Robert Bogan 50,706 words
Austin, Texas (Word 2003)
Cell: 512-963-6879 robert@boganstrictor.com
512-280-9467 © 2007 Robert Bogan
BONNELL VESPERS
by
Robert Bogan
PROLOG
Highlighted by late February sun, the busy blue waves of Lake Austin played
like third graders at morning recess. A great blue heron, miniaturized in the
distance, tucked its crooked neck behind river sedge and pulled into the bright air,
gliding north along the far lakeshore in search of quieter shallows for its predatory
meditation.
On the near side of that raucous watery playground, in the chill shadow of
Mount Bonnell, a muddy yellow backhoe grunted and chugged near a mossy
retaining wall. With the robotic determination of a rooting armadillo, the machine
stabbed and scooped the rich soil of Bonnell Landing, a gated community moored
in a landfill at the base of the high cliff.
Watching closely the mechanical blade of the backhoe, three county crewmen
with shovels paced the sinking pit’s perimeter. Nearby, two 30-foot cypresses
were burgeoning into fine green lace, bothered by the backhoe’s clumsy rumble.
The property owner, Conrad Mentin, retired real-estate developer and
entrepreneur, also held a manic and tearful eye on the loud backhoe. His thin
body quivering like a length of top-heavy spring, Conrad Mentin clutched a Sheltie
lap dog to his gray sweatshirt soiled with what could have been rust or raspberry
jam.
Several of Mentin's neighbors, dressed for the morning chill, yielded to the
morbid urge to walk over and watch. They stood alone at intervals, arms folded,
or they leaned into groups of two and three, behind the burnished steel fence that
divided the north end of the landfill.
Members of the larger community and the media were also watching the dig,
but from beyond the guarded gate at the street entrance to exclusive Bonnell
Landing. I wasn't surprised to learn later that two news crews had stationed
cameras on the heights of Mount Bonnell, under police supervision, and were
zooming down on the exhumation at that very moment. Breaking news: A lead in
the decades-old Nueces Rapes case.
Few did any talking except for the city, county and state officers gathered at
the pit's edge. They leaned over, hands on knees, watching the turn of each
careful inch of landfill, sometimes aiming a finger down or waving a hand at the
backhoe operator.
Rojelio Cavazos, captain of homicide detectives, broke free from the huddle
and walked over to where I stood beside the dismantled iron fence that an hour
ago had guarded the swimming pool behind Conrad Mentin's ornate Neapolitan
villa. Cavazos was a compact man whose sunken pockmarked cheeks masked the
focused charisma of a puma.
"You sure this where the body is?" he grumbled at me.
"Near as I reckon," I replied. "Remember it's been twenty-five years."
"You better not be jerking me round. We're tearing up this man's yard real
good and he still gotta lotta influence in this town."
"She's there. Just keep digging," I said.
"She ain't there, Bucko!" Cavazos snarled, fixing me with a fierce feline gaze.
"You going straight back to lock-up. Plus you pay damages to Mr. Mentin over
there, fore you walk."
Cavazos turned away and rejoined his colleagues around the gradually
deepening pit, leaving me to ponder the dual prospect of bankruptcy and lengthy
incarceration.
I already had enough of jail for today, thank you. I'm not really a criminal
myself, though I've hung out with a few crooks through the years. That
experience lets me read criminal behavior, which morphs to a job skill for me.
Problem is, the eagle that flies with buzzards ends up puking green slime, same as
they do.
A damp-chill shiver rolled down from Mount Bonnell’s morning shadow and
bouldered through my bulk.
The small dog clutched to the old man’s tin-thin chest fired a long volley of
yaps -- frantic, choppy, staccato. The Sheltie almost succeeded in breaking free
from Mentin's distracted embrace.
One of the labor crew dropped his shovel, jumped into the pit and stooped
over until all you could see were shoulders and skull cap. In a moment he stood
up and handed a narrow shaft to Cavazos. Whatever it was -- looked like a foot-
long root -- the detective held close to his face, turning it over a couple of times.
He glanced at me with flat black eyes.
Everything was still for a heartbeat. Even the flashing waves seemed to at
stop and listen. Then Cavazos spoke to anyone who could hear him.
"This wet dirt preserved her pretty good. Get the doc and his crew over here."
Conrad Mentin wailed. The Sheltie escaped the trap, tumbled to the ground
and darted round in rapid yelping loops.
Cavazos glanced at me again and nodded. I think I could read there for the
first time a faint glimmer of respect, or at least an absence of heavy disdain. After
conferring briefly with three men in suits, the police captain walked back to where
I stood beside the flattened fence.
"Looks like you hit it right on the money, Buck." Cavazos narrowed his
shrouded puma eyes as if actually seeing me for the first time.
