Long Fall from Heaven Read online

  Long Fall From Heaven. Copyright © 2013 by George Wier and Milton T. Burton. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in case of brief quotations for reviews. For information, write Cinco Puntos Press, 701 Texas, El Paso, TX 79901 or call at (915) 838-1625.

  Printed in the United States.

  First Edition: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Wier, George.

  Long fall from heaven / by George Wier and Milton T. Burton. —First edition. pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-935955-52-8 (pbk. : alk. paper); E-book ISBN 978-1-935955-53-5

  1. Ex-police officers—Fiction. 2. Serial murder investigation—Texas—Fiction. 3. Galveston (Tex.)—Fiction. 4. Mystery fiction. I. Burton, Milton T. II. Title.

  PS3623.I3846L66 2013

  813’.6—dc23

  2013010653

  • • •

  Book and cover design by Blue Panda Design Studio

  E-pub handcrafted at Pajarito Studios

  Table of Contents

  Arlington, Virginia. August 1943

  [ 1 ]

  Galveston, Texas. October 1987.

  [ 2 ]

  [ 3 ]

  [ 4 ]

  [ 5 ]

  Galveston, Texas. October 1943.

  [ 6 ]

  Galveston, Texas. October 1987.

  [ 7 ]

  [ 8 ]

  [ 9 ]

  [ 10 ]

  [ 11 ]

  [ 12 ]

  [ 13 ]

  [ 14 ]

  [ 15 ]

  [ 16 ]

  [ 17 ]

  La Marque, Texas. September 1944.

  [ 18 ]

  Galveston, Texas. October 1987.

  [ 19 ]

  Galveston, Texas. November 1943.

  [ 20 ]

  [ 21 ]

  [ 22 ]

  [ 23 ]

  [ 24 ]

  [ 25 ]

  Galveston, Texas. October 1987.

  [ 26 ]

  [ 27 ]

  [ 28 ]

  [ 29 ]

  [ 30 ]

  Galveston, Texas. September 1944.

  [ 31 ]

  Galveston, Texas. October 1987.

  [ 32 ]

  Galveston, Texas. December 1943.

  [ 33 ]

  Galveston, Texas. October 1987.

  [ 34 ]

  [ 35 ]

  Galveston, Texas. December 24, 1943.

  [ 36 ]

  [ 37 ]

  Galveston, Texas. October 1987.

  [ 38 ]

  [ 39 ]

  [ 40 ]

  La Marque, Texas. September 1944.

  [ 41 ]

  Galveston, Texas. October 1987.

  [ 42 ]

  [ 43 ]

  Galveston, Texas. December 24, 1943.

  [ 44 ]

  Galveston, Texas. October 1987.

  [ 45 ]

  Galveston, Texas. September 1944.

  [ 46 ]

  Galveston, Texas. October 1987.

  [ 47 ]

  AN AUTHOR'S NOTE

  [ 1 ]

  He paced the long floor in the night. Twenty-eight steps the long way, nine steps the width of the old hardwood floor. After the first hour of the first night he knew the square footage down to the inch. From there it was a quick extrapolation to determine the cubic area, given the fourteen-foot antebellum ceilings. He loved the old house, the way the floors creaked and groaned. He also hated it. The scent of old resin and yellowing linen wallpaper hung in the air, the constant reminder of age and a dissolution held in long abeyance. The house should have been shelled or burned during the Civil War, but somehow the old building had escaped that insane bloodbath. It was likely one of only a few.

  At night, he could see the dim glow of the Capitol above the trees that hemmed in the old mansion, but only when the lights were out inside. He could navigate fine indoors using only moonlight. But even when there was no moon, his perceptions were sharp—you didn’t have to see a thing to know it was there. You had to be able to feel the night. And the night was his only friend.

  The night was also quiet, but for the occasional outburst from one of his roommates. When one of them was pushed or fell ‘beyond the beyond,’ as he called it, they would cry or scream or gibber unintelligibly. This night they were quiet.

  The military men needed him. They needed him against Hitler and Mussolini and Hirohito. He had little use for them. But there were steel bars on the windows and there was nowhere else to go.

  One of the orderlies had taken to calling him ‘Longnight.’ He’d never had a nickname before. Somehow it fit him. Yes, the nights were long. Yes, he slept only during the day. He would be Longnight then, he decided.

