George Wier - The Last Call

“My partner and I are here to shut down a certain moonshine operation that has been going on in this county since the late 1920s.”

“Oh. That.” He yawned. “Every few years a couple of fellows like you come through here. They go out there, look the place over. Then they leave.

“Yep,” Cranford said. “I know. I’ve read and re-read the files. But-” he pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket and handed it to Thornton. Thornton looked it over and handed it to me. I scanned over it quickly. There were three columns. The first column heading was ‘Date’, and underneath it was a long list of dates from 1930 to four years ago. The second column was a list of offenses, most of them the same thing: “ULUT alcohol transport”.

“What’s ULUT?” I asked.

“Unlicensed, untaxed.”

The third column was numbers. Dollar amounts.

“Those are just the ones we’ve interdicted-caught,” Cranford said.

I did some quick math. The total was millions of dollars.

“This case,” Cranford said. “It’s my last hurrah. I retire in two months.”

“So where does the wrecking crew here come into play?” Sheriff Thornton asked and gestured towards me.

“Our government cannot run without the assistance of its people.”

“What the hell kind of an answer is that?”

“The only one I have to give, right now.”

“All right. All right.” Sheriff Thornton stood up. He leaned across the table as Agent Cranford and I stood up. He shook both our hands.

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

“Please,” he said. “Get that crazy, gun-toting alcoholic out of my jail.”

Agent Cranford followed us back to the motel. Julie and I helped a snoring Hank out of the car and into his room. Dingo followed us in.

Hank needed a bath. I wasn’t his Momma, so I decided to wait and see if she showed up to bathe him. He was a friend, but I hadn’t signed up for that job yet.

“You two go get some breakfast,” Cranford said when I came out of Hank’s room. “I’ll stay here until you get back.”

“Uh. Thanks,” I said.

Julie waited until we were in the Suburban headed out of the parking lot before asking me: “Why do you trust those guys?”

“They sprung Hank out of jail.”

“Yeah, but what’s their angle?”

“I wish I knew.”

We had a late breakfast-that was more of a lunch than anything-at a Mexican Restaurant. The food was pretty good, but not as good as the Austin venues I was used to.

When we got back to the motel, Hank was still zonked.

Cranford and Bruce waved and drove away as soon as we unlocked our door.

“You’re right,” I said to Julie. “They’re pretty weird. Nice, but weird.”

Julie and I passed the rest of the day in each other’s company.

I kept expecting Hank to wake up. I kept expecting the phone to ring. I kept a watch out for light blue Ford F-150 pick-up trucks.

Night time.

We were back inside the hotel room, in the same bed. In the dark with her body pressed against mine, it was like we’d never left the room from the night before. The events of that day hadn’t even happened. We did things in the night that young people do in the back seats of their parents’ cars.

Afterwards, I went outside and smoked one of her cigarettes. At one time in my life I smoked only when I had a beer in my other hand, so this was new for me. Julie had been craving a cigarette for the last several days. She’d gotten some when we had stopped for lunch.Maybe I wouldn’t turn it into another bad habit. Like sleeping with my clients, for instance.

A white, late model Ford sedan pulled up next to the Suburban. A lone figure emerged under the bright orange-ish light.

Agent Cranford.

I waited for him.

I’d forgotten to give the Suburban a thorough going-over and remove the GPS bug that had been planted there.

The North Texas night was cooler than the previous one. The door behind me was open just a crack. Julie was in there in the dark, snoring softly.

I thought of a name: Ernest Neil. The name of the man who had died in Julie’s arms. That sounded rather poignant.

“Hiya,” Agent Cranford said.

“Hey.”

“Nice night. Got another one of those?” he asked, referring to my cigarette. “I think I left mine down in the car.”

“I don’t normally smoke,” I told him. “These are Julie’s. But it’s a smoking kind of night, you know?”

“Uh huh,” he agree.

I fished a cigarette out for him. I wondered if Julie counted them. Probably not.

He took it with a thin smile. I thumbed the lighter. Held it for him as he lit up.

“Thanks.” He drew deeply, paused, letting the nicotine bite, exhaled slowly. I’d say he was about forty-eight years or so. Conservative haircut. Clean shaven, even late at night. Forty-eight seemed sort of young to be looking at retirement. I hoped I was going until I was about ninety.

“How’s Hank?” he asked.

“Still sleeping it off,” I said.

“Good. Ya know,” a touch of New England came through in his accent, “people here are real nice.”

“Mostly,” I said.

“Mr. Travis-”

“Bill. Call me Bill.”

“Fine. Bill, I’ve been wondering something.”

“What?”

“Just what is it you do for a living?” he asked. “If you don’t mind telling me.”

“Financial consultant.”

“Ahh. Okay,” he said. There was a little sparkle in his eyes.

Suddenly I knew that he’d already read everything that his friendly, neighborhood FBI computer could spit out about me. Probably, he knew who my second grade teachers were when I’d forgotten the information a long time ago.

There was an odd and long moment of silence as we smoked.

“Got something for you,” he said finally.

I waited.

He fished something out of his jacket, handed it to me.

It was a photograph.

“What am I looking at?” I asked. The sodium arc light from the parking lot revealed an old black-and-white photograph of three men sitting at a small table. The men looked somber and serious. It was from a time when it was customary to put on your most dour face for a picture.

Then it hit me what I was looking at.

“This is Carpin, isn’t it? Matthew Carpin. The fellow on the right is Bryan “Whitey” Walker. Who’s that in the center?”

“You’ll figure it out, Mr. Travis. Oh, sorry. I’m supposed to call you Bill. Old habits die hard, you know. Kind of like old law men. It’s getting late. Good night, Mr. Travis.”

“Good night, Agent Cranford,” I said.

He turned and went back the way he came, got into his car and left.

I’d have to remember to get rid of that GPS bug on the Suburban.

I studied the photo.

Whitey was already going bald on top by the time he was in his late twenties, but this was earlier than that. The other fellow, Matthew Carpin, was a wiry little fellow. All three men at the table were nattily dressed.

It hit me.

The man in the center was Jack “Blackjack” Johannsen.

Stirrings in the night.

I listened to Julie breathe in the night as the dark thoughts came and went. Even though we weren’t touching, I felt the heat from her.

Around two in the morning the phone rang.

I grabbed for it before I was even fully awake.

“Bill. You are not a very nice fellow.”

“Huh?”

“I said, you’re not a very nice guy.”

I got up, the phone snugged against my ear. Stumbled around in the dark in my underwear. Outside? No good. Bathroom! I went inside in the dark and closed the door behind me, felt for the toilet, put the seat down and sat on it.

I was cold all over.

“You there?” Archie Carpin asked.