Shoveling Smoke (6 page)

The little man
might have been thirty or fifty. He wore a suit of shiny gray silk, with a dark shirt, white tie, and black Italian loafers. He would have looked like an extra in a
Godfather
flick—the guy playing the corpse, given the pallor of his skin and the wrinkles in his suit—except that his hair was out of character. Carrot-colored, it fell back from a receding hairline and reached his skinny shoulders in lank, unwashed locks. The hair and the two days’ growth of stubble on his cheeks gave him away as a Texas kicker, a guy more at home in jeans, T-shirt, and running shoes than in Continental finery. He might as well have been wearing a bill cap with his Italian suit.

He reached over the desk and offered me his hand. Tattooed on the back of it was the blue-green tail of a reptile whose body must have been slithering up his arm underneath the shiny sleeve. He smiled at me, skin whitening as it tightened over a cheekbone that, some time past, had been badly broken.

“I’m Bevo Rasmussen,” the little man said. “I’ve been wanting to meet you.” I shook his hand and sensed something awry with the motion of his arm, like a lever with a bent connecting rod.

“My pleasure,” I said.

“I understand you’re a Houston man,” said Rasmussen, crossing his legs. I caught a flash of metal from under his pants cuff. He had a razor in his sock! “Houston’s a fine town. Wouldn’t happen to know a judge down there name of Nebold, would you? A federal judge?”

I said I was not familiar with the name.

“Judge Nebold is a good man,” Rasmussen said, smoothing the whiskers on either side of his mouth with a lazy gesture of his hand. “He has looked after one or two little affairs of mine in the past.”

I could not imagine anything a federal judge might do for the shabby little buccaneer sitting in front of me except to pass sentence on him. Molly Tunstall had suggested that I would not like Bevo Rasmussen, and she was right. I found him ridiculous and repulsive. And I felt a little guilty about my reaction. He was, after all, my firm’s client.
My
client.

Rasmussen held his hand up and flexed it so that the dragon’s tail tattooed on the back of it writhed. “You got a good handshake,” he said. “Strong. I can tell things about a man by his handshake.” There was a pause, in which I was supposed to ask what he could tell about me.

“I see,” I replied.

“I can tell you’re a man to be counted on, Counselor. I can tell we’re going to be friends.”

“I hope so.”

“Mind if I smoke?” he asked, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of a jacket pocket.

“Sorry,” I said, “there’s no smoking in the office.”

“That’s all right, that’s all right,” he said, pocketing the cigarettes. “It’s not going to ruin a budding friendship. Say, tell you what. I’m not just a client, Mr. Parker. I’m the welcome wagon.” He set a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the desk between us. “Cheers to your new job with Chandler and Stroud. I don’t know if you’re aware of the fact, sir, but Claymore County is dry. It’s twenty-two miles round-trip to the nearest liquor store, which happens to be run by an associate of mine. You wouldn’t happen to know where we might find some glasses, do you? We could toast your new job. You do drink, don’t you?”

“I do drink, and I appreciate the welcome, Mr. Rasmussen, but it’s a bit too early in the day for me to start.”

“Call me Bevo.”

“Let’s forgo the whiskey, Bevo.”

“Well, then, here’s something you might like to try,” he said, reaching into his inside coat pocket and bringing out a slim plastic package, which he tossed on the desk. Inside the package were shiny black patches of what I took at first to be boiled tree bark.

“Jerky?” I said.

“It’s another one of my bidniss interests. That’s genuine emu jerky. You know, the big African birds? That’s the most nutritious food in the world. Bursting with protein. Mark my words, that little package is going to make some people around here rich. Do you like jerky, Mr. Parker?”

I hadn’t eaten jerky since I was thirteen or fourteen, but I remembered liking it then. “As a matter of fact, I do,” I told him. “Thanks.”

The little man slapped a scrap of paper on the desktop. “My final gift of the morning,” he said. On the paper was scribbled a name and a phone number.

“Nevah June Balch?” I read.

“She’s expecting your call. Best herbalist in three counties,” he said.

