The Devil Went Down to Austin (5 page)

"You're right about cooperating for Jimmy's sake," he told me. "But you've got to trust me, little bro. I've got to handle this without you. I just can't—"

He looked at me as if he was trying to explain a smashed vase. "Do you understand?"

"I'm trying, Garrett. I am."

He held my eyes, searching for some stronger commitment. When he didn't find it, he turned and wheeled himself into the bedroom.

I pulled his front door locked behind me.

The afternoon sun was heating the walls of The Friends into a cooking surface. I walked toward the stairwell, listening to industrial rock and the neighbours arguing behind every door.

I managed to stay home a whole twentyfour hours, but San Antonio felt like a ghost town.

My colleague George Berton was in L.A., spending his life savings on the Spurs playoff games. My boss, Erainya, and her son, Jem, were vacationing in the Greek Isles. Even my mom was gone—off fishing with her new beau at a mountain cabin in Colorado.

I spent Saturday alone in the offices of the Erainya Manos Detective Agency, eating Erainya's weekold dolmades and trying to gather information. I emailed a friend at the Bexar County ME, asked if he could finagle Jimmy Doebler's autopsy report from Travis County. I tried the Bexar County Sheriff's Department and SAPD, hoping somebody knew somebody in Austin who could give me an inside read on Vic Lopez's investigation. Nobody got back to me.

The Doebler family proved to be a brick wall.

Most of the clan lived in Austin. I'd even met some of them. But nobody wanted to talk to me on the phone. Yes, they remembered me—Garrett Navarre's brother, Jimmy's friend. Yes, they'd heard about Jimmy's death. Could I please refer all further questions to the family's law firm?

I couldn't tell which name they spoke with more coolness— Garrett's or Jimmy's.

W.B. Doebler, Jimmy's cousin and present chairman of the board of Doebler Oil, was in a meeting. Could I please call back? I

did, six times over the course of the day. W.B. Doebler was still in a meeting.

I almost thought I'd struck gold when I discovered that Jimmy had an aunt, Clara's younger sister, also living in Austin, but even Faye DoeblerIngram turned me down.

"Oh, Mr. Navarre." Her voice was small and plaintive, snagging on every word—a silk handkerchief brushed over bricks. "I'm very sorry, but there's nothing I can do."

"If you'd spoken to Jimmy recently, if you knew anyone the police should talk—"

"I'm afraid I couldn't help."

"This is your sister's son, ma'am. As the closest relative—"

"Oh, no. No." A new snag in her voice—fear? "You must realize how sad this is for my family. They felt so much pain over Clara's whole life, her death, and now Jimmy . . .

puts himself in a position like that."

"A position like what?"

"The family wants to put this behind them, move on as quickly as possible, you see."

"And you agree?"

Ninety miles of silence over the phone line. "Jimmy was a sweet boy. I'll miss him terribly."

"Will I see you at the memorial service, then?"

The softest sound I ever heard was Faye DoeblerIngram laying the receiver of her phone in the cradle.

I sat at my desk, staring out the Venetian blinds at the traffic on Blanco.

I turned to the computer, logged on to a news database, and started digging for dirt on the banker Garrett had mentioned— Matthew Pena.

According to Silicon News, Pena was a Texan by birth, Californian by choice. BS in computer science from UT Austin. MBA from Stanford. He'd spent the past few years as an investment banker, orchestrating buyouts and providing venture capital for hightech startups. His clientele read like a who's who list of Silicon Valley. Pena's only noted hobby was scuba diving, which he was so zealous about that his business adversaries had started calling him the Terror of the Deep.

He was, by all accounts, the most vicious set of freelance teeth a company could hire.

August 1998. Pena's first major conquest—a promising startup company in San Jose.

In the course of one month, Pena sabotaged their prospective deals with venture capitalists, hired their best talent away, and set the principals of the company at each other's throats. One of the principals filed a complaint with the San Jose police. She claimed Matthew Pena was harassing her with phone calls, visits, email. When asked for specifics, the woman backed away from her allegations. The complaint fizzled. A month later, the startup agreed to sell. Once Pena bought them out at a firesale price, their product became the backbone of Pena's client's virus protection software—a cash cow.

