Still River

by Harry Hunsicker

  “This is Nolan O’Connor. She’s helping me on this thing.”

  Nolan said hello as he shook her hand. He refused to let go, instead leaning on her as if she were another cane. “Let’s go to da den. You can tell me what so important it brings you out thisaway.”

  Together the three of us made our way into the cavernous family room overlooking the minuscule backyard. Victor still wouldn’t let go of Nolan, insisting that she sit next to him on the leather sectional sofa running along one wall. He propped a leg up on the coffee table and turned to me. “Lee Henry, we need us some beer. There’s a pile of Dixie in the icebox. Grab some, wouldya?”

  I got three cold bottles and passed them around. The Diceman smiled and patted Nolan’s knee. “Ask what you need to ask, Lee Henry.”

  “You know a man named Fagen Strathmore? A real estate guy?”

  Victor removed his hand from Nolan’s leg and scratched his head. “Whatchoo mixed up with him for? He trying to sell you some swampland?”

  “It’s a case,” Nolan said. “Guy goes to meet Strathmore and is never seen again.”

  Victor took a long pull of his drink. “That wouldn’t be the first person to disappear.”

  “So you know him?” I said.

  “Yeah, we was friends once.” He rubbed his eyes, and leaned back. “Lemme tink a minute. Been a long time since I recollected about ole Fagen Strathmore.”

  After a few moments he told us the story of the boy who would eventually be a multimillionaire, the person they would call the Big Man, about how he grew up poor, in a trailer park in Port Arthur, Texas, where the sulfur stink of the coastal refineries permeated the humid air like smoke in a barroom. Dad died young, a blowout on an oil rig. Mom took care of the tiny family as best she could, slinging hash in a grease trap in Bridge City, and living mostly on Schlitz, Lucky Strikes, and broken dreams. Sometimes she liked to bring home shrimpers, hard, sun-leathered men who smelled of the sea, sweat, and whiskey. Fagen was big for his age, and a challenge to more than one of his mother’s boyfriends. For his thirteenth birthday, a doctor at the free clinic downtown set and plastered his broken right arm, and then taped his ribs and nose, the fractures courtesy of a Portuguese fisherman who held no truck with mouthy young men objecting when Mama got slapped around a little.

  When he was fourteen he got a paper route, delivering for one of the Houston dailies. At fifteen he was named Paperboy of the Year, and presented with a plaque and a genuine Davy Crockett coonskin cap. At seventeen, he quit high school and bought his first rental house.

  The next year proved to be seminal in the life of the young entrepreneur. On his eighteenth birthday, he evicted his first delinquent tenant, skipping the legal niceties and using a baseball bat instead. The next day he bought his fifth lease property, and tracked down the Portuguese man who had put him in the hospital five years before.

  The fisherman was never seen again.

  At twenty he sold all fifteen of his rental houses, gave half the money to his mother, and took a job with a real estate development company out of Atlanta that wasn’t particular about things like a lack of formal training. They bounced him up and down the eastern seaboard, Connecticut, Philly, New York, even a year in Boston. When he had learned all he could, he quit and came home to Texas, settling in Dallas, the concrete mesa on the banks of the Trinity, where it was said a hungry young man could make a name for himself. Strathmore’s first project had been an office and shopping center, in what at the time had been little more than a cow pasture. The local banks balked at loaning so much money, unsure of this brash young man. The owner of a strip bar on Commerce, a dingy place called the Carousel Club, put him in touch with a fellow in Shreveport who had sent him to see some dark men in the back room of a social club in New Orleans.

  One of the people in that back room had been a much younger Victor Lemieux. The person who put them together, the owner of the bar, was named Jack Ruby.

  “Fagen always paid back promptly, every time, never gave us the chance to get our hooks in him for real,” Victor said, draining his second beer.

  “He kept borrowing mob money?” I said.

  “Yeah. It helped us too, sometimes.” Victor shrugged. “Clean funds, you know.”

  Nolan stood up and stretched. “So he was doing you guys favors?”

  “Uh-huh.” Victor nodded. “Hell, one time he gave us some money so that we could loan it to a certain person for him. Guy’s name was Peabody somethingerother. Went through a savings and loan we had at the time, in Tyler. Peabody was small time, trying to buy property and build some offices. Unfortunately, he had stuff that Fagen wanted. Guy owned the last teeny chunk in a strip of dirt that Strathmore already owned. Bad thing to be Peabody.”

