The Last One Left

Chapter Seven

On that Monday morning after the news of the missing cruiser had been announced, two men sat waiting in a second floor office in Brownsville, in a mottled old stucco building two blocks from the old bridge across the Rio Bravo to Matamorros. The windows faced a narrow street where the mid-morning heat was increasing. The windows were closed. The noisy compressor on the old window unit set up a sympathetic resonance in the metal cover of the air conditioner and in the glass of the window, a resonance that built and faded like engines out of sync.

The wooden furniture was heavy, scarred, marked with the burns where cigarettes and cigars had been forgotten. The grass rug was scuffed thin, broken in places. Only the file cabinets looked new, three of them aligned against one wall, thick, gray, fire-resistant, with combination locks. Below the office was a small grocery store and bar, specializing in Mexican food, Mexican beer. The juke music was always turned high, but over the sound of the air conditioner only the repetitive thud of the bass could be heard.

The girl rapped at the door and came in from the outer office without waiting for a reply. She brought letters in and silently placed them in front of the older man who sat behind the desk. He read each one slowly and carefully, lips moving, before signing it. A straw ranch hat was pushed back from a scramble of untidy white hair. His moustache, thick and unkempt, shaded from white at the hairy nostrils down to a stain of yellow at the lips. He wore khakis, the shirt sweated through so many times the pale streaks of salt formed overlapping patterns at the armpits. In the frigid air of the office the sharp stale smell of him was still detectable.

He signed the last letter and the tall, frail girl picked them up from in front of him as he leaned back.

“Francie,” the old man said, “you go on over to the courthouse and get them two notorial certificates the fella over in Tulsa wants.”

“I could take the deeds along, Judge, and mail them from there.”

“You do that, Francie. And leave that door there open so as we’ll know it when Sam Boylston gets here.”

She nodded, and as she turned and walked out, she gave big Tom Dorra a sidelong, speculative glance. Tom Dorra stared at her hips and legs as she walked out. He dwarfed the oak armchair he was slouched into, a man big enough to be stared at in the street, five inches over six feet, broad as a man and a half. He added almost another foot with the heels of his western boots, and with the very high crown on the custom Stetson. He was half Judge Billy Alwerd’s age. Their skin was almost the same shade of brown, but whereas the Judge’s looked desert dry, Tom Dorra’s hide looked oiled. His tailored khakis were pressed and fresh. His belt buckle was a half pound of ornate Mexican silver.

After the outer door closed behind Francie, Tom Dorra said lazily, “Your Francie, she give me the look about one more time, Billy, even though she got no more ass on her than Fred Astaire, I’m going to purely run her over to the Orange Tree Motel and give her my message.”

The Judge yawned. “Don’t you mess with her, Tom D. I need for her to keep her mind on her work, not wobbling around all sprung and breathing hard. After Milly died, I run through four of them before I found Francie. She’s no Milly, God knows, but she keeps track. Get back to what you were starting to say when she came in.”

“Oh. Here’s the way I see it, why Boylston wants to see us both together. It figures that Bix Kayd cut him into it too, didn’t tell us he was in, but told Boylston we were. So what’s happened has got him a little jumpy too, and he wants to know what we plan on doing.”

Judge Billy shook his head slowly, contemptuously. “That kind of thinking is the best reason in the wide world you better keep checking everything out with me, Tom. First off, young Sam hasn’t got the yen for anything too tricky, and that’s why he give up doing any law chores for Bix, knowing that if he didn’t know the whole story and anything went a little sour, he could spend a lot of time in tax court, explaining. Second, that means that Bix wouldn’t be about to beg Boylston to come in on anything, because the way Bix likes it is having folks lined up and itching to let him he’p them get rich. Third off, that young Boylston is handling himself smart enough he doesn’t rightly need to come in on a little piece of a big one when he can do just as good taking a big piece of a little one and running the show himself.”

“But you said he said on the phone it was about Bix.”

“So he smelled something out, figured you and me had something riding this time, and wants to know what the hell goes on because his little sister is on that cruise, boy, or maybe you forgot.”

“Do you think we ought to tell him anything?”

The Judge chewed at the corner of his moustache. “I think I’m going to wait and see just how he comes at us, and then I’m going to make up our minds for us, Tom D. One thing to bear in mind is that young Sam don’t have a lot of real weight yet, but come a few years from now the way he’s going, you and me could find ourselves needing a favor.”

