“It was about a lease. He’d just passed his test, you know. So he could do that stuff.”
“Right,” I said. “He’d just gotten his real estate license and started working at Callahan Real Estate.”
She frowned, suspicious. “How did you know where he worked?”
I tried to control my impatience. “Charlie’s sister, Vera, told me. Now this is real important, if we want to find Charlie.” I sat down beside her. “Tell me what you remember about his appointment. Did he say where it was? Who it was with? Anything?”
Jenny bounced up from her seat like someone had shocked her with a cattle prod. “Ooooh, I know where he went.” She did a little two-step jig, hopping from one foot to the other, then ran into the kitchen. She grabbed something off the refrigerator and came back. Proudly, she handed me a piece of glossy paper. “This is where his meeting was.”
It was a sales flyer from the Callahan Real Estate Company. Their name, address, and various phone numbers ran across the top. A color picture of a cinder-block building covered most of the remainder of the page. Across the bottom of the picture, it said the address of the property, and “Exclusive Listing—Available Immediately.” Below that, in smaller type, was “For Information Contact the Listing Agent—Charlie Wesson.” There was a floor plan and technical details about the place on the back.
“Do you remember who it was with? Or what time?”
Jenny kept nodding, but closed her eyes. “The guy. The guy who …” She scrunched her face up and curled into a tight little ball on the sofa. “It was at four-thirty. I remember because that’s in the middle of Oprah.”
The time fit. Vera said he left his office at four.
Jenny jumped up again. “The guy next door. It was the guy next door.”
“That’s who he was meeting with?” I said. “The guy next door? Next door to what?”
She grabbed the flyer out of my hand and waved it at me. “Next door to this. He was meeting with the guy next door. He wanted to move into this place. From next door.”
I took the piece of paper from her, folded it, and put it in the pocket of my jeans. I handed her one of my cards. “You’ve been a big help, Jenny. If you think of something else, call me.”
She smiled, as eager to please as a puppy. I asked her if she needed anything, food, smokes, soft drinks, anything at all. She said no, she was set. I stood up and she pulled a telephone off the floor and put it on the coffee table.
“You should probably leave. It’s almost time for my shift.”
I moved toward the door. “Your shift?”
“Yeah. Phone sex.” She said it as a matter of fact, with a blank face, neither ashamed nor proud.
I said good-bye and left her there, lighting another cigarette and drinking Big Red. As I got into my truck I wondered what would become of Jenny, if there was anyone else who could look after her if Charlie didn’t come back.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I was halfway down Luna Road, almost to the highway, before I real ized I’d left Charlie’s front door unlocked and the remainder of his place unsearched. I figured that getting robbed was the least of his worries at the moment. Jenny would probably check on it anyway. As for not completing the search, the real estate sales flyer resting in the passenger’s seat was the best clue to be found. I could always go back.
Charlie’s listing, the building that was his last known appointment, was on Gano Street, number 919. It must be a good part of town, because I hang out in all the bad areas and that name didn’t sound familiar. I pulled into the parking lot of a discount liquor store with one cracked window, and got out the map. I was wrong. Gano Street lay south of the center of town, but north of the Trinity, a no-man’s-land between North and South Dallas.
I headed down to Interstate 30, the southern boundary of downtown. City hall and the convention center lay to my left, and I turned right, looking for Charlie Wesson’s building. The area was old, like where I lived and worked but less renovated and less populated. There were few houses, just block after block of old brick structures, threadbare and faded like a pair of well-washed blue jeans. Some housed taverns, places with names like South Side Johnnie’s and Cleo’s Bar and Social Club; others were occupied by barbecue joints and home-cooking places. But most were used by small businesses: mechanics, appliance repair shops, electrical and plumbing supply houses. Not many cars or people moved about. I drove by four package stores in a single block and wondered who shopped there. Dallas was a patchwork of liquor laws, resembling something designed by an alcoholic Mormon with a split personality. Whiskey was legal to sell by the drink on one side of a given street, yet beer and wine forbidden to be stocked in a supermarket on the other.
