Shoveling Smoke (27 page)

It must have been a wild night
for Jimmy Wortmann and his associates. Gill demanded that Wortmann find a way to get the charge against Bevo dropped and Bevo driven back to Jenks by noon the next day, or else he, Gill, would go to the grand jury with the damaging phone record. He also demanded that the RICO hold on the Stromboli check be lifted by the time of Bevo’s arrival in Jenks. We found out later that a whole raft of SWAT lawyers, including Jimmy Wortmann himself—the
W
in SWAT—descended on Paul Primrose’s office at eight o’clock the next morning. Primrose was not there, he and Judge Wrong Tit Tidwell having teed off half an hour earlier at the Mule Springs Sportsman’s Club. Primrose and the judge had reached the fifth hole when the SWAT lawyers found them and whisked them back to the courthouse.

There Jimmy Wortmann related a sad tale. It seemed that Warren Jacobs, one of SWAT’s most brilliant associates, had, in the course of handling several high-pressure cases, become emotionally unstable. For reasons nobody could fathom, Jacobs had developed an intense hatred of Bevo Rasmussen, whose defense counsel had just outmaneuvered the ailing attorney in a recent lawsuit. Smarting from that defeat, the lawyer initiated a plan to send Rasmussen to prison.

Wortmann explained to his mystified audience how the tape on which Rasmussen bragged about committing certain crimes was rigged: The voice that sounded like Bevo’s belonged to an actor whom the demented lawyer paid to read from a script while he himself supplied the other voice. The sick man then delivered the tape anonymously, counting on Primrose to do his duty. The plot was only discovered late the night before, when Jacobs, the unfortunate associate, was relieved of his duties and sent to a hospital for a rest. SWAT was very, very sorry for any inconvenience their firm had caused the DA’s office, but they felt they had to come forward in order to prevent a terrible miscarriage of justice. Bevo Rasmussen, Wortmann explained to Primrose and Judge Tidwell, was an innocent man.

It could not have played very well. Primrose would have demanded to know why, if this crazy story were true, Bevo had admitted to taking part in the taped conversation when it was played for him in the DA’s office. I don’t know how Wortmann got around that, or around the other holes in the story, but one thing I had learned in the new life was that there is no story told in the country without a few holes in it, some big enough to drive a hay baler through. That’s true about stories told anywhere, of course. I had known that back in Houston—I was a tax lawyer, for God’s sake. I guess I had not wanted it to be true in the country. Put me down for an idiot.

In any event, Wortmann finessed his sloppy story. An exasperated Judge Tidwell ordered Primrose to release Bevo and unfreeze the check. Primrose had to drive to Jenks himself to deliver the original of the order dismissing the RICO forfeiture. We saw his Buick sliding into a parking space across the street in front of the bank at eleven-thirty.

“That’s one unhappy Baptist,” Wick said, watching through the blinds as Primrose trudged into the bank.

A few minutes later, Bevo showed up. For the second time in two days, he, Chandler, and Stroud walked across the street and into the bank to cash the settlement check. I sat again on the fender of Bevo’s Lexus, waiting for them to come out, wondering if I would need to dive into the car again for another wild ride through the blistering heat to avert some new catastrophe. To tell the truth, I don’t think I would have minded much.

Maybe it was something in the water, or the effect of thumping along so many country roads, or the craziness of Bevo’s case—or Sally, late last night, after we drove off in her Mercedes and found a roll of duct tape in her glove compartment—but I was beginning to think that country life was the right move for me.

True, it had not turned out to be quite the bucolic retreat I had imagined. In the last week, I had been threatened, stabbed, tied up, lost in the woods, and attacked in a diner. I had met drug dealers and horse thieves, I had survived a car crash, outwitted police, witnessed a fistfight between a man and an emu, burgled a house, and participated in a pitched battle won with firecrackers. I had careened in and out of the dim gray border regions of the law. And I had gotten shockingly, magnificently laid, on more than one occasion. I wondered what the next week would be like. Sitting on the fender of the Lexus, I waved to my neighbors as the locusts in the trees tried their best to give me a clue.

Then the three of them were out of the bank, heading toward me, and I saw that, for the moment at least, there would be no more mad dashes. I asked if they had seen Primrose while they were in the bank.

“He must have been hiding under the counter,” Stroud replied. “Too bad. I was going to invite him over for a drink.”

Bevo waved his cashier’s check at me. “You’re gonna have to treat me different now, Mr. Parker. I’m a rich man.”

“Remember what I told you, Bevo,” said Wick. “I’d stay out of the county for a while if I were you.”

“Scales ain’t coming after me,” Bevo said. “It would be bad for his bidniss if I disappeared so soon after the deposition.”

“On the contrary,” said Stroud. “He might think it
good
for his business. He surely knows you were selling him out to Duett. He’s probably even heard the tape. I wouldn’t think he’d take kindly to that.”

“Thanks for your concern, gentlemen, but I can look after myself,” Bevo said.

“At least now you can pay Deck Willhoit what you owe him,” I said. “That should give you some comfort.”

“I already paid him,” Bevo said. “Me and him are friends again. I’m gonna get that whale-dick back for you, too, Mr. Chandler, if I have to steal it myself.”

“Do me a favor, Bevo,” said Wick. “If you get caught, don’t mention my name.”

“You say you’ve already paid Willhoit off?” I asked.

“Like I told you, Mr. Parker, it’s no trouble getting hold of money.” The little man shook hands all around, opened the driver’s door, and climbed into the Lexus. “Gentlemen, I thank you for your services. If I ever get in another scrape—”

“When
you get in another scrape,” Wick interrupted.

