The Next Time You Die Read online

  I nodded hello to the bartender, a guy I sort of knew from previous visits, and ordered a Shiner Bock. Across the room the front door opened, and I squinted against the sunlight as the man I took to be Lucas Linville entered.

  Five-eight or -nine. Skinny. Late fifties. The pink bow tie was the giveaway, the article of clothing he had mentioned he would be wearing. It was tied tightly around the neck of a beige dress shirt underneath a brown suit. Even from across the room, I could see the outfit was worn at the edges.

  He blinked a couple of times against the gloom of the place and then walked to the bar, leaned in, and whispered something to the guy who had just served me a beer. The bartender cut a glance my way without breaking his conversation with Linville.

  I nodded.

  He pointed to me with an ashtray he’d been polishing.

  Linville took a moment to examine his surroundings and then walked around the bar past Mr. Emphysema and took the empty stool next to me. He stuck out a hand and introduced himself. His breath smelled like Wrigley’s Doublemint chewing gum, and I caught the faint aroma of drugstore aftershave on my hand where it had pressed against his palm.

  Before I could say much of anything other than my name, Linville ordered a shot of Jim Beam with a Budweiser chaser and said, “Did you have any trouble finding the place?”

  I didn’t reply for a moment as I watched the bartender serve up my newest favorite concoction: a Baptist boilermaker. Might have to start going to church.

  “I know my way around town pretty well,” I said. A few blocks away a bullet had punched a hole through the side of my new Hugo Boss leather jacket a couple of winters ago. I was still pissed about it.

  “I have a small ministry not far from here.” He downed the glass of whiskey in one gulp, followed it up with a swig of beer. “This is a troubled part of town, wouldn’t you say?”

  “No offense.” I looked at my watch. “But I didn’t come here to talk about urban blight.”

  Linville leaned back and stared at me, a blank expression on his face. “You find stuff for people, right?”

  “Sometimes.” Category two: people missing something. I felt a little better. “Depends on what it is.”

  “A file was stolen from my office yesterday.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “My ministry helps the people on the fringes.” He steepled his fingers underneath his scrawny chin. “Drug addicts. Prostitutes. What society thinks of as the gutter.”

  He paused for a drink of beer. “Sometimes the people who find themselves on the bottom started out on top.”

  “Debutantes turned streetwalkers, next on Jerry Springer.” I’d been hired once to find the daughter of a social bigwig. It turned out a busboy at the country club had introduced the flaxen-haired lass to the joys of injectable methamphetamines. The situation turned out poorly for all concerned.

  Linville nodded. “Yeah. More or less.”

  “What was in the file?”

  “Records on a former employee of mine, a young man named Reese.” Linville tugged on an earlobe as he talked. “Came from a prominent family. Mother was involved with all those charity balls. He could have done anything, been anything he wanted.”

  “What was Reese’s problem?”

  “He had trouble with opiates, and cocaine, too. Ended up on the streets in a bad way until I gave him a job.” Linville clinked the empty shot glass against his beer bottle and asked the bartender for another Jim Beam. “His family has been more than generous to my ministry.”

  “When did he quit working for you?”

  The older man frowned and ran his index finger around the rim of his beer can. “Four or five months ago.”

  “It’s an employment file,” I said. “So that means it has his last name.”

  “Yes.” He lowered his voice and looked around the room. “Reese Cunningham.”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar. It conjured up an image of yacht clubs and cotillion dances. I said, “And Mumsy and Daddy won’t be too eager to fund your operation if it gets out that their precious angel was a homeless addict.”

  “Certain segments of society care about appearances at all costs.” He downed his second shot.

  “When did you notice it missing?”

  “Yesterday, right after lunch.”

  “Anything else gone?”

  He shook his head.

  “Who had access—” I stopped and mentally slapped myself on the forehead. The people he ministered to were not exactly pillars of the community.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Linville’s eyes glowed with alcohol, watery yet intense. “Only one other person had keys to my office.”

