“You don’t know?” I enjoyed drawing out the moment. “Actually, it’s his half brother. Name’s Aaron Young.”
Jessup leaned forward. “Coleman Dupree’s brother is Aaron Young? The same guy that got the contract for the—”
“Yeah, the guy in charge of the Trinity Vista.”
They dropped me back at the church. I got in the Taurus and headed toward the tollway and Baylor Hospital. I’d been there already that morning, before the funeral, but wanted to go again. Ernie was still in a coma and I guessed that was a good thing since he wasn’t in pain. Also, I didn’t have to tell him that there’d been no word from his niece for three days now. I didn’t have to tell him that she was probably dead and it would be a miracle if her body was ever found. I’d told all I could to Miranda. She’d nodded and cried and then took a couple of pills.
At Northwest Highway, I exited. It was the wrong place to get off, but I did anyway. I headed west until I got to a topless bar called the Amazon Club. There used to be a dancer who worked there named Connie or Karen or something like that. I’d helped her out with a problem involving a certain local televangelist who had a thing for handcuffs, tall redheads, and crotchless panties, not necessarily in that order or in the way you might think.
Unfortunately, that had been a long time ago and she no longer worked there. I sat at the bar and tried to figure out what I wanted to ask her. Something about dancers. I was midway through my second beer when it came to me. I threw some money down and left.
I burned it down the tollway this time, anxious to get to the office and the phone number I needed. Fifteen minutes later I rolled in the front door, passed my two remarkably sober suite mates, and went into my office. It took a few minutes but I found the card I was looking for, hiding underneath a box of .38 Specials in the bottom drawer. Rick Haggard, private investigator. New York City.
I got him on the first try with the second number. We small-talked for a few minutes, chatting about the thing we’d worked on in L.A. a few years back, and a couple of grifters we knew in common. Finally I told him what I needed. He said it would be no problem and he’d get back to me in a day or so. It was a freebie, a professional courtesy, so I couldn’t rush him. It didn’t matter. The info wasn’t going anywhere.
I left and went to the hospital. Miranda sat outside the room, leafing through a magazine and looking at a blank spot on the far wall. The pills were good and bad at the same time.
“Doctor’s in there now. He’s a new one.” She let the magazine slide off her lap and onto the floor as I walked up. “Dr. Mort, one of the candy stripers told me. He’s the one they call when there’s nothing left to do.”
“How’re you doing?” I pulled a chair next to hers and sat down.
“I’m doing for shit, Hank.” Her voice was flat, monotone, no emotion whatsoever.
I patted her hand. “Ernie still in a coma?”
“Yeah. Goddamn coma. Nurse said he’s got edema. That’s a fancy name for swollen feet.” She exhaled loudly. “And that means his heart’s shutting down. So he’s gonna die sooner rather than later, and that’s when they call in Dr. Mort.” Still no tears or emotion. I guessed there was only so much anguish a body could hold.
I didn’t know what to say. “Miranda, I am so sorry—”
She interrupted me. “And you know what, Hank? It’s about damn time.”
I looked at her but didn’t say anything.
“Hope you don’t think bad of me. But I don’t give a shit.” She lowered her voice and leaned closer to me. “I can’t see him like this anymore. I can’t do it.”
The door to Ernie’s room opened. A doctor and two nurses came out. The doc wore a set of three-day-old scrubs and a four-day-old beard. His eyes were red-rimmed, his hair was disheveled. I’d seen gutter slut cokeheads who looked better.
“Mrs. Ruibal, I’m Dr. Mort Silverberg.” His breath smelled like cigarettes. “Your husband is in the end stages of hepatocellular carcinoma. It’s probably metastasized even farther than we’d thought. I’m afraid he won’t live out the night.” He tried to look like he cared but didn’t quiet pull it off. Miranda asked a couple of questions. He answered them. Then he left. We went inside and sat on either side of the bed.
In the end there’s nothing to it, really. About ten, the monitors did that flat-line thing, and that was it. Finito. No más Ernesto Ruibal. Another spark extinguished in the vast cosmos. I thought I would feel more, but I didn’t. Too much had happened in too short a period. Miranda got on the phone and pretty soon the room was filled with extended family and friends. Old women I didn’t know, crying and wailing. She was in good hands.
