The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan (9 page)

"Had Aaron and his brother been arguing
recently?"

"I don't want another stranger in the house."

"Had they?"

She exhaled. "They hardly ever spoke — no more
than two or three times since we were married. They hated each
other."

"Because of the family business?"

"Because of everything."

"But your husband never mentioned Zeta Sanchez."

"No."

"What about a man named Hector Mara?"

It was a blind shot, but it hit something. Ines
Brandon's face clouded. She seemed to be casting around for some
context. Maybe she just remembered the name from today's newscast.
Maybe it was something more.

Then her face shut like a blind. "Sorry."

"It could be important, Mrs. Brandon."

"What's important is that my son not have to
deal with any more strangers."

"Mrs. Brandon—"

"Good night, Mr. Navarre."

It bothered me that she remembered my name. It meant
she'd been paying a lot more attention than I'd given her credit for.
But her eyes made it clear that our conversation was over.

I decided to honor that.

When I looked back from the front door, Ines Brandon
was still curled in a ball on the sofa, her arms hugging her knees,
her eyes fixed on the fireplace like there was something blazing
there.
 
 

NINE

My old teammate from Alamo Heights varsity, Jess
Makar, opened the door at my mother's house. This shouldn't have been
a surprise since Jess lived with my mother, but it had been a long
time since I'd seen him anywhere except seated at the kitchen table,
beer in hand, watching ESPN.

Jess scowled at me. His boyish good looks had, over
the last three or four years, begun to settle like cement along with
his midsection. His blue eyes had become permanently stained with
capillaries. Tonight he wore sweatpants and a Dallas Cowboys tunic
streaked with motor oil.

"Tres," he grumbled. "Might as well
join the party."

His cologne was stronger than usual. It didn't mix
well with the usual scents of my mother's house — vanilla incense,
shrimp steaming in the kitchen, the dusty aroma of old curios, Indian
blankets, spicewood carvings.

In the main room, Christmas lights were blinking in
the exposed rafter beams. Folk music was playing. Over at the pool
table, the normal coterie of young rednecks was breaking setups and
pouring each other shots from my mother's liquor cabinet.

I'm not sure where she gets the guys. Her liquor
supply and pool table have just always attracted tan, muscular men
between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, three or four a night
ever since my mom got her divorce. As near as I can tell, Mother
doesn't know these guys, never calls them anything but "dear,"
has no recollection that most of them went to school with me. The man
pouring the shots at the moment had once traded lunch boxes with me
in third grade. His name was Bobby something. Or at least it had
been. Probably Bob, now. Mr. Bob.

Every piece of furniture had been removed from the
center of the living room. Mother's Guatemalan-patterned sofas were
piled in the entrance of the den. Her pigskin chairs were lined up on
the back porch by the hot tub. The upright piano had been pushed into
the hallway. In the middle of the now-bare floor, Mother was kneeling
on her twenty-by-twenty Persian carpet, folding large pieces of
marbleized paper into origami hats.

Jess stepped over several of the finished products
and retrieved a Lone Star longneck from the fireplace mantel. "Tell
your mother she's obsessed."

Mother carefully made a fold in the paper, pressing
out a long isosceles triangle. "Please, Jess."
 

She was dressed in jeans and black turtleneck under a
red-and-orange dashiki. Her Birkenstock clogs were nearby on the
carpet. Mother's Cleopatra haircut had been newly frizzed in what was
either a perm or the aftermath of an electrical storm.

She pressed another triangle into the paper. "The
Crocker Gallery sold two yesterday, Tres — Samurai Moon and Plum
Dragon. The buyer owns a hotel in Florida. He wants to see five more
that match the color schemes of his suites by the end of the week.
I'm simply swamped."

Jess mumbled some obscenities about Florida, looked
at me to share his disgust. "I told her let's just hire some
Mexicans, get 'em folding the damn things in the backyard. Set up a
damn art factory."