"Now you got to tell me,” he growled. “How come you know so damn
much?"
1991
ONE
The glass indigo expanse of Lake Travis reflected the hills and cloudless
February sky to the south and east, on that Saturday afternoon when I got tangled
up with Tommie and Zag again.
Something ghost-white bobbed in the waves fifteen yards offshore. Was it a
styrofoam cup? Plastic oil jug? Dead catfish? I sat in my beach chair and
watched the unidentified floating object traverse at a slow bouncing angle while I
looped the telephone message in my mind:
"Billy Duran! I recognize your voice!" Tremor of uncertainty? "At least I
think that is you. This is Tamar Cohn. Surprise!” Laugh tremolo. “I have come
to Austin and I need to see you. I am at the Hyatt on Town Lake, room 637. If
this is you, please call me back." Pause. "It is urgent, Billy. Hyatt room 637."
I had about decided it was a dead fish when for some reason, maybe the
descent of the sun behind me, I could no longer see the pale lakewater bobber.
That ruled out styrofoam.
Relaxing in the sling-back beach chair, I gazed at Lake Travis wavelets,
mesmerized by the echoes of Tamar’s voice. Sometimes just two words can snap
a brittle seal deep inside you where you think the distant past is locked away. My
chest hummed with the thrill of seeing Tamar Cohn again, after more than two
decades.
Tamar loomed large in my emotional memory because she came early and the
experience was intense, at least for me. Hearing her voice again was like lifting a
long disused telescope that let me see far into the past, let me glimpse Tamar
herself, in memory.
Her eyes were the first thing that came into focus, obsidian-black and deep,
ignited by bright infrequent smiles. Smooth latte skin laced with cinnamon.
Exotic, mysterious, Mediterranean, Tamar was a spare double-handful, a well
rounded beauty only half my size.
She was my best friend’s girlfriend.
Fighting ambiguous memories, I reached for the ice tea mug and tasted melted ice
tinged with honey and mint.
Finally I could sit no more so I boosted up from the beach chair, flexed the
idleness from my knees, and walked the limestone ledge, alert for the ghostly
floater. Nothing verified 'fish', so I turned back and climbed the crumbly
limestone terraces to my cabin just north of Bee Creek, on the west shore of
Anderson Bend.
A distant storm in the northwest painted a dramatic backdrop above my roof.
January had been wet, but a good rain now would boost the wildflowers. This
storm might hold together and roll south!
My life changed for the better when I bought this place on the lake, three
acres and a two-bedroom shack. My partners and I took advantage of a business
opportunity, one dark night six years ago on a ranch in Llano County. That gave
me the financing. Then couple years later, a twisted lawyer’s tax bomb exploded
Cody Enterprises, scattering my tribe. I ended up here.
Flipping through the phone directory, I found the hotel number, punched it
into the handset and searched my mind for words. Ready to hang up in an
instant, but no way could I do that.
The desk clerk buzzed room 637. No one answered. I exhaled and relaxed.
When the perfunctory operator returned, she let me leave a voice message.
"Hey, Tommie! This is Billy. Meet me at the Branchwater Lounge, right
there in the lobby of the Hyatt, anytime between six and seven this evening. I’ll
see ya!”
I didn't put down the receiver when I punched it off. I entered the memory
code for the Austin Police Department switchboard.
Lieutenant Cruz was still in the building. They switched me to that line.
"This is Cruz, Yeah?"
"Hey baby, it’s me."
"Oh, Buck! I’m glad you called.” Her voice fell. “Looks like I'm not getting
off any time soon. I can’t make it to dinner. Stuff’s flyin thick, round here."
"What happened?”
"One of the shirts, Zoo Reilly? Shot a sixteen-year-old kid in Garrison Park
after a B&E."
"How bad?" I asked.
"Bad as it gets. Kid’s in ICU; give him 50/50. South side started hoppin.”
“So dinner’s out?”
“Dinner’s out, baby. Maybe drinks later, okay? Call me. Just get this scene:
Saturday afternoon in the park, right? First nice day of the year, families doing
picnics, throwing frisbees. So a patrol car responds to a backup call from a school
cop. These bangers broke into Crockett and were wrecking shit. Zoo chases one
of them into the park, thought the kid was pointing a pistol? Boom! Turns out to
be a microscope the kid tooled from one of the science labs. What a screw up!
Plus, I just found out I’ve got to work tomorrow! On Sunday!"
"Well, crap!” I said, and I meant it. “I guess I got some things to do, but I'll
be free later."
"Look, the chief's on his way down right now. I'll call you back, okay?"
"Sure, babe," I said to the click and the buzz that followed.
