The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan (4 page)

"That thing."

I looked at Kelly for enlightenment. She didn't give
me any.

"Yeah, you know." George made a gun with
his hand. "Pow, pow."

"Pow, pow?"

"Yeah." George smiled, apparently satisfied
that we were on the same page. "Family's got some bad damn luck.
Anyway, Kelly pulled up all of that in one morning. Just on the
computer. She's something."

"She's something," I agreed. "Speaking
of those background files—"

"You're going to want a copy." Kelly opened
my side drawer and produced a thick rubber-banded folder, plopped it
in front of me. "Erainya got me started while certain other
people were out getting themselves blown up. Regretfully, not
completely blown up. Was there anything else?"

Her tone was super-sweet.

I said, "Ouch, already."

She batted her eyes.

Erainya hung up the phone, put her hands on her desk,
and hoisted herself to a full imposing height of five-foot-zero. She
looked across the office at me, her eyes black and piercing.

"So, what—?" she demanded. "You
managed not to get yourself killed. You think that makes your morning
successful? Come back here."

"Been nice knowing you," George
commiserated.

I rapped my knuckles on his desk, then went to see
the boss. I could feel Kelly Arguello's eyes on my back the whole
way.

Behind every man, there is a woman whom he's
successfully pissed off. Unfortunately, with me, there's usually one
in front, too.
 
 

FOUR

Erainya's desk was piled high with manila case
folders arranged in precarious spirals like cocktail party napkins.
In the valleys between were crumpled balls of legal paper, framed
pictures of Jem, two phones, investigative reference books,
surveillance equipment, and the disgorged contents of several purses.

Multicolored sticky notes were slapped down here and
there like stepping-stones through the chaos.

It was difficult to tell, but the project on top
seemed to be a spread of brochures, glossy three-folds like mailers
for investment companies. The one nearest me read St. Stephen's.
Excellence Is Our Tradition. A sepia photo of an adolescent boy with
glittering braces smiled sideways at me.

Erainya nodded me toward the client's chair.

She had on her usual outfit, an unbelted black
T-shirt dress that hung on her body like a handkerchief over an
Erector set. No makeup, no jewelry, no hose. Simple black flats.

"This is your idea of a thank-you for the nice
job?" she demanded. "You get yourself detonated?"

"I'm ungrateful, I know."

She made a sideways slap at the air, a gesture of
annoyance she does so often I'd learned not to sit next to her in
restaurant booths. "You're lucky UTSA is  keeping us on."

"Totally ungrateful," I agreed. "You
arrange a teaching position for me without my knowledge, let me win
you an investigative contract with the University, and I don't even
say kharis soi."

Erainya frowned. "What is that — Bible Greek?"

"Only kind I know. I'm a medievalist, remember?"

"The modern phrase for 'thank you' is
ephkharisto, honey. Good one to learn, seeing as I keep doing you
favors."

She reached toward her spiral files, used her fingers
as a dowsing rod, then pinched out the exact slip of paper she
wanted. She handed me a printout of classes — medieval graduate
course Lit 4963, Chaucer undergraduate seminar Lit 3213, one section
of freshman English.

"Three classes," Erainya said. "Wednesday
and Friday afternoons. You're a visiting assistant professor, six
thousand for the rest of the semester allocated from the dean's
discretionary fund. I don't call that bad."

"What's your commission?"

She sighed. "Look, honey, I knew you had some
hard feelings when you had to turn down the teaching position last
fall."

"Completing the license was my decision,
Erainya."

"Sure, honey. The right decision. I'm just
saying — this opportunity came up—"

"A man getting shot to death."

"—and I figured it was perfect. You get to
teach some classes, keep working for me. They offer you a contract
next fall, you'll get full benefits and thirty K a year. Plus what
you make for me."

I drummed my fingers, let my eyes weave across the
clutter of Erainya's desk.

"You're going to send me to boarding school if I
say no?"

It took her a second to remember the brochures.
"They're not boarding."

"Private school for Jem?"

She scowled, began gathering up the brochures. "I
want the best."

"These places have scholarships?"

"Stop changing the subject."

"Most people still do public, Erainya. Kids turn
out fine."

"You're telling me Jem is most kids?"

I looked back at Jem, who was now trying to explain
to Kelly Arguello how the gears for his Tinkertoy motion machine
worked.

"All right," I admitted. "He's
exceptional. Still—"

"You worry about your college classes. Let me
worry about kindergarten."

"And the Brandon case?"

"Let George take care of that."

"SAPD give you anything?"

"I just told you — wait a—"

I leaned toward the morass of papers on her desk and
did my own dowsing job, plucked a phone message slip that was
sticking out of a stack of reports. "Put that back,"
Erainya demanded.

I read the message. "Ozzie Gerson. Deputy Ozzie
Gerson?"

"I'm not talking to you."

"Ozzie's about as low in the sheriffs department
as you can get without crawling under one of their patrol cars.
You're asking him for information. On a city homicide case, no less."

Erainya tapped her fingers. "Look, honey, I know
you."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning if I tell you details, you're going to
decide it's your case. You're going to go poking around when what I
really need for you to do is stay safe and make UTSA happy."

"Is this connected with that thing a few years
ago?"

"That thing."

"Yeah. You know. That other guy named Brandon.
Pow, pow."

Erainya folded her arms. Her black hair stuck out
wiry free-style, not unlike Medusa's. "Just do your teaching,
honey. Give George a week and he'll have a full report for UTSA. You
got an advanced degree. You can read it."

"Gosh, thanks."

"And what I said about the sheriffs department —
just because Ozzie's a mutual friend, don't get any bright ideas."

"You know I'll ask him."