  Sometimes during the day, when they roused him and put him at a table with a writing tablet, Longnight would mock them by drawing cartoon figures instead of the ciphers. He sensed they wanted to hurt him, as if doing so would somehow make him do what they wanted. He knew there was no power on earth that could compel him.

  He sensed the dawn long before it arrived. The orderly had come to check on him an hour before and left without saying a word. Maybe the man would go catch a catnap in the living room of the old house. Who knew? He sensed the dawn and stopped, staring out into the inky blackness beneath the line of trees across the lawn. There was something there. Something in the dark. But really, there wasn’t—it was something in the darkness of his own mind, this he knew. It lived in the hollow places between thoughts. And it had a name.

  Longnight realized he had stopped pacing. He stood, rapt. He exhaled, staring at the window four feet away with its heavy black steel bars. And waited.

  It took a while, waiting there like that, unmoving, but finally the night breathed back at him. A low mist had arisen. Longnight watched it separate from the ground and begin to rise.

  Longnight smiled. He stepped to the window and reached a hand between the ugly vertical bars. He breathed onto the window and wrote one of the equations the military men were looking for—the secret behind stabilizing Uranium 238.

  He stepped back, waited for the figure to fade into nothingness and then wrote another figure, one with more far-reaching implications than simple nuclear fission—the secret for getting mankind to the stars:

  That was the real secret after all. Nothingness. It was the one thing that the limited minds of most scientific men could not fathom. All along they were looking for some grand unifiying theory, and the answer was simply...nothing. And nothing was the answer they would never see. The answer was even contained within his new name, the nothingness of the long night.

  Longnight watched as this figure also faded into the night.

  At that moment he began planning his escape. After all, there was time. The World War was still on and it was stopping for no man. He could dole out hints at the true nature of the secret in return for day after day of breathing and still they would know less than nothing. And if he were to be deliberate, slow, he would find a way out. And then...

  His name was Longnight, and the night was his only friend.

  [ 2 ]

  Micah Lanscomb’s home was a repossessed Airstream parked in the alleyway behind Cueball Boland’s pool hall. Its former silvery glory had dulled to a light orange, tarnished by the salt air from the Gulf, its buckled seams patched with various kinds of rubber cement—reds, blacks, translucents and grays. It looked like the tail section of a cooked lobster.

  Micah’s boss, Cueball Boland, owner of NiteWise Security Company, banged on the wall outside the door. It was still dark out. The sodium arc light made an eerie shadow of his aging and solid frame. The sky above was most
ly overcast but an occasional dim star shined through. Not that Cueball spent much time looking at stars.

  “What?” The voice from inside was muffled and sleepy.

  “Need to talk to you,” Cueball said.

  No reply came. Instead the trailer creaked on its foundation of concrete pilings. Micah was getting himself up. Some day, Cueball thought, he would have to scrap the trailer and find proper quarters for his employee.

  The door opened and Micah stood there in his underwear looking down at Cueball, his abdominal muscles rippling with his breathing. Micah shielded his eyes against the glare of the parking lot light. “Come in,” he said. “Give me a sec to get some clothes on.”

  “Might as well put your security uniform on,” Cueball said.

  Cueball entered and stood in the cave-like darkness of Micah’s living room. Micah shuffled off down the hallway and flicked on the light.

  The room was neat as a pin—the way Micah kept everything with which he came in contact, be it possessions or relationships. From the bedroom, Cueball heard the sounds of hurried dressing and mild oaths.

  “What gives?” Micah asked from down the hallway and a half-closed door.

  “There’s been a killing,” Cueball said.

  “Who?” Micah asked.

  “Jack Pense.”

  “Damn,” Micah responded. His bedroom door slapped the wall of the trailer and Micah’s long stride brought him into view.

  “Rusty called and woke Myrna up a few minutes ago. Somebody broke into the DeMour warehouse. They knocked Jack on the head, tied him up, and then—just for good measure—beat him to death.”

  “Shit,” Micah said. “Anybody told Jenny?”

  “No,” Cueball said. “I’m sorry, Micah.”

  “Yeah. Me, too. Anything stolen over there?”

