Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 46, No. 11, November 1982

J.J. DuBose let out a whoop of sheer joy, and at once he was out of his chair and shaking Landry’s hand, unmindful of his still dripping-wet index finger.

“Damnit!” the Texan was saying. “I knew I could count on you! I knew it when I spotted you first off. I kin judge character from a mile away, an I said to m’self. There’s a man with the guts of J.J. DuBose hisself. But I had t’be sure.”

“A trick,” was all Landry could say.

“Trick? Why, son, the world’s fulla tricks. I strung you along the same as everbody else. The difference was none o’the others was up to callin my bluff. You called it. An you earned yer ree-ward.” He picked up the check from the table and handed it to Landry. “Fer services rendered,” he said.

I had no idea how Landry felt, but at that moment I experienced a distinct sense of unreality. The characters and landscape had suddenly taken on the quality of a dream, and it was all I could do to turn to the waiter and say, “I’ll take that drink now. A double. Please.”

J.J. DuBose had begun to chuckle again, and, as before, his laugh turned into the same wracking cough. He sat back down in his chair and, when the coughing fit finally passed, managed to say, “What’-chall gonna do with that money?”

Landry shook his head. He had a blank expression, as though he still could not believe what had happened, as though the test of courage DuBose had spoken of still lay before him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “There are a lot of things I could do, but I don’t know...”

His voice trailed off. Just at that moment my drink was brought in, and I gulped it gratefully.

“Looky here,” the Texan was saying. “It’s early in the day yet. You boys look like y’could use a meal. Why don’t y’all come out t’my spread? It ain’t too far from here. I got a good Filipino cook’ll make you the best dang lunch y’ever had. Dinner, too, if y’like. How’s about it?”

I had not eaten in half a day, but there was something about the terrible eagerness the Texan had exhibited that prompted me to decline.

“I don’t think so. We should be pushing on. We’ve got to get back to California.”

“What’s yer hurry?” DuBose said, but he had turned his attentions once more to Landry. “What d’yuh say?”

To my surprise Landry looked up at me. His wide-open eyes were eloquent. “Why not?” he said.

I felt a sudden twinge of alarm, the first sign of a creeping panic caused by an inchoate fear that the danger was not yet past — that we had, in fact, only skirted its perimeters.

In the end we went. Landry was keen on visiting DuBose’s “spread,” and the Texan had promised to show us over the grounds. I can explain my grudging acquiescence to the idea of going only by saying that, since I realized DuBose was one of the filthy rich oil millionaires of storied legend, and thus wielded such power, it would be foolish to resist. Plainly, his influence was pervasive throughout the county, and probably throughout the state, so anything I feared from him could come about just as easily here in the restaurant as on his estate.

We left the restaurant and headed towards the parking lot. The only car there was a Cadillac, a garish red in color. A stony-faced uniformed chauffeur sat behind the wheel. J.J. DuBose opened the door for us, and Landry got in first, then DuBose, so he was sitting between us. As I was getting in I noticed an enormous ornament on the hood, a praying angel that looked to have been forged from solid gold. I meant to ask DuBose about it, but never got the chance: I was struck speechless the moment I entered the car. It had a portable bar, a stereo, intercom, and telephone, and, my God, it was the biggest car I’d ever seen in my life.

DuBose never stopped talking once during our drive, which lasted over an hour. He moved from one subject to another with incomparable ease, from his cancer to his wildly successful career as an oil baron to his trips to Europe to his love of airplanes (particularly those of pre-World War II vintage) to his love for his departed wife and his estrangement from his ne’er-do-well son.

By the time the Cadillac turned into a gleaming metal gate with the single metallic letter D set into the intricate grillwork design high above, a roadway that might have led all the way to California stretched out before us, and I was more nervous than ever.

The driveway was exactly like the ideal of Landry’s dreams: a seemingly endless expanse of crushed stone and granite that eventually gave onto macadamized roadway. By then we were within sight of the estate itself, although “estate” does not begin to suggest the size and palatial splendor of it; nor does “palace,” with its vaguely European connotations of elegance and design. This mansion was thoroughly American in flavor and architecture; with its gabled front and tall stone columns, it suggested nothing so much as a monument, rather like the Lincoln Memorial. The only difference was this memorial was dedicated to a living man. I was reminded of Coleridge’s lines:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan