The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan (22 page)

"You think it's still happening?" I asked.

"What — smack running through RideWorks? Del
Brandon couldn't think his way off one of his own merry-go-rounds,
kid. He couldn't handle something that big."

"Hector and Chich were worried about Zeta
Sanchez coming back to town. Del Brandon was too. He was also real
worried about his brother Aaron, who was reading articles about how
to sic the IRS on your relatives to take over a family business.
Maybe Del and Hector and Chich got together and killed two birds with
one stone — framed Sanchez for Aaron Brandon's murder."

Ozzie laughed. "Mr. Navarre."

"Sir?"

"You really want to get Zeta Sanchez off the
hook, don't you?"

"I don't think he killed Aaron Brandon. Call me
old-fashioned. I think that means we should look for whoever did."

"Guys like Zeta Sanchez — you can't go soft
for them. They're Attila the rat."

"Attila the what?"

Ozzie held up the TV remote and punched the volume
down to zero.

"Something from when I was a kid in the fifties,
down in Harlingen. I never told you this story? My mom was a
waitress, worked a lot at night so she wanted to get me a pet. Only
she couldn't afford a dog or anything, so she came home one night
with these two dime-store rats — the little kind, one black and one
white."

"Rats?"

"Yeah. Only we found out pretty quick they
weren't both males. A week went by and they had a litter of little
pink things, looked like grubs. My mom said we'd have to drown them,
but we never did. They grew into gray adult rats, then had babies and
pretty soon the babies had babies. I woke up one morning and the
original two rats were gone. Nothing left but little patches of hair
in the wood shavings. Their kids had eaten them. My mom didn't know
what to do. The rats kept having babies, and eating them, and eating
the weaker adults. Most horrible time in my childhood, waking up
every morning and dreading to look in that cage, wondering what I'd
find. Finally, there was only one rat left — he must've been fourth
or fifth generation — and he'd eaten all the other rats. This fat,
mean little fucker had made a bed out of their fur. I'm not kidding
you. I named him Attila. My mom said we had to let him go, that
Attila was big and mean enough to survive in the world, so we let him
loose in the alley."

"That's pretty intense for a young kid."

"You won't see me keeping pets, Navarre. The
thing is — every time you look at a veterano like Zeta Sanchez or
Hector Mara, somebody who made it through the gang life and got past
the age of twenty, you're looking at Attila the rat. You're looking
at the end product of generations of truly efficient cannibalism.
They've made themselves a bed out of all the weaker ones."

"It's not that simple."

Ozzie shook his head sadly. "What do you hear
from George Berton?"

"I'm seeing him later tonight. I get the feeling
Hector Mara might be trying to tell him something."

"How do you mean?"

I told Ozzie about Hector's comments at the Poco Mas
— how Hector seemed to be considering some kind of offer George had
made.

Ozzie thought about that. His eyes closed. They
stayed that way for half a minute before opening again. "I got
to get some sleep."

"Okay."

"Let me know how it goes with George. You mind
getting the drapes?"

I got them. The room dipped into cool darkness. Ozzie
turned the television off.

"Thanks for the tree," Ozzie said.

I told him no problem.

"And, Tres — I owe you. Pulling me out of the
line of fire the other day. Don't think I've forgotten that."

"It's okay, Ozzie."

"It's not." He shifted, tugged the covers
over his bare belly. "It's not. You need anything — you need
anything at all, you come find me."

"Thanks, Ozzie. I'll do that."

Gerson mumbled something I couldn't make out.

I left him in the dark, swathed in downy beige
comforters, the bedroom quiet except for the ping of carbonation in
his Sprite can.

I went into the living room to reclaim my boots.
 

TWENTY-FOUR

I wasn't planning on meeting the SWAT team at Hector
Mara's farmhouse that afternoon. I just got lucky.

When I pulled over at the Y in the road where
Hector's property sat, the shoulder was already crowded with police
vans, lights flashing. SWAT members with black flak suits and assault
rifles milled around in the road.

With typical April fickleness, the sunny morning had
turned into an overcast afternoon — fiberglass-yellow clouds, air
as moist and warm as dog's breath. Ana DeLeon and Kelsey were having
a chat with a squad sergeant over by the banana trees as I walked up.

"Remembered the reinforcements this time, did
we, Kelsey?"

Kelsey pointed at me without speaking, balled his
other fist, then gestured to the SWAT sergeant to follow him. The two
men walked toward the nearest patrol unit.

"Navarre." DeLeon's voice was weary with
the sound of recently jettisoned adrenaline. "What do you want?"

I looked up the drive at the Mara property.

The door of the L-shaped cinder-block house had been
busted off its hinges. Several of the windows were broken. SWAT
members stood on the porch, a uniformed officer leaning in the
doorway writing up a report. There was a similar scene at the white
mobile home. They must've smashed open Hector's chicken coops, too,
because the fields were now overrun with poultry. Wild bantams were
pecking around the base of the apple tree. A Rhode Island Red was
perched on a broken tricycle seat. There was even a rogue peacock
strolling down the driveway, dragging a strip of pink toilet paper in
its plumage.

"Let me guess," I said. "You followed
up on my message. Mara was gone."

DeLeon wore a navy blazer and skirt and a cream
blouse. In the afternoon light, her face seemed softer, her eyes not
quite so severe.

"Don't flatter yourself, Navarre. What got us
out here was some work by the ATF. They finished tracing the Solidox
in the pipe bomb — got it down to the exact hardware store, got an
ID on the buyer from one of the clerks."

"Hector Mara."

"We just got through busting up his mobile home—
found some things we missed on the first search. Or maybe they just
weren't there the first time — some wiring. A timer."

