Friday Fiction (New): Fear of Cold Water and Blued Tattoos, Chapters 3-4

This is the second portion of the beginning draft of my new novel, a sequel of sorts to Devils Walk Through Galveston (link to buy on Amazon).  It’s a draft, so let me know what you think.  If you want to catch up, get DWTG on Amazon.  If you want to affect the story, send me comments, they’ll get worked in.

Chapters 1 & 2 were posted last week.  Here are Chapters 3-4.

(Material is copyrighted, but noncommercial sharing is encouraged.  Commercial reproduction is prohibited.)

Fear of Cold Water and Blued Tattoos;

Or an unpaid internship in the truth

Chapter 3.  Houston, two weeks before, 7 a.m.

A warm morning in Southwest Houston.  Early spring in Houston and the temperature was in the sixties, summer nearing.  Windows down on Fondren Street.  A few mothers in yards idly glancing over at children playing in the grass in the early morning, watching to make sure they didn’t get near the sidewalk.  The street a mix of businesses and homes.  Massage parlor brothels and transmission shops.  The neighborhood a mix of Latin and Southeast Asian.  Tricked out Hondas and low-riding Impalas sleeping off the night before. 

The metal roll top garage door to Taitz Body Shop down, set to open in half an hour.  Four cars in the parking spots to the side, the chain across the driveway still closed.  Music playing inside. The muffled beats creeping out through the one open window of the office.  Traffic picking up at Laredo Taqueria down the street.  People walking and stumbling into the line that stretched outside.  Four uniformed policemen waiting patiently in the line.  Ignoring the stink of last night’s weed on the plaid cotton shirts and torn jeans of the laborers getting breakfast before walking down to the empty lot to wait for a day’s work.

Three shots muffled shots heard.   Deafened by the distance.  High pitched, low caliber. They sounded like a hammer hitting metal.  Hammers hit metal at the body shop all the time.  No one on the street stirred.  No one in the taco line moved.

The garage door raised up a foot and slammed down.  Two more shots. A man rolled out bleeding from a shot to the back of his shoulder.  He got up and ran, staggering, off balance, to the taqueria, collapsing in front of a pick-up screeching its brakes an inch from his leg.  The police ran to him, turned him on his back.   One asked, “Where.”  He pointed at the garage down the street. Three ran toward it. One stayed behind, radioed in an ambulance.  The laborers in line moved away slowly. Walked down the street.  Trying to disappear from the onrush that would come.

The three cops ran to the garage. Saw the bullet holes at the bottom of the garage door.  One dropped to the ground, pointed his gun toward the bottom of it.  One squatted down and lifted the door.  The one on the ground shouted, “Police.”  He kept lifting as the third rolled in, pistol drawn.

There was no more danger apparent.   Three men were slumped on the floor, hands bound behind their backs with zip ties. Feet bound together, too.  Bleeding from their noses and ears.  A single bullet wound to the back of each head.  No one else in sight. 

The cops pulled the door all the way up.  They fanned out and checked the garage office, the parts room, the outside perimeter.  Found nothing.  Found boot prints leading everywhere.  Found tire tracks going in and out.  It hadn’t rained in a week.  The gravel chert around the back gave no clues. No tracks seeming fresher than the others.  The chain across the back entrance down. 

The sound of sirens coming closer.  The ambulance coming to the taqueria and the shot man on the ground writhing in pain, not talking, not answering the questions of “Who did this. Who shot you.”  The marked cars coming in, fanning out across the neighborhood to start questioning anyone who was out.  No one walking toward the garage.  No one coming over to ask what had happened. 

The police found the office locker open, emptied out on the floor. The desk drawers closed.  They’d fingerprint the dead men.  They’d run fingerprints over the locker handle, the drawer handles, the garage itself.  They’d brace the neighbors.

They looked around. They saw the ice cream truck in the lot next to the garage move slightly. They saw the weight shift.  They went over and knocked on its door and announced.  It opened to the smell of weed and a man with bloodshot eyes in his boxers, terror in his eyes.  He came out and sat on the ground.  They asked if they could search it.  He said, “There’s nothing in there but my ice cream and clothes.”

“There’s weed”

“You’re busting me for weed with three cops at six a.m.  For real? I don’t got none.  Look around.  I don’t care.”  He knew he’d smoked it all. 

They asked, “Did you hear anything?”

He said, “What?  The sirens?  You all waked me up.”

“Did you see anything over there.” The pointed to the open garage door. 

