* * *
That afternoon I did a records check on the drilling company. Mitchell Corporation had racked up litigation against them draggin' on for years. On a hunch I ran a criminal history on the president, the V.P., and the operations manager, Guy Grundfest. The president had a domestic on him two years ago. The V.P. was clean. Grundfest had two assault convictions, one in El Paso, one in Houston, and a theft-by-check out of Huntsville. What rang a bell, though, was the name of the company CEO, Ray Wayne Wooley. I'd seen that name before but didn't know where. It gave me a funny feeling. The more I wanted to shake it off, the more it hung on.
In an hour I'd have to get ready for my evening job, the one I mentioned to Minnie Chaundelle.
I called Stinger. "Who you know named Wooley? Ray Wayne Wooley."
"Not a single sinnin' soul."
"Don't sound familiar, nothin'?"
"Nope."
"Okay, what do you know about drilling outfits? That Bazile boy's workin' for a company might be doin' some fishy stuff, but it seems like he's not quite ready to lay it all out."
"Sonny's maybe got to boil in his own oil a while," Stinger said.
"I'd like to see what I can do to avoid that."
"You'd like to see what Minnie Chaundelle's sugah tase like."
"That too. But in the meantime I don't want to see no jacko playin' slice-'n'-dice with that boy again neither."
"Lemme ask around. You up the car lot this evenin'?"
"That's right. I'll have my cell phone with me, you need to call."
"I don't know, maybe I need a new car. Maybe I'll see ya around."
I rang up a reporter I met at a legal investigator's conference one time, nerdy guy named Jobar Wilson, liked to go by Buck. Once you saw him you knew how bad he needed to, but it was hard for me to remember to say that name. He was rackin' on a story about the blues bands playin' for the Juneteenth festival. That's the three-day annual celebration marking the about-date when word reached Texas the slaves were freed. Buck supported what Verlyn told me about wildcatters sometimes overselling a well. "An investor might put up the million it takes to drill a hole, okay?, but then the wildcatters get greedy. Say they meet a guy at the Petroleum Club's got another million to toss around. They take him on, don't happen to mention they already got their million to start the drill. That way they're sure to have enough money in case they run into problems. Or, they're lookin' ahead to the next hole. Say, then, their kid's buddy has a daddy with money to invest. Okay, they take him on too. Problem: Now the well comes in productive. Oops. They got too many people to pay, 'cause it's not going to be
that
productive. Ass-is-grass time."
"So they go bankrupt," I said. "Happens every day."
"Wrong deal." He waited like an actor thinking he invented timing. "Nuhuh. What they do,
they plug the hole
. Plug the hole and
say
it's dry."
I said, "And they go unplug it later."
"No. What do they care if the poor schmucks don't get a return? They're not in the production/refining business, they're in the drilling business."
"Hey now," I said. "Grifters everywhere."
I was letting him go when I got him back and asked, "Jobar, does the name Ray Wayne Wooley mean anything to you?"
There was a pause and I wondered if he was playin' me, till he said, "Might be, Cisroe. But I'd sure rather you call me Buck."
"Sorry, man. Buck." I could hear him clacking on a keyboard.
"Ray Wayne Wooley," he said. "He's the brother of Brant Wooley. D. A. down the courts building. Saw that name in the Society page the other day."
* * *
I rang up Verlyn several times. He either didn't have a machine or it was turned off. If Verlyn knew the connection between Mitchell Corp.'s CEO and the chief district attorney for the city, that boy owned more sap than I'd given him credit for. Maybe more stupid, too. Maybe that's what his sister meant.
At six I had to give it up and get to my evening job. It was for a rich brother bought a fancy pre-owned car and suspected the dealer fooled with the odometer. Asked me would I pose as a salesman to see if I could sniff out their practice— didn't matter what-all it would cost him, it was the principle. I said I'd do it for a week but how'd I know I could even get hired? He laughed. His voice sounded like a nail coming out of hard wood. "You Sneaky Petes just another kind of con man. Tell me different and I'll show you a hog can dance."
