The Last Death of Jack Harbin

by Terry Shames

  “In a few minutes he and his friends came back by my station. They didn’t stop to gamble, but I couldn’t help overhearing them. Your friend Jack was all heated up and he was talking pretty loud. They had to calm him down because his language was a little ripe. You know, fuck him, screw this, screw that.”

  “Jack had a mouth on him.”

  Her mouth quirks up in a grin, showing those shiny teeth. “It’s not like I haven’t heard it before. But it’s strange to hear a man in a wheelchair going on like that.” She shrugs.

  “I can see that.”

  “After they got him calmed down he said something like, ‘He doesn’t have any business being here.’ And one of his friends said well he was entitled to do what he liked. But here’s what was strange. Your friend Jack said, ‘Not on my money, he’s not.’ Seemed like an odd thing to say, don’t you think?”

  “You sure that’s what he said?”

  “Hundred percent sure. They were standing in a little group near my table. Then they headed to another part of the casino. I figured they wanted to keep Jack clear of whoever had him fired up.”

  So that’s why the money was missing from Jack’s account. Somebody borrowed money to gamble, and Jack didn’t know that’s what the funds were going to be used for. Whoever it was managed to pay Jack back—except for that last time. But who is it? Gabe LoPresto? He and Jack got on pretty well and spent time together most every day at Town Café. I can imagine LoPresto thinking he could get away with owing Jack money, and maybe after Bob died, Jack put the screws to him. But LoPresto has a pretty successful business. Why would he need to borrow money?

  Maybe it’s one of the football players’ parents? Some of them cozied up to Jack in the stands during the games. Not that I’d ever thought of it as anything but kindness. But maybe one of them was using Jack as a banker on the side.

  Saturday morning doesn’t start out to my liking. Checking on my cows is troublesome. My knee hurts like the devil from all the poking and prodding Thursday and from hustling around the casino. Plus, Loretta and I didn’t get home until almost midnight last night.

  But one thing is going my way. The motorcycle shop is open on Saturdays and when I call over there, Walter Dunn tells me he’ll be working there all day. It’s eleven o’clock before I get over to the shop. Dunn is working on one of the biggest cycles I’ve ever seen. The parts he’s taken out are laid out next to him. His hands are on his hips and he’s glaring at the cycle as if it’s a child that’s been misbehaving.

  “I need a word,” I say.

  He gestures to the parts. “You can see I’m tied up.”

  “Sometimes if you walk away from a problem for a while, it’s easier to deal with when you get back to it.”

  “Promised the guy I’d have it to him by four o’clock.”

  “I had a talk with Taylor, and now I need to talk to you.”

  He wipes his hands on a rag on his belt and takes his time doing it. “How much did she tell you?”

  “Not quite enough.” I put some steel in my voice to let him know I’m not in the mood to be put off any longer. “She said you’d know the rest.”

  He confers with a heavily tattooed mechanic, gesturing to the motorcycle he’s promised to finish. The man eyes me and nods to Dunn. We walk out the front door. “Let’s go down the road to Smoker’s Barbecue. I’ll bring back some lunch for the boys.”

  Smoker’s is a wooden shack with picnic tables under a rickety wooden awning out back. It smells so good that I can’t resist getting a plate of brisket, even though it’s so early. Dunn does the same.

  “Taylor tells me when she found Jack in trouble out in California, she called and you came right away.”

  His mouth is full and he nods. I wait while he swallows. “I blamed myself for not checking out this guy before I sent Jack to his facility. He sounded so dedicated that I never questioned whether he was telling the truth. You don’t think somebody will try to make a buck off people who’ve gotten injured like those boys. I guess if something sounds too good to be true, it is.”

  “You don’t want to believe the worst of people.”

  “I have to get me a beer. You want one?”

  I decline. When he comes back, he’s already drunk half the beer, and his face is grim. We sit quiet, and when it comes clear that he’s going to wait for me to pull more out of him, I say, “How did you get Jack back here?”

