by George Wier
After a near stone-silent dinner of meatloaf, over-cooked vegetable on sparkling china and stale tea in Scottish crystal—a dinner where even the children were daunted into silence by the oppressive atmosphere—Pense excused himself with a grunt and went upstairs. Shortly thereafter Lorraine excused herself as well and went in search of her old man.
• • •
Lorraine Pense Dumas entered her father’s bedroom.
“Daddy?”
“Here, Princess.” Pense emerged from a walk-in closet.
“Bart brought a big sack with him. It’s full of money. The baby is the DeMour baby.”
“I knew it the moment I picked you two up. I will not allow this family to fall through scandal. We’re keeping the child. You will raise him as if he is one of your own and you will stay here with me.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“The child will be given no special treatment. He is a foundling, and he’ll be brought up as a foundling.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Your husband…you are done with him?”
“I’m done,” Lorraine said without hesitation.
“Good. He is about to disappear from all our lives forever. You may go and cry into your pillow, if you feel the need.”
“No,” she said. “I am done with crying.”
“That’s my girl,” Pense said.
• • •
Bart was sitting on the back porch regarding a seagull on top of a telephone pole along the street when Nicholas Pense stepped from the house.
“Bart,” he said. “Let’s go hunting.” Pense handed Bart a British .303 Enfield, checked that there were no rounds in his own double-barreled shotgun and didn’t wait for Bart to reply but instead started down the back steps toward the garage.
“Wait. What are we hunting?” Bart called after him and picked himself up to trail the man.
“Snipe,” Pense said.
• • •
Bartholomew Dumas didn’t like the Island. He never had. And life had not been going well since his last trip to the cursed place. So it was with a sense of dread that he rode beside Lorraine’s father on this evening hunting trip. They had no lanterns, no flashlight that he was aware of, no gunny sacks for what they were to kill and bring back. No sir. Nothing.
Pense whistled discordantly and Bart attempted without any success to recognize the tune. After a while the old man stopped and Bart turned to watch the sun go down inland. They were heading south and away from town.
• • •
Galveston is a narrow strip of land some twenty-nine miles in length and two and a half miles in width at its widest point. The island tapers as you travel southwest until there is nothing left but the waters of San Luis Pass, a dangerous place where the rip-tide has been known to walk up and grab anyone impertinent enough to immerse themselves any further than waist-deep.
Pense pulled off the narrow, double-rutted roadway just before it played out into the water, parked on the sand and killed the engine.
“So there’s snipe around here?” Bart asked.
Pense didn’t say a word.
“Never killed a snipe,” Bart said. “Never even seen one.”
“We’ll flush them out and bring home dinner for the next week.” Pense smiled.
“Is it snipe season, do you think?” he asked, but the old man ignored him and climbed out into the gathering dark.
“Can’t even see to shoot, really,” Bart said to himself, and got out of the car. His head had begun aching ever since he’d stopped drinking. But Bart Dumas was used to living with his hangovers. His whole life had become one long, continuous hangover, and he knew nothing better to do than to keep breathing his way through it.
At that moment Pense held out a flask to him. Bart took it, unstoppered it, and sniffed.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Drink,” Pense said. “It’s cognac. Although I’m sure you’ve never tasted the stuff. It’s better than beer or whiskey. It’s the smart man’s drink.”
“Reckon I need me some of that,” Bart said, and took a long pull. It went down smooth as silk.
He handed the flask back to Pense who took a long pull on it himself.
There seemed to be somebody walking close by, just out of vision, but when Bart swept his eyes that way, he could see no one. Then the fire began in his belly and all thoughts of interlopers afield left him. Bart Dumas wasn’t the kind of man to let more than one thought at a time crowd him.
“Let’s go down the beach a bit,” Pense said. “We’ll find them in the sea grass and the dunes.”
“Sure thing,” Bart said.
They had walked a hundred yards when he thought he heard someone call his name, as if they were over the next hill or something.
“Did you hear that?” Bart asked.
Pense shook his head.
“Alright then,” Bart said. “You know, I didn’t take you for the outdoors type, Nicholas. But going hunting wasn’t a bad idea.”
Pense nodded but kept his eyes straight ahead.
After five more minutes, with the sun gone completely from the sky and only a dim glow remained on the horizon, Pense stopped and nodded toward the dunes west of them. “You go on up there to the top of those dunes and tell me what you see. Then go along the dunes around behind them and flush them in my direction.”
There it was again. A distant voice, and a voice he recognized.
“We’d better trade guns as well,” Pense said. “You’ll be closer to them, so you’ll need the shotgun.”
Bart traded with him. Pense dug in his pocket and handed Bart a couple of shells.
“Should I load up now?” Bart asked.
“Not yet. You won’t need them until you see something.”
“Right,” Bart said.
He walked away from Pense and made his way up the lowest sand dune in sight. He wondered, absently, how anything could live amid all the sand. Crabs he could understand. Crabs were practically composed of sand, what with their shells like hard stone.
