“Those tracks could have been put there by anyone,” Saber said.
Hopkins turned up the soles of our shoes. “How’d the same paint get on here?”
“You put it there,” Saber said. “We saw you do it.”
“That paint has been dry for hours.” He squatted down again and touched the floor and rubbed his thumb across his fingertips. “See?”
Through the back door, I saw the SPCA man wrap Krauser’s Doberman in a piece of canvas and carry it out of the yard. Hopkins walked into the weight room and turned around. “Bring those two in here. I want to see if they’re proud of their work.”
I went ahead of Saber, the paint in the foyer sticking to the bottoms of my feet. At first glance, everything in the weight room seemed to be in order. The dumbbells were racked, the weight bar loaded with fifty-pound plates notched on the stanchions above the leather-padded bench, the memorabilia hanging on the walls. As my eyes adjusted to the poor lighting, I saw the methodical thoroughness the vandal or vandals had used in destroying everything that daily reassured Krauser who he was.
They had broken the glass out of the frames on the walls, then cut and shredded the citations and photos and military decorations inside them, reducing them to confetti and miniaturizing Krauser’s life. They had used pliers or vise grips to mutilate Krauser’s medals for valor and his combat infantryman badge. The Confederate battle flag hung in strips from the wall, each strip tied in a bow. The lamp made from a German helmet was upside down on the floor, propped against the wall. Hopkins tipped it with the point of his shoe. A rivulet of yellow liquid ran onto the concrete. The white-handled Nazi dagger with the incised gold SS lightning bolts was gone.
No one spoke. The air-conditioning unit in the window was dripping with moisture, its motor throbbing. As much as I disliked Krauser, I felt sorry for him.
“What would make y’all do something like this?” Hopkins said. “That man served his country. That’s how y’all pay him back?”
“We never did anything to that motherfucker,” Saber said.
“What do you call this?” Hopkins said.
“You’re asking me?” Saber said.
“That’s his Purple Heart by your foot. Yes, I’m asking you.”
“I hung my swizzle stick through a hole in the ceiling above his biology class. I put a dead frog inside his coleslaw. But you want my opinion on this mess here?”
“We’re burning to know,” Hopkins said.
A sound came out of Saber that was like air wheezing from a slow leak in a basketball. He was trying to hold it in, his face splitting; his knees started to buckle, his suppressed laughter shaking his chest, his tear ducts kicking into overdrive.
“What do I call it?” he said. “What do I call it? What do you think, man? It’s a fucking masterpiece.”
I NEVER KNEW THAT jails were loud. The Harris County jail boomed with noise of all kinds: people yelling down corridors and out windows, cell doors slamming, radios blaring, cleaning buckets grating on concrete, a dozen court-bound men coming down a steel spiral staircase on a wrist chain, a lunatic banging a tin tray outside the food slot of an isolation unit. The level of cacophony never grew or decreased in volume; the building seemed to subsume it the way a storm does; you could actually feel the noise if you pressed your palm against the wall, as if the building had a vascular system.
There were eight of us inside a rectangular cell that had four iron bunks hinged and suspended from the walls on chains. The toilet seat was gone, the bowl striped with tea-colored stains. Our compatriots were a drunk who’d started a fight at the blood bank, a handbill passer accused of window peeping, a check writer who had been out of jail six days before he wrote another bad check, a four-time loser picked up for parole violation, and two bare-chested Mexican car thieves whose torsos were wrapped with knife scars and jailhouse art. They all seemed to know one another or have friends in common, and to accept the system for what it was and not argue with either their surroundings or their fate.
I was allowed one phone call. I called my father’s office. He was out and I had to leave the message with a secretary, knowing the embarrassment it would bring him. At four o’clock a trusty in white cotton pants and a white T-shirt with HARRIS COUNTY PRISON stenciled on the back stopped a food cart at the bars and handed a tray through the food slot with eight baloney sandwiches and eight tin cups of Kool-Aid.
“When’s the bondsman come around?” Saber said.
“You got to go to arraignment first.”