“Herbalist?”

He leaned forward and whispered, “For your foot problem. That bromohydroxy business. She’ll clear that right up. Don’t worry about the fee. It’s taken care of.”

I felt myself coloring. “Thanks, Mr. Rasmussen, but my feet are fine.”

“Sure they are! And they’ll be even better when Nevah June gets through with them. Trust me on this. You’ll like her. She’s a favorite of Mr. Hardwick Chandler’s, too. She makes this salve helps him with his dandruff. Speaking of Mr. Chandler, I ain’t seen his jolly face around the office this afternoon.”

“No, Mr. Chandler isn’t here,” I said.

“Nor is Mr. Stroud, am I right?” he asked.

“Not at the moment.”

“But you’re here, ain’t you,” he said, smiling as if he had just proven a point. “You’re here holding down the fort.”

It seemed I had passed some sort of test. He sighed deeply. “You might not know it to look at me, Mr. Parker, but it’s been hand to mouth for me lately. Hand to mouth. A man who’s been wronged like me, a responsible man, a man of the community such as I am, it just plays fast and loose with his sense of purpose. Know what I mean? I mean, what’s it all for if it can all be taken away from you quick as a bullet? What has the American dream come to?”

There was an oily confidentiality in his tone that made my hands feel clammy.

“Let’s talk about my suit,” he said. For a moment, I thought he meant the lumpy ensemble he was wearing, which was coming unstitched at the shoulder. “Unless I miss my guess, that’s my file right there.”

The
law
suit—he was talking about the case concerning his dead quarter horses.

“So tell me, what do you think my chances are?”

“Mr. Rasmussen, I have just begun to examine the file. I’ll be happy to discuss your case with you after I have become thoroughly acquainted with it.”

“Come on, Mr. Parker,” Rasmussen insisted, “give me your gut feeling, right now. I’m a man who believes in gut feelings.”

I told him that I didn’t have a gut feeling yet, but that I would share it with him when it came to me.

In other words, I lied to him. My gut had been shouting at me for a good five minutes before Rasmussen appeared in my office. My gut told me we were going to be slaughtered in court, that he would never see any of his money, and that he would most likely be arrested and charged with burning his own horses. But I didn’t tell him any of that, partly because I hoped against hope that I was wrong, but partly because I didn’t want to see his reaction. Bevo Rasmussen was a weird, pathetic little man, but there was something else about him that was past pathetic. I didn’t know exactly what it was, some sort of look in his eyes, perhaps. But it was disturbing. I wasn’t exactly afraid of him. I just wanted him out of my office as quickly as possible.

“Mr. Parker.” It was Molly’s voice on the intercom. “I can’t get Mr. Stroud on the phone. He isn’t answering at home.”

“All right, Molly,” I said into the machine.

“Ho ho,” said Bevo Rasmussen with an ugly leer. “So he’s coming in, is he? I wouldn’t be surprised if Sally Dean hadn’t been wringing him out fit to die.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Haven’t you met Sally Dean?” he replied. “Never mind, you will.” He shook his head and made a grunting noise. “finest piece of tenderloin in the county, would you believe it? She drives all the way down from Mule Springs and cleans his plow for him. A sort of May-December romance, don’t you see?” He shrugged. “Some people have peculiar tastes, that’s all.”

I must have been staring at him, for he winked at me and smiled. “Oh, I know everything that goes on around here, Mr. Parker,” he said. “Everything. You might even say I keep the clocks in this town.” He stood, produced a Panama hat I had not noticed before, and with a flourish settled it on his head.

With his next words something new crept into his voice. “Look that file over real good, Counselor. Stroud won’t give me the time of day anymore, but I’ve got a sixth sense that tells me we’re in trouble.” The wheedling, the contrived affability were gone. In their place I detected the hint of a threat.

He leaned over the desk. “Those goddamn wops owe me a million dollars, and they’re not gonna get away with pissing in my hat. Stroud may not have the marbles left to win this case, and God knows Chandler never had the brains in the first place, but you’re a Houston man, a goddamn city lawyer.” He cracked his knuckles and pointed at me. “You’re it.”