Before they came and wheeled out my padre and my partner, I leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. Then I slipped out, into the night. I walked around for a while, then went home, drank scotch, and stared at a spot on the floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The next morning I woke sweating, the sour taste of Dewar’s , coating my tongue and the pain deep inside me. The low the night before had been eighty-three, a phenomenon that usually only occurred in the dog days of August. Anything above eighty for the low kept the city from properly cooling at night, which made everyone’s air-conditioning less efficient. My body felt greasy with perspiration, and jittery. I ached like a decayed tooth that couldn’t be removed.
My various wounds and bruises hurt more than usual, and I stubbed my toe on the way to the bathroom. Once there I showered and scrubbed and brushed and soaped under cool water and repeated all of the above until I felt a little less bad, physically anyway. Dripping, still in my towel, I called Jessup to see if anything had turned up on Nolan.
Nada. Again.
I dressed and went to the Ruibal house to … to do whatever it was that people like me do in situations like this. Olson and Delmar came along to help. Olson had brought a chicken casserole. Once we got there, Delmar pulled me aside and told me to act like it tasted good because Olson had stayed up until three making the damn thing. Delmar was the cook in the family but Olson had insisted that he wanted to do something, and his contribution was to fix a chicken casserole. Both men were unusually subdued. Ernie had meant a lot to them also.
The small house was filled with mourners, friends, extended family, even a couple of representatives from the Hispanic Police League of Dallas. A former city councilman was drinking coffee in the living room, talking to a silver-haired man who’d just flown in from El Paso. Ernie had been a friend and adviser to a great many people from all walks of life over the years.
Olson, Delmar, and I stood in the kitchen, sipping coffee and trying to stay out of the way. Somebody dropped that day’s issue of the Dallas Morning News on the table. We each took a section and skimmed it, as the people and preparations for a traditional Mexican funeral whirled around us.
Olson grunted and handed me the business pages. “Read this. Third page toward the bottom.”
I looked where he indicated. It was in the Business Briefs section, the stuff deemed barely worthy of newsprint. I read it aloud. “Mr. Roger Strathmore announced today his retirement from his family’s company, Strathmore Realty. In a prepared statement Mr. Strathmore said that he was looking for a lifestyle change and would be moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to pursue a career as an artist. There was no mention of his unexplained absence from the U.S. Corps of Engineers meeting where he was to deliver a proposal on his company’s desire to manage the Trinity Vista project. Observers say that his unexplained nonattendance was part of the reason, but not the only one, that resulted in the project being awarded to a South Dallas firm headed by Aaron Young, a prominent real estate developer in that area. Minority activists hailed the Aaron Young decision as a milestone in race relations in Dallas. Calls to Strathmore Realty were not returned.”
Olson whistled. “So Roger’s not a corpus delicti after all. Wonder what that’s all about?”
I had a real good idea but didn’t say anything.
Miranda breeze
d into the kitchen, a herd of middle-aged women following in her wake. She shooed them away and then came over to me.
“Hank? Por favor, un—” She stopped abruptly and sighed. “Sorry. Haven’t spoken this much Spanish in years. Hank, I need to talk to you for a moment.”
I followed her into the small utility room off the kitchen.
“Nolan’s mother just got here.” She paused and looked at me. “I wanted you to know. Since Nolan is missing I thought you could talk to her. It must be difficult losing a brother and not knowing about her child.” She paused to clear her throat, and I patted her arm.
She started talking again. “I-I-I thought that … I thought that since … since Nolan—” Her voice broke. “Oh, Hank, Ernie’s dead.” She cried then, big wails of agony, tears of what was left of the pain and sadness she thought were all gone after the drawn-out, bitter death of Ernesto Ruibal.
