he had hopped a wad of rubber-banded cash across my desk when he walked in with his request. Just so happened I had a lawyer to settle with who needed just such a wad of money.
Lawyers…the very blip of the word in my thoughts made me turn and spit out the second floor window of the Iron Works building without thinking about hitting someone on the sidewalk below. I gazed at the faded glory that was the Tarrant County Convention Center — someone really ought to paint that dome a new color — before returning my attention to Clarence.
“Revenge,” he said. “I want revenge.”
REVENGE
“I really don’t do revenge,” I said.
“That’s not what I heard.”
I looked from him, to the wad of cash, to the book.
“Well, you heard wrong.”
He shook his head and smiled. His two upper front teeth were missing. Wife must of got ‘em in the divorce.
He said, “Look, I ain’t asking you to do nothing physical. What I got in mind is a whole lot different.”
I needed the money, so I listened. There was a drought in my private investigation business lately, probably due to El Nino’. Recent jobs had entailed a lot of divorce and picture-taking, not on my wish-list of assignments, and so I had turned down some that I shouldn’t have.
What Clarence wanted me to do really wasn’t all that bad. Nasty, maybe, but not bad. I didn’t understand why some couples couldn’t just get along, to quote Rodney King. Sure, his old lady had screwed around on him, ruined his reputation, almost wiped him out of business….
But what about the kids?
I listened to his pain. There was a lot of it. His Ex did sound like a real bitch. Limited his visitation to the Texas Standard, which I knew amounted to very little. Banned him from the children’s athletic activities. Constantly taking him to Court over piddly squat. He had the Court Orders to prove it.
“See, I really didn’t have all this proof at the time. I’d hired a crummy lawyer — he’s the moron that lost that Joshua cop-shooting case — and he failed to do proper discovery.
“But I want her next victim to have a fighting chance,” he said with a smile.
“Let me get this straight, you want me to do all this and then give it to her new beau? What you’re talking about, that’s going to be a good-sized nut,” I told him.
Still smiling, he held up a orange and white Texas Lottery ticket, a Pick-5 . “That cash there, that’s just the down payment. You get everything I want, you get this. It’s from the 25th’s drawing. Four winners, fourty-seven grand and change each.”
He stood and handed the ticket to me,then dug something out of his pocket. A torn piece of the Fort Worth Star Telegram newspaper with the lottery draw from the night before| 4, 6, 10, 11, 12.
“Finally got some good luck, huh,” I said. “And now you want to waste it on her?”
“Listen, it won’t be a waste. I know the guy cheated with my wife — idiot even walked out on his own wife at the time — but I want to make sure he’s the last one. He gets the evidence from your investigating, then you call the newspapers. See, in Texas you can’t publicize your case…but another party…?”
“Over fifty-grand, just to get even?” I asked.
He nodded his head at me, unable to speak as his face crumpled into a ball of pain, tears runnelling over his cheeks.
THE COURTHOUSE
After making out a quick contract to cover the disposition of the Lottery Ticket and having McGillicutty sign it, I drove my trusty steed - a 1968 Dodge Charger, recently painted white - to the Tarrant County Courthouse. I counted the wad of bills as I drove. Five grand, and then some. Enough to take care of the lawyer I owed, and a bit extra for a dinner at El Chico’s. Since the closing of Casa Linda a few years ago, I’d resorted to franchise Mexican food.
The lawyer I had to pay off sued me on behalf of a client with whom I’d gotten a little rough. Just ‘cause the guy had a gun out and ready to shoot me, was no reason for me to break his arm, nose and a foot for good measure. Didn’t want to pay his bill. Seems the evidence he thought I could produce that would clear him in a insurance-scam suit clearly pointed the finger of guilt square on him.
Lawyers and insurance salespeople….
I twirled around the beautiful Courthouse a few times before finding a open parking meter. I obediently covered the meter with a FWPD bag. Hey, save a quarter here and there….
The Courthouse had been polished and refurbished years ago. Attached to it was the Civil Court, which had only merited a painted enclosure to make it appear older yet newer. Works from a distance, but up close….
Inside I trotted the elevator up to the fourth floor and sauntered over to the 455th District Court clerks’ cubicle and asked a smiling, polite and short Mexican-American lady for McGillicutty’s file. The smile faded at the name. She grimaced and rolled her eyes and grudgingly trundled to the file cabinet and pulled out five swollen file-jackets that seemed to take up half the drawer.
Apparently, she was familiar with the case.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Fill this out,” she said, handing me a sign-out card. They don’t actually let you take the file with you. You have to sit there and review it. But I had a feeling she was one clerk that wouldn’t mind seeing this file disappear.
I squinted at her name plaque on her desk; Beth Lawler. I winced. I’d recently had bad luck with a dark-skinned lady named Beth. No since hitting on this one. In fact, I’d probably be camera-shy of women for the next few years because of recent experiences I’d had.
It took me an hour to read the maze that was the McGillicutty case. Accusatory motions back and forth of violence by both sides, physical and psychiatric exams of their poor little kids, depositions, police reports.
The files painted an ugly picture of adultery and recrimination. Sometimes I really hated this job.
But there was nothing there that would prevent me from carrying out Clarence’s request. No protective orders, no restrictions with the children.
“I’ll put these back in for you if you’ll open the drawer,” I said to Beth, the clerk. The files probably outweighed her by a few pounds.
The smile came back as she jumped up and went over and yanked out the file drawer.
“Thank you,” she said. Her eyes had that glint that makes men’s knees buckle. I glanced at her ring-finger; no ring.
I resisted the come on and twiddled my fingers goodbye at her.
THE STATION
I wanted to check out something from one of the police reports so I drove my Charger over to the neighborhood station on Lancaster in the East Side of Fort Worth.
Even if I hadn’t been dressed in standard jeans and tucked-in t-shirt, I would’ve gotten the ‘look-over’ when I walked inside the station. Don’t care who you are, what you look like, if you’re not a cop and you enter a police station you get stared at as if you’re face is being compared to the Most Wanted board.
At the desk - just a metal desk like the one in my office, not the big wooden podiums like in the movies - a cop as massive as the furniture he sat behind said, “Can I help you?”
“Detective Douglass, please,” I said.
His meaty hand swallowed a cell phone he picked up. His sausage-sized fingers expertly poked the numbers. He mumbled into it.
Around me cops in uniforms milled around as if they had nothing to do. Some changing shifts, maybe, some just finished