The Austin Job

  Contents

  Title Page

  Letter to the Reader

  Once Upon a Bolshevik

  Sausage and Eggs

  Warming Up

  Clarity of Communication

  A Starr is Borne

  Put Your Dying Shoes On

  Back to the Beginning

  The Gambit

  Towers and Tunnels

  An Older Austin

  This Keeps Getting Better

  Starr, James Starr

  A Streetcar Named Retribution

  Ballroom Games

  Get Ready, Get Set...

  ...Middlegame!

  None of This is Real

  Hell's Gates

  Welcome to the Final Act

  Deaf Ears

  Plan B

  Let's Make This Look Good

  Over the Edge

  Endgame

  Second to Last Chapter

  Phoenix

  Author Greeting

  Author Bio

  Copyright Page

  Letter to the Reader

  The Austin Job was where it all started for me. Two years after receiving my research and teaching post at the historic University of Texas campus, I received a manilla envelope in the mail, book rate. I ignored it for a week (I get conspiratorial treatises from whackjobs as well as unsolicited manuscripts from amateur geologists constantly). Upon opening it, I discovered a first edition of The Austin Job, published 1929.

  Honestly, I thought it to be a joke from a coworker. It wasn’t until after being kidnapped and nearly blown up that I sat down to read the thing. And its reading has changed me. Laugh if you must, but I write this letter from the very same office referenced in the story. I’ve seen the passage way and underground facility.

  While most consider David Mark Brown, IV and the Truth in History Society to be mild-mannered terrorists and irrelevant conspiracists (I would have agreed until last year), I now know differently. Thus I’ve accepted the challenge of seeking out, editing and organizing the obscure and forgotten works of David Mark Brown.

  Due to the polished nature of The Austin Job in its original published form, editing had been a relatively simple task. When possible I’ve replaced pseudonyms with their historical counterparts. For example, James Starr appeared as Junior Corona (cute) in the original text. No doubt Brown would have been hunted earlier and more fiercely by the mysterious individuals he attempted to uncover if he’d been transparent about such well known public figures.

  And so without further ado, I let the reader decide for her or himself. Is there more to this roisterous, pulpy thriller than meets the eye? Finally, be forewarned. Becoming lost in these “lost” files and the world they reconstruct is difficult to resist. May what once was lost, now be found.

  Professor Jim “Buck” Buckner

  Department of Geology, University of Texicas, Austin

  All known “Lost” Files (in chronological order allowing for suspected gaps):

  Reefer Ranger (#9)

  Del Rio Con Amor (#14)

  Fistful of Reefer (#17)

  The Austin Job (#18)

  Hell’s Womb (#22)

  Get Doc Quick (#24)

  McCutchen’s Bones (#25)

  Twitch and Die! (#26)

  Paraplegic Zombie Slayer (#35)

  Fourth Horseman (#43)

  And now, The Austin Job. Saddle up. Austin’s about to get hot…

  The Austin Job

  ONE

  Once Upon a Bolshevik

  It was the anniversary of his exile. Standing on the northern lawn of the Austin State Capitol, Oleg watched the sun wink below the horizon. The last of its reflected light danced off the river in the distance. Transported back to the Dneiper, he closed his eyes and let the ecstasy of sorrow bubble within his heart. One of the few remaining Ukrainian warriors trained in classic buza, he rolled his neck and loosened his slight shoulders. Hatred flowed from his center into every extremity.

  Opening his eyes, he yanked his arms forward, orchestrating the movement of minions on either side. Two dozen figures enshrouded in shadow rushed the perimeter of the capitol building. Lifting his gaze slowly to the darkened dome, he flicked a black parasol from a sheath on his back and opened it at the exact moment the exterior lights of the dome buzzed to life.

  Ten years ago on this day, men and women he’d fought alongside for a democratic Russia betrayed him. For the unification of the party, they forced his wife and daughter to disavow him—stole his inventions, his dreams and his identity. After several years of anonymity as a chemistry professor by the name of Yuri Medved, new individuals with old lusts promised to reunite him with his family. Indeed he would dance, but not without taking his pound of flesh. Pulling Oleg Rodchenko’s strings come at great cost. Tonight, first payment.