Tom Dorra looked bleak. “I sure God hope old Bix didn’t get careless about anything. It would give me a case of the shorts for some spell. And you tell me, Billy, just why in the world old Bix had to turn it into some kind of damn game, making it look like a big old family cruise, when by God, he could have fly over and got it all settled in three, four, five days at the most.”

The Judge took a half-eaten cigar from the top drawer of his desk, bit an inch off it, put it back, chewed slowly. “Now you know how Bixby Kayd is. He doesn’t like for anything to look like what it is. He wants the whole world wondering and guessing what’s up his sleeve. Besides, taking his own boat makes the transportation problem easier in one sense. Then, too, the delay would like to make that pack of limeys a little edgier and readier to deal. And being there like that would give him a chance to do some thinking on just how the whole thing should be operated once he’s got hold of it. Bix likes to put on a show, but dog knows he’s no fool.”

He stared at Tom. “Am I keeping you awake?”

“Huh? Oh, I heard what you were saying. I was just thinking back on the onliest time I ever did see that little sister, that Leila Boylston. About four years back, which would make her about fifteen then. Wally and me had flew up to Ritchie’s spread to look over some blooded stock, and that Leila was up there visiting the youngest Ritchie girl. The little Leila, she came riding along with us when we went looking for that stock. She set that roan real nice and pretty, and goddam, Judge, she was dressed like for a street parade in white britches so tight she could have set on a dime and told which president it was. Now a gallop was right interesting, and a canter was something to see, but when that roan moved at a slow walk, that little round can on her, it tippy-tilted back and forth so sweet and fine. I could have fell off my horse like the sun stroke and lay there howling and a-tearing up the sod. That roan liked to stay out in front, and I tell you that Leila was prime. There don’t one like that come along every year. I swear, we stayed there one more day, I’d have slung her under my arm and took off up into Ritchie’s high timber and never been seen since.”

Judge Alwerd sighed, spat into his tin waste basket. “One day, big Tom, you’ll find out how it quietens and eases a man to get past all that stud time of life.”

“Sounds a little too quiet to me,” said Dorra.

Judge Billy shook his head. “A fifteen-year-old girl child you saw that one time four years back. Agitates you to this day. And going on about my Miss Francie. You with seven kids. Makes me wonder if you got enough attention left over for business.”

“Now, Billy, you know I...”

“All I know is we’d better be talking about money around here.” He began to say more, but stopped as Francie touched the buzzer to signal the Judge that Sam Boylston was on his way in.

As the door opened, Billy Alwerd said, “Come on in, Sam. Come in and set. You know Tom D. Pull the door shut, you don’t mind.”

Sam shook hands with them and took an oak armchair about the same distance from the scarred desk as Tom’s was. He wiped his forehead on a handkerchief and said, “Summer seems to be starting up earlier ever’ year. Tom D., you gained some weight?”

“Not one bit. Just seems like I must always look bigger than folks remember. I stay just under two ninety like always, Sam.”

There was a silence as they waited for Boylston to decide how he wanted to bring it up. Sam clicked his lighter shut, huffed smoke and said, “One of the things I learned when I did a little work for Bix, he hates having his name in the paper. I remember when there was a little trouble, he was paying a man to keep it out. Now he’s in the news, and he’s on the front page. The papers keep calling that cruiser a yacht. Bix would be stomping and cursing, wondering how many IRS boys might be wondering if he was being audited close enough. But then again, I was wondering if something might come along that looked good enough so that he wouldn’t mind being in the papers, if it was necessary.”

“Have to be real, real good,” Judge Billy said softly.

“Good enough, I guess, so that you and Tom D. would be glad to have a piece of it?”

“If it was something like that,” said the Judge.

Sam looked over at Tom Dorra. “It would ease my mind if I knew all this publicity was something Bix decided he’d just have to put up with. On account of Leila being along, if he’d wanted to be considerate, he could have let me have a little hint. But it isn’t too late for a little consideration. It’s something a man could give without having to say anything else about anything, wouldn’t you say?”

“Billy is doing the saying,” Tom said.

The Judge swiveled his chair and sat staring out the window. He turned back slowly. “I guess I tell you that we’re edgy about it too, you’d have to know more.”

“I guess I would.”

