All the Devil's Creatures (17 page)

“Last time you said—”

“I don’t care what I said last time. I might not even be here.”

She raised a long, slender finger to the bridge of his nose, its curved scarlet nail a doubled blur. “Don’t interrupt me. I could care less whether you’re here or not. But you will not let your little business games interfere with our affairs.”

Looking up at her, feeling his strength returning, he said, “These aren’t games. Dear.”

She placed her hands upon his desk and leaned toward him until her face loomed only inches from his own. He smelled her familiar breath, the jasmine in her hair. She said, “I’ve never known what that …
partnership
of yours is up to, and I don’t care. I do know that Daddy didn’t like it one bit. Never trusted you people and your Eastern money.”

Carpetbagger.
That’s what his father-in-law had called his father behind his back.
But they shared a common enemy—the Communists, the longhairs.
And anyway Robert III had had surpassed his father—had become one with this place. He could out-East Texas anybody.

Robert gazed up at his wife, amused more than annoyed. “Kathleen darlin’—”

“Don’t you use that phony cowpoke crap on me.” She straightened her back and folded her arms. “I’ve got my own life now, Robert, and you’re a political has-been. You need me more than I need you—if you ever want to stage any kind of come-back. So don’t cross me. You hear?”

He tried to look sheepish and she seemed satisfied at that and when she left his mind turned right back to the Group’s problems. He had no doubt poor ol’ Kathleen would always be there for him. Dallas’s top plastic surgeon had fixed her funny nose years ago, and a high-priced trainer kept her middle aged body as toned as a cheerleader’s—but when she looked in the mirror, Robert did not doubt she still saw that homely, shy Panhandle girl he had plucked from the plains thirty years before.

He had bigger worries. He knew that the nosy black bitch must have delivered her stolen prize to her professor in New Orleans, knew that the lady scientist would have recognized its value. And his own idiot had killed her without recovering it. But it hadn’t taken long to figure out whom the professor had worked for—a goddamn ambulance chaser with a bullshit do-gooder save-the-fucking-tree-frogs water pollution lawsuit. Now Hargrave had informed him that the Dallas lawyer had started digging into the case on his own. The D.A. had heard as much from his own assistant, the Carter girl, who seemed to be developing some sort of fling with a sheriff’s deputy.

It didn’t matter who blabbed what—Duchamp had gotten wind of the lawyer’s interest in the case. And the son-of-a-bitch had even hired a private investigator with Spanish name that sounded as fake as a three dollar bill.
Geoff Waltz and Marisol Solis.
The Speaker snarled as he texted pair’s names, along with instructions, to Jimmy Lee Monroe.

T
he valet opened the door for Marisol. Geoff got himself out, took the ticket and then Marisol’s arm and they stepped onto the sidewalk. She wore a short black dress with spike heels—standard uniform for the downtown Dallas club scene. The other women on the street teetered in similar get-ups; their men did them no justice, out like boys with spiky hair and oversized pants. Geoff wore his most modern black suit with a narrow-collared blue shirt open low down the chest.

The club was housed in the basement of a nineteenth-century commercial building that had been a boarded up stone ruin only a year before. They descended the staircase past a refrigeratoresque bouncer bedecked in gold rings and a gold chain and a crisp, loose suit. Inside all was brass and walnut and rhythmic bass and pheromones. They found an empty banquette away from the dj, not hard mid week, and sat and waited for the Prince.

The number Marisol had that horrible night at the bar—the number which Dalia Bordelon weighted with such significance by hiding on a computer drive secreted with her boyfriend days before her death—connected to nothing. Silence, and then a busy signal. But then two days later her cell phone, which she had used to call the strange number, rang.

The voice said: “You called for the Prince?”

“Who is this?”

“Who is
this
?”

Marisol leapt. “A friend of Dalia Bordelon.”

A pause on the line, and then instructions.

She had called Geoff with the message. By then, he was over the hangover he had earned at Tony’s corner after learning of Eileen’s death, and he had sworn off hard liquor—at least until this case was over.

Now, downtown three nights later, a cocktail waitress approached in tight shorts and boots and a clinging, low-cut shirt, balancing a tray of toxic-looking shots. She leaned down to Marisol’s ear, the tray ever steady, said something, and with her lips almost touching the curve of Marisol’s lobe she moved her painted eyes to Geoff and then she straightened.

