Long Fall from Heaven

by George Wier

  His name was Bartholomew Elrood Dumas, but his co-workers called him Big Bart. His gut protruded a full twelve inches beyond his straining belt. His face, neck and hands were as red as a West Texas Indian—an Apache, perhaps, if such still walked the Earth. Big Bart was known to drink too much on a Friday night, go home and collapse on the couch and sleep half through Saturday. It was his only vice, and his wife Lorraine had come to expect it. She made sure the children didn’t stick celery up his nose or put shaving cream in his hands and tickle his neck with a weed from the yard until he slapped himself, creating a spectacle far more entertaining than the Saturday-morning radio shows which invariably invaded his strange dreams as he slept the day away, snoring loud enough that the neighbors could hear all the while.

  This Saturday in September, Big Bart Dumas was awakened by Lyle Fisher, his foreman from the Fleischman Oil Refinery on the Houston Ship Channel.

  “Wha— wha—”

  “Bart! Wake up!”

  “Lyle? What the hell? Ain’t it Sat—”

  “It is Saturday,” his roughneck foreman stated. “But I need your help, Bart.”

  “Where’s Lorraine? Lorraine!”

  A clatter of dishes reached his ears from the kitchen in their small, two-bedroom shotgun house.

  “I got your missus’ permission to wake you, Bart. Come on. There ain’t much time.”

  • • •

  “Where’re you stayin’ now, Lyle?” Big Bart asked as he rode alongside his foreman in his panel truck. “I mean, since you and the missus has split up?”

  “Oh,” Lyle said, “here and there. That’s not important right now.” Lyle Fisher turned his truck onto the highway headed east towards Galveston Island and Bart looked a question at him. “I’ll tell you all about it as we go,” Lyle said. “It’s the reason I didn’t tell you back at the house. You’re not going to like doing this one damned bit, but it’s got to be done.”

  “What’s got to be done?” Bart asked, and then for good measure added: “You know that I trust you, boss.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Lyle said. “At least, not after today.”

  And then Lyle laid out the job for him as the truck bounced over potholes and on into the noonday sun.

  • • •

  The job was a kidnapping, to occur in broad daylight. Apparently a young girl of school age had gone and gotten herself in a family way. But the girl’s father had money and was well-respected in society. The scandal alone would cost him a great deal of business. So the family had kept it quiet. They’d kept the girl home from school to have the baby and gave an obscure illness as the official reason. But the girl’s father had no intention of raising a bastard child under his roof. And so the arrangements had all been made. Lyle was to kidnap the child while the grandfather was out of town on business and take him to a pre-arranged home.

  “What about the kid’s momma?” Bart asked. “She won’t like it.”

  “No, I suspect she won’t,” Lyle said. “But it’s better this way. It’s better for the old man and the family, it’s better for the girl, who is just a kid herself. And it’s better for the baby.”

  When Lyle was finished laying it all out, along with as much of the back story that he dared to share, Bart caved in.

  “Alright,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  “There’s a thousand dollars in it for you.” Lyle handed Bart an envelope.

  Big Bart looked down at the white linen envelope in his beefy, unwashed hands.

  “Lyle, I don’t—”

  “Yes you do, and you will take it. That’s an order. I know taking the kid is the right thing to do—the way it was explained to me and the way I’ve given it to you. So if it’s right then there’s no call to turn the money down, which is what you were about to do.”

  “Boss…I…”

  Lyle turned to see a tear slip down the big man’s cheek.

  “Forget about it. Tell you what. I’ll hold on to the envelope for you until the job is done. Then, when all’s well, I’ll give it back to you. You might lose it or something.”

  “Oh, shoot. You’re right,” Bart said. “Thanks, boss.” He handed the envelope to Lyle, who folded it over and stuck it in his shirt pocket.

  “Bart, this will be either the easiest or the hardest thing you’ve ever done. I don’t see much of in-between anywhere in all this.”

