Still River

by Harry Hunsicker

  After a half dozen more blocks of double-backs and speeding through yellow lights, I was convinced that no one was trailing me. Three minutes later I idled down the alley behind the unit. A needle of pain shot through my side when I got out of the Ford. I bit a Tylenol in two and swallowed half, dry, while I punched codes and unlocked deadbolts. Once inside, I Fort-Knoxed the door behind me and wandered into the gun room.

  My supply of Browning Hi-Powers was running low. One in the safe at home, then the ones here. I took the next to the last one and wiped it down. I cracked open a case of nine-millimeters and loaded up five magazines. I jammed one in the pistol and went looking for a holster. I found another inside-the-waistband rig lying on a shelf, so I stuck the gun in that and threaded it onto my belt. The weight pulled on my wounded side, but felt comforting nonetheless.

  The tiny Smith & Wesson that Olson had given me in the hospital went to his corner of the room. I dug around and found another Seecamp .32, complete with an ankle holster. I frowned and tried to remember what happened to my shotgun. A vague recollection skittered through my head about sticking it in the backseat of the Mercedes before I went to see Roger Strathmore. That meant the police had it.

  Damn. It had been a hard few days on equipment, of all sorts.

  I found a black-stocked Remington in the hall closet. After pilfering fifty or so rounds of double-aught buckshot from Olson’s section, I went over to my corner and sat down, pulling the brown-wrapped package between my legs. I plunged my pocketknife in the top and eased it out. White powder clung to the blade, the consistency of baking soda. I touched my gum line with the tip of the blade, and then pressed my finger on the spot.

  Numbness. Enough to do surgery.

  No wonder they were pissed off. There had to be almost thirty or so pounds here, pure stuff. I didn’t know that much about the drug business, despite that thing in Houston the one time, but I figure that they could cut this three or four ways and come up with almost two hundred pounds of retail-level cocaine.

  I shuddered involuntarily and realized I was hyperventilating. Where the hell was Nolan? What had I done to her by taking this stuff out of the warehouse? How dumb was I to think it would get me closer to finding Charlie Wesson? I started to shake and my side hurt. I was on the verge of losing it, the enormity of the situation dawning on me. I no longer cared who killed Charlie Wesson or why Roger Strathmore had gone missing or any of that other stuff. I wanted Nolan back. This wasn’t her battle, it belonged to me. Why hadn’t there been any contact from them?

  I stuck the parcel back in the corner and pushed myself up, using the shotgun as a cane. The time had come to go see Aaron Young. The half brother of Coleman Dupree.

  Monday evening lay quiet on Second Avenue, the stores and daytime businesses closed since dusk. The only activity came from the occasional bar that dotted the thoroughfare. A solitary light burned in the window of Aaron Young’s office. I peered into the parking lot as I passed. A dark-colored Lexus, similar to the one he’d been driving the other day, sat under a floodlight, nestled against the building.

  By the time I’d turned around, the Lexus had pulled out of its parking spot and up to the street, waiting for a break in traffic. By the light of a passing eighteen-wheeler, I caught a glimpse of Aaron Young’s profile as he motored onto Second Avenue, three cars ahead of me. I maintained the distance and followed him up Second to Hatcher Street. He signaled and took a left, with me and the ugly Taurus a hundred yards behind.

  Hatchet Street, as it’s called by some of your more hard-nosed law enforcement types, runs across the bottom half of southeast Dallas and has seen more than its fair share of violence. Block after block of apartments and tiny, shotgun-style homes peeled past my window. Some were well maintained. Some were not. All of them looked like they were built during the Coolidge administration. Hubcap-size satellite dishes sprouted from most of them, like toadstools after the spring rains. The weather was warm so there were people out, cooking on grills resting on bare dirt lawns, drinking beer, milling about in the sultry evening.

  Aaron Young drove on, past the man and woman arguing in the thin light from the open door of their Pontiac, while a toddler sat on the sidewalk crying. He drove past the group of young men standing on a corner, wearing Raiders T-shirts and jeans with two inches of boxer shorts visible at the top. They glared at Aaron in the Lexus, then at the tinted-window Ford, angry at us or the world, or maybe the grittiness of life on Hatcher Street.

