Cold in July (9 page)

“Don’t try and scare me, Price, it just makes me tired.”

“I pity you.”

“You said that. Now either let Russel out, or I call my
lawyer and you folks start having problems.”

It was my turn to stare this time, and I gave it all I had.
After a moment he stood up, raked the destroyed paper cup into one hand, went
over to the trash can and deposited it.

“You’re making a big mistake, Dane. But it’s your life. And
your family’s. I may not be there to pull your ass out of the fire next time.”

“As I recall, Ann and I did the pulling. Your man was on the
floor.”

He gave me a look that made his handsome face ugly.

“You got it, buddy. I’ll let him out. Just remember when he
comes after you, I told you so.”

“I’ll wait out in the parking lot just to make sure he’s set
free.”

“You dumb bastard,” Price said, and left the room.

He had failed the test. It had been too easy. There was more
to this than met the eye. And Price was in on it.

17

I was in the lot leaning on the hood of my car with Russel’s
wallet in my pocket when he came out escorted by Price and a uniformed
policeman. The three of them stood there looking at me and then Price gave
Russel a slight nudge with his hand and Russel walked over toward me. Price and
the uniform stayed where they were.

When Russel got to me he said, “They’re waiting to see if I
try and kill you.”

“Are you going to try?”

“No.”

I waved Price and the uniform cop away.

“Leave the lot,” Price yelled back. “Get killed somewhere
else.”

Russel turned and smiled at them. “You don’t have faith in
me, Lieutenant.”

“You’re both sick,” Price said and went inside. The uniform
stayed where he was.

“Get in,” I said. “We have to talk.”

Russel got in and I cranked the car and drove out of the lot
and coasted slowly down California Street. “What do you think?” I said.

“I agree with Price. You’re loony. I tried to kill you a
little while ago. You know I was really trying.”

“You didn’t kill my son. You had the chance.”

“I couldn’t have… Hell, I don’t know if I could have killed
you.”

“You banged me around good enough.”

“I thought I wanted to kill somebody. I hate your guts, you
know?”

“Because I killed your son?”

Russel made a noise somewhere between a hummph and a cough.

“I didn’t kill him,” I said.

“Look. You’re crazy enough to get me out of jail… I don’t
know how, but you did, but don’t be so crazy as to think I’m gonna believe that
shit. Just let me off somewhere, all right?”

“Let me show you something.” I fished the wallet out of my
shirt pocket and flipped it open with one hand to the photographs and handed it
to him. I turned on the inside light. “That’s your son, right?”

“You know damn good and well it is. If you’re trying to find
out if I’ll kill you after all, you’re on the right track.”

“You’re sure the boy and the man in those pictures are your
son, Freddy?”

“I know my own son.”

I turned off the inside light. “That’s not the man I shot.”

We drove on in silence until Russel said, “You mean you
don’t recognize him from these photographs?”

“I mean that isn’t the man I shot. He couldn’t have changed
enough to be the man I shot. How tall is Freddy?”

“I don’t know. Tall. Tall as me.”

“At least six foot?”

“Yeah. I haven’t seen him in a while. We haven’t been in
contact. He could have changed a lot.”

“Could his eyes have changed from blue to brown?”

“Contacts maybe.”

“No. This man wasn’t wearing contacts. He was also shorter,
darker. It wasn’t your son.”

“What in hell are you saying, Dane?”

“I’m saying something screwy is going on.”

Russel thought for a while and I turned right on Crane
Street and hit the main drag and turned left. “Why should I believe you?” he
said. “Maybe you’re just jerking me around. I’m told by the cops my son is dead
and I find out you did it, and now you want me to believe different just
because you say so.”

“What’s in this for me?” I said. “Think about it. You damn
near beat my head in earlier and you threatened my son. Not something I’ll
forget or forgive you for, even if I do believe you couldn’t have done it. Hell,
I could be wrong. You could kill me and my whole family and it would be my
fault. But I didn’t kill your son. I knew that when I saw the photographs. I
don’t know who I killed or why the police said he was Freddy Russel, but I’m
convinced it wasn’t a mistake on their part. They did what they did on purpose.
If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have let you out no matter how many lawyers I
threatened. They let you out because they were afraid I’d raise a stink and
reveal something else. Something they’re trying to hide about your son.”

