Cold in July (6 page)

“Is that some kind of threat, you sonofabitch?”

“Not at all. I was just saying it would be awful if
something happened to him. It could, you know? Look what happened to my son.”

“Maybe if you’d been a better father, it wouldn’t have
happened.”

“You have no idea what kind of father I was.”

“I can imagine. You stay away from my son. My family. Hear
me?”

“Don’t shit yourself, Dane. I was just pointing out how
horrible it would be if something happened to your little Jordan. Little kids
don’t always watch what they do. You have to be very careful with them. They
get hurt easy. Killed sometimes.”

“Come near my family, and I’ll kill you.”

He smiled at me and got out a cigarette and lit it. He
pushed the pack toward me. “Smoke?” I noticed his hands were exactly like my
father’s. Thick and square and powerful. It made me uncomfortable.

“I meant what I said, Russel.”

As I opened my car door and slid behind the wheel, he said,
“Have a nice day, sonny boy.”

10

“I told you to stay away from there,” Price said.

We were in the police assembly room, which served as a kind
of lounge, and like everything else about the station, it surprised me. It was
cool and clean. The vending machines were well stocked.

Price looked his usual sharp self. Today he wore a gray suit
with a maroon shirt and striped tie, and his shoes were as shiny as ever.

“I know,” I said. “But he wouldn’t have left me alone if I’d
stayed home. He’s been asking around about me. Even went to the newspaper
morgue to read about me, saw pictures so he could identify me.”

Price ran a hand over his face as if trying to reshape it.
“Anyone overhear you two?”

“No.”

“Tell me exactly what he said.”

I did.

“It wouldn’t have mattered if the two of you were overheard.
No real threat there. He even told you to have a nice day.”

“It’s the way he said it.”

“You got zip. Maybe if someone could testify that the tone
of his voice was threatening, you might have something, but not much. Besides,
you haven’t got anyone.”

“Can I get protection for my family?”

“Officially he hasn’t done anything.”

“He’s an ex-con.”

“He served his time… Look, I believe he threatened you, I
do. But it doesn’t amount to anything officially. I don’t make all the
decisions around here either. Even if I wanted to post someone to watch your
family I haven’t got a legal reason to do it. If you’re lucky, he’ll go away.
He could just be worked up over things. That’s natural. No crime in seeing the
man who killed your son. If he wanted to harm you, he could have done that at
the cemetery.”

“It isn’t me he wants, it’s my son. An eye for an eye, a
tooth for a tooth, a son for a son.”

“All right, listen up tight, Mr. Dane. Unofficially, I can
give you protection for a couple of days. It might get my ass in a crack, but
I’ll do it. It’s possible the chief will pull me off of it if he finds out, but
we’ll give it a shot, even if I have to do it myself. I’ll have a car watch your
place, and we’ll check with you from time to time.”

“You said a couple of days. That’s all you can do?”

“Two days, Mr. Dane. That’s it.”

“And what if he waits until the third day?”

“He makes a real threat you can prove, we’ll move in on him.
I’ll run a check on him in the meantime, and my suggestion to you is to get
another gun, sleep light, and hope he leaves town. I think there’s a good
chance he will.”

“I don’t find that too goddamn reassuring. You said he was
dangerous. You’re punishing me for not listening to you.”

“That’s stupid. He is dangerous. But I can’t do a thing
unless he tries something. Innocent until proven guilty, Mr. Dane.”

“When does this protection begin?”

“Tonight. That’s as soon as I can arrange it. I can’t make a
big deal out of it. We’re short-manned as it is.”

“In LaBorde?”

“More goes on here than you think, Mr. Dane. A lot more. I
want you to describe his car. If you’re lucky, he stole it. That would be
something to hold him on, and with him being an ex-con, it would be a quick trip
back to the pen. Perhaps for good this time.”

I didn’t know the license plate number, but I gave him a
good description of the car, for what that was worth. There must have been a
lot of old, blue Ambassadors around.

