The Devil Went Down to Austin (22 page)

What I liked least was my own imagined addition to her photo collection—Ruby standing next to Matthew Pena, signing away her company. Garrett's company.

I checked the nightstand drawer. It was locked. I picked it open. I found a .38 calibre automatic and a halffinished pint of Jack Daniel's.

I sat on the bed, deliberating whether to call Lopez about the gun. By breaking in, I'd rendered all potential evidence useless, of course. If it became known that I broke in. I wondered if Travis County would serve a search warrant based on an anonymous tip.

I doubted it.

I turned my attention to the moving boxes, found that a few of them contained archived paperwork—more than I could possibly read. There were orders for boat repairs, personnel files on boat jockeys, maintenance records for numerous yachts. Letters from an accountant documented financial troubles the marina had been suffering from in the early 1990s.

From a box marked 1990 AND PRIOR, I pulled a stack of yellowing brochures that announced the opening of the marina in 1975. POINT LONE STAR, Rouell McBride, Proprietor. Behind these was a whole folder full of photographs that Ruby's father had apparently considered using for promotional materials. Many of them were ancient black and white shots showing the family orchards before they'd been flooded. In one, a large family sat under a pecan tree, rows of other pecans stretching out behind them, a split rail fence running along one side. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the branches. The darksuited patriarch sat on a folding chair, his wife beside him in a white Edwardian dress. Children of various ages fanned out on either side, sitting crosslegged on quilts—the boys in coat and tie, the girls with bobbed hair and 1920s dresses. It was obvious they were all McBrides. I could imagine the photo in colour—so many green eyes, so much red hair.

A note paperclipped to the back of the photo was written in what I assumed was Ruby's father's handwriting: The McBride name has been an institution—Here a few words were scratched out—The McBrides have been landowners on Lake Travis—more scratch outs—No one knows the lake better than the McBrides. Trust us for all your boating needs.

I looked at the brochure. Mr. McBride hadn't used the old photo. He'd opted instead for glossy colour aerials of the marina.

A little more digging in the clothes boxes got me something I had not been anxious to find—a letter from Matthew Pena, folded into the pocket of Ruby's winter coat. It read: Next weekend, then. I'll see about the Farallons. Fondly, Matthew.

Hardly damning evidence of anything illegal, but it meant that sometime during the winter, very possibly before Matthew approached Techsan, he'd been corresponding with Ruby McBride. And while Ruby was still married to Jimmy, she'd been talking to Pena about a weekend trip to San Francisco—a boat ride out to the Farallon Islands.

I crumpled up the letter, made it into as small a ball as I could. I had an irrational impulse to overturn Ruby's nightstand, dump her boxes on the carpet.

The only thing that sobered me was thinking what Garrett would do if he'd found the letter instead of me. If he blamed Ruby for abandoning him, then watched her marry Jimmy Doebler, and then, on top of it all, suspected Ruby was spending time with Matthew Pena . . . betraying both of them. I thought about the night Jimmy had died—Garrett getting so angry upon hearing Ruby's name that he'd shot off the kiln goddess' arm.

While I was thinking about this, I found myself staring at a poster on Ruby's bedroom wall. It was a huge topographical map of the lake with longitude and latitude coordinates. Depths were noted. Boating hazards. I got up to take a closer look.

There was a green pushpin marking Point Lone Star, and out in the water, five red pins, making a curve from the shore to a point close to the boating channel. The pins were equidistant—about one hundred yards apart.

Her flooded family land, I guessed. I remembered what she'd said about mapping the old property lines, and about taking Matthew Pena down there.

And then a voice behind me said, "There is no Mr. White at this marina."

Clyde Simms stood in the doorway. His nose had a butterfly pattern of bruises around it from our encounter at Scholz Garten. There was a tire iron in his hand.

"Thank God," I said. "I must've taken a wrong turn. I was on my way to Jimmy's—"

"If I liked police," Simms snarled, "they'd be hauling your ass away right now."

"And since you don't?"

He lifted the tire iron, patted it against his palm. "You're walking with me over to my place. Nice and friendly, no scaring the customers. No joint locks. And then we'll see."

Clyde's homestead was set back in the woods about fifty yards from the marina, just enough to be out of sight of the paying customers.