February 1999 Similar story. Pena strongarmed a Menlo Park startup into selling to a major tech company for six million in stock—little more than glass beads and trinkets compared to what other computer businesses were trading for then. Opposition to the sale collapsed when the most vocal of the principals was found dead in his garage—apparently a suicide, shotgun to the mouth. The other principals turned the police investigation toward Matthew Pena—claimed Pena had been calling them up, emailing them, threatening their lives. Police investigated Pena, but he came away clean. Pena's quote on the matter to the press: "If the guy killed himself because I was about to make him a millionaire, he's so stupid he deserves to die." Mr. Pena: big warm fuzzy.

January of this year. A glimpse into Pena's private life. His girlfriend of six months, Adrienne Selak, disappeared off a privately chartered dinner cruise boat in San Francisco Bay. Selak had been seen arguing with Pena earlier in the evening. The couple had gone off alone toward the back of the ship. Thirty minutes later, Pena called for help, claiming that Ms. Selak had fallen into the Bay. A search was launched, but her body was never recovered. Selak had been a competent swimmer. In fact, she and Pena had met because of their shared interest in scuba. After her disappearance, one of Selak's girlfriends informed the police that Selak had complained about Matthew "getting creepy" on several occasions, threatening to kill her.

One of Pena's employees, Dwight Hayes, gave a witness statement supporting Pena's assertion that the fall had been accidental.

Pena hired the best legal counsel money could buy. As near as I could tell from followup articles, the investigation was still open, but no formal charges had been filed against Pena.

In March of this year, Matthew Pena's services had been contracted by AccuShield, Inc., a Cupertinobased company that made security software—virus protection, encryption, network firewalls. Pena had apparently sold AccuShield on the idea of expanding into the Austin market, and one of Pena's first buyout targets was Tech

san Security Software: Garrett, Ruby, and Jimmy's startup.

The AmericanStatesman chronicled Techsan's betatest problems, which began shortly after Techsan rejected Pena's first buyout offer of twenty million. I tried to get my mind around the kind of optimism, hubris, stubbornness, whatever, that had made my brother and his two partners turn down twenty million dollars. What were they thinking?

Then I thought about the guy from Menlo Park who had been offered millions by Matthew Pena, then went into his garage and ate his shotgun.

The latest article I could find, dated last week, talked about Pena's second offer—a rescue buyout proposal to the nowbeleaguered Techsan for four million in stock of the client company, AccuShield. Techsan had been wavering on whether or not to accept it.

And now Jimmy Doebler was dead.

There were no available pictures of Matthew Pena. I had no luck finding solid information on his background except for what the business articles told me secondhand—nothing that made Matthew Pena human for me. I liked that just fine. It made it all the easier for me to hate the bastard.

That evening, I wanted to go out to the ranch. I wanted to honour Garrett's wishes to butt out of his problems. Instead, I packed and unpacked my bags for Austin three times.

Sunday morning, after fortyfive minutes on the road, I was still reconsidering. I pulled over on the side of 135 at the Onion Creek rise, just inside the Travis county line.

I looked down the valley, up the opposite hill from which I'd first be able to see the silhouette of downtown. Last chance. Once up that hill, the gravity of Austin would pull me in. There was no avoiding it.

I could call UT, cancel the damn extension course. My department head at UTSA had pushed me to take the job, to get some more upperdivision teaching experience under my belt, but he could live with the disappointment.

I let the engine idle. Next to me, Robert Johnson meowed complaints in his carrying cage. My Ford shuddered as a semi rig barrelled past.

I opened my backpack and pulled out the page and a half of notes I'd gleaned from my search on the agency computer. I read through them again, hoping I might be able to interpret them differently.

Unfortunately, Matthew Pena wasn't the thing that bothered me most. The real worry was down there at the bottom of my notes—the name of the law firm that had represented Pena in the Menlo Park shotgun suicide, and then successfully shielded him from charges in the Adrienne Selak drowning.

Pena had good taste. His legal firm was Terrence & Goldman of San Francisco.