“What you do is keep it in mind that Tom D. and I are coming right out with it, without being cute, just because your little sister being a guest on that boat kind of takes it out of the business picture and makes it friendship.”

“I won’t forget it.”

“The way it started, you know Bix has been getting into resort operations outside the country. Sunshine Management, Incorporated. It’s a nice tax picture. He had an eye on the Bahamas. He found an outfit based there that was in trouble. Ventures, Limited, set up as a Bahamian corporation. They’d moved too fast, picked up too much land in too many places, but a lot of it right choice. Some kind of legal tangle was keeping them from selling off some of the beach land and islands to get even. It was all pledged against the full amount of the loans they’d gotten, I guess, and they’d borrowed to the hilt and no way to issue more paper to get development money. The only way out was to sell all the holdings at once, in one package, pay off the debt, and have something left to distribute to the shareholders. Eleven million five was the asking price. Bix muscled them down to ten three, but it was still too much he figured. He had it figured that about nine flat would be about right, but that was getting near the danger point because at that price maybe a lot of other promoters would have started to get interested. So he started snuffling around. He got a man who could deliver the whole board, a majority of the board, if he could have some leverage to work with. The leverage they worked out was eight hundred thousand cash, under the table. For that piece of money, Bix’s pigeon could get an affirmative vote through the board to take Bix’s cash offer of eight million seven. That makes the total nine five. He’s been working on it a year and a half. All he could scrape up for the under-the-table money was four hundred, in a real quiet way without attracting any attention. So Tom D. here and me, we came in for two hundred each. Bix’s program was to keep them sweating and see if he could get them to go along for less than the eight hundred, and if it was less, we’d all cut our ante the same percent. Sam, there’s no need to go into how we stand to make out. We worked it out with Bix, and let’s say it’s enough to make a man smile some. When there’s risks something could go wrong, and when you come up with the kind of money you keep in fruit jars, you want it should fatten up pretty good. So, considering, when the news came through, Tom and me started feeling some edgy. There isn’t a scrap of paper we’ve got to show, not even any way to write it off. It isn’t like Bix to get careless with any kind of money.”

“So the Muñeca left here with eight hundred thousand dollars in cash aboard her!”

“More than half of it hundreds, all the rest in fifties,” Tom Dorra said. “All banded and marked and packed neat in a suitcase, not a big suitcase, little bigger than one of those dispatch cases. Those boys on the board who were going along with it, it was going to make them well, but the others were going to get burnt and figure everybody got burnt.”

“Who was his contact?”

The Judge said, “A Canadian name of Angus Squires, has a place in Freeport and some kind of a hideaway fishing lodge on something called Musket Cay in the Berry Islands. The way it works, Bix had moved the eight million seven into a Nassau bank and had some lawyer in Nassau with a limited power of attorney who’d make the offer and when it was voted in, pay by bank check and take over the deeds to the holdings in the name of Sunshine Management, Incorporated. Squires would call an emergency meeting of the board in Nassau. On his way from Freeport to Nassau he’d meet Bix at Musket Cay. Bix would give him some of the cash money and show him the rest. When the deal went through, Squires would stop at the same place on the way back to Freeport and pick up the rest of it, the eight hundred, or whatever Bix was able to work him down to. Bix said he wasn’t going to hustle the deal through. He said he’d cruise around the islands some. He said the longer he dragged his feet, the more Squires and his crowd would be hurting. Last I heard from him, Sam, he give me a call from Miami when he got there, just about almost a month ago.”

“Who is that Staniker and his wife?”

“Now that would be the fella he took on in Miami. He said he’d want to get somebody who knows the waters. Bix and his boy, Roger, took it around the Gulf to Miami from here. He said he’d want to get a cook aboard too once they took off from the states. Reckon he found a couple that suited. Bix would check them out pretty good, that’s for certain. The thing is, Sam, there is no reason on God’s earth Bix would want to turn up missing this way. It’s a good safe boat, and he’d have a good safe place aboard for the money, but eight hundred thousand and no sign of the boat at all, it starts a man thinking, and it keeps your food from settling real good.”

“Who is the lawyer in Nassau?”

“Near as I remember, he didn’t mention a name.”

“What have you been planning to do, Judge?” Sam asked.