  “Don’t know. It’s a big warehouse. I told Rusty to hold off calling the cops until we’ve arrived.”

  “Fine,” Micah said and moved toward the door, but Cueball slowed his advance with a gently raised hand.

  “Now, I know your first instinct is to go and tell Jenny. But she doesn’t know yet and the news can keep for another few hours. Meantime, we’ve got work to do. Rusty is waiting for you in the warehouse. I’ll finish up his rounds for him, which shouldn’t take long, then meet you there. Not a word to anyone about this. After you’ve checked the place out, go ahead and call the local cops.”

  “Okay,” Micah said. And that was that.

  • • •

  Jack Pense had retired from running an armored truck crew for Wackenhut Security ten years before. Too young for social security but with not enough income to support himself and his common-law wife, Jennifer Day, Jack had come to work for Cueball Boland’s security firm a week after he was pensioned off.

  During the drive to the warehouse on the back side of the Island, Micah summoned up an image of Jack’s face—round, tired and somewhat pained. Mostly what he associated with him were a stack of read and re-read Sackett and Longarm novels and the stubs of chewed Muriel Magnum cigars. Also, he had known for years that Jack sometimes laced his on-the-job coffee with Southern Comfort and that he probably took too many pain pills, but who could blame him? Jack’s ruptured discs and three fused vertebrae weren’t imaginary. Jack’s favorite topic was his injuries and his general health. He could be downright expansive on the subject. Aside from this, Micah’s and Jack’s conversations mainly kept to football, old western movies, and the antics of Depression era desperadoes such as Bonnie and Clyde, Raymond Hamilton, and Joe Palmer.

  Micah had liked Jack Pense. Micah didn’t like many people.

  “Damn,” he told the Island. It said nothing in return. It lay mocking and silent in the haze of the breaking dawn, a little exotic, a little seedy, and—as always—a little menacing. To his right and slightly over his shoulder, the sky and the horizon waters of the Gulf glowed with coming light while ahead loomed the grim, gray silhouette of the DeMour warehouse. “Damn,” he said once again.

  [ 3 ]

  Micah Lanscomb and Cueball Boland had met five years earlier in a manner that in another time and in a more conventional place might have seemed strange. But Galveston is a port city, one with a threadbare allure many find irresistible. Its citizens are used to seeing the odd and the offbeat wash up on their shores.

  Besides owning NiteWise Security, C.C. “Cueball” Boland was a pool hustler who operated his own billiards room a block off The Strand. Additionally, he was a retired Dallas cop who gambled moderately on poker, drank a fair amount of whiskey when the situation seemed to call for it (which it frequently did), and never failed to notice a pretty girl. Which is to say that he had all of the usual male vices and a couple he had cobbled together on his own. One vice he didn’t have was philandering because his wife, the former Myrna Hutchins, had been the center of his erotic universe since sixth grade. Nor could he ever be accused of disloyalty to friends. It was this last quality that had gotten him into trouble several times since his retirement eight years earlier. Or as Myrna often said, “C.C. is the only man whose learning curve is a straight line.”

  Myrna said a lot of things like that, the kind of one-liners Groucho Marx would have appreciated. To his credit, Cueball listened to her. It was Myrna’s dry wit and uncanny sense of proportion that had attracted him to her long before the raging hormones of his early teens took charge of him, body and soul. Over the years it was his sense of loyalty that gathered to him a smattering handful of long-time friends, those few who had proven equal to the engulfing depths of his devotion. Much later in life, one of those friends was Micah Lanscomb.

  Micah came into Cueball’s life from the rain, both literally and figuratively. Lanscomb was soaked, thin and weathered, and wore an impenetrable and taciturn demeanor. He was a head taller than his fellows and his shadow came before him, a palpable, inescapable thing that parted idle chatter like the wake of a great ship traversing middling waters. If the person meeting him were pressed on the matter, he would have said that the tall man was engaged in weighty matters, which, on the face of it, was the simple truth.

  The pool hall was already quiet that fateful evening. The jukebox was being given its requisite thirty minutes to cool down, the plug disengaged and held against the wall by a racked billiard cue. The repairman who’d fixed the turntable motor and charged Cueball sixty bucks for the service call had advised a cooling down period each night—just one more thing Cueball could add to his religious regimen. It was either that or replace the damned thing, but Cueball had a soft place in his heart for old jukeboxes.