  He takes another pull on the beer. “By the time I got to Frisco, Taylor had cleaned up Jack and his apartment—if you can call it that. It was a big room, but just a basement really. Concrete walls and floors, bare bulb hanging from the ceiling for light. Not that Jack needed a light.” He runs a beefy hand along his jaw. “I sent Taylor back home and told her I’d take care of getting Jack back to Texas. But first I knew I had to do something about this asshole who was making money off the misery of those vets.”

  “How many vets were in that place?”

  “A dozen, give or take. Men who were in the same situation as Jack, except they didn’t have somebody like Taylor to help them out. Filthy conditions. I hardly knew what to do. I was broke. We had just bought our shop and I’d put every penny into it. I called my daddy and told him what was going on. He didn’t have much, but he got a little money together so I could at least get the place cleaned up. Had a crew come in. And spent the rest of it on food.”

  My head is bowed. I wish I’d known about this. I could have helped out with funds. “I was the chief of police, and thought I knew everything that went on in my little kingdom. You all kept this pretty quiet.”

  “Jack and I were ashamed for different reasons, and I think Taylor was so shocked . . .” He trails off, eyeing the past. Then he shakes his head to clear it. “Eventually it all got taken care of. All of the vets who were there were like Jack, not wanting to be a burden. Once I’d located their families, the relatives were grateful and pulled together the money to pay my dad what he’d lent me.”

  “You’re a good man.”

  “No, I’m not. I should have checked out the place to begin with.”

  “If you had, Jack never would have gone there, and no telling how long those other vets would have suffered. Did you ever locate the son of a bitch who did it?”

  “He was slippery. He got wind that somebody found out what he was up to and he laid low. But he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. He had used his own name to rent the place, and I tracked him down through the realtor.” His smile is sardonic. “Had to put the fear of God into the realtor before he’d cough up the information, but once I told him I’d be calling the Veterans Administration about his part in it, he had a change of heart.”

  I wipe my mouth. “Anyway, you got those vets out of there, and put the guy out of business.”

  “Something like that.” A shadow passes over his face. “I brought Jack home, that’s the important part. In a way, I think he had to go through an experience like that so he could accept his family taking care of him. I had a lot of respect for Bob. He didn’t get all teary-eyed. He reamed Jack out for not letting him know where he was.”

  Something about the way Dunn leaps onto this new subject and suddenly gets all chatty makes me wonder what he’s left out. My mind flashes to the article I found in Jack’s wallet about the homeless man found in the dumpster, and I bet I know who the man was.

  “I expect you’re not telling me the whole story.”

  He sips his beer, never taking his eyes off me. In effect, he stares me down, and I blink first.

  “Makes you wonder how many times this happens,” I say.

  “The VA got an earful from me, but I doubt it made a lot of difference. They don’t have the personnel to look into every situation. They’re overwhelmed.”

  “Now I’ve got something else I need to spring on you.” I tell him about my trip to Coushatta and about what the dealer told me.

  “Yeah, that was a coincidence. I wasn’t party to what went on. I was playing poker at the time. Vic
can tell you about it. He was there.”

  Dunn tells me Vic isn’t in today. He takes out his cell phone. “I’ll see if Vic will come over to the shop and talk to you.” But Vic doesn’t answer his phone. “He’s the only one of us not married, so it’s a little harder to keep tabs on him. But he’ll be in Monday.”

  Back at the shop, I watch Dunn tinker with the motorcycle he’s working on and indulge myself in a fantasy of buying one. But then I remember my knee and figure it’s not in my immediate future.

  I’m surprised when Dunn follows me out to my car. Just before I get in, he says, “About the guy who scammed Jack. I know what you’re thinking, and it probably didn’t happen exactly the way you imagine. You find who killed Jackie, and I’ll tell you the rest of it.”

  The remainder of the afternoon is a wash. I go by to talk to Curtis again, hoping I can drag something more out of him, but the place is locked up tight. He had that back door lock repaired.

