Summer Cool

Up in his office, Paine turned on his answering machine. Billy Rader's voice said, "Call me."

Paine called, and Billy answered the phone.

"What is it, Billy?"

Rader laughed. "I just wanted to tell you the skies are supposed to be crystal clear down here tonight."

"Fuck you, Billy."

Rader laughed again. "I also wanted to tell you I got a name on the fellow we found in Bob Petty's hotel room. Parker Johnson. Local boy. No one saw him go into the hotel room. Hold on, let me get my piece of paper." Rader went away from the phone, came back. "I'm just guessing, but would you say Petty was about six foot or so, maybe one hundred seventy pounds, waist size maybe thirty-four?"

"About that."

"Well, Johnson was five foot eight, a hundred forty pounds, waist size thirty" Rader gave a short chuckle. "The clothes we found in the room were Petty's, so he must have still been around. And the desk clerk described him as the man who checked into the room. He never came back to check out."

"Anything else?"

"Well, it seems some of Johnson's friends say he got very nervous a couple of days ago, and suddenly moved out of his boardinghouse."

Paine paused. "This guy Johnson have any record?"

"Clean. His boarding house buddies say he liked to drink, liked the prostitutes now and then, but otherwise was just an okay type."

"Thanks, Billy."

"Jack, any chance your friend Petty killed this guy?"

"I'd like to think he didn't."

"Sure, Jack. Anything else you'd like?"

"Any chance you could get into the airline reservation computers, find out if Bob Petty left Dallas-Fort Worth?"

"I'm already working on that. Also the buses and trains."

"I can't thank you enough, Billy."

"Any chance you'd like to sneak on back here tonight, go out to the scope with me?"

"I'd love to, Billy, but-"

"Your loss, Jack."

"Can I ask how you got all this?" Paine asked.

Rader laughed again. "Your friend Landers has a few rivals in the Fort Worth Police Department. Let's just say I've got a lot of friends in high and low places. I'll get back to you."

"Thanks again, Billy."

"I'll think of you tonight while I look at Omega Centauri."

"Like I said, fuck you, Billy."

13

The funeral of Roberto Hermano was not an elaborate affair. All those attending, if they hadn't been scattered throughout the church, might have filled one long pew. The church itself was a model of pre-Vatican II Catholicism-a miniature gothic that must have been, in its polished wood and cleaned stained glass heyday, an inspiration to its congregation. Gloomy, dark, muggily cool, with shadows in the corners, the eye was drawn upward to the vaulted, painted ceiling and its now-faded representations of cherubs floating among the clouds.

Paine's eye was drawn to Hermano's mother, a short, weeping woman in black who had draped herself over the casket parked on its gurney at front and center, and refused to move. The priest waited patiently while two or three family members-cousins or uncles or brothers-tried to persuade her to sit down. But she would have none of it.

"My Roberto!" she wailed. "What have they done to my baby?"

Paine knew what they had done to her baby, and he hoped the police hadn't been stupid enough to tell his mother. He was dead, which was enough.

"Roberto! My Roberto!"

The man Paine was looking for was sitting alone in the far right front. There was a weak pool of light to his left, and he sat shunning it, in the shadows. Paine made his way up the right aisle, past the carved stations of the cross on the wall-representations of Jesus dropping the cross, Jesus being whipped, Jesus being nailed to the cross-and slid into the pew, in the deeper shadows to the right of the man.

"I saw you come in here," the man said, in a slight Spanish accent. He was slim, impeccably dressed. The open jacket of his silk suit showed a spotless white silk shirt, pale blue silk tie knotted tight and small and perfect. His face was smooth as a baby's, the eyes large and brown, the hair pulled back into a short tight black ponytail. In his right ear was a tiny gold earring. "You sure as hell didn't try to hide."

"I've got nothing to hide, Philly," Paine said.

"Bullshit you don't. I could get my balls cut off, stuffed in my mouth, just like Roberto, just for talking to you."

"You don't seem worried," Paine said.

Philly smiled slightly. "I'm not," he said, "because they'd do it to you first."

"Who killed Roberto, Philly?"

"Good question," Philly said. "The guys who might have done it are sitting five pews behind us."

Paine turned slightly to see three conservatively dressed black men. Their attention was on the antics of Hermano's mother, which they followed with mild interest.

"Are they the South American boys?"

"Let's just say they work for the South Americans."

"Did they kill Roberto?"

"No. "

"Then who did?"

"That's what everybody here wants to know."

"Was it Jim Coleman?"

"Maybe. I heard Coleman disappeared. But any of fifteen people might have done Roberto. He was very smart, but he was also very stupid. He played a lot of cards, Paine, tried to make everybody happy. The South Americans think they've lost a great friend, because he was helping them set up. But at the same time, he was working for Bob Petty, who was setting them up. And at the same time, he was working for Coleman, who was setting himself up with the South Americans for a little piece of their pie when he made sure that Petty's sting didn't work." In the near dark, Philly moved his fingers up and down. "And there was Roberto in the middle, jerking all the strings. And he was very good at it, too."

"You also said he was very stupid."

Philly turned to look at him in the dark. His slight smile came back. "He's dead, isn't he?"

"What about you, Philly-you finished with drugs?"

The smile stayed. "Look at this body, Paine-does it look like I put drugs into it? You remember the way I used to look." The smile widened. "I'm a beautiful man, Paine."

"One more thing, Philly. Is there any possibility that Bob Petty was on the take?"

Philly looked surprised. "Petty? No way."

"Are you sure?"

"You know, I was thinking about this. With Petty taking off and all. The kind of man he is, him leaving a job behind. I wouldn't be surprised if he was going to catch Coleman too when this whole thing went down. I just couldn't see him leaving like that."

"You think it might have been something else? A woman?"

Now Philly's smile was wide. "What do I know about women? Are you asking me if I think it was a man?"

"Okay, I'm asking you."

Philly shook his head. "You know, Paine, you know a lot, but there's a lot you don't know. It wasn't a man. Not Bob Petty."

"You sure?"

Philly turned his eyes on him in the shadows again; this time, there was no trace of humor in the eyes or around the mouth. "I'm sure. You know, I didn't have to say word one to you, never have."

"I know that, Philly."

"You helped me once, I appreciate that. But that favor went out a long time ago. You were a cop then, you're not a cop anymore." The humor was still absent. "You know, there was a time I wasn't sure about you. You know, I would be very good to you."

"Sorry, Philly."

The humor crept back into the corners of his eyes; the slight smile came back. "No harm in asking, Paine."

"No," Paine said. "Thanks, Philly."

At front and center, the uncles and cousins had managed to get Mrs. Hermano to sit down. The priest had come down off the altar, and was slowly circling the coffin, sprinkling it with holy water. He went back to the altar, returned with an incense burner; raising it up high with one hand, he began to circle the coffin again, swinging the burner, sending puffs of incense toward the ceiling.