Lake Charles (31 page)
My tire impressions left from our Saturday outing were still visible in the sand to the lane branching off the state road and leading to Lang’s Teahouse. I feared my guess Sizemore had come this way on horseback was wrong. The dance pavilion’s ruins came into sight where the lane veered to the left. The braking cab truck slew in the sand.
I keyed off the engine parked on the same spot as on Saturday, more than a quarter-century ago now it seemed. Our trailered bass boats still loitered behind the bushy hedge. My roving glance halted a few strides shy of the T-dock where I’d sank Mr. X into his watery grave. After vaulting out of the truck bed, Mr. Kuzawa made a half-circle, absorbing our drab surroundings.
“And to think the cream of the bands jammed here,” he said.
“This marina turns my stomach.” Edna rubbed her goose-pimpled forearms.
“We’ll soon be off,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
“What happened after you left us on Saturday?” I asked her.
She inflated her chest, and her breath wheezed out as a pained sigh. “Livid at Cobb, I gunned off on my jet ski. Speaking of the devil, where is he again?”
My teeth clicked as the tragic words gummed in my throat.
Mr. Kuzawa was blunt. “A grower guarding Sizemore’s dope plants killed Cobb while out searching for you.”
I rebuffed her imploring eyes. “Death was fast. Sorry, Edna.”
“Oh, my dear Lord.” Tears wrung out of her bleary eyes and leaked in hot tracks down her sore cheeks. “Cobb … he’s dead … oh, my dear Lord.”
“Sis, pull it together,” I told her in a confidential whisper. “Give Agent Sutwala the rest of your story, so we can end this and go home. You’d headed off toward the earth dam and . . .”
Edna’s knuckle trapped the salty trickles to her tears. She sniffed. “Cobb had pushed my right buttons. He always could.” She sniffed again. I hope she didn’t break down sobbing before she resumed her story. “I flew over Lake Charles. The rush of the air swooshing against my face was great, and it also helped to cool down my hissy fit.”
“We heard your jet ski’s engine,” I said.
“Right. When I reached the earth dam, I buzzed along it.” Throwing back her shoulders, she gulped to draw in more air. “A man carrying a crossbow schlepped out of the woods and stopped at the lake’s edge.”
My nod encouraged her. “Yeah, I think we met.”
Her fingers tucked away a strand of the red hair blowing into her lips. “Curious, I watched him. He crouched, scooped up a handful of the lake water, and shook his head. I yelled over to him. After glancing up at me, he startled and signaled, acting as if he’d something on his mind.
“Completely clueless, I puttered over. As I pulled up on the jet ski, he lunged and walloped me over the head with something hard. I fell unconscious. Later when I came to with a monster headache and a big lump, I found myself tied up and sitting in a campsite not far from the lake. Did you happen to find my barrette I left behind?”
I dug it out of my pocket to give her.
“Thanks. The two men argued over who owned the baggie of dope. I knew they grew it there, and I’d learned their dirty, little secret. That scared me. If they wanted to shut me up, I was toast. So I pretended I was out of it. Later, the same one marched me at gunpoint out to the state road where they’d hid a jeep in the laurel. He drove me to the mansion and forced me into the hole to lock up where you freed me.”
“Did the man left at the campsite keep the crossbow?” I asked her.
“Yes—and he killed Cobb, didn’t he?”
I nodded, my eyes roving over Lake Charles in the direction of their campsite in the high country.
Agent Sutwala’s head shifted. “Hey all, an Appaloosa just wandered up and grazes near the cattail reeds.” Her nod directed our attention to the riderless horse with its hand-tooled saddle. Its scabbard held a scoped, high power rifle.
“Sizemore has scrambled off,” said Mr. Kuzawa.
But Agent Sutwala who’d studied her subject’s behavior since May understood the craven way he thought. “No, Sizemore is a coward. He’d never run willy-nilly into the bush. He’s hunkered down here, banking on the probability we’ll figure he’s fled on foot and strike out after him.”
“Try to call him out,” I said to Mr. Kuzawa.
Agent Sutwala nodded her approval.
“Sizemore!” Mr. Kuzawa’s drill sergeant voice boomed. “It’s all over now. The DEA is here.” He brandished his 12-gauge and racked a shell into its chamber. “You killed my boy Cobb. So the DEA is your best deal. Or your ass is mine. You don’t want that, believe it.”
A muffled response issued from under the T-dock. “Stand easy. I’m coming out.”
“Toss all weapons.” Crouching in her stance, Agent Sutwala aimed her 9 mm straight on the T-dock. “Hands behind your head and move into the clear. Do it slowly. Nothing sudden.”
Like the cornered rat he was, Sizemore did as ordered and duckwalked out from under the T-dock, the bright sun hurting his eyes. The flamboyant lawyer wore tan jodhpurs and a white shirt above riding boots sleek and black as his thoroughbreds.
“You pay the piper,” said Mr. Kuzawa. “No more holing up in basements or lamming off.”
His overconfident smile under the Van Dyke beard ridiculed us. “Pay for what? I’ve done nothing unlawful.”
“Then why did you crouch under the pier?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I heard a truck engine and played it safe. It was a perfectly natural reaction.”
“Uh-huh. This is a strange place to ride a horse.”
“Not really. I do it twice every day, morning and evening.”
Using his new revelation, I cobbled together the final stray ends. “I know why you do. You pick up your pot cuttings. Too bad you wasted your time by coming today because we trampled under your gardens.”
“Then where’s your evidence for my alleged crimes?” He strutted over and gloated at me. Agent Sutwala covered him. “You’ve destroyed it all.”