Though I didn’t much feel like it, I shook Price’s hand and
went outside. I understood his position, but I didn’t much care for it.

Standing there on the edge of the parking lot, I thought
about Russel and his son and tried to imagine them at home together; Ben on the
floor playing with little Freddy, or maybe sitting around in his bathrobe
Christmas morning, laughing while the boy unwrapped his presents. But these
weren’t visions I could hang onto. I could more easily imagine him teaching the
boy to beat a lock or hotwire a car.

Then I got to thinking about what Russel had said about my
son, and I got mad again, then scared. I drove over to the day school on North
Street to get Jordan early. I planned to call Ann from there and tell her I had
him and where she could meet us.

When I pulled into the church parking lot I saw Russel’s
Ambassador and Russel was standing over by the dumpster, smoking a cigarette.

I parked near his car, got out, made a point of. memorizing
the license plate this time, and went over to him.

Russel looked at his watch. “I didn’t think your boy got out
until three-forty-five.”

I swung at him with everything I had. He rolled his head
like a boxer to avoid it, but I caught him some on the jaw and the punch was
hard enough to move his head and send his cigarette flying out of his mouth.

I brought the left around and tried to coldcock him, but he
blocked that with his right forearm and stepped back out of range of any more
blows.

“You hit pretty hard for a frame builder, Dane. You got to
watch dropping your shoulder and roundhousing though. Gives your punch away,
takes half the sting out.”

“You sonofabitch,” I said.

“Could be,” he said, and he got out a fresh cigarette and
lit it. I stood there breathing heavy as I watched him take a puff and put the
lighter back in his pocket. I watched to see if his hands were trembling. They
weren’t. But mine were.

“Been to the cops yet? That’s what I figured you’d do. Go
straight to them. I think you’re of the opinion that I’m threatening you and
your family.”

I wanted to tear back into him, but he’d taken my shots so
easily, I figured, sixty or not, he could mop up the parking lot with me.

“I told you once to stay away from my family. I won’t tell
you again.”

“Careful, Dane,” he said. “You keep threatening me like
that, I may have to lodge a complaint.”

I walked back to my car and drove it over to the far side of
the lot and got out and walked through the side door. Once inside the glass
door, I turned to see if he was still standing there.

He wasn’t, and the Ambassador was gone.

11

I left a message for Ann at the school, told the
receptionist to tell her everything was all right and not to worry, but to meet
Jordan and me at the police station.

At the station, Jordan was restless and I bought him a Coke
and a package of those round peanut-butter-filled crackers. He drank some of
the Coke and used the can to mash the crackers into the table. That seemed to
bother Price. You would have thought it was his table. I didn’t make Jordan
stop.

“Who was there first?” Price asked. “You or Russel?”

“Russel.”

“Did he do anything to you?”

“No. He said he thought my son got off at three-forty-five
and I took a swing at him.”

“Did you make contact?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he hit you back?”

“No.”

Price did the reshaping number with his hand and face again.
“You still got nothing, Mr. Dane. The worst he could be accused of is
loitering. That’s a big parking lot. He could have been planning to go in one
of the stores on the other side of it; maybe he was having a smoke before going
inside. He could try and press charges against you for taking a swing at him.
You’ve admitted yourself that you did.”

I didn’t even feel like arguing anymore. I could see where
this was going. “For what it’s worth,” I said. “I got his license number.”

“I’ll run a check on the computer. Give me the number. It
won’t take but a minute.”

I gave him the number and he went away with it and came back
in about two minutes. I was watching the clock.

“Local car rental. All legal.”

“I guess that leaves me where I was.”

“I’m afraid so. I know how you feel, but I can’t arrest a
man on another’s say-so. Even if the one accused is an ex-con. If we arrested
everyone that might commit a crime, the jail would be full long before
sundown.”

“I get the picture. But you still intend to have someone
watching the house tonight?”

“That’s right.”