Along the gravel path, we passed two Chevrolet carcasses, three cow skulls nailed to mesquite trees, and a bikinied store manikin who'd been given a lobotomy and an appendectomy by shotgun. The joys of simple country living.

The house itself was an overgrown portable shed with a plywood porch and a corrugated tin roof heaped with fuzzy brown cedar fur. Parked out front was a HarleyDavidson hog. On the front porch post, a sign read FEROCIOUS DOGS —NO

UNANNOUNCED VISITORS.

"Come in," Clyde told me. "And don't think I won't kill you, you try any more of that kung fu shit on me. You know how much I snore when I get my nose broke?"

Clyde opened the screen door and the smell of burning pork and beans came wafting out.

He cursed, pushed past me toward the stove. Apparently he'd forgotten a culinary experiment in his haste to apprehend me.

I stepped into the dark kitchen area, and one of the advertised ferocious dogs appeared from the hallway.

It was a Doberman—sleek black, tan muzzle, little devilhorn ears. It took one look at me with its sad, milky eyes and squeaked the toy in its mouth—a pink rubber bunny.

Then the Doberman

plodded forward a few steps, collapsed on the rug as if it had been shot, and sighed.

"Vicious," I said. "Terrifying."

Clyde glowered at me. He picked up a spatula with baked bean crust on the edge, took his black, smoking pan of lunch off the electric stovetop.

"I had me two other asseating Dobes," he growled. "Mean ones—Harley and Davidson. Both died since Christmas. Now all I got left is Miata."

"Let me guess. Ruby named her after her car."

His ears turned bright red. "Fucking disgrace. You don't go out of here talking about this, you understand?"

I crossed my heart.

Clyde's living room was a cozy combination bike garage, poker den, and army surplus centre. Tables overflowed with greasy wrenches, nuts and bolts, cartridge boxes, and pieces of disassembled weapons. Somebody had played 52pickup across the rug.

There was one sofa that looked like a piece of chewed gum.

Clyde told me to sit down. I chose the edge of a table. Clyde offered me a drink—raw egg shake, Gatorade, or beer. I declined.

He plopped himself onto the chewing gum couch, popped open a beer. "Before I kill you," he said, "what were you doing on Ruby's boat?"

"Just visiting. Finding out Ruby's a lot closer to Matthew Pena than she lets on."

Clyde sipped his beer, got some white foam on his moustache. "Ruby's a good woman. Don't judge her."

"She sold out her company, went behind Garrett's and Jimmy's backs—"

"If I thought Ruby had done something to hurt Garrett, I'd talk to her."

"You must have a pretty narrow definition of hurt."

Clyde studied me, the tape on his broken nose making him look slightly crosseyed.

"Your brother's a standup guy. The Buffett summer tour this year—he got tickets, swung some for me and some friends, too. You think I like this shit with the police? I want him free to go."

He said free the way a con says free—like it was a kind of weather.

Miata the ferocious dog was closing her eyes. She was just about to go to sleep when the weight of her snout closed her jaw around the pink bunny and made it squeak. She lifted her head, looking around sleepily for the intruder.

"There's a thing about Matthew Pena," I told Clyde. "People think they can work with him. They find out they're wrong."

Simms scratched the Doberman's muzzle with his toes. "Ruby knows enough to call her own shots."

"You care for her."

His eyes got dangerously hot. "She's a good boss."

"That's not what I meant."

He finished his beer, crumpled the can, tossed it somewhere behind the pink sofa. "I got discharged from the Marines in '82, Navarre. I spent a few years hanging with bikers, striking with the Diablos. Then I started bumming with dock rats at the lake. I met all kinds of people. You know what I figured out? Only friends worth having are the ones who can hurt you, man, hurt you worse than any random shithead in a bar fight. I hang with Ruby because she stands by me; she tries to be good to me. Is she dangerous? Fuck, yes. Is she a little screwed up, all that shitty family history? Sure.

But you want to boil it down to—hey, Clyde's got the hots for her, well you go ahead, man. That's how you think, you'd never understand anyway."

The Doberman was looking at me mournfully, chewing her pink bunny.

"I apologize," I told Clyde.