  I do some errands, and stop by the café about four o’clock for a cup of coffee. I’m surprised to see Lurleen on duty, since she usually has the weekend off. “I asked to work a shift this afternoon. My mamma has the kids, and I’m about to lose my mind being in the house by myself.” She looks terrible. “Have you had any luck finding out what happened to Jack?”

  “I haven’t sorted it out yet. But I’ll get there.”

  Gabe LoPresto hollers at me to come over and talk to him and a couple of old boys. Their faces are so animated that I know they are rehashing last night’s game, a squeaker of a win that spoiled Needleton’s homecoming.

  I ask Lurleen to bring me a cup of coffee and she talks me into a piece of fresh berry pie to go with it. LoPresto is happy to have me join them because I didn’t go to the game last night. This gives him an opportunity to regale me with a play-by-play account of the drama that led to the win.

  “Something has got to be done about Boone Eldridge,” Jess Bolton says.

  “He won, didn’t he?” I say.

  “Yeah, but the son of a bitch almost managed to lose again. Same as last time. He took Louis out for the whole last quarter.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “He’s got a bug up his ass about something Louis is doing,” LoPresto says. “But this time Collin had a surprise for him.”

  Collin is the second-string quarterback, a junior nobody has had much faith in. I ask what happened.

  “It was Dilly’s doing, so you tell it, Jess.”

  Jess Bolton doesn’t even try to swallow his pride in his son. “Dilly has been putting in extra hours practicing with Collin, so this time when coach sent Collin in, he was ready. Surprised the hell out of everybody, including Eldridge.” I’m glad for the boy, and a little surprised that Dilly Bolton bothered with Collin. Dilly is known to be pretty pleased with himself—ambitious, and not necessarily a team player. But I expect he realized it’s better for his stats if the Panthers win. And if that means drilling Collin in secret, then so be it.

  Eventually the game is hashed to death, so we all get up to leave. My knee is so stiff I can hardly walk. LoPresto stops me. “Samuel, when the hell are you going to do something about that knee? You’re hobbling around like an old man.”

  “As it happens, pretty soon.” Somehow, telling Loretta about my surgery has loosened my tongue, so I tell them about my visit to the doctor Thursday.

  As usual, since LoPresto knows someone who had knee surgery once, he knows more about knees than my doctor does. So I have to listen to his advice for a few minutes. But I find it comforting to hear that his friend came through with a knee that works as well as before.

  After everyone trickles out of the café, I hang behind to talk to Lurleen. There’s only one couple left, so when I tell Lurleen that I need to clear up something, she sits down with me.

  “I’ve been going over Jack’s finances and I’d like to know if he ever told you anything about lending somebody a chunk of money.”

  She shakes her head. She’s brought a grilled cheese sandwich with her, but it’s sitting there getting cold. She hasn’t made a move to touch it. “We didn’t talk about money much.”

  “Did he ever lend you money?”

  Her expression hardens. “I may not be rich, but I can take care of my kids. I never needed to borrow anything from anybody.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m just trying to clean up some loose ends.” I sit back and sip my coffee, giving her a chance to unruffle her feathers.

  “What gave you the idea that I might have borrowed from Jack?”

  It’s the opportunity I need. “Well, I noticed when I was at your place the day Walter Dunn and I came to tell you about Jack that your son had a nice looking computer. I got the impression his daddy wouldn’t spring for something like that.”

  She picks up her sandwich, looks at it like it’s a dead rat and puts it back down. “All right, Jack did buy the computer for the kids. I didn’t like it. He was at my place one day when Will was complaining about homework and said he wished he could have a computer. I told him no possible way, and next thing I know Jack buys them one. He had his daddy go over to Bobtail and buy it. And then Jack paid to have the Internet line put in and everything.” She sighs. “I told Will that if he wants to keep that line now that Jack is gone, he’s going to have to figure out a way to pay for it.”

  “And Jack never mentioned lending money out to anybody?”

  She shakes her head. “I wish I could help you, but he never said a word.”