  “What happened?” Nolan pulled a pack of Marlboro Lights from her pocket and stuck one in her mouth. She made no move to light it.

  Victor looked at her smoke and licked his lips, breathing heavily. Finally he snapped out of it and said, “Huh? Oh yeah, well, Fagen says let me buy it. Peabody says no. Fagen ups his offer. Peabody says no again. See, he’s got plans, needs that building to use as collateral because he wants to borrow some money. So he borrows the money, using this certain savings and loan I done mentioned already. Then guess what happened? Had ’em a little case of Jewish lightning. Damn shame too; his family had an antique store in the place, been there for years.” Victor paused and looked at a spot on the wall. “Peabody’s mother was there that day. She didn’t make it out.”

  “Jewish lightning?” Nolan said.

  Victor grabbed her pack of cigarettes and stuck it under his nose, inhaling the scent of the tobacco deeply. “Whoowee, that smells damn good. Guddam doctors say no more smokes, no more sausage, no booze ’cept for a Dixie or two a day.” He took another whiff of the demon weed and put the pack down. “Where was we, oh yeah, Jewish lightning. That’s a fire. Usually you do it to collect the insurance money. Only this time, there weren’t no insurance because the S&L’s supposed to take care of it. But that bank didn’t and Peabody lost his ma and his property. To good ole Fagen Strathmore.”

  “Whatever happened to Peabody?” I said.

  “Humph.” Victor waved a hand and shrugged. He pulled a cigarette out of Nolan’s pack and stuck it in his mouth, leaving it unlit. “Peabody threatened to sue. Started calling the papers, shit like that. He had a car wreck a little bit after. Died.”

  I turned to Nolan. “I hope you’re not going to say Strathmore’s got narcissism whatever.”

  She shook her head. “His basic personality type sounds like self-confident with narcissistic disorder overlays. Most definitely a Type A.”

  I sighed. “Are you making this stuff up as you go?”

  “I have a degree in psychology.”

  “That makes her smarter than you and me put together, Hank.” The old man laughed and removed the smoke from his mouth, running it lengthwise under his nose like it was a Monte Cristo No. 1.

  “When I was on the job, I specialized in profiling.” Nolan looked at me. “You got a problem with understanding the way the mind works?”

  I didn’t reply. She held a Zippo out to the Diceman. He shook his head, and sucked the dry, unlit tobacco.

  “I’m trying to quit too.” Nolan slid the lighter back into her jeans. “Sometimes it feels good to just hold one in your mouth.”

  “Orally fixated, are we?” A brief smirk crossed my face as Victor chuckled. Nolan rolled her eyes.

  I decided to get back on track. “What’s Strathmore been up to lately? Any ideas?”

  The Diceman shook his head. “I’m out of the game. No idea. Ain’t talked to that crooked son of a bitch in ten years, I’ll bet.”

  We made small talk for another half hour. As we were leaving, my cell phone rang. A muffled voice was on the other end, crying. I waved good-bye to Victor and we walked outside, listening to Vera Drinkwater’s voice in my ear. “Hank. They’ve found Charlie.” More tears now; her voice became ragged. “He’s d
ead. They found him dead.”

  “Tell me what happened, Vera.” My tone was sharp, trying to snap her out of hysteria. Nolan and I got in the truck. She raised her eyebrows at me. I shrugged and mouthed, Charlie’s sister.

  “They said he shot himself.” More crying, then the sounds of deep breathing. She was trying to get control of herself. “They said he committed suicide. They found him in a crack house. With drugs.”

  “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When did they find him?”

  “I don’t know, they just called me, just now.” She started sobbing again. “He had one of those emergency contact cards in his wallet. He had my name on it. I remember when he filled it out—” She started to cry harder. I let her sob for a few moments. The crying subsided and she spoke again. “He didn’t kill himself, Hank. There’s no way, not after what he’d been through. He was on the upside. People don’t kill themselves when they are on the upside, do they, Hank?”

  “I don’t know.” My voice was low and calm.

  She quit crying and her tone became cold. “I want you to find whoever did this. I want you to find who murdered my baby brother. Will you do that for me, Hank?”

