Shoveling Smoke (15 page)

“Of course he did,” I said.

“You get Wick to show you anything Dick Devereau signed in the last couple of months,” Bevo replied. “The typing underneath will say Willard Dick Devereau, but you tell me what the signature says. I admit, it’s hard to make out, but it sure ain’t Willard Dick.” Bevo laughed. “You lawyers are crazy fuckers.”

When we got back to the LBJ Expressway,
Bevo went west instead of heading back toward home.

“Now where?” I asked as we worked through LBJ’s six lanes of traffic.

“Just another errand,” he said.

“For Wick?”

“This one’s personal.”

That was all I could get out of him for twenty-five minutes, until he pulled the Cadillac into the parking lot of a seedy club on Industrial Boulevard. I could hear rock music booming through the walls of the strip joint next to the lot.

“Would you mind coming with me this time, Mr. Parker?”

“I’m not interested in retrieving any more whale parts, Bevo,” I told him.

“It ain’t anything like that,” Bevo replied. “Please, Mr. Parker. There’s some friends I want you to meet. They’ll be impressed with you.”

We headed toward the club, but before we got to the door, a Mexican in pressed Levi’s, boots, and a Western-cut sport coat came out from between the cars and stopped us with a motion of his hand.

“How’s it hanging, Mig?” said Bevo.

Without answering, Mig led us to the back of the lot. Seven or eight men dressed like Mig were lounging around a big black Bentley Arrow. There was music coming from the Bentley, a ZZ Top blues tune, and dancing in the bed of a pickup next to the Bentley was a girl in a sequined mini-dress. The girl danced languidly, a stripper’s motions, the sequins on her dress blazing in the light from the neon sign that rasped and sputtered out the name of the strip joint: the Showtime Lounge. As we walked toward the Bentley, the girl saw us, jumped off the truck, and ran away, and the men moved out to circle us.

“Are these the friends you wanted me to meet?” I asked Bevo.

“Just give ’em a chance,” Bevo replied. “You’ll like them.”

One of the men, the one standing closest to the back window of the Bentley, was Kirby Nutter. He had traded in his good-old-boy clothes for a Western outfit like the ones the others were wearing, but he still had his Colorado Rockies cap on. He did not look happy to see me.

Bevo seemed as unconcerned as if he were at a Sunday picnic. He walked toward the Bentley until Mig stopped him. The men behind us moved up so near that I could feel breathing on the back of my neck. Bevo peered into the Bentley from fifteen feet away.

“Howdy, Deck,” he said.

All I could see in the Bentley were shadows. A voice came from the backseat, a low-pitched drawl I could barely hear above the rock and roll.

“There’s folks said you’d be late to your own funeral, Bevo. I’m happy to see they were wrong.”

Bevo reached into his jacket, a move that caused consternation among the men around us.

“Easy, boys,” Bevo said, pulling out a banded stack of currency. He handed the money to Mig. “Would you give this to your boss, Miguelito?” Bevo asked him. The Mexican walked over to the car and handed the money in. There was a moment of silence, then a woman giggled in the backseat.

“A drop in the bucket, Bevo,” said the voice.

“A first installment,” said Bevo. “I know I screwed up, Deck. But I’m going to make good. You know about my lawsuit.” He pointed at me. “This here is Mr. Clayton Parker, one of my lawyers. He’s the fellow took the message you sent to my house. He’ll tell you for me.”

“How do, Counselor,” said the disembodied voice.

“How do,” I replied.

“You’re new, aren’t you? Whereabouts you from?”

I told him.

“A Houston man,” said Willhoit. “Bevo Rasmussen has confused me on one point, Counselor. He says you intercepted the message I sent him. Now, what exactly does he mean by that?”

Kirby Nutter was staring at me from his spot near the rear door of the Bentley.

“He means that your associate contacted me in Jenks, and I acted as go-between,” I said.

There was a moment of silence. Sweat gleamed on Kirby Nutter’s impassive face.

“My, my,” said the voice. Then, after another silence: “I understand there was an altercation at the Rasmussen house. You must understand, Counselor, that my associate is new to the company. I trust he did not behave indecorously?”

Nutter went white. I realized that he must have lied to his boss about his visit to Jenks—God knows what kind of story he made up—and had just discovered that his boss knew about the lie. I wondered how Willhoit had found out, and how much he knew. Had he heard about Nutter’s arrest, or about Sally Dean getting the best of his new thug? I had the feeling that I had walked into a kind of back-lot trial, and that Kirby Nutter’s fate rested in my hands.