  When I get home, my telephone answering machine has been busy. I have three calls. One is from Jenny, asking me to come over for a glass of wine later, since we missed our usual date last week. The second is from my nephew, Tom, in Austin, wanting to catch up with me. It’s unusual that we haven’t talked in a couple of weeks. He’s my late brother, Horace’s, boy, and the best nephew anybody could have. I’ll have to tell him about my knee. That will entail fending off his wife, Vicki. She’ll want me to come to Austin after I get out of the hospital, so she can keep an eye on me while I get back on my feet. Not that I wouldn’t love to take her up on it, but she’s got her family and job to take care of. And I don’t want to be a nuisance.

  The third call is from Dr. Hadley in Bryan. I didn’t know doctors worked on Saturday. “Mr. Craddock, I didn’t have time Thursday and Friday to do the tests I promised I’d do, but your question about Bob Harbin’s blood tests got under my skin, so I stayed late last night to run the tests. You were right. Harbin had a toxic level of digitalis in his system, and no reason on earth he should have been taking it. Looks like that’s what you were after. If you have any more questions, call my office Monday.”

  I phone Jenny and ask for a postponement of our wine date, since I’m planning to turn in early tonight.

  After the pie I ate at the café, I’m not particularly hungry, so I make do with a couple of tamales and some coleslaw that I think is still edible. I’m just washing up the dishes when the phone rings.

  Linda Eldridge’s voice is trembling. “Samuel, I don’t know what to do. Boone left early this morning and he hasn’t come home.”

  “It wasn’t even six o’clock this morning. He was all ready to go when I woke up. He said he had a couple of things to do and he’d see me later. And that’s the last I heard from him.”

  We’re sitting at the kitchen table in the Eldridge house. Linda’s huge brown eyes are wild as a spooked horse. She’s a pretty woman with a voluptuous figure. She gets her dusky complexion and black hair from her Mexican parents, who attend most of the football games. Linda said she called me because when she tried the police department, James Harley told her she was being foolish, that she should call him tomorrow morning if Boone hadn’t shown up by then.

  “Boone left at six? That’s awfully early. Did he give you any idea what he was going to do?”

  “I was still half asleep. I told him nothing was open at that time of the morning, but he said he had somebody he had to meet.”

>   “Is it possible he went fishing?” Boone is known to spend a lot of time fishing, but it would be unusual during football season.

  Linda thinks. “He wasn’t dressed for fishing. Usually he wears this vest thing that smells to high heaven. And old pants. But this morning he was dressed in regular clothes.”

  “Has he ever done anything like this before?”

  She’s kneading her hands on the table. “I guess he has, but he usually tells me if he’s going to be late. You know, Boone’s job is different. It’s not like he keeps regular hours. He teaches a few history classes, but being the coach he’s got a lot of free time during the day because he works late after school with football practice.” Nerves are making her chatter.

  “I expect he practices with the team on weekends, too.”

  “He works with the boys all the time. Weekends are probably the worst, especially during football season. But if he’s called a weekend practice, he’ll always tell me in advance. And even if he forgot to tell me, he’d surely be home by now.”

  “He didn’t say when to expect him?”

  “No. And I asked my daughter if she’d heard from him—I went out grocery shopping and hoped he might have called while I was gone, but she says no.”

  “The boys won last night. Maybe he planned something special and didn’t want anyone to know about it.”

  At the mention of last night’s game, she frowns and her eyes dart away from me.

  “Was there something about last night’s game that bothered Boone? I understand it was a close one. Maybe he called a secret practice?” I’m thinking about Dilly working with Collin. I don’t know Boone well, but coaches can be funny. Maybe he didn’t like the idea that one of his players was training the backup quarterback without him knowing about it, and decided if the boys wanted extra practice, he’d give it to them.

  Sweat is beaded on Linda’s upper lip, and she swipes at it. “You could be right, I guess. But here’s the thing. Boone is usually excited after we win. I tease him that he’s just as bad as his boys, getting so worked up. But last night, he was quiet. I asked him if everything was okay. I thought maybe his stomach was bothering him—he has trouble with his stomach. But he said he was just tired.”