Two Bits Four Bits (20 page)

His face
reddened.

“I-I don’t know what you
mean.”

I laughed. “I’m just
kidding with you. Say, I thought that receptionist was going to
bring me a cup of coffee.”

“We won’t be much longer,”
he said, glancing at his watch.

“Oh, take all the time you
need. I was just looking forward to a nice cup of java, since she
offered and all. You do keep it made up around here don’t
you?”

“Yes, yes of course. But I
don’t want to keep you any longer than necessary.”

He stood up and came
around the desk.

“No problem, I’ve got
plenty of time. I take mine black.”

He stood there for a few
seconds waiting for me to stand and follow him out of the office,
but I stayed put. Finally, he strode toward the doorway muttering:
“I’ll be right back.”

As soon as the door closed
behind him, I reached across and picked up his cell phone and
flipped it open. I scrolled to his saved numbers until I saw the
name Sandy, highlighted it and pushed the Send button. A gruff
voice answered after a few rings.

“What?”

From his tone I got the
impression that if Sandy Doyle wanted to talk to you he would be
the one to do the calling.

“Do you have Prince Albert
in a can?” I asked.

“What the fuck? Dayton, is
that you?”

I hit the End button,
closed the phone and put it back where I’d found it. Clark came
back into the room carrying a Styrofoam cup of steaming black
coffee.

“I knew she wouldn’t be
the one bringing me my coffee,” I said. “She just didn’t look like
the type.”

“Here you go, Mr. Griffin.
Now, I’m sorry but I’ve got—“

His cell phone rang,
playing the theme from The Godfather. He snatched it off the desk
and gestured toward the doorway.

“I’m sorry, but I’ve
really got to take this. I’ll be in touch.”

I just nodded for him to
go ahead with his call and took a sip of coffee. There was almost
as much steam coming out of his ears as from the cup. He opened the
phone and listened for a few seconds.

“No, it wasn’t me. Of
course I’m sure.”

He held the phone out and
looked at like nobody had ever hung up on him before, then snapped
it shut and looked at me. I did my best impression of Jimmy
Do-Rag’s shrug, turned and shuffled out of the office.

* * * *

CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE

After leaving Dayton
Clark, instead of making my way across Midland to Highway 158, the
quickest route back to Elmore, I drove south and got on Interstate
20, which led to Odessa. I was a little pissed off at Dayton Clark
for making me drive all the way to Midland and then giving me so
little information. So I decided to give myself the thirty-minute
drive from Midland to Odessa to figure out what to do
next.

When I got into Odessa, I
exited the interstate near the campus of the University of
Texas-Permian Basin. On University Boulevard, not far from the
campus, I spotted a coffeehouse called The Brutal Bean with a big
sign proclaiming FREE WIRELESS INTERNET!! I parked, grabbed my
brand-new laptop computer from behind the pickup seat and went
inside. The Brutal Bean? What was Odessa coming to?

So I wouldn’t look too out
of place, I ordered one of what Norris Jackson had referred to as
an ‘eight-dollar double-fluff-mocha-latte-bullshit drink’. Before
the gangly dreadlock-wearing barista could finish making it, I had
fired up the laptop, connected to the Brutal Bean’s FREE WIRELESS
INTERNET!! and jotted down the address for Doyle Financial Group.
Just so the barista-mon wouldn’t get his feelings hurt by my hasty
departure, I sat for a few more minutes sipping my eight-dollar
double-fluff-mocha-latte-bullshit drink and surfing the Ikea
website like I’d seen the Starbuck’s crowd in Austin do. Paging
through the starkly uncomfortable desks and chairs shown on the
website, I tried to imagine them arranged in the converted
storeroom inside Lita’s Little Mexico where I was setting up my
office. I decided a trip to a second-hand furniture store might be
more appropriate. Maybe I could persuade Angie to help me pick out
something.

* * * *

CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX

The name of the Doyle
Financial Group made it sound more impressive than it looked. It
was located in a glass-walled storefront in a strip center with a
faded plastic sign reading DOYLE FINANCE. The words All Paychecks
Cashed had been hand-painted in two-foot high bright yellow letters
on the front window. A couple of doors down from Doyle Finance was
the E-Z Pay Furniture Rental store with the same yellow lettering
on the windows proclaiming Flat Screen TV’s Starting at $20 Per
Week!! I wondered if they rented office furniture too.

Inside Doyle Finance there
were half a dozen cubicles, each with a desk and a couple of metal
folding chairs. The employees were all Hispanic women and the
clientele occupying the folding chairs were working-class people,
often with two or more kids bouncing around while their parents
told them to shut-up, leave-that-alone and sit-down.

After I waited a few
minutes, one of the employees finished with her customer, so I gave
her my card and told her I was there to see Sandy Doyle. She
excused herself and walked to the back of the building and through
a doorway that went into the building next-door. She returned a few
minutes later and asked me to follow her. I turned down her offer
of coffee since I was certain she could hear the gurgling in my
stomach from the eight-dollar double-fluff-mocha-latte-bullshit
drink I had just consumed, and the Dayton Clark Law Firm coffee
before that. Why didn’t these receptionists ever offer you the use
of their restroom instead of more coffee?

At the end of a long dark
hallway, we reached a brightly-lit doorway and she gestured for me
to step inside and then closed the door behind me.

Sandy Doyle stood behind a
large desk littered with paperwork and magazines with a telephone
receiver to his ear. He was wearing an expensive-looking red golf
shirt and black Sans-A-Belt slacks. If he’d been wearing a cap with
the Nike swoosh on it I might have mistaken him for Tiger Woods
were it not for the salt and pepper hair and the face that could
have easily earned a screen test for a revival of the The Sopranos
television series.

