stuck his hand inside the back of her blue jeans and panties, knotting the fabric, his knuckles wedging into her buttocks, and pulled her toward a chair.
I grabbed his upper arm and spun him toward me.
The skin of his face tightened against the bone, his teeth showing, his eyes glinting. He pulled a lead- weighted blackjack from his back pocket and wrapped his palm around the braided grip. I swung with my right and caught him just below the eye, snapping his head back, driving him into the wall.
Then I felt the old curse have its way, like kerosene evaporating on hot coals and igniting in an enclosed space, a yellow-red flash that burned away all restraint and always left me numb and shaking and unable to remember what I had just done.
I felt my fist sink to my wrist in his stomach, then my boot arched into his face, the heel raking his mouth and nose, splitting the back of his head against a log in the wall.
But three other men were swinging at me now, with fists or batons or both, the blows showering across my back, and I knew I was about to slide into the bottom of a dark well where I would be safe from the angry faces that shouted down at me from above.
Then suddenly the room was still, speckled with blowing rain, the only sound that of the deputy named Kyle, on his hands and knees, spitting blood on the oak floor. Temple Carrol stood in the doorway, her extended arms and rounded shoulders and chestnut hair etched with the sun's last fiery glow.
'Ah, the testosterone boys in uniform at work and play. Hugo, you sorry sack of shit, please give me an excuse to blow your other lung out,' she said.
At the same time that I, an officer of the court, was brawling with rednecks, a small man with thick glasses named Max Greenbaum was leaving a synagogue in the old Montrose district of South Houston. The rabbi, who had known Greenbaum for years, waved goodbye from the doorway. Greenbaum stopped at a post office and picked up a priority envelope, then drove into Herman Park and stopped by a tree-shaded lake and was writing on a legal pad when three cars filled with Mexican gangbangers pulled into the parking area, sealing off Max Greenbaum's Jeep.
It was dusk now, and the only other people at the lake were an elderly black couple and their grandchildren picnicking on the grass. The gangbangers' stereos roared with such ear-pounding volume that the water in the lake trembled. A kid who wore a bodybuilder's shirt deliberately scissored into strips threw a beer can in the direction of the picnickers.
'Hey, man, the park's closing,' he said.
Then they pulled Max Greenbaum from his Jeep, lifted the cellular phone from his hand, and crushed it on the pavement.
'Y'all leave that man alone. He ain't done you nothing,' the black woman yelled.
'Time to haul yo' black ham hocks out of here, mama,' the kid in the scissored shirt said.
The elderly black couple loaded their grandchildren into their car and backed out into the road, their faces staring in bewilderment at the scene taking place before them.
One of the gangbangers tore Max Greenbaum's priority mail envelope and the sheet of letterhead paper it contained into shreds and threw them in his face. Then they formed a circle around him and began pushing him back and forth as they would a medicine ball.
But the terror that Max Greenbaum probably felt turned to anger and he began to fight, flailing blindly at the gangbangers with his fists, his glasses broken on the pavement. At first they laughed at him, then his finger scraped across someone's eyeball. A gangbanger reeled backwards, the heel of his hand pressed into his eye socket as though it had been gouged with a stick.
The circle closed on Greenbaum like crabs feeding on a piece of meat.
5
The Houston homicide detective who called the next afternoon was a woman named Janet Valenzuela.
'The early word from the coroner is it looks like heart failure,' she said.
'How'd you get my name?' I asked.
'The gangbangers picked up most of the pieces of the priority envelope. But a couple were under the victim's Jeep. We could make out your zip code and the last five letters of your name. Do you know why he would be writing you?'
'I think he had knowledge that would exonerate a client of mine,' I said.
'Does this have to do with stolen bonds?'
'How'd you know?' I said.
'Greenbaum told his rabbi an uneducated working-man was being set up in an insurance claim. It's a muddy story. It has something to do with a guy being provoked at a luncheon, then stealing a watch, and a rich guy claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonds were stolen, too. Are the gangbangers tied into this somehow?'
'I'm not sure.'
'You were a city cop here?'
'That's right.'
'Keep in touch.'
An hour later Cholo Ramirez pulled his customized Mercury to the curb in front of my office, the stereo thundering. His sister, Esmeralda, got out and walked into the portico on the first floor.
A moment later she was standing in my office, dressed in the same jeans and maroon shirt, now thoroughly rumpled, she had been arrested in the day before.
'You're sprung?' I said, and smiled.
'They're not filing on me.'
'How about the rock under the seat?'
'The cop was lying. Who'd be crazy enough to drive around in Cholo's car with crack in it?'
'They're bad guys. Who sicced them on you?' I said.
'I just came to thank you for what you did.'
'Sit down a minute, will you?'
'I'm not feeling too good. There was noise in the jail all night.'
Her face was pretty, her eyes turquoise. She pushed her hair up on her neck with one hand. A package of cigarettes stuck out of the front pocket of her jeans.
'You had a reason for being out by the Deitrichs' place?' I asked.
'I want Mr. Deitrich to leave my brother and Ronnie… Ronnie's my boyfriend… I want Mr. Deitrich to leave him and Cholo alone.'
'You were going to tell him that?'
She blew her breath up in her face and sat down on the corner of the chair. 'Look, he's a bullshit guy. Guys like him didn't make their money worrying about people who eat refried beans,' she said.
'Earl Deitrich's got another agenda?'
'Hey, I'm glad you weren't hurt too bad yesterday. That's it,' she said, and walked out of the office without saying goodbye.
Temple Carrol could find a chicken feather in a snowstorm. Early Wednesday morning we drove out of the hill country toward San Antonio. She had already put together a folder on both Cholo Ramirez and Ronnie Cruise, also known as Ronnie Cross.
'Ronnie is a California transplant. He came out here with his uncle in '88. This customized car business they run may be a front for a chop-shop operation. Boost them here and sell them in Mexico,' she said. 'Anyway, Ronnie was in Juvie once in L.A. County, but that's his whole sheet.'
'Jeff Deitrich says he threw a couple of guys off a roof,' I said.
'My friend at San Antonio P.D. says two Viscounts got splattered all over a cement loading dock about a year ago. The word on the street is Ronnie did it. Supposedly the Viscounts had tried to molest Cholo's sister in a movie theater. Ronnie 'fronted them on the roof because Cholo was his warlord. Later Ronnie and Esmeralda developed