Quick shower, a shave. I pulled on clean clothes and went out to the red
Bronco that Cody gave me after the Fiero’s sudden tumble. A wizened live oak
nodded over the first bluebonnets of the season, clumped on a scant patch of
ground between boulders.
Out of the valley I flew headlong into the approaching storm, dark and
boiling. But when I turned onto Bee Creek Road, the windshield filled again with
the clear deepening blue of evening sky, reflected in a couple more bluebonnet
clumps that I whizzed past. After a wet winter you can count on plenty of spring
flowers.
The memory of Tamar Cohn was so vivid, she could have been riding on the
back bench behind me, Zachary Curtis at her side. That was the geometry of our
relationship twenty-five years ago: the three of us on the corners of an isosceles
triangle -- me at the apex facing the wrong way.
I powered the receiver and punched weekend news on NPR. Dry cultured
voices discussed the expiration, a few hours ago, of Saddam Hussein’s deadline
for leaving Kuwait. They speculated whether or not the military news blackout,
and rumors of recent massive troop movement, implied that the much dreaded
ground war had begun in the wasted Kuwaiti frontier. The newsman calmly retold
the Pentagon’s prediction of ten thousand American lives to be lost to Saddam's
fierce and redoubtable Republican Guard, with their anthrax and poison gas, their
fuel vapor bombs, their nuclear scuds and rail guns.
The sky grew dark as I drove down Highway 71 toward Austin. In my
rearview I watched ominous gray-purple storm clouds overtake me from the
northwest.
TWO
The Hyatt’s lofty atrium bumbled like inside a bee hive. I crossed the
polished marble lobby to the lounge, taking some cleansing breaths. Tamar was
not there yet. I searched every face. Finding a table between the bar and the
bank of 30-foot windows, I settled into a sturdy lounge chair and faced the show
outside.
Darkness was storming the city. On the other side of the lake, the art-deco
fortress of Seborg Power, still reflecting light from the southern sky, lifted obsolete
silver smokestacks in bright contrast to the purple curtain billowing behind it. I
could see nothing of the westward hills.
“Billy?”
“Tommie!” The lounge chair almost collapsed when I launched myself
upright.
It was a good embrace, long time coming.
“You’ve always been easy to pick out in a crowd,” she said demurely.
The mature woman was more beautiful and exotic than the 20-year-old coed.
Long ago those dark eyes flared like wildfire ravaging the plain; now they burned
like coals in a hearth, domestic and inviting. The color of tea with drops of stirred
milk, the same glossy smooth skin was now softened in places with skeins of fine
matte. Fifteen new pounds were dispersed mostly over the high points of her five-
foot-four profile, so her waist was still small in proportion. Her talk, overlaid with
so many dialects, still refreshed and welcomed like good wine.
Tamar Cohn was born in the Ukraine a few months after the fall of Berlin.
Alone across the war-torn continent, her mother carried her to Antwerp where she
reunited with Tamar’s father. The family immigrated to America, eventually
buying an appliance shop in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Tamar was a loving and obedient child until she reached high school. Then
she started acting like an American teenager. As many of her generation who
rejected their parents’ values however briefly, Tamar also felt estranged from her
family for a while.
"I need to get in touch with Zachary Curtis," Tamar said as she handed me a
small silver ring inlaid with turquoise chips. Her fine lips arched with an old
sadness or an old joke.
“You were able to find Zach the last time I gave you that, Billy.”
I pushed the ring onto the little finger of my left hand; it stopped at the first
knuckle. I fought to hold my head above the waves of surging emotion.
Tamar asked, "When is the last time you saw Zachary?"
"It's been forever. Last time I saw him was the last time I saw you. How
long ago was that?"
Her eyes went down. “I am sorry you two stopped being friends. I moved
back to Flagstaff in December 1966. I did not return for finals after the winter
break."
"In that case I haven't seen Zachary Curtis in nearly 25 years," I said.
"Do you have any idea where he is?"
"Probably dead, rate he was going. Speed kills."
A shock of pain blew the embers of Tamar’s deep eyes.
"Zach was your best friend."
I thought about that before I said anything, looking at it from a couple of
angles.
"I don't know. He was my friend once, for sure, a long time ago. Why do
you need to see Zag now?"
Tamar's flame-shaped eyes dropped again to the salt-rimed margarita rim and
she stirred a red straw through the ice crystals as though looking for signs of
crushed glass. Long lashes shrouded her gaze but a tear broke down one brown
cheek finely lined.
"It's pretty complicated," she said.
When I had last seen Tamar Cohn, long ago on one of her last nights in
Austin, she was pregnant with Zachary Curtis's child. No one knew anything
about that, least of all Zag or me. Late in 1966 she had moved back into her
parent's home in Flagstaff and next September she bore a baby boy to whom she
gave the name Asher. From an early age continuing through maturity, she said,
Asher’s face and manner have reminded her of Zachary Curtis, the unknowing
father.
