Bobby Byrd - Lone Star Noir

“He was a criminal just like you and the other three.”

“You’re a bigger criminal than me and my crew ever dreamed about being. And the Kid was no criminal, he was an idealist. Stealing the money, that was my idea.”

“I’m sure these are all fine distinctions,” said the old man, turning his head to spit blood. “I could use a cigarette, though. How about it?”

“Kill yourself on your own time, not mine.”

“What the hell do you really want?”

Slim picked up the novel and thumbed it open. “You really believe the things this sheriff character says?”

“I surely do,” he said. “That’s a wise man wrote that book. He’s one of us for sure. A true believer.”

“ You can’t go to war without God. You put a big red star next to that line in the book. You believe that?”

“Absolutely.”

“I guess that’s why the war we got now is going so well.”

“You’ve turned away from God’s love,” said the old man. “That’s the one unforgivable sin, you know. God can’t help you if you don’t accept His grace.”

“You hired some dirty cops to kill a twenty-six-year-old musician who had a naïve idea of saving the world from guys like you. And you’re upstairs banging a seventeen-year-old girl. What’s that shit?”

Color rose in the puffy folds of flesh in the old man’s face as he grinned. “Let me ask you, son, have you ever committed a worthwhile deed in your whole, sorry life?”

“Not unless it was by accident.”

“Look here, I can get you a half million and change. But you’d have to work with me on it.”

“I’m listening.”

“Tomorrow we’ll go to a certain bank. You wait in the car or somewhere you can keep an eye on me because you could be recognized and arrested. You’ll have to trust me, but I know you won’t do that. I suppose you could hold someone hostage-”

“You mean like a family member?” Slim interrupted with a smile. “Like your wife or daughter? A preacher, like your brother?”

“I’d rather not go that route.”

“But you didn’t say absolutely not, no way. How about telling me the box number?”

“It would serve no purpose. You can’t do anything without me.”

“Let’s see if I can trust you.”

Reluctantly, State recited the number. It was the same sequence the Kid had left on his machine, except the last three digits were transposed.

“Try again,” said the thief.

Color drained from the old man’s face. He recited the number again. This time it was exactly the same as the message from the Kid.

“Good boy,” he said.

“We have a deal?”

“So what’s in the box besides cash?” asked the thief. “A little black book? Some disks with names and dates and figures showing how your scam works, and if you ever find yourself behind the eight ball, you can extort your way out?”

The old man wouldn’t answer.

“But it would be trouble for you if the stuff came out now, without any control on your part, right?”

“You can’t get in the box without me,” said the old man. “You need me.”

“Actually, I don’t, I know a guy,” he said, placing the muzzle of the.380 against the old fart’s forehead and then watching him squirm as he wet his pants, like they always do.

You could be in the life a long time without ever having to kill anyone. Maybe there was nothing he’d ever wanted badly enough.

“You don’t need to expose me,” said the old man. “You’ll have the money, there’d be no purpose in it. You say you don’t give a hoot about morals and hypocrisy. If you’ve got a shred of humanity at all, you’ll do me a favor and destroy those disks in that box. You’d just end up hurting a lot of innocent people.”

Slim made no promises. What he did was loosen the tape binding the old man’s right hand just enough to allow him to light a cigarette. He removed the pack from the old man’s robe, grabbed a lighter from the side table, put both items in the old man’s palm, and walked out the door.

He was halfway to his car when he visualized himself being pulled over, cuffed, jailed. Getting caught was always a possibility, but he hated the idea of it happening at this moment, the way things stood. The old man, sitting in his big fucking house, smoking his cigarettes. That superior look on his face.

The rain had let up but the wind stung his cheeks and there was a low howling coming from the east. Something in the tone of it made him think of one of the Kid’s best songs, the one that seemed to turn time and space inside out.

He went back for one last thing.

Two months later, three young men were scarfing candy and energy drinks in the break room on the tenth floor of a highrise overlooking Lake Austin. They’d been working overtime for several weeks processing insurance claims from the storm. All three looked haggard and stoned. Sometimes their topic of conversation was pornographic, more often it was a gruesome joke at the expense of a policyholder.

The rich old fart who burned alive in his recliner, for example.

“What do you think?” said Carney. “Coulda been lightning. The house did get hit, no doubt about that. We don’t have a lot of ‘Act of God’ cases anyway. What’ll the boss say?”

“Bullshit,” said Willet. “I’d rather chalk it up to spontaneous human combustion. I’d love to see the look on old Rickstein’s face when he reads that.”

“Sorry, dude,” Carney said. “People don’t just up and bust into flames. I can’t go for that.”

“Too bad that guy got shivved to death in jail,” said Lamont. “He could’ve told us how he did it.”

“You mean the asshole they caught with booty from the old guy’s house?” said Willet. “The murder charge against him was bullshit, purely circumstantial. I say the guy just exploded.”

“Question is,” Lamont said, “did the old bastard climb up on his roof and paint that message there before he exploded, or did somebody else do it?”

Lamont still had the aerial photo in his hands. His girlfriend, the television reporter, had given it to him. Taken by the pilot of a traffic helicopter, it showed a sea of ravaged roofs, uprooted trees, and crap blown all over hell. In the exact center was the old man’s house. Someone had painted the words MORAL HAZARD in huge block letters on the roof, and below that, a sequence of letters and numbers. Lamont didn’t know what they signified, but his girlfriend was working on it. A veteran investigative reporter from Fort Worth was helping her out. They were calling it “The Church and State Case.”

“Fuck it,” said Willet. “Wouldn’t spontaneous human combustion be covered under the ‘Act of God’ clause?”

“Obviously you’re joking, but it sure as hell isn’t moral hazard, either,” said Carney. “Who files for homeowner’s damage and claims it was moral hazard? We didn’t force them to take out a policy. I didn’t shove an M-80 up that dude’s ass. Maybe the wife did it.”

“She was in Mexico,” said Lamont. “And you’re a little too stoned for this time of day.”

“You’re right,” said Carney. “I need a couple weeks off. Somewhere good, where the sun shines all day and there’s no thunderstorms or tornados. They say Bali is nice.”

“Two words,” said Willet. “Tidal waves.”

“One word,” said Lamont. “Suicide. Can you imagine a guy so full of self-hate and loathing that he’d douse himself with lighter fluid and torch himself? And why didn’t anything else in the room burn? Why didn’t his feet burn up?”

“Fuck, man, it’s just the dynamics of fire,” said Carney. “The body burns up like a candle because of the fat content. When the fire uses up all the oxygen in the room, it goes out. In this case, there was just enough for it to burn down to the feet. Air currents in the room cause the heat to rise to the ceiling and melt the TV. No mystery to it. What about Isla Mujeres?”