Still River

by Harry Hunsicker

  “You here permanently, even if they catch your ex-husband?”

  She shrugged but didn’t reply.

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “San Antonio’s your home.” I drank half my eight ounces of beer in one swallow. It was cold and warming at the same time and felt great. “You leaving town because of him?”

  “I’m just leaving. Okay?” She drained her glass, set it down, and stared out the window. After a few moments she started talking: “The hostage negotiator for the SAPD is a fat lush name Vinnie Decambra. Vinnie could talk the pope into turning tricks on the west side if he wanted to. He was that good.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “So one day a few months ago the SWAT team gets a roll-out, hostage situation. Only problem is Vinnie is getting drunk with a beautician he sees on the side, at a bar across town. Since it’s on the sly he’s turned off his cell phone and beeper. Of course the backup guys are at Quantico doing some new training thing.”

  I said, “And that left you?”

  She nodded. “I’d had some luck with a sociopath who was killing hookers. Pegged his next location. To the brass that makes me a negotiator.”

  “They’re completely different things.” I shook my head.

  “No shit.” Nolan covered her eyes with one hand, her voice so low it was hard to understand. “A speedfreak was holed up in his apartment with his common-law wife and their three-year-old little boy. Guy’s convinced he’s got ants coming out of his skin. All he’s got is an old thirty-two and a pocketknife.”

  “What happened?” I leaned forward in my seat.

  She shook her head, still covering her eyes. “I did everything I could, which wasn’t fucking much. Had him on the phone saying what you’re supposed to say when he decided the ants were in his son. So he slits his little boy down the middle, looking for the bugs. We hear the screaming and everybody rushes in.”

  “The child? Did he … ?”

  She looked across the desk at me but her eyes were somewhere else. “I got to him first. His intestines are laying on the floor, on this filthy carpet, and he’s crying for his daddy, why were they arresting his daddy. He died with his guts in my hand, me trying to shove ’em back in and praying the EMTs get there in time.”

  “You did what you could, under the circumstances,” I said.

  “Shut up, Hank.”

  I fiddled with a stapler lying on the desktop. “Just trying to help.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I got that message now.”

  “It’s all bullshit, you know.”

  “What is?”

  “Every thing.” She stood up and crossed the room to the window on the far wall. She didn’t say anything for a while. When she turned back around it was like the previous conversation hadn’t occurred. We talked for a few more minutes about the course of action: Coleman Dupree or the maintenance man for Aaron Young. But not tonight, I said. We should go to the hospital. Nolan agreed. We decided to take separate cars to visit Ernie. Tomorrow was soon enough to find Coleman Dupree, not today. Little did I know that he would find me.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Back before the first Persian Gulf War, I’d lived in Waco for a while, working for a guy named Frankie Rebozo. Frankie owned a little joint right outside the city limits called Spanky’s. The bar was not what you’d call a family place, if you catch my drift. Smoky and dirty, an air of depravity littered the place like cigarette butts at an AA meeting.

  Spanky’s didn’t even have a liquor license, so the girls could dance naked, rather than just topless. For this, you paid a cover charge and a setup fee, and brought in your own alcohol so you could sit at a cramped, wobbly table and watch a strung-out nineteen-year-old with three kids shake her ass to Metallica. The bar was also where I met my ex-wife, Amber, but not in the capacity most imagine.

  Frankie hired me as a bouncer. It didn’t take much skill or energy, mostly slapping around the Baylor fraternity dipshits who acted like they owned the place, or mixing it up with the drunken day-shift guys from the chicken-processing plant down the road when they got crossways and thought that one of the girls really did love them. After a couple of weeks I received an on-the-spot promotion when the manager got stabbed by a redneck kid hopped up on angel dust.

  Mother was so proud.

  The guy Frankie hired to replace me was a bullet-headed sociopath named Clairol Johnson. Clairol hailed from one of the swampier parts of East Texas, where the double-wides sat hidden beneath the pines and anybody who graduated from high school was called Professor.