I found Gano and followed it until I hit number 919, right before the street ended abruptly at a railroad embankment. It contained only three buildings: Charlie’s, the one next door, occupied by Pete’s Printing Service, and another vacant property across the street. It looked like the picture: cinder block, peeling paint with a faded awning, and a Callahan Real Estate Company sign. I parked in front and got out, reluctant to leave the cool air of the truck for the midmorning heat.
I’d managed five steps toward the front door when an olive-skinned man in a pair of blue work pants and a matching shirt accosted me. He wore a name tag on his chest that said “Pete.” His black hair was shot through with gray that spilled out from underneath a Greek fisherman’s cap. He was as wide as he was tall, with a barrel chest and wrists as thick as wine bottles.
“That my building. What you want?” He spoke fractured English with an accent, and blocked my way, hands resting on his hips.
“You must be Pete. From next door.” I pointed to the adjacent building.
“That right. My name Pete and this my building. What you want?”
“Trust me, Pete. I don’t want your building. I’m looking for Charlie Wesson.”
Pete appeared to relax. “You know where Charlie I find?”
I translated that to mean he didn’t know his whereabouts either. “No, not yet. I was hoping you could tell me about the last time you saw him.”
“Monday. He come with lease for building. Leave it with me. Say he go outside for minute. Go to see the man at the other building.” Pete took off his cap and waved it at the place across the street.
“Who was the man at the other building?” I looked at the third place on the block. It was redbrick, older, and set back from the street. Chipped paint on a window indicated that at one point there had been a restaurant there. It looked like someplace Bonnie and Clyde might have robbed. The ubiquitous green and white sign of one of the larger real estate companies in the area proclaimed that it was for sale or lease.
Pete shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know. Charlie very excited, say he see the big man, he go meet him. Then he never come back.” Pete’s pocket rang, and he pulled out a cordless phone, babbling in a language I couldn’t understand. After a few moments, he covered the mouthpiece with one hand. “You go find Charlie. I sign lease. Need building.” He handed me a business card. His last named started with an S, and had seven syllables that ended in olopoulus.
I walked across the street, to the redbrick building. On the back of Charlie Wesson’s sales flyer, I jotted down the number on the sign, and the company name, Strathmore Real Estate. After peering into one of the front windows and not seeing anything, I walked around to the back. A few dozen empty beer cans, faded by the sun, littered the asphalt and gravel. The door was locked. My fingers were warmed up after the earlier break-in and I managed to tweak the tumblers in thirty seconds.
The back half was as hot as Charlie’s apartment and divided into a series of offices, four in a row opening onto a hallway that ran along the rear of the building. They were all empty except for the last one, the farthest from the street. There were no windows there, but the overhead fluorescent lights worked. The room was clean, free of the dust and debris cluttering the others, as well as bigger, maybe twenty by t
hirty. It contained a desk, a half dozen chairs, a dirty sofa, and a late-model Sony portable stereo. The wastebasket held an assortment of empty fast food containers and cigarette butts. And one spent nine-millimeter cartridge. I left everything where it was. Nothing in the desk except a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a disposable lighter.
I had my hand on the doorknob, ready to leave, when it opened on its own and I found myself face-to-face with Mr. Gold Filling, the goateed man from yesterday afternoon. Someone had bandaged his head where I’d kicked him at our last meeting.
He snarled and lunged forward, getting a fast punch in toward my stomach with one hand and wrapping his other around my torso. I twisted and took it as a glancing blow, hitting him in the side of the head with the heel of my hand as he went by.
We went down in a heap, each throwing short jabs and clawing for leverage. He gave as good as he got, not afraid to use knees, fingernails, and teeth. His head butt was a mistake, though, less than twenty-four hours after a concussion. He connected, his temple to my cheekbone. My flesh bruised, the skin split, and I felt a trickle of blood. Mr. Goatee passed out. I rolled away and stood up, wobbly but okay. With a handkerchief, I dabbed at the blood on my cheek and mopped sweat off my face. The ribs on my left side felt sore, and there was a tingly spot on one thigh where his knee had just missed my groin.
