Free Shoveling Smoke by Austin Davis Page B

IRS,” I said.
    “That’s right. And that little bell can also wake up the FBI, the DEA, and lots of other alphabet police. So instead of handing your connection a big pile of dirty bills that can be traced, you give him a pair of ostriches. It’s a weird world, isn’t it? They’re nasty creatures, ostriches. Bad-tempered sons of bitches. You ever seen anybody kicked by an ostrich?”
    I had not.
    “You don’t want to, either. An ostrich can work you over like a prizefighter. I saw a guy take a kick one time like to have broken his pelvis. And he was holding a big flat board like a shield between him and the bird. I don’t know how that ostrich got around the board. They only have two toes on their feet, and one of them has a nail on it that can open a man up like he’s got a built-in zipper. You see that farm over there?” He pointed to another field fenced with chain link. This field was sectioned into long walkways, like in a kennel for show dogs. One of the birds was standing in a walkway, looking at that distance like a butler in gray livery. “That’s Deirdre’s farm. Well, it’s Mike’s farm. Deirdre and Mike Starns.”
    “So Deirdre is married?”
    “Mike is the guy I saw get kicked. He doesn’t really like the birds anymore, not after he found out how mean-spirited they are. He sold most of his ostriches and put the money into emus because they’re not so testy. But even emus can kick the shit out of you. He spends a lot of time out of town now,” Wick said. “He likes to fish. I go with him sometimes. Then sometimes, when he goes on one of his trout safaris, Deirdre calls me up, and we have our own safari.”
    “One of our clients introduced me to emu jerky this morning,” I told him.
    “Bevo Rasmussen,” he said. “So you’ve met him already. Christ. He thinks he’s going to become the emu czar of Texas.”
    “If that’s what he wants, then why did he buy a bunch of horses?” I asked.
    “The horses were a way to make money to buy the birds. It’s a complicated plan, which he’ll tell you in great detail if you ask. My advice is, don’t ask. Bevo Rasmussen is a fucking snake. God almighty, I wish he’d never walked through our door.”
    I told Wick that the little man seemed more pathetic to me than deadly.
    “Bevo isn’t his real name,” Wick said. “He got that name from stealing the big steer down in Austin. You know, the university’s mascot.” The University of Texas football team is named the Longhorns, and their mascot is a longhorn steer named Bevo. From time to time a rival university tries to steal the steer before a big game as a prank. For this reason, Bevo the steer is heavily guarded during football season.
    “He did it on a bet,” Wick said. “Some smart-ass Aggies down in College Station put him up to it. But he didn’t just steal the steer. He took it to a butcher down in College Station and had it cut up into steaks and served to the A&M football team!”
    “That’s right!” I said. “I remember hearing something about that. About eight years ago? So that was Bevo?”
    “Yep. The Aggies thought eating the Longhorns’ steer would be a motivator, you know, get the juices flowing. Turns out that the UT fans were so mad over it, there was a riot at the game, and some people got hurt. The Longhorns beat the shit out of the Aggies that year. So I guess you could say the prank backfired. Most of Bevo’s pranks do. Disaster follows that boy around.”
    “That makes him a jerk,” I said, “not the devil incarnate.”
    “I suppose you’ve noticed that problem he’s got with his arm, how it moves kind of funny?”
    “I’ve noticed,” I said.
    “He got that in a knife fight outside a bar in Dallas with a Mexican that tried to run out on a coke sale. The Mexican outweighed Bevo by a good sixty pounds. He was one mean son of a bitch, but Bevo called him on the trick and had it out with him.”
    “It looks like Bevo got the rough end of it,” I