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Harvey Blaylock was maybe sixty, medium height, with neatly trimmed gray hair, black-framed glasses, a white short-sleeved shirt, and tan gabardine slacks. He looked like the kind of man who, if things had taken a slightly different turn, might’ve wound up as a forklift salesman, or, best case, a high-school principal in a small agrarian town.
In reality, however, Harvey Blaylock was a man who held tremendous sway over my future, near- and long-term. I intended to remain respectful and deferential.
Blaylock’s necktie — green, with bucking horses printed on it — rested on his paunch as he leaned back in his chair, scanning the contents of a manila folder. I knew it was my file, because it said ROY W. BALLARD on the outside, typed neatly on a rectangular label. I’m quick to notice things like that.
Five minutes went by. His office smelled like cigarettes and Old Spice. Rays of sun slanted in through horizontal blinds on the windows facing west. As far as I could tell, we were the only people left in the building.
“I really appreciate you staying late for this,” I said. “Would’ve been tough for me to make it earlier.”
He grunted and continued reading, one hand drumming slowly on his metal desk. The digital clock on the wall above him read 6:03. On the bookshelf, tucked among a row of wire-bound notebooks, was a framed photo of a young boy holding up a small fish on a line.
“Boy, was I surprised to hear that Joyce retired,” I said. “She seemed too young for that. So spry and youthful.” Joyce being Blaylock’s predecessor. My previous probation officer. A true bitch on wheels. Condescending. Domineering. No sense of humor. “I’ll have to send her a card,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound sarcastic.
Blaylock didn’t answer.
I was starting to wonder if he had a reading disability. I’m no angel — I wouldn’t have been in this predicament if I were — but my file couldn’t have been more than half a dozen pages long. I was surprised that a man in his position, with several hundred probationers in his charge, would spend more than thirty seconds on each.
Finally, Blaylock, still looking at the file, said, “Roy Wilson Ballard. Thirty-six years old. Divorced. Says you used to work as a news cameraman.” He had a thick piney-woods accent. Pure east Texas. He peered up at me, without moving his head. Apparently, it was my turn to talk.
“Yes, sir. Until about three years ago.”
“When you got fired.”
“My boss and I had a personality conflict,” I said, wondering how detailed my file was.
“Ernie Crenshaw.”
“That’s him.”
“You broke his nose with a microphone stand.”
Fairly detailed, apparently.
“Well, yeah, he, uh — ”
“You got an attitude problem, Ballard?”
“No, sir.”
“Temper?”
I started to lie, but decided against it. “Occasionally.”
“That what happened in this instance? Temper got the best of you?”
“He was rude to one of the reporters. He called her a name.”
“What name was that?”
“I’d rather not repeat it.”
“I’m asking you to.”
“Okay, then. He called her Doris. Her real name is Anne.”
His expression remained frozen. Tough crowd.
I said, “Okay. He called her a cunt.”
Blaylock’s expression still didn’t change. “To her face?”
“Behind her back. He was a coward. And she didn’t deserve it. This guy was a world-class jerk. Little weasel.”
“You heard him say it?”
“I was the one he was talking to. It set me off.”
“So you busted his nose.”
“I did, sir, yes.”
Perhaps it was my imagination, but I thought Harvey Blaylock gave a nearly imperceptible nod of approval. He looked back at the file. “Now you’re self-employed. A legal videographer. What is that exactly?”
“Well, uh, that means I record depositions, wills, scenes of accidents. Things like that. But proof of insurance fraud is my specialty. The majority of my business. Turns out I’m really good at it.”
“Describe it for me.”
“Sir?”
“Give me a typical day.”
I recited my standard courtroom answer. “Basically, I keep a subject under surveillance and hope to videotape him engaging in an activity that’s beyond his alleged physical limitations.” Then I added, “Maybe lifting weights, or dancing. Playing golf. Doing the hokey-pokey.”
No smile.
“Not a nine-to-five routine, then.”
“No, sir. More like five to nine.”
Blaylock mulled that over for a few seconds. “So you’re out there, working long hours, sometimes through the night, and you start taking pills to keep up with the pace. That how it went?”
Until you’ve been there, you have no idea how powerless and naked you feel when someone like Harvey Blaylock is authorized to dig through your personal failings with a salad fork.
“That sums it up pretty well,” I said.
“Did it work?”
“What, the pills?”
He nodded.
“Well, yeah. But coffee works pretty well, too.”
“You were also drinking. That’s why you got pulled over in the first place, and how they ended up finding the pills on you. You got a drinking problem?”
I thought of an old joke. Yeah, I got a drinking problem. Can’t pay my bar tab. “I hope not,” I said, which is about as honest as it gets. “At one point maybe I did, but I don’t know for sure. Probably not. But that’s what you’d expect someone with a drinking problem to say, right?”
“Had a drink since your court date?”
“No, sir. I’m not allowed to. Even though the Breathalyzer said I was legal.”
“Not even one drink?”
“Not a drop. Joyce, gave me a piss te — I mean a urine test, last month, and three in the past year. I passed them all. That should be in the file.”
“You miss it?” Blaylock asked. “The booze?”
I honestly thought about it for a moment.
“Sometimes, yeah,” I said. “More than I would’ve guessed, but not enough to freak me out or anything. Sometimes, you know, I just crave a cold beer. Or three. But if I had to quit eating Mexican food, I’d miss that, too. Maybe more than beer.”
Blaylock slowly sat forward in his chair and dropped my file, closed, on his desk. “Here’s the deal, son. Ninety-five percent of the people I deal with are shitbags who think the world is their personal litter box. I can’t do them any good, and they don’t want me to. Most of ’em are locked up again within a year, and all I can say is good riddance. Then I see guys like you who make a stupid mistake and get caught up in the system. You probably have a decent life ahead of you, but you don’t need me to tell you that, and it really doesn’t matter what I think anyway. So I’ll just say this: Follow the rules and you can put all this behind you. If you need any help, I’ll do what I can. I really will. But if you fuck up just one time, it’s like tipping over a row of dominoes. Then it’s out of your control, and mine, too. You follow me?”
~ ~ ~
After the meeting, I swung by a Jack-In-The-Box, then sat outside Wally Crouch’s place for a few hours, just in case. He stayed put.
I got home just as the ten o’clock news was coming on. Howard Turner had been located in a motel in Yuma City, Arizona, there on business. Police had verified his alibi. He had been nowhere near Texas, and the cops had no reason to believe he was involved.
So Tracy Turner was still missing, and that fact created a void in my chest that I hadn’t felt in years.