A couple of days later when Phil Thursby got back from Houston, where he had managed to plead a capital murder down to manslaughter-one even though the crackhead rich kid from Clear Lake had been caught on video and confessed to killing a Vietnamese convenience store clerk, he came into the bar while I was behind the stick giving Mike a much needed break. Thursby hopped on a stool, and shook his head slowly, almost painfully. Thursby had a high forehead above thick black-rimmed glasses and looked like a teenager playing a criminal lawyer in a high school play. But he had pale blue eyes, as restless and mad as a rabid dog's, a thin mouth like a knife wound, a curiously deep and soothing voice, and he was one of the best criminal lawyers in the state. Except for an occasional glass of Veuve Cliquot champagne and a nose for trouble, Thursby seemed to have no vices. He bought his suits off the rack in the boys' section at Penney's, still lived in the small frame house off Red River where he'd been raised, and drove a battered Toyota Corolla with neither a radio nor air-conditioning. Wallingford said the little bastard didn't need a radio because he listened to the voices in his head, or air-conditioning because he had liquid nitrogen in his veins.
'Remember, Milo, if Carver D wasn't your buddy, I wouldn't even talk to you,' Thursby rumbled as I pulled a cork and filled a flute for him. He took a tiny sip, nodded as if he approved, then added, 'as far as I know Steelhammer plans to dismiss your charges, but when the grand jury convenes, and with your history, unless you happened to be hanging on the cross next to Jesus Christ that day and he'll climb down to swear to it, Gatlin County will indict you. Tobin Rooke is almost as good as I am, but he lacks my convictions.' Thursby allowed himself a flicker of a smile, larger than an eyelash, but not much. 'He knows he really hasn't got a duck's fart chance of stinkin' in a blue norther to finally get you in prison,' Thursby continued, 'but it'll cost you a couple hundred K just to get it to a jury verdict, and believe me, they'll convict, so then it's another hundred for the appeal, with no guarantee that we can beat this before we can get it into federal court.' Thursby paused, sipped at a single champagne bubble, then added, 'You want the best free advice I've ever given?'
'My father always told me free advice usually wasn't worth what it cost,' I said. 'What do you want for a retainer?'
'To hell with that. Sell everything you own,' Thursby said, ignoring me, 'and learn to speak Portuguese.'
'Brazil?'
'You'll like it there,' Thursby said, 'the women are pretty and the drugs are cheap.' Then Thursby took another tiny sip of the champagne, hopped off the stool, and turned to leave. 'Let's start with fifty thousand.'
'I'm too old to move again,' I said as I waved him back. 'Give me a couple of days,' I said quietly as I leaned over the bar, 'and I'll come up with the money.'
'Clean?'
'As clean as I can make it. But if it isn't, will you take that case, too?' I asked.
'Not my style,' Thursby said flatly. 'Put it in my overseas account. You've got the number.'
'If you had a sense of humor,' I said, pushing a standard PI contract across the bar, 'you'd be dangerous.'
'Dead wrong,' Thursby said as he signed it so I would at least have a little confidentiality coverage and left, saying, 'Don't abuse this. I don't want to have to defend this thing in court.'
Later that afternoon, as predicted, Judge Steel-hammer dismissed the charges and released the bond, and the Sheriff's Department released the Cadillac and the Airweight. Of course, when I picked them up, the Beast came back with a location beeper under the gas tank and the Airweight with a broken firing pin. Gannon stopped by after work, so I complained to him about the alterations in my machinery. He just leaned on the bar as if trying to decide what to drink.
'You're lucky you're not dead,' Gannon chuckled, 'and the Caddy stashed in a chop-shop in Nuevo Laredo.'
'I'd forgotten how lucky I was,' I said. 'Thanks for reminding me, Capt. Gannon.'
'Call me Jimmy.'
'Not yet,' I said. 'You're still on duty.'
'Not now,' he said.
'Well, we still haven't had that drink.'
'Last time I saw you, Milo, you had them all,' Gannon said. 'I'll have whatever your lawyer drinks.'
'I do that sometimes,' I said as I filled two flutes with some of Thursby's champagne, 'but I seem to remember an offer of help.'
'I think I offered to help you pack.'
'How about something else?' I asked.
Gannon lifted his glass and his eyes narrowed as he frowned. 'What's in it for me?'
'Enos Walker,' I said. 'Lalo Herrera is coming out of retirement to cover my shifts and manage his sons and the bar, so I can give this my full attention.'
'What the hell's Walker got to do with Rooke's death?'
'Damned if I know,' I admitted, 'but it sure seems like my troubles started there.'
'What do you want?'
'The case files on the Dwayne Duval shooting. That's all.'
'That was before my time,' he said. 'I think the state boys handled the investigations back then. I'd have to sign the files out.'
'Whatever happened to interdepartmental cooperation?' I said.
'Not my department,' Gannon sighed, then we clicked glasses. 'But I'll see what I can do.'
'Please,' I said quietly.
Gannon savored the champagne. 'Here's to the good life.'
'And a copy of those files.'
I didn't really have any real hope that Gannon could or would get them to me, but it seemed like a good idea to get him in the habit of at least trying to do favors for me. We finished the flutes, then he walked slowly out, as if the single glass of champagne had made him wistful.
Gannon was barely out of the bar when Travis Lee stepped through the door and pulled up a stool at the end of the bar next to the glass wall over the hollow. At least he set his cowboy hat on the bar, so I didn't have to point out the sign prohibiting umbrellas. He smiled, ran his fingers through his thick gray hair as if to remind himself that he still had it.
I held up the champagne bottle.
'A headache in every swallow,' he snorted. 'Turkey on the rocks,' he said. 'A double. And a beer back.'
After I got his drink, I poured myself another glass of champagne. No sense in losing the expensive fizz. As I lit a cigarette, Travis Lee bummed one off me. 'I didn't know you smoked.'
'Haven't had one in twenty-five years,' he said, then hit the cigarette so hard that he burned a half-inch of it into ash. 'Damn, that's good.'
'What's up?' I asked.
'Oh, I was just in the Lodge, so I thought I'd stop in and see how your back's coming along and remind you that we have a chance to make a lot of money very easily and very quickly,' he said.
'I got some other stuff on my plate right now,' I said.
'What? Tending bar?' he said.
'I'm just giving Mike a few days off so he'll cover my shifts while I try to dig out from under this load of crap that has fallen on me,' I said. 'Phil says I've got about three weeks.'
'Where are you planning to start?' he asked, but he didn't sound either interested or confident.
'First I'm going to talk to the kid that shot-gunned Dwayne Duval.'
'What the hell does that have to do with anything?' Oddly enough, he seemed interested now.
'I don't know exactly,' I admitted. 'It's just a place to start.' I didn't tell him that Sissy Duval had lied to me. If you can't follow the money, I thought, perhaps you should try to unravel the lies. 'You didn't know this Duval character, did you?'
'I bought a drink or two off him in the old days,' he said. 'I've known his widow since she was a kid.'
'Sissy?'
'Yeah,' he sighed, then tossed off the Turkey. 'She used to be a pistol. Haven't seen her in a while.' Then he looked at me as if he knew I had. But I didn't say anything. 'You think Duval's death is connected somehow to the, ah, young woman who, ah…' He paused to sip on his beer. 'That killing was a long time ago.'
'I don't know,' I said. 'Every case has to start somewhere,' I added, 'and what's the point of being a private
