'Buy me a beer,' I said.
For one second I really thought he was going to bolt. His knuckles on the strap of the backpack went white. Then he shoved past me, angry but slow-heading for the bar like a kid who'd been told to go to the principal's office and knew the way by heart.
We sat at the same table I'd been occupying. My seat was still warm. Brent slid across from me with a beer. One for me-none for him. He passed the beer over and then waited for my reaction, like I might tell him he could go now.
I didn't.
'New York,' I said. 'Where then?'
Brent let out a little hiss of air. He looked strange with the fake prescription glasses, older somehow. He also looked strange because for the first time, he'd taken pains with his appearance. Real pains. He was closely shaven and immaculately clean. Not bad for a guy who had been a charred pile of ashes a few days ago.
Apparently a few papery lies floated through his mind before he decided not to try them. Finally he just said, 'I don't know.'
'Les hadn't thought it that far ahead?' I asked. 'Or you just don't know what he had planned?'
Brent shook his head. 'What do you want, Navarre?'
He didn't sound very anxious to hear the answer.
'I don't need a confession,' I said. 'I know the basics. Les had to go somewhere when he got scared away from his hiding place on Medina Lake. He'd already decided you were a kindred soul-you'd spent time together, you didn't give a damn, you knew what it was like being a shell. You also knew what it was like getting suckered into something by Miranda.'
I waited for him to contradict me. He didn't.
' Les came to you and you agreed to put him up in the upper room of the apartment.
Maybe a week and a half ago?'
Very slightly, Brent nodded.
'At some point, Les got drunk. Then he got stupid. He was a pill popper. He thought he recognized something in your medicine cabinet-something cosmetically similar to one of his favourite drugs. He took it and collapsed- diabetic coma. Maybe he didn't die right away. Maybe he stayed in a coma for a while, but eventually you realized you had a dying human vegetable on your hands. Les already had plans, had an identity, had money and an escape and everything he needed to get a new start. A man in his forties, with money and no connections. Les didn't need it anymore, so you decided you'd take it. Brent Daniels didn't have much of a future, did he? And he sure as hell didn't have much of a past. You burned his body in that tractorshed apartment along with Brent Daniels' identity.'
Again I could only judge the truth of what I said by Brent's eyes. Nothing snagged in his expression. He let it roll over him, not pulling back, not giving any indication anything was wrong. Or maybe he was just too dazed to let any reaction show.
'That's why Les never collected his fifty grand from the boat shed. He wasn't alive to do it, and you didn't know anything about it. How much did you know about, Brent?
With the keys to Les' new identity, maybe a change of photo or two-you could have whatever you wanted. To make it work, you must have access to at least a few of the late Mr. Meissner's accounts.'
'You want to go now?' he asked. It was clear the 'you' was actually 'we,' that he expected somebody to put on the cuffs.
'No,' I said.
Brent stared at my beer. He let his shoulders sag down under the weight of the backpack.
'No?'
Total disbelief. Incredulity. I felt some of that myself, but I still shook my head. I heard myself saying, 'You've got ten minutes. Maybe I think you deserve it. A lot more than Les SaintPierre did.'
Brent stayed frozen at first. Then slowly, testing the theory, he got to his feet.
'One thing,' I said. 'One thing I need an answer about.'
He waited.
I drank some more beer before I tried to speak again. Then I met Brent's eyes.
'There's another possible scenario. One I don't want to accept. The scenario where you gave Les those pills intentionally, knowing what they'd do to his alcoholic liver. Les was dead a lot longer than just a day or a few hours-he was dead long enough for you to really put the plan back together. Those septic tanks in the backyard- one of the newer ones had been buried, then dug up again just before the fire. That wasn't just coincidence. It wasn't just holding gray water, either.'
Brent waited.
'Tell me that's not the way it was. It wasn't intentional.'
Brent shook his head. Then said, almost inaudibly, 'It wasn't.'
He shouldered his backpack a little more firmly.
He met my eyes.
'I couldn't stand to hear those songs sung,' he said. 'It was a mistake, letting them out.
If I heard them on the radio, Miranda singing them…'
He closed his eyes so tight he gave the impression of a man about to pull the trigger next to his temple.
'Catch your plane,' I said.
It was hard sounding convinced, sounding like it was really the best thing. It was even harder watching him walk away, but I did. The last I saw was his cowboy hat, just before the Latino kid riding on his dad's shoulders stepped into line and started bouncing up and down along the gateway tunnel, waving his arms out to the side like he was an airplane, obscuring my last view of Brent.
The stewardess smiled and rolled her eyes at the skycap with the empty wheelchair next to her. Kids.
I got up and looked down at the beer Brent had bought me, what was left of it. I dumped it in the bromeliads and walked away.
My phone conversation with Professor Mitchell at UTSA lasted exactly thirty seconds.
He offered me the job. I said I was honoured and I'd have to think about it.
'I understand, son.' He tried to make his tone not too obvious-that he didn't understand, that he thought I was an idiot for even hesitating. 'When can you let us know?'
I told him next week. I told him I had another kind of class to finish up between now and then. He said fine.
After hanging up, I spent a long time staring at the crepe myrtle out the kitchen window. It was a relief twenty minutes later when Erainya did her customary unsyncopated rattattat on the screendoor frame.
When I opened the door Jem laughed and just about launched a twolayer cake into my chest as he came in. Fortunately I caught the cake while it was still in one piece and raised it up, allowing Jem free rein to tackle me.
Robert Johnson mewed a complaint and disappeared into the closet. He probably remembered the last time the Manoses had come over.
Erainya stepped in and looked around my apartment. 'So you're still alive. You don't call why-you forget the number?'
Jem was explaining to me about the cake. He told me that we'd have to wait until I really finished my hours to eat it but he'd made it himself with his food colouring kit and I wouldn't believe the colours inside when I opened it up. The outside was forbidding enough-lumpy gray frosting that looked like the product a cement finger painting session, the layers uneven and offcentre so the cake seemed to be leaning away from me on its plate.
'It's just about the nicest cake I've ever seen, Bubba.'
Jem giggled, then went to find the cat.
In the top of the closet a shoe box moved.
Erainya was still waiting for an answer to her question. She was giving me the lookofdeath treatment, her black eyes bugging toward me and her talon fingers tap ping her forearm.
'I got ten hours left,' I told her. 'That's about one job. You figure we can avoid arguing that long?'
'It's twenty,' she reminded me. 'And I don't know, honey. You going to get yourself sidetracked again?'
'Professor Mitchell is probably wondering the same thing.'