“Okay,
when
it happens, you’re my first call.”

“You don’t know how happy that makes us,” said Wick.

“Say, Bevo,” I called. “Wick and I have been thinking of driving over to take a look at your burned-down barn.”

“We’ve been thinking what?” asked Wick.

“Old time’s sake, you know, now that the case is over. We’ve never even seen the place. Can you give us directions, Bevo?”

Bevo looked at me for a long moment. “Sure, I can do that, Mr. Parker. But you don’t want to drive all that way. There’s nothing there anymore. I haven’t seen it myself in almost a year. You’re liable to drive right by and miss it.”

“All the same, Bevo,” I said, “we’d like to head out there and tell the neighbors what we got for your horses. I think it might surprise them.”

I looked into Bevo’s eyes and he into mine for maybe ten seconds. Then he gave me that wolf’s smile of his and shook his head. “How’d you figure it out?” he asked me.

“figure what out?” asked Wick.

“I’ll be damned!” said Stroud.

“It was a lot of things,” I said. “Your paying off Willhoit before you got the settlement check, of course. But there was always something a little fishy about the money. Even cooking the numbers like you did, the scam just wouldn’t have been worth the risk, after paying off all your debts, unless—”

“Unless what?” asked Wick.

“Unless there were never any horses to begin with!” Stroud said. He shuffled over and gave me an exultant slap on the back. “You’re a quick study, Mr. Parker.”

“I was wondering if any of you hot-shot lawyers would figure that out,” said Bevo. “Damn if it wasn’t the new guy.”

“Wait a minute,” said Wick, squinting dubiously at me. “You’re saying there were no horses?”

“No flesh-and-blood horses,” I explained. “But they were there on paper. I think what clued me in for sure was the glimpse Gill and I got of Pulaski’s horse mausoleum. All those little plastic bags, neatly arranged and labeled, just waiting to be used in an arson scam.”

“You’re scary, Mr. Parker,” Bevo said. “That’s what happened, all right. Nyman sold me seven dead horses. He called ’em pre-burned. Pulaski picked ’em out—he and Nyman have been in bidniss for some time. Old Nyman told me what to write on the dec sheets, and we were in bidniss. I only paid Nyman seven hundred dollars up front, a hundred a horse, even though it says on paper that he loaned me a quarter of a million.”

“All right, now,” said Wick, “if that’s true, then why didn’t Pulaski just choose remains of seven more horses from his morgue the night he discovered the evidence was missing?”

“Because no other horses would have matched the descriptions on the original dec sheets,” I replied. “The case had become so smelly by then that he knew we would hire our own pathologist to verify his findings. When our pathologist’s report didn’t match his, things would have gotten even more embarrassing.”

“So the insurance money reimbursed you for the bogus quarter-million loan from Scales,” Stroud said to Bevo.

“Right. Only, like I say, there wasn’t no quarter-million loan from him, since there wasn’t no horses. I was supposed to pay Nyman fifty thousand out of the settlement, when I got it.” Bevo winked at me. “I don’t think I’ll do that now.”

“And the money you borrowed from the Farmer’s Branch Bank, you’ve had that money stashed all the time?”

“Yep. That’s another quarter mil.” He laughed. “If only I could have found a way to snooker you out of your fee, I’d have walked off with the whole pot. As it is, I made close to nine hundred thousand on the deal. Not bad, considering I never even had to burn any horses.”

“A little more effort went into it than that,” I reminded him. “Don’t forget, Deck Willhoit almost gelded you that night in Dallas. And you came close to going to prison.”

“You lying little rat’s ass son of a bitch!” Wick said, a note of awe in his voice.

“It’s the principle, Mr. Chandler,” Bevo explained. “You get a plan, you stick with it. That’s what I done, and it sure as hell worked.”

“With a little help from us!” Wick said.

“I don’t want you boys to think I’m not grateful,” Bevo said, starting the car’s engine. “I’m reserving an emu egg for each of you, soon as I get the ranch started. You know what an emu egg’s worth?”

“That’s fine, Bevo,” said Stroud, “we could use the protein.” The old man gave a little shrug. “I just hope you’ll still be grateful when you get the 1099 form we’re sending to the IRS to let them know you got all this money.”

Bevo’s smile disappeared. “What?”

“The law imposed that duty on us when the check came to this firm.”

“Are you fucking
nuts?”
Bevo cried.

“Ask Mr. Parker here,” Stroud said. “He’s our tax man.”

“That’s right, Bevo,” I said. “Principle, you know. And the firm doesn’t want to pay the tax on the money it pays out to you.”

Bevo slammed the Lexus in gear, rocketed out of the parking space, and ringing curses on our heads, sped away down Main Street.

Wick watched him go and shook his head. “Think he’s still going to give me an emu egg?”

“If he does,” Stroud said, clapping him on the shoulder, “you can sit on it. And when it hatches, you can give it to Mike Starns to replace the bird you lost for him.”

We had not noticed Paul Primrose leaving the bank, but now, as he passed us in his car on his way back to Mule Springs, he made a universal gesture toward us with his hand.

“There you have it, Mr. Parker,” the old man said. “The elected district attorney, the highest peace officer in Claymore County, a lay preacher, no longer waves at us with his entire hand. What does that say to you?”

“I think it says, 'Welcome home,’” I replied as we headed for the office door.

AUSTIN DAVIS is a native Texan. This is his first novel.

Copyright © 2003 by Steve Garrison and John Alexander.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN 978-1-4521-2502-2

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Composition by Suzanne Scott

Cover photo by Petography

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