Читать книгу Texas Confidential - Michael Varhola - Страница 7

EVERY SUMMER, WHEN THE MERCURY starts heading toward the 100-degree mark, I ask myself, “Why do I live in Texas?” Walk outside on a typical July or August afternoon and the sun is like a hammer hitting you in the back of the head. Why stay in a place where the heat can kill you if you’re not careful? Not that there aren’t lots of other reasons to not be associated with a state that’s number one in executions and dead last or close enough to it in education, environment, and other categories that would seem vital to the quality of life.

I have a theory, however, that extreme heat causes a kind of amnesia, with the result that once the summer heat wave ends, so does the memory of how awful it was. This may explain why the original inhabitants of the region did not move on to more hospitable climes after their first experience with the murderous months of mid-year.

One other thing that has kept me here, other than a seven-year stint in sunny Los Angeles, is the richness of material to write about. As a crime writer, Texas is a gift that keeps on giving. I confess I can’t articulate a simple description of what exactly makes the Texas criminal environment special, but like pornography, I know it when I see it. Frontier traditions and a stubborn clinging to the bullshit myths of Texas’ supposed independent streak have something to do with it, as do the collision of hardcore Christian repression, progressive ideals, and greed.

Texas narcissism is also a theme here, if not an explanation. Warren Burnet, the great Texas criminal attorney of Odessa, had a relevant comment about that. Responding to his fellow Odessans’ boast that the town was bursting with friendly, virtuous, kindhearted people, Burnet said, “We’ve got the same cross- section of assholes here that they have everywhere else.”

I was honored and thrilled to be asked to write the foreword for this book, and once I glanced at the table of contents, I felt as if I was flipping through folders in my own research files. I was cheered, for example, to see a mention of the Overton Gang of Austin. I’ve been working on a book about Timmy Overton and his merry band of fist-fighters, pimps, and safecrackers for several years now. It’s been difficult but very rewarding to sift though all the stories about the Austin underworld of the 1950s through the 1970s. Part of the problem is that I’ve found enough material for several books.

The Veterans Land Scandal is another topic I’m pleased to see. A few years ago I was researching that story for a possible book project. The real estate scams perpetrated during that episode very often took advantage of African-American war veterans. A Cuero newspaper reporter named Ken Towery won a Pulitzer for his series of newspaper articles that blew the whistle on the scandal. When I interviewed Towery, however, I was repulsed by his own racist and ultra-conservative views. At the time I submitted an outline for the book to my agent, it had recently been revealed that President George W. Bush had lied to the public about the reasons that the U.S. invaded Iraq. My agent pointed out that the scandalous behavior of Texas politicians of the present would probably make those of the 1950s seem distant and trivial. It was hard to dispute his point, even though I’m not sure he was right. I still think it’s a fascinating chapter in Texas history.

The chapter here on the band of scalp hunters, the Glanton Gang (which was actually only one of several such groups), helps evoke some of the bad juju that seems to have existed here since at least the years when the Comanche Indians were terrorizing the Plains, raiding and killing and stealing, then trading their booty with other groups, including white reprobates. The Comanche method has accurately been compared to outlaw motorcycle gangs, except that the Hell’s Angles are pussies compared to the Comanche.

The Texas Rangers served as the tip of the spear for the white takeover of Texas territory from Native Americans. Talk about a license to kill, James Bond had nothing on the Texas Rangers. Texas school kids grow up hearing heroic legends about these frontier militia men, as sterling examples of rugged independence, virtue, and justice, who rescued white captives and protected white settlements by launching both punitive raids and preemptive attacks. Few of us hear about the atrocities committed by the rangers. A memoir by Captain Rufus Perry related his refusal to participate in the gang rape of Indian women and how, on one expedition, a fellow ranger hacked off the leg of a dead Indian to eat later.

Texas has many fine attributes, but the state has a lot to answer for. Lee Harvey Oswald may have assassinated President Kennedy, but (conspiracy theories notwithstanding) the city of Dallas always seemed complicit in the crime. If brain waves could kill, the toxic public sentiment there would’ve killed Kennedy before he stepped onto the tarmac at Love Field.

Coincidentally, the night before the assassination, the presidential party spent the night at Hotel Texas in downtown Fort Worth, right on the edge of what was still known as Hell’s Half Acre, due to its reputation for vice. Back in the Roaring Twenties, Jim Thompson, the author of The Killer Inside Me and dozens of other pulp fiction classics, was a teenage bellhop working nights at the hotel and buzzing on cocaine and booze, attending high school during the day. Thompson helped procure hookers, booze, and dope for guests, and in addition to his tips, collected enough material for a few dozen pulp fiction novels. Later, Thompson worked as a roughneck and gambler in West Texas, places with rich oil reserves below ground and damned souls above.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that crime is funny or that criminals are admirable. Mostly, criminal behavior is an indicator of the deep and often irreconcilable contradictions and injustices of modern society. I think crime is fascinating because of what it exposes, and because desperate people do desperate things, whether they are billionaire oil executives or crack dealers on the street. The big difference there is that the billionaire crooks and corporations usually do a lot more damage to society than the small-time operators. The latter, however, usually have more personality and better hair.

Jesse Sublett

Austin, Texas

May 2011