the doughnut counter and he looked like he’d been there all night and was ready for a fresh recruit. When I ordered a couple of doughnuts and coffees for us, he didn’t say any more than he had to, like maybe his mouth was tired.
We took a table at the rear of the place and after sipping at our coffee, Russel said, “I still don’t see why you’re bothering. What do you care about me?”
I slid sideways in the booth so I could put my feet along the seat and my back against the wall and not have to look directly at Russel. “Personally, I don’t give a shit about you. I don’t even like you. Why should I?”
“Why then? You could have just let things slide.”
“I’ve been hoodwinked. I don’t like that. I killed a man and I don’t even know who I killed. I don’t like that. Because they said I killed your son it made you crazy enough to threaten my son and try to hurt me and my wife. I don’t like that. But I’m a human being. I think I know some of how you must have felt, your son dead and all. I think I’d have been a little crazy. I’m not forgiving you, mind you, I’m just saying I’ve got some idea about how you must have felt, and then for it all to be a lie…”
“I never did that boy any real good when he was alive,” Russel said. “I’m not sure why I thought I could do him any now. Guilt maybe.”
“You see him much?”
“ No. Just when he was younger. Those pictures were about it. His mom may have made him send the one where he was older. I don’t know. That was years back. Me and his mom were separated, but she still kept in touch, let me know how Freddy was doing. The football team, stuff like that.”
“What were you in for?”
“Burglary at first. I got out and then I went back in on an armed robbery charge. I got off light because it couldn’t be proved I had the gun. Which I didn’t. The guy with me had the gun.”
“Same difference, isn’t it?”
“Just about. I kept him from killing the store attendant. He shot the attendant once and I hit him and wrestled the gun away. It wasn’t supposed to be like that, the shooting I mean. I just needed money and we were going to bluff. Or so he said. I didn’t know the asshole was a cold killer.”
“So they got you while you were fighting with your partner?”
“No. I took the gun from him and coldcocked him and waited until they called the law. I figured things were bad enough with the store manager bleeding to death without me making it worse for myself by running. And the truth is, had I left my partner, he’d have talked. I didn’t want to kill him, so I stayed and took my medicine. One of the clerks testified that I had stopped my partner from finishing the man off, but it didn’t matter really. He died later.”
“What happened to your partner?”
“He was one of the last to get the chair-this was before the injection stuff. I got a stretch.”
“What plans did you have when you got out… before this thing happened with your son? Or the man who was supposed to be your son?”
“I sat in there twenty years trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Some things crossed my mind. Wasn’t any of them any good. I wanted to find my son and make up for lost time. That was about it. I’d have taken any kind of job just so I could be near him, or go to see him from time to time. I had a lot of catching up to do. Some explaining. But that’s all shit under the bridge now.”
“Your son is probably out there somewhere, we just have to figure how to find him.”
Russel laid those hands that looked like my father’s hands on the table and looked at them, as if trying to determine how they had gotten there on the ends of his wrists. Finally he lifted his head. “There was this guy I knew once. We were good friends before I got stupid. He was a character. But hell, I haven’t seen him in twenty years. He’d be about fifty now, I think. He wrote me in jail some and I wrote back for a while, then quit. His letters kept coming. He knew me and my family, you see.”
“What about him?”
“He was a private investigator. Real good. I worked for him some doing skip traces and repossessions before I got stupid. He had quite a reputation.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know now. He was in Houston then. He’d been in the military. A Green Beret. Ex peen?”
“You think he could help us find some things out?”
“If he’s still out there and will do it, yeah. If he can’t, no one can.”
I thought about that a while. In spite of my humanity speech I was beginning to feel like a jackass. I had gotten Russel out of jail and that was enough. Like he said, I didn’t owe that to him. Maybe he was crazy and maybe he didn’t believe a word I was saying. He was just waiting for a chance to finish what he started. And what would Ann think about all this? Not only had I gotten him out of the slammer, I was now planning to help him find out what happened to his son. Hire some private detective to do it. It didn’t make much sense.
But then again I thought about the man I had killed. You didn’t just kill a man and not know his name. And I didn’t like the idea of being used. I wasn’t sure how the police had used me, but they had. And this poor bastard might never have gone off his head for even a little bit had they not told him the lie they did. And it seemed like the more I tried to rationalize not getting involved any more than I already was, the more I felt I should.
“A detective costs money,” Russel said, voicing my next concern. “I don’t have any, and I don’t think Jim Bob will do it for free. Maybe he would have in the old days, but I don’t know now. Lot of time has gone by. I feel like it was yesterday that we were friends, but my contacts have been kind of limited the last few years. Jim Bob has probably gone on and had a life. He may not want anything to do with me-even if I had money to hire him.”
“I can supply the money,” I said. “I’m not made of it, but I do all right. First thing, let’s see if he’s still around.”
I drank my coffee and went outside to the phone booth between the doughnut shop and the Fina station and called Houston information. I asked first for a Luke Detective Agency, then for a Jim Bob Luke. Neither was listed.
I tried Pasadena, which is a small burg outside of Houston. A lot of people drive to work in Houston from there.
“Jim Bob Luke on Mulberry Street?” the operator asked.
I took a flyer. “Yeah, that’s him.”
She gave me the number and I wrote it on one of my business cards and went back to the doughnut shop. I slid into the booth across from Russel and said, “Bingo.”
18
There was a lightening of the sky by the time we left the doughnut shop. I drove Russel to the Lazy Lodge on the edge of town and checked him in for the day. It’s a sleazy place that caters to the wetbacks passing through on their way to shitty jobs and enough money to rent a mobile home for twelve. Meals were served from a candy and soft drink machine in the grungy lobby. For a dollar or so you could have a Snickers and a Coke.
I gave Russel enough money for emergencies, like Coke and Snickers and a throw-away razor of the sort they sold at the check-in desk.
“ You taking me in to raise?” Russel said.
“Seems like it,” I said.
We went into the little room he was assigned and left the door half open as it was hot in there and the air- conditioning wasn’t turned on. The room had the faint smell of an uncleaned toilet and too much lemon air freshener. Three dead roaches had been piled in one corner on top of one another by an indifferent broom stroke, making them look like an insect balancing act.
Russel sat on the bed and it sagged so bad in the middle he seemed to be melting from the butt up. He worked his way out of the slump and got down on his knees and looked under the bed and laughed. “Only one slat in the middle. Swank.”
“It’s all my finances will allow,” I said.
“I’m not complaining.” He sat on the very edge of the bed and got out his cigarette pack and shook out the