I could not believe it. My own client, this fractured little man, was trying to intimidate me.

“I know you’ll do what it takes,” Rasmussen said, the diamond in his tooth flashing as he smiled. He held out his hand for me to shake. “It’ll be a pleasure doing bidniss with you.”

Ignoring his outstretched hand, I stood up and was about to tell him what I thought of him and his lawsuit and his conjectures about Stroud and Sally Dean, when suddenly a grimace crumpled Rasmussen’s face, and he clapped his hands over his ears. I felt it, too, a silent but palpable buzz, an invisible knife that cut for an instant through the hum of the air conditioner and sliced off the top of my skull. It was as if the air in the room had come apart along a razor-thin line. My vision blurred. An invisible cat danced its claws along my spine. The feeling lasted for maybe four seconds, then was gone. I had never felt anything like it.

“That son of a bitch!” snapped Bevo, storming out of the room. I stood blinking, probing my skull with my fingers to see if it had cracked.

“A word, Mr. Parker,” said Gilliam Stroud, who had materialized in front of my desk, broad-shouldered, hands behind his back.

“Did you feel that?” I asked him. My temples were throbbing. “Was it a sonic boom?”

Stroud ignored my questions. “I guess you’re wondering why you’re here,” he said.

“Mr. Stroud, there’s something weird going on.”

“Listen to me, son,” he said. “You have a mission.”

“You told me about it yesterday, remember?” I answered, closing one eye, then the other, checking my vision. “You said I was here to keep you from getting depantsed in court.”

“That’s one mission. There is another.” Stroud spoke in grim tones, a mortician explaining a mistake in the billing. “You have been hired, Mr. Parker, to perform a rescue.”

“A rescue?”

“You are here to rescue the founder of this firm.”

“Hardwick Chandler? Rescue him from what?”

“From the perils of the flesh,” Stroud intoned. “Nookie, my boy.”

“Nookie?”

“Our colleague is addicted to women, and his addiction has left him poised upon the verge of ruin.”

My brain had not stopped spinning. “Mr. Stroud, I think there’s something wrong with the air conditioner in this building.”

“When a noble man is destroyed, a little something dies in all of us. Don’t you find that to be so?”

I studied the old man’s face. Dizzy though I was, I recognized a summation speech when I heard one—or, rather, a parody of a summation speech, theatrical intonations and all—and it irritated me.

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls,” said Stroud.

“I’ll tell you what’s going to ruin Hardwick Chandler,” I said. “The damned interrogatories in the Rasmussen case. They’re going to ruin all of us. Mr. Stroud, tell me you turned them in. Tell me you didn’t forget to do that.”

He hushed me with an upraised hand. “Later, son. We’ll iron all that out later. Right now we have a far bigger problem on our hands. The salvation of a soul in need, a brother at the bar laid low by circumstance and a saucy eye.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. But I could not jolly him out of his hammy mode of Shakespearean regret. He loved Hardwick Chandler like a son, he avowed, and he couldn’t bear to see his son destroy himself.

“Together,” Stroud announced, “we shall exert so positive an influence as to rehabilitate a good man and a fine lawyer.” Stroud produced from behind his back the bundle that he had been hiding. It was a pair of pants on a hanger.

“Go!” he said, thrusting the pants at me.

“Go where?” I asked, taking the pants.

Stroud reached across the desk and clapped a giant hand on my shoulder. “Go and rescue Hardwick Chandler!”

It turned out that Hardwick Chandler
needed more than a pair of pants to be rescued. He needed a whole suit of clothes and a pair of shoes, all of which Molly Tunstall handed me on my way out the door. I wasn’t to know the reason for the wardrobe until I arrived at the farmhouse out in the country close to Mineola where, according to Gilliam Stroud, Chandler was holed up, “sideswiped,” said the old man, “by appetite.” Stroud gave me directions that kept me wandering back roads for an hour, griping at the cows as I passed.