  I kept going, following the dark Lexus as it swung onto South Central and headed south toward the interstate and Houston. Before the cutoff for H-town, he exited at Illinois and headed west, toward Oak Cliff. The traffic had thinned and I struggled to keep a car between us yet not get too far behind.

  He crossed Interstate 35 and we were in the Cliff, the road unfolding in front of us in a series of hills and valleys unique to the usually bland terrain of north Texas. The houses were different here too, quaint, 1920sera Tudors that hadn’t been scraped away to make room for the latest in overbuilt tackiness, as had been done to great chunks of land in the northern half of the city. At Colorado Boulevard, Aaron turned left and then a quick left again.

  We were in Winnetka Heights, twenty or so square blocks of prairie-style houses on steep lots, home to the middle tier of Dallas civic and business leaders a century ago. Aaron Young pulled into the driveway of a sand-colored stucco place in the middle of the block. I stopped two houses away, lights off. As he got out of the Lexus, I pulled out the dome light of the Taurus and slipped out the door, easing it shut. The evening air was humid and I felt perspiration bead on my forehead.

  No movement whatsoever on this particular block. It was early evening and the street lay dark except for the porch lights on several of the houses, including the one where Aaron Young had parked. While he rummaged around in the backseat, I moved down the sidewalk as quietly as possible. I was halfway across the front lawn when he stood up, holding a wad of papers and a briefcase. He saw me at the same time as I cleared the Browning from its holster.

  “What the hell?”

  “Remember me, Aaron?” I stepped in close and knocked the briefcase to the ground and spun him around, all in one motion. “Put your hands on the car and don’t say a word.”

  “Who are—?”

  “That’s a word.” I whopped him in a kidney with the barrel of the Browning. He groaned but didn’t say anything. “Now let’s do this the easy way, what do you say? You and I are gonna take a little drive and you’re gonna tell me what I need to know. Then I’ll drop you off here and everything will be back to normal.”

  I grabbed the back of his suit coat and pulled him off the car. “Put your hands behind you.”

  He hesitated a beat and then complied. I grasped the cuffs of his coat in one hand, making an informal pair of handcuffs, and stuck the gun in his back. “Now we’re gonna walk to my car, down the street, and you’re going to get in the backseat and lay on the floorboards.” I prodded him with the Browning and we moved across the lawn toward my auto.

  I heard the stretch and springing sound of a screen door open and close, followed by footsteps on creaking wood. “Aaron? Aaron, honey, is that you?”

  I dug the muzzle harder into his ribs, turned, and looked at the porch. A slim woman stood there, leaning against one of the wooden columns along the front. The light on the door frame silhouetted her, making it difficult to see her features.

  “It’s okay, Mother. I’ll be there in just a minute.” Aaron yanked his arms out of my grip and stepped around to face me. I cursed my codeine-and fatigue-numbed reflexes, and the bullet wound in my side, that made his escape possible. I held the gun close to my hip, out of sight of the woman on the porch. Nobody said anything, the three of us staring at one another in some bizarre triangle.

  “So what are you going to do? Gun me down in the yard, in front of my mother?” Aaron kept his voice low.

  “I want some answers and I’ll do what it takes.”

/>   “Who the hell are you?”

  I moved a few inches closer to the light on the porch. “It’s been a rough few days, but you sure you don’t recognize me?”

  He squinted and then nodded. “The private investigator. Yeah, that’s you, from the other day. Man, you look like shit.”

  “If I don’t get some answers from you, you’re going to feel the same.”

  “I’ll be glad to answer anything you want to talk about. I don’t understand the need for violence. Ask me what you want, and I’ll answer. I assume this is about that fellow you were trying to find, the one that turned up dead at my place.”

  “It started with Charlie Wesson, but it’s gone beyond that.” I cranked up the volume in my voice. “Let’s talk about your brother, Coleman Dupree.”

  Stone-cold silence.

