He grinned and chewed his gum furiously and skipped a stone across the water.
'Black people say you spit on your hook, you always catch fish. You believe that?' he said.
'Could be.'
'How come you don't marry Temple Carrol?'
'You have too many thoughts for a boy your age.'
'She sure spends a lot of time jogging past your house.'
'Why do you have Temple Carrol on the brain this evening, Pete?'
'Cause there she comes now.'
I looked over my shoulder and saw Temple's car drive past my garage and barn and chicken run and windmill, then follow the dirt track out to the levee that circled the tank. Pete thought that was hilarious.
Temple got out of her car and walked up the slope of the levee. Her face looked cool and pink in the twilight.
'He's out,' she said.
'Moon?'
'None other.'
'Excuse us, Pete.'
I leaned my cane pole in the fork of a redbud tree, and we walked down the levee. The late red sun looked like molten metal through the willows on the far bank.
'He was at your office,' she said.
'What?
'Sitting on your steps for maybe an hour. In a blue serge suit and a Hawaiian shirt that's like an assault on the eyeballs. I told him your office was closed. He just sat there, cleaning his fingernails.'
'Don't mess with him, Temple. Next time call the cops.'
'What do you think I did? A half hour later, this new deputy, Mary Beth Sweeney, shows up. I told her I was glad somebody from the sheriff's department could finally make the trip from across the street. Get this, nobody sent her. She just happened to be driving by. She told him to hoof it.'
Temple forked two fingers into the side pocket of her blue jeans.
'He left you a note,' she said.
It was written in pencil, on the inside of a flattened cigarette wrapper.
Mr Holland, I find it damn inconsiderate you dont post your office hours. Call me at the Green Parrot Motel to talk this thing out.
Garland T. Moon
We were back at her car now. She opened the driver's door and reached across the seat and picked up a revolver. It was an ancient. 38-40 double-action, the metal as dull as an old nickel with holster wear.
'Keep this. You can add it to your historical collection,' she said.
'Nope.'
'I got a friend in Austin to run Moon on the computer. Corrections thinks he did two snitches in Sugarland.'
'Thanks for coming by, Temple.'
She lowered the revolver, which she held sideways in her palm.
'Where's it end?' she said.
'Excuse me?'
'You gave up your badge, then your career as a prosecutor with the Justice Department…' She shook her head. 'Because you think an accidental death takes away your right to judge people who are evil?'
'Pete and I are fixing to fry up some fish. You're welcome to join us.'
'You make me so mad I want to hit you,' she said.
Later that evening, I called the sheriff at his home.
'My PI made a 911 on Garland Moon,' I said.
'So?'
'Nobody was dispatched.'
'What's the man done?' he asked.
'He was in your custody. You let him out. I don't want him on my doorstep.'
'You think I want this lunatic on the street?'
'To tell you the truth, I'm not sure, sheriff.'
'You're a natural-born pain in the ass, Billy Bob. Don't be calling my house again.'
After I hung up, I called a friend in the sheriff's department and got the address of Mary Beth Sweeney. She lived in a new two-story apartment complex with a swimming pool just outside of town. It was 9 p.m. when I walked up the brick pathway at the entrance, and the underwater lights in the pool were turned on and pine needles and a glaze of suntan lotion floated on the surface. The lawn was empty, the portable barbecue pits left on the flagstones feathering with smoke.
I climbed to the second landing and rang her doorbell. My right hand opened and closed at my side and I felt warm inside my coat and wished I had left it in the Avalon.
Her face had a meaningless expression when she opened the door.
'Sorry to bother you at home. But I heard Garland Moon was at my office,' I said.
'Yes, is there something I can tell you?'
'Maybe. If I'm not bothering you.'
I waited.
'Come in,' she said.
Her small living room was furnished with rattan chairs and a couch and a round glass table. A yellow counter with three stools divided the kitchen from the living room. She was barefoot and wore jeans and a white and burnt orange University of Texas Longhorn T-shirt. A copy of The New Yorker was splayed open on the glass tabletop and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses lay next to it.
'You just happened by and saw Moon outside my office?' I said.
'What's this about, Mr Holland?'
'I think I'm developing an ongoing problem with the sheriff's office. I think it's because of Lucas Smothers.'
She hadn't asked me to sit down. She placed one hand against the counter and pushed her feet into a pair of white moccasins as though she were about to go somewhere. Her eyes were violet colored, unfocused, caught somewhere between two thoughts.
'You shouldn't come here,' she said.
'I wonder how I should read that. Is there hidden meaning there? I always have trouble with encoded speech.'
'If you don't like rudeness, you shouldn't keep forcing the issue, Mr Holland.'
'My name is Billy Bob.'
'I know who you are.' Then I saw the color flare behind her freckles, not from anger but as if she had made an admission she shouldn't.
'You like Mexican food?' I asked.
'Good night.' She put her hand on the doorknob and turned it.
'Tomorrow night? I appreciate what you've done for me.'
She opened the door and I started outside. I was only inches away from her now and I could smell the perfume behind her ears and hear her breathing and see the rise and fall of her breasts. A tiny gold chain and cross hung around her neck.
'Moon won't come at you head-on. He'll use Jimmy Cole,' she said.
I felt my mouth part as I stared into her eyes.
It was sunrise the next morning when I pulled into the dirt drive of Vernon Smothers's two-bedroom white frame house, with a mimosa in the front yard, a sprinkler spinning in a sickly fashion by the wood steps, a partially collapsed garage in back, and every available foot of surrounding property under cultivation.
I walked along the edge of a bean field to an irrigation ditch where Lucas stood up to his knees in the water, raking dead vegetation out of the bottom and piling it on the bank.