His blast of rancid breath repulsed me. “Those bulging saddlebags hold your harvested pot. Your growers pack it here. More than what is in your saddlebags streams out of Lake Charles. The larger gardens probably grow on the grassy balds. Your drug mules will grab a plea deal and testify about the rest of your set up.”
“We’ve already sketched out the basics,” said Agent Sutwala.
Sizemore switched his gray eyes to her. “You’re really the DEA?”
“Duped you when you hired me, didn’t I?” She glanced off at Will Thomas Mountain. “Finding this narcotics source is our linchpin evidence. You’re shut down for keeps.”
“Snatch off the saddlebags,” I said. “That’s what lands our dope pimp behind bars.”
“I’ll bury you,” he said.
“Too late. You already drove my life underground.” My gape parried with his gray eyes that I last saw shine with sadistic glee in my prison cell before he sapped me to recover in a hospital ward with a concussion. “What did you pay Herzog to double cross me?”
“You’re confused. I never brought in Herzog. He was a buffoon.”
A pang of doubt stunned me. Had we misread Herzog’s treachery at the wayside? With Agent Sutwala standing there, I didn’t dwell on it but asked, “Why did you kill Ashleigh?”
Sizemore was mute but his hate-blazed face just as well confessed to it.
“She deserved better than you,” I said.
Sizemore muttered for my ears only. “You think so? She was a murderous, little slut.”
I crafted a likely scenario of her murder. “That night when we returned from The Devil’s Own concert, you heard our van pull up at your mansion. You knew Ashleigh and I went to the Chewink Motel. She’d partied there before, no doubt. You gave us plenty headstart before you cantered off after us in your Porsche.”
Sizemore yawned but his droopy lower lip quivered, a telltale nervous tic I’d seen him use in my prison cell. I was driving my wooden stake into the monster’s heart, so I hammered even harder. “By the time you arrived, the bored DEA boys had left the parking lot, and Mrs. Cornwell was asleep. For a price, either she or the maid had slipped you a duplicate key.
“So you stole into Room 7 and gave the toxic PCP to Ashleigh. How I don’t know. A syringe probably. Then you duct taped the junk PCP under the bed table. Your less-than-perfect frame job had pinned me in the middle.”
The haughty Sizemore laughed. “You’ve got a vivid imagination, but no direct proof.”
“On Ashleigh’s homicide, not yet. But on drug trafficking, big time. I’m sorry to foil your plans for a future cocaine ring. Maybe you can sell it in the yard.”
“You’re nothing but trailer trash,” he said, an unsmiling slur.
Rage balled up my knuckles to smash in his leer of superiority. But restraint weighed in, and I slow counted. One … I couldn’t stoop to his level. I was no thug. Two … but the putrid vapors breezing off Lake Charles defiled my nose. I saw the parade of dead men: Mr. X at Lang’s Teahouse, Acne Scars the punk robber at the store, the archer at the growers’ campsite, and Herzog at the wayside. Three … all of the dark shit—betrayal, greed, lust—had run into my life from Lake Charles. So I reached back to slug a right cross at Sizemore’s chin.
“Don’t, Brendan. “ Her face and words tough, Agent Sutwala dodged Mr. Kuzawa’s restraining hand and approached me. “Take a breath … relax … good, there … now, back away, and I’ll take control. Do it, now.”
Her incisive command told me the violence had to stop. As she commanded, I faded away from Sizemore. But my fists didn’t go lax, and neither did Sizemore’s oily smirk.
Agent Sutwala stepped between us, saying to Sizemore, “You have the right to remain silent . . .”
Mr. Kuzawa’s eyes skimmed the ominous, battleship gray clouds bunching over Lang’s Teahouse. “The damn hurricane will hit us if we don’t hustle.”
“I hope it blows up and levels the earth dam and Lake Charles dies.” After I reseated the Magnum loads, I wedged the .44 into my waistband. I wasn’t in the mood to take any shit off anybody.
Mr. Kuzawa, laughing, cracked the bond seal on his fifth, and we alternated tipping the Jack Daniels. It scorched all the way down. Invading the laurel hell, we set Will Thomas Mountain as our compass bearing. Pearly wisps of haze shrouded the grassy bald while Lake Charles reeked of a morgue’s drain. The smell of death was fitting. Seeing the algae scum brought to mind our bass boats still racked on the trailer at Mama Jo’s house. The Umpire Bank would soon repo them. I didn’t care. We’d left Edna’s jet ski in the sheet metal building. Evidence, said Agent Sutwala. Again, I just didn’t care.
The morning packed a joint-numbing chill. I flipped up my jacket collar, and my coughs racked my lungs. Jags of pain drilled my temples. One consolation was the early frost had killed the gnats and deer flies. Coming to the ruins of the pot plants in the first glen, we redoubled our gait. Mr. Kuzawa had brought the sheaf of a rolled up sailcloth, and I lugged along the hatchet I’d sharpened earlier on a buhrstone.
“Something should be left under the rocks.”
My nod was terse. “Jesus Christ couldn’t tunnel out of there.”
“Don’t go dragging Him into this.” Mr. Kuzawa kissed the upended Jack Daniels bottle, then said, “This Lake Charles mess is all of our own shameful doing.”
“I heard that.”
My palm swiped off the fifth’s glass rim, and I nailed a hearty swallow. The booze re-fired my near comatose heart, and we slogged on until passing under the firs into the growers’ old campsite. The abandoned black pot and fishing equipment were still there. The stench from Cobb’s crude sepulcher needled our nose linings. My glance didn’t include the dead archer, but the crossbow’s shot arrow still creased a streaking coppery blur in my brain.