Capitol Offense (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  “What can I do for you, Noah?”

  “Well, I heard through the grapevine that a certain well-established local accountant was on somebody’s short list for the Lieutenant Governor spot.”

  “And who might that be, Noah? I can tell you, it sure ain’t me.”

  “Nobody said anything about you, Bill. I’m talking about your partner.”

  “Oh. Nat? Where’d you hear that?”

  “A little birdie told me.”

  “I thought you ran a magazine, not a gossip column.”

  “That’s a low one, Bill. I would have expected better from you. So let’s say to make up for that jab, you buy me lunch?”

  “Hmm,” I said. I looked at the stack of papers beside me. On top there was an old black and white front page news photo of a truck with a winch pulling wreckage up onto a Galveston dock.

  “That, my friend,” Noah began, “is what we call in the business a pregnant pause.”

  “I was just thinking, Noah — ”

  “Don’t do that, Bill. Thinking is usually dangerous.”

  “I know. I know. It’s just that I’ve got something else I’m mulling over at the moment. It’s something you might have some insight into.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Noah said. “Like what?”

  “Well. I may have run across something that potentially could turn a really big somebody into a little bitty nobody. That’s if... somebody were to push it. And it’s a somebody that you so happen to love to hate.”

  “Oh, well. Put it like that, I might have to buy you lunch!”

  Faith, the word came unbidden into my head. Then I remembered a strange, amusement park-like moment when a convicted murderer was giving me a miniature sermon.

  “Say, Noah. What do you know about the Marfa Lights?”

  “That’s a funny question,” he said.

  “Well, it came from an odd source.”

  “Bill, I guess I’ve personally read maybe fifty-thousand words on the subject. I’ve seen lots of photos, video shots, and even swung by there during a trip to California once to check it out for myself. What do you want to know?”

  “Everything. Nothing. I don’t know. Let’s save it for lunch.”

  “Yeah? Okay. How about Las Manitas Café over on Congress?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sounds great. I love Mexican food.”

  “I know,” Noah said.

  “Noon?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Can’t wait.”

  “Okay, See you at lunch,” I said.

  Noah hung up.

  I picked up the article at my elbow and read it again.

  *****

  I sat waiting at the counter at Las Manitas Café in downtown a few blocks from Town Lake. The place was packed. I saw a lot of people I knew and I shook a few hands.

  I was once sitting at a table there, deep in conversation with a lawyer friend of mine, and looked up to notice that Anne Richards, the former Texas Governor, was sitting at the next table chatting away with one of Reagan’s former press secretaries. I looked away from Anne in time to see the door open and Billy Bob Thornton walk in. The place is like that. You never know who you are going to run into.

  I saw Noah wading through the crowd gathered inside the door waiting for tables. I waved, got his attention.

  “You’re looking fit,” he said after dodging through the throng.

  “Thanks,” I said and took another sip of cinnamon coffee. Las Manitas was the only restaurant where I’d ever found the stuff. It was not on the menu — you had to ask for it.

  A very pretty waitress stuck a menu on the counter in front of Noah. Just as apparent as her beauty was the fact that she didn’t speak more than a dozen words of English.

  “Iced tea,” Noah said.

  She nodded, smiled and whisked away.

  “Okay,” he said, “so who do I hate?”

  “All right. What do you know about Dick Sawyer from about the early 1980s, or thereabouts?”

  He whistled. “Well. Damn. I know a lot. I just love running articles on the guy. As much as our politics don’t match, he does help me sell magazines. I guess the question should be, in connection with what?”

  The waitress came back with Noah’s tea and he ordered from memory.

  “You’ve got to keep this under your hat, my friend,” I told him when the waitress was gone.

  “Okay. I can do that.”

  “Remember way way back — hell, I guess it’s been twenty-plus years now — remember there were some Vietnamese fishing boats blown up and sunk down in Galveston.”

  “Yeah. One of the girls that does my wife’s manicures — her father owned one of those boats. That’s why they moved to Austin.”

  “I’ll be damned,” I said.

  “Yeah. It really is a small world. What’s this got to do with Sawyer?”

  “I think Governor Sawyer, way back before he was Governor but probably not before he wanted to be Governor, paid a man to sink ‘em.”

  “Sources?”

  “Won’t name him. But yeah. I got at least one source. The man that actually threw the switch or pushed the button, or however he did it, is dead and gone. But his son is alive and well, for the time-being. I don’t know if any proof could be dredged up. But it’s sort of — ”

  “Interesting?”

  “Yeah. Interesting. That’s the word.”

  “You know,” Noah said. “You really ought to talk to Milo Unger.”

  “Who?”

  “He’s written a couple of our feature articles on Sawyer. He’s a little strange. Kind of a loner, you know. But, the guy’s got it going on.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  “When you get back to your office, call me. I’ll give you his number. Don’t have it with me.”

  “Okay.”

  “You know,” he said. “They never did solve that.”

  “The sinkings? Yeah. I know.”

  “Well, that too. I’m talking about the lights.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I forgot. The Marfa Lights.”

  “I’ve read a number of in-depth articles on the Marfa Lights over the last few years. Like I said, I took a detour way the hell out of my way one time during a trip.”