  “What’s his name?” I got out a pen and grabbed a cocktail napkin from a pile by the beer taps.

  “How do you know it was a he?”

  I sighed. “Okay. What was her name?”

  “Oh, never mind. He was my assistant.” Linville rubbed the bridge of his nose, his voice now sounding distant. “Carlos. He didn’t come to work today.”

  “Last name?”

  “Jimenez.”

  The old guy on the other side of me erupted into a fit of coughing, his chest cavity sounding like a tin can full of gravel. When his wheezing subsided I said, “How long has he worked for you?”

  “Must be six months now.” Linville drained his beer. “Started as a court-ordered DWI thing. He’s been clean ever since.”

  I fanned away a cloud of smoke from Mr. Emphysema’s fresh cigarette. “Where does Carlos live?”

  “A boardinghouse. In Oak Cliff.” Linville grabbed my pen and scribbled something on the cocktail napkin. His hand trembled as he slid the paper in my direction.

  I put the information in my pocket but didn’t say anything.

  “Discretion is—” Linville covered his mouth with one hand and hiccoughed. “Uh . . . imperative. That’s why I didn’t call the police.”

  I mentioned my fee. He produced an already-made-out check. The amount was for a week’s worth of my time, a sum of money incongruous with the man’s shabby appearance. He described Carlos. Overweight, Hispanic, mid-twenties, a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on his left arm.

  A shaft of sunlight penetrated the darkened room as the front door opened and two people entered. Mr. Emphysema coughed a couple of times and spat something on the floor. He ordered an Absolut martini, one hundred proof, straight up. I debated taking up smoking.

  “One more question for now,” I said. “Why haven’t you tried to track down Carlos yourself?”

  “My work demands a lot of time. And . . .”Linville stood and looked at two men who had just entered, “. . . I believe certain people mean me harm.”

  I stood also. The two newcomers flanked out, their attention plainly focused on Linville and me. Their hands were balled into fists. Everything about their demeanor screamed attack.

  “Oh, dear.” Linville’s face drained of color. “Now I’ve got you involved.”

  The larger of the two produced a semiautomatic pistol from a pocket. He started toward us.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The two guys were rednecks. Cowboy hats. One in a Western-style printed shirt; the other, the one with the pistol, wore faded overalls. Lace-up Roper boots. Big, work-callused hands. They were the real thing, not some city cowpokes playacting.

  Lee Harvey’s was not a redneck bar. It was an urban place. Lee Harvey’s was graphic designers with soul patch beards who wanted to pretend they were living on the edge, drinking a few brewskies in a bad neighborhood. Lee Harvey’s was the NPR crowd slumming.

  Which meant the rednecks weren’t randomly looking for a fight. They were here for a reason. And the reason appeared to be Pastor Linville.

  Redneck One, the guy in overalls with the gun, moved around the bar toward where we stood. “Are you Lee Oswald?”

  “Who wants to know?” I tried to make sense of what was happening, how they knew my name.

  “Gonna mess you up, boy.
” Redneck One spit a stream of tobacco juice on the floor.

  “Why?” Not the best of comebacks but all I could manage. I grabbed for the Browning Hi Power on my right hip. Damned if I was going down without a fight.

  He laughed and his belly jiggled the denim of his overalls. The bartender reached for the phone.

  My hand slid underneath my shirt and rested on the butt of the pistol.

  Redneck One cocked the hammer of his gun.

  I gripped my weapon and began to draw, much too slowly. What the hell was going on? From zero to a gunfight in under five seconds.

  The redneck’s shoulder and arm erupted in flames. He shrieked. Dropped the gun. Shrieked louder. Hopped from one foot to the other, making the flames bigger.

  Somewhere between the first yelp of pain and the dropping of the weapon, I had heard a glass break. Mr. Emphysema cackled. He held a lighter over his head and flicked it, as if he were at a Van Halen concert. His martini glass was gone. I put two and three and four together and realized he had lit the drink on fire and tossed it at Redneck One, who was now rolling around on the floor, getting more flambéed as the seconds ticked by.

