reminder that day of who or what he was.
I almost didn't recognize her when she got out of a taxi cab in my drive at noon the same day. She wore a powder-blue suit, heels, a white blouse, and a beige shoulder bag. But for some reason, in my mind's eye, I still saw the tall, naturally elegant woman in tan uniform and campaign hat. I opened the side door and stepped out under the porte cochere.
'Wow,' I said.
'Wow, yourself.'
'You sure look different.'
'That's the welcome?'
'Come in.' I opened the screen.
She hesitated. 'I don't want to interrupt your day.'
We seemed to be looking at each other like people who might have just met at a bus stop.
'I don't know what to say, Mary Beth. I got one phone message. My only source of information about you has been Brian Wilcox.'
'Brian?'
'He got a warrant and tossed my house.'
She looked away, her face full of thought.
'I'm not supposed to be here. My people are cutting a deal with the new sheriff,' she said.
'Your people?'
'Yes.'
The wind blew the curls on the back of her neck. I could hear the tin roof on the barn pinging with heat, like wires breaking.
'The locals are trying to jam you up on the shooting?' I said.
'It's their out. I handed it to them on a shovel.'
'Sammy Mace was a cop killer. He got what he had coming,' I said.
'Can we go inside, Billy Bob? We were in Denver this morning. I overdressed.'
She sat down at the kitchen table. I poured her a glass of iced tea. I ran cold water over my hands and dried them, not knowing why I did. Outside, the barn roof shimmered like a heliograph under the sun.
'My office is taking the weight for me. I screwed up, but they're taking the weight, anyway,' she said.
'A stand-up bunch. We're talking about the DEA?' I said.
Her back straightened under her coat. Her hand was crimped on a paper napkin, her gaze pointed out the window.
'I thought coming here was the right thing to do. But I'm all out of words, Billy Bob.'
'Can't we have dinner? Can't we spend some time together without talking about obligations to a government agency? You think you owe guys like Brian Wilcox?'
'This is pointless. Because you hung up your own career doesn't mean other-' She didn't finish. She put both her hands in her lap, then a moment later placed one hand on top of her shoulder bag.
I opened the refrigerator door to take out the iced tea pitcher again. Then closed it and stood stupidly in the center of the room, all of the wrong words already forming in my throat.
'An English writer, what's his name, E. M. Forster, once said if he had to choose between his country and his friend, he hoped he'd have the courage to choose his friend,' I said.
'I guess I missed that in my English lit survey course,' she said, rising from her chair. 'Can I use your phone to call a cab? I should have asked him to wait.'
'I apologize. Don't leave like this.'
She shook her head, then walked into the library and used the telephone. I stood in her way when she tried to walk down the hall to the front door.
'You see yourself as a failure. You put yourself through law school. You were a Texas Ranger and an AUSA. You can be a lawman again, anytime you want,' she said.
'Then stay. I'll cancel the cab.'
I put my hand on her arm. I saw the pause in her eyes, the antithetical thoughts she couldn't resolve, the pulse in her neck.
'I'd better go. I'll call later,' she said.
'Mary Beth-'
Then she was out the door, her cheeks glazed with color, her hand feeling behind her for the door handle so she would not have to look back at my face.
But by Monday morning there was no call. Instead, a dinged gas-guzzler stopped out front of my office and a woman in a platinum wig and shades and a flowered sundress got out and looked in both directions, as though by habit, then entered the downstairs foyer.
A minute later my secretary buzzed me.
'A Ms Florence LaVey. No appointment,' she said.
'Who is she?'
'She said you'd know who she was.'
'Nope. But send her in.'
The inner door opened and the woman in the platinum wig stood framed in the doorway, her shades dripping from her fingers, her face expectant, as though at any moment I would recognize her relationship to my life.
'Can I help you?' I asked. Then I noticed that one of her eyes was brown, the other blue.
'The name doesn't turn on your burner, huh? San Antonio? The White Camellia Bar?'
'Maybe I'm a little slow this morning.'
'I know what you mean. I always get boiled on Sunday nights myself. I think it has something to do with being raised Pentecostal… Let me try again… A nasty little fuck by the name of Darl Vanzandt?'
'You're the lady he beat up. You're a waitress?'
'A hostess, honey.' She winked and sat down and crossed her legs. She opened a compact and looked at herself. 'I'd like to slip some pieces of bamboo deep under his fingernails.'
'His father says you and a pimp tried to roll him.'
She wet the ball of one finger and wiped at something on her chin and clicked the compact shut.
'His old man paid me ten thousand dollars so he and his son could tell whatever lies they wanted to. You interested in what really happened?'
'It's not of much value if you took money to drop the charges.'
'I'm not talking about what that little shit did to me. I read about that girl in the paper when she got beaten to death. But I didn't make any connections. Then last night him and this ex-convict named Moon come to this new bar I'm working in. Fart Breath starts talking about a trial, about this girl got gang-raped and her head bashed in, about how some lawyer is trying to make him take somebody else's fall. I'm standing behind the bar. I keep waiting for him to catch on who I am. Forget it.'
'Yes?'
'Get the girl dug up. See if she wasn't stoned-out on roofies.'
'We're talking about Ro-'
'You got it. Rohypnol. That's what the Vanzandt kid uses. He picks up a girl and dumps it in her drink so he can do anything he wants with her.' She fitted her glasses on, then removed them again. 'I wish I'd sent him to the Ellis Unit at Huntsville. The colored boys always appreciate new Ivory soap when they come out of the field.'
'I've seen the autopsy. She was full of booze but no dope.'
She brushed a long red thumbnail back and forth across a callus. 'He sat on my chest and spit in my face. He broke both my lips. I told this to his old man. He goes, 'Ten thousand is my limit.''
'The Vanzandts have their own way of doing things,' I said, my attention starting to wander.
She got up to leave.
'Forget about the dope. Either that kid did her, or y'all got real bad luck.'
'What do you mean?'
'Two like him in one town? This might be a shithole, honey, but it doesn't deserve that,' she said.
Just before lunch, the lady in charge of payroll at my father's old pipeline company called from Houston.
'We didn't contract any jobs around Waco during the late Depression or the war years. But of course that
