'Ten acres, on the back of your property, along the river there. I'll build my own house, one of them log jobs. With a truck patch and some poultry, I'll make out fine.'
'What do I get?'
'I'll fuck whoever you want with a wood rasp. I done things to folks you couldn't even guess at.'
'I think your benefactor will use you for a golf tee, Moon.'
I saw the heat climb from his throat into his face.
'There's a kid hereabouts thinks he's a swinging dick 'cause he can throw a football-' Then Moon caught himself, his mouth drawn back on his teeth.
'You molested a little Negro girl when you were sixteen. That's why my father fired you off the line,' I said.
He walked to my desk and mashed out his cigarette. His arms were still damp from the rain and his muscles knotted and glistened like white rubber.
'The little girl lied. It was her uncle done it,' he said.
'You were at Matagorda Bay when my father was killed in 1965.'
His eyes lighted and crinkled at the corners.
'You're hooked, ain't you?' he said.
'Nope, it's just time for you to find another wallow. Deal with that wet rat that's eating out your insides.'
He sucked his teeth, then scraped a thumbnail inside one nostril, his expression hidden. 'You got a mean streak, boy, but I know how to put the stone bruise down in the bone,' he said.
He strolled through the outer office into the hallway, dragging one finger across the secretary's desk.
I opened the windows, heedless of the rain that blew in on the rug, then told the secretary to call the police if Moon came back again.
When I walked down the stairs into the foyer, he was waiting for me. The rain danced on the street and sidewalk and gusted inside the archway.
'Your mama probably told you your daddy died a brave man,' he said. 'He was rolling around in the dirt, squealing like a charbroiled hog, praying and begging folks to take him to a hospital, his pecker hanging out his pants like a white worm. I went behind the toolshed and laughed till I couldn't hardly breathe.'
I took a yellowed free newspaper from a mailbox that had no cover. I unfolded it and popped the wrinkles out. I walked to within six inches of Moon's face, saw the skin under his recessed eye twitch involuntarily.
'Here, Garland, put this over your head so you don't get wet. That's a real frog-stringer out there,' I said, and crossed the street through the afternoon traffic.
chapter thirty
Virgil Morales, the San Antonio Purple Heart, was my next witness. He wore knife-creased white slacks, tasseled loafers, a purple suede belt, and a short-sleeve shirt scrolled with green and purple flowers. His freshly combed hair looked like wet duck feathers on the back of his neck. His walk was loose and relaxed, his eye contact with the jury deferential and respectful; in fact, he had transformed from bad-ass biker into the image of an innocuous, slightly vain, blue-collar kid who simply wanted to cooperate with the legal system. I couldn't have wished for a better witness.
'You're sure the defendant was unconscious while Roseanne Hazlitt was alive?' I said.
'The guy was a bag of concrete. You could look in his eyes and nobody was home. I was worried about him,' Virgil replied.
'Worried?'
'I thought he might be dead.'
Then the judge asked Marvin if he wished to cross-examine, and I knew I had a problem.
'No questions at this time, your honor. But I'd like to reserve the right to recall the witness later,' he said.
It was 4:25 when Jamie Lake took the stand, which meant she would be the last witness of the day, and it was her testimony that would be the most clear and influential in the jury's memory overnight. I couldn't believe her appearance. She had showed up in sandals, hoop earrings, faded jeans that barely clung to her hips, and a tie-dye beach shirt that exposed the dragons tattooed on her shoulders. She had peroxided her hair in streaks and pinned it up on her head like a World War II factory worker. She popped her gum on the way to the stand, her hips undulating, and let her eyes rove across the jury box as though she were looking at chickens perched in a henhouse.
This time Marvin didn't pass on cross-examination.
'Did you think the defendant was dead?' he asked.
'No,' she answered.
'Why not?'
'Because he was breathing. Dead people don't breathe.'
'Thank you for telling us that. Did anybody pay you to come here today?' he asked.
'No,' she replied.
'Did anybody pay your friend Virgil Morales to come here today?'
She chewed her gum and turned her right hand in the air, looking at the rings on her fingers.
'Did you understand the question?' Marvin said.
'Yeah, I'm thinking. How come you question me and not him? Like, I'm dumb and he's smart, or I'm smart and Virgil's a beaner can't understand big words?' she replied.
'Have you been using any narcotics today, Ms Lake?'
'Yeah, I just scored some crystal from the bailiff. Where'd they get you?'
Then Marvin introduced into evidence the subpoenaed bank records of both Jamie Lake's and Virgil Morales's checking accounts.
'You and Virgil both made deposits of five thousand dollars on the same day three weeks ago, Ms Lake. How'd y'all come by this good fortune?' Marvin said.
'I didn't make a deposit. It just showed up on my statement,' she said.
'It has nothing to do with your testimony today? Just coincidence?'
'I was UA-ed and I took a polygraph.'
'What you took is money.'
'What's-his-face over there, Lucas, looked like a corpse that fell out of an icebox. You don't like what I tell you, go play with your suspenders. Excuse me, I take that back. Go fuck yourself, you little twit.'
Set up and sandbagged, and I had walked right into it.
An hour later I drove Mary Beth to our small airport. The windows of my car were beaded with water, and lightning forked without sound into the hills.
'Don't feel bad,' she said.
'It was a slick ruse. Those two kids were telling the truth, but somebody gave them money and turned them into witnesses for the prosecution.'
'Felix Ringo and Jack Vanzandt sent them to you?'
'Let's talk about something else.'
'Sorry.'
There was nothing for it. Everything I said to her was wrong. We stood under a dripping shed and watched a two-engine plane taxi toward us, its propellers blowing water off the airstrip. I felt a sense of ending that I couldn't give words to.
'I didn't do you much good, did I?' she said.
'Sure you did.'
'I have to think over some things. I'll be better about calling this time,' she said.
Then a strange thing happened, as though I were an adolescent boy caught up in his sexual fantasies. I hugged her lightly around the shoulders, my cheek barely touching hers, but in my mind's eye I saw her undressed, smelled the heat in her skin, the perfume that rose from her breasts, felt her bare stomach press against my loins. It wasn't lust. It was an unrequited desire, like a flame sealed inside my skin, one that would not be relieved and that told me I was completely alone. For just a moment I understood why people drank and did violent things.
'So long,' she said.
'Good-bye, Mary Beth.'
'Watch your butt.'
'You bet.'
I watched her plane take off in the rain, its wings lifting steadily toward a patch of blue in the west. I got in my car and drove back to town. The hills were sodden and green under clouds that churned like curds from burning oil tanks.
L.Q. Navarro was waiting for me when I got home. He leaned his hands on the windowsill in the library and looked out at a cold band of light on the western horizon.
'It's been a mighty wet spring,' he said.
'I might have blown the trial today, L.Q.'
'You know what you got on your side? It's that boy's character. He's got sand. You know why?'
'Tell me.'