  “Yes sir,” Bart said, and said no more until they were driving up the ramp from the ferry onto the Island.

  [ 19 ]

  The alert for Harrison Lynch went out all over the county and state. Morgan met with Boland for coffee at Nell’s the next morning where Boland gave him a rundown on what they’d learned the day before from Wiley Sheer.

  “Family,” Morgan said musingly. “Lynch told him that he had some bones to pick with his family.”

  “Right.”

  “What family does he have?”

  “Well, we knew Jack was his stepbrother. His parents are dead, so what does that leave? Some cousins? Aunts and uncles? What?”

  “That’s what I guess I better find out,” Morgan said.

  “Then there was Underwood, who may have been killed because he knew something out of Harrison Lynch’s past.”

  “You think he killed Homer Underwood?” Morgan asked.

  “I think it’s highly possible. The only thing that keeps me from giving you an unqualified ‘yes’ is the way old Homer lived. Right on the edge. As you know yourself, for old winos every day is sort of a minor miracle.”

  “We shouldn’t have any problem finding him,” Morgan said. “This is a small city and he can’t have many resources after being locked up for twenty years.

  “Don’t count on it,” Cueball said.

  “How so?”

  “For one thing, I learned from the warden up at the Dreyfus unit that Lynch is one hell of a lot smarter than anybody ever gave him credit for. Know what his I.Q. is by any chance?”

  Morgan shook his head.

  “One fifty-six. That puts him in the genius category. Plus he’s been reading and plotting and planning for a long time. As far as resources go, we don’t really know what he’s got.”

  “So you’re saying what, exactly?”

  “Did you know I’m the cop who caught him in the first place up in Dallas?”

  Morgan shook his head and looked at Boland with a new respect.

  “I sure as hell was,” Cueball said, and gave the other man a quick thumbnail version of the night Veronica Hilliard was murdered.

  “Then you think he might come after you?” Morgan asked.

  “Who knows? I’m trying to be ready if he does. But my point is that twenty years ago, I had him pegged as a low-wattage thrill killer and nothing more. Once he was on death row, he was out of sight and out of mind so I never gave him any more thought.”

  “Then he’s obviously had this planned for a long time,” Morgan said. “Just hit town and started killing.”

  Cueball nodded. “That’s my analysis too.”

  Just then Micah came through the doors of the coffee shop and took a seat at their booth.

  “What’s on the burner, buddy?” Cueball asked.

  “Weird shit, man. I just went down to the funeral home to see what would be involved in my arranging a decent funeral for old Homer. But your buddy Billy told me it had already been taken care of.”

  “Really?” Cueball asked. “By whom?”

  “Blake & Purcell.”

  “You’ve got to be joking,” Morgan said.

  Blake & Purcell was an old-line law firm that had been on the Island forever. It drew the bulk of its business from a half dozen of the town’s most prominent families. Blake & Purcell was all walnut paneling and brass-studded leather furniture. It trafficked in deeds, wills and trusts—a quiet sort of law that rarely saw the inside of a courtroom, not the kind of law one imagined arranging funerals for wino beachcombers.

  “Then what—” Cueball began.

  “That’s all
I know,” Micah replied. “You know, the county can only release a body to the next of kin.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “I plan to go down to the courthouse later this morning and see if I can find out what happened.”

  • • •

  Three hours later Micah phoned Cueball at home. “It was a simple court order,” he said. “Purcell asked for it. Judge Colvin granted it. There is no explanation on any of the paperwork. Is that legal?”

  Boland sighed. “Why not? Judges can do pretty much what they want to do in cases like this. Who’s going to second guess them?”

  • • •

  Two funerals in two days. Jack Pense’s service was at the funeral home chapel and it was hopelessly sad. About forty people showed up, which was a respectable crowd for an obscure man like Pense. Jennifer couldn’t keep it together and was in tears the whole time. Lieutenant Morgan attended. Cueball knew he was acting on the lawman’s belief that the murderer often attends his victim’s last rites. He and Boland both examined the crowd closely but saw no one who resembled Harrison Lynch or appeared in the least suspicious.

