'Lucas's deposition-' I began.
'It won't hold up by itself.'
'Does Moon know that Lucas…' I could feel the pinpoints of sweat breaking on my forehead.
'You already know the answer to that… I'm sorry. We thought we had this guy halfway to the boneyard,' Marvin said.
Lucas walked toward us, his face uncertain in front of Marvin.
'How y'all doin'? Is my dad outside?' he said.
I sat alone in my office with the blinds down and tried to think. I kept seeing the grin on the face of Garland T. Moon, the latex skin, the liquid blue eye; I could almost smell the breath that was like fermented prunes. I pulled open the blinds and let the sunlight flood into the room.
The secretary buzzed me on the intercom.
'Mr Vanzandt and his son are here to see you, Billy Bob,' she said.
Jack Vanzandt, the college baseball star who'd fought in Vietnam and had come home decorated and had made a fortune in the Mexican oil business, then had lost it and made another fortune in computers. He'd called yesterday, or was it the day before? Yes, about his son, the one who had been expelled from Texas A amp;M.
'Bad day for a talk?' Jack said.
'Sorry. It's been a peculiar morning,' I said.
Jack still lifted weights and worked out regularly on a speed bag and played polo at a club in Dallas. He was well mannered and intelligent and made little of his war record. Few found any reason not to like him.
His son was another matter. His blond, youthful face always seemed slightly flushed, overheated, his gaze turned inward on thoughts that swam like threadworms in his green eyes.
'Darl had a fistfight with a Mexican kid. We'd like to just shake hands and forget it. But it looks like the family found out we have a little money,' Jack said.
'What about it, Darl?' I asked.
'At the American Legion game. Kid scratched all over my hood with a nail. I asked him why he did it. He said because of the cheer we were yelling in the stands. So I told him it was a free country, people can say anything they want 'cause that's why we got a First Amendment. Wets don't like it, they can swim back home.'
'What cheer?' I asked.
'"Two-bits, four-bits, six-bits a peso, all good pepper bellies stand up and say so."' His eyes smiled at nothing. He rubbed the thick ball of muscle along his forearm.
I looked at his father.
'The Mexican boy had to have his jaws wired together,' Jack said.
I took a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen out of my drawer and pushed them across my desk toward Darl.
'I'd like you to write down what happened for me. Just like you're writing a school essay,' I said.
'I just told you what happened,' he said.
'Darl has dyslexia,' Jack said.
'I see,' I said. 'I tell you what, I'll get back with y'all this afternoon. I'm sorry I'm a little distant this morning.'
Darl Vanzandt played with the high school ring on his finger, his cheeks glowing with peach fuzz. His eyes seemed amused at a private thought. Then he looked me straight in the face and said, 'My father says Lucas Smothers is your woods colt.'
'Go to the car, son,' Jack said.
After Darl was gone, his father extended his hand.
'I apologize. Darl has serious emotional problems. His mother… It's called fetal alcohol syndrome. He's not always accountable for the things he says and does,' Jack said.
'Don't worry about it,' I said.
'I really appreciate your helping us, Billy Bob.'
He squeezed my hand a second time. His grip was encompassing, long lasting, the skin moist and warm. After he was gone and I was seated again behind my desk, I found myself unconsciously rubbing my hand on the knee of my trousers.
Why, I thought.
There was a cut, an indentation, newly scabbed, the size of a tooth, on the ring finger of Darl Vanzandt.
No, I told myself, you're letting it get away from you.
That night, as an electrical storm raged outside, L.Q. Navarro stood in the middle of my living room, his ash-colored Stetson tipped back on his head, and said, 'You were as good a lawman as me, bud. When they're poor and got no power, like Lucas and the dead girl, and other people get involved with what happens to them, you know it's a whole sight bigger than what they want you to think.'
'Why'd you go and die on me, L.Q.?'
He twirled his hat on his index finger, and an instant later, through the window, I saw his silhouette illuminated by a bolt of lightning on a distant hill.
chapter six
The next day, after work, I dug night crawlers and cane-fished with a little mixed-blood Mexican boy in the tank on the back of my property. His name was Pete, and he had blue eyes and pale streaks the color of weathered wood in his hair, which grew like a soft brush on his head. He grinned all the time and talked with an Anglo twang and was probably the smartest little boy I ever knew.
'That was the Chisholm Trail out yonder?' he asked.
'Part of it. There're wagon tracks still baked in the hardpan.'
He chewed his gum and studied on the implications.
'What's it good for?' he asked.
'Not much of anything, I guess.'
He grinned and chewed his gum furiously and skipped a stone across the water.
'Black people say you spit on your hook, you always catch fish. You believe that?' he said.
'Could be.'
'How come you don't marry Temple Carrol?'
'You have too many thoughts for a boy your age.'
'She sure spends a lot of time jogging past your house.'
'Why do you have Temple Carrol on the brain this evening, Pete?'
'Cause there she comes now.'
I looked over my shoulder and saw Temple's car drive past my garage and barn and chicken run and windmill, then follow the dirt track out to the levee that circled the tank. Pete thought that was hilarious.
Temple got out of her car and walked up the slope of the levee. Her face looked cool and pink in the twilight.
'He's out,' she said.
'Moon?'
'None other.'
'Excuse us, Pete.'
I leaned my cane pole in the fork of a redbud tree, and we walked down the levee. The late red sun looked like molten metal through the willows on the far bank.
'He was at your office,' she said.
'What?
'Sitting on your steps for maybe an hour. In a blue serge suit and a Hawaiian shirt that's like an assault on the eyeballs. I told him your office was closed. He just sat there, cleaning his fingernails.'
'Don't mess with him, Temple. Next time call the cops.'
'What do you think I did? A half hour later, this new deputy, Mary Beth Sweeney, shows up. I told her I was glad somebody from the sheriff's department could finally make the trip from across the street. Get this, nobody sent her. She just happened to be driving by. She told him to hoof it.'
Temple forked two fingers into the side pocket of her blue jeans.
'He left you a note,' she said.
It was written in pencil, on the inside of a flattened cigarette wrapper.
Mr Holland, I find it damn inconsiderate you dont post your office hours. Call me at the Green Parrot Motel to talk this thing out.
Garland T. Moon
We were back at her car now. She opened the driver's door and reached across the seat and picked up a revolver. It was an ancient.38-40 double-action, the metal as dull as an old nickel with holster wear.
'Keep this. You can add it to your historical collection,' she said.
'Nope.'
'I got a friend in Austin to run Moon on the computer. Corrections thinks he did two snitches in Sugarland.'
'Thanks for coming by, Temple.'
She lowered the revolver, which she held sideways in her palm.