  “Yeah? Did you see them?” I asked.

  “I saw them.”

  “Never did that, myself,” I told him. “Always meant to give it a try.”

  “Some people say that those lights are really just car headlights passing by anywhere from ten to twenty miles away in the desert. I don’t know if that mystery should be solved, though. That’s about the only tourism that little town has got, other than the fact that it’s now a fledgling art colony.”

  “What do you think they are?” I asked.

  “They really do move around, you know. Disappear and re-appear somewhere else. They oscillate through the whole spectrum and then all over again, and they bob up and down and move around. Miles away. Just little balls of light.”

  “Car headlights?”

  “Don’t think so. Where those lights are, there are no roads. There’s nothing but sand and rock.”

  *****

  When we parted company, Noah said something odd by way of a goodbye.

  “Viva la revolucion.”

  “Huh. See ya, Noah.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  That night I spent a relaxing evening with Julie and her adopted daughter, Jessica, and together we watched old movies in our den. The three of us lived like a family. Jessica even called me ‘Dad.’ I wanted to marry Julie, had pressed her on the subject on many occasions, but thus far I’d batted zero.

  Jessica was going through a phase. She had become enamored with Tom Cruise and Julie and I were indulgent about it. She had a Tom Cruise poster above her bed, and magazine covers and photos tacked to her wall. I tried not to shake my head whenever I went in her room.

  That night I had nothing else going on, so I found myself dozing off during a reprise running of Legend.

  Gook bo
ats, Tom Cruise seem to be saying.

  Julie nudged me and woke me up.

  “Stop snoring, Dad,” Jessica said, and rolled her eyes at me.

  *****

  Later, when Julie and I were in bed, I tossed and turned and tried hard to get to sleep.

  When I did finally cross the threshold into sleep I quickly found myself caught up in a vivid dream.

  I was meeting with the warden at Ellis Unit, which was some kind of castle where they also kept unicorns. I was there to get a temporary release for Howell to be with me when I exhumed his father’s body. I had no idea why I would want to do such a thing.

  Dreams are like that. Our experiences percolate together in our sleep and some interesting things can happen. I guess that’s why you can’t give them too much credence.

  In the dream when I visited Norman Howell, the Warden decided to come along for the ride.

  We took an elevator down a mile beneath the earth and pulled Normal Howell out of a cave in the bedrock. He’d gone blind — two milky cataracts covered both of his irises and while I looked at him in the glow of my miner’s helmet, I couldn’t see a reason that he should come with us anyway.

  Chief Engineer Scott was there, and he energized the transporter beams as soon as Norman was out of his cell and we re-appeared at the grave site. There was a backhoe already in operation, pulling up shovelfuls of boneyard dirt.

  When the casket was pulled up and finally opened, what I knew was going to happen indeed did. Emil Howell spoke.

  “Leave me alone, you niggers,” he said, the flesh around his mouth was the color of a glass of weak tea and it cracked and crumbled as he spoke.

  “Mr. Howell,” I said. “Did Dick Sawyer pay you to blow up Vietnamese fishing boats?”

  “I’m taking the fifth,” he said.

  “You can’t do that,” the warden chimed in. “You’re dead. The fifth doesn’t apply to the likes of you.”

  “He can do whatever he wants to,” the junior Howell told us, his milk-water eyes tracking back and forth like a metronome. “He’s my dad. Here’s your fifth, Daddy.” Norman produced a bottle of Jack Daniels and put it in the coffin. The senior Howell patted it with stiff fingers — click click click.

  “That’s my boy,” Emil said.

  “We’re wasting our time here,” I told the warden.

  “That’s right,” Emil said. A piece of his jaw disintegrated as we looked on. “You won’t get any answers out of me. The lights in the desert...”

  I woke up.

  That was when I knew it for sure. I’d be following this particular white rabbit just a little further, to see what kind of hole it ran down. In other words, it was time to put on my pointed-toed boots, because I was certainly going to be kicking some sleeping dog-hide.

  *****

  The next morning I fished out the number for Milo Unger that I’d gotten from Noah McPherson and called him up. I made a promise to stop by after work for a visit, which is why I found myself headed west toward the town of Lakeway with the sun glaring directly into my eyes. I had never been much on sunglasses, but I vowed to get a pair.

  I hadn’t been to Lakeway in a few years. The town is nestled around the southwestern bend of Lake Travis. It has the world’s largest urban deer population, and they sleep right on the lawns and take their time crossing the roads. The local speed limit is strictly enforced in order to protect them. It’s sort of quaint, but for my taste deer belong in the country.

  Lakeway was just as I remembered it, but for a few additional new service stations, a Starbucks, and the fact that the road through town had a couple of additional lanes.

  I wound my way through town down to the lake, slowed for the deer and poked on past the marinas, looking for the one described to me by Unger. I knew he was going to be a peculiar fellow in that he didn’t seem to want to talk much over the phone, apart from Noah’s other comments about him. I wished Noah had told me about that.

  I found it, a weather-beaten wharf a step down in upkeep from the two I’d just passed. The boats tethered there were likewise weathered and worn.

