Lone Star Noir

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.”

“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 naive 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.