Shoveling Smoke by Austin Davis

Author:Austin Davis [Davis, Austin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781452125022
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC

CHAPTER 24

It was seven-thirty Friday evening when Bevo and I crossed the long bridges spanning Lake Ray Hubbard at the northeast edge of Dallas. Pleasure boats of all shapes and sizes dotted the lake, and although the boats were enveloped in evening shadow, sunlight still flashed on the billowing canvas of a parasailing skier floating high in the air half a mile away.

“That’s not something I would want to do,” said my traveling companion. “Parasailing is dangerous shit. Friend of mine took off in one of those outfits, got tangled up in some electric lines. No more friend.”

Name something, anything, and Bevo Rasmussen had a friend who had seen it, tried it, bought it, swallowed it, ridden it, run over it, or shot at it. Bevo had on the sharkskin Godfather suit he was wearing when we met, and he popped his cuffs out of his jacket sleeves to show me his cuff links. They were little silver skulls with diamond eyes.

“Got them from the president of the Hells Angels,” he told me. “He’s a friend of mine. He give me this one, too.” Bevo curled his upper lip in a lupine snarl to show me the diamond in his tooth. “That one’s worth over a thousand dollars.”

Bevo had friends in high places. “Places of respect,” he said. “Governors, movie stars, drug lords, TV preachers. The cream of the crop. There’s a writer whose name you’d probably know, wants to write my life up. He says he’d have to make it a novel, because nobody would believe it if he told it for the truth.”

“Who’s that other lawyer you’ve been talking to?” I asked, hoping to catch him by surprise. “Is he one of your friends?”

Bevo said he did not know what I was talking about.

“You know,” I said, “the one you’ve been meeting in the Dairy Queen.”

“Oh, him,” Bevo said. “He ain’t a lawyer. He’s an architect. From Dallas.”

“An architect?”

“Yep. I’m thinking of building me an estate outside of town, and I brought him down from Dallas to consult on which land to buy. It’s hard finding just the right spot. I need a lot of western exposure. Mornings ain’t my time of day, but I love a good sunset.”

“Bevo, how much do you think you’re going to clear out of the insurance money?” That question had been puzzling me. I knew at least half of the purchase money, around $500,000, had come from the Farmer’s Bank in Tyler and from Nyman Scales, in roughly equal amounts. I did not believe the other half-million could possibly have come from his own pocket. Bevo was carrying a lot of debt.

“It don’t matter how much I clear,” he said. “It’s seed money. All seed money. I got me a plan, Mr. Parker. In four years, I’ll be the richest man in the state. No, goddamn it, in two years. Know how I’m gonna do it?”

“Emus?” I asked.

“Damn right,” he replied. “I’m gonna be the biggest goddamn emu breeder in the Southwest.”

He rattled on about the big birds for a while, telling me how much money could be made from them.

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