The Jealous Kind (44 page)

T
O SAY IT
was a rough place doesn't get close to it. Back then, Houston was the murder capital of the world. It was only forty miles from a town called Cut and Shoot, supposedly named because of a fight among the townspeople over the design of their church building. Violence was an inextricable part of the culture; it hung in the air, perhaps passed down from the massacres at Goliad and the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto or the feuds during Reconstruction or the systematic extermination of the Indians. One of Houston's most famous beer joints was called the Bloody Bucket.

The patrons at the place in the Heights were nine-ball hustlers, drifters, grifters, gamblers, and midnight ramblers. Driven less by passion than necessity, they had an encyclopedic knowledge of bail bondsmen, local flatfeet (whom they called roaches), shylocks, floating craps games, call girls (there were no brothels in Houston), hot-property fences, money washers, Murphy artists, jack-rollers, street dips, safecrackers, prizefight fixers, arsonists, and dope dealers. In its way, the bar and poolroom represented another country, one that didn't quarrel with human nature and the perfidious tendencies that hide in the unconscious.

I went inside the phone booth in back and closed the folding door and dialed Vick Atlas's number. There was no answer. I had a cup of coffee at the bar and waited fifteen minutes and called again. This time he picked up.

“Hey, Vick,” I said. “I'll try to make this brief.”

The line was silent.

“Are you there?”

“I assume this is my favorite hemorrhoid calling.”

“I just came from the police station and wanted to update you,
Vick. They were talking about your hit man, the one who used to murder people with your father for a hundred dollars a hit. His name slips my mind.”

“Like always, I got no idea who or what you're talking about. You trying to be cute again? That's what we're doing here? You got a tap on this?”

“Your man had an accident at the church campground, Vick. He got knocked in a gully by the church bus while driving a stolen car. I remember now. His first name is Devon.”

“Where are you?”

“It's Devon Horowitz,” I said. “The cops said he's an imbecile, just like you and your father. They said y'all have the reverse King Midas touch. Everything you touch turns to shit.”

“Say that to my face.”

“That's why I called. I'd like for us to get together.”

“You think I'm stupid?” he asked.

“Not at all. I think you're scared. I think you hate your father and your father hates you. Anyway, I'm in the Heights.” I gave him the name of the bar and its address.

“What are you up to, asshole?”

“Don't just send your guys, Vick. Bring yourself, too. Prove you're not the chickenshit, gutless dimwit everybody says you are.”

I hung up and sat at the bar and watched two men shooting nine ball, my ears popping so loudly I couldn't hear the balls drop into the leather pockets.

I
WENT INTO THE
men's room and washed my face and looked in the mirror. My heart was tripping, my breath coming hard in my throat, beads of water trickling down my face like moisture on a pumpkin. The room looked a hundred years old. There was a flush tank with a chain high up on the wall; the floor was wood, dark with stains and soft as cork from toilet overflow or urine that had missed the bowl. A dirty towel hung in a loop from a machine above the toilet. There
was not one inch of graffiti written or carved on the walls. These may seem strange details to notice, but they each represented in some aspect the situation I found myself in. I had broken the hands off my own clock and sealed myself inside an era and a culture that had more to do with the past than the future. Maybe my spells were an incremental journey to this spot, a retrograde place that was grimed and smelled of piss, where you dared not scratch your name on the shithouse wall unless you wanted your fingers broken.

I went back to the telephone and called Valerie. Through the plastic panels in the door, I saw the bartender watching me. Valerie picked up on the second ring. “Is that you?” she said.

“It's me.”

“Where are you?”

I told her.

“What are you doing in there? It's full of criminals.”

“So is the whole town.”

“What
is
going on with you, Aaron?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to talk.”

“Saber called and said you were at his house and talking crazy.”

“He's exaggerating. Look, I have to take care of some things, Val. Will you do me a big favor?”

“What?”

