For just a second, or maybe a hundredth of a second, I saw his eyes drop to her breasts and hips. It was one of those instances when one man immediately knows the thoughts and makeup of another man, and from that moment on he never thinks of that man in the same fashion. Fincher wiped rainwater off his forehead and looked around the room again. “Well, this does beat all,” he said. “Who thought we’d make it plumb to the Elbe and end up in one piece and rendezvousing in the Heights?”
I fixed him a drink and wrapped it in a napkin and handed it to him. I had put aside most of my resentments from the war, particularl
y ill feeling toward the incompetents who never should have been promoted into positions of authority. It was hard, however, to forget that Fincher had been part of an investigation into Rosita’s past.
“Did you finally get your Silver Star?” he asked.
“Yes, I did.”
“It was an honor to put you in for it. There’s another reason I came out to see you. A friend of mine at the National Bank of Commerce said you were looking for a loan. Maybe I can help out.”
“In what way?”
“Oil exploration isn’t being financed by money from the banks, son. It’s coming from insurance companies. Mine is one of them.”
“I didn’t know you were in the loan business.”
He mentioned the name of an infamous wildcatter, an uneducated, brawling alcoholic who grew up dirt-poor within a few miles of Spindletop and was now one of the most cost-efficient oil producers in the business. The man was also building a luxurious hotel, one with a huge turquoise pool shaped like a shamrock, at the bottom of South Main Street. “Every dollar going into that hotel went across the top of my desk first,” Fincher said. “Know why we lend money to a violent drunk who can’t walk down stairs and chew gum at the same time? If you sent him into a desert with a bucket and a shovel to find water, he’d come back with a bucket full of oil. That’s you, Weldon. You’ve got the same kind of initiative. Except you’re intelligent and educated, and you’ve got manners and breeding on top of it.”
“We just brought in two dusters.”
“If it weren’t for dusters, everybody would be in the oil business.”
“Can you stay for dinner?” Rosita asked.
“Major Fincher has to catch a plane,” I said.
He finished his drink, the ice cubes clinking when he set it down. He studied the glass as though he couldn’t see his thoughts clearly.
“You’re the right man for the times,” he said. “My friend building the hotel belongs to another era. When he figures that out, he’ll probably become born again or stick a gun in his mouth. The big money is in oil, Hollywood, and technology. But you’ve got to have a brain. I knew it in the Ardennes.”
“Knew what?”
“The Germans weren’t going to kill you. You were fixing to walk into history. I’m willing to bet the ranch on it.”
“Thanks for coming by,” I said.
He removed a business card from his shirt pocket and wrote his home number on it and put it on the coffee table. “How’s Pine doin’?”
“Hershel’s the best there is.”
“They would have eaten up him and his welding machines if you hadn’t been on board.”
“Who would have eaten him up?”
“Good Lord, son, who do you think? The boys in Houston and Big D are putting a man in the United States Senate who used to be an elevator operator. Pine isn’t equipped to deal with men like that. You can. You got the smarts and the education, and you’re not afraid. Can I use y’all’s bathroom?”
“It’s at the back of the hall,” I said. “I’ll call a taxi for you.”
LINDA GAIL STOOD on the gallery of a country store north of Bogalusa and watched a black man crank the handle on the gas pump and begin fueling her car. The evening sun was red inside the dust from the fields, the cotton leaves wilted in the heat, the air close with the odor of herbicide and hot tar. On the far side of the road, three men with a camera on a tripod were filming several figures in the distance who were hoeing out weeds in the cotton rows. Linda Gail fanned herself with her handkerchief and went back inside the store and bought an Orange Crush at the counter. A soot-stained Confederate flag was tacked by all four corners to the ceiling, puffing and rippling in the breeze created by an oscillating fan mounted on the wall.
She asked the owner where the restroom was. “Out back. The latch is broken, but there’s a rock you can push against the door,” he answered.
The aggregate of the restroom’s interior was revolting, the heat stifling. When she was finished, she tried to wash her hands. The handle on the faucet squeaked dryly when she turned it, and it left a rusty smear on her palm. The bottom of the lavatory was matted with dead flies, the sides striped with noxious minerals that abided in the water. She walked around the side of the building to the gallery, trying to forget the experience of using a public restroom in the place where she’d grown up. The black man had just started up a gasoline-powered air compressor. “Your tires is low, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll be done in a minute.”
One of the men who had been filming the workers in the field walked toward her, an expensive camera hanging on a cord from his shoulder. He was tall and had a thin black mustache and wore two-tone shoes and a long-sleeved white shirt with pale silver stripes in it. He touched the brim of his panama hat. “Would you mind if I took your picture in front of the store?” he said.
“What for?”