I was driving by a six-foot-high section of chain-link fence, wondering what sort of cattle needed such a barrier to prevent their escape into the woods, when suddenly I passed what looked like an emaciated child in a gray ball cap and shaggy parka, staring at the road from inside the fence with his hands tucked high behind his back and his elbows sticking out at a weird angle. I turned to get a better look and almost landed in a bar ditch. It was a big, ugly bird. fifty yards further was a sign announcing that I was passing the Triple-B Emu and Ostrich Farm. Next to the sign stood another bird that looked too shaggy and too stout to be an ostrich. That must be an emu. The bird stood completely still, poised as if expecting me to paint its picture.

Ostriches had been a coming thing in Texas for some time, but this was the first ostrich ranch I had seen. Well, I thought, why not ostriches? Weren’t they the biggest birds in the world, and wasn’t this Texas, where big was an obsession? Maybe Texas farmers were breeding ostriches to take over as the state bird. I passed two other ostrich farms as I crisscrossed the countryside.

The locusts were going full blast when I finally found a place that fit Stroud’s description, a little yellow house with lace curtains and bright lavender trim on the windows and eaves, the sort of place you knew at a glance would be crammed with country knickknacks. The house looked deserted, but when I knocked at the door a curtain moved, and a man’s voice asked me my name. I gave it, the door opened, and I walked in to meet Hardwick Chandler.

“About fucking time,” he said.

He was a short man, five-ten, maybe forty-five years old, and plump as a football, with a tremendous throat bound tightly by three gold chains. He had short, curly red hair and pinkish, freckled skin, much of which I could see because the woman’s silk kimono he was wearing was wholly inadequate to the task of covering his immense stomach. The only other thing he was wearing was a pair of handcuffs, which dangled from his left wrist.

“Hardwick Chandler?” I asked.

“In the flesh,” he replied. Snatching the hangers out of my hands, he tossed the kimono on the floor and began to dress with frantic speed, the handcuff flapping around him. Chandler was so obese that when he moved, different parts of him seemed to vibrate on their own separate frequencies. The effect was one of immense energy being let loose all over his body. The pink-speckled roll of fat around his middle rippled in counterpoint to the flab of his neck and his upper arms as he worked his trousers up one leg and then the next.

“I had to break the damn bed,” he said, holding up the dangling handcuffs. “She’ll chew my ass good for that.” He told me he’d been in bed for four straight days with the woman who owned the house, whose name was Deirdre. The only time Deirdre would unlock him was when he had to go to the bathroom. They had had a fight that morning, and Deirdre had walked out, leaving him cuffed to the bed. I asked him what happened to the clothes he had been wearing when he arrived.

“Maybe she took them with her, for spite,” he replied. Then he smiled. “Or maybe they just burned up. Things got pretty hot in here.”

His wrist where the handcuff hung looked badly chafed and a little swollen.

“Are you okay?” I asked him.

“Love’s a hurtin’ thing,” he replied. He slid the handcuff into his shirtsleeve, followed it with his arm in a practiced motion that made me wonder if this sort of thing had happened to him before. When he was fully dressed, he stepped back into the front room to get a look at himself in a mirror, then offered me his unencumbered hand to shake.

“Wick Chandler,” he said, as if the last three minutes had never happened. “It’s great to meet you, Clay.”

After the introductions, our next order of business was to get the cuff off his wrist. He told me that he had turned the house upside down looking for the key, and sure enough, the place looked as if a pack of wild dogs had been set loose in it. So we went out into the backyard, where there was an anvil sitting on a couple of cinderblocks. Nearby on the ground was a big axe. Chandler laid his wrist on the anvil and invited me to strike the locked cuff with the flat end of the axe.

“What if I miss?” I asked.

“Clay, there’s a woman back in town that’ll kill me sure as we’re standing here if she sees me with these handcuffs on. Now, I hope you don’t miss, but I’d a hell of a lot rather have a bashed hand than a slit throat.”

I remembered the phone calls from the angry woman with the razor. “You know some dangerous women,” I told him, taking careful aim with the axe.

“That’s the only kind God makes,” he replied.