“I believe that you would have approved of your associate’s behavior,” I said. I told Willhoit that Nutter had found me at Bevo’s home instead of Bevo and had made an honest mistake.

“I heard,” said Willhoit, “that at one point in your discussion, my associate became incapacitated.”

I replied that his man had indeed been temporarily immobilized by an associate of mine.

“An associate with great tits, is what I heard,” said the voice. There was a round of hooting and laughter, and Nutter’s face went from white to flaming red.

The fact that I was working to save the man who had tried to shatter my kneecap with a needle must have shifted my exhausted brain into a kind of overdrive. My fear melted away, and I chatted with Willhoit as if he were a judge I was trying to talk out of coming down hard on a first-offender.

“So Bevo moved you in and didn’t give out a forwarding address?” Willhoit chuckled, and the focus of ridicule slid from Nutter toward me.

“Yes, sir,” I said, one good old Texas boy to another, “Bevo left both of us out of the loop on that one. You didn’t know about me, and I sure as hell didn’t know about you.” That caused more laughter.

“Mr. Rasmussen is a resourceful rascal,” said Willhoit. “Quite a salesman, too. Do you know about our business transaction, Counselor Parker?”

I said I had not heard about it.

“Your client there sold me on the idea of getting into the cattle business. I entrusted him with enough money to set me up in a small way, and damned if that money didn’t just disappear.”

“That is unfortunate,” I said.

“And that was over a
year
ago. I keep waiting for restitution, but all I get are promises. Where has all my business sense gone?”

“I’ll pay you back double, Deck,” said Bevo. “I said I would, and I will. Tell him about my case, Mr. Parker.”

“Did you hear that, Counselor?” said Willhoit. “Your client claims he can increase my original investment two-fold. What do you think? Will you win the case?”

It occurred to me that I could end everybody’s troubles right then just by telling the truth. I could tell this invisible cowboy gangster that we didn’t have a chance in hell of winning, that Bevo wasn’t going to get a cent for his horses, and then Willhoit would hang Bevo from the neon sign, and we could all go home. Chandler and Stroud would be off the hook for screwing up the lawsuit; the geologist, wherever he was, could reclaim his house without a fight, if he wanted it; and I could stop puzzling about the hold this little weasel of a man might or might not have over Sally Dean. What a calmer, saner world it would be, I realized, if I came clean.

“Yes, sir,” I said, “we’re going to win.”

“Well,” replied Willhoit, “it was my intent to kick a mud hole in your client’s lying ass and then stomp it dry. But you think I ought to wait on the trial?”

“Yes, sir.”

Suddenly a couple of the cowboys behind us took hold of Bevo and pinned his arms behind his back. Bevo fought, tried to speak, but one of the cowboys had an armlock around his windpipe.

“Wait a minute, guys,” I said, stepping toward Bevo. I felt something sharp press against my spine.

“I wouldn’t move, if I was you, Houston,” the man behind me said.

“Don’t worry, Counselor,” Willhoit said, “I’ll wait for the trial, but I want to hold some security this time. Kirby, go on over there and cut something off Mr. Rasmussen. He’s got a razor in his sock. Use that.”

Bevo’s body jerked as if a current had shot through it, but he was still held fast. I saw red fury in his eyes. Kirby came over to him, glanced at me as if to say, Sorry about all this. As he reached down to take the razor out of Bevo’s sock, Bevo kicked him hard enough in the temple to cause him to go down on one knee. After the sap that Sally had given him the night before, I was surprised that Nutter didn’t pass out. He grabbed Bevo’s ankle and ripped the razor out of his sock.

“Cut me something I can put on my key chain,” Willhoit called. “Don’t take something he can’t live without, but make it something he’ll miss.” He had leaned up from the backseat of the Bentley to get a good look at what was about to happen, and I saw his face for the first time. Deck Willhoit was a ZZ Top wanna-be, all black sunglasses and thick, grizzled beard.

Two other massive cowboys had captured Bevo’s ankles and were holding his feet on the pavement so that he could not move. The arm around his neck tightened, and a strained, gurgling sound came out of his mouth. Nutter, kneeling, was unbuckling Bevo’s belt.

“Hold on, Mr. Willhoit,” I said. “Let’s trade.”

Willhoit cocked his head. “What sort of trade?”

“I’ve got an antique in the car that you just might find more amusing than one of Bevo’s body parts.”

“I doubt it,” Willhoit said. “But let’s see.”