  With quick strides he rounded the building. Grand pergolas emblazoned with electric lights and crammed with Austin’s elite littered the southeast lawn. Pure titillation. He snapped his fingers and drew his thumb across his throat. Reaching the gala’s fringe, he collapsed the umbrella and strode forward, twirling it like a conductor’s baton.

  As if representing the gnarled finger of death, cracks in the merriment rippled outward from his presence. A portly woman adorned in pearls dropped her beverage, fanning herself with both hands. Perspiration poured down her face and neck. A gentleman tossed his jacket to the ground while clutching his thigh.

  Oleg inhaled deeply, tasting the ionized air—the pregnant pause between lightning and thunder. He slowed to appreciate the moment.

  “Good Gawd, it’s hot!” The jacketless man convulsed, his skin red under the twinkling electric lights. “I’m so damn hooooouuah!” Racked with spasm the man crushed his wine glass, the skin of his hand erupting with flame. During the brief moment it took to fill his lungs with precious, flammable oxygen, five blue tendrils of fire spiraled from the tips of his fingers several feet into the evening air.

  Oleg licked his lips, sweat dripping from his mustache. Then came the scream—like vine-ripened terror plucked at the perfect moment. So juicy. So fresh. As the man’s lipids bled into his clothing through cracks in the skin, his fear and agony bled into the crowd. After barreling into open lawn, the man froze, rigid with pain. He arched his back, head only inches from the ground. Finally, the low, wispy flames creeping over the surface of his body erupted.

  They burst from his thighs, his buttocks, his chest, his hands. Surging from his opened throat, the flames extinguished his voice. Oleg commenced his stroll through the panicked crowd. In another moment the man’s soul would vanish, gone in a puff as his ashes collapsed to earth. But Oleg had greater business to attend to, and he would relish the expression on her face when she realized how far he was willing to stretch the boundaries of their arrangement. He wished to erase the smug look she’d worn when they last parted.

  His two fingers mimicking a pistol, he predicted each combustion—an attractive debutant, a banker with a lazy eye. Swirling storms of flame burst from human islands—friends, lovers, spouses absent during their final moment—nothing left but green grass, a private hell, and purifying fire.

  The heat and stench licked Oleg’s skin, beads of sweat forming on his forehead, dripping down the ridge of his nose. He split the herd. Stepping over bodies spent of fuel, crushing brittle skulls with his heel, retarding tongues of flame through sheer discipline—he imposed an angry contrast from the corrupt chattel of government and the slaves to wealth surrounding him. Their own predictable indulgence forfeited them to the flames. Tonight he freed them from the illusion of a happiness found in others’ misery.

  The pathetic ones too weak to flee dropped with limp thuds, overcome by artificial heatstroke. With a sigh of contentment he spot
ted her and her associates through the thinning herd, cowering by the refreshments he’d laced with dinitrophenol. Let her taste my loss. The temporary light of human torches faded as his demonstration ran its course. Out from the shadows and brimming with anticipation, Oleg approached the band of four.

  Ms. Lloyd, the sheriff, his daughter and the new pet, State Senator Starr. An interesting one that. Might have been great man, but for corruption of vanity. Oleg leveled his parasol, took aim at the sheriff’s chest and squeezed the handle. An eruption of gases built within the hollow of its chamber as a tiny pellet of lithium interacted with water. Oleg watched realization crest in the eyes of his enemies, the senator first. Bursting from the umbrella’s tip at 200 meters per second, the projectile struck the spontaneous Senator Starr in the fat of his ass as he attempted to play the hero. Laughing, Oleg turned to go. Fate always allows for worthy improvisation.

  TWO

  Sausage and Eggs

  12 hours earlier

  Senator James Starr hefted the envelope in his hand, weighing its words versus the personal check it contained. He intended it as a gift, but he couldn’t shake the feeling it was a betrayal wrapped in a half-assed apology. His parents needed the money, and they would accept it, bitter pill or not.