“I'd like for you to talk to my mother. I'd like for you to be closer to her. She's strange in her ways, but her heart is in the right place.”

She made a sound like she was blowing her hair out of her face. “Either come to my house right now or I'm going to that pool hall.”

“I'll try to get there directly.”

“Directly? I hate that word. It's what ignorant people say when they want to sound folksy. When did you start talking folksy?”

“I love you, Valerie.”

The line went silent.

“Did you hear me?”

“What's wrong, Aaron? Is it that man from the campground? Did you see him again?”

“No, I didn't. Don't worry anymore. Tell Saber I've got it under control.”

“I'm babysitting the child from next door. I can't leave. Don't do this to me.”

“I've got to go now. Remember what I said about my mother, okay?” I eased the receiver back onto the hook.

I
ASKED THE BARTENDER
for another cup of coffee. His shoulders and chest had the solidity of concrete; the backs of his fingers were tattooed with illegible letters. He poured into my cup but set the coffeepot down on a towel rather than back on the stove. “What are you doing in here?”

“Waiting on somebody,” I replied.

“This isn't a social center.”

“I didn't mean to bother anybody.”

“Who you waiting on, kid?”

“They didn't give me their names.”

He put the coffee back on the burner and picked up the towel and wiped the wet spot the pot had left on the bar. “Where you from?”

“Houston.”

“Where in Houston?”

“The southwest side.”

He gazed through the front door at the street. “The warm-up is on the house. Drink up.”

“You're telling me to leave?”

He huffed air out of his nostrils and filled his chest with air. “Don't complicate my day. That's the operating rule here. Think you can abide by that?”

“Yes, sir. Have you seen any strange guys around?”

“What do you mean by strange?”

“Greaseballs.”

“This isn't a cuddly place. That's not a good word.”

“Guys who carry guns and shoot other people,” I said.

He threw his towel into the air and caught it, then walked away.

I watched the clock. Five minutes passed, then ten. The two nine-ball shooters stacked their cues and ordered draft beers and started peeling hard-boiled eggs at the end of the bar. The bartender was reading a newspaper he had flattened on the bar. I saw him look up and study something or someone out the front window. When I turned on the barstool, I saw a maroon Packard station wagon, one with real wood paneling and whitewall tires and chrome-spoked wheels; it drove to the end of the block and disappeared. The bartender folded his newspaper and walked toward me, trailing one hand on the bar top.

“A couple of guys out there have been around the block twice,” he said.

“The ones in the station wagon?”

He nodded.

“I don't know anybody with a station wagon,” I said.

“They were in the alley a little bit ago.” I didn't reply. He leaned on his arms. “They're hitters. One of them was trying to see through the back door. Want to tell me what's going on?”

“You know Merton Jenks?” I asked.

“Everybody knows Merton Jenks.”

“Call him if things go bad in here.”

“Are you out of your fucking head?”

“I don't think so.”

“Scram. Now.”

“I'd appreciate it if I could stay a little longer.”

“You'll appreciate being alive if I have to repeat myself.”

“Was one of them a big guy? His name is Devon Horowitz.”

The bartender stabbed his finger an inch from my nose.

I went out the door. An old gas-guzzler packed with children passed by. I thought I saw the little Mexican girl from the park waving at me. I raised my hand in reply, but the car turned a corner and was gone.

On the next block, I saw the station wagon parked at the curb in front of a pawnshop, the sunlight's reflection as bright as an acetylene
torch on the windshield. Inside the glare, I thought I saw a man step out on the curb, but even with my hat brim shadowing my eyes, I couldn't make out his features.

The driver shifted into reverse, turned around in the middle of the intersection, and drove away. I got into my heap and headed for Vick Atlas's apartment building in the Montrose district.

T
HE CONCIERGE STOPPED
me at the desk. “Sir, you can't go upstairs.”

“Why not?”

“Aren't you the person who attacked Mr. Atlas?”