  I hadn’t seen Clairol in over a decade so I was surprised when I bounded out of my house Sunday morning and saw him leaning against the borrowed Mercedes in my driveway. He hadn’t changed much; the reddish hair had thinned, the pale face that always looked sunburned or flushed had a few more lines. His hands were the size of grapefruits, and still looked capable of smashing through a car window and pulling a person out. I should know, I’d seen him do it.

  “Heya, Hank,” he said.

  “Hi, Clairol.” I transferred my tumbler of coffee to my left hand, keeping my right hand free to grab my piece. I didn’t think he was there for a social call.

  “What’s up?” He hadn’t moved, just remained leaning against the car, arms crossed.

  “Not much, this and that. How about you?”

  He shrugged. “Same shit, different day. I got this new thing going, working up here now. I work for this guy … and well … he wants to see you.”

  “Would his name be Coleman Dupree?” I took a stab in the dark.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you’re here to take me to him?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “See, Clairol, here’s the deal. I’d really like to visit with Coleman, but on my own terms.”

  Clairol’s beady little eyes frowned and I could see the wheels turning. He’d always been a few clowns short of a circus but I was surprised that he hadn’t thought it through. Like I was just going to hop in the car with him.

  The gravel crunched behind the Mercedes. I had my fingers on the butt of the pistol when a burning sensation like a sliver of the sun hit my leg. My last impression before I hit the ground was of a younger, fatter Clairol standing behind the car, holding a Taser in his hand.

  When I was with myself again I was in the backseat of a Lincoln, speeding down Gaston. My arms and legs had duct tape around them. Clairol was driving and his mirror image sat next to him, working the action on my Browning. I rubbed my ankles together and felt the backup .32-caliber still there. With one hand Clairol reached across the seat and bopped his partner’s ear. “Put that fucking thing down before you shoot somebody.”

  The younger, fatter Clairol made a noise that sounded like a donkey trying to pass a kidney stone but put the pistol on the floorboards. He muttered something I couldn’t understand, gibberish, and began playing with the switchblade I usually carried tucked in my waistband.

  “Don’t cut yourself either, dumbass,” Clairol said.

  Younger, fatter Clairol gurgled to himself and kept flicking the blade.

  Clairol looked in the mirror and noticed I was awake. “Sorry about the laser thingie, Hank. Poon gets carried away sometimes.”

  “Poon?” I said. “What the hell is a Poon?” My left leg felt like a twelfth-degree sunburn.

  “He’s my kid brother.” Clairol pointed to his sibling.

  “Your brother is named Poon?” I asked this of the man whose parents had given him the moniker of Clairol after seeing an advertisement for how silky it made your hair.

  “Yeah,” Clairol said matter-of-factly. “Poon Otis Johnson.”

  “I see.” We drove in silence for a few blocks, the flicking of the switchblade the only sound in the car.

  “Where’re we going? This isn’t any way to greet an old friend, is it?”

  “Dupree.”

  “How about untying me and giving me back my
gun first?”

  Clairol shook his head. “It don’t work that way, Hank, you kno—”

  His words were cut off when Poon started to howl. He’d cut himself. Clairol jerked his arm away from the spurting blood and the car swerved. An eighteen-wheeler blasted its horn, as Clairol cussed at Poon and pulled us back into the correct lane. He started digging around in the front seat looking for something. An Oldsmobile loomed ahead, its rear end about to connect with us.

  I shouted Clairol’s name. He looked up with nanoseconds to spare and tugged the wheel. Tires squealed and horns honked but we missed the Olds.

  “Fucking shit,” he said. “Quit fucking blubbering, you mush-headed piece of shit.” To me he said, “Hank, you got a paper napkin or a towel or something? Poon, he’s a bleeding motherfucker, I’ll tell you what.”

  “Got a handkerchief, but I can’t really get to it now.” I’d been trying to wiggle out of the duct tape but to no avail. If my life wasn’t on the line, this would all be real funny.