I held on to her and murmured soft things. Several of her posse of mourners poked their heads in, tongues clucking that they were not comforting the widow Ruibal. After a while she quit crying and left. I sat on the dented Kenmore for a while, in the tiny room utility room at the back of the late Ernie Ruibal’s house in East Dallas. I didn’t want to talk to Nolan O’Connor’s mother. What would I say? Sorry?
From where I rested, I could see a slice of the kitchen, people coming and going as the activity level increased in the house. Food smells wafted in, corn tortillas, coffee, and cinnamon rolls. I wondered where Nolan was at that exact moment and said a quick prayer for her safe return. I missed her. The psychoanalysis that actually proved to be pretty astute. The skepticism of the street so often apparent in the deep blue eyes. The fact that she had been a partner when I needed one. And I had let her down. Just like I had done with Charlie Wesson and Vera.
After a few minutes a gray-haired man with a bushy mustache sauntered into my field of view. Several of the hens clustered around the stove greeted him, making a fuss. He spoke to Miranda, and the way he positioned his head, and the way she moved her body, told me a tiny story about what the future held, the years to come without Ernie Ruibal walking this earth.
Anger coursed through my body, and I fought the urge to grab my pistol and shoot the man with the bushy mustache. Instead, I answered my cell phone. The voice of my friend in New York sounded crackly in my ear. I heard what he said, though, and asked him to fax the info to me. I hung up. That’s when the woman screamed and I knew they’d found Nolan.
I bounded out of the room and into the kitchen. A groundswell of voices came from the dining room, yelling and crying. I pressed through the crowd and saw a middle-aged woman in a dark shawl crying. I didn’t recognize her but knew instantly it was Nolan O’Connor’s mother by the way she moved her head and the line of her jaw. She cried and grasped a cordless phone in front of her as if it were on fire. Miranda stood on one side of her, holding on and weeping, her face contorted so much it looked like a smile.
All the other women were crying and talking excitedly at the same time. Delmar appeared beside me. “They found her.”
I nodded and closed my eyes.
“Hank.” He grabbed my arm and squeezed. “She’s alive.”
Parkland Hospital emergency room. The same doors through which they had wheeled me only days before.
My Browning set off the metal detectors. Olson intervened as the guard tried to frisk me. Delmar held me in a bear hug so I wouldn’t hurt anybody or myself. Shouts and threats. More yelling. Another guard appeared and drew his revolver. Then there was silence. Delmar kept his arms wrapped around me and his eye on the gun. Olson had the first guard on the ground, hands behind his back. The second guard, the one with the gun, opened his mouth to speak but the metal detector went off again. We all looked up to see Officer Jessup standing there, holding his shield in one hand. He spoke to the guards: “Let ’em go. They’re with me.”
The rent-a-cops didn’t like it but complied. Olson released the one on the ground and muttered an apology. The four of us left them and found the nurses’ station. Once again the badge worked its magic and we soon found ourselves talking to an ER doc wearing bloody scrubs and a bad attitude.
He was older than the one who had treated me, maybe mid-forties. He looked at Olson and Delmar, then at me. Finally he turned to Jessup. “Are any of you family?”
“Do I look like family?” the black man said. “Dallas Police. Homicide. What can you tell me?” He flashed his badge again.
“She’s not dead.” The doctor pulled a lollipop from a pocket. It looked like a skinny cigarette hanging out of his mouth. “What do you want with her?”
“I need to talk to her.” Jessup sighed dramatically. “About a homicide.”
I took a step forward. “How is she?”
The doctor looked from Jessup to me. He sucked on his lollipop for a few seconds longer than necessary. “Who are you?”
Jessup put a hand on my arm as I took another step toward the man. “He’s another party concerned with the health and welfare of a certain Nolan O’Connor, who I believe you are treating at the moment. Which gets back to my original question. What can you tell me about her condition?”
“You should know about the new medical privacy laws.” The doctor pointed to Jessup with the lollipop. “Can’t tell anybody anything until I see some documentation on a case you are investigating or the patient says it’s okay.”
Olson growled. Delmar flexed his fists. I got very cold and still.
“Suit yourself.” Jessup shrugged. “Here’s how I see it. You’re pushing fifty and still working the ER. That’s a young man’s game. You’re not the head doc either because nobody treats you that way.”