"Pretty clear, then."

"The one thing we did not find is Mr. Mara."

I pointed toward the cinder-block L. "Can I take
a look?"

"Nothing there. We went through it pretty
thoroughly."

"May I take a look?"

DeLeon considered, then let her dissatisfaction with
me collapse in a kind of tired apathy. "With me present, I
suppose."

We walked up the drive, past the peacock, past a
couple of uniformed cops complaining about the humidity and the woes
of polyester uniforms.

"That friend we spoke about," I told
DeLeon. "He could maybe track down Mara. If Mara's still in
town."

"I'm not dealing with Arguello."

"You figure Lieutenant Hernandez will give you
more time?"

DeLeon kept walking, occasionally slipping on the
gravel in her heels. "Not likely."

"Because nothing here points away from Sanchez.
It just means Hector was helping him out."

"Something like that."

"Nice and simple," I said. "And it
stinks."

DeLeon stopped at the porch. The SWAT team had moved
on. The bullet-riddled door lay flat across the entrance like a
broken drawbridge.

DeLeon pushed her hair behind her ear, turned slowly,
and looked out across the fields.

"You doing all right?" I asked.

She raised her eyebrows, gave me the little head
shake women do when they're addressing a man who's acting like a
three-year-old. "Just fine. And you?"

I watched two SWAT guys out in the field, trampling
Hector Mara's tidy garden. They were kicking the heads off cabbages.

DeLeon smoothed her skirt. "I'm sorry. I'm on
edge."

"Understandable."

In the main room, bedsheet curtains had been ripped
down. Shafts of dust-moted light sliced across an old television set,
a bare plywood bookshelf, a beanbag chair that had been cut open, its
polyfoam guts spread across the cement floor. The tiny kitchen had
been ransacked. Bathroom likewise, even the top of the toilet tank
removed.

The first bedroom was filled with antique furniture
too solid to destroy. Against one wall was a teak sideboard with the
glass removed. A sewing table charred from the long-ago fire, an old
foot-pedal Sears machine on top. A stripped bed frame. A basket of
faded quilt remnants. Hung on the wall was a small cross studded with
silver milagro charms. Men's clothing was heaped in the corner —
sweats, tank tops, running shorts, the kind of clothes Hector Mara
wore. The room smelled of old perfume and sweat. Neither the clothes
nor the smell of sweat went with the rest of the room. It looked as
if Hector had moved in after his grandmother's death and never
bothered to redecorate.

There was a second bedroom down the hall at the end
of the L.

Despite the police ransacking, I knew whose room it
was the moment I entered — Sandra Mara's.

A young woman's clothes that hadn't seen the light of
day in years were now disgorged from a closet in the corner —
Jordache jeans, fuzzy sweaters, moccasin shoes, the kind of pastel
tourist T-shirts you get from Solo Serve and La Feria. The upturned
dresser drawers had spilled silver bangles, random stud earrings, a
few sparse items of makeup. Not much for a teenage girl. There were
no CDs, no magazines, few personal effects. Most notable was the
ankle-deep pile of books and loose papers that had been swept off the
shelves against one wall.

I toed through some of the book titles — Heller,
Marquez, Vonnegut, Bronte. An African American poetry anthology, a
Latin American one, Sylvia Plath. Good assortment. Very good for a
high schooler.

I picked up the Sylvia Plath. The library pocket
pasted to the inside cover said JUDSON ISD. The book had been due May
12, seven years ago. Hell of a late fee. Of course, before Sandra
Mara had checked it out, the book had been borrowed exactly once, in
1975. Probably JUDSON ISD hadn't missed it yet. The loose papers
looked like pages of high school essays — double-spaced cursive,
most dated spring, 1992. One was on "The Wife of Bath." I
scanned half a paragraph and was depressed to find it better than
most of the college papers I'd been looking at that morning.

I picked up another book — this one with a gold
marbleized cover, no title. A writing journal. The first half of the
book was filled with tiny cursive handwriting, distinctly feminine. I
read a line or two.

When I looked up again, Ana DeLeon was standing at
the window.

On the sill next to her were three porcelain mugs,
all shaped like grotesque sailors' faces with long noses and cherry
cheeks and glazed rum-sodden smiles. Ana DeLeon was circling her
finger absently around the rim of one.

"Mind if I check this out?" I asked.

It took her a while to focus on me. "What?"

"This journal. Hector's sister's. I thought I
would borrow it."

"Let me see it."

DeLeon flipped some pages. She looked at the words
without reading them, traced the edges of the cover.

She handed the journal back to me. "I should
tell you no. But I can't see that it'll be missed."

"No photographs."

"What?"

"No photographs anywhere," I told her.
"None of Sandra. None of anybody else, for that matter. Did you
find any during the search?"

"I don't recall any."

I looked out the window. Under a stand of cedars,
half a dozen chickens were clucking and pecking around the feet of
some SWAT guys.

One of the men, an assault rifle on his knee and
greasepaint under his eyes, glanced in my direction. I smiled. He
didn't smile back.

I looked down at the grinning sailor's-head mugs. The
mugs didn't offer any advice.

I looked toward the closet.

"What?" DeLeon asked immediately.

I walked over to the closet, crouched down, tugged
the tiny glinting piece of red and gold paper from the crack in the
cement.

DeLeon stood over me. "What is it?"

I kept the paper wrapper curled in my palm while my
finger traced the almost invisible seam on the closet floor — the
square outline I would've missed if not for the paper. "Trapdoor."

DeLeon said, "Stand back."

DeLeon yelled out the window for some assistance,
somebody with a crowbar.

Thirty seconds later the little room was filled with
cops.