Bobby Byrd - Lone Star Noir

Cell door clang, stench of vomit and disinfectant, darkness. When you came right down to it, Monday night’s heist was a briefcase job: you got two guys-a guy with heavy government connections and a preacher-with a briefcase containing $300,000. Maybe they were barracudas in the suit-and-tie world, but they sure weren’t streetwise. Taking the money away from these stiffs was a cakewalk.

But somewhere, the job had gone sour. Real sour, real fast.

Slim had already spoken with Tom’s lawyer. No charges had been filed yet, but the feds might be involved. Forty-eight hours later, still no word. They can’t hold you for longer than that without pressing charges. Except when Homeland Security is involved. Or just because they want to.

By Friday night, still nothing, no arraignment, no anything. Tom’s in jail, the Kid is dead. Teo and Rick don’t show up with the money.

Nothing. Zip.

The thieves assigned code names to the two guys with the briefcase. The preacher was Church, the lobbyist was State. Some of the info the thieves had on the stiffs was public record, the rest was thanks to the hacking expertise of Slim’s friend, the Kid. State was the guy who had his tentacles inside the machinery of government. He had been inside, right at top of the food chain. He loved that power and the money that came with it. Ambition and vanity were Church’s addictions. God was talking in his ear. That’s what he said. Then, in the late 1990s, he found himself in the crosshairs of a grand jury, with Revelation Gardens on the verge of bankruptcy. He gave State a call asking for help. State flew to Houston to meet with Brother Church at Revelation Gardens. The place had a five-million-dollar chapel, where daily prayer meetings were led by the Brother himself, two four-star restaurants, three spas, a golf course, and other luxury amenities. State saw the place immediately for what it was: a great place to move money around, make it seem fresh and clean. “Think of it as salvation for dirty money,” said State to Brother Church.

With his contacts in the oil industry and foreign governments, State was in a unique position to help Church. After 9/11, the federal government had begun distributing large amounts of aid to the rulers of impoverished populations in Muslim countries, basically paying people in foreign countries not to hate and resent Americans more than they already did. Representatives from oil companies and other industries with interests in the region said they wanted to help too. They knew State as a skilled facilitator in this area. State could coordinate not only the U.S. funds going overseas but the bribes coming in from his corporate contacts. With the help of State, Church opened a laundry. The laundered cash was then dispersed to the respective business lobbyists, as well as certain right-wing conservative causes, with a skim off the top split two ways between Church and State. A special allotment was set aside for Church to use on improvements to the resort, and if any was left over, he could tithe to a real charity, like the Salvation Army or something.

Slim laughed when he found out about the scam. He didn’t give a shit what they did with the money. The world was corrupt and rotten and most people were thieves and liars at heart, even the amateurs. The pros just get paid more for it. He belonged to no political party, had never voted. In his profession, you couldn’t afford to leave tracks like that. Even if he happened to give a fuck.

The Kid had dropped the whole job in Slim’s lap. Besides being a virtuoso on the electric guitar, the Kid was a blazingly talented hacker. Using a hot-rodded laptop and a broadband connection, the Kid had hacked his way into Church and State’s money laundering scheme. The beauty of the thing was that the four thieves would be stealing money that Church and State had stolen from the federal government.

By hacking his way into their accounting program, the Kid was even able to predict, within a day, when the skim had to be withdrawn from the money laundry, which meant that Church and State would meet and divide the money. Stealing it would be easy.

But that wasn’t what the Kid wanted to do. He wasn’t a crook. He was a do-gooder, an artist, an idealist. The Kid told Slim he wanted to stop these men, “to take these assholes down and expose them to the public.”

Slim told him wait, he had a better way. He told the Kid to be cool. “Leave it alone for a while,” he said. “These dudes are well connected, and they might fuck you up.”

But the Kid kept hacking the system, building more of a case, finding more dirty secrets. He rarely slept.

Meanwhile, Slim got the crew together. Ric, Teo, and Tom were up for the takedown. The Kid told them the skim would be withdrawn Friday afternoon. Not because he wanted to help rob Church and State, but because it was a matter of pride. He was a hacker. He had to tell somebody.

The job was on. Teo and Ric kept a tail on Church, who rode in a black Lincoln Town Car. Slim followed State’s black Ford Excursion.

The meeting happened on Monday at a restaurant in the suburbs. State lifted the briefcase from the trunk of the Town Car in the parking lot. The two men froze when they saw the guys with guns. The thieves took the briefcase and split.

Nothing to it. Except for what came next.

It was a little over a week ago the last time Slim went to see the Kid play. The Kid was on fire. Making ungodly sounds with his guitar. Sometimes, facing the teeth-rattling wall of noise pouring out of the Kid’s amp, time and space seemed to fall away like a broken curtain. Slim realized it was a kind of insanity to feel that way, but he didn’t care.

He couldn’t play a lick of music himself. He didn’t buy many CDs and usually listened to whatever was on the radio or whatever came with the environment he happened to be in. But he supposed that the Kid was the main reason he had stuck around Austin longer than other places. Six months or so. He enjoyed the Kid’s company. You could say they’d been friends.

The Kid, the idealist, had left a message on Slim’s cell phone Saturday after midnight. “This will bring their whole fantasy kingdom tumbling down.” Sounding nervous, as if he thought someone might be listening, the Kid spoke a sequence of three letters followed by a string of numbers. He repeated the sequence once more and added, “I’d say guard it with your life, but I know you don’t value anything that highly.” There was a laugh at the end.

Slim memorized the sequence and deleted the message. Obviously it was some kind of code or identification.

That was the last time he heard from the Kid.

“Some people here to see you,” said the jailer. “Supposed to be your parents.”

“Why not?” said Slim, his chipped tooth a hole in his smile.

A few minutes later, they were as close to him as a sheet of bulletproof glass. The man supposed to be his father said, “The D.A. seems very intent on the death penalty.”

The woman supposed to be his mother kept staring at a spot in space just above and to the left of his head. “I want to pray with you,” she said.

“Try it and I’ll tell the guard you smuggled in plastic explosives by sticking them up your ass,” he said.

That shut them up for a minute or so.

He couldn’t remember just when, but at an early age he’d become convinced that these two people were not who they said they were. Fake parents, maybe even fake people. Or maybe he was the imposter. The physical resemblance was slight at best. He felt nothing for them.

The man supposed to be his father said he would like for him to consider donating his body to science. That way, he said, something positive might come out of this someday.

He told them he’d already put in a request to be torn apart by wild dogs.