The man didn’t say anything.
Jessup continued. “Which means you’ve either fucked up somewhere along the line, or pissed off somebody. Based on your attitude, I’m guessing the latter.”
The doctor opened his mouth but didn’t say anything.
“So why don’t you tell me how the woman is, before you piss me off.” Jessup cocked his head to one side and stared at the man.
The ER doc hesitated for a few moments and then talked. An elderly Russian woman, bad to no English, had dropped her off that morning. She’d found her in a vacant apartment, in East Richardson, an area where most Russian immigrants settled. She wasn’t in bad shape except for a GSW to the leg, which hadn’t been treated and was now infected. A few cuts and bruises. Nothing major. She was unconscious due to surgery to remove the bullet. Jessup questioned him further, about the Russian woman and other details. The doctor led us to a small window where we could see her still figure, hooked up to an array of machines. I stayed there for a moment and watched her chest rise and fall underneath the thin hospital blankets. Jessup continued to ask questions of the ER doctor.
Delmar, Olson, and I slipped out after determining that we wouldn’t be allowed to visit with her. In the parking lot, Olson asked what I was planning to do. I ignored him, got in the Ford and headed for the office, with a quick stop at the unit.
CHAPTER THIRTY
For a prominent, socially connected, rich-ass son of bitch, Fagen Strathmore was damn tough to find. How hard is it to hide a six-and-a-half-foot-tall multimillionaire? According to a directory for one of the country clubs, he lived on the twentieth floor of a high-rise on Turtle Creek. I scammed my way past the front-desk security with a set of INS credentials. A middle-aged black woman in a maid’s outfit answered the door and said that Mr. Strathmore didn’t live there anymore on account of he and Mrs. Corrine were getting a divorce and no, she didn’t know where he was staying. The tone of her voice did not indicate a great deal of respect for either employer. I gave her fifty dollars and my cell phone number, and told her to call me if she heard anything.
From there I hit a couple of bars and social clubs, putting out the word on the Mexo-American grapevine of wait staff and cleaning people that I was searching for Señor Hombre Grande, Fagen Strathmore, and that I would pay mucho dinero f
or information on where he might be staying, eating, or drinking. On the third day after we put Ernie Ruibal in the ground, a waiter at the Dallas Country Club called me. He said Señor Strathmore was there now, finishing lunch with two men. I was in the car, close by, so I headed that way.
A block away, the phone rang again. He was leaving, in a black Cadillac SUV, out of the Mockingbird Lane exit. I ran a red light, not the smartest thing to do considering what I was planning, and made Mockingbird just as a black truck turned north on Preston Road. Traffic ran light for noon on a weekday. I punched the gas on the Taurus and passed an Oldsmobile. The light changed and several cars stopped ahead of me. I cut through the parking lot of the gas station on the corner, tires squealing on the asphalt.
The congestion was heavier on Preston, and I could barely see the truck, ten or twelve blocks ahead. With one eye in the mirror and the other looking forward, I darted in and out of the line of cars, trying to go only ten miles over the speed limit. By Northwest Highway, I’d closed the gap to three cars. The Cadillac turned left and I followed, keeping two or three cars between us.
Wherever he was headed, time was not a concern. Strathmore stuck to the middle lane, a steady and sedate thirty-five miles an hour. He passed the topless bars at Bachman Lake, then the megaplex movie theater and restaurants at Stemmons Freeway, and kept going. At Newkirk Lane, he turned north, into a run-down warehouse district built on the old City of Dallas landfill.
A few more streets passed and he turned left, then right into the parking lot of a squat, one-story building. It was made of prefab concrete, weathered to the color of a corpse. Idling at the corner, I could barely read the sign over the metal door that said, “Opal’s Printing Service and Modeling Studio.” I had no problem making out the long legs and black miniskirt of the girl that dashed out of the place and hopped in the passenger seat of the truck. I bet she wasn’t named Opal. The SUV sat there for a few minutes until three more girls scampered out of the building, similarly clad. They got in the backseat.
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