Tom Dorra said, “Earlier I was saying to Judge Billy we don’t hear anything in another couple days, I just might go on over and get that Squires off in private and dance him up and down some to see what might come loose and fall off him. But Bix didn’t talk like he was dealing with any hard case. What are you going to do?”

“Clean up a few things and see if I can get out of here by tomorrow night and get on over there and see if there’s anything they could be doing they’re not doing. I can take a look at Squires and let you know.”

“We would be most humbly grateful, Sam’l,” said the Judge.

“I’m grateful you told me what’s going on.”

“Just saved you a lot of digging is all, I expect. I sure hope that — everything is all right aboard that boat. You boys want to walk an old man down the street and let him stand you a touch of the nerve tonic?”

“Thanks, but I’d best be getting back up the line.”

“Nerve tonic is what I need most,” Tom said, rising to his full height, straightening his pale hat. “By the way, Sam, I was talking to old Goober the other night and he said he seen Lydia Jean a week back still up there in Corpus. Her old lady must be having some long spell of the sickness, I guess.”

“Can’t be helped,” Sam said.

“Can get tiresome, tending the sick. I got to go up to the regional meeting of the growers next week, and if I get a chance, I could give her a ring and cheer her up some.”

“You do that,” Sam said evenly. He said goodby to them and walked out. Tom D. started to follow along, but the Judge called him back in and closed the office door.

“Now what the hell were you trying to do, bringing that up about Lydia Jean?” Billy asked angrily.

Tom D. sprawled his bulk and weight back into an oak chair and said, smiling, “Now Billy, half the Valley knows Lydia Jean run out on him and he can’t seem to sweet talk her into coming home where she belongs. Thought I’d give him a little something to think on.”

“A little game, eh? Like learning to jump out of airplanes without a chute, or picking up rattlesnakes by the back of the neck with your teeth. What makes you so damn dumb anyways?”

Tom Dorra looked angry and upset. “You’ve got no call to talk to me like that. Sam Boylston’s just another one of those nice clean little lawyer fellas.”

Judge Billy tilted his swivel chair back and looked at a far high corner of the room. “Been around a long, long time. Seen a lot of them come along. Don’t you get twitchy thinking on that free drink I offered. You set and listen. Might help you some day. Got any idea why Lydia Jean run for cover? Tell you what I think, big Tom. She’s trying to see if she can slow him down some, make him look around and see folks instead of things, and like the fella says, get him to learn to stop and smell the flowers.”

“Do you honest to God know what you’re talking about, Judge?”

“Won’t work, of course. Not with Sam Boylston. He’s in a dead run. Can’t stop. Won’t stop. Scared to stop. That’s the way the big ones are. He ain’t real big yet. But he’s moving as fast as you’ll ever see. Twenty years when he’s Bix’s age about, line ’em up side by side, Bix Kayd is dime-store goods, a clown-man. You can feel the power in Sam’l. He’s got the stillness, hearing all, seeing all, tucking it away. When you ragged him some about Lydia Jean, I seen something look out of his eyes at you, something I wouldn’t fool with.”

“You’re scaring me to death, Judge.”

“Me, I won’t last long enough to see him as big as he’s going to get. But he’s a-going to own this whole Valley, as just a first step. Oh, not by title and deed, but there won’t be anybody with land worth in six figures on up stupid enough to cross him. What he wants done gets done. And tucked back in his brain is the memory of how you did him today. He won’t come after you just to pleasure himself. He can’t waste his time on earth like that. But one day there’ll be money he can see on the far side of you, and he won’t go around you. He’ll go right over the top of you, stompin’ as he goes, and you won’t be a person to him because nobody is real to him but Sam Boylston. If I was you, I’d start thinking on cashing ever’thing in and moving far enough away so he won’t likely come across you.”

“Billy, what’s wrong with you? The land my great grand-daddy settled is smack in the middle of my holdings. I got friends close and true in six counties. Nothing Boylston can ever do to me, a little lawyer-man like that!”

“Lydia Jean may slow him a little bit for a little time, but then he’ll come on faster than ever. He thinks he’s like everybody else. It’s just he don’t have any softness slowing him down. God knows I ain’t got much, but what I got makes me smaller than I could have been. You got more than me by far. But if Sam Boylston had a thing to gain by rendering you down into cooking oil, he’d stoke the fire, boil you good, skim the fat into a bucket and tote it off. It saddens me thinking you’re the last Dorra going to own land in this county, and I might live long enough to get brought down with you if I’m standing too close, so we’ve come to an end of drinking together, and now it’s time we start winding up all the things we’re into together, so let’s start dickering on who buys who out of what and for how much.”