Eventually Tamar met a chemical engineer named David Rosabi, married him,
and emigrated to Israel with her husband, her son and her widowed mother. Six
years later she gave birth to a daughter, Eva, and the five of them prospered in Tel
Aviv, David Rosabi adopting Asher as his own son. The boy sadly accepted his
mother’s word that his biological father was dead.
On reaching manhood Asher Rosabi entered the Israeli army, specializing in
intelligence and special weapons. But one month ago, after a terrible tragedy, he
had deserted his unit and that was why his mother was talking to me now, half a
world away.
"Like another one?" the waitress asked, as she reached for the empty bottle in
front of me.
It took me a minute to figure out what she was talking about. I looked up and
shook my head no. Beyond the waitress’ bare freckled shoulder I saw faces tilt
and turn to a TV above the bar. Someone jacked up the volume. On the screen a
heavy man in chocolate-chip camouflage fatigues and cap spoke behind a spray of
microphones. He repeated estimates that several tens of thousands of Americans
might die fighting the bunkered Republican Guard.
I heard a moan from Tamar, and I turned back to see her cover her face. A
moment later she leaned forwards and branded her eyes onto mine.
"Scud missiles fell on Tel Aviv for more than a month. It was so awful! We
were terrified! Did you hear about it?”
“Oh yes,” I nodded. “Everybody’s been following that one.”
She sat up and took a deep breath. “David took Eva to a birthday party for
one of her school friends. I stayed home to take care of Mother. David and Eva
were there, in a condo overlooking the Sharon, when an incendiary scud hit the
building. Their bodies were not uncovered for five days. Positive identification
took a week. It was too much for Asher. He broke apart from grief."
Again Tamar Cohn Rosabi looked at me straight on. I could only meet her
gaze and listen.
"Last September, just before his 23rd birthday, Asher found some of the
letters Zachary Curtis wrote to me, and he deduced Zachary was his natural
father. He confronted me and I admitted the truth. Maybe I should have lied.
Maybe I should not have kept the letters. But I wanted to remember what it was
like back then, the Sixties here in Austin. I mean, everything, not just Zachary
and me. That was one of the best times of my life, a crazy time, all turned upside
down! I still feel remorse for what I put my parents through. I removed myself
from family and religion for a few years, and that was frightening. But I
remember feeling so alive, so capable! And you are a big presence in those good
memories, Billy.”
She reached across the table and placed her cool fingers on my hand. “I have
always wanted to say thank you.”
Sparks spiraled upward from the dark coals of her eyes. Her hands retreated
before I could move to catch them, and the tale continued.
“Remember how Zachary used to obsess about Zionism? Remember how
pro-Palestinian he was? When Asher found and read Zachary’s letters, especially
the anti-Israeli parts, he developed a violent hatred of Zachary Curtis. Then when
David and Eva were killed..."
Yes, I could remember how Zag would obsess. He would not just maintain a
car; he read books and magazine articles about his current model, and talked about
it with animation whenever he brought up the topic. Likewise Zag developed a
pro-Palestinian obsession. I remembered his endless diatribes against Israel, as I
remembered emotional tirades against other targets of his venomous disdain:
people on welfare, homosexuals, sorority chicks, Neil Diamond. But I also
remember thinking he used the Palestinian issue to manipulate his relationship with
Tamar. I used to wonder: Why does Tommie choose an insensitive bigot like
Zag? Why doesn’t she choose me? Then finally I pushed my luck too far.
Back to the present: "My son informed me yesterday, he was going to kill Zachary
Curtis."
Startled by her own words Tamar sat in silence as if she were listening to an
echo in her distant mind. After a few moments I asked:
"Asher wants to kill Zag?" When she did not respond I asked again, "Is that
right? Asher wants to execute Zachary Curtis for crimes against Israel?”
“Yes. No. That sounds crazy.” Tamar roused herself from a moment of
catatonia. "Yesterday afternoon he asked me where he could find Zachary Curtis
because he was going to kill him. He threatened to hurt me if I tried to stop him.
My own son!”
She looked at me with shock and surprise. “Billy, why did you laugh?”
“Last time I saw Zag, 25 years ago? He said somebody was going to shoot
him. Back then I didn’t think Zag would last this long. Like I said, he is probably
dead already.”
“I must be certain, Billy,” Tamar said, and her face cracked into a mute cry.
"I’m going to find Zag wherever he is. Everything will be okay,” I said.
"My son is strong, intelligent and relentless. That is why I came to you as
quickly as I could. My only hope now is that you can find Zachary Curtis first,
before Asher does."