  The next day about a dozen people attended Homer Underwood’s graveside service at the old City Cemetery. Cueball had two surprises that morning. The first was when the presiding minister turned out to be Father Lloyd Wilkes, assistant rector of St. James Episcopal Church. The second surprise was the imposing woman who stood a little to one side, half hidden by a huge water oak. She wore dark glasses and a scarlet scarf.

  As soon as the brief service was over, Cueball stepped around the tree to greet her.

  “Hello, Vivian,” he said.

  “Hi, Charles.” She was one of the few of his acquaintances who used his real name. She was also, he reflected, probably one of the few who even remembered it. She removed her sunglasses.

  “Strange place for you to show up.”

  The woman smiled and said nothing. When she spoke, her eyes were half-lidded and full of amusement. “Charles, do you remember last year when I ran into you and that eccentric friend of yours...What’s his name?”

  “Micah.”

  “That’s it. I ran into the two of you at Gaido’s, and my friend called to say she couldn’t make it as planned. So the three of us wound up having lunch together. Do you remember that day?”

  He smiled and nodded.

  “Then you should also remember that you and I got to talking about the people we had grown up with here in town and about their parents and their grandparents and all their quirks and foibles and about who shot whom for sleeping with which wife or husband…Do you recall that as well?”

  “I do.”

  “And your friend got very exasperated at being left out of the conversation and finally made a pronouncement about the nature of the reverie we were having. What did he call it?”

  Cueball laughed. “Old Island shit.”

  “Exactly. So just put my presence here today down as ‘Old Island shit.’”

  “Yeah?” Cueball said. “You must have known Homer from the old days.”

  “Everyone knew Homer. I’m surprised there aren’t several hundred people here. He was once a very big man on this island.”

  “A reporter. That’s what Micah tells me. I don’t remember him well, though. I never had many dealings with the local paper until I came back from Dallas. I would, though, like to find out who killed him.”

  She nodded. “I know you would, and I’m not insensitive to your aims.” Here she kissed the tip of her index finger and gently touched it to his nose. “Come by the house for coffee in a few days. Maybe we can help each other.” Vivian turned as if to go.

  Cueball became aware that his ears were red. There was something downright seductive about the woman and always had been. Supposedly it was once Vivian’s sister, Lindy, who was the wild one in the family. It was Vivian, however, who had always had an affect on Cueball.

  “Why not today?” he asked.

  “Give it a week, Charles.” With that she turned and walked away on high heels, dark-stockinged legs moving as if she were still in her prime.

  Micah and Lieutenant Morgan materialized beside him.

  “I think that now we know who paid for the funeral and arranged for the minister,” Cueball said, nodding toward the woman. “We just don’t know why.”

  “I’d say that’s her business,” Morgan stated.

  Cueball turned to stare at the man. “Sure it is. But it means something.”

  “Probably it means she knew him from the old days and felt sorry for his ne’er-do-well ass.”

  Cueball frowned at the policeman. “All of Vivian DeMour’s friends are old friends. That woman keeps her own counsel. If she wants to pay for Underwood’s funeral, that’s fine by me. Aside from that, she’s one of my biggest clients, although I see her no more than once every couple of years. So don’t read too much into anything I say, all right?”

  “But?” Morgan asked.

  “It’s just…it seems to me she’s been a little reclusive the last few years, which is why I was surprised to see her here.”

  “Okay, so she’s a recluse.” Morgan said.

  “He didn’t say she’s a recluse,” Micah countered. “He said she’s been a little reclusive. All the difference in the world.”

  Morgan was seething once again. “God, but sometimes I wish I’d never left Lubbock!”

  • • •

  Cueball walked up beside Father Lloyd Wilkes. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said.