“I have no memory of that. Is Vick in?”

“Mr. Atlas went somewhere. Please leave.”

“You mean he's not here?”

“If you go upstairs, I'll call the police.”

“I'll go up there and check. You're doing a good job. I'll tell Vick.”

I rode up to the penthouse and knocked on the door. There was no answer. I walked to the end of the corridor and looked down into the alley. Two men in dark trousers and immaculate long-sleeved white shirts billowing with wind, the cuffs rolled, were talking by the maroon station wagon. They were young and lithe and had long black hair combed straight back, a small pigtail like a matador's on the nape of the neck. I opened the window and stepped out on the fire escape, the steel grid screeching under my weight. They both looked up. I leaned over the handrail and lifted a hand in greeting. Neither reacted. They started talking again, glancing at the street and at the other end of the alley where my heap was parked. They didn't recognize me. Cisco Napolitano had said Jaime Atlas's hired killers were imports who never knew their target. The only one who might recognize me was Devon Horowitz. He had taken a photo of me at a bad angle in poor light in front of the theater.

Vick Atlas had not shown up at the bar and poolroom in the Heights. Now he had eluded me again. I stepped back inside and took the elevator down to the lobby. “You're right,” I said to the concierge. “Vick isn't here.
Two of his friends are in the alley, though. They're killers from Sicily. I'll tell them you want them off the property.”

I walked outside. The sun was a reddish-purple melt in the west, the clouds aflame, the breeze out of the south, fresh and cool and smelling of rain and flowers. I saw no sign of the maroon station wagon or the two men who looked like matadors. I got into my heap and drove to River Oaks, my mufflers purring on the asphalt in the cooling of the day.

B
UT FIRST I STOPPED
at a drugstore and called home. My mother answered. “Decide to have supper with us?”

“Sorry, Mother, I got tied up.”

Then she surprised me. “That's all right. I put your plate in the icebox. Where are you?”

“Out on Westheimer. I'll be there soon. Is Daddy there?”

“I'll put him on. Are you all right, Aaron?”

“Sure.”

“Just a minute.”

She set down the phone. A moment later my father picked it up. “Have trouble with your car?” he said.

“No, sir. I need to take care of some things. I want to ask you something.”

“Hold on. Take care of what things?”

“When you were in the trenches, how did you get the courage to go over the top the first time?”

“I didn't get the courage,” he replied.

“Sir?”

“I never had courage. None of us did. We ran at Fritz because we were too frightened to run in the other direction. Where are you, son? What are you into?”

“I've got to get these guys off our backs.”

“Tell me where you are. Let me help you.”

“You already have. I'll be fine. If I'm a little late getting home, don't wait up.”

He started to argue. I took the receiver from my ear so I couldn't hear his words. When he stopped speaking, I placed it to my ear again. “I'll be swell. The circus is coming to town in August. We'll be in the front seats.”

I set the receiver back on the hook and got into my heap and drove into that giant island of oak trees and wealth and faux antebellum splendor that was Grady's homeland. There was a squall in the Gulf, and horse tails of purple rain were spreading across the blueness of the sky. I glanced in the rearview mirror. The Packard station wagon was two blocks behind me. A piece of wet newspaper slapped against my windshield and disappeared into the vortex of wind and trees behind me; the gearshift knob was throbbing like an impacted wisdom tooth inside my palm.

B
Y THE TIME
I got to Grady's block, the sky had gone dark. The rain was blowing in sheets, leaves floating in the gutters. All the lights were on in Grady's house. I parked at the curb and cut the engine and waited. Two or three cars with their headlights on were coming up the street. Each of them passed me without slowing down. The station wagon was not among them. I could see two cars parked by Grady's carriage house, but I couldn't make out what kind. I thought about my father's words regarding the nature of courage. I believed he was telling the truth about himself and his friends. They had been terrified, but they had stepped across a line and surrendered to their fate, whatever it might be.