He stared, getting used to what light there was. He saw the bodies on the ground, said, “Oh, shit.  No, man. Shit.”  He crossed himself, said, “Dios mio.”  He crossed himself and started to pray the Rosary in Spanish.  He stayed sitting cross-legged in the dust and gravel as the marked cars pulled up. He swayed.  He finished, looked up to see them still standing there, said, “You can search my truck.  There’s nothing in it.  Asked, “Can I get some pants?”  He knew he’d be there a while. He hoped he wouldn’t be taken in.

The man on the taqueria driveway waited for the ambulance.  He waited for the day to come to him.  He repeated his story silently in his head.

The police fanned out. It would be a long day.  There’d  be many more to come.

Chapter 4.  Finding the pieces to pick back up

Luke took David Venable out of the Harris County Jail in downtown Houston and drove him to the medical center.  Luke called the home of a neurologist they had both known since college, got him to come in to his office on a Saturday morning.  They didn’t go home to change.  The doctor wanted to see Venable right away. 

The office was lit with the dull green-white haze of fluorescent lights.  It was quiet with no receptionist.  No one in the waiting room and no one down the hall.  No nurses milling about.  One had come in to work the CAT machine.  It was somewhat eerie.  It was also calming.  There was no one to judge him.  The doctor could wash the blood from David’s nose and knuckles.  David could smell himself and his clothes and know something of what he had done by the next-morning evidence.  He could be alone with these men he trusted and barely remembered.  This man, Luke, who said was Venable’s best friend.  This man who felt so comfortable. Peace was where he had to start from.  Peace was what he had to try to keep.

There were a battery of tests.  The mundane, making him walk in a straight line and touch his nose with his eyes closed.  All ones he passed.  A CT scan and interview which he failed.

Venable could remember very little.  He was told the diagnosis.  He’d had a minor stroke in the courtroom.  Brought on by stress.  Brought on by things he didn’t remember and didn’t want to.  The CT said there was a small hemorrhage above the Medial Temporal Lobe.  He didn’t need surgery.  He would likely recover.  The doctor didn’t know when.  The doctor didn’t know if the stroke or the stress caused the memory loss.  It may have mattered.  The Medial Temporal was a worry.  They’d have to do an MRI to make sure.  He wanted Venable to see a psychiatrist, as well.  The criminal judge and family law judge would want that too.  He would set it up with someone he trusted to short circuit a court-appointed hack being ordered.  Venable would need visits to a shrink to appease the judges and also his bosses.  His job was now in doubt.  He’d have a long interview with the partners at McGuire & Torres, an old, venerable law firm in downtown Houston where he’d worked the last seven years without making partner.  These last two days wouldn’t help that at all.  Making partner was a minor worry.  He wouldn’t have made partner any time soon anyway.

But the lack of memory was a real worry.  The organic brain damage was significant.  He was in the middle of a divorce proceeding. There was no custody fight.  His son was almost grown.  Even so, there was a child involved in the divorce.  His love was involved.  As was betrayal.  It’s what’s involved in every divorce.  The type and details are all that’s different.  

The battery of tests finished, the doctor said he’d put together a diagnostic report.  It could be used for the court and Venable’s bosses at McGuire Torres.  They’d likely heard what had happened at court.  Venable would have to call them or send an email about not coming into work on Monday, let them know he was going to be back soon.  He had to figure out how to do it, who to send it to, what to say.  Really, Luke would do it.  Venable had to remember who his boss was, what he was working on. He had to remember it quickly if he ever wanted to go back.  His soon-to-be-ex-wife was another matter.  There may be no going back ever again.  He’d have to try to remember.  He’d have to decide if he wanted to try.  He might have to beg.  He’d have to remember whose fault it all was, if it mattered. 

§§

They walked slowly out of Scurlock Tower.  The hallway narrow.  The space smelled old and stale, no matter how many times they shampooed  the carpet or painted the walls. There was too much sickness, too much near-death passing through to ever to be free of it. 

They picked up Luke’s four year old Honda Accord from the valet on the first floor.  They didn’t stop for tacos in the atrium.  Luke wanted to get Venable back home.  To Luke’s home.  To the spare room where Venable’s suitcase had been emptied into the spare dresser.   Where he had put up one picture of his son.  They’d retrieve Venable’s BMW later from the court-house garage.

Luke got in the driver’s seat, looked over Venable sliding in gingerly, asked, “You hurting?”

Venable thought and said, “I’m sore.  My body’s stiff.”

“A night sleeping on concrete will do it.”

“And I’m scared.  I’m terrified.”

“You’re safe now.”

“Safe from what? What do I do when we get back to your house.  You said that’s where we’re going.  Where’s my house?”