Using his belt, I tied his hands behind him and rolled him over. There was a Glock nine-millimeter tucked in his front pocket that I stuck in my waistband. The only other weapon he had was a cheap stiletto hidden in one sock. That went into one of my pockets. The Texas driver’s license in the wallet behind his right hip identified him as Carl Albach, age thirty-four, address in northeast Dallas. There were two hundreds, three twenties, and a handful of fives and ones in the wallet. No credit cards. I copied down his name, address, and driver’s license number on the back of Charlie Wesson’s flyer and returned it all to the same pocket. The only other item on his person was a key to a BMW, housed in its own protective case.
He and Jack the Crack rode in a Mercedes yesterday. Did the BMW belong to Carl, and the Mercedes to Jack? Was Carl alone today or did they always travel in tandem? Was Jack Washington standing in the hallway, waiting to see who came out the door? Too many questions and not enough answers.
I found a piece of twine on the floor and tied up Carl’s feet. With my gun out, I crouched by the entrance to the room. Using my free hand, I punched the door open and hit the hallway, running low and fast. Each office lay empty, nothing but dirt and rat droppings. I burst through the back door, ignoring the pain in my thigh and the blood dribbling down my cheek.
A dark green BMW sat by the door, locked and empty. He had pulled around so it wasn’t visible from the street. I peered around the front of the building. No other cars or people were evident except for my truck, still parked in front of Charlie Wesson’s listing. The sky was cloudless, the air hot, and I felt a fresh sweat bead on my forehead. I walked to the front of the redbrick building. The door was locked so I kicked it in, and explored that section of the place. It was empty. With a chunk of cardboard, I wedged the entrance shut as best I could and went back around the building.
The car was next.
Automobiles can be tricky if you’re not careful; there are a lot of nooks and crevices things can hide in. I found a roach clip and half a joint in a plastic Baggie in the ashtray, under a pile of cigarette butts. A cell phone lay on the console. No numbers programmed into memory. I left it where it was. Nothing else in the front except an owner’s manual for the BMW and an insurance card, made out for Carl Albach, at the same address as his license. On the floorboard in the back, a dirty denim jacket covered a twelve-pack of Schlitz, a half-off delivery coupon for a Domino’s pizza, and a pornographic DVD entitled Anal Alice and the Alley Cats—Part III. Carl had some social life.
The trunk got interesting. A package lay in the middle, the only thing there, and measured about eighteen inches square, four or five inches deep. It was wrapped tightly with black plastic trash bags and sealed with duct tape. It felt heavy, twenty or thirty pounds at least. I bet it wasn’t Carl’s dirty laundry. The smart thing to do would be to leave the package and get out.
Sometimes I’m not the ripest tomato in the basket. I got my truck and pulled around back. The package fit nicely behind the seat. I checked on the unconscious Carl. Still out cold, but breathing. I untied his bonds and left him there, key returned to his pocket where it came from. It was time to leave Gano Street, so I drove back to my part of town, toward the office. There was one stop to make first, at my personal self-storage unit.
A few years ago a friend of mine went to Mexico on business. He never came back, for reasons best left unsaid. He lived not far from Ernie, in an old brick house in the middle of the block, an unkempt two-bedroom cottage on a street that fell somewhere between eclectic and dangerous. He had no family and precious few friends. Before leaving, he asked me to retrieve his mail, water when needed, and get the lawn mowed. Five years later he’s taking the eternal siesta in an unmarked grave on the outskirts of Piedras Negras, and I’m still house-sitting. There’s no corpse to be found so there’s no death certificate. That means there’s no probate so technically my dead friend is still the owner and no one is the wiser. I maintain the place, splitting the cost with Delmar and Olson. We call it the unit, and use the place for storage of things we’d rather not keep in a traceable location. Like twenty or so pounds of unidentified stuff found in the back of a small-time hood’s BMW.