“You got to be kidding, Billy! Your old brain is cloudy. I got a bad case of the shorts. Do that, and you’ll be running me out of some prime stuff, and you damn well know it. We been friends a long time.”

Judge Billy Alwerd blinked and smiled like a lizard on a rock. “All of a sudden being friends with you is too dangerous, Tom D. Anything you want to take over, I’ll take back mortgages, but I’ll discount ’em right off. We’re going to be arms length all the way.”

Tom stood up and leaned over the desk and said, “Do me this way, and I’ll crack your spine, old man!”

“I will. And you won’t.” He chuckled. “In a manner of speaking, boy, what’s happening to you right now is Sam Boylston’s doing. You tweaked him about his woman, and you come down with a hard case of finance-yool leprosy. Don’t mess with Francie on the way out, you hear?”

When Sam got back to his office there was a note that his wife had called him. He called her back, knowing the call would be about Leila, and that she had heard. He told her that he didn’t know anything new, and that he was going over to the Bahamas the evening of the next day. When she asked about Jonathan, Sam said that Jonathan might be in Nassau already, but he certainly would be there by the time Sam arrived.

When she was silent for a few moments, Sam said, “Aren’t you going to say it?”

“Say what, dear?”

“If it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t have been on the cruise.”

“There’s no point in you blaming yourself, Sam. You had no way of knowing anything would happen. And why do you think I’d say anything like that to you at a time like this? Do you think I go around looking for chances to be nasty?”

“I don’t know what to think about you, Lyd. I don’t know how much resentment there is. There has to be some, wouldn’t you say? Or you’d be home where you belong.”

“That isn’t the kind of attitude that’s going to make me hurry back.”

“I should get used to your new rule, I guess. No matter what I say, it’s going to be wrong.”

Her long sigh was audible over the line. “Darling, let’s start this conversation over. We both love Leila. We’re both very worried about her. I would appreciate it if you would let me know what you find out. And I hope everything turns out for the best, and that she’s safe. And — please don’t take any chances over there, like flying around in some little airplane in bad weather looking for her.”

“I want to make certain they’re doing everything.”

“Please be nice to Jonathan.”

“For God’s sake, Lydia Jean!”

“Don’t try to shut him out. He’s as concerned as you are.”

“I’m not the one who goes around shutting people out.”

“We have such happy talks, don’t we, Sam?”

“So let’s try a new area. An old friend of yours will be looking you up next week.”

“Really? Who?”

“He had the needle out. And he was enjoying it. Maybe you can tell him your troubles.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Big Tom Dorra.”

“Damn you, Sam! Damn you!”

“Did I say something wrong?”

“He is not an old friend and you know it. Do you really think I’d talk to him about us? He is physically repulsive to me. He looks — buttered. And he is absolutely convinced he’s God’s gift to womanhood.”

“You’re a legitimate target, Lyd. You turned yourself into a target by leaving me. So you’ve got to expect Tom Dorras to come around. And there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.”

“Do you think I’m incapable of handling the situation?”

“Does it make any real difference? Tom D. will have a little smirk and a little wink for anybody who asks him if he saw you when he was up in Corpus.”

“So what fools believe is more important to you than what you know is true?”

“A lot of things I thought were true haven’t turned out so good.”

“So I’m supposed to come home just to keep you from feeling inadequate?”

“Honey, I’m adequate. Some day Tom Dorra will sign a testimonial to that effect if anybody asks him to. What’s the matter now?”

“I’m crying. Do I have your permission?”

“For the love of...”

“I don’t want to spoil the Sam Boylston image. Oh God, I thought we were getting somewhere the last time we talked.”

“The day you tell me exactly where we are supposed to be getting to, then we can start getting there. Try writing it down. It might help.”

“Good luck about Leila.”

“Thanks for calling.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said and hung up.

After thirty thoughtful seconds, he picked up the hand microphone, pressed the dictate button, and began to work his way through the stack of correspondence on his desk. After one false start, he pushed Lydia Jean and Leila back into storage cupboards in the back of his mind and closed those doors which would isolate them completely until he would be free to once again give them his attentions.