Photographs of Sandy Doyle
standing in groups of people at various public functions cluttered
the office. I spotted one photo of Sandy shaking hands with G.
Travis Kirkland at an awards ceremony of some kind. Another showed
the two of them side by side on a sport fishing boat. He watched me
while he talked on the phone, looking almost as pissed off as he
sounded.

“Yeah, well I’ll talk to
you about it later. I got a guy here to see me,” he said, hanging
up without waiting for a response.

“What?” he
asked.

“Aren’t you going to ask
me to sit down?” I asked.

“I don’t even know who the
hell you are,” he responded.

“Buddy Griffin. Your
attorney just interviewed me.”

“Oh, sure, sure. Sit the
fuck down,” he said, sinking into his own chair.

“I thought maybe we should
just cut the bullshit and meet each other,” I said. “Make things a
lot less complicated.”

He shrugged and nodded.
“Whatever. Freakin’ lawyer thinks I can’t talk to anybody without
tripping over my own dick.”

“Speaking of Dayton Clark,
he said you needed some help with what he called a security matter.
Is that true, or was there some other reason for calling
me?”

“Well, I guess I could
have just called to ask what you’re up to with all the nosin’
around, but the truth is that I do have a problem. Somebody I
trusted, in fact two somebody’s that I trusted, have taken
something that didn’t belong to them and I’d like it
back.”

“Two people were
involved?”

“Yeah. Well three people
actually. Two employees and one guy from outside the company. But
the outside guy isn’t so much of a problem anymore. One of the
employees, it didn’t surprise me a bit that he would try something
like this, and I’ve already severely disciplined him. But the other
employee, I always thought of more like a family member. It’s
disappointing, you know, when people that you think of that way let
you down. This was a longtime employee, and we go way back
together. And now this employee seems to have
disappeared.”

“And you think this
missing employee may have the stolen item with them?”

“Yeah, probably. It sure
looks that way. It’s hard to think that this particular employee
would screw me like this, but I don’t know what else to
think.”

“Have you contacted the
police to report the theft?”

He chuckled.

“It isn’t that simple. In
case you don’t already know this about me, I’m a very private
businessman and the last thing I need is word of this kind of thing
getting around town.”

“And, you haven’t always
had the greatest relationship with the police.”

He chuckled again. “Well,
shit yeah, I guess you could say that. I’ve got a few guys working
on this.”

“Listen,” I said. “I don’t
mean to try to tell you how to run your business, but letting your
own men look for this missing employee could be a
mistake.”

“You got any better
ideas?”

“Let me take a shot at it.
Tell your guys to back off and give me a few days,” I said. “I
think I might be able to help.”

He stared at me for a few
seconds before answering.

“And why should I think I
can trust a squeaky-clean ex-cop to help me with this kind of
problem?”

“Because I need to find
out why Russell Chilton was killed and you need to find out if Eva
Trout really broke your heart. From what I know about this, Eva’s
about as close to you as your own daughter might be, and I’m the
only one in a position to figure out the truth about what happened.
You have my word that I’ll share that truth with you, good or
bad.”

I may have been mistaken,
but for a second I thought the old psychopath’s eyes got misty.
Then he shook his head and stood up.

“I’ll give you a few days
to come up with something, but I’ve been around long enough to know
when somebody’s playing me for a fool. Don’t think I won’t come
after you too if you try to screw with me.”

I stood up.

“Good enough,” I said. “Is
there any way I can talk to the employee that you disciplined. To
see if he has anything that would help?”

“I’m afraid that’s not
possible. We let him go and haven’t seen or heard from him since.
But, we gave him a good talking-to before we sent him on his way.
I’m sure he didn’t hold back anything.”

I had no doubt Sandy Doyle
was telling the truth.

* * * *

CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN

Driving out of Odessa, I
noticed a large warehouse building with an Estate Sale banner
draped above the entrance, so I stopped on the chance that they
might have an old office desk I could use. Thirty minutes later I
was on the way back to Elmore with a beautiful old wooden desk in
the bed of my pickup. It looked like a Government Issue desk from
World War I and weighed slightly less than the Texas State Capitol
Building. I had talked the woman running the sale into throwing in
an executive chair from a more modern era and a couple of guest
chairs for not much more.

The next morning, I called
Ray Garcia and asked if he wanted to go to Lita’s with me. I failed
to mention the purpose of our visit.

“Holy crap, hombre. You
couldn’t have found a heavier desk somewhere?”

“I thought you’d be
grateful that the waitresses inside get to see you flex your
muscles.”

“Shit. I wondered why you
wanted to go to breakfast so late. Didn’t want the whole town
laughing at us carrying this raggedy old desk past them while they
were eating breakfast. Let’s just hope the lunch crowd don’t get
here early and see us.”

We slid the desk down the
bed of the pickup and lifted it off the tailgate, taking slow,
short steps and watching each other to see who would be the first
to drop their end. Manuelita Rascon saw us from inside the
restaurant and ran out to prop the entrance doors open.

“Oh, my God! Do you need
some help? I can get Pete if you need some help.”

“Thank you, but I think
Ray’s okay. He’s got the lighter end, and I’m fine.”

Once we had the desk
inside the area I had rented from the Rascons, we brought the
chairs in and arranged them into what resembled a formation one
might find in an actual office.

“You know what I think?”
Ray said. “I think it looks like a storeroom for old
furniture.”

“Thanks Ray. That’s the
look I was going for.”

“I also think you need to
buy me some huevos for blindsiding me about coming here and then
using me like a damn pack mule. Speaking of food, are you and Angie
still going to the picnic with us?”