“When’s arraignment?”
“In the morning.”
“I’m not planning on being here in the morning.”
“We got Cream of Wheat and sausage and coffee for breakfast. It’s pretty good.”
The trusty pushed the cart down the corridor.
“Come back here!” Saber shouted. “Hey, I’m talking to you!” He pressed his head to the bars, then gripped them with both hands and tried to shake them.
“Relax,” one of the Mexicans said. “You got to be cool. Don’t be shouting at the trusties. They’ll spit in your food.”
“I got news for them. I ain’t eating it.”
“That ain’t smart,” the Mexican said. “You got to get in step, man. You’re in jail.”
“Thanks for telling me that.”
I put my hand on Saber’s shoulder. “Your dad or mine will be here soon.”
I was wrong. The hours passed and the electric lights went on in the corridor, then at 11:01 P.M. they went off with a klatch all at once, dropping the building into darkness except for the fire exits and a guard box by the main gate.
At seven A.M. the trusty was back with a cauldron of Cream of Wheat and an aluminum bucket of sausages and a huge pot of coffee. One hour later we went to arraignment on a long wrist chain. My father was among a handful of spectators in the courtroom. Saber’s was not. We were charged with breaking and entering and destruction and theft of private property. Our bail was set at five hundred dollars, a great amount back then.
My father had brought cash. Saber kept craning his neck, looking at the entrance to the courtroom. Mr. Bledsoe never arrived. It took a half hour for me to be processed back on the street. Saber was issued jailhouse denims and told to change for transfer to a unit upstairs. I could see the fear and hurt in his eyes. “Your dad is probably putting the money together,” I said.
“No, he’s not. He’s drunk. He doesn’t care.”
“I’m sorry, Saber. Don’t mouth off to these guys. No matter what they say or do.”
“I can do this standing on my hands.” He missed an eyelet as he buttoned his denim shirt, as though his fingers had gone numb.
I lowered my voice. “Be careful about what you say to everybody, got it? There are no secrets in a place like this.”
“So maybe I’ll make some new friends.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the way things worked out. I’m here. You’re going home. I told you they were out to get us. I was half right.”
Outside, in the freshness of the morning and the sound of traffic amid Houston’s tall buildings, I walked with my father toward his car while Saber was put in lockdown with mainline cons.
“Did you do it?” my father said.
“No, sir.”
“Your word on that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about Saber?”
“He wouldn’t kill Mr. Krauser’s dog. I’m sure of that.”
“I talked with this fellow Hopkins, the one who arrested you all. He said the SPCA man thought the dog was fed sleeping pills, not poison.”
“How could he tell?”
“Poison would have caused convulsions and vomiting. The dog simply went to sleep. You still think Saber wasn’t involved?”
He waited for my reply.
“Can we get him a bondsman?” I asked.
“He might be better off in jail. Anyway, we can’t mix in the family business of other people.”
> “Hopkins rubbed the soles of our shoes in the paint on Mr. Krauser’s floor.”
“I think it’s time we have a talk with Mr. Harrelson.”
“Grady?”
“No, his father.”
We crossed the street to Kelly’s steak house, one of my father’s favorite downtown spots. His face was untroubled, perhaps even at peace, his fedora tilted over one eye, his clothes free of cigarette smoke. I wondered if we had entered a new day.
Chapter
13
I WAS SURPRISED HOW easily we gained access to Clint Harrelson, since he was known as a recluse and an introvert. My father called him, and he invited us to his home. As we opened the piked gate and entered the main grounds of the estate, I noticed how my father looked at the details surrounding him; I knew what he was thinking. The Harrelson estate was a replica, at least generically, of the Louisiana home where my father was born in 1899, except the brick walkways and live oaks and camellia bushes and creamy columns and emerald-green lawn and clumps of pink and lavender wisteria and subterranean garage of the Harrelson estate were real. They were not an abstraction or part of a postbellum era that had become little more than a decaying memory on a polluted bayou.
