Bobby Byrd - Lone Star Noir

The woman supposed to be his mother wanted to know how could anyone pour lighter fluid on another person and set him on fire? And just watch them burn alive? How could one human do that to another?

“Didn’t you hear?” he said. “It was spontaneous human combustion. The guy was so rotten with corruption he just blew up.”

Her upper lip twitched to the side, giving her the appearance of a cleft palate.

“The D.A. didn’t like that story any more than I do,” said the man supposed to be his father. After a long pause, he continued, “Wouldn’t you like to know you did one good thing before you died?”

Slim laughed and for some reason felt obligated to explain. “That’s the same thing the old fart said.”

Twitching, the woman said, “You mean, the man you…?”

The man tugged at her arm and said, “Let’s go.”

The rain was still heavy Friday night when Slim arrived on the cul-de-sac. He parked a block away and walked back. State had company. A little Saturn with Mardi Gras beads hanging from the rearview. The kitchen window proved to be the easiest way in. As he entered he could hear groans of faked ecstasy upstairs. Seventeen-years-old, with braces and fake boobs and a shaved package, Jennifer charged five hundred dollars an hour for house calls.

Slim had known her since she was twelve. There was no connection between her presence and his being here, just one of those coincidences that happen in a community of pirates and thieves. Small world. No telling how long he had to look around, so he got busy. Checked the garage first. A white Lexus, power tools, guns. A ladder, painting supplies, and other stray items were stored on the patio.

In a downstairs bedroom closet, he found some diamond rings, and in a locked hideaway drawer that took him all of two minutes to jimmy, he found a bag of stones, a few emeralds, some diamonds, and eighteen gold coins. He also found $800 in cash-about $250 in a money clip in a man’s overcoat and the rest in one of the wife’s designer purses.

Plus a safe-deposit box key.

There would be more loot upstairs. He settled into an overstuffed leather chair in a corner of the den and waited. They were still going at it, Jennifer shrieking every few seconds, followed by a low grunt like a dog barking. Sometimes the timing worked out so that Jennifer’s shrieks followed a thunderclap. Flash, boom, shriek, bark. Flash, boom, shriek, bark.

And then it was over. It was quiet upstairs but the storm still raged outside. He settled into a comfortable chair and waited. The.380 automatic in his lap kept him company.

On the wall were signed photos of former U.S. presidents: Reagan, Bush, Bush. There were other photos on the mantel. In one of them, a man in a clergy collar, Church, stood in a dusty village surrounded by dark-skinned children staring up at him as though they thought he might be lost. A mangy-looking dog warily sniffed the man’s pants leg. In another photo, State was shaking hands with an Arab man wearing an expensive suit and a headscarf. There was one photo of State with his wife and daughter. The daughter was good-looking in an anorexic way. A flap of skin on the wife’s left eyelid was the only sign of relief on an otherwise hard, tight countenance. State was broad and jowly and tanned the color of roast ham.

On a side table next to the chair was a leather portfolio, and atop that, a hardcover novel in a red dust jacket. Keeping one eye on the staircase, he flipped open the portfolio and leafed through the contents. Corporate documents and memos, the jargon so dense and odd it could have been from an alternate universe. There was a handwritten note from someone named Eric. Bob, it said, we need to run through all this with a fine-tooth comb. Need to check the precedents on moral hazard because it will probably come up.

Leafing through the rest of the document, he found the words moral hazard , punctuated with a question mark, scribbled in the margins of almost every other page. The handwriting appeared to be the same as the guy who had scrawled the note.

He tossed the portfolio aside and picked up the novel in the red dust jacket. The title was No Country for Old Men . Post-it flags jutted out like yellow teeth. Flipping through, he saw that lengthy passages had been underscored with a red felt-tip pen. Weird.

A creak on the stairs. Jennifer, not exactly tiptoeing but carrying her high-heeled boots under her arm. Tucking some folded currency into her purse.

“Hey,” she said.

He still hadn’t replied when she reached the last step.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s out. He sleeps hard.”

Slim nodded. “I’m not here.”

A quick glance around the room, her eyes coming to rest on the.380. She swallowed hard. “Baby, I’m so not here, either.”

“Right.”

She paused to slip on the boots and zip them up, then left. He locked behind her.

He started for the stairs, then decided to give her more time to get down the road.

He went back to the chair and picked up the novel, using the gun barrel to hold it open. The book started out with a drug deal gone sour out in Big Bend. Bodies piled up quickly. The killer had some of the best lines, but the real pontificator was the old Texas sheriff. Gruff and as reactionary as the Old Testament, the old fart seemed to believe that all the violence and decay in the world today is our own fault, because we’ve been too liberal and permissive and have lost our faith in God. The passages expressing these sentiments were the most frequently bookmarked and underlined.

Almost half an hour passed before State came down. White-haired and wearing a sweat suit, as if he was going out for a jog. Smoking a cigarette.

The old man made a sour face when he saw the.380 automatic pointed at his midsection. “My God, what in hell do you want now?” he said, recognizing Slim from Monday night. “You’re gonna be one sorry son of a bitch.”

The thief smashed him in the face with the gun, then dragged him by his collar to the leather recliner and strapped him in tight with duct tape.

“You made a call about the Kid, right?”

The old man glared at him. Both the upper and lower lips were split, causing blood to cover his teeth and pool in the creases on either side of his mouth. “What do you think you’re going to accomplish here? You want money?”

Usually, the person staring at the goodbye end of the gun did not ask questions that sounded like demands. Incontinence is common, along with profuse sweating and shaking. The old man displayed none of these symptoms.

“No,” said Slim. “I want answers.”

“You’re a son of a bitch, coming in here like this.”

“Yeah, I am. What’s moral hazard?”

“Huh? What the fuck you want to talk about that for?”

“Moral hazard, you tub of lard. What is it?”

“It’s a legal concept,” he said, his face distorted by an ugly scowl. “It’s a little fuzzy and subject to interpretation, but say you have a business where people end up taking advantage of you, cheating you out of money or breaking the law some other way. If your business is set up so that it tempts people to cheat or break the law, it’s called a moral hazard and a court can hold you liable for it.”

“Is that like saying the devil made you do it, or you did it because you ate too many Twinkies?”

The old man shrugged. “Well, like I say, it’s kind of a fuzzy area.”

The windows rattled as thunder rolled through. Rain peppered the roof.

“You’re a corrupt piece of shit,” said Slim, “but I don’t care about that.” He faltered for a moment, surprised at the sound of his own voice. “I came here because you and your people killed the Kid. You shouldn’t have done that.”