"Let me pretend, honey. For my pride, all
right?"

"Anything else?"

Erainya picked up the private school brochures again.
She shuffled through them, contemplating each, then carefully dealt
out three in front of me. "If you were choosing between those,
which would you pick?"

I frowned at the brochures. Maroon, green, blue. All
very slick. All sported pictures of venerable school facades and
happy honors students, grinning and hugging their textbooks like old
friends.

I looked up at Erainya. "I know nothing about
schools."

"You know Jem?"

"I have that pleasure."

"All right, then. I'm asking you."

I picked up the brochures reluctantly. A weird memory
came to me from thirteen years ago, when I'd looked through brochures
for graduate schools. The forms, the spiel, the tuitions. These were
about the same. "Eighty-five hundred a year? "

Erainya nodded. "Cheap."

"For New York, maybe."

"I want the best," Erainya insisted. "I'm
not asking you about the finances, honey. I'm asking you about those
three choices."

Hesitantly, I held up the green brochure. "This
one. I've heard it's a nice place. Small. Got an arts program. It
isn't Catholic."

"I thought you were Catholic."

"I rest my case."

Erainya took back the brochure. "I'll get Jem a
visiting date. He'll want you to take him."

"Me?"

"You don't know Jem adores you, honey? You
blind?"

"We need to work on the kid's taste."

"No argument." Erainya collected the
brochures. "Now get out of here and rest. You got class
tomorrow. And no poking around in George's case." "Suggestion
noted."

Erainya shook her head sourly. She gazed at the
gilded icon of Saint Sophia hanging on the wall next to her desk and
muttered something, probably a Greek prayer to deliver the Manos clan
from wicked, disrespectful employees. As I was going out, George
Berton was fielding another call. He covered the receiver long enough
to say, "See you tonight."

Kelly looked up from Jem's Tinkertoys. "I'll see
you Thursday."  I agreed that he would and she would.

Then I ruffled Jem's hair and told him to keep at it
with the perpetual motion engine. I anticipated needing one.
 
 

FIVE

By the time I got home the painkillers had started to
wear off. The delayed shock of the morning's explosion was starting
to do funny things to my brain. As I walked up the sidewalk of 90
Queen Anne, the backward-leaning facade of the old two-story
craftsman looked even more precarious than usual. The purple
bougainvillea around the awnings seemed fluid and sinister. When I
got around the side of the building to the screen door of my in-law
apartment, I had trouble making myself touch the latch.

Once inside, I settled onto a stool at the kitchen
counter. Robert Johnson leaped up next to me and rubbed against my
forearm. I ignored him. I was too busy trying to convince myself that
the dots on the linoleum floor were not accelerating.

I pulled down the wall-mounted ironing board and
picked up the phone, which is installed in the alcove behind for
reasons known only to God and Southwestern Bell.

There was a message from my mom, wondering if I was
going to make it for dinner. Another message from Maia Lee in San
Francisco, asking if I was okay. Maia apologized for being out of
town when I'd called her Sunday.

My finger hovered over the ERASE button for a good
five seconds. I punched it.

I called Deputy Ozzie Gerson's cell phone number and
found him working patrol on the far South Side. When I mentioned the
Brandon murder he grumbled that he'd try to stop by.

Then I went back to the kitchen counter, snapped the
rubber band on Kelly Arguello's files, and started reading.

Professor Aaron Brandon. Born San Antonio, 1960,
graduated Churchill High in 1977. BA. at Texas A & M, M.A. and
Ph.D. at UT Austin. First full-time teaching job: a year here in San
Antonio, non-tenure track at Our Lady of the Lake University,
1992-93. Contract not renewed for reasons unspecified. After that,
six glamorous years at UT Permian Basin, known among the region's
academics as UT "Permanent Basement." Brandon had returned
home to San Antonio last Christmas to accept the emergency opening at
UTSA. He had been killed three weeks before his thirty-ninth
birthday. He had no police record of any kind. His wife's name was
Ines, age twenty-four, maiden name Garcia, born in Del Rio, also no
police record. They had a five-year-old boy named Michael — older
than Jem by two months.

The curriculum vitae Aaron Brandon had submitted to
UTSA looked mediocre — a minimum of articles, published in
lesser-known journals, a course load that was ninety percent freshman
English and ten percent medieval, references that were no more than
confirmations of his past employment status. The only violent edge in
Brandon's life seemed to be the works he studied. He had an affinity
for the more disturbing texts — Crucifixion plays, Crusade accounts
of the Jewish massacres, some bloodier stories from Chaucer and Marie
de France. The theses he'd written looked adequate if not brilliant.
It made me feel just dandy to have been offered the same job as he.

Kelly's search for the name Brandon in the
Express-News archives had yielded nothing about Aaron but some about
his family.

A business section interview from '67 featured one
Jeremiah Brandon, founder of a company called RideWorks. Kelly had
highlighted the last paragraph of the story. This mentioned that
Jeremiah had two sons he was raising by himself — Del and Aaron.

According to the article, Jeremiah Brandon was a
former printing-press repairman who had made a small fortune
repairing and building amusement rides for the many carnivals that
passed through South Texas. Now with a permanent workshop and fifty
employees, Jeremiah was increasing his profits yearly, and had
invented such child-pleasing rides as the Super-Whirl and the Texas
Tilt. I studied the 1967 photo of Jeremiah Brandon.

He looked like a turkey buzzard in a suit — thin,
hardened, decidedly ugly. The fierce hunger in his eyes animated his
whole frame. I could imagine him descending on a broken amusement
ride like so much delicious roadkill, stripping it to its frame and
wrenching out the offending gears with his bare hands and teeth.