The Jealous Kind (6 page)

“He said a Mexican woman, a prostitute, was killed two blocks from the burned car. He thinks she was mixed up in the burning of the car. He says the cops found the gasoline can that did the job. It was in Saber's garage.”

There was a long silence. I couldn't look at him. “Daddy?” I said. But he didn't answer. “Daddy, say something.”

“What have you got us into, son?”

S
ABER WASN'T AT
school the next day. I didn't know if his father had beat him up or if he had just cut school. Mr. Bledsoe was from rural Alabama. He wasn't a bad man, but he was uneducated and insecure and frightened and each day had to scrub off the grime from his job at a rendering plant with Ajax and a bar of Lava soap and a stiff brush. Whenever I saw a bruise on Saber, I didn't ask about it. I didn't think Mr. Bledsoe meant to hurt his son. When he was drunk, he made me think of a sightless pig trapped inside a circle of javelins.

At three o'clock I hitched a ride to Saber's small frame house on the edge of the West University district. He was under his Chevy on a creeper board, his legs on the grass. I grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him out. He had a wrench in one hand; he rubbed at a piece of rust in his eye. “What the hell,” he said.

“Why weren't you at school?”

“Didn't feel like answering questions all over campus. Besides, I wanted to put my split manifold on the engine and hang my new mufflers. I filled them with oil first and set the oil on fire. The carbon gives it that throaty sound.”

“You're thinking about putting dual exhausts on your heap when the cops are trying to send us to Gatesville?”

He pulled his knees up in front of him, his skin dark in the shade of the car. He used his shirt to wipe the grease off his cheek. “I don't know where that gasoline can came from. I told that to the detective.
So did my old man. I was proud of him. He told the detective to pack his shit up both nostrils.”

“I hate to tell you this, Sabe, but that's not smart.”

“I thought it was. They're after us, Aaron. I told you.”

“Who is ‘they'?”

“Ask yourself where all this started.”

I shook my head.

“Don't play dumb,” he said. “This is about Valerie Epstein.”

“No, it's not.”

“You went to see her, and the next thing you know, Loren Nichols and his greaseballs show up in front of her house. The next day the same guys show up at school and in my driveway. In the meantime, Mr. Krauser is twirling his joint in the punch bowl.”

“I can't tell you what that image does to my brain.”

“Who's the guy getting a free pass on all this?” he asked.

“You tell me.”

“Stop acting like a simp. You're talking to the Bledsoe, the Delphic oracle of Houston, Texas.” He cocked back his head and spat in the air, catching his saliva on the return trip in his mouth.

“You're unbelievable.”

“I know. I also know Grady Harrelson is a prick from his hairline to the soles of his feet. I think we should make some home calls.”

He pulled himself back under the car and finished hanging one of his dual mufflers on a bracket, oblivious to the rest of the world.

R
IVER OAKS WAS
foreign territory. It wasn't simply a section of the city that contained some of the most beautiful homes in America or perhaps the world; it was a state of mind. Unlike the Garden District in New Orleans, the mansions of River Oaks were not connected to the antebellum South and not stained by association with the lash and branding iron and auction block. Inside an urban forest were homes as white and pure as a wedding cake, the St. Augustine lawns a deep blue-green in the shade, the gardens and trellises and gazebos blooming with flowers as big as grapefruit, almost all of it bought and paid
for by oil that sprang like chocolate syrup from the ground, oceans of it put there by a loving Creator.

Police cruisers rarely patrolled the streets. They didn't need to; no professional criminal would invade a sanctuary like River Oaks. The afternoon was cooling, the streets dropping into shadow as we motored toward Grady Harrelson's house, Saber's new mufflers rumbling off the asphalt. I asked him how he knew where Grady lived.

“A year ago he shoved my cousin into the Shamrock swimming pool with all her clothes on. On prom night I followed him and his girlfriend to his house. His folks were away, and he thought he'd use the opportunity to get his knob polished at home. I bagged up a dead skunk and shoved it through his mail slot with a broom handle.”