Luke thought a minute, pulled over in Hermann Park.  He decided they needed a talk before Venable got home.  Luke parked by the Natural History Museum and walked Venable to the reflection pond. They sat facing Rice University.  Luke thought it might bring something back.   Thought at least seeing Rice might give Venable some sense of the familiar, some sense of peace. 

The weather was perfect.  Those few months in early spring when the temperature in Houston hovers in the seventies and the humidity’s low.  The reward for the summers.  The reward for stifling heat and humidity.  Half the city out enjoying it now.  Adults alone at the reflection pond.  The zoo train packed with kids and tired parents following the outside edge of the park.  Luke motioned for Venable to sit down on one of the metal benches sat as the train squeaked by. Venable looked over to it with little recognition. 

As they sat, Luke looked forward, not at Venable, not in his eyes.  Looked forward and sat next to him as they always had, comfortable, telling Venable, “I’m going to give you the basics.  I talked to Fox, the doctor you saw a few minutes ago.  He says everything  before the blackout will likely come back.  He says it’ll take time.  You’ll likely lose everything during the time you blacked out, which is probably better for you.”

“From what you all said, no one else who was there’ll forget it.”

“No.  They likely won’t.  We’ll have to pick up the pieces.  It’s going to take time.  Today’s Saturday.  We have today and tomorrow to rest.  I’ll call your bosses today.  They’re concerned.  They heard.  I’ll get you a couple of days before you have to go back.  I’ll call and make the appointment with the psychiatrist on Monday.  I’ll call the court, the family law judge and the criminal judge, and tell them who you’re seeing.  Make sure they approve.    We’ll see on Monday how you’re doing, see if you can drive or if you need a car to take you around.  You can afford it.  We’ll get through this.  Just be patient.”

Venable apprehensive, fidgeting, asked, “Why should I be patient?”

“Because it’s worth it.  Because you had a lot to live for before.”

“I was in jail this morning and you told me that I blacked out in family court and tried to hit my wife’s divorce attorney.  None of that sounds good.  None of that sounds like something to look forward to.”

“You had a lot more before Friday.  You had a lot to live for before that.  You’ve been in a rut. We were getting you out.  We’ll get you back out.”

Venable looked down at the gravel between his feet, asked, “Why are you doing this for me?”

Luke touched his shoulder, got his head up, pointed across the reflection pool, across Main Street to Rice University, beyond the cloak of Live Oak trees lining the edge of the campus, said, “Twenty years ago when we were out of our parents’ houses for the first time in our lives and I was a skinny kid from Nacogdoches, you brought me a cup of beer when I walked into our college’s first party.  You brought me that first cup of beer and we’ve been friends since.  I’m doing this because we’ve got twenty years of good and bad.  We’ve had more than half a life since that first beer.  You went astray these last five or six years.  I’m doing it because when things fell apart, you came back to me.  I would have come back to you.  That’s why.  That’s where we start, brother.  That’s where we start.”

Venable nodded, looked back between his shoes.  Choked up, terrified, said, “Alright, let’s start then.”

§§

They pulled into the driveway of a bungalow in the Montrose section of Houston.  A house older than the two of them combined.  Blond wood floors and deep set windows that were melting slowly to the base of their wood frames.  It had high ceilings and echoes.  It had area rugs from Lowes.  It had second-hand wood furniture that Luke had sanded down and re-stained on weekends.  Venable was led in by Luke, who pointed him to a room with bare walls and a double bed with a white cotton comforter, a dresser and end table with a lamp and book on the floor. 

Luke stood in the doorway and told Venable, “When you change, leave the suit out.  I’ll take it to the tailor and get the hole in the knee reweaved.  We’ll get it fixed.  Get a shower, get changed.  I’ll make us some breakfast.”

Venable did as he was told.  He shut the door and got undressed.  Left the suit on the floor.  He walked into the small spare bathroom and found a laundry hamper and put his under-clothes inside.  He turned the shower on.  Looked through the little pressed wood medicine cabinet that stood on the floor.  Inside was Edge Shave Gel, a silver razor.  A motorized tooth brush.  A prescription bottle for Elavil with his name on it.  It had the name of a doctor.  He’d have to call that doctor tomorrow.  The bottle said one per day was the dose.  He took one with water from the tap.  He turned on the warm water in the shower and looked at the shampoo and soap.  He wondered if it was his or Luke’s, who chose it.  He undressed and stepped into the water.  He didn’t care that the water was still cold.  Ran the soap over his body, over the cuts.  Tried to remember his skin.  Tried to remember each bruise, each scar.  Tried to remember himself.