Grady had no siblings nor a mother. Grady told others she had died of breast cancer in a Mexico City clinic. Others said she’d died in a plane crash with her Brazilian lover, a famous polo player and owner of a coffee plantation. Regardless of how she died, all of her genes and physical characteristics must have gone into her son, because Grady looked nothing like his father. Texas was full of loud, porcine oilmen who made fortunes during the war. They combined a predatory form of capitalism with down-home John Wayne folksiness and couldn’t wait to spit a mouthful of Red Man on the lawn of a country-club terrace. Mr. Harrelson was not one of these. He was a slight ascetic-looking man with a thin, bloodless nose and a V-shaped chin and a broad forehead and steel-rimmed glasses and white-gold hair cut short. He wore a white robe and slippers on his small feet and had a book in one hand. “Oh, yes, you’re Mr. Broussard.” He glanced at his watch. “Right on time. Come in.”
He didn’t bother to acknowledge me. My father waited for him to extend his hand, but he didn’t.
“This is Aaron, my son,” my father said.
“Yes, how are you?” Mr. Harrelson said. “Follow me, if you would.” He paused at the staircase. It was wide enough to drive a truck up, the handrail and steps made of restored cypress, the grain polished to a glossy amber. “Our guests are here, Grady!”
His voice had no inflection, no regional accent. His eyes were a grayish blue. They showed neither interest nor dislike and seemed to look inward rather than out. He made me think of a mathematician or a chemist, not the owner of rice mills and a drilling company. There was an antiseptic cleanliness about him that made me wonder if his glands were capable of secretion. If he had a botanical equivalent, it was a hothouse plant that had never seen sunlight or one that had been leeched of its chlorophyll.
He went into the living room and sat down in a stuffed chair by the fireplace. There was a tea service on the coffee table with a cup for one. He raised his eyebrows and gestured toward a divan on the other side of the fireplace. “Let’s see if I have everything straight. It started with the Epstein girl and progressed to a brick being thrown through the windshield of Grady’s car, right? So your son wishes to own up and apologize or pay damages, or you want me to speak to the Atlas boy’s father? Or some combination thereof? Does that sum it up?”
I stole a glance at my father. I could not count the number of social indiscretions that, in his eyes, Mr. Harrelson had already committed.
“You have a very attractive home,” my father said. “I was admiring your camellia bushes. They put me in mind of the place where I grew up.”
Mr. Harrelson set his book facedown on the table, splayed open against the spine; he crossed his legs, his robe falling loose. He pawed at a place below one eye. There were white bookcases on either side of the fireplace. The titles of the books had to do with history and economics. The only novelist I recognized was Ayn Rand.
“Can you tell me why you’re here?” Mr. Harrelson asked.
“My son has been accused of things he hasn’t done. This morning he was charged with a break-in. The possibility that someone is doing this to him deliberately is difficult to abide.” He held his gaze on Mr. Harrelson.
“Does your indignation extend to the Atlas boy losing an eye?” Mr. Harrelson said.
“Yes, it does. I’m bothered by another factor as well. The Atlas family are criminals. Your son was in the company of both the father and the son and a gangster named Frankie Carbo. Does that seem normal to you?”
Mr. Harrelson touched at his nose with one knuckle. He looked toward the staircase. “Come down here, Grady.”
Barefoot, Grady walked down the stairs and into the living room. He was wearing a T-shirt cut off at the mid-abdomen and beltless Levi’s that hung below the navel. His tan had deepened, and his body tone was as supple and smooth as warm tallow. “What’s going on, Pop?”
“This gentleman says you were with a gangster named Carbo.”
“Not so. I saw Vick Atlas at a nightclub. Vick was at another table and joined us. That’s about all there was to it.”
“You urinated in Aaron’s car,” my father said.
“With respect, I don’t do things like that, sir.”
I tried to make Grady look at me. He wouldn’t.
