The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan (32 page)

She glanced at the half-written lesson plans on the
counter. "I'm not helping you get those done."

"Tomorrow. I've got the whole weekend now. I'm
still supposed to visit George Berton in the hospital tonight."

"I didn't tell you the truth about Ralph."

I plinked the rim of my glass. "It was a little
more than just one date, wasn't it?"

She didn't say anything.

"So... you two used to be—" I searched
for the right word. Thinking about Ralph Arguello and Ana DeLeon, no
word seemed applicable. In fact, the whole idea seemed so absurd I
started to laugh. Or maybe it was the Herradura.

Ana scowled. "Oh, screw you."

"I'm sorry. It's just — I've never seen
anybody get under Ralph's skin the way you did today. At least not
somebody who lived to tell about it."

"He tricked me," she said. "He left me
feeling more betrayed than anybody I've ever known. If I got under
his skin — good."

My smile faded. "He really hurt you."

"He's your friend. You don't want to hear it."

"Ralph is my friend," I agreed, "in
spite of things that sometimes make me want to lock the door when he
comes over, or not answer his phone calls. Some of the things I know
about Ralph—"

I stopped. Ana didn't seem particularly surprised by
what I was saying, but I reminded myself somewhere under the tequila
buzz that I was talking to a homicide detective.

"Why do you keep him as a friend?" she
asked softly.

"Because he's the most fiercely loyal person
I've ever met. In some ways, he's also the most honest."

She made a sour laugh. "Honest."

"Ralph never lets me get away with anything. I
get deluded, Ralph is the one who brings me back to reality every
time. Ralph is never anything but Ralph. No pretense."

"For six weeks he convinced me he operated a
retail chain."

"His pawnshops. They are a retail chain."

She gave me a withering look. "And what do you
call the rest of it? Throwing electric fans at people.
Pistol-whipping them. Where the hell does that come from — that
side of him?"

It was my turn to be silent.

Ana swirled her drink. Between us, on the counter,
Robert Johnson had his feet tucked under his chest and his eyes
closed and his motor on full outboard purr. Life was good with Ana
DeLeon's fingers in your fur. The bastard.

"You must've guessed he had that side," I
told her. "You're a detective."

She scowled. "But he didn't — Ralph wasn't
like that. Intense, sure. Kind of crazy. Relentless when it came to
having fun. Like everything was on fire all the time with him. He
kind of — he took my breath away. But violence..."

She stopped herself, searching my face. I think she
realized she couldn't explain to me what she was thinking. She was
probably right. Ralph as a lover of women was not something I wanted
to understand. Especially not with this woman.

"I can see why Ralph would be loyal to you,"
she said.

"Are you insulting his intelligence?"

She smiled thinly. "No. You two have some things
in common."

I got a sudden intrusive image of Ralph outside the
U-Best Scrap Yard. He was grinning, checking out his newly washed
Cadillac, his thick glasses circles of gold.

Ana looked at her empty glass. "Never mind. The
tequila is talking."

"Let it talk. This week sucked."

She leaned toward me, clicked my glass with hers.
"Amen."

We were shoulder to shoulder again, the way we had
been this afternoon in my living room when she'd introduced me to my
make-believe girlfriend. Maybe it was the similarity in scenes, or
the killer margaritas, but the next thing I knew I was leaning toward
her and kissing her — tasting lime and triple sec, my vision
reduced to her temple and a sweep of glossy black hair.

We touched at the mouths only. Our arms stayed where
they were — mine, at least, too paralyzed by disbelief to take
further liberties. Finally, when I felt dizzy from oxygen loss and
the margarita buzz that mixed very well with the scent of Ana DeLeon,
she put her hard, long fingers gently on my chest and pushed me back.
 
She blinked slowly, sleepily, pulling her
lips inward as if to reclaim them. She shook her head, then laughed
as if she'd just caught herself doing something extremely silly.

"Mm-mm," she mumbled. "Not a good
idea."

"You want to try again, just to be sure?" I
was astonished my voice still worked.

She was still close enough that when she turned her
head and sighed, her breath made a cool path across my arm. "No
— listen, I need to go. You need to go visit your friend George."

"Ana—"

"Really, Tres. I've got to."

Deliberately, slowly, she slid down from the stool.
She retucked her T-shirt into her jeans, brushed off her denim shirt,
pushed the strands of hair out of her eyes.

"I'll call you tomorrow," she said. "About
the Brandon case."

I nodded.

"You'll let me know if Ralph calls?" she
asked. "He won't call me."

"I will. If he's speaking to me."

She reddened just slightly. "Good night."

"Night."

When the sound of her car engine faded down Queen
Anne, drowned out by the sounds of conjunto music from the Suitez
party across the street, I looked at Robert Johnson, who was still
sitting on the counter. His eyes were contentedly half-closed and his
fur still raked into furrows from Ana's fingers. He was purring.

"Don't gloat," I told him.

Then I went to get the margarita pitcher and see
about emptying the damn thing.
 

THIRTY-NINE

My body refused to get drunk. At least not drunk
enough to forgo visiting Brooke Army Medical Center later that night.
Definitely not drunk enough to handle the sight of George Berton.

Kelly Arguello was waiting for me outside the private
room. We relieved two of George's friends from the Elf Louise
program, then took their still-warm and very uncomfortable chairs
next to his bedside.

No nonrelatives should've been allowed in George's
room, of course, but the nursing staff seemed to have caved to
Erainya and Jenny's vigil plans as docilely as George's friends had.
Two of us would be with Berton at all times until he woke up — if
he ever did.