“I don't believe you.”

“So ask him about it. His girlfriend was screaming, and every light in the house was on when I left.”

I looked at the side of his face. His expression was serene. The Bledsoe never lied, at least not about his one-man crusade against hypocrisy and phoniness. Sometimes I longed to know his secrets, but even at my young age, I knew he had paid a high price for them. “I don't know if this is a good idea.”

“You got to do recon,” he said. “Write down license numbers. See who's going in and out of the house. I've got connections at the motor vehicle department.”

“Grady Harrelson's father will have us ground into salt.”

“That's my point. We'll get the coordinates on these guys and call in the artillery.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“Grady is out to hurt you, Aaron. I'm not going to let that happen.” He put his hand on my forearm and squeezed it, maybe for longer than he should. “You're the only real family I got.”

W
E WERE NOW
on the outer edge of River Oaks, in an area where the yards were banked and measured in acres, the houses three stories high with white-columned porches, the driveways circular and
shaded by trees that creaked in the wind. The sky was a soft blue, the lawns deep in shadow, the air scented with flowers and chlorine and meat fires. The interior of every house tinkled with golden light.

Saber began reciting the encyclopedic levels of information he had on the Harrelson family; I would have dismissed most everything he said if it had come from anyone else. But he had a brain like flypaper and never forgot anything.

“See, the old man isn't just a rice farmer and oil driller. He's mixed up with these Galveston mobsters who're moving out to Vegas,” he said. “You know their names.”

“What do you mean, I know?”

“Your uncle is buddies with some of these guys. It's no big deal, Aaron.”

“Don't be talking about my family like that. You get this stuff out of men's magazines with Japs on the cover, strafing naked women tied to stakes in the Amazon.”

“The best source of information in the nation,” he said. “Look at what we read in school,
Silas Marner
and
The House of the Seven Gables.
I bet that's what people in hell have to read for all eternity. Hitler and Tojo and guys like that.”

He coasted to the curb, under the limbs of a spreading oak, the engine coughing like a sick animal. Up ahead we could see the floodlamps shining on the front of Grady's house and a party taking place by the swimming pool in the side yard. Saber took a pair of binoculars from the glove box. I could feel my heart thudding against my ribs. He read my mind. “They cain't see us,” he said. “I'm going to read off these license plate numbers. You write them down.”

“This is nuts.”

“Take off the blinders, Aaron. How do you think these people got their money? Hard work? I bet this place is full of gangsters. How did Grady get discharged from the Marine Corps?”

“Grady Harrelson was in the marines?”

“He enlisted after he graduated. Except, when he was about to be shipped to Korea, he discovered he had asthma. His old man pulled strings. The guy's not just a tumblebug, he's yellow.”

“He might be a bad guy, but I don't think he's yellow.”

Saber began reading off license numbers, then stopped and took the binoculars from his eyes and wiped the lenses and looked through them again. “I don't need this.”

“Need what?”

He squeezed his scrotum. “My big boy just woke up with a vengeance. Check it out. You ever see a pair of cantaloupes like that? Those bongos were made in heaven.”

I took the binoculars from him and focused them on the pool. Nine or ten guys Grady's age were swimming or barbecuing or springing off the board. The obvious center of attention was a black-haired, dark-skinned woman who must have been in her late twenties. She was lying on a recliner, her white swimsuit like wet Kleenex.

“Who is she?” I said.

“Mexico's answer to Esther Williams.” He pulled the binoculars from my hands and looked through again. “Didn't I tell you the Harrelsons had ties to Galveston?”

“She's a pro?”

“No, she's the kindergarten teacher at St. Anne's Elementary. Say a prayer of thanks you have me to escort you through these situations. Oh, man, I'm about to shoot my wad. Look at that broad. It's criminal that a woman can be that beautiful.”

“You know those guys?” I asked.

“It's his regular crowd. Guys who went to military school because their parents don't want them. Know what makes them different from us?”

“They're rich?”

