The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan (7 page)

The uniform stifled a yawn. Probably, like Ozzie,
he'd been pulling fiesta duty all last week. "Half the shift
called in sick at the substation, ma'am. We're covering the whole
South Side today."

DeLeon sighed, turned to Kelsey. "I wanted SWAT
here. Where are they?" \

"No point," Kelsey said. "I told the
lieutenant not to bother."

DeLeon stared at him. "You what?"

Kelsey put a piece of spear grass to his mouth. He
bit the end and spit it out.

"This ain't that hard, partner. We going to bust
Sanchez or wait here all day under the poontang trees?"

The second uniformed officer suppressed a smile.
Kelsey grinned at DeLeon, waiting for her response.

"Probably be unwise to stay here," I broke
in. "Been so long since Kelsey's smelled the real thing."

Kelsey's nose reddened.

Ozzie laughed louder than he needed to, slapped me on
the back. "Smelled the real thing. That was good, Navarre. Joke,
Detective. You know?"

Kelsey didn't smile. He pointed his middle finger at
my chest. "You sign a release to ride in that car?"

"Sure he has," Gerson lied.

Kelsey nodded. "Which means something
unfortunate happens in the course of our work, Mr. Navarre, I got no
legal liability. With that said, you want to come along, fine by me."

He nodded to the uniforms and they fell in line as
Kelsey trudged up the gravel drive. After a resentful glance at me,
DeLeon followed. Ozzie and I brought up the rear.

"Kelsey's okay," Ozzie assured me. "First
time I had to work with a piece of ass, it was tough on me too."

I told Ozzie that made me feel a lot better.
Apparently Ozzie took me seriously, because he patted my shoulder
paternally. "Nobody's going to hurt you, kid. Stick with me."

Friends are grand.

We walked toward the porch of the cinder-block
building.

Kelsey stopped ten feet from the edge of the porch.
He looked at the high grass and sticker burrs and swarms of gnats one
would have to tromp through to get to the back of the house, assuming
there was even a door on that side.

"This looks like the back entrance," Kelsey
decided. He smiled at DeLeon. "I think you should have the honor
of taking the front, since you're primary. Don't you?"

DeLeon didn't hesitate. She dropped her paperwork,
took her Glock from the holster. "Absolutely."

She made a wide arc around the house, using her gun
to part the weeds. Kelsey grinned at the uniforms, then directed one
of them toward the white mobile home farther out in the field. He was
about to step up on the porch when Ozzie nudged his arm. "Yo,
Detective. Sheriffs jurisdiction?"

Kelsey waved him ahead with an exaggerated flourish.
"Be my guest, Deputy."

Gerson pointed at me, then pointed far away. I backed
up to the open edge of the porch. Kelsey and the other uniform moved
to the other side, where the foot of the L-shaped house jutted out.

Gerson banged on the door. It was a particleboard
job, thinly painted white, no window or peephole.

"Hey, Sanchez!"

Shouting erupted from the mobile home across the
field. I looked over and saw a dark-skinned man standing in the
doorway, yelling at the uniformed officer. The officer was holding up
his hands, trying to get the guy to quiet down. The man in the
doorway looked like he had been asleep thirty seconds before. He wore
only grimy white boxer shorts. His upper body was well muscled and
his head was bald and  rown as an egg.

"What the fuck is this, man?" he yelled.
"Otra vez?"

He looked in our direction. When he spoke again it
was even louder, like he wanted us all to hear. "I got to go to
work in a few minutes, hijo de puta. Respectable job. What the hell,
damn pinche cabrones on my chingate property—"

He kept cursing in Tex-spanol, shifting his weight
stiffly from foot to foot. From the way the uniform was reacting, and
from the bland look Kelsey gave the altercation, I got the feeling
Baldie was not the man we really wanted.

Ozzie Gerson banged on the door again. "Yo,
Zeta. Open up, man. Got some friends out here—"

Snap.

The first shot made a splinter-flower in the door.
The second ripped a hole through Ozzie's left shoulder.