“Well, there you have it,” Mr. Harrelson said. “We seem to have different perceptions about past events. I’d like to let it go at that. An investigation into the brick incident is in progress. I’ll abide by its outcome.” He turned toward his son. “I think the real issue is the Epstein girl. I think she’s better left alone. Her father is a Communist. Usually the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree. That’s just one man’s opinion. Do you want to say anything to Mr. Broussard or Aaron, Grady?”
“I’m willing to shake hands,” Grady said.
“How about it?” Harrelson said. “Then let the law handle it. Grady has never been in trouble. He’s never hurt anyone, either.”
Grady had his arms folded on his chest, his gaze focused on the floor, a study in humility. Outside, the underground sprinkler system sprang to life. I had never seen one before. Jets of water spiraled and twisted throughout the yard, swinging across the patio, clicking against the live-oak trunks and trellises and French doors, misting in the twilight. Simultaneously, the underwater lights in the swimming pool came on, creating a turquoise radiance on the surface that resembled colored smoke. Could a person live in a more perfect setting? And there in the midst of all this stood Grady Harrelson, lying through his teeth while Saber Bledsoe was probably eating grits and beans out of a tin plate, wondering about the visitors who might come to his bunk when the count screw dropped the building into blackness.
I stared at Grady’s father, forcing him to look at me. “Grady does hurt people, Mr. Harrelson. Last summer some hoods from across town crashed a party on Sunset Boulevard. Grady and his friends beat them so bad they begged. They stretched one guy backward over a car hood and pounded his face in.”
“That might have been wrong, but it sounds like these fellows were asking for it,” Mr. Harrelson said.
“Maybe you should talk with Detective Jenks,” my father said. “A Mexican girl, a prostitute, was killed in the Heights. Someone broke her neck two blocks from where a car was burned. Detective Jenks thinks the two events are related. It appears someone is trying to place the blame on my son and his friend Saber Bledsoe.”
Mr. Harrelson wrinkled his nose under his glasses and smiled. “This has nothing to do with us,” he said. “At this point I think we should say good evening and next time speak to the authorities if we have questions about my son’s behavior or the behavior of his friends. I must say one thing, though, before we conclude: There seems to be little concern about the damage done to the Atlas boy. From what I understand,
he’s lucky he wasn’t decapitated. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get into that again. Grady, would you make sure the outside lights are on for Mr. Broussard and Aaron.”
My father looked into space. His hat lay on the table, crown-down. He picked it up and straightened the brim. Then he rose from the chair. He hadn’t slept well the night before and had gotten up early to go to the bank and withdraw the five hundred dollars he needed to pay my bail. He looked ten years older than he was.
“We’ll find our way out. Please don’t get up,” he said.
Mr. Harrelson nodded and opened his book and began reading. I didn’t think I had ever met a more arrogant man in my life.
Grady opened the front door and held it while we walked outside. The night was sweet with the smell of flowers and lichen and the haze from the sprinkler system. Grady started to close the door. My father turned around and stiff-armed it back open. “Ask your father to come out here.”
“He’s done talking,” Grady said. “It’s just his way. He’s a funny guy sometimes.”
My father had not put his hat back on. He held it pinched by the crown and pointed it at Grady. “Go get him, young man. I don’t wish to embarrass you, but you need to do as I’ve asked you. Now.”
“If that’s what you want.”
Grady went back into the living room and returned a moment later with Mr. Harrelson, who was still holding his book, his thumb marking his place. For the first time I could see the front of the jacket. The book was a collection of essays by Harry H. Laughlin.
“Yes?” he said.
“Your ungracious manner is probably related to a lack of breeding and background, Mr. Harrelson, so you should not be held accountable for it,” my father said. “However, the degree of your rudeness seems to indicate contempt for the civilized world rather than ignorance of it. You seem to lack what William James called ‘the critical sense.’ This is the faculty in us that works a bit like God’s fingerprint on the soul. It’s not a faculty that can be acquired. One is either born with it or he is not born with it. Obviously, in your case, it’s the latter.” My father fitted on his hat. “You have a grand place here. As I said, it reminds me of another setting, one I don’t think you would understand. Good evening, sir. Come on, son.”