“And you never came up with anything else?” Jay asks, try ing to think of how to put it. “Any other relationships worth nothing? Cops, sheriff’s deputies? Federal agents? Anything like that?”
Rolly raises an eyebrow. “What’s your deal with this girl again?”
“What about government work?” Jay asks, pushing the issue. “What’d she do after she left Cole?”
“I told you, she got in the real estate game.”
Rolly pulls off the 59 freeway somewhere past Beechnut.
“The girl landed on her feet pretty good.” He turns off the freeway feeder road into a subdivision called Sugar Oaks Planta tion. “ ’Cause short of owning your own oil well, real estate is about the best game in town. If you’re thinking the girl’s got money, it’s a good guess that’s where she earned it.”
Only Jay hadn’t thought she
In his gut, he had believed the girl was trouble, or at least
In his head, it was the government, not somebody like Thomas Cole.
In his head, they were using her to get to him.
But he has been known to see things that aren’t there, to wake up some nights reaching for his gun, reaching for a world that no longer exists, for friends who are gone. He has been known to jump at sudden noises, to fear a stranger’s smile. He is not sure a broken heart, a broken man, can be trusted.
Sugar Land, Texas, the crown jewel of Fort Bend County, was founded more than a hundred years ago as a cotton and sugar plantation. Which, apparently, is license enough for real estate developers to boldly embrace “plantation-style living” as a sell ing point, with absolutely no hint of irony or restraint. All across the county, savvy developers have sprawled colonial knockoffs and erected white columns over every square inch of newly razed pastureland, wrapping it all up in names like Sweetwater Plantation Estates and Oakville Plantation Homes and Colonial Dreams. At the Sugar Oaks Plantation, there are lawn jockeys at attention on the clipped lawn in front of the clubhouse. They are not black so much as they are tan—not exactly white, but rather some reassuring shade of brown, the universal color of good ser vice. They are meant as a reminder that somebody, somewhere, is working harder than you. The clubhouse, visible from as far back as the 59 freeway, is well lit and alive with good landscap ing and fresh white paint. But beyond it, the main road into the subdivision is dotted with stumpish baby pin oaks and clumps of clay and sand where grassy lawns should be. Most of the grand, palatial single-family homes advertised on the painted billboard (from the $120,000s!) on the highway are still in their skeletal phase. They are just skimpy wood frames poking up out of the dirt, casting strange, sickly shadows into the street. Beneath the hazy moonlight, Sugar Oaks looks less like a plantation and more like a cemetery.
At the back of the subdivision is the entrance to the Planta tion’s “condominium-st yle living quarters.” Rolly’s idea is to park the truck inside the apartment complex so as not to draw any attention on the main road. He’ll find a spot for the El Camino to hide, and Jay will go in alone. Rolly cuts the engine.
“They pick her up for killing a john?” he asks. “Is that the story?”
Jay shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
He remembers the groundskeeper’s description of the crime scene, the car discovered in a remote, empty field. A couple parked out there alone on a Saturday night, the victim’s pants undone. It certainly sounds like it was a date, legit or not. Jay turns to Rolly, thinking out loud, “To hear you tell it, the girl found a new call ing. Why would she go back to working backseats?”
“Some habits are hard to break,” Rolly says with a shrug. “Maybe if I knew a little more, you know, like what the hell is really going on here . . .”
Jay makes an impulsive decision to trust Rolly with the rest of it: the man from the black Ford, the blackmail money in his office, and his missing gun.
Rolly listens to the whole of it, whistling through his front teeth.
“Damn, man,” he says.
“I’m just trying to see what I’m dealing with, you know.”
“You don’t know who it was? The dead guy?”
“Just his name,” Jay says.
Rolly sits up in his seat. “Why don’t you let me take a crack at him?”
“What?”
“The dude,” Rolly says. “Let me find out who he is.”
“You think it’s so easy?”
“Shit, man.” Rolly shakes his head, as if he’s sorely disap pointed in Jay’s lack of faith. “ ’Course, I might need a little extra for it, you know.”
Rolly, always hustling.
“You find something,” Jay says. “I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”
“All right, man, cool.” He taps another Camel out of his pack.
“What about the phone records from the girl’s place?” Jay asks, knowing that Rolly keeps an on-and-off-again girlfriend at Southwestern Bell who has come in handy on more than one occasion. “I’m working on it,” Rolly says.
Jay finally starts out of the car.
Rolly leans across the seat. “You carrying?”
Jay thought about going in with a gun. After all, it’s more likely than not that this girl shot somebody. But instinct told him to go a different way, that armed he might only cause more trouble for himself. Hell, what if the girl takes one look at him and calls the cops. Empty-handed, he can always say he just came to talk. He shakes his head, waving Rolly off, assuring him that he’s fine. But, of course, he doesn’t feel fine. His ribs ache and his face is