  “Oh yeah,” Clairol said. He kept one hand on the wheel and jammed the other one under the seat. He came up with a greasy rag and handed it to his brother. Poon wrapped the dirty cloth around his wound and then turned to look at me. The okra patch of his mind had not gotten the proper amount of water during its formative years. His eyes looked buggy and twitchy. And angry. He gurgled something and his good hand shot to my throat and squeezed. Colored lights began to flash in my head as oxygen drained from my brain.

  From a long way away, I heard a series of whopping sounds as someone said “Dammit, you fuckstain” repeatedly, and the pressure on my throat was released. I wheezed my way back to a semblance of consciousness and saw Poon huddled in the far corner of the front seat, whimpering.

  “How much farther we got to go, Clairol?” My voice was a croak.

  “I don’t think you should be in a hurry.”

  A dozen minutes later I’d hyperventilated myself back to a state nearing normalcy, and we turned onto Harry Hines Boulevard. Poon muttered to himself while Clairol drove the speed limit and sang along with the Eddie Arnold tape he’d popped in a few minutes before.

  Harry Hines split the western sector of North Dallas, running north and south, six lanes of vice and commerce catering to the blue collar/ immigrant crowd: adult entertainment venues, working-class saloons, and windowless, steel-doored liquor stores peddling Schlitz and Thunderbird. The bottom was a bunch of sleazy motor court motels, hookers, and the hospital district, all enjoying some sort of symbiotic relationship I never quite grasped, at least the hospital part. Next came the Mexican shopping area, a couple of miles of supermercados, gigantic flea markets and pawnshops, all advertising en español. After that, the Koreans took over with a stretch of cheesy import-export houses, hawking cheap electronics, gold and silver and perfume. Every third place was going out of business.

  We wheeled into the parking lot of a dingy strip center located somewhere between Little Monterrey and Koreatown. The building ran lengthwise, perpendicular to the street and back. A tavern called Sue’s Easy Times II sat at the front while the back was a topless bar named Roxy’s. Clairol pulled to the rear of Roxy’s and stopped the car. He tapped the horn and the door opened. Two large black men, both wearing gold chains and running suits, came out and stood guard while Clairol cut the tape off my ankles and wrists. I held my breath as his hands came near my backup piece. He missed it again. When he was finished, they each grabbed an arm and dragged me inside.

  If there’s anything more depressing than the back entrance to a sleazy topless bar on Sunday morning, let me know. Harsh fluorescent lights, only used during the off hours, lit the joint with an unnatural glow, exacerbating the natural tackiness of a bar that prided itself on being the Home of the Five Dollar Table Dance. The shag carpet on the walls was worn and soiled with things I didn’t care to know about. The whole place smelled like a whore’s drawers: stale booze and smoke with the faintest aroma of disinfectant. They pulled me through the bar out into the main sitting area. One lone, red open-toed pump with a six-inch heel sat forlornly on the empty stage, a silent witness to the revelries of the previous evening.

  The two men plopped me down in a seat midway between the bar and the stage, and retreated to the next table. I was vaguely aware of Clairol and Poon somewhere in the background.

  A door, leading to the dancers’ dressing rooms, I guessed, opened and out walked Jack “the Crack” Washington. He looked GQ in a three-button dark gray suit with an open-collar navy shirt. A skinny white guy in dirty chinos and a greasy ponytail followed him. From somewhere out of the shadows to the left of the stage a huge mass of flesh waddled out. He got in the lights and I could see he was Asian, Korean probably, wearing a Roxy’s sweatshirt. The gathering was a veritable Rainbow Coalition of hoods.

  Jack Washington slid into the seat opposite me, drew back his arm, and backhanded me with all he had. My head whipped to one side and I fell over. By the time I had righted myself and gotten back into the chair, Jack had a cigarette lit, resting in one of the ashtrays. Gingerly, I felt my swollen lip where a trickle of blood ran down my chin.

  Jack took a drag and laughed. “Boy, you hurt one of my cousins. His mama is pissed off, and so am I.”

  The Korean and the white guy sat at the next table, opposite where the two guys in running suits were. Everybody but me was smoking. I’d rather have had a cocktail but I didn’t want to impose. Instead, I said, “So where’s this Coleman Dupree fellow? I’ve got things to do.” I made a great show of looking at my watch.