  Finally the woman spoke. “Who is that out there with you, Aaron? Walk into the light where I can see you.”

  Aaron had his eyes closed and his shoulders sagged. “Put the gun away, Oswald. Let’s go inside and talk.”

  I holstered the Browning and followed him to the porch and inside.

  His mother held the door open for me and expressed no dismay at my condition. I saw her now, clearly, with the light. Tall enough to almost look me in the eye, she grasped my hand and said, “Lydia Bryson. And you are?”

  “Oswald. Hank Oswald.”

  She must have been in her sixties but could have passed for a hard forty-five. Her skin was flawless, all but unlined and the color of chocolate ice cream. The tailored linen suit she wore accented her long legs. She possessed a certain regalness and poise I found engaging.

  “Why don’t we sit in the living room?” She gestured to the spacious room to the left of the hallway. Muted lighting illuminated the leather sofa and easy chairs, casually arranged on the polished hardwood floors and Oriental throw rugs. “Is that all right with you, Aaron?”

  Aaron eyed me warily, rubbing his back where I had punched him. “Yeah, Mom. That’ll be fine, we’ll sit in the living room.”

  I let the two of them go in first. Lydia sat down in a wing-back. Aaron sprawled on the sofa. I stayed standing, suddenly weary and afraid that sitting down would be a bad move. Nobody said anything for a moment. Aaron looked at a spot on the floor. His mother stared at me, expressionless.

  “I need to know where to locate your brother, Coleman. He’s got something of mine and I need it back.”

  “Coleman Dupree is my half brother,” Aaron said, evidently anxious to get the degree of sibling connection established. “Not my full brother.”

  “Okay then. Half brother. I need to find him. It’s real important.” I debated taking the speed. Not yet.

  “I don’t know how to get in touch with him.”

  “Why don’t you take an educated guess.” I reached in my pocket and pulled out the cellophane package with the white pills.

  “I know some people who might know some other people who—Well, you get the idea.” Aaron rubbed his eyes and leaned his head back. “My brother and I have chosen different paths for our lives. We don’t keep in contact. If you’ve had any dealings with him, if you know anything about him, I’m sure you’ll understand why.”

  I kneaded the package of diet pills. “Not exactly Wally and the Beaver, huh? How come you turned out the way you did and he’s—”

  “A criminal? A drug dealer?” Aaron made a noise that was a laugh but wasn’t funny. “Who knows why anything is the way it is. We’re both entrepreneurs, you know, just in different fields.”

  Lydia had not uttered a word. I decided it was time to switch it up. “So … uh, Mom. You got any ideas where to find Coleman?”

  I wasn’t even sure she had borne the two men. Something told me that she was the common denominator, though. She sat stiffly in the chair, hands held in her lap and her legs crossed at the ankles. Without moving anything but her lips, she said, “I did not raise my child to be what he is. He was a good boy. Both my kids were good. Raised them to be Christians. But Coleman, he turned out differently. I don’t know why.”

  She blinked her eyes. Twice.

  Then she started talking again. “Maybe he fell in with a bad crowd. Maybe his father was a thing with him, maybe not. He wasn’t a bad man, his father. He liked to drink and gamble, but Lordy, so did Aaron’s father. I tried to do the right thing.”

  “All I need to know is where to find him.”

  “You’re going to hurt him, aren’t you?”

  “No. I’m not going to harm your boy.” Nobody said anything for a few moments. I broke the silence. “I’m trying to help him.”

  The woman snorted. “A white man helping Coleman out?”

  “Lives are at stake.”

  She blinked her eyes two more times, then took a deep breath. “What does he have of yours that’s so important?”

  I debated with myself over what to tell her. “It’s not a what. It’s a who. A woman. He’s taken a woman. And I’m going to get her back.”

  “My boy is not a kidnapper.”

  “No,” I said. “He’s just a drug dealer and a murderer. Not a kidnapper.”

  Aaron laughed once, a sharp burst, before smothering it. His mother glared at him, then turned to me. “A mother’s love is unconditional. The mind knows things that the heart refuses to see. My Coleman is a good boy underneath all that stuff they say. Surely you can understand that, can’t you?” There were tears in her eyes.