Another pregnant silence before, “So what if I believe you?
What do I do?”

“What do we do,” I said. “I’m in this too.”

          
· · ·

We went to an All-Night Doughnut Shop on North Street. It,
along with a Kroger store, are about it beyond ten at night and before six or
seven in the morning. They stay open for the college kids.

The All-Night Doughnut Shop had a couple of young guys at a
table drinking coffee looking over books, probably cramming for a test that
they should have been studying for a month. A somewhat older guy was behind the
doughnut counter and he looked like he’d been there all night and was ready for
a fresh recruit. When I ordered a couple of doughnuts and coffees for us, he
didn’t say any more than he had to, like maybe his mouth was tired.

We took a table at the rear of the place and after sipping
at our coffee, Russel said, “I still don’t see why you’re bothering. What do
you care about me?”

I slid sideways in the booth so I could put my feet along
the seat and my back against the wall and not have to look directly at Russel.
“Personally, I don’t give a shit about you. I don’t even like you. Why should
I?”

“Why then? You could have just let things slide.”

“I’ve been hoodwinked. I don’t like that. I killed a man and
I don’t even know who I killed. I don’t like that. Because they said I killed
your son it made you crazy enough to threaten my son and try to hurt me and my
wife. I don’t like that. But I’m a human being. I think I know some of how you
must have felt, your son dead and all. I think I’d have been a little crazy.
I’m not forgiving you, mind you, I’m just saying I’ve got some idea about how
you must have felt, and then for it all to be a lie…”

“I never did that boy any real good when he was alive,”
Russel said. “I’m not sure why I thought I could do him any now. Guilt maybe.”

“You see him much?”

“No. Just when he was younger. Those pictures were about it.
His mom may have made him send the one where he was older. I don’t know. That
was years back. Me and his mom were separated, but she still kept in touch, let
me know how Freddy was doing. The football team, stuff like that.”

“What were you in for?”

“Burglary at first. I got out and then I went back in on an
armed robbery charge. I got off light because it couldn’t be proved I had the
gun. Which I didn’t. The guy with me had the gun.”

“Same difference, isn’t it?”

“Just about. I kept him from killing the store attendant. He
shot the attendant once and I hit him and wrestled the gun away. It wasn’t
supposed to be like that, the shooting I mean. I just needed money and we were
going to bluff. Or so he said. I didn’t know the asshole was a cold killer.”

“So they got you while you were fighting with your partner?”

“No. I took the gun from him and coldcocked him and waited
until they called the law. I figured things were bad enough with the store
manager bleeding to death without me making it worse for myself by running. And
the truth is, had I left my partner, he’d have talked. I didn’t want to kill
him, so I stayed and took my medicine. One of the clerks testified that I had
stopped my partner from finishing the man off, but it didn’t matter really. He
died later.”

“What happened to your partner?”

“He was one of the last to get the chair—this was before the
injection stuff. I got a stretch.”

“What plans did you have when you got out… before this thing
happened with your son? Or the man who was supposed to be your son?”

“I sat in there twenty years trying to figure out what I
wanted to do. Some things crossed my mind. Wasn’t any of them any good. I
wanted to find my son and make up for lost time. That was about it. I’d have
taken any kind of job just so I could be near him, or go to see him from time
to time. I had a lot of catching up to do. Some explaining. But that’s all shit
under the bridge now.”

“Your son is probably out there somewhere, we just have to
figure how to find him.”

Russel laid those hands that looked like my father’s hands
on the table and looked at them, as if trying to determine how they had gotten
there on the ends of his wrists. Finally he lifted his head. “There was this
guy I knew once. We were good friends before I got stupid. He was a character.
But hell, I haven’t seen him in twenty years. He’d be about fifty now, I think.
He wrote me in jail some and I wrote back for a while, then quit. His letters
kept coming. He knew me and my family, you see.”

“What about him?”