  They were simply too young to live off their oldest son’s handouts. Returning to the farm to pick up the slack left by his brother shipping off to Europe and his sister getting married would have preserved their dignity. But a check in the mail?

  All the same, he slipped the letter through the slot and exited the post office back onto Congress Avenue. He breathed deep, inhaling the mixture of past, present and future as Austin’s early morning bustle girded him. The clip clop of horses’ hooves punctuated the steady rumble of a half dozen Model Ts. A Packard bounced across the streetcar rails in the middle of the intersection before turning south toward the river.

  Once again, the city’s cogs had been oiled overnight. Despite two days of the largest organized strikes the state had ever seen, Austin’s financial district continued to bear a fastidious front. Riots from the previous day rested uneasily for the moment, and as Starr turned east on Sixth Avenue, thick grey skies blocked out the morning sun. With a huff, he picked up the pace.

  His parents’ pill would be bitter, but thousands of other tenant farmers had no remedy at all, nothing but hot air and dry winds. Another season come and gone, another winter pressing in. Empty cupboards, empty silos, empty stomachs. A week ago the vast majority had up and quit, leaving the land owners to keep the cracked and exhausted soil from whisking away on the winds.

  Despite the human tragedy involved, the recent collusion of events quickened him. It was just the sort of thing life in Austin—the place and its people—made possible, and in the face of it, the entirety of his life seemed to be given purpose. His past gave him insight into current issues, while his position introduced him to people with the minds to shape them—people like Daisy Lickter.

  Months ago he met her father, a sheriff from Del Rio. Last night he met Miss Lickter, the most tantalizingly confounding woman imaginable. Hailing from backwater towns, they both shared a simple outlook on life along with a shared repulsion for the simple life. She understood that while rural lands pulsed with the nation’s life blood, cities were the swirling tempest of new ideas and possibilities necessary to keep the blood pumping. She shared his tension.

  Beyond that, she unsettled him. After an evening of the conversational equivalent of skinny dipping, he’d spent a sleepless night replaying Daisy’s outrageously frank questions and his failure to answer them. A bubbling mixture of doubt and ambition rose in him as a result. Spending more time with Daisy seemed the best remedy.

  An ironic gust, pregnant with the promise of rain, rippled his denim jacket. The smell reminded him of baser elements and lifted his gaze toward the grey September clouds—signs of an early autumn. Beginning as moisture from the Gulf, the clouds had already passed over miles of fallow farms on their way inland. He flipped up his collar, dug his hands into his pockets and shuffled toward the breakfast appointment that had interrupted his normal routine. All the while, he endeavored to push Daisy from his mind.

  Returning home would have helped his parents, but by staying he could help all the tenant farmers. He and a few of his fellow senators had a good plan, a plan to return the land gradually back to those who worked it. The problem was getting Governor Hobby to release emergency relief funds for people he viewed as redneck hooligans besieging his city. The fool hadn’t even called a special session.

  He zigzagged his way north and east a block at a time, leaving the linear lines and clean angles of the financial district to plunge into the off-kilter hoi polloi of the immigrant neighborhoods. The juxtaposition humbled him. Many men had traveled much further than he in pursuit of the promise.

  He’d grown up in Bastrop with dirt under his nails. The short-term stardom of the rodeo arena had been his ticket out. The life savings of his adopted grandpappy, Big Eddy, had been his hand up. Becoming Texas’ youngest state senator at a day past his thirty-fifth birthday had been the first step in his calling. His new job at the Pride of Texas National Bank earned ten times what he could make as a tenant farmer and a sophomore senator combined, allowing him to remain in Austin year round.