My mother sat on her haunches and glared at him.
"This is my art, Jess."

Jess plunked his beer back on the mantel. "They're
fucking paper hats, Rachel. Get over it."

Before she could respond, he stormed off toward the
bedroom hall. It's difficult to storm properly when one has to
squeeze sideways past an upright piano, but Jess did his best. I
heard seven more heavy footfalls, then the door of the master bedroom
slammed.

Over at the pool table, billiard balls clacked. New
beers were opened. Joni Mitchell sang softly on the stereo behind the
rednecks, telling them all about Paris and flowers and Impressionism.

My mother stared into the empty hallway, her face
stony with anger.

"He's learning to take time-outs all by
himself," I said. "That's encouraging."

The comment didn't even get her attention, much less
a rise.

"Mother?"

The creases in her origami unfolded slowly, the paper
trying to find its original shape. Mother closed her eyes.

She reassembled her composure — a weak smile, chin
higher, wisps of black hair pushed away from her face.

Then she stood and gave me a hug. "I'm sorry,
dear. You shouldn't have to see our little squabbles."

Their little squabbles. As if she hadn't been married
to my father. "It's okay, Mother."

She pushed me away gently, wiped something out of her
eye. "Of course it's okay."

She stared down the hall.

"Isn't it?" I asked.

"Of course! Or it would be if you wouldn't keep
scaring your poor mother to death. Look at your face."

She ran her finger down the three new stitches on my
cheek.

"The day picked up after that," I told her.

"I don't want to hear it."

"Okay."

She glared at me. "Of course I want to hear it,
Jackson. Kitchen. Now."

I followed her down the Saltillo-tiled steps. The
smell of boiling shrimp was overpowering — brine and allspice and
Tabasco. Mother stirred the pot, reset the timer, then sat me down at
the butcher-block table with a beer in my hand and a fresh red wine
in hers and commanded, "Tell."

Several times during the story her eyes drifted
toward the sliding-glass door that looked across the patio to the
master bedroom. The curtains on the other side stayed shut, blue TV
light flickering behind them.

I told Mother about the UTSA job, the police
assurances that the Brandon case would be wrapped up quickly, the
arrest I'd witnessed this morning. I told her about my double date
tonight.

She stared into her wine.

I waited for half a Joni Mitchell verse. I found
myself studying Mother's hands, the way they cradled the glass, their
raised veins and faint age spots the only real indications this was a
woman in her mid-fifties. "You missed your cue."

She refocused on me. "What, dear?"

"Your cue. For pestering me about my date.
Asking me how soon I can quit P.I. work now that I've got a real job.
Lecturing me on why I shouldn't go riding with Ozzie Gerson. Stuff
like that,"

She plinked a fingernail against the blue-tinted rim
of the Mexican glass.

"Please, Jackson. I am never that bad."

"What's up with you and Jess?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Did you hear my story at all?"

"Of course."

"And?"

Mother's eyes drifted away. "I remember Ozzie.
Your father and he hunted out at Sabinal many times — Jack used to
say that Ozzie's hobby was collecting bad luck."

"Apparently that hasn't changed."

"He also said Ozzie was one of the few deputies
he'd trust with his life. If Ozzie advised you to stay out of this
matter—"

The patio door slid open and Jess entered the room,
an army-green duffel bag over his shoulder. He swiped his Cowboys cap
off the television. "I'm going."

Mother stood, unlacing her fingers from the
wineglass. "Jess?"

He trudged up the steps into the living room.

"Jess?"

The front door slammed. Over the Joni Mitchell and
the poolroom chat and the bubbling of shrimp we could just barely
hear Jess' truck engine start in the driveway.

Mother turned, sank back into her chair. Her eyes had
gone blank.

"I could call off my plans," I offered.

"Don't be silly. Everything's fine. Go on your
date, dear."

"You're sure?"

