The World's Finest Mystery Part 46

He said, "Me and Verlyn and Bitsy was kickin' it, watchin' the game, like that, this hype comes outta my room. Lucky he ain't stone dead, man." He laid off a bunch of rowdy names on the culprit while Verlyn stood there offering no contradiction, his eyes held steady on somethin' the rest of us couldn't see. I thought then that the only thing missin' in that young man's face was a young man's youth. Stinger and I bend the polar ends of forty, but the kid seemed worn ragged at the cuffs.

I gave out my card and said if they have any more problems to give me a call. Then I told Verlyn he might ring up his sister, too. A change came into his eyes at his sister's name. Softer. Younger.

He said, "Keep this under your hat, okay?"

"I got no problem with that," I said.

Stinger and I left out the opposite side of the courtyard when we saw the baby-blue cars of Houston's finest because we'd as soon not waste everybody's time.

When we pulled back into the lot at Kroger's the clouds opened at last. I could feel the difference in the air already.

"Thanks, man," I told Stinger.

"No problem, baby," he said, and pinched a wad of Bandits into his cheek before he opened the door. As he hurried to his truck, big drops pelted the back of his s.h.i.+rt like loads off a fully choked shotgun. He ducked like he thought if he was shorter the rain wouldn't hit so hard.

I drove away, thinking Minnie Chaundelle would sure be grateful to know her baby kin was still healthy. Maybe she'd give me some pecans in a paper cone, or bake me a pie.

It was comin' on to six o'clock and the rain was drummin' so hard I thought the ark would have to be broke out. Lookin' through my winds.h.i.+eld was like lookin' through seven sheets of waxed paper. But when I got to Gross Street and parked, like magic, the rain sucked back in a heavenly tide.

I was about to get out when I saw a tall man in a light suit emerge from a car and cross the culvert to Minnie's. Up on the porch he closed his umbrella and tugged at his jacket before he knocked. The front door opened and the screen door right after, and Minnie beckoned him in with a big sweet smile. She was framed in the golden light and I imagined I smelled candied pecans cooking on the stove.

I drove on by.

Seven the next morning my phone rang. I reached for a gla.s.s of water on my lowboy and slugged some before I answered.

The voice said, "This is Verlyn. Could I talk to you?"

I met him at Starbuck's off West Gray. He was wearin' olive-green pants and a pale green polo, b.u.t.terscotch loafers with no socks. In one ear was a gold earring and on his hand a cla.s.s ring from U.T. We got our orders and sat outside in the pleasant morning. He drank juice and took a bite out of a dry croissant I knew was dry because I had one too. I asked him did he call his sister. He said he woke her up and apologized for bein' absent without leave, told her this before she had it together to yell at him too much. Once in a while he'd flex his shoulder a little and wince. Each car pulling in he gave a long stare.

I said, "You ready to tell me who's the snook got a grudge against you?"

"Somebody don't like what I know, okay? Somebody thinkin' to scare me." He pressed his middle finger to the fallen powdered sugar on the paper and put it to his tongue.

"And did he do a proper job on that?"

Verlyn leveled his eyes at me. "A bee don't flee."

"Say again?"

"You swat him, he bite," he said in an old man's mimic.

"Thataway you can get a buncha trouble comin' at you, brother."

"Not if you go after the head nacho, right?" He blew on his coffee, took a sip, then said, "I need to go pick up a computer I left at the office. I could use some company."

Am I workin' for you now?, is what I wanted to say, not a complete d.a.m.n fool, the man's got money to spend. But what I did ask was, "Cain't your friend there, Toolhead, what's his name, come with you?"

"William? Not the right one."

"I charge twenty-five an hour," I said.

"I'm down with that," he said, causing me to ponder just how much he made on his job. He said, "It may already be takin' up window s.p.a.ce at E-Z p.a.w.n," he said. "Cheapskates. Making me bring in my own computer."

"So far, not a capital offense, far as I can see."

"Well, there's stuff going on...," he said, leaning closer to the table so his chest hit the edge. "Some of these wildcat drillin' outfits will do any d.a.m.n thing to get money for the next hole. They take on more investors than they can handle. And they get away with it because they tell people they're drillin' in a 'prohibitive frontier,' kinda like drillin' on the moon, so n.o.body should be all that fried when it comes up dry."

"Makes some kind of sense," I said.

"But the thing is, good people invest in these things, people like my rich aunties, if I had any. And too many times they get the hot yanked right out of their fire."

"I don't quite get the scam here."

He took a bite of his pastry and chewed awhile and got a look of a man still plannin' what his next step would be. I let off the pressure a bit and asked him a side-question. "So why didn't you show up for work three days?"

Verlyn sat back and crossed his legs. "Disgusted," he said, and turned in his chair and crossed his legs the other way. "There's this one temp agency I been with for more than five years. They had a rush job, so I filled in. Hey, I know it's not stand-up to do Mitch.e.l.l Corporation that way. But what they pull is worse. I'm serious. I got names. I could hurt 'em."

"Most people would just shut their eyes and go to lunch."

"Most would, I give you that. You met my sister? She raised me right. Tomorrow I go to the D.A."

"That's one you might want to think over."

"A bright man don't chew on something that's eating him."

"I'd just hate to answer to Minnie Chaundelle over you."

"That's something I'd hate myself," he said, managing a grin.

We went to a high-rise off the West Loop and rode a gla.s.s elevator lookin' down on Buffalo Bayou, where a dozen gray shapes cut the green water- turtles with their long necks out, or baby 'gators.

Verlyn's lip was beaded with sweat.

"n.o.body gonna shoot you here, boy," I said.

He rolled that shoulder but smiled and said, "Can't be a hundred percent on that, now, can we?"

Verlyn went to an office along one wall of a roomful of cubicles. He said to stand by, and I did, leanin' against a wall and cleanin' my fingernails with my pocket knife. Before long I heard a raised voice say, "You leave me high and dry like this? Thank you very much." Someone down a lane poked a head out a cubicle, then pulled back in. I moved so I could see into the office where Verlyn was and got a look at a short man with a lot of scalp edged with white hair, over a fall of red face. When the man saw me he stared, then flipped his hand at Verlyn, like Go on, get out of here.

In the car Verlyn unzipped his laptop case and fired up to look at his files. What files? The machine was wiped clean. He cursed and hit the door with the side of his fist, but then seemed to resign himself.

"How about we go get the book you left with Minnie Chaundelle?"

He said maybe later, he had to grab some sleep. I caught him in a smile again. He said, "My girl likes a wounded man."

Back home, I phoned Minnie and told her her brother might be along, maybe with me, except I had a job to do early in the evening so I didn't know.

"Oh honey, that is a great relief," she said. "Anytime you want to drop on by, I sure be happy to pay you what I owe." I wondered if she was sittin' on her porch swing talkin' to me.

When I hung up, I checked my closet to see what s.h.i.+rts I had clean, fried up some okra and sausage with red bell peppers and leftover noodles, then took a nap and dreamed of a bayou I lived on as a child, and how a yellow b.u.t.terfly used to land on a bush outside, and the smell of jasmine and apples and pine.

That afternoon I did a records check on the drilling company. Mitch.e.l.l 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 a.s.sault 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. a.s.s-is-gra.s.s 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 Mitch.e.l.l 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 p.i.s.sin' 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."