Immediately a third shot punched through the
particle-board door, a little bit higher, but Ozzie had already
turned and dived full force into the cement. He started scrabbling
away, trailing blood.

Kelsey and the uniformed officer hit the ground on
top of each other, their weapons drawn. The uniform swung around the
corner of the building, firing two rounds into the door. On the
second shot Kelsey lunged out at ground level and tried to grab Ozzie
by the collar, but someone in the house returned fire and Kelsey fell
back to the wall. Ozzie kept crawling on his own. Time slowed to the
consistency of sap.

I remember standing paralyzed by the edge of the
porch, then feeling a sickening momentum build up in my gut. I ran
toward Ozzie, collapsing into a forward roll as another shot was
fired, landing by Gerson, grabbing his bloody uniform shirt,
beginning to pull. Kelsey shouted curses at me but then he was there
too, helping. Together we lugged Ozzie around the corner of the
building. Ozzie made wet sounds of pain.

The uniform next to me was yelling a code 10-11 into
his field unit. The uniform at the mobile home was screaming at the
bald guy to get on the floor. I looked over in time to see the
officer's nightstick flash. Two strikes to the knees and Baldie
crumpled awkwardly on the steps. At the count of three, his hands
were cuffed in the small of his back.

No more shots came from inside the cinder-block
house.

Ozzie Gerson was propped up against the wall,
alternately cursing and screaming. There were so many voices I almost
didn't hear the other noises coming from around the back of the
building.

A door slammed. There was a muffled thud, some
rustling. Then a very loud: "Hey!"

It was DeLeon's voice. A single shot ricocheted off
brick, followed by more scuffling noises.

I locked eyes with Kelsey and just for an instant I
saw what the bastard was thinking, what options he was weighing. Only
one of those options was running to DeLeon's assistance. Then he was
up and moving but I was already ahead of him, ripping through the
brush and stickers.

When we got to the back of the house it was already
over.

A second Latino man was kneeling with his chest and
the side of his face slammed into the back wall of the house. He wore
only jeans and huarache sandals. He was an enormous man, dark-skinned
and hairy as a timber wolf. It was hard to tell much else about his
looks because they were mostly ruined by the pistol-whipping he'd
received. Nearby in the dirt lay car keys and a gun — a
long-barreled .38.

Detective DeLeon didn't look much better than her
apprehendee. Her skirt was torn and her panty hose reduced to amber
cobwebs. Her white blouse was ripped. Her blazer floated in the tall
grass nearby like some kind of pointy scarecrow. She had shiny red
cross-hatching on her cheek and a line of blood down the side of her
mouth.

She also had her Glock 23 pressed decisively under
Timber Wolf's ear and was in the process of cuffing him one-handed.

Kelsey looked at her, looked at me, then lowered his
weapon. He shouted our status to the officer at the front of the
house.

Three seconds later the young uniform came busting
out the back door with his gun drawn. He took one look at DeLeon and
the apprehendee I assumed was Zeta Sanchez and was so surprised he
nearly backed up into the house.

DeLeon got up and wiped her bloody mouth with the
back of her hand. She let the uniform take over with Zeta Sanchez,
then stumbled toward Kelsey and muttered, "Thanks for the front
door."

She stumbled again as she walked past us. Sirens were
already wailing in the distance.

Kelsey watched her go. In a tone of grudging
admiration he muttered, "I'll be damned."

I turned and punched him hard in the gut.

It was a tai chi upper cut, only slightly less
forceful than a pile driver. By the time I regained the feeling in my
hand, Kelsey was doubled over, contemplating the pool his lunch had
made in the dirt.

Then I walked back around the corner of the house,
figuring I should try to help stop the bleeding of another guy I
didn't like much either.
 
 

SEVEN

That evening after the Eyewitness News I owed Andy
Warhol a reimbursement check for two and a half minutes.