  I sighed and stared at a greasy spot on the floor mats, feeling older than I should have. I grabbed a pencil out of the console. “Tell me where they found him.”

  She told me the address and we hung up, after I promised her I’d be in touch later in the day with what I found.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Charlie Wesson died on a toilet, like Elvis.

  The similarities ended there. The King croaked in the bathroom of his mansion in Memphis, amid a sea of flocked wallpaper, shag carpet, and fried banana sandwiches. Charlie died in West Dallas, in a condemned crack house with a needle in his arm and cockroach shit on the dirty linoleum floor. The blackened spoon and lighter used to cook a dose of heroin lay nearby. The gun he used to shoot out the back of his head rested in his lap, right hand still clenched on the grip. It was a Glock. Charlie had been there for a couple of days if I had to guess, based on the condition of the body. I brushed a fly away from in front of my face and wiped a trickle of sweat off my temple, trying to breathe through my mouth because of the stench.

  “That your guy?” The police officer named Cloyd was a burly man in his mid-fifties, with a whiskey-tanned face and stubby fingers. We’d been acquaintances since his partner had become involved with a slick-talking hooker a few years back. I’d helped end the relationship on terms amicable to almost everybody. He didn’t let me in the bathroom, just peer through the door. Nolan was outside.

  “Yeah. That’s him. Charlie Wesson.” Even given the trauma of death and the beginning of the decomposition process, the face still bore a remarkable resemblance to the decade-old picture I’d found on the wall of his apartment.

  “Huh. That’s what his ID said too. Charles Wesson.”

  I didn’t bother to point out that I would not have been there if they hadn’t called his sister, which meant they already knew his name. I left the house and stood in the front yard. Where the lawn should have been was a mass of weeds, beer cans, and other trash. The humid air buzzed with mosquitos that had bred in the pools of stagnant water in two worn tires by the front porch. A cloud passed in front of the sun, providing a momentary relief from the heat.

  The house itself was a small wood-frame structure, unattractive when new, now just plain ugly, with boarded-up windows and an orange sign from the city denoting its status as condemned. All the houses on the block bore the same sticker. A sign on the corner said that this was the future home of the New Canaan Baptist Church and Apartments of Hope. I hoped that the people of New Canaan fared better than did Charlie Wesson.

  Nolan got out of the truck and joined me. “Was it him?”

  “Yep.”

  “Dead?”

  “Uh-huh, stuck a gun in his mouth.”

  “Suicide?”

  I kicked an empty beer can. “That’s what they’re going to say. An ex-junkie, with a needle in his arm. It doesn’t work, though. Why would you shoot up, get the buzz working, and then go and blow your brains out?”

  Nolan slapped at a mosquito. “You kill yourself on the way down, when you’re depressed about using again.”

  “Maybe it’s the house,” I said. “Got some bad feng shui.” I didn’t even laugh at my own joke.

  “Maybe Charlie was just supposed to die now.” Nolan patted my arm. “Doesn’t make it right, just makes it what it is.”

  Her touch was strangely comforting. A few more clouds appeared, dotting the sky like fat dirty cotton balls. A hot wind whipped around us, blowing dirt and garbage into the street. The house sat on a side street, off Westmoreland and Fishtrap Road, in an area still waiting for the promised urban renewal. The places that weren’t condemned were colored a cross between the clouds in the sky and the dirt below my feet. An ambulance pulled into the graveled rut that passed for a driveway, no sirens or light. A white Crown Victoria, bristling with antennas, followed.

  “How’d they know about the body?” Nolan said.

  “Two kids saw the door was open, wandered in.”

  The ambulance attendants stayed in their ride, waiting further instruction. The Crown Vic pulled up until it was a couple of feet from my legs. Two men got out. One was black, late forties or thereabouts, in shape, and wearing a tailored dark suit, white shirt, and muted tie. He could have been a stockbroker or a well-dressed insurance salesman. The other guy was the same age but white. Twenty years of chicken-fried steaks and pitchers of Lone Star at the local Elks lodge had left a gut that spilled over the top of his maroon polyester slacks. The yellow and purple tie he wore stopped about midway down the front of his brown dress shirt. An orange and navy herringbone sports coat finished out the ensemble. The jacket looked like someone had skinned the seat covers off a 1973 Pinto. He was a cop, no question.