  Father Lloyd Wilkes was a thin, witty man in his late thirties—a fair pool player who stopped by the pool hall a couple times a month to have a beer or two and lose a few games of eight ball to the joint’s proprietor.

  “Duty called, C.C. This is what I do. Along with weddings and christenings.”

  “Yeah, but for your parishioners. Not for the world at large.”

  The priest smiled. “I have never refused a request to conduct a funeral, not even for the unchurched. But according to the baptismal registry and parish records, Homer Underwood was born into, baptized into, and took his first communion at St. James.”

  “Really? That surprises me.”

  “Why? I’ve found that most derelicts have conventional backgrounds. Many have loving but disappointed families. Didn’t Jesus himself speak to such people?”

  “Point taken. But that brings to mind the question of why you were rooting through a seventy-year-old baptismal registry? Do you do that every time some wino dies here in town?”

  “Let’s say I had good guidance in that direction.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to name your guide, would you?”

  Wilkes laughed and slipped his prayer book into his pocket. “Dream on, C.C. A good Catholic boy like you should know about the sanctity of the confessional.”

  “A lapsed Catholic, Padre. I’m not much of a churchman.”

  “Come to St. James some Sunday morning and we’ll fix that.”

  Cueball smiled and shook hands with the priest.

  The day had grown warm. The sun was high overhead, and although the Gulf with its incessant tides, crashing waves and crying seagulls seemed a world removed from the verdant green of the cemetery, the smell of the sea abided.

  [ 20 ]

  The knock on Longnight’s door came as he was dressing to step out for lunch. He’d made up his mind to convince the chef of the hotel café to prepare him an egg sandwich made just the way he liked it. The knock at the door was to change all that—and to change Longnight’s future as well.

  “Just a minute,” he called out, pulling his pants up over his starched white shirt, and slipping his belt on. He glanced about the room to make sure there was nothing that shouldn’t be there and opened the door.

  A thin, waspishly-dressed man of perhaps thirty-five greeted him. He wore a finely-tailored black suit and silk tie, yet looked out of place in it, as if he would rather have been at a bar or a boxing match somewhere.

&nbs
p; “Sir. I have the honor of extending to you an invitation to take lunch with Mr. Salvatore Maceo on his balcony in exactly ten minutes.”

  “The answer is yes, of course,” Longnight said.

  “Very good sir. I will wait and escort you.”

  “I’ll be ready to go in just a minute.”

  • • •

  The Spanish-style furnishings of the Hotel Galvez ended inside the doorway to Salvatore Maceo’s seventh-floor suite. As at the Maceo brothers’ club, the suite was furnished in a South Pacific island motif. A set of bronze dolphins four feet from end to end emerged from bronze waves on the center of a large table in the entryway. An exact scale-model replica of Captain Cook’s ship Endeavor stood out on a pedestal in the corner. The floor underneath was tiled in black volcanic granite.

  The valet led Longnight through the suite and on past a set of French provincial doors to a spacious rooftop balcony. A man Longnight recognized from the Balinese Room sat at a large, round table beneath an unfurled umbrella. The man wore Bermuda shorts and a loose-fitting shirt with a garish floral print of reds, whites and yellows. On his feet he wore soft leather sandals. His legs and arms were tanned a golden brown as if he spent a great deal of time in the sun. He appeared to be about fifty.

  “Mr. Talos,” Salvatore Maceo said. He rose to his feet. “Good of you to join me on the spur of the moment.”

  “It was good of you to offer, Mr. Maceo.” Longnight shook the man’s hand and took the offered chair.

  “Call me Sam,” Maceo said. “My family and all of my friends do.”

  “Sam, then. Call me Randall. I don’t like ‘Randy.’ It sounds too pornographic.”

  Maceo laughed.

  So far, so good, Longnight thought.

  “Talos. What is that? Greek?” Maceo asked.

  “You might say. Talos was the name of one of the Titans, cast in bronze by Hephaestos and given as a gift to Zeus’s lover Europa.”