He grunted.

"You mentioned Ruby's family," I said. "You knew them?"

"Only stories. The grandfather was the one that sold out, left them with this little piece of land. He sat on the money he'd made from the sale, pretty much pissed it away on drink and gambling. What Ruby's dad inherited wasn't a third of the value. He tried a lot of things, ended up starting the marina, never made much of a go of it. Toward the end of his life, Ruby was running the place, trying to make it pay off for the sake of her old man. Ruby did it, too. Wasn't her dream to get rich, or to keep the land. But by the time her dad was gone, she couldn't get away from the place. Building that house up there on the hill—you don't understand what a big

deal that is for her, Navarre. It's Ruby admitting she's here for keeps; she ain't going to get away."

The sound of a motorboat went by out on the lake. The smell of burnt pork and beans was slowly giving way to cedar from the open windows.

"Where is she now?" I asked. "Do you know?"

Clyde gave me a look I couldn't quite read. "Yeah, I know. She don't always let me tag along."

"Like when she goes to meet with Matthew Pena?"

Clyde shook his head. "I ain't your enemy, Navarre. I ain't Garrett's enemy. But you ask me, you're barking up the wrong pole. I seen Garrett around Ruby, how they dance around each other. I seen how Garrett looked when she told him she was marrying Jimmy Doebler. You want to help your brother—maybe you should start by thinking: Hell, yeah, he killed the guy. Go from there. You understand me?"

"This advice from you, who wanted to kill Matthew Pena months ago?"

But when I met Clyde's eyes, I understood what he was saying. Clyde could believe Pena deserved to die. He could also believe Garrett had murdered Jimmy Doebler. He could also believe that Garrett was a decent man who deserved to be free. These ideas were not mutually exclusive. For Clyde, murder was no more astonishing than chicken pox, certainly no reason to judge a man.

I stood. "I'll keep your advice in mind, Clyde."

"And I won't kill you," he decided. "But stay off Ruby's boat, hear?"

I left Clyde on his chewing gum couch, Miata the ferocious dog sleeping at his feet.

Outside, the lake spread out glittering and blue, but for once I couldn't help seeing it the way Ruby must've seen it all her life—as a cool heavy funeral cloth over a million acres of land.

Date: Mon 12 Jun 2000 20:03:12 0400

ReplyTo: The Original Jimmy Buffet* List

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MUOHIO.EDU> Subject: Clara/First Show of the Season

She was sitting by the water, on the tailgate of the truck, not twenty feet from me.

Her hair had gone almost steel gray. Her face was swollen, no longer delicate. Fifty years of crying will do that to you. She wore a white blouse and white shorts, so she fairly well glowed in the night.

She would write a word or two, then look up and talk for a while, but she would look through me—dazed. I couldn't be sure if I was still there to her; I could only hope. I hoped she heard me tell her that this was a reunion.

The fact that she had the gun made it all the more exciting. I wasn't quite sure what would happen, how long I had. My recipe was still pretty new.

She was apologizing. She was crying.

It wasn't everything I wanted, but it was close. I felt that painful sting in my mouth, the tension of waiting, like I'd bitten into a lime and couldn't yet swallow. I wanted to step out of the darkness. I wanted to close the distance between us, embrace her, kiss her forehead.

But then, the intrusion.

I'd timed things as best I could, tried to err on the side of caution, but here came company, much too early—boots cracking twigs.

"Ma'am?" he called."You all right?"

She turned toward the voice.

She could've ended things for me right there. But in her mind, the deed was already done. She'd signed her name.

She raised the gun, and the intruder's voice got frantic. He ordered her to drop the weapon.

And then she turned the barrel, raised it to her mouth for a kiss.

A thousand tons of pressure, an entire miserable lifetime, escaped in one tremendous burst.

The intruder's face saved him then, it really did. I wanted to show myself. I wanted to destroy him. But his expression told me that Providence had spoken.

He was meant to see what he saw. I couldn't have hurt him any worse than that.

P.S. Sorry for the offtopic post.

It's going to be a great tour this summer.

First show tomorrow night, and I am pumped.

Despite how close Jimmy's dome looked from the water, it took me half an hour to get back on the winding lakeshore roads.