Cimarron Rose

'Where's it end?' she said.

'Excuse me?'

'You gave up your badge, then your career as a prosecutor with the Justice Department…' She shook her head. 'Because you think an accidental death takes away your right to judge people who are evil?'

'Pete and I are fixing to fry up some fish. You're welcome to join us.'

'You make me so mad I want to hit you,' she said.

Later that evening, I called the sheriff at his home.

'My PI made a 911 on Garland Moon,' I said.

'So?'

'Nobody was dispatched.'

'What's the man done?' he asked.

'He was in your custody. You let him out. I don't want him on my doorstep.'

'You think I want this lunatic on the street?'

'To tell you the truth, I'm not sure, sheriff.'

'You're a natural-born pain in the ass, Billy Bob. Don't be calling my house again.'

After I hung up, I called a friend in the sheriff's department and got the address of Mary Beth Sweeney. She lived in a new two-story apartment complex with a swimming pool just outside of town. It was 9 p.m. when I walked up the brick pathway at the entrance, and the underwater lights in the pool were turned on and pine needles and a glaze of suntan lotion floated on the surface. The lawn was empty, the portable barbecue pits left on the flagstones feathering with smoke.

I climbed to the second landing and rang her doorbell. My right hand opened and closed at my side and I felt warm inside my coat and wished I had left it in the Avalon.

Her face had a meaningless expression when she opened the door.

'Sorry to bother you at home. But I heard Garland Moon was at my office,' I said.

'Yes, is there something I can tell you?'

'Maybe. If I'm not bothering you.'

I waited.

'Come in,' she said.

Her small living room was furnished with rattan chairs and a couch and a round glass table. A yellow counter with three stools divided the kitchen from the living room. She was barefoot and wore jeans and a white and burnt orange University of Texas Longhorn T-shirt. A copy of The New Yorker was splayed open on the glass tabletop and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses lay next to it.

'You just happened by and saw Moon outside my office?' I said.

'What's this about, Mr Holland?'

'I think I'm developing an ongoing problem with the sheriff's office. I think it's because of Lucas Smothers.'

She hadn't asked me to sit down. She placed one hand against the counter and pushed her feet into a pair of white moccasins as though she were about to go somewhere. Her eyes were violet colored, unfocused, caught somewhere between two thoughts.

'You shouldn't come here,' she said.

'I wonder how I should read that. Is there hidden meaning there? I always have trouble with encoded speech.'

'If you don't like rudeness, you shouldn't keep forcing the issue, Mr Holland.'

'My name is Billy Bob.'

'I know who you are.' Then I saw the color flare behind her freckles, not from anger but as if she had made an admission she shouldn't.

'You like Mexican food?' I asked.

'Good night.' She put her hand on the doorknob and turned it.

'Tomorrow night? I appreciate what you've done for me.'

She opened the door and I started outside. I was only inches away from her now and I could smell the perfume behind her ears and hear her breathing and see the rise and fall of her breasts. A tiny gold chain and cross hung around her neck.

'Moon won't come at you head-on. He'll use Jimmy Cole,' she said.

I felt my mouth part as I stared into her eyes.

It was sunrise the next morning when I pulled into the dirt drive of Vernon Smothers's two-bedroom white frame house, with a mimosa in the front yard, a sprinkler spinning in a sickly fashion by the wood steps, a partially collapsed garage in back, and every available foot of surrounding property under cultivation.

I walked along the edge of a bean field to an irrigation ditch where Lucas stood up to his knees in the water, raking dead vegetation out of the bottom and piling it on the bank.

'What are you doing?' I said.

'My dad uses it in the compost heap.'

'He's not one to waste.'

'You don't like him much, do you?' he said. His face and denim shirt were spotted with mud, his arms knotted with muscle as he lifted a rake-load of dripping weeds to the edge of the ditch.

'Garland Moon's out. I want you to be careful,' I said.

'Last night a Mexican in the poolroom offered me five-hundred dollars to drive a load of lumber down to Piedras Negras.'

'What are you doing in the poolroom?'

'Just messin' around.'

'Yeah, they only sell soda pop in there, too. Why's this Mexican so generous to you?'

'He's got a furniture factory down there. He cain't drive long distances 'cause he's got kidney trouble or something. He said I might get on reg'lar.'

'You leave this county, Lucas, you go back to jail and you stay there.'

'You ain't got to get mad about it. I was just telling you what the guy said.'

'You thought anymore about college for next fall?'

'I was just never any good at schoolwork, Mr Holland.'

'Will you call me Billy Bob?'

'My dad don't allow it.'

I walked back to my car. The sun was yellow and pale with mist behind Vernon Smothers's house. He stood on his porch in work boots and cut-off GI fatigues and a sleeveless denim shirt that was washed as thin as Kleenex.

'You out here about Moon?' he asked.

'He's been known to nurse a grievance,' I answered.

'He puts a foot on my land, I'll blow it off.'

'You'll end up doing his time, then.'

'I busted my oil pan on your back road yesterday. You'll owe me about seventy-five dollars for the weld job,' he said, and went back inside his house and let the screen slam behind him.

Just before lunchtime, my secretary buzzed the intercom.

'There's a man here who won't give his name, Billy Bob,' she said.

'Does he have on a blue serge suit?'

'Yes.'

'I'll be right out.'

I opened my door. Garland T. Moon sat in a chair, a hunting magazine folded back to ads that showed mail-order guns and knives for sale. He wore shiny tan boots that were made from plastic, and a canary yellow shirt printed with redbirds, with the collar flattened outside his suit coat.

'Come in,' I said.

My secretary looked at me, trying to read my face.

'I'm going to take my lunch hour a little late today,' she said.

'Why don't you go now, Kate? Bring me an order of enchiladas and a root beer. You want something, Garland?'

His lips were as red as a clown's when he smiled, his head slightly tilted, as though the question were full of tangled wire.

He walked past me without answering. I could smell an odor like lye soap and sweat on his body. I closed the door, turned the key in the lock, and put the key in my watch pocket.

'What are you doin?' he said.

I sat behind my desk, smiled up at him, my eyes not quite focusing on him. I scratched the back of my hand.

'I asked you what you're doing,' he said.

'I think you're a lucky man. I think you ought to get out of town.'

'Why'd you lock the door?'

'I don't like to be disturbed.'

One side of his face seemed to wrinkle, his small blue eye watering, as though irritated by smoke. He was seated now, his thighs and hard buttocks flexed against the plastic bottom of the chair.

'I want to hire you. To file a suit. They took a cattle prod to me. They put it all over my private parts,' he said.

'My client's deposition has no meaning for you now. You're home free on murder beefs in two states. I wouldn't complicate my life at this point.'

'That little bitch they planted in the cell, what's his name, Lucas Smothers, he told y'all a mess of lies. I never had no such conversation with Jimmy Cole. I been jailing too long to do something like that.'