  Jack laughed until he choked. “Shit, boy. Only thing you got to do is cough up what you know and then die.”

  I had an idea that me dying was part of the plan since nobody had covered his face or hid where we were. My mind goes cold in situations such as these, which allows me to start running through escape possibilities and filtering the current situation through my subconscious. I began to ease my leg up to get to the .32-caliber backup gun strapped on my ankle, calculating the distance across the table to Washington. Concentrating on slowly moving my leg like that, it took me a few moments to register the sound of a cell phone ringing. One of the running suits, the maroon one, pulled a Motorola out of his pocket and answered. He grunted a couple of times, hung up, and nodded to his partner in the beige running suit. They stood up and began to move tables out of the way, clearing a path to the front door.

  The Korean walked to the entrance and opened it with a key on a chain attached to his belt. Sunlight streamed in. Jack Washington’s attention faltered for a moment and I pulled the tiny pistol out and palmed it in my right hand. Everybody extinguished their cigarettes.

  A short, squat figure appeared in the doorway, hazy and backlit by the midmorning sun. Another person materialized behind the first, much taller and thinner. Together they entered the bar and the door closed.

  The woman was tall and pretty, her hair a henna red, wearing a pair of low-slung jeans and a tight black T-shirt, a couple of inches of midriff showing. She pushed the wheelchair carrying Coleman Dupree into the bar, navigating through the path left where the tables had been. They maneuvered to where we were. It was hard to tell much about Dupree, sitting like that. He wore a plain white shirt with an open collar and a baseball hat from the Gap. His skin was the color of watered-down coffee and looked unhealthy, pasty, and drawn. Jack Washington stood up and embraced him, leaning down to place his arms around the man. The white guy with the ponytail came over and shook his hand, as did the two running suits and the Korean thug. It was all so Don Corleone.

  Jack Washington moved aside and let the wheelchaired man ease up to the table. Nobody said anything. Coleman waved his hand and the girl sprang to his side. She handed him some sort of inhaler and he took a puff. He held the dispenser in his hands, toying with it, as he took several deep breaths. Finally he turned his attention to me. “So this is the great Lee Oswald. We’ve only crossed paths here in the last few days but already it seems like an eternity.” />
  I didn’t respond, crunching the numbers instead. The Seecamp .32 held seven rounds. Coleman, Jack Washington, the two running suits, and Clairol and Poon. That was six. Then there was the white guy and the Korean. That was eight. Nine counting Dupree’s friend, Miss Rent-a-Babe in the skintight clothes. Two would be left standing, assuming I didn’t miss. And that the pip-squeak .32 put each one down for the count.

  Coleman spun the inhaler around on the lacquered wood of the table. “There’s lots of things I’d like to know about you, but over the course of my career, I’ve learned to prioritize. So we’ll start with the most important item first. One of my employees was to store a shipment of merchandise for me at a certain location. He turns up at this location, comatose, with the merchandise and his firearm missing. I believe that you know where that bit of product is.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Coleman smiled. “After you tell the location to my vice president of security here—I believe you’ve met Mr. Washington—I’d really like to know what you are up to. Why don’t you leave it all alone?” He began to push himself back from the table.

  I started to say something to buy some more time when a screech from the end of the bar interrupted me. Everybody turned to see Poon Johnson blubbering and banging his good hand against the Formica countertop. His brother had been trying to clean the wound on his other hand with a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

  Dupree spun his wheelchair around. “What the hell’s wrong with that fucking cracker?”

  Maroon running suit spoke. “Cut himself. With this boy’s knife.” He pointed to me.

  Poon bawled again. Clairol tried to shush him.

  Coleman turned to Washington. “Who the hell is that, anyway?”

  Jack the Crack shrugged. “Two guys from Waco. He used to work with Oswald. ’Fact, we used him for the snatch this morning.”

  Coleman wheeled closer to the two men at the end of the bar. “And the younger one?”