This business, you do a lot of things for a dollar.
So I was up on the auto corridor on North Shepherd, standing outside in a shirt with too much starch in it and listening to a blues station over headphones hooked up to a radio clipped to my belt. Now and then I'd roll down the sound and take out my cell phone and try Verlyn's number again.
Two couples came in, took my time, walked away. I was going for a bathroom break when I saw Stinger's faded tan truck. He got out and put on his shades against the lot lights. When he reached me, he said, "You might want ta come with me, Cisroe. They got your boy."
* * *
Verlyn Vincent Venable, twenty-four years old. Ideals, character, history, brains, beauty. All that, ready… for what? To be put in the ground for worm feed. Officials said he didn't make one of the curves up on Allen Parkway, the tree-lined drive that streams along in sync with the bayou.
Stinger guessed better, and so did I.
But it wasn't till the next morning at four A.M. that I knew for sure. Buck Wilson reported the findings to me after I gave him a call and he reached a contact at the morgue down on Old Spanish Trail. A single .40-caliber round sent parts of Verlyn's skull zinging over the black bayou waters that carried a full moon on its back. Rage and sorrow filled my soul. I shattered a pane in my bedroom window when my loose shoe went through.
* * *
My heart cinched down for Minnie, that big lovely woman struck with grief, and I was going to go over her place, when Stinger said he already called and a friend of hers answered, and he could hear some awful wailing in the background, and what women need at a time like this was other women.
By the book, I had no more to do for Minnie Chaundelle. I'd found her brother briefly, and that's all I was paid for. But it made me sick thinkin' I could've maybe done somethin' to prevent him being given over to evil.
I stayed away from Minnie's but I thought of her and that poor boy in and out all that day. After a while, I played back what Stinger said about pissin' in your boots and whinin' about it, and about Verlyn himself saying spit or swallow. I decided I wanted to have a second look at that book he left at Minnie's.
Around five I was leavin' my house to get dinner when Stinger came by. I stood talkin' to him outside his pickup.
Across the street, men were handling pieces of tin for a new roof. The sun was a gray, sharp light through the clouds, and the brilliance it gave off struck Stinger's face in a way that made him look hard and mean.
"We gon' get him," he said.
"Which one? We got no idea—"
"The hail we don't."
I said, "It could be Grundfest, sure. He's got assaults. It could be a high muckety like Wooley. Or it could be a low-ass snake-clambake like the one cut the boy in the shoulder. How you gon' pick which one?"
"Young brother down, Cisroe. Could've done good in this world."
"I know that. But there are ways to handle it."
"Sure there
are
."
"Legal ways."
"Bullshit," he said, and yanked the far window handle in circles till the glass got down low enough he could spit. Then he pulled out a white sock he carried in his pocket and wiped his mouth with it. "Who gon' tell Minnie Chaundelle that? You?"
* * *
After dinner we drove to Minnie's. A woman named Ardath Mae was there. She had silver in her hair and a church look about her that I guessed made Stinger all of a sudden shy. Ardath Mae said Minnie went with another friend to make Verlyn's funeral arrangements. "That child
all
broken up," Ardath Mae said. "Don't know how she gon' come out thothah side."
I asked if it would be all right if I checked Minnie's bedroom for something Verlyn might've left there.
Ardath looked at Stinger before giving me a nod. As I was leaving to the back, I heard her say, "Whatchu been up to, Mistah G.? Been a long time, ain't it, now?"
* * *
Minnie's room was full of picture frames and vases glued with beads and nutshells, and more hanging in strands in front of the closet like something out of the hippie days. It took me all of a minute to find Verlyn's book under a shoebox on the closet shelf. When I came out, Stinger and Ardath Mae were standing kind of close together. I showed her what I was going to make off with and told her to tell Minnie. She frowned but said okay, and then I saw her hand slip out of Stinger's, which was hiding behind a fold of her skirt.