I went to Bevo’s car and retrieved the whale’s pizzle.

“What the fuck is that?” asked Willhoit as I handed it in to him. It protruded several feet out the window. I told him what it was, and he inspected it, turning it in his hands. I could now see the woman in the seat next to him, a brunette in a glittery dress who ran her fingers along the rawhide spirals of the pizzle.

“How about it, babe?” Willhoit asked her. He made thrusting movements with it, and I had to duck to keep from being struck in the eye. This amused Willhoit, and he used the pizzle to knock the hat off a cowboy standing next to the car.

“Whoa!” he said. “That’s some dick.”

“How about it,” I said, “a dick for Deck.”

He thought that was hilarious, and so did his girl. “What do you say, Bevo?” Willhoit called. “Is this thing bigger than yours?”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” I said, “it’ll make a hell of a key chain.”

The brunette whispered in his ear, and he laughed again. “Okay, Counselor,” he said, “you’ve got yourself a deal. Kirby, turn that little rat’s ass loose.”

Nutter let go of Bevo’s belt. As he climbed to his feet, he gave Bevo a terrific punch in the stomach. Bevo doubled over and fell to the pavement, gasping for breath. Nutter handed me the razor.

“I owe you one,” he whispered, patting me on the back as he walked past me. Nutter and the other cowboys got into a couple of cars.

Willhoit had his driver roll the Bentley a few feet closer to us, and the drug dealer prodded Bevo with the end of the pizzle. “One hundred and eighty thousand dollars, Bevo, due the day you get it. Wait one day longer, and you and the whale this thing came from can start your own lonely hearts club.”

A hand thick with gold nugget rings came out of the Bentley’s window.

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Counselor,” said Willhoit. “Maybe we’ll do business together someday.” We shook hands. “If you see Nyman Scales’s daughter anytime soon, you tell that little girl to call her pappy. I know Nyman’s been missing her.”

I promised to deliver the message to Sally Dean, and the big car pulled away, followed by the two carloads of cowboys. The tip of the pizzle slanted out of the Bentley’s back window, whirling and thrusting in the air.

“You shouldn’t ought to given that dingus away,” Bevo gasped. He was on his hands and knees, trying to stand up.

“It was either that one or yours,” I reminded him.

“That dickweed wasn’t gonna lay a hand on me,” Bevo gasped. I pulled him to his feet—he was amazingly light—and he bent over and vomited.

“This is the second time you’ve put me on the spot with your friend Willhoit,” I said to him a few minutes later as I drove the convertible back toward the LBJ Expressway. Bevo was slouched in the passenger seat, staring at the dash. “Don’t do it again.”

“Willhoit’s made a big mistake,” Bevo said, flicking his razor open and closed. “A big mistake.”

“It was a laundering scheme, right?” I asked. “You were supposed to use Willhoit’s money to buy him some cattle, make him a real cowboy.”

“I should have sold him on emus,” Bevo said. “I coulda got more out of him.”

“Instead of buying cattle, you used his money to help buy your horses. Which you then burned for the insurance money. What in hell were you thinking, Bevo? Didn’t you know a guy like Willhoit would be watching to see what happened to his money?”

“I didn’t burn them horses, Mr. Parker. Besides, I’m gonna pay him off with the insurance money.”

It was time one of Bevo’s lawyers fulfilled his ethical obligation to his client by spilling the beans. “Bevo, you can’t win the lawsuit.” I told him all about Stroud’s screwup with the interrogatories, how it meant we could not call any witnesses. I explained that SWAT was going to eat us for breakfast. The news did not register.

“Stroud will fix it,” Bevo said. “All we got to do is get Nyman Scales on the stand. Stroud can do that. Or else you can.”

“Bevo, listen to me. We are going to lose. Scales can’t get on the stand for us. Nobody can. You can’t count on money from the lawsuit to pay off your debts. We just lied to your drug dealer.
I
lied to him. Jesus, why did I do that?”

My question seemed to surprise him. “You were representing me, is why you did it. That’s why I brought you along. We just went to court, Mr. Parker. We went to Deck Willhoit’s court, and we won. You did just fine, like I knew you would.”

“We didn’t win,” I told him. “We bought some time with a lie.”

“Whatever works,” he said. The motto of our firm.

I asked him where he got the money he gave to Willhoit that night. “You told me you were living hand to mouth,” I reminded him.

“Money ain’t nothing,” Bevo said. “Getting money ain’t nothing. It’s the principle. That’s all that matters. It’s the principle of the thing.”