“He was a private investigator. Real good. I worked for him
some doing skip traces and repossessions before I got stupid. He had quite a
reputation.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know now. He was in Houston then. He’d been in the
military. A Green Beret. Ex peen ?”

“You think he could help us find some things out?”

“If he’s still out there and will do it, yeah. If he can’t,
no one can.”

I thought about that a while. In spite of my humanity speech
I was beginning to feel like a jackass. I had gotten Russel out of jail and
that was enough. Like he said, I didn’t owe that to him. Maybe he was crazy and
maybe he didn’t believe a word I was saying. He was just waiting for a chance
to finish what he started. And what would Ann think about all this? Not only
had I gotten him out of the slammer, I was now planning to help him find out
what happened to his son. Hire some private detective to do it. It didn’t make
much sense.

But then again I thought about the man I had killed. You
didn’t just kill a man and not know his name. And I didn’t like the idea of
being used. I wasn’t sure how the police had used me, but they had. And this
poor bastard might never have gone off his head for even a little bit had they
not told him the lie they did. And it seemed like the more I tried to
rationalize not getting involved any more than I already was, the more I felt I
should.

“A detective costs money,” Russel said, voicing my next
concern. “I don’t have any, and I don’t think Jim Bob will do it for free.
Maybe he would have in the old days, but I don’t know now. Lot of time has gone
by. I feel like it was yesterday that we were friends, but my contacts have
been kind of limited the last few years. Jim Bob has probably gone on and had a
life. He may not want anything to do with me—even if I had money to hire him.”

“I can supply the money,” I said. “I’m not made of it, but I
do all right. First thing, let’s see if he’s still around.”

I drank my coffee and went outside to the phone booth
between the doughnut shop and the Fina station and called Houston information.
I asked first for a Luke Detective Agency, then for a Jim Bob Luke. Neither was
listed.

I tried Pasadena, which is a small burg outside of Houston.
A lot of people drive to work in Houston from there.

“Jim Bob Luke on Mulberry Street?” the operator asked.

I took a flyer. “Yeah, that’s him.”

She gave me the number and I wrote it on one of my business
cards and went back to the doughnut shop. I slid into the booth across from
Russel and said, “Bingo.”

18

There was a lightening of the sky by the time we left the
doughnut shop. I drove Russel to the Lazy Lodge on the edge of town and checked
him in for the day. It’s a sleazy place that caters to the wetbacks passing
through on their way to shitty jobs and enough money to rent a mobile home for
twelve. Meals were served from a candy and soft drink machine in the grungy
lobby. For a dollar or so you could have a Snickers and a Coke.

I gave Russel enough money for emergencies, like Coke and
Snickers and a throw-away razor of the sort they sold at the check-in desk.

“You taking me in to raise?” Russel said.

“Seems like it,” I said.

We went into the little room he was assigned and left the
door half open as it was hot in there and the air-conditioning wasn’t turned
on. The room had the faint smell of an uncleaned toilet and too much lemon air
freshener. Three dead roaches had been piled in one corner on top of one
another by an indifferent broom stroke, making them look like an insect
balancing act.

Russel sat on the bed and it sagged so bad in the middle he
seemed to be melting from the butt up. He worked his way out of the slump and
got down on his knees and looked under the bed and laughed. “Only one slat in
the middle. Swank.”

“It’s all my finances will allow,” I said.

“I’m not complaining.” He sat on the very edge of the bed
and got out his cigarette pack and shook out the last cigarette and put it in
his mouth. He didn’t light it, just let it dangle there. “You really going to
help me find my son?”

“Yeah.”

“You trust me after what I did?”

“I don’t know. I must. Either that or I’m crazy.”

“It was a kind of calculated madness, Dane. I thought I knew
what I wanted to do, but I couldn’t do it. It seemed sane to me when I first
thought it. A son for a son, but I knew inside me I couldn’t do it. But I could
have killed you… I’ve thought about it all morning. I told you in the car I
didn’t know if I could have. That was a lie. I could have. I thought you killed
my son and it wouldn’t have been anything for me to do you in.”