floor was sticky.
I said, “Are you guys going to be okay in here? I'm going to check on Lynn.”
“We'll be fine,” Gloria said, then bit her lip and moved her shoulders back and forth as she looked up into Chunk's face.
“Great,” I said, and left them to it.
I found Lynn in the hall bathroom, passed out in the corner between the bathtub and the toilet. I helped her to her feet.
“You feeling okay, sweetie?” I said.
“Oh yes,” she said.
“Why don't we go check on your husband?”
“Good idea,” she said, then hiccupped. “Let's go see the boys.”
With Lynn's left arm around my shoulder and my right arm around her waist, I carried her down the hall, through the living room, through the kitchen, and into the dining room.
Billy was there, a bleary-eyed look of victory in his eyes.
Avery sat in the chair next to him, passed out. His hands were in his lap and his head was tilted all the way back so that the little dollop of shaving cream pointed out at us like some kind of bony finger.
“Billy,” I said, “I think it's time we helped the Camerons home. What do you think?”
Billy slapped his thighs with his palms and smiled. “Yep, I reckon so.”
“Fantastic, cowboy.”
He winked at me, then stood up to help Avery to his feet.
“Wait,” said Chunk. He was behind me, coming into the room. “One second. This has been bugging me all night.”
He went over to Avery and flicked the hardened shaving cream off of Avery's chin with a snap of his fingers.
Gloria slapped Chunk's bicep when he went back to stand by her. “Bad boy,” she said. “So bad.”
We got the Camerons to their feet, out the door, and pointed them toward their house. Meanwhile, Gloria picked up June and carried her outside.
“I should be getting home too,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Chunk asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Unfortunately, yes.” She shrugged with June in her hands. “Got to get her to bed. You got my number though, right?”
“I could walk you home,” he said.
“Another night,” she said, and worked her eyelashes up and down to let him know she meant it. “Call me, okay?”
“Okay. I'll call you.”
“Cool.”
Just like that, the party was over.
I put Connie to bed while Chunk and Billy cleaned up the piles of limes in the kitchen.
“She get to bed okay?” Billy asked.
“Yeah,” I said, and kissed him.
“It was a good party,” Chunk said. “Lots of interesting people.”
I threw a wad of paper towel's into the bag he was holding and said, “Mmm hmmm.”
After most of the mess was cleaned up, Chunk said, “So when do you think it'll be ready?”
Billy said, “Soon. Tomorrow, maybe the day after. It'll have to be soon. Before the patrols discover the hole.”
“So, day after tomorrow then? Around sunset?”
We all looked at each other, the air around us thick with the mood of conspiracy.
“Sounds good,” Billy said.
He looked at me. I nodded.
“Okay then,” Billy said. “Day after tomorrow. We meet here right after nightfall.”
Chapter 22
The next morning, shortly after dawn, Chunk and I checked out a light green Chevy Malibu with a banged up front right fender from the Scar's fleet yard and headed to the shallow west side to see Treanor. We were both hung over and glassy-eyed, neither of us prepared for the lingering chaos that still shrouded the area where the riot had been at its worst.
At the corner of Bandera and Woodlawn, a pair of baby-faced patrolmen waved us down and checked our IDs.
“We're only passing people who live in the area or who are part of emergency agencies,” one of the patrolmen said. It sounded like he was apologizing.
“It's okay,” I said.
“Yes, ma'am,” he said, and waved us through.
We passed the checkpoint and were greeted by the sounds of still crackling fires, the slapping of high- pressure hoses spraying water onto smoldering buildings, and shouting policemen and fire fighters.
Behind us, morning broke over downtown, backlighting the skyline with a vague glowing line of pink and green and gold. It was beautiful, not anything like the streets ahead of us. My first thought was it looked like a hurricane had rolled through.
Demolished police cars had been abandoned in the street, and everywhere columns of gray and black smoke rose into the air. Not a single window anywhere had been left intact. Broken glass glinted like coins on the sidewalks and in the street. The weapons of choice of most of the rioters had been stones and bricks, and great heaps of both were everywhere. As we crept down the street, never getting faster than ten or fifteen miles per hour because of all the obstructions, glass crunched beneath our tires.
In the end it had taken a little more than three hundred officers to contain the riot, and now an eerie calm had prevailed over a roughly twenty block area. Every street, every alley, was blocked by orange and white-striped sawhorse barricades and watched by officers still wearing parts of their riot gear.
Strangely, the only things that remained untouched were the hundreds of orange warning notices that the Metropolitan Health District people had posted on walls and poles and fences. Here and there they rustled in the warm, sluggish morning breeze.
Many of the officers we passed looked tired and bored. They leaned against their cars, most of which were damaged by rocks, while others leaned against barricades. They eyed our Malibu closely as we drove through the debris.
The line of stores in the one-storey building in front of Treanor's office was a gutted and charred mess. Fire from gas cocktails and pipe bombs had torn it open from the inside out, like a body on the autopsy table. Still smoldering pieces of the frame poked up from the debris like blackened ribs. Already, at the end of the block, Public Works off-loaded bobcats and earth movers to clear away the mess. Chunk gave the building a sideways glance and said, “Your friend was nice.”
“Which one? The one that wanted to take naked pictures of you or the one who just wanted to take you naked?”
Chunk grunted. “Your next door neighbors are nuts, you know that?”
“They're good to Connie. And they're sweet in their own way.”
He grunted again.
Treanor's office, nestled behind the row of burned stores, had managed to escape being damaged. I figured that was probably because it didn't look like what it really was. If you didn't know any better, you'd think it was an abandoned adult bookstore. There were no windows on the bottom floor, no signs saying what was inside. Just a single faded green metal door in a pinkish-white granite-walled building.
We parked along the north side of the building.