She stared at me, daring me to contradict her. "I'm
sure." Her voice was tin. "You go on."

I looked at my watch. George Berton was on the South
Side, our dates back in Monte Vista, reservations at Los Barrios for
eight-thirty. I could stay here maybe another ten minutes. Safer if I
just canceled.

Mother reached over and patted my hand, tried for a
smile. "Don't worry."

"Jess will probably just drive around awhile,
blow off some steam."

"Yes," she agreed.

When I met her eyes, I realized how completely
clueless I was about their relationship, about what they were like
the ninety-five percent of the time I wasn't around. I'd never wanted
to know before. Now I felt about as useful as a paperweight in a wind
tunnel.

I left Mother at the kitchen table with a refilled
glass of cabernet and the new Texas Monthly. The kitchen timer was
still going next to her, ticking off the minutes until the shrimp
were boiled. I followed the smell of Jess' cologne all the way
through the house and into the front yard, where it finally
dissipated.

I tried to convince myself that it was only my shitty
day, my strung-out nerves that were giving me the urge to ram my VW
into Jess Makar, if I could've found the bastard.

Cultivating that sense of well-being, I got in my car
and started the engine, heading out to be a lucky lady's dream date.
 

TEN

George Berton stood in his front yard looking like an
extra from Dr. No. His Panama hat brim cut a black ribbon across his
eyes. His pencil mustache was newly trimmed. He wore a pink camp
shirt with the obligatory Cuban cigar in the pocket, black slacks,
polished white shoes, and a tiny gold cross in the V of hairy chest
at his open collar. He carried a bouquet of wildflowers wrapped in
cellophane.

I pulled the VW up to the curb.

"For me?" I asked.

George leaned into the passenger's-side window. "I
been standing here so long I got three other propositions. I was
starting to think you'd chickened out."

"That would've been the smart choice," I
agreed.

George dropped the flowers on the seat. "Reminds
me. I do have something for you. You want to wait or come in?"

"You think we have time?"

"Not my fault."

"Hey, you could've picked me up, Berton. I was
on the way."

I pointed to the carport, where George's restored red
70 Barracuda convertible sat enshrined.

George looked appalled. "Drive her? I spent all
last weekend on that chrome, ese. It's supposed to rain tonight. I'm
talking mud and everything."

"I'll come in."

George's front lawn was a quarter acre of colored
fish-tank gravel lined with aluminum edging. Pyracantha bushes made
perfect cubes underneath the windows. The cottage itself was white
stucco with blue-and-white awnings, white drapes on the picture
windows. Like George, it could've shifted back in time forty years
and no one would've been the wiser.

I followed Berton into the living room.

"Hang on a sec," he said. "It's in the
back."

There wasn't much to look at while I waited. The
walls and floors were bare, the furniture consisting of two papasan
chairs, a TV on the floor, and a glass coffee table with nothing on
it. George's only clutter was carefully confined to a coat closet by
the front door — a space that held the altar for his wife at Dia de
los Muertos, and the rest of the year held George's Sinatra CDs, his
car magazines, his gothic novels, his cigar box, and everything else
dear to his heart. It was a space he could close off quickly and make
it seem, to the casual visitor, that he was a man living in complete
austerity.

The closet was open tonight. I peeked inside.
Unpainted Sheetrock was pinned with photographs of George and
friends. One showed George and me on our trip to Corpus last
Christmas. George was grinning and pointing at the marlin he'd goaded
me into catching. Another showed George and the kid he was Big
Brother to on the weekends — Sultan, I think his name was, eleven
years old, already flirting with gangs. Another photo showed George's
forty-third birthday party at Pablo's Grove, where I and about five
hundred other well-wishers had shown up chewing Cuban cigars and
wearing Panama hats and the loudest golf shirts we could find.
Interspersed with these photos were years of thank-you letters from
the Elf Louise program, the local charity that collected Christmas
toys for poor kids.