  I nodded. “Uh-huh. But this woman he’s taken, her family wants her back too.”

  Her chocolate complexion darkened and her voice became angry. “You’re the man and you lying. Gonna get what you want and kill my son.”

  “I can’t change how you feel, but I will tell you one thing.” The wound on my side ached, reminding me again of the stakes. Fatigue smothered me now, to the core, a weariness that no amphetamine would fix.

  “The next time they come looking for Coleman, whether it’s to get this girl back or something else, they’re not gonna be as pleasant as I am, sitting around in the nice living room you got here.” I pushed myself off the wall.

  Lydia Bryson blinked her eyes, but this time she didn’t open them immediately. A tear trickled out of one, running down her cheek. “You promise you won’t hurt him?”

  I nodded.

  “I have a phone number,” she said. “It’s to his nurse. That’s how I get in touch with him. You won’t hurt him, will you?” She pulled a piece of paper out of the pocket of her jacket.

  I walked over and took it from her. “Ma’am, all I want is my friend back. I’m done hurting people or being hurt.”

  “Do you know why my son is in a wheelchair?”

  “Mother.” Aaron Young’s voice was an angry hiss. “Why he is in a wheelchair has nothing to do with what he is.”

  “He is my son, and they put him in that damn chair.”

  “He is my brother and he’s a murderer.” Aaron’s voice had cracked.

  I felt for them, sensed their pain as a palpable thing in the conservatively decorated living room. It hung over everything like a layer of smog over a dirty city. You knew it was there, suffocating life, but you couldn’t see it.

  “My son was stopped by the police,” the woman said, pausing for a moment to regain her composure. “He was stopped in some little cracker town in East Texas, near the Louisiana border. Stopped for nothing, nothing at all. Driving while black. They hauled him out and laid him over the hood of his car. It was nighttime. His car was on the shoulder but they’d pulled off the road onto the grassy area. It was their county and they knew. They knew, dammit.”

  “Knew what?” I said.

  “They knew to pull off the road at that stretch of highway. It was at a bend, everybody in the county knew it was a blind spot and you shouldn’t stop your car there. They went back to the squad car to see what they was gonna charge my boy with. Left him spread out on the hood of his car. They left there and damn straight if one of their cracker friends didn’t com
e around the bend, drunk, and hit my boy.”

  She paused and wiped fresh tears away. Her voice got husky. “Then they left him there, torn up and bleeding, while they searched his car. Finally, they decided they better call an ambulance or they might have ’em a dead niggah on their hands.”

  I didn’t say anything. Aaron sat on the sofa, leaning over, elbows on his knees. He stared at a spot on the wall. He said, “Tell him the rest of it, Mother. Tell him about what they found in his car.”

  The woman didn’t want to tell. She got up and stalked out of the room.

  He turned to me. “I’m sorry about that. It’s a difficult part of our life. You got what you needed. I think it’s best if you leave.”

  I pushed myself off the wall and walked to the hall, turning around in the doorway. “One more thing, Aaron. How’s the bid going?”

  If he was surprised, it didn’t show. He managed to swallow all the family trauma and turn on the charisma. “Ah yes, the Trinity Vista. The board meets tomorrow. That’s when we know.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah, me and the other people up for the contract.”

  “And who would the other people be?”

  He looked a little confused, but not reluctant. “Well, there’s me and then the Strathmore team, and a couple of others. They really don’t count. The competition is between me and Strathmore.” He wasn’t smug, just stating a fact in his mind.

  “You and Roger Strathmore?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I guess you could say it’s between me and Roger Strathmore.”

  I headed to the front door. “So you think you’re gonna get it, huh?”

  The charisma left his face and voice. The eyes were hard and cold. The voice flat. “Oh, I’ll get it Mr. Oswald. I like to win, I always have.”

  He shut the door behind me, and I stepped off the front porch into the evening. The time to go hunting had arrived.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Before I could do much of anything, my phone rang. I was stopped at a light on Colorado Avenue, headed I didn’t know where.