I didn't much want to hit the freeway down to Sugarland to check out Verlyn Venable at four-thirty when traffic's all hinky. Instead, I swung over east a couple blocks to Kroger's grocery down on Montrose, thinking I might run into Stinger.
He was sittin' in a booth by the side of the bakery, smearing mustard on a soft pretzel with a coffee stirrer. I asked if Minnie's brother was the type to mess with trouble. "Not that boy," Stinger said. "It don't fit, 'less he got mixed up with drugs down the way. He play Little League when my own boy was livin' here with his mama. Used ta, I'd see him drivin' Minnie Chaundelle the doctah when she had breathin' difficulties. They parents die young but dem two kep' they nose clean, I say dat. 'Course there's Minnie with her fellas. But hell, she give it away for free you real down and out. Used ta, anyways."
Across the room in a Formica booth a man the color of summer grizzly was sittin' silent with his knees out into the walkway, his blond girlfriend opposite. She had a cut under one eye and on her cheek, surrounded in green and yellow. "Ain't that a damn shame," I said, nodding in that direction.
Stinger looked over while he bit into the pretzel, leavin' mustard in his goatee. "Some women go outta they way to find somebody ta whack 'em," he said with his mouth full. He swallowed and said, "Ever' body got a choice wever to walk in dry socks or piss in they boots and whine about it."
Stinger wasn't a low man but he was one to take serious.
"Verlyn got a lady by Buffalo Speedway," he said. "I cain't tell you the
add
ress, but I c'n show you."
* * *
Stinger went to his pickup truck and unlocked the door, glancing right and left, then reached behind the seat where there's space enough for his paste bucket. He hunched his shoulders then, and I knew he'd slipped his .38 into his waistband under his loose shirt. He glanced around again, shut the pickup door, and headed my way. His top half was a sandy-colored shirt and a Rockets cap. His bottom half was brown pants and red sandals, and he moved like all his tendons had been stretched too long on the rack.
How he came by the gun was one time he was drivin' home after a wallpaper job when a man was yellin' and wavin' a gun in the street with his own children lookin' on. Stinger pulls over, walks up to the goon and says, "I know you want to get rid of that piece, man." A woman who saw it said he held out his palm "like he ain't got no normal skin a bullet go through."
While we drove to the street Stinger pointed out, the air was heavy and worthless from a storm comin' in off the Gulf. Lightning flickered like dyin' neon and low thunder rumbled, making promise the sky would rip open and relieve itself so we could breathe again.
Halfway down the street we saw a girl in gray shorts and a black halter-top come runnin' barefoot toward us, wavin' her hands. "Uh-oh," I said, and slowed the car.
"Tha's her," Stinger said. "Tha's Verlyn's stuff."
Her hair was dark and curly and she had a light, fleshy look to her limbs when she came jammin' up to my window. A blue-rose tattoo showed on the rise of her left breast when she leaned in. "There's a guy with a knife! He's attacking someone!" she said.
I told Stinger to get in the back so she could get in the front, and she hung onto the dash, pointing backwards as I smoked tires up to the outside pay phone at Popeye's Chicken. She hopped out and dialed, rocking foot to foot. Stinger said, "She get done, le's go take us a look." She came back, fear still in her face, and I told her to wait in Popeye's, where there's light.
We found the apartments no sweat, and saw through a wire fence trailed in vine two lean men with no shirts standing by the pool smokin' cigarettes. The Cauc was wearin' black trousers. The other one had long beige shorts on and somethin' white wrapped around his shoulder and under his armpit with the pattern like a big red rose coming through. Stinger said, "Well, he's alahve but he's nicked."
* * *
All the while we talked, Verlyn smoked his cigarette and kept an eye on the breezeway. He could've been a golden panther, what with his hard jaw and yellow eyes.
I told him I was a friend of his sister's. She was worried about him. He nodded but kept his counsel.
There was a quiet but alert resolve about him, like he was just goin' to catch his breath before he took care of business. I'm like that myself sometimes. I once in a while get criticized over it, like by the woman who left me a few months ago. She took a bunch of things I called mine, but I didn't go after her when she very well knew I could hunt a whisper in a big wind. By the time I got through mulling it all over, she was askin' to come back, but my head was in a different place. It takes this cement a while to set, but when it does it's what it's going to be for a long, long time.
The Anglo did all the talkin'. His hair was buzzed close so you could see the metal studs embedded in his scalp down to an arrow's point. I'm not squeamish but that did catch my attention.
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 shirt 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 windshield 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 glass 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, butterscotch loafers with no socks. In one ear was a gold earring and on his hand a class 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 damn 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 space at E-Z Pawn," 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 damn 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 nobody 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 Mitchell 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 glass 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.
"Nobody 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 shirts 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 butterfly used to land on a bush outside, and the smell of jasmine and apples and pine.