“They don't have feelings. After we do our recon, I'll drive you over to Valerie's. That's what's really on your mind, isn't it?”

“I want to tell her we didn't have anything to do with burning Loren Nichols's car.”

“Right, otherwise she'd be heartbroken.”

“Lay off it, Saber.”

But his attention had shifted to a kid who'd climbed up to the high board and was looking straight at us.

“Start the car,” I said.

Saber shook a cigarette out of his pack. “Bad form. There's a tire iron under your seat. I'd love to bash one of these guys. Maybe sling brains all over the bushes.”

“Are you serious? What's the matter with you? Start the car.”

“Too late. Don't rattle. You got to brass it out. Look upon this as an opportunity.”

A sea-green Cadillac with fins bounced out of the entrance to the driveway, and a Buick with a grille like a chromium mouth came up behind us, sealing off the street. We were shark meat. Grady's friends piled out of the cars. Grady, with the woman behind him, walked through the camellia bushes in his yard and opened the door to a piked fence and stepped out on the swale in his swim trunks and a pair of sandals. He tied a towel around his hair, like a turban, exposing his armpits. He was probably the most handsome young guy I'd ever seen. I could not understand how a kid who had so much could be the bastard he was. He leaned down to see who was in the car. “Bledsoe?”

“The chosen one himself,” Saber said. “How's it hangin', Harrelson? Love your pad. I hear you bonked the maid in your atom bomb shelter.”

“I dig your pipes.”

“I always knew you had taste.”

“But why is your shit machine parked in front of my house?”

“We got a situation we thought you could help us with,” Saber replied. “Aaron didn't mean to cause you any trouble at the drive-in restaurant, but you blamed your breakup with your girlfriend on him because he happened to say hello at the wrong time. That's definitely uncool. In the meantime, somebody has been trying to kick a telephone pole up our asses.”

“A telephone pole? Man, that's a sad story.”

“Framing us for a car arson, stoking up some hoods in the Heights, that sort of thing.”

Grady propped his hands on the Chevy's roof and seemed to reflect on Saber's words. The woman had hung a blue silk robe on her shoulders
and was watching from the other side of the piked fence. Her sloe eyes and her black hair curling damply around her neck made me think of a villainous movie actress.

“Do you see anyone else on this street, Bledsoe?” Grady asked.

“Not a soul.”

“Does that indicate the nature of your situation?”

“You mean y'all could rip us apart and stuff us down the storm drain and nobody would care?”

“I can tell nobody is putting anything over on you. But we don't want to see you hurt. You're a nice little guy. So I'll ask you again: What are you doing with your shit machine in front of my house, nice little guy?”

Saber sniffed at the air. “Y'all got skunks around here?”

“What?”

“Smell it? One of them must have come out of the coulee or the sewer. Maybe you could call in the marines and clean the place up. You know, semper fi, motherfucker, let's take names and kick ass and exterminate the smelly little varmints before they perfume the whole neighborhood and people stop believing our shit don't stink.”

Don't do this, Saber. Please, please, please don't.

“You been getting high on lighter fluid again, turd blossom?” Grady said.

“Heard you were in the Corps for a while. So was my old man. He was at Iwo Jima. Did you make it over to Korea before you got sent home?”

“Go back to that business about the skunks.”

“Before you know it, they'll be coming through your mailbox, maybe while you're muffing the town pump. What do they call that? Climax interruptus?”

“Get out of the car.”

“Up your nose,” Saber said.

I opened the door and stepped out on the asphalt and looked across the roof at Grady. “This is between you and me. Saber isn't involved. We shouldn't have come here. We'll leave.”

“You'll leave when
I tell you to. You haven't answered the question. Why are you parked in front of my fucking house?”

“I want to know if you sicced Loren Nichols on me,” I said.

I saw a tic under Grady's left eye, as though someone had touched the skin with a needle. “Who the fuck is Loren Nichols?”

“The guy whose car got burned,” Saber said.

“Step out of your heap, you slit-eyed freak,” Grady said.