Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

“You watched Raymond Hamilton die in the electric chair?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just to see him suffer?”

“I just wanted to tell him something.”

“What?”

“How Bonnie and Clyde died. How she screamed like a banshee when they capped her. I wanted him to know they hurt like hell.”

I walked away and left him bleeding on the concrete. I don’t know if men are evil by choice or if some are born without a conscience. I suspected Harlan McFey knew the answer. I didn’t think he would ever share it with the rest of us.

I WAS DUE BACK on the job Monday morning, but I called Hershel and put him in charge and, after breakfast, headed straight for Roy Wiseheart’s home in River Oaks. On a street of mansions, I passed the home of which Linda Gail Pine was so proud. It was couched on a small, treeless lot. With its flat roof and off-white hand-grimed stucco walls, it could have been a store that sold used automobile tires. I wondered if she had knocked on the neighbors’ doors to introduce herself, or brought them a home-baked pie or wildflowers she had picked in a vacant field. Her gladness of heart, the rural innocence that dwelled alongside her obtuseness toward her husband’s adoration, made me grieve, if only for a moment, on the pain and disappointment that were waiting for her in the wings.

Roy Wiseheart and his wife lived on an estate that even by River Oaks’s standards was so majestic and massive in its architectural dimensions that you got lost looking at it. Its fluted columns were three stories high; its white paint glowed like a symbol of capitalistic purity inside a bower of towering oaks. The ambiance of lichen-stained stone birdbaths and tarnished sundials and hanging trumpet vine and roses that climbed up trellises to the second story were all part of an antebellum stage set that had no relationship to the rough-hewn legacy of Sam Houston. Even the carriage houses and the servant quarters were made of soft antique brick that probably came from historical teardowns in the Carolinas. As I stood on the breezy porch and rang the chimes, I felt like I was about to walk through a doorway into the classical world, and once there I might not want to leave it.

Roy Wiseheart pulled open the door, smiling broadly, as though I had walked in on a joke he had told to someone else. “Holland, you rascal! You won’t believe who I just got off the phone with,” he said. “Come in, come in! This is hilarious.”

He walked toward the breakfast room, talking over his shoulder. “You just missed Whorehouse Harlan by three minutes. I’m talking about McFey, the guy who tried to shake you down.” He laughed so hard he had to sit down. “ ‘Whorehouse’ is his nickname. Know why? He had venereal disease of the face. That’s how he got those furrows in his skin. Guess under what circum

stances he contracted it? The key word is ‘under.’”

“I’ll pass.”

“He says you broke his nose.”

“I doubt that.”

“Holland, you’re heck on wheels. God, I’m glad you dropped by.”

Through the French doors, I could see flowers blooming in the shade of the live oaks, the potted Hong Kong orchids beaded with dew on the brick terrace, the swimming pool that looked as blue and cool as a Roman bath. His breakfast table was set with warmers containing ham and bacon and biscuits and redeye gravy and scrambled eggs. “Eat up,” he said.

“I already ate. How do you know McFey?”

“He was a bird dog for my father. My father fired him a couple of years ago. You hit him in the nose with a Luger?”

“Probably. I have blank spaces in my head sometimes. Why’s he calling you now?” I said.

“He’s trying to sell information. Plus, you scared the crap out of him.”

“Information about what?” I asked.

“You, your wife, any dirt he can dig up. He’s a scavenger. Nobody takes him seriously.”

“I do,” I replied.

He leaned out of his chair and hit me on the arm. “Sit down. At least have some coffee. You’re a breath of fresh air. Most of the people I know have the thinking power of cinder blocks.” He folded a strip of bacon inside a biscuit, then took a bite of the biscuit. His eyes brightened as though he were examining a thought in the back of his mind. “Did you think Harlan was working for me?”

“You were the first person to show an interest in our welding machines.”

“And you think I hire dimwits like McFey to represent me?”

“You said he worked for your father.”

“My father employs people a Bedouin wouldn’t shake hands with.” He picked up an ornate silver coffeepot and filled a cup. He set the cup and a spoon on a saucer and handed them to me. “Come on, Holland. You’re a good judge of people. I’m not a back-shooter. I like the hell out of you.”

“I think McFey wants to hurt Hershel Pine.”