I collected Jordan and we went outside to wait on Ann.
Jordan told me a story about a little blue rabbit that could run fast, and
about five minutes later Ann drove up. I told her to follow us to our favorite
Mexican restaurant and I’d tell her the story there.

          
· · ·

Ann went through all the arguments I had given Price, and I
gave her all of Price’s arguments back. She didn’t like my answers any better
than I had liked them coming from Price.

“I think you and Jordan should leave town,” I said. “Stay
somewhere until this blows over.”

“I don’t like that,” Ann said.

“I don’t want the idghalada, daddy, I want chips.”

“It’s enchilada, son, and don’t talk when we’re talking.
It’s not polite.”

“But I don’t want—”

“Will you hush, son? I’m trying to talk to your mother. Or
she’s trying to talk to me… Christ, I don’t remember who was talking to who.”

“I just want chips,” Jordan said.

“Eat the chips then,” I said, “but let mommy and me talk.”

Jordan started eating out of the bowl of corn chips, looking
quite content with himself.

“I was saying,” Ann said, “that I don’t like that idea. I
don’t think we should leave. He could follow us. If we went to your mother’s
for example, and he did follow us, we could put her in jeopardy as well as
ourselves. I say we do as Price suggested. We get a gun and watch out. We’ve
got burglar alarms and bars now. That should be worth something.”

“We could take Jordan out of school a few days,” I said.
“And maybe you could get some time off. I could let James and Valerie run the
shop and we could all stay home for a time. Wait Russel out.”

“It seems like the best idea to me,” Ann said. “Let’s go
home.”

12

I drove out ahead of Ann, and Jordan rode with her. I began
to relax some. I began to see everything in a different light. I felt silly.
Just because Russel was trying to scare me, didn’t mean he had the balls to do
anything. It didn’t necessarily mean anything more than he was upset about his
son, which was normal. He was certainly no cream puff, I could see that, but he
was still an old man and my house was barred and full of alarms and I had a
shotgun in the garage and tough as he might be he couldn’t eat lead, as they
might say in a B gangster movie.

I thought about the shotgun. Like the pistol, it was
something I had acquired more on the spur of the moment than by design.

About five years back, in a town close to LaBorde, some nut
had broken into a house and killed a family while they slept. Two of the
victims were kids. Ann was pregnant with Jordan at the time, and I guess I was
overcome with paternal instincts. I had never owned a gun and had never wanted
to, but I went out and bought the .38 that had eventually killed Russel. I told
Ann’s father about the .38 on a visit to Houston, and he had given me the
shotgun, told me it was better than the revolver. Said it was less likely to
penetrate walls and injure family members. It was a short-barreled Winchester
pump, and he gave me some double aught loads and I took the shotgun and the shells
home and they went into the garage and the pistol stayed in the shoe box. As my
hysteria faded, I forgot about the shotgun and nearly forgot about the .38.

To the best of my memory the shotgun was broken down and was
in the garage storage cabinet in the original box with oilcans and tools in
front of it. I told myself I would get it out of the box when I got home and
load it, put it under my bed, but in the end, I was certain I would feel silly
with it there because nothing was going to come of my mental cowboy movie.
Russel would lose interest in his dead son, as he had probably had little
interest in him when he was alive, and he would go away and things would return
to normal.

But when I pulled up in our drive and Ann and Jordan pulled
in behind me, the fear and uncertainty returned. Even with the bars and the
alarms, or perhaps because I had to have them, I knew I might never feel safe
in that house again. And I was more certain of this when I went ahead of them
with my key in hand ready to unlock the door.

It was cracked open about three inches already.

I turned and scooped Jordan up with one arm and grabbed
Ann’s elbow with the other and directed them back to Ann’s car.

“Get in,” I said.

“Richard?”

“We just got here, Daddy.”

“Get behind the wheel, Ann. The front door is unlocked and
open.”

She gave me a strange look, then turned and opened the car
door. I put Jordan inside and Ann climbed in behind the wheel.

“Get to the Ferguson’s and call the police. Ask for Price.”