He heard the voice again, this time close. He recognized it. It was Lyle Fisher.
“That you, Lyle?” he called out. The dark was kind of funny in that it seemed to soak up all sound around him.
He stopped atop the dune.
“Lyle?” He called ahead.
And then distinctly, Lyle said: “Stupid-dead is what you are, Bart.”
The hole opened in Bart’s gut and a wad of his innards came tumbling out. An instant later he heard the report. He dropped the shotgun.
He turned around and gazed down the dune toward Pense.
The second bullet went through his right lung and out his back into the high sea grass.
Bart Dumas tumbled forward and rolled.
He waited to die.
Pense rolled him over, stared down into his face. Pense’s face was black, and behind Pense’s head the moon shone, illuminating the man’s head like a nimbus crown, as if Lorraine’s father was one of those saints who walked with Jesus in the Holy Land.
“Stupid dead is what you are, Dumas,” Pense said. “There’s no snipe. I found the money in your duffel bag. How stupid can you get? We’re keeping the DeMour baby. And the money. And we’ll make sure the DeMours keep paying. Nobody wants a bastard, that much is sure. The DeMours don’t want him and we don’t either, but we’re willing to keep him for the money. Lorraine was right to tell me. You would have screwed everything up, Bart Dumas. You were stupid before. And now you’re stupid-dead.”
And then Pense’s face became that of Lyle Fisher’s.
“It hurts, Lyle. I have to…confess something,” Bart said. His breath came in little hitches. He wasn’t long for the world.
“What?” Lyle asked.
“Owe you a hundred…dollars,” Bart said. “That’s all…I took. Hundred…dollars.”
And then Lyle was gone and the moon was gone and coldness tugged at him. It crept from the balls of his feet and up his calves and over h
is private parts and on into his head.
[ 47 ]
Two evenings later Micah and Cueball found themselves once more on the front porch. The weather was once again warm over the Gulf Coast after a few days of cool north wind. Since Myrna had returned both men knew their unsupervised evenings would be drawing to a close and the whiskey would once more come only in measured drams. But not this night. Tonight it was a liter of Glenmorangie, and the level in the bottle fell steadily and Myrna had not once interrupted them.
They talked of this and that, skirting uneasily around the edge of the recent events until at last Micah said, “C.C., I’m sorry about your friend, Vivian DeMour.”
“So am I.”
“It just seems like such a waste. All that fortune, all that history. For what?”
“Yeah. I spoke with the Ranger in charge of the investigation today. Vivian confessed to paying Leland Morgan to get rid of old Homer.”
“Damn.”
“You remember what Sheer said that Lynch told him before they let him out?”
Micah sighed. “Something about someone would have a long fall from heaven.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. What do you think Lynch meant by that?”
Micah paused for a moment, considering. Then he said, “I think Lynch planned to kill them all. Even Vivian, who took great pains to make sure he survived. Hmph. The angel sent of God.”
“Some angel,” Cueball said. “More like a demon sent from hell.”
“I do wonder, though,” Micah said, “where Lynch was staying all that time he was on the Island.”
“At a motel on the mainland. His motel room key was in his pocket. I got that information from Robeling.”
“Do you really think he was trying to kill Vivian DeMour?”
Cueball paused, considering his words. He had a faraway look in his eyes. “I don’t know. I think if he wanted to, he would have early on. He was a force of nature, like his father.”
“I’m surprised Vivian didn’t have him killed herself.”
“No,” Cueball said. “That’s one thing she told me was not to happen. Harrison was the last of her family. And blood is always thicker than water.”
The two sat for several minutes without speaking. Cueball waited for more from Micah, and he was not disappointed.
“Homer,” Micah said. “And Denny Muldoon.”
“Hmph.”
“There was definitely something between those two.”
“I suspect you’re right. But then there are some things it’s maybe better not knowing.”
Micah sighed. “You’re probably right. By the way, I know what was in the safe in the DeMour warehouse.”
“So do I,” Cueball said.
“Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m sure the feds have it all now.”
“I called that Shane Robeling fellow and confirmed it,” Cueball said. “Harrison Lynch’s handwritten mathematical texts are now the property of the United States Government. But now I have a puzzle for you.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“This,” Cueball said, and reached into the paper sack on the floor beside him and brought out the leather notebook Vivian had given to him, and handed it to Micah. “It’s Longnight’s journal, or it’s a madman’s ramble, or it’s the future of the human race, take your pick. Regardless, it is not the property of the United States Government.”
It was a leather journal of some age, hand-bound. Micah’s hand fluttered through the pages, pausing for mere moments, then flipping forward again. His eyes moved and darted from leaf to leaf.
He began reading aloud: “‘The summation: As field strength approaches infinity, gravity goes to zero.’ ‘In this manner instantaneous communication can be achieved between any two points anywhere in the universe.’ ‘Gravity is, therefore, instant, and therefore not a waveform, as one must have time against which to measure the troughs and crests of a wave.’”
Micah looked up at Cueball. The look was priceless.
“I wonder if Lynch’s writing was anything like this?” Micah asked.