  That left the second redneck to deal with. I turned his way. He was brandishing a pool cue like a baseball bat. Linville held a beer bottle, arm cocked back as if he was going to throw it.

  I racked the slide on my Browning and pointed it at the man. “Who the hell are you?”

  “You’ve got to answer for what you did to Billy.” He dropped the pool cue.

  I didn’t reply. Suddenly the room was cold as a child’s grave on Christmas morning. I’d known only one Billy in my life, and I didn’t want to think about him ever again.

  Sirens wailed in the distance. The man grabbed a pitcher of ice water from the bar and doused his smoldering friend. “Didn’t think you could get away with it, didya?”

  “You hillbillies are out of your league,” I said, “and a long way from home.”

  “Everything comes back around.” He grabbed his friend and pulled him to his feet. Mr. Overalls screamed as his blackened arm hit the side of the bar. Together they walked backward toward the front door. I kept the pistol pointed at them. The sirens grew louder.

  Before I could say anything else, they were gone, slipped through the entranceway and into the afternoon sun. I headed after them but stopped when Linville fell over a table and crashed into a chair, ashtrays and glasses clanking to the floor. I holstered my gun and picked him up.

  His eyes rolled back in his head. The bourbon and beer on his breath hit me like a wino’s wet dream. I turned my head to one side, pulled him into a chair, and felt for a pulse.

  “He gets that way,” the bartender said. “From time to time.”

  “He come in here often?”

  “When he wants to get shit-faced.”

  Linville shrugged himself awake. Blinked. Looked around the room.

  “Which is how often?” I said.

  The bartender didn’t answer. The sirens sounded as if they were in the next room. Car doors slammed. The first cop walked through the door.

  Two and a half hours. That’s how long it took to get everything straightened out. There were reports to complete. Descriptions to give. Questions to answer.

  So I sat and told my version of the events to the uniformed officers a half dozen times. The one in charge, an older sergeant, kept staring at my driver’s license and asking if my name was for real. I kept saying it was, indeed.

  Lee Henry Oswald, the gift of a bullheaded father so stubborn he’d insisted on bestowing his name on his only son, even though the words “Lee Oswald” has recently entered the collective consciousness of the world at about the same level of hatred as “Adolf Hitler.”

  The officer made a bunch of jokes about my name and the bar we were in, Lee Harvey’s. I was less amused.

  The cops finished with Linville first. While my interview wound down, he ordered one boilermaker after another to the curious stares of the after-work types who ambled inside to get a drink.

  The sun had eased behind the trees in the west and the heat of the day had begun to dissipate as we walked out the door. Linville was drunk. He staggered a little and looked as if he was going to vomit.

  “You need a ride?” I said.

  “Y-y-yeah. I don’t . . . uh . . . no car here.”

  I got him in the passenger side and exited the parking area. The dogs in the junkyard next door were out now. They ran the length of the fence separating them from the outdoor seating of the bar and whined at the smell of food and drink and activity. Linville gave surprisingly lucid directions to an ancient brick structure that might have been a school at one time, a dozen or so blocks south. It had a newish red sign over the front door that read, NEW HOPE SOUP KITCHEN.

  The building was on a corner, next to a Quonset hut-looking place called Jimmy Earl’s Social Club and a boarded-up house with a handful of people sitting on the porch in the dim evening light, drinking beer from quart bottles. Across the street was a two-story apartment building that looked like a prime target for the city’s next tornado. What was either a car backfiring or gunfire rattled in the distance.

  As Linville opened the door to my truck and staggered out, a wiry man with brown skin, Filipino, probably, exited the front door of the church, hurried over, and grabbed him by the arm. The man stuck his head inside. “Thank you for taking care of him.” I nodded and said sure, no problem, as he half carried the drunken preacher up the sidewalk. Another man had exited the building and was standing on the steps, holding what looked like a shotgun. A sentry, watching for trouble.