Unless things had changed at Terrence & Goldman, they had only one criminal lawyer, a junior partner whose sole job was to defend their less socially upright corporate clients from their own vices, shield them against criminal inconveniences so they could continue to make millions. That lawyer was, unfortunately, the person I would have to call if I wanted more information on Matthew Pena.

I looked down the highway. Another big rig plowed past and all the metal on my pickup truck rattled.

Robert Johnson said, "Roww?"

There would be nights, later, when I'd lie awake wondering how my life would've been different had I turned around that morning on 135—later, after I'd seen things that made my previous repertoire of nightmares look like the Charlie Brown Halloween Special.

But I couldn't turn around, and I suspected that Garrett, damn him, had known I wouldn't all along.

I put the Ford into drive and started rolling north, heading into Austin.

Date: Sun I I Jun 2000 16:59:07 0000 From: TG Law@TG Law, n et To:

[email protected]
Subject: magic thinking That was a good Christmas. Nineteen eightyseven.

You remember? It was the last time it snowed in Austin.

Pickup trucks were sliding down that big hill at Lamar and 24th—nobody had a clue how to drive on ice. Old women were breaking their hips, slipping on sidewalks.

Classes at UT closed down. All because of half an inch of snow.

Autumn had been rough for me, but I'd ended it feeling euphoric. I'd gotten through a bleak period, vented my anger on a few experiments—no one important, no one who would be missed.

Now I was feeling like the snow, like I could do the smallest thing, make the least effort, and I could shut down the whole town.

I decided to give myself an early Christmas present.

I remember it was a hard ride into the Hill Country. The roads were pitch black, glazed with ice that gleamed in the headlights of the little car I'd stolen. The barbed wire sparkled like Christmas garland. There was nothing except dark and mist and the scraggly outlines of bare trees.

I finally found the house where they were attending their party. Excuse me—gala. It was always a gala, with them. Huge ranch villa, the lawn crusted white, the driveway outlined with glowing luminarias. Real holly in the windows. A dozen topoftheline pickup trucks and BMWs in front. Their car was there, too—the old green Mercedes.

I watched from the road until I saw them through the window. The woman with a gray helmet of hair, a sequined black gown. The man in a rumpled brown suit, always the humble escort.

I smiled, watching them. I drove from the party all the way to the old couple's house, five miles away, then back again. here was only one route, and I knew the point where they would turn off, come around the hill, speed up in anticipation of home. It was a road nobody much used.

I parked my car on the shoulder, hugging the side of the hill.

I got out and waited, knowing I would see their headlights on the tree branches before I saw the car round the bend. It was perfect.

I wasn't wearing gloves. Or a hat. The wind ripped through my coat, stung my eyes and skin like jalapeno juice. I looked up at the snow, swirling like gnats out of complete darkness, and I thought about being underwater—cold and black, visibility nil, the sparkle of small bubble trails, everything colourless. I thought about how I had started to master that fear. How good it felt. How much I wanted to be underwater right then, scared as hell but loving the taste. The thought warmed me.

When the trees illuminated, I slid the rough paper cylinder out of my coat pocket. The thrill was not knowing whether the plan would work, whether I would have to use the little gun I had in my other pocket.

Headlights appeared and I knew it was the right car. It could be no other—not at this time of night, on this little country road.

The rest happened fast.

I snapped the end of the flare and stepped into the glare of their headlights, waving the orange fire frantically, making a huge arc to my left—toward the dropoff.

And they were going too fast. In driving class, they always tell you—don't look at the lights in the opposite lane, because you will drift toward them. You instinctively want to look at the light, and you will drift toward what you see. That's what happened with the wave of the flare, in those three seconds.

That old fart could have run me down. He could have swerved the other way, into my car, into the side of the hill, and caused me to use a much more difficult plan, but instead he turned the car toward the wave of the flare and swerved into nothing—a short BUMPBUMP of wheels leaving the road, the cracking of brittle tree branches and crunch of metal, rolling, insanely large sounds of a dumpyard compactor, and then quiet.

No fire. No headlights. Just darkness. Two large wet marks at my feet where the old green Mercedes had taken flight.