“I have no idea. But it must have been interesting enough for the government to want it all. No telling what madman’s technology is in use today because of the father. Or what might be in the future from the son.”
“By the way, Homer once told me I should find out who Lynch really was, and by that he meant who Lynch’s father really was. Do you know who Longnight was?”
Cueball took a sip of his whiskey and turned slowly to Micah. “Longnight? I don’t know who he was. I rather imagine he was a nobody. But he was apparently brilliant when it came to the things you’re reading there in that journal of his. I think he was a surgeon of some kind. Probably well-educated. Hell, for all I know he could have been royalty.”
“Good God. You know, some folks think that Jack the Ripper was a member of the Royal Family. Oh cripes!”
“What?”
“His birth certificate. He was born here on the Island. There would be a record.”
“Exactly,” Cueball said. “There was. But when he was kidnapped and raised by the Penses, they didn’t have a birth certificate for him. The Penses moved to Houston shortly after Harrison came to them. He was supposed to have gone to a Catholic orphanage in Houston, but somehow the kidnapping went south. Somewhere along the line Harrison found out who his real father was and what his real father’s name was. And I think I know who told him who his father was. He changed his last name to Lynch right before his first killing spree.”
Micah thought on it. “Homer,” he said.
“That’s what I figure,” Cueball agreed.
“Where is the birth certificate?”
“The last of the DeMours has it.”
“Vivian,” Micah said. “That’s what Lynch was really after when he robbed the warehouse and killed his stepbrother.”
“Yeah. He wanted his identity,” Cueball agreed. “He wanted to know who both his mother and his father really were, and not what he may have been told by the Penses or anyone else. The official birth record was taken from the county shortly after Lynch’s birth. A little petty bribery, I suspect. I’d lay odds on it having been Abraham DeMour.”
A light breeze sprang up to rustle the palm fronds in the trees beside the house, and the faint whisper of the surf could be heard as the Gulf rolled endlessly onto the beach. Micah smiled and sipped his scotch and said no more.
As for his part, Cueball could have said some things as well. He could have said that he had noted Denny Muldoon’s former caregiver Minnie stepping inside Micah’s trailer late last night when he had come by for a visit, but had instantly decided not to intrude on the couple. Diana, gone these many years, no doubt would have approved. Cueball had never known Micah’s Diana, but if she was half the gentle and caring creature Micah had described to him, then she should be smiling.
Cueball could have also mentioned that he had lied when he told Micah and Morgan that Lindy DeMour was Harrison Lynch’s mother. He could have gone on to explain that he did so because Lindy, now dead these many years, was beyond any harm or shame, while his friend Vivian was still very much alive. She would stand trial for Homer Underwood’s murder. There was still the one secret—the identity of the father and the love of the mother for her son despite the murderous natures of all three—father, son and mother. Justice, though. Justice, perhaps, would not be too unkind to Vivian DeMour.
“Old Island shit,” Micah would have called it—all of it—his voice tinged with mild disapproval. Cueball decided to remain silent on the subject as the two of them sat cloaked in the soft sounds of the late fall night, each lost in his own thoughts as they gazed out into the balmy darkness that lay over the town like a shroud.
Finis
AN AUTHOR’S NOTE
Milton T. Burton passed away in the early morning hours of December 1, 2011. He will be missed by his family, his friends—many of whom were of the life-long variety—and by his many fans.
I want to say a few words, both about the current volume and about my friend.
Galveston is the central character in this story. As Milton says, “There has always been something a little sad about Galveston.” I agree with him. I love Galveston, having spent many summers there in my youth. But to go there again, to re-create it as it once was in all its splendor and all its tarnish. That is a dream. And now it’s a dream come true.
Along about the summer of 2011, Milton went into the hospital. His health deteriorated rapidly.
At the time of Milton’s hospital stay he had three books out in hardback from Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books, including The Rogues’ Game, The Sweet and the Dead, and Nights of the Red Moon, with a fourth, The Devil’s Odds at that time forthcoming in February of 2012. Additionally there remains his completed manuscript for These Mortal Remains, which I have completed editing. It is slated for publication in July 2013.
During the latter part of the summer of 2011, when Long Fall From Heaven was nearing completion, Milton described his ideas for the first chapter to me in detail. I had thought the first chapter we had initially written together was the first chapter. It wasn’t. There was the other one—the one that existed only in Milton’s mind. It was that chapter that my friend most wanted to write. So the file for the present volume sat for some time on my computer with the words “To Be Finished By Milton” in brackets under the first chapter heading. Then, over the summer and fall of 2011, Milton’s health complications became much more complicated. On my last visit to him in late November, mere days before his death, I knew the end was likely near. I hurried back home to Austin from Tyler and polished up the present volume the best I could. As I sat thinking about my friend before my computer and the unfinished text of this volume, I remembered his descriptive words to me for the first chapter. I remembered the feel of the words as he described Longnight’s stay at the government’s mental asylum. With Milton’s words set clearly in my mind, I began.