Kelly and I watched the lights on the bedside
monitors, the glow from nighttime fluorescents reflecting on George
Berton's Bryl-ed hair, the moisture that was crusting around his
unblinking eyelids. His chest rose and fell with the ventilator's
beat.

George looked like an insect half-chrysallized —
small desiccated patches of his old self just barely recognizable
under white swells of bandages, tubes, tape, and sheets. The skin of
his face, what was visible beneath the breathing apparatus, looked
thin as rice paper, streaked with capillaries. His hands lay at his
sides palm up, curled, and motionless.

We listened to the ventilator. The accordion pump
went up and down in its clear plastic tube, filling George's lungs
and deflating them with dispassionate efficiency.

"I want to bolt out of this room," Kelly
whispered. "Do you feel like that?"

She'd changed into jeans and a man's white
button-down, probably Uncle Ralph's. The sleeves were rolled up and I
caught the mixed scents of Ralph's bay rum on the linen and chlorine
from Kelly's skin and hair. I imagined she'd made time this evening
to visit the Alamo Heights pool, done a few hundred laps. Her hair
was tied back in a pony tail and the roots were still slightly damp.
She looked at me, her eyes soft and brown and gently pulling as Gulf
Coast surf.

"Put on a brave face," I said. "Sound
happy. Tell George he's looking good."

"He looks terrible, Tres. It's like he isn't
even in there."

"He's not a corpse."

"I know. It's just... Sorry. I'm talking like a
wimp."

I stared at a photo someone had put on George's
bedstand — a silver-framed picture of Berton, perhaps ten years
younger, and a pretty woman that I decided was his wife Melissa. They
were standing on a curve of granite overlooking the hill country —
probably the summit of Enchanted Rock. I'm sure the photo was meant
as a nice "get well" gesture for George, but somehow the
smile of that woman murdered so many years ago, the image of her with
her arms around George, made me uneasy.

When I looked again at Kelly, she was staring at my
chin — maybe tracing the network of tiny cuts there I'd received
from my tumble into the drainage ditch last night.

"What are you thinking?" I asked.

She gave me a small, sad smile. "It's nothing."

"Look, if you really want to leave—"

"No, no. I'm staying with Tio Ralph overnight. I
should be glad to be out of the apartment. He's in a pretty black
mood."

"About?"

"Oh — some woman."

She waited for a response. I didn't give her one.

"I was hoping Ralph had done himself a favor and
forgotten this lady. Apparently they ran into each other today. You
wouldn't think a woman could affect Ralph very much, would you?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Mmm."

The monitor lights continued blinking green. I found
myself watching the digital numbers of George's heart rate wavering
between 51 and 52. Occasionally the beat faltered and the numbers
blinked off completely, then came back on. After a few minutes of
watching this, I had to look away. Kelly took something out of her
pocket. "Before I forget. Maybe this is nothing. We found it
when we were sorting George's files."

She handed me a carbon copy of a While-you-were-out
message from Erainya's phone record book, written in George Berton's
immaculate cursive, dated Wednesday. The note said, Poco Mas.
Brandon. Mami called back. "Make any sense to you?" Kelly
asked.

"No, but I'll follow up."

Kelly nodded. With what was obviously great force of
will, she leaned toward the bed and touched George's forearm in the
free space between the hospital wristband and his IV plug.

She blinked, then withdrew her fingers, apparently
satisfied that Berton was really there.

"You think all George's friends balance out?"
she asked me.

"Against what?"

"Melissa. I was thinking about something Jenny
told me — how different George was before he lost his wife. You
didn't know him back then?"

"No."

"Apparently not many people did. Jenny made him
sound like a completely different person — tender with Melissa but
arrogant with everybody else. Very few friends. Heavy drinker. A
hell-raiser. According to Jenny, George used to act like this air
force hotshot and a lot of people hated him. Can you imagine?"

I admitted that it didn't sound like the George I
knew.

"Then he lost Melissa and it just — made him
gentle. Charity work. New friends. Always time for anybody. Most
thoughtful guy you'd ever—" Kelly stopped, exhaled a shaky
breath. "So do you think it balanced out, Tres? You think the
friends ever made up for losing that one person?"

"I'd guess it doesn't work that way."

"Kind of scary that one person can count for so
much. I hear about a couple like George and Melissa and I don't know.
Maybe I'm jealous, or maybe I'm scared as hell and thankful that I
don't have somebody that important. Does that make sense?"

I didn't answer.

She smiled sadly, examined my face some more, then
reached up and rubbed her thumb against my lower lip, along the side
of my mouth.

Her thumb came away tinted red from Ana DeLeon's
lipstick. Kelly wiped the color off on her jeans.

We stayed next to George until two of his friends
from the Big Brother program came to relieve us.
 

FORTY

The Poco Mas Cantina was a different place on
Saturday morning. Only one battered pickup truck sat in the front
lot, and the music coming from inside the bar was subdued, a soft
instrumental corrido. In the daylight the bar's facade showed its
age. Pastel stucco walls were bleached and cracked like a
grandmother's makeup; the air-conditioner units whined asthmatically
as they dripped condensation onto the gravel.

Inside, one customer, a muscle-bound Latino man in
T-shirt and shorts, was sleeping at the center pink Formica table
amid wadded-up dollar bills and empty beer bottles. The old bartender
with the silver grease-mark hair was placing last night's dirty
glasses into a washer rack. A younger assistant stood at the liquor
display with a clipboard, doing inventory. At the back booth, where
I'd encountered Mary and the armed locos three nights before, a
chubby, fiftyish Latina woman was counting money into a cash box. She
was one of the women I'd seen Wednesday evening, lap-hopping at the
bookies' tables. She still wore the same uniform — tight red dress,
red hose, smeared peach makeup, hair like a blowtorch.