  I wanted to ask Linville some more questions, but he was incoherent. I wanted to know why the two rednecks had confronted us. I wanted to know why they had invoked the name of a dead man.

  That could wait. It was time to leave this part of town. The sun was going down; the night people would be out soon.

  I zigged and zagged through the narrow streets past empty lots and tiny wooden houses and cars on blocks. Though only a few blocks south of the central business district, the area might as well have been a hemisphere away from the power and privilege residing in the sleek towers that made up the Chamber of Commerce version of Dallas.

  After a few minutes, I hit Ervay Street, a major thoroughfare leading north to downtown. The street was originally a bustling commercial district, the storefronts housing whatever businesses had been popular a hundred years earlier, haberdasheries and milliners, maybe, or small dry-goods merchants and pharmacies, the Gaps and Starbucks of another era.

  But the economy and the population had shifted, leaving South Ervay boarded up and decaying like so many parts of the city.

  The street wasn’t empty of people, though. There were dozens of figures milling about on the corners. Small knots of young men in two-hundred-dollar sneakers and oversized, low-slung jeans. Children were on the curbs, runners the police wouldn’t arrest for delivering a glass vial of crack cocaine to the eager hands of the living dead who scurried in and out of doorways like cockroaches, looking to score.

  I locked the doors of my truck and headed north.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I drove through downtown Dallas, under the long shadows cast by the concrete-and-glass towers forming the skyline, past the new bars and stores and clubs lining the narrow streets, the latest attempt at pretending a suburban city could have a thriving downtown. I drove by churches and a couple of old buildings where I had been told several nice brothels and opium dens had operated in the early part of the twentieth century, when Dallas had been an open city, the vices of its frontier heritage still evident along the cobblestone streets. This was during the same era that the Ku Klux Klan ran the city, and a Dallas dentist named Hiram Wesley Evans was elected as the national Imperial Wizard.

  Now the century-old gingerbread structures housed small law firms and real estate offices, and I wondered if maybe we might not have been better off with the brothels and opium dens, minus the Klan, of cou
rse.

  Ten minutes later I was in my neighborhood in old East Dallas, an eclectic chunk of town devoid of the strip malls, swaggering real estate developers, and big-haired, Neiman Marcus-ized woman that make up so much of the city’s stereotype.

  I stopped at a taqueria on Gaston Avenue and bought a to-go plate of carne asada and a six-pack of beer. I made small talk with an acquaintance of mine named Hector, a sometimes bookie and full-time owner of a bar a few blocks away.

  Last stop was home, a snug little brick Tudor on Sycamore Street, a few blocks north of Baylor Hospital. Except for a Caucasian assistant DA with a topless bar addiction who lived one street over, half my neighbors were Hispanic, the other half Asians from perhaps a dozen different countries.

  I got out of my car with dinner and the beer. The air smelled like charcoal fires, fresh-cut lawn, and livestock, the latter the result of the goats my neighbor next door, a retiree named Mr. Martinez, sometimes kept in his backyard. I didn’t live in a fancy part of town, and the city officials didn’t enforce the codes about such things. That was fine with me since every so often Mr. Martinez would ask me over for a plate of slow-barbecued cabrito.

  Inside my house, I ate the carne asada and drank two beers. I played fetch for a few minutes with my elderly chocolate Lab, Glenda. At eight-thirty I put the dirty plate in the dishwasher.

  Then I puttered. Or tried to. I took apart a shotgun in my basement workroom and began to clean it, stopping halfway through with a rod still in the barrel. I made a grocery list but tore it up. I started the latest Lee Child thriller, anxious to see what troubles had befallen Jack Reacher this time. I raced through the first twenty pages, two lifetimes’ worth of adventure for a normal person, just a typical day for Reacher. At the end of the second chapter, I put the novel down.

  The name of a man, dead for many months now, kept swirling through my head, interfering with my concentration.