  The sun was headed down for its date with the horizon, scattering etheric fingers of pinkish light through high cirrus clouds.

  I finally saw the green Mazda Miata that Milo had described, and right behind it was his boat.

  Milo lived on a large pontoon house boat that resembled the kind I used to see out on Lake Somerville, way back in the sixties and seventies. And yep, it was old too.

  I walked up the narrow, creaking plank and onto the boat.

  I heard voices, but then recognized them as TV voices. Sure enough, there was a small satellite dish just visible back of the pilothouse.

  “Halloo!”

  I heard footsteps inside the cabin. The voices stopped. The small door opened with a whine.

  The man before me was a tall, thin fellow, perhaps a week unshaven, wearing a dirty Hard Rock Café t-shirt and cutoff blue jeans. His hair was either black or dark brown and greasy, I wasn’t sure which.

  “You’re Travis, huh?” he said and extended his hand.

  “Yep. Thanks for inviting me over, Mr. Unger.” We shook.

  “Just call me Milo.”

  “Okay.”

  “Come on in. Don’t mind the mess.”

  “No problem.”

  It wasn’t that bad. In the dull, dim glow of a bare forty watt frosted light bulb I took in the inside of Milo Unger’s house boat. There was little that was dirty or messy about it, but for a couple of ashtrays loaded to the gills with spent cigarette butts, some dirty dishes stacked in the small galley down a narrow hallway, and some dirty laundry scattered about. Not much worse than my place had been back before Julie came into my life.

  “Wanna beer?”

  “Sure.”

  “All right,” he said. “Just a sec.” He stepped back out the door to the side of the boat and pulled on a rope. Up from the lake came a small Igloo cooler suspended from the nylon rope. He reached in and hauled out two Pabst Blue Ribbons. It had been a long time since I’d had a Pabst.

  He re-entered, handed me one.

  “So. Have a seat.”

  There was only one other chair besides the one he apparently sat in to watch TV, and I took it. Across from us was an old Panasonic television set. I was surprised he’d ever gotten satellite reception to work on the thing.

  “So you want to talk about Dick Sawyer, huh?” he asked.

  “Just that I heard a little something and I’ve got to make sure it fits in. You know?”

  “Yeah. You’re a ‘check-the-facts’ fellow. Sounds reasonable.”

  I waited.

  We sipped our beers. I heard a speed boat going by way out on the lake. Soon we’d feel the wake pass underneath us, bob us up and down. It had also been a very long time since I had been on a boat of any kind.

  “So what’s your question?” he asked me.

  I drew in a breath. “Does anybody know what kind of interests Sawyer has or had down on the Gulf Coast? Say, back in the seventies and eighties?”

  Milo Unger looked at me. “You know,” he said. “It’s interesting you should ask about that. I’ve often wondered myself just how far his interests are spread down there. I’ve poked around myself some. Made some passing remarks in one of my articles, but nothing that has, so far, tied him to anything... like some of the things his friends have been known to do in the past.”

  “Okay. What interests?”

  “Well. For one thing there’s the I.G.W., the Inter-coastal Gulf Waterway. Sawyer’s father had some interests in that, in the dredging of it back during the thirties and forties when first there was this notion to connect it all up to the rest of the country’s east coast shipping.”

  “All right,” I said. “Sounds pretty innocuous so far.”

  “Yeah, it does. Especially when you say it like that and pass over all the stuff about the convict labor and the kickbacks to politicians and how out of that Sawyer’s father helped f
ound the Houston Port Authority, or at least helped make it what it has become today. It’s where the family made their first cool million. They’d be worth probably a few hundred million today. That’s just a guess, though.”

  He paused, sucked on his beer.

  And then I asked the question.

  “What about fishing interests?”

  “The Sawyers and fishing? It’s more like the Sawyers and longshoremen,” Unger said.

  I waited.

  “You know something,” he said. “I don’t hate Dick Sawyer. I don’t hate anybody. There’s just no percentage in it. I used to have a dartboard up there over the TV.”

  I looked. Sure enough, there were countless puncture holes in the laminated wood-grained paneling up there, and a large round area inside it without any holes.

  “You used to throw darts at his picture?” I asked.

  “Yep. Used to. There’s that old saying, you know? About how when you’re going to start seeking revenge, first dig two graves.”

  “I’ve heard it,” I told him.

  A palpable moment arrived. One of those good long silences that you could drop an aircraft carrier into and it would have vanished without a trace.

  “I don’t hate Dick Sawyer, even though my mother and father are dead because of him.”

  “What do you hate, Milo?” I asked. Don’t know why. Just that I sort of needed to know.

  He set his feet up on an old milk crate that he used for an ottoman, crossed them.

  For the first time I noticed a small laptop computer leaning up against the wall next to his easy chair. Probably where he’d written all of his articles. On a boat you’d want to have a laptop, space being so scarce.

  “Bill, I’m forty-eight years old, and I’ve already had open heart surgery twice.” He pulled up his T-shirt to show me his chest. Two pinkish-white lines ran down several inches on either side of his breastbone. He dropped his shirt back down.