* * *
Back at my place, I set a bottle of JW Black on the table, got glasses, the ice tray, hot peppers and pretzels, and commenced to read Stinger the list of investors in Mitchell Mining and Drilling Corp. He'd nod at each one, sip his whiskey, and let the sounds roll by while his lids were half-closed. There were eleven names, with sums from a quarter million to a cool eight zeroes posted. When I got to name number nine, Stinger's eyes came open. He said read that one to me again.
* * *
Houston is rich in gentlemen's clubs— Centerfolds and Baby Dolls, La Nude and Peter's Wildlife; Rick's and a dozen others. The one we were headed for you had to know was there to know was there. It was a sandstone stucco box with soft-lit arches guarded by two palm trees and had no sign out front, but I knew the place from when it did, remembered it when Stinger said to read that name to him again— Barsekian's Lounge.
We found a place to park at the back of the lot. In the shadows off to the side a security cop in a black uniform sat still as cardboard in his golf cart. The white wafers of his eyeglasses drew him into a cartoon.
Inside, I asked of a man with bleached hair and a face like a chunk of chipped concrete for Mr. Barsekian. He gave us the twice-over, asked our names, then left off through the crowd.
Armen Barsekian used to be one of the biggest bookmakers on the Third Coast, but he retired at the behest of the
federales
. Maybe he was trying to go legit now, run with the bulls down the slick streets of Oil and Gas. If he was the same A. Barsekian listed as an investor in Verlyn's notebook, maybe he'd just like to stimulate an accounting of the Brickner Deposit operation. Only thing was, if this was the hood I thought he was, he also used to be the kind you don't mess with unless you have a fondness for medical personnel of the emergency kind.
Glamour-boy came back and said Stinger could see Mr. B. I'd have to wait at the bar. I started to object but thought maybe Stinger, with his lighter skin, thinner build, and grayer hair, wouldn't be so terrifying as Cisroe Perkins to an old, beat white man.
I went up to the bar and ordered a stout from a woman whose outfit left little to the imagination. She looked about ready to blow and shower us all with beer fuzz. She wore a skirt that could make a man holler and not even know he did.
The crowd was mixed, but not very. I thought I recognized a cop smiling pretty at a dancer and figured you take your pleasure where you can. The music wasn't over-loud, but it was that kind of music anyway, and before long I felt a pulling need for someone with heat and perfume and a great, kind heart.
When Stinger came back I was on my second. He swiped at his goatee, then tipped his head back toward the office door, and said, "It's done, man. It's in the right hands."
* * *
Armen Barsekian was an influential man. I didn't much like what I might have guessed about the various businesses he was in nor how he conducted them, but sometimes, I thought, you have to let water cut the channels it is born to cut.
Minnie's baby brother Verlyn Vincent Venable had died on a Wednesday night. The Friday following, way out the Katy, a hunting dog learning to retrieve on a swamp-lake by a shooting range found Guy Grundfest, operations manager at Mitchell Corp., in a dive to its muddy depths. And Ray Wayne Wooley suffered an unfortunate mishap that broke both his legs at the knees, jet-skiing, he said, on Lake Houston on Saturday midnight when he knew he'd had too much too drink.
* * *
Monday I took a trip to Chicago, work-related. I was gone four days. When I came back I had other things to attend to, so I didn't make it by Minnie Chaundelle's till the Saturday following.
When I drove down Gross Street, the sun was bright enough to score diamonds. The radio reported ninety-five degrees and about the same dewpoint and I thought it would be all right on this sticky day if it turned out Minnie Chaundelle wasn't there. She didn't answer the door. But then I walked around back and looked through the thick stand of glowering green oak in the cemetery and saw that lovely full-figured woman who from here seemed tiny as a child as she stood by a gravestone.
