Heartwood

'What gives you the right to snub me in public? Can you tell me what it is I've done to you?'

'You're married. I didn't want to recognize that fact. The fault is mine.'

'We shared a great deal when we were young.' Her eyes held mine. 'I'm not talking about just one afternoon. We were true friends. Are you just going to step across a line and pretend we don't know each other? That's sick, if you ask me.'

I leaned forward on my elbows and turned my hat in my hands and bounced the brim on the tip of my boot. Then the words I should not have spoken had their way.

'What happened to you, Peggy Jean? You used to be one of us. Why'd you go off with a guy like Earl? Was it the money?' I said.

In the corner of my eye I could see her hand clenching and unclenching against her organdy dress, hear the fractured breathing that was about to crest into tears.

'I'm sorry I said that,' I said.

But it was too late. She strode back toward the pavilion, her hair swinging on her shoulders. I don't know what her face looked like, whether it was tear-streaked or angry or bloodless with humiliation or numb and distraught with personal loss, but Earl and Jeff Deitrich had disengaged from their friends and were both staring at her, then at me, their eyes blazing, like men who had witnessed another man commit a cowardly and brutal act against a woman or child.

'You want to get Earl Deitrich before he gets you?' a voice next to me said.

Cholo Ramirez wore gray slacks and a shiny black dress shirt with a pomegranate-red print tie. His left eye was taped over with a square of white gauze. Ronnie Cruise stood behind him in the shadows, a Popsicle stick in the corner of his mouth.

'Ask him about killing himself in the Red Pine Lodge. Ask him what happened to his friends in that water-bed skeet club between Houston and Conroe,' Cholo said.

'What's he talking about?' I said to Ronnie.

'You're a religious guy, right, worrying about stuff like people wearing rosaries around their necks? Listen to Cholo, maybe discover how we dress ain't the big problem in your town,' Ronnie replied. His dark eyes that seemed impervious to whatever degree of joy the world could offer him wandered over the strollers on the gravel paths and the aerial fireworks popping in pink and white showers above the river. 'Does this shithole ever get tired of itself?' he said.

Cholo's skin was glazed with sweat when he came into my office at noon the next day. He hooked a finger over the neck of his T-shirt and pulled it out from his chest and smelled himself.

'That sidewalk will burn through the bottom of your shoes,' I said.

'I picked up a sheriffs tail south of town. The guy stayed with me all the way to your office,' he said. He chewed on a hangnail.

'They don't see many cars like yours. I wouldn't worry about it.'

'This guy had that Fletcher fuck in the car, that ex-mercenary guy or whatever who does scut work for Deitrich.'

'Why do you want to dime Earl now, Cholo?'

''Cause Kippy Jo Pickett says I got to own up. She says maybe I'm gonna be on the Ghost Trail.' He hunched his shoulders forward and made a coughing sound, but his throat wouldn't clear.

'The what?' I asked.

'When Indian people die, they disappear down a trail. Light goes through their bodies, and they get pale and gray, like bad milk, and finally you can't see them no more. That's what Kippy Jo said.'

'You think you're going to die?'

'You got something cold to drink? I need a beer. Maybe a shot of rum. You got that?'

'No.'

He wiped his hair and his eyebrows with a handkerchief. Then he pressed both fists into the sides of his head and squeezed his eyes shut.

'I can't think good when it's hot,' he said. 'Ronnie's uncle is connected up with some peckerwoods out of Houston. Ronnie didn't have nothing to do with it, though. They was working a scam in Kerr County at a place called the Red Pine Lodge. A shill brought big oil guys in there to play 'Hold 'em.' We'd turn the game over, scare the shit out of the marks with shotguns, play like we was torturing and killing people down in the basement.'

'This isn't new information, Cholo. You told this to Temple Carrol when she picked you up for jumping bail.'

'Yeah? The shill brought Earl Deitrich into the game. We came through the door with nylon stockings over our heads, knocking people on the floor, breaking glasses and whiskey bottles, throwing poker chips and playing cards in people's faces, yelling at Deitrich, slapping his face, jamming the shotgun in his nuts.

'Then we led everybody one by one downstairs. The screams that come up them stairs was so real they scared me. We fired off a bunch of twelve-gauge rounds in a barrel and threw chicken blood all over everybody. It looked great. Then this woman, the dealer, lies down in the middle of all those bodies. She's got on a white blouse and skirt and it's got chicken blood on it, too. This broad was in porno movies and she was real good at acting. She knew how to twitch, with her eyes closed, just like she was gonna bleed to death unless somebody got her to a hospital.

'So we walk Earl Deitrich downstairs and we tell him, 'Look, man, one guy got out of control down here. We still don't know where the bank is at. You got a chance to live, man. What's it gonna be?'

'He thinks for a minute. Can you believe that? Bodies are all over the floor and he stands there thinking. Then he says, 'There's a safe under the duckboards behind the bar.'

'One of our guys goes upstairs and comes back with handfuls of money, like it's a big surprise. Then we tell Deitrich, 'Look, man, we got nothing against you. But you saw too much here. The broad is still alive. Pump one into her and that puts us all on the same side.'

'The guy saying this takes the magazine out of a Beretta nine-millimeter so Deitrich knows only one round's in it and hands it to him and waits for him to pop the broad. Deitrich just stands there with the piece in his hand, thinking, a smile on his mouth.

'Our guy goes, 'You got a hearing problem?'

'Deitrich says, 'You know, you guys have brought my year to a head. It's been a real pisser. How about all of you kiss my ass?' And he shoots himself in the side of the head.

'We can't believe it. Neither can he. Smoke is rising from his hair and he's smiling at us. He opens and closes his mouth like he's gonna be deaf a month and says, 'A blank, huh? I got to admit, it's a slick blackmail operation. But you're amateurs.' Then he pitches the piece back to the guy who give it to him and says, 'Clean yourselves up, then I want to have a talk with you all.''

Cholo wiped the heat and grease from his eyes with the flats of his fingers and walked to the air conditioner and hit on it.

'Why don't you get some central air, man? This place is a kitchen,' he said. He looked through the blinds, down onto the sidewalk.

'Go on with your story,' I said.

'That deputy's still down there, the one with the ex-mercenary fuck. You told somebody I was coming here today?'

'Nope.'

'Kippy Jo trusts you. But you ain't earned no points with me.'

'That's too bad.'

'Maybe you're setting me up. You was a Texas Ranger. That means you still got a badge up your hole.'

I could feel the anger rise in my chest and seize in my throat, but I kept my eyes focused on nothing. In the far corner of the room I thought I saw L.Q. Navarro leaning against the woodwork, his ash-gray Stetson tilted on the back of his head, his eyes filled with humor.

'Get out of here,' I said to Cholo.

'Wha-'

'Go learn some respect for other people. I'm full up on bullshit and rudeness today.'

'I don't believe you, man.'

'It looks like that's an ongoing state with you, Cholo. Adios. No ethnic slur intended,' I said.