d served as a chief adviser to Jeb Longerbeam, an executive owning the Umpire printery. Baxter had lobbied Governor Clements to order in the state cops, a move that sapped the will of the pressmen’s strike. I gave the page to Mr. Kuzawa.

  “So Longerbeam got Baxter to lobby for the governor’s help to strong-arm the strikers.”

  “His surviving son Ralph is Ashleigh’s dad,” I said. “Small world, after all.”

  Ada Zigler the bulldog guarding the entry upstairs forced us to use the emergency exit. I shoved down on the metal bar to thrust out the door, and no alarms clanged at us. I led our scramble up the exterior steps to the sidewalk, and we pelted down the block to where my cab truck hid behind the same cinderblock wall as earlier.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I wheeled us around in the hardpan side yard, and I took measure of the Arbogasts’ plain farmhouse before us. What did Sizemore see in it? Nothing actually. He was just a rich bully who got his jollies by throwing around his weight to smash up lives, and my rage heated up by a few more degrees. Just then, a girl’s wheat blonde head appeared climbing the cellar outside steps. She toted a wet mop in one hand.

  “I thought I heard your truck engine, Mr. Kuzawa.” She yawned. “I stayed up last night stuffing comic book orders into their envelopes. Hey, it pays even if it’s a pittance and I have to stay busy. Is this Brendan I talked to last night?”

  My nod took the credit.

  Profiled by the sunlight streaming behind her, Alicia brushed off her baggy dungarees fringed at the cuffs and a peach maternity smock. She approached my age but looked—especially in her soft, pliable face—younger. A girl, actually. She had flawless skin, and her breasts protruded acorn nipples through the fabric. She smiled, oblivious to any danger because her all focused on her portended middle.

  “Sorry to barge in like heathens,” said Mr. Kuzawa.

  She leaned the wet mop against the gutter spout. “Not at all. I’m just a castaway starved for company. Have you had lunch? I fixed a mess of deviled eggs, and I will eat them all unless you help me. Stacking on the pounds, I’ll burst apart like a whacked piñata.”

  “Dandy. Can we eat later?” asked Mr. Kuzawa.

  “Well, I’m hungry as a bear,” she said.

  Mr. Kuzawa gave her the nutshell version of why she was a sitting duck. He concluded with, “Sizemore got away, and no telling what he will do next.”

  Her girlish face paled. “Brendan told me something about that last night. I haven’t seen Mr. Sizemore for several days.”

  “You’re
in danger so we’ll move you to your grandparents’ place,” said Mr. Kuzawa.

  “I like the idea, but what if I go into labor?”

  “We’ll go fast. Meantime give your grandparents a phone call to expect us.”

  “Have you picked up any local scuttlebutt on Sizemore’s drug dealing?” I asked her.

  “Nothing out here.” She wagged her head. “He does that stuff?”

  “He’s not a very stand up guy.”

  We hauled her belongings from her bedroom in the farmhouse to load on the bed of my cab truck. I brought out a bassinet, a baby carriage, and milk crates filled with folded cotton diapers. The red tick I’d spotted the last time panted under the porch. She told me Rocko belonged to the neighbors on the next farm. Mr. Kuzawa tossed his last beef jerkies to the grateful Rocko and climbed into the cab seat.

  I added the final item, a bevy of teddy bears won at the carnival nickel pitches. When Herzog didn’t appear, I went back in the farmhouse and bumped into him. Acting sheepish, he gave me taking a bathroom break as his excuse, and I let it slide.

  With no room to spare in the cab, Herzog clambered into the back to ride between the tool chest and our payload. My sore bones and wire-tight muscles nestled into the cushiony seat under the steering wheel. The Arbogast farm receded in the mirrors while Alicia’s breasts (more voluptuous than Ashleigh) mashed against my side, a pleasant sensation.

  Alicia smiled at us. “My grandparents who just moved in haven’t had a chance to drive up and see me. Thanks for your help.”

  “You’re most welcome.” I savored the feel good moment since a qualm told me the next one was far away. I saw Mr. Kuzawa cut a hard eye in the rearview mirror. I did, too, but I didn’t see Sizemore’s goons on our tail. Herzog rode flaked out asleep in the truck bed as if he’d no care in the world. That’d soon change.