Marisol stood and nodded for Geoff to do the same and they followed the waitress past the bar down a cavernous hallway and up an industrial stairway to a fire door. She gestured them outside to an alley that smelled of marijuana and urine and crickets and closed the door behind them.

Geoff said, “Well. It’s a good thing I dressed.”

A black SUV squealed into the alley off Harwood Street and Geoff and Marisol moved against a brick wall by instinct, but there was plenty of room and the SUV stopped beside them just long enough for the back door to open and a voice to say: “Get in.”

•

Geoff stuffed his hands in his pocket against the pre-dawn chill and wondered how Marisol managed to look unfazed in her skimpy outfit. They stood in the dark gravel parking lot of a scrap yard on a bluff overlooking the wasted Trinity River bottoms. High voltage power lines soared above them, and headlights hovered over the old concrete viaduct down river heading into Oak Cliff. The SUV that had brought Geoff and Marisol here idled nearby.

The Prince had arrived simultaneously in a separate vehicle, a black Town Car. He spoke with a British boarding school accent and looked Middle Eastern and well bred, a tall, gaunt man in an English suit with his tie in a full Windsor knot almost as wide as his head.

“Are you aware of Operation Paperclip, Ms. Solis? Mr. Waltz?”

Marisol looked at Geoff with raised eyebrows, and Geoff said, “Sure. I think so. The Nazi rocket scientists, at the end of World War II. Our government wanted their expertise. And, especially, didn’t want it going to the Russians. So Truman spirited the scientists over here to work for the military. And they escaped the war crimes tribunals.”

“A morally dubious bargain at best. But those scientists built the American space program.”

“Okay. So?”

“So you are aware of the lengths your government went to to gain advantage during the Cold War.”

Marisol said, “Are you going to tell us what this is all about?”

“Patience.” The Prince paused to light a cigarette. “What do you know about Area 51?”

“Aliens,” Marisol said. “That’s where the feds keep what they know about extraterrestrials under wraps. From the crash at Roswell—”

“That’s all loony conspiracy theory bullshit,” Geoff said.

“A secret government facility; that much is not bullshit, Mr. Waltz. What goes on there is immaterial to your quest. What matters is that you have stumbled onto another such facility. It’s there that you will find your answers.”

“You mean on the lake, at the old Texronco refinery? Seriously? And anyway, which is it? First you’re talking about Nazis, then aliens.” Geoff rolled his eyes and turned as if to make his way back to the SUV. “I think you’re a nut job and I think you’re full of shit.”

The Prince smirked. “You’ve dipped your toe into a rather interesting conspiracy, Mr. Waltz.” The Prince chuckled and Geoff’s skin crawled. “And like any worthwhile conspiracy, its operations are centered here in Dallas.”

Marisol said, “So what do you want from us?”

“Many answers will follow when you retrieve what Ms. Bordelon collected from the facility.” He raised his voice toward Geoff’s back. “I suggest you begin your search.”

Geoff half-turned back around. Marisol had stayed put and watched him with arms crossed over her chest. The Prince stared back, impassive.

“Hold on,
Prince
. We still don’t know who the hell you are. And we don’t know what in the hell we’re supposed to be looking for.”

“Who I am is not pertinent. What you are looking for is biological material. Inert now. Harmless. But extremely valuable. Evidence of a scientific enterprise stretching the limits of our understanding of life itself. This enterprise has a name—Operation Moth Wing.”

Moth Wing.
It sounded absurd. But then a vision of that East Texas bayou came to Geoff—the odors, the sense of strange life breeding in the murk. Joey Kincaid’s eyes. He pushed the image away.

The Prince gave them a sharp nod. “I may or may not be in touch, as necessities dictate. Good night.”

The Town Car pulled up and the Prince made to get in the back seat.

Marisol said, “Hey. What does any of this have to do with Robert Duchamp?”

For the first time, the Prince looked flustered. Just for an instant. He faced them with his hand on the car door handle. “I can only take you so far, Ms. Solis. Now, I beseech you: find that biological sample.”