  The black man took off his suit coat and his badge became visible, clipped to the leather belt. He positioned himself between me and the car. “My name is Sergeant Jessup. Homicide.” He smelled like Ralph Lauren aftershave. “What are you planning to tell me that explains why you are standing in front of this house with a dead body inside?”

  I didn’t move and my eyes never wavered. “My name is Oswald. The deceased’s name is Charlie Wesson. Until an hour ago, a missing person. His sister hired me to find him.”

  At the word hired Jessup held up his hand, palm outward. He placed one finger on his lips. “That means you’re a … private detective.” He made the two words sound like child molester.

  “Yeah, I’m a private investigator.” I pulled out my ID and held it up. “In my free time I train telemarketers in new and better ways to be intrusive.”

  Sergeant Jessup smirked, a smile with no humor. A dangerous face. He read from my license. “Lee H. Oswald. You any relation to the other Lee Oswald?”

  “Nope.”

  “What’s the H stand for?”

  “Henry. Hank for short.”

  Jessup examined my PI license again. “Says here you were born after Lee Harvey whacked Kennedy. That mean your parents went ahead and named you Lee H. Oswald? That’s pretty fucking weird, don’t you think, Lee Henry?”

  I stuffed the license back in my pocket. “My name’s not important. I’m here about the dead body you’ve got in there.”

  “How long had he been missing?”

  “Four days.”

  “This guy have a history of disappearing?”

  I didn’t answer because I knew it was just a short distance to discussing Charlie’s drug use.

  Jessup didn’t press it. He said, “Well then, the stiff is no longer missing. There’s no need for you to be here, is there?”

  “I don’t suppose you want to know any of the particulars of this case, do you?”

  “We need your help, we’ll let you know.” If he was trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, he failed. Again a smile that had no apparent gla
dness behind it creased his face, and he moved toward the front door. His partner followed. They ignored Nolan. Cloyd came out and stood on the sagging front porch. He and Jessup huddled, heads together. Jessup’s partner listened in but kept an eye on me. I hadn’t moved from in front of the Crown Victoria.

  Jessup nodded and then shrugged his shoulders. All three police officers turned and looked at me. Jessup spoke. “A fucking junkie? Somebody actually hired you to find a junkie? You could’ve just waited at the morgue, he would’ve shown up there sooner rather than later.”

  I walked toward the truck. “Take a look at the body. Why would he shoot up, then commit suicide?”

  “Whaddya expect?”

  “I expected to make some calls, check some things out, and find Charlie Wesson strung out somewhere. I didn’t expect to get tangled up with Coleman Dupree.”

  Jessup had his hand on the torn screen door, ready to enter. Instead, he sauntered down the rickety stairs of the crack house, hands held behind his back, a leisurely stroll. At the bottom of the stairs, he paused to examine a small patch of paint remaining on the railing. He picked at it with a fingernail and then continued his walk over to me. When we were face-to-face he stopped and pulled out a piece of gum from his pocket. His face was oily with sweat, a thin sheen coating his mahogany skin. The heat was like a third person standing between us. He fiddled with the wrapper while talking to me. “Who exactly are you talking about, Lee Oswald?”

  “Coleman Dupree.” I felt a trickle of sweat meander down my back as a thin cloud moved past the sun, exposing us both to the full brunt of the afternoon heat. “And his buddy Jack Washington. They’re tied up in this somehow.”

  Jessup didn’t say anything. He just fixed me with that thousand-yard stare perfected by cops the world over, displaying nothing but utter and total blankness.

  I kept on. “Dupree’s goons warned me off asking any more questions about Charlie Wesson. Then less than forty-eight hours later, Charlie turns up dead in this shit hole.”

  Jessup looked off into the distance, toward a liquor store on the corner. Three old men in overalls sat in front, leaning back in lawn chairs. Without taking his eyes off them, he spoke to me, his voice so quiet I had to strain to hear. “You think you’re some hot shit PI from North Dallas, don’tcha, Lee Harvey?” When I didn’t respond he continued. “Well, lemme tell you something, you Spenser: For Hire motherfucker. You are nothing down here. They eat people like you in this part of town. Just because some white guy scores a load of the good stuff and then offs himself, don’t go blaming the latest colored boogeyman.” Jessup stuck the piece of gum in his mouth. He turned to me and said, “So go home.”