With a concerned face, KENS anchorman Chris Marrou
told San Antonio all about my day — how a pipe bomb this morning
had nearly killed a private investigator, a UTSA administrator, and
an SAPD homicide investigator; how the incident had spurred police
into swift action this afternoon, leading to a bloody standoff and
finally the arrest of longtime fugitive Anthony "Zeta"
Sanchez. Police would not officially comment on Sanchez's connection
with this morning's bombing or the recent murder of UTSA's Professor
Aaron Brandon, but unnamed sources confirmed that indictments on both
counts were imminent. Rumors had surfaced about Sanchez's onetime
employment by the Brandon family and Sanchez's possible role in the
1993 murder of Aaron's father, Jeremiah, none of which the SAPD would
comment on.

"But the UTSA campus," Chris Marrou assured
me, "is breathing a collective sigh of relief tonight."

Chris seemed mildly disappointed that he couldn't
offer a more detailed explanation for Zeta Sanchez's actions, but
what the heck. The footage was good. The news cameras kept zooming in
on Hector Mara's bloody front porch, the bloody back wall of his
house, the bullet holes in the door. Grade A local news. A mug shot
of Anthony "Zeta" Sanchez looked a lot better than Zeta had
in person — a handsome, sharply angular face, mustache and beard no
thicker than marking pen around his jaw and mouth. He had the
heavy-lidded eyes and deceptively calm expression of a well-fed
carnivore.

Marrou told us that Deputy Oswald Gerson was in
critical but stable condition at Brooke Army Medical Center, that
Hector Mara of 11043 Green Road had been questioned and released by
police, and that the D.A. was praising the efforts of the detectives
involved in today's arrest. I turned off the news. I fixed myself a
margarita, took it out to the back patio, and sank into my well-worn
butterfly chair.

I sipped painkiller-on-the-rocks while the sun went
down over Mrs. Geradino's garage. The webworm patches in her pecan
tree glittered orange. Her sprinkler sliced across the yard. The
Geradino babies — six Chihuahuas that resembled boiled and shucked
armadillos — yapped mutely at me from the other side of their
mother's glass patio doors. Your basic romantic sunset at 90 Queen
Anne.

I thought about Jeremiah Brandon — the old turkey
buzzard with his seedy connections to the carnival circuit and his
appetite for underage women that had eventually gotten him killed. I
kept envisioning his face from the 1967 photograph, stuck on a body
with no chest — a broken pinata thrown into the corner of a West
Side barroom, surrounded by stone-faced employees who hadn't seen a
thing. I thought about Jeremiah's two sons, Del and Aaron, and what
it might've been like growing up in a family that made amusement
rides. A kid's dream. Maybe Aaron Brandon had fond memories. Maybe
he'd taken his own five-year-old son Michael to Uncle Del's shop from
time to time to try out the products.

Or maybe growing up around the carnival business had
been an endless series of encounters with people like Zeta Sanchez,
carny owners with the same hungry eyes as Jeremiah Brandon. Maybe
that kind of childhood produced an adult who studied medieval gore
and monster stories and Crusade massacres. Maybe Aaron Brandon kept
his little boy the hell away from that shop.

I took a long hit on my margarita.

The sun had almost disappeared behind Mrs. Geradino's
garage. I checked my watch. Two hours before I was supposed to pick
up George Berton for our double date. Enough time to visit my worried
mother, maybe make one other stop before that.

I began the almost impossible task of getting out of
a butterfly chair with a margarita in one hand. I wasn't making much
progress when the back door creaked open and a man's voice said,
"Undignified, vato. Somebody was to shoot you like that, you'd
spout like a wine sack."

I turned my head. "Your perception of the world
is overly grim, Ralphas." Ralph Arguello grinned in my doorway,
his knuckles rapping lightly on the frame as if some long-dormant
instinct was reminding his body that it was polite to knock.

Ralph's chili-red face was completely clear of life's
little worries — self-consciousness, doubt, morality. His eyes
floated behind thick round glasses and his salt-and-pepper hair was
pulled back in a tight ponytail. He wore an extra-large white linen
shirt and black jeans. Several gold rings set with onyx stones
glittered on his punching hand. "Sounded like you had a rough
day, vato. Came by to see if you made it through."