•

In the bar, in his Corner, Tony laughed and coughed, his belly jiggling the table and threatening to overturn their drinks. “Nazis? Fucking
space aliens?
You shitting me?”

“My reaction exactly.”

“Don’t that just beat all.”

Marisol said, “I don’t know about the so-called Prince’s Nazi spiel, but obviously, something’s up.”

Geoff sipped his beer. “Dalia was onto something. Something worth killing two people for.”

“And you guys are in touch with the New Orleans P.D.?”

“I am,” Marisol said. “The department’s understaffed and swamped, half their stations still inoperable with the officers working out of field camps and trailers. To them, Eileen was a victim of a botched robbery, probably drug related. They have no expectation of solving it.”

Geoff had also called Sheriff Seastrunk to tip him off to Eileen’s murder, to let him know it might be related to Dalia’s lynching. That something bigger than a couple of reprobate rednecks out for a deadly joyride might be at work. He thought he piqued the old man’s interest. Hoped he had. Geoff had kept this phone call from Marisol, figuring the P.I. didn’t trust Seastrunk. As he thought of this he felt an urge to guzzle the beer and order something stronger. He tamped the feelings down and obeyed his vow to stay off the hard stuff.

“Nazi scientists or no, I need to find out what Eileen died for. I owe it to her. And Dalia. They both died on my watch.”

“That’s not true, Geoffy,” Tony said, his small eyes softening as they met Geoff’s own. “Eileen wouldn’t talk to you—you had no idea what they were into.”

“They wouldn’t have been into it if not for me. But that doesn’t matter now. We’ve just got to figure out what happened. Who’s behind all this.”

Nodding, thoughtful, Marisol said, “I’m working the Prince angle. That number we called, that somehow put us in touch with him? Doesn’t exist. Shouldn’t exist. The club we went to last night is owned by a multi-national corporation with tentacles in everything from oilfield services to fast food joints. Some holding company owns the scrap yard where we met the Prince. I can try to follow the chain, see if they’re linked somehow. But it’ll take time.”

“Good. Look especially for any tie to Texronco or its subsidiaries.”

“Right. And to Robert Duchamp.”

Tony stubbed out his cigarette. “Duchamp? The ex-congressman?”

“Yeah, about that,” Geoff said. “What caused you to ask the Prince about him?”

“He just keeps coming up—T-Jacques thought he had something to do with Dalia’s murder, and his family had something to do with Texronco, going way back. So I asked the Prince about him on a hunch. And did you see the guy’s reaction? Duchamp’s connected to this somehow.”

Tony lit a cigarette. “And what about this T-Jacques?”

“He’s not answering his phone.”

“Well, don’t you still have access to that refinery through your lawsuit?”

“Sure. For now. I spent the morning on the phone about that.”

He summarized for them the status of the lawsuit that started this mess. First, his phone call with Willie, staying at his daughter’s house most nights now, as if he wanted to stay accessible, knowing all that churned around him.

Willie had said: “So now you’re advising against taking the settlement?”

“I’m saying you were right. There’s something going on at the lake, Willie, something somebody found worth killing for. If you’re up for it, I don’t think we should walk away now. But Lord knows, it could be dangerous.”

“We’re not going to let those bastards scare us off now, counselor.”

That was the easy phone call. Next, Geoff called Texronco’s lawyer, Rick White.

“Another expert consultant dead, Geoff? My condolences, but really—you’re going to get a bad rep around the enviro law world. Your cases should come with a warning: ‘Working with Geoff Waltz may be hazardous to your health.’”

If I could climb through this phone, I’d strangle your pale, beefy, country club neck, you arrogant son-of-a-bitch.
He closed his eyes and put his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. “Rick, please. Eileen and I went way back. I’m calling because I’m going to need another extension.”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry—that was callous. But if I remember correctly, we have a settlement offer on the table.”

“That’s correct. My client’s not ready to accept.”

There was a pause on the line. Geoff kept his eyes closed. Then White said, “That’s disappointing. It’s a generous offer, Geoff. And you without a testifying expert. If I were an asshole, I’d get my client to withdraw the offer and we’d go to trial.”

If? If you were any bigger an asshole, sunlight wouldn’t escape.
“Rick, we just need more time. Give me sixty days to retain a consultant and submit a report.”