  A single, fat drop of rain splattered on the pavement. Something as simple as rain could define a man—to one a nuisance or pleasant diversion, to another life or death. To Starr, rain represented the tension between his two worlds. He had to stay. The farmers of Bastrop were still his people. But now he was their senator, bucking the system instead of bales of cotton.

  ~~~

  Starr swung open the rough-hewn wooden door. Tinkling bells announced his entrance, but no one inside the dingy cafe took note. It struck him that he’d failed to prepare for this meeting, or even figure out who he was meeting with or why. Amidst the alien surroundings he regretted the characteristically cavalier decision. A wooden shield hung on the wall, painted in blue and gold, but he couldn’t place it.

  He strode into the center of the narrow room before spotting a short man with a warm smile rise from a table in the back. “Mr. Starr, thank you for meeting me for breakfast.” Starr recognized the Russian accent from the telephone conversation he’d had the day before with the mysterious Yuri Medved.

  “Hey, my pleasure.” Medved’s grip reminded him of a wrestler he’d met during his years at the University of Texas, like it came all the way from his shoulder. “It’s nice to see a new part of town. I tend to spend most of my time within the same few blocks.” Odors of cabbage and boiled meat wafted from the kitchen as the bells above the door tinkled again.

  “Ah, financial district.” Medved spat out the words.

  “Between there and the university.” Starr focused on gauging the man. Wiry, middle-aged, nondescript save a flamboyant mustache curled around his lips like the seed pods from a devil’s claw. “You said over the phone you were a professor?”

  Medved directed Starr back to his table, the wear patterns revealing where thousands of elbows had rested beside bowl after bowl of borscht. The two men sat. “Law school is not my department.”

  Starr laughed, thumping the table with his fist. “Is it that obvious? I mean, that I went to law school?” The bells chimed again as Starr spoke. This time he turned to see a couple of surly students take a table a few down from theirs.

  Medved sat quietly, studying Starr for several seconds. The act reminded Starr of Big Eddy—a man who had edited his own speech, mulling over a hundred ways of saying a thing before opening his mouth to say the simplest possibility with the most profound impact.

  Starr had tried to model his own speech in the same manner, but he lacked the patience to pull it off completely. Instead he’d found his facial expressions to be his strongest ally. Humble a man with your words. Lift him with your brows. He thought of his most effective facial expression as the ‘twinkle.’

  Currently, he
reserved all expression while staring back at the foreign man sitting across from him. Medved’s face couldn’t have been more different from Big Eddy’s—eyes close together, a single brow pinched in a “v.” The mustache contrasted everything about the man. Yet, Starr could hear his grandpappy’s gravelly voice in his mind. “Jimmy, you’s meant fer more than farmin’. Stop dis knucklehead dreamin’ and get to doin’.”

  Without warning Medved shouted toward the kitchen, “яичка и сосиска,” before addressing Starr with a raised monobrow. The senator shrugged and nodded, consenting to have what his host was having. “Другие,” he finished the order.

  Starr noted the man’s efficiency. It struck him as a sort of personal discipline, a commitment to starkness. It wasn’t really Starr’s thing, but he could respect it.

  “I apologize Mr. Starr, but I might have mislead you on telephone. I do not wish to procure loan from Pride of Texas Bank.” Starr nodded, causing the man to break into a wide grin. “But I suspect you know as much already. This why I like you, James Starr. And please, call me Oleg. Oleg Rodchenko is given name.” Oleg leaned back in the booth while curling the tips of his mustache between his fingers. The gesture made the scar on Starr’s cheek itch, always a bad sign. “Several years ago given name was taken.” He pursed his lips. “Is time I take back.”

  “I’m not sure I follow, Professor Med—Rodchenko.” Starr corrected himself.

  “I grow up on small farm in Eastern Ukraine, four hectares. You know hectare?” Starr shook his head. “Is less than ten acres, while gentry own thousands of hectare in every direction. You and I know what is like to grow up coveting thy neighbor’s property.”

  He winked at his reference to the Bible and leaned back as a bowl full of hard-boiled eggs arrived from the kitchen. “где чай?” The young waiter, no older than 13, apologized before rushing off to return with a pot of tea, two chipped porcelain mugs and a plate of sweet rolls.