Lone Star Noir

Who said he’d hired anybody?

Abels, sporting a Burt Reynolds ’stache and burns, only not sexy, studied Phelan like he was a mud tire track lifted from a scene.

Phelan zeroed in on Joe, who raised his eyebrows, pulled down his lips, shook his head to indicate the purity permeating his soul.

“Okay.” Phelan set hands on his hips and broadened his stance. “All right. So my friend here appeals to my famous heart of gold. So I interview his girl. So she stuck some baddoer. So what.”

“Minced that one, yeah. I worked that case.” Louie wagged a finger. “I’m gonna tell you, cher, lock up the letter opener.” He punched his nephew’s arm, nodded at Joe, and he and Abels ambled off, chortling.

“Loudmouth bastard,” Phelan said to Joe. “Give me the dopers and perverts north side of town.” Commandeering Joe’s chair, Phelan reeled off some street names.

“That’s confidential.”

“Could have my secretary call you.”

“Hand full a ‘Gimme’ and a mouth full a ‘Much obliged’-that’s you.” Joe squinted, put-upon. “Not my territory, but old Parker lives in the can.” Joe stalked over to his coworker Parker’s vacant desk, the one next to his, and rambled through its file drawers.

Phelan phoned Tyrrell Public Library. Formerly a church-thus the arches and stained glass-it was a downtown standout, a sand castle dripped from medieval gray stone. He asked the librarian to get a Miss Wade, who’d be in the reference section, going through newspapers.

“This is not the bus station, sir. We don’t page people.”

Seems like, Phelan thought while locating his desperately-polite-but-hurting voice, one bad crab always jumps in the gumbo.

“I’m just as sorry as I can be, ma’am. But couldn’t you find my sister? We’re down at the funeral home, and our daddy’s lost his mind.”

Clunk. Receiver on desk. Joe was still pulling files.

Footsteps, then Delpha came on. “Hey, Bubba,” she said.

Phelan grinned.

She told him she’d call him back from a pay phone. “Call Joe’s,” he said.

In three minutes Joe’s phone rang, and Delpha read out what she had so far. “Check this one from last night.” A Marvin Carter, eighteen, wandering down Delaware Street, apparent assault victim, transported to a hospital. Then, outside of husband-wife slugfests, thefts, one complaint of tap-dancing on the roof of a Dodge Duster, she’d found seven dope busts and two missing-boy reports. She gave him names and addresses, phone numbers from the cross directory.

Joe dumped files on his desk, said, “Vacate my chair, son.” Phelan ignored him, boring in on each mug shot as he scribbled names on his unprofessional legal pad.

One of the names was a Don Henry. Liberated from Huntsville two months back.

Some D name, Don or Darrell.

There you go. Cake.

No mud, no grease, no 500-pound pipe, no lost body parts. Man, he should have split the rigs while he still had ten fingers.

2:01. He drove back to the office and hit the phone. Got a child at the Henry number, asked for its mother.

“She went the store. Git away, Dwight, I’m on the phone.” A wail from the background.

“Honey, your daddy there?”

The child scolded Dwight. Dwight was supposed to shut up while the child had dibs on the telephone. But little Dwight wasn’t lying down; he was pitching a fit.

“Honey? Hey, kid!” Phelan hollered into the phone.

“Shut up, Dwight! I cain’t hear myself talk. They took Daddy back Satiddy.”

“Saturday? Back where, honey?”

“Where he was. Is this Uncle Merle?” The child yelped. Now two wails mingled on the other end of the line.

A woman’s harsh voice barked into the phone, “Lowdown, Merle, pumping the kids. They pulled Don’s paper, okay? You happy now? Gonna say ‘I told you so’? You and Ma can kiss my ass.” The phone crashed down.

Saturday was six days ago. Frowning, Phelan X’d Don Henry. Next, mindful of the gray-haired volunteers in pink smocks on the end of the line, he called Baptist Hospital and inquired feelingly for his cousin Marvin Carter. Strike one. Next was Saint Elizabeth, long wait, transfer, and strike two. Finally Hotel Dieu and a single to first.

He parked in a doctor’s space in front of the redbrick hospital by the port. Eau de Pinesol and polished tile. A nun gave him the room number.

The face on the pillow was white-whiskered, toothless, and snoring. A pyramid of a woman in a red-flowered muumuu sat bedside. Phelan checked the room number. “Marvin Carter?”

The woman sighed. “My husband’s name is Mar-tin. Cain’t y’all get nothing right?”

Phelan loped back to the desk and stood in line behind a sturdy black woman and a teenage boy with a transistor radio broadcasting the day’s body count in a jungle on the other side of the globe. The boy’s face was lopsided, the wide bottom out of kilter with a narrow forehead. He nudged the dial and a song blared out. “Kung Fu Fighting.” The woman slapped shut a checkbook, snatched the transistor, and dialed back to the tinny announcer spewing numbers and Asian place names.

“Jus’ keep listenin’. ’Cause you keep runnin’ nights, thas where you gonna be, in that war don’t never end, you hear me, Marvin? What you lookin at?” She scowled at Phelan.

The boy turned so that Phelan verified the lopsidedness as swelling. He ventured, “Marvin Carter?”

The woman’s eyes slitted as she asked who he was. Phelan told her, emphasizing that he was not a policeman. He told her that he was looking for Ricky Toups, kept his eyes on the boy.

The boy flinched. Bingo.

“Les’ go.” The woman pushed the teenager toward the glass doors.

Phelan dogged them. “Did that to you, Marvin, what’s he gonna do to Ricky, huh? Want that on your slate? Could be a lot worse than the dope.”

The boy tried the deadeye on Phelan. Couldn’t hold it.

“We talking dope now?” The woman’s voice dropped below freezing. “You done lied to me, Marvin Carter.” Her slapping hand stopped short of the swollen jaw.

Marvin grunted something that was probably “Don’t, Mama,” enough so Phelan understood his jaw was wired.

“Ricky got you there promising dope,” Phelan said, “but that wasn’t all you got, was it?”

The boy squeezed his eyes shut.

“Wasn’t white kids did this to you? Was some grown man?” Marvin’s mother took hold of his skinny waist.

“Listen,” Phelan leaned in, “if he said he’d hurt your mama here, I’ll take care of that. It’s just a line. But Ricky’s real. You know him, and he’s wherever you were last night. Help me find him, Marvin.”

“Avy,” the boy said.

“Avie? The street near the LNVA canal?”

Shake from Marvin said no. And he mumbled again, “Avy.”

“Davy? That’s his name?”

A shudder ran through the teenager.

Phelan scanned his list of parolees. Didn’t have to be one of them, but he had a feeling. “Dave Deeterman? Concord Street?”

Shake from Marvin said yes. “Kakerd.” Marvin muttered directions, minus lots of consonants. The mother glared Phelan away, and Marvin bent down and shook against her neck.

Phelan dashed back to the hospital’s two pay phones, called Delpha, told her where he was heading, and if she didn’t hear from him within the hour, to call Louis Reaud down at the station. “That’s R-E-”

“Know how to spell it,” she said. “Guess your second client brought over your retainer. Somebody left a