  Outside the storm freshened, diminished, and came on once again with a howl. Then suddenly, like an apparition, a wet stranger appeared just inside the doorway, dripping on the bare wooden floors.

  “Help you?” Cueball asked.

  “I don’t have any money,” the stranger said, “but I’m hungry and I’ll wash dishes and clean the place up to cover it.”

  Cueball closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he turned and opened them again he saw his own reflection in the long mirror behind the bar—a nondescript gray man of sixty-two years with graying hair and a face that people found difficult to remember even when they were looking right at it. He was five ten and weighed a hundred and sixty-five pounds—neither tall nor short, neither stocky nor skinny. The clothes he wore were usually as unmemorable as the body they covered. A writer friend had once told him that there was something about him reminiscent of the flicker of old black-and-white film—quick celluloid images at the corner of an unfocused eye like those long-ago RKO newsreels from childhood afternoons spent at the quarter matinee.

  He turned back to the man and stared at him. This was, beyond doubt, the kind of person he’d always resolutely, and with little success, sought to avoid—gaunt, hollow, needy, empty. A man like the thousands of others who wander this great and turbulent land looking for the one unnamable thing that might fill them, the undefined Holy Grail of their rootless existence. Yet t
here was a tiny something besides emptiness in the man’s eyes—something that said there was a story there worth hearing. And Cueball Boland was a man who listened to stories.

  Cueball shrugged. “Pete,” he said quietly to the huge black man behind the bar. “Put a rib-eye on the grill and turn on the fryer. I do believe this poor guy could stand a square meal.”

  “Much obliged,” the man said.

  “Want a beer?” Cueball asked.

  “Naw. A coke, maybe.”

  Cueball’s hand had been resting on the cooler. He slid back the door, reached down and pulled up a bottle, maneuvered it under the church-key out of habit, his pale gray eyes locked with the stranger’s. Cueball didn’t bother to give the man a smile. The fellow was beyond caring about petty things.

  The stranger took the coke and wandered over to a table, sat down and stared into the darkest corner of the room, oblivious. And so Cueball Boland went and joined him.

  • • •

  Micah Lanscomb’s story would come out, fully told, over a five-year period. Over those years, it would take the better part of a full case of Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey to coax it forth.

  As Lanscomb’s tale had it, in 1968 he’d left his family home in a dead end East Texas small town and made his way westward to San Francisco and the mecca of the children of Aquarius, the intersection of Haight Street with Ashbury. After weeks of hanging out with flower children, smoking dope from tall bongs between intermittent readings from Frodo’s passage of Moria and Gandalf’s consequent fall, he awoke one morning with the sure knowledge that his new hippie friends were full of shit to the precise degree they loudly clamored to be heard and understood. Which was not surprising given the fact they were, by-and-large, overgrown children, many of whom had been kicked from conservative nests as awkward and unfit offspring. It was, after all, a time of little understanding.

  Experience was what Micah was looking for, experience with life and living. But in the cool California atmosphere of rebellion and irresponsibility there seemed little evidence that anyone else was on the same quest.

  And so his quest turned inward. The drugs became harder drugs.

  His first disaster came during a group campout on the beach at Malibu. He’d taken the ride down the Coast Highway with a busload of flower children in search of a score. During a particularly disturbing acid trip on the beach, one of the girls who had been traded around was murdered. Micah heard the screams in a starlit, acid-fueled darkness while wrestling with an eerie and ever-shifting reality. The stars overhead had become streaky, violent arcs. The sand beneath his bare feet sucked away at him as if drawing his life force downward from his heart. At first he thought the screeches were that of a peacock from the neighbor’s yard back home and in his distant childhood, but soon they became something else entirely. By the time he gathered himself enough to launch forward to investigate, there was only the still and lifeless body, savaged and torn beneath the cold glare of a cheap flashlight. He hadn’t loved her. No one had loved her, to his knowledge. And Micah Lanscomb hadn’t saved her. She was as much Kitty Genovese as she had been Susan “Sun-energy” Glover of the long, willowy legs and blond, Galadriel tresses. And she was dead.