I made the turn down the alley that ran behind the unit and pulled into the garage. The trees lining the gravel surface formed a canopy on the sides and overhead, keeping out prying eyes. As time passed, there had been some modifications to the house: we’d bricked the windows from the inside, installed steel doors with a complicated locking system, and reinforced the roof.
The unit was relatively empty at the moment. In the dining room I kept an exercise machine I no longer cared for but didn’t want to sell. It sat next to a box of china that Delmar’s grandmother had given him. The dishes rested on a two-column stack of magazines, a twenty-year collection of Guns & Ammo. They belonged to Olson or Delmar, I couldn’t remember which. In the bedrooms, the three of us maintained a small stock of ammunition in various calibers and configurations. Bullets are like dollars; you can never have too many.
There was a new addition in the living room, a wooden crate about the size of a desk. Cyrillic lettering stretched across the top. I suspected something fully automatic and highly illegal, property of Olson, the honest and reputable merchant of death. I put the plastic-wrapped package and the Glock in the corner of the living room, and proceeded to check the place, making sure everything was secure. No invaders had breached the fortifications so I left, carefully locking the door behind me.
It was time to go to that place I called an office, to see if my suite mates had scared off Nolan O’Connor. I’d gotten two blocks when my cell phone rang. It was Porter Baxter, an old client of mine who had made and lost several fortunes in the oil fields of East Texas and the divorce courts of Dallas County. His voice was frantic, pleading with me to meet him at an Italian restaurant on Northwest Highway that had last been popular when Martin and Lewis were still a team. Her name was Sue something, he said, and she was a really sweet girl but was being unreasonable. Why do women always think you love them when you say you love them? It was just the Viagra talking anyway, dammit.
I didn’t get home until three the next morning.
CHAPTER NINE
The talking head who did the weather on the local morning show, the one with the shellacked hair and a fondness for neon-colored bow ties and black dress shirts, predicted an afternoon high of 101. I drank another glass of tepid tap water, positioned the pistol digging into my kidney in a more comfortable place, and left the house, cussing the endless Dallas summer.
Four blocks away from the office, I pulled to the curb and got out a pair of Zeiss binoculars from the glov
e compartment. I spent several minutes studying the cars parked near the office, as well as the sparse traffic. Satisfied the Camaro was not around, I put the optics back where they belonged. That was when I noticed the banged-up beige Chevy idling behind me. It sat lower than my pickup and obviously had pulled in behind me while I was scoping the office. This was the kind of mistake that could get a body disbarred from the Private Investigators Association. Or killed.
Reiger Street was free of traffic for the moment so I jumped out, pulled the Browning, and flattened myself against the side of my vehicle for cover. I snuck a peek over the bed of the truck. The driver was barely visible, his kinky-curly hair hidden under a San Antonio Spurs ball cap. His lips twisted into a jagged worm when he saw me as his right hand appeared from underneath the dash, holding what looked like a Beretta .25 semiauto. From behind the front windshield of the Camaro, he pointed the tiny gun at me.
I tried not to laugh out loud. Aimed dead-on there was only a fifty-fifty shot that a .25-caliber bullet would even break through a modern windscreen. He held the pistol at a forty-five-degree angle to the glass, virtually guaranteeing a ricochet into the instrument cluster sitting above the driver’s knees. This had disgruntled ex-boyfriend written all over it, but I hadn’t had that many dates lately. Somebody from a long time ago, maybe. I raised my head another couple of inches and smiled at him.
He frowned and pressed the muzzle of the .25 against the glass. I lowered my gun and stood up straight. The driver’s face went blank, his eyes as big as quarters. I took a step toward him, and he dropped the gun on the dash, hand scrambling for the gearshift.
I made another move forward and he burned a layer of rubber off the tires in reverse, squealing into the street and narrowly missing a Yellow Cab parked across the street. He jammed the car into drive and sped off, eyes looking straight ahead. I waved at him as he went by, mildly ticked that a layer of mud obscured his license plate.
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