The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan (40 page)

The morning gray had burned off. The air smelled of
steamed grass and cow dung. A Mexican eagle circled over the trees
that lined the creek in the center of the property.

The Navarre ranch isn't much of a spread by South
Texas standards — 250 acres, about the size of a King Ranch
bathroom. The usually dry Apache Creek snakes through its middle,
with wheat fields to the north and west, grazing lands and
deer-hunting woods to the south and east. Where the land isn't
cultivated it's choked with white-brush and cactus, littered with
limestone chunks, the topography around the creek gouged with
sinkholes and gullies and washouts from years of unpredictable
flooding.

I found Ozzie and Harold in a clearing where the
mouth of the road dipped down into the trees between the creekbed and
the man-made cow pond. Ozzie was dressed in civilian clothes —
jeans, white-and-red Hawaiian shirt, boots, white Stetson. A side arm
and several extra magazines were spread across a table made from an
old door and two sawhorses. Harold Diliberto stood next to him with
the Remington 700.
 
The usual line
of beer cans was set up on a hay bale fifty yards downrange. Ozzie
had also set out a professional target — a small metal disk
designed to rock back on its base when hit and make a resounding
ping.

Ozzie grinned when he saw me walking up. "Well —
it's alive."

I accepted his congratulatory pounding on my back,
which was marginally less painful than an electric nail driver.

Harold Diliberto offered me a hit from his breakfast
whiskey flask. I declined.

"Just getting my aim back," Ozzie told me.

His side arm was a .357 semiautomatic that had seen a
lot of use. The muzzle was scored as if it had once been fitted with
the wrong end sight.

I watched Ozzie aim at the metal target, then fire.

I flinched at the sound, even though I knew it was
coming. There is nothing quite so loud as a gun fired by someone
else.

There was no subsequent ping against the target. I
kept my eyes on the gun. "Used to be the recoil on this thing
didn't bother me at all," Ozzie said. "You get stiff in one
arm, even if it's not your good arm, it completely fucks you up.

Give me that old rifle, Harold."

Harold looked from the rifle to Ozzie. "You
serious?"

Ozzie took the Remington from Harold and clamped the
stock under his bad shoulder, released the bolt with his good hand.
The loading spring dangled uselessly underneath. It would be one shot
at a time forevermore with the Remington.

With some effort, Ozzie pushed a .243 bullet into the
magazine, slid the bolt forward to chamber the round, locked the
handle down.

"Yeah," he said with satisfaction. "In
the old days I could fire one of these with my good arm in a cast.
Just prop it on a fence. I'm getting old. So, Tres — feel good to
be done with the Brandon family?"

I looked down the reservoir road. Clouds of gnats
floated over the little bridge of land between the creekbed and the
water tank. I remembered a time in high school — coming out here
with a half-dozen friends, getting together with some of the local
kids who promised us dinner in exchange for beer. We'd set up a
barbecue pit on that road, cranked up the truck radio, and watched
the local boys shoot ring-necked doves out of the sky one after
another, gutting and cooking them for us on the spot. I remembered
Lillian, the girl I'd been with at the time, and what it was like
trying to make out in the back of a truck with the constant fire of
guns and dead birds falling all around us. I hadn't thought of that
day in years.

"I don't feel much of anything," I said.

Ozzie nodded. "They doped you up pretty good.
I'll give you a ride back to town this afternoon, you want it. I'm
going to personally have a chat with Chich Gutierrez, let him know
what's what. I'm a civilian now. I'm leaving town. I figure what the
fuck — the bastard needs a talking-to."

Harold Diliberto sat back against the door-table and
slurped his whiskey. Ozzie brought up his bad arm carefully, used his
forearm as a platform to stabilize the barrel.

"You figure Chich's men shot George Berton and
Mara?" I asked him.

"I mean to find out."

Ozzie sighted the target. A trickle of sweat wove its
way down his cheek. His hatband was already stained brown as a coffee
filter.

"The M.E. thought there was somebody else in
George's house that night," I said. "A single shooter who
came in the back. Maybe the shooter got out of the house before
Chicharron got inside."

Ozzie shot and missed. He lowered the barrel, his
eyes full of cool amusement. "The timing would be a pretty huge
coincidence, kid."

"Not if the shooter choreographed it that way.
Not if he knew Chich would be watching the house, knew that any
witnesses would most likely implicate the guys in the white van."

Ozzie turned the vertical knob on the telescopic
sight. "You ask Sandra Mara about that possibility?"

"Who says I could find her?"

Ozzie laughed, turned to Diliberto. "Dang,
Harold. This five-by-thirty sighted for you? How you manage to hit
anything?"

"Maybe you were right," I said.

Ozzie smiled at me. "Right about what?"

"Maybe the thing to do is just wait and ask
George."

Ozzie turned the horizontal knob. "How's he
doing?"

"Erainya says he's still sedated. But he's beat
the infection. He's going to make it. Maybe another three or four
days and he'll be able to talk."

Ozzie grinned. "That's excellent."

"Where are you and Audrey going? Cancun?"

Ozzie nodded, released the rifle bolt. The spent
casing ejected, spiraling past Harold's ear. Harold Diliberto had
finished his flask and was now looking for something else to do. He
zeroed in on Ozzie's .357, picked it up, and began slowly, drunkenly,
field-stripping it.

Ozzie just looked over and laughed good-naturedly.
Diliberto liked taking things apart. Sometimes he even got them back
together.

"I told Harold I'd leave that old .357 at the
ranch for him," Ozzie said. "God knows he needs something
better than this rifle. And yeah, kid. Cancun. If I was you, I'd tell
Sandra Mara to clear out. They haul her in, they won't go easy on
her."

"You're probably right."

"You know I am."

"Chich Gutierrez is still looking for those lost
two kilos of heroin," I said.

"Sandra will be the one Chich holds
accountable."

Ozzie winced with effort as he reloaded the rifle. "I
ever tell you your dad was the first man I saw hunt with a handgun?
That same .357 Harold's destroying right there."

Harold looked up like he'd just vaguely recognized
his name. He had unloaded the .357's magazine and was now removing
the chamber cover.

"Jack and I were out there" — Ozzie
nodded toward the creek — "looking at all the gravel in the
riverbed. Your dad always talked about selling it for people's
gardens, you remember? And this huge buck just appeared. I couldn't
believe it. Your dad borrowed my side arm and shot it on the spot.
Damnedest thing. We ate venison for months."

He brought up his forearm for a brace, rested the
Remington on it, and aimed. Harold looked up sleepily from the
half-disassembled handgun. He was rubbing a finger over the irregular
scoring on the muzzle. "You been modifyin' for a silencer,
Ozzie?"

Ozzie fired. Metal pinged. He smiled and lowered the
rifle. "Naw. Bought me a new sight, tried to fit it on the
barrel, turned out to be a bad match. You going to have anything left
of that gun when you're through?"

Harold blushed. He started collecting the pieces of
the .357 for reassembly. I was hit with another wave of nausea.

"Whoa, son." Ozzie quickly put the
Remington on the table and caught my arm, guided me over to a flat
piece of limestone to sit. "You want us to walk you back to the
house?"

"I'll be okay in a second."

"Maybe we should take you back to town sooner
than later."

"No. It's all right."

Ozzie studied my eyes, seemed to be satisfied I
wasn't in immediate danger. "Couple more shots, then. Never like
to leave before I'm fifty-fifty on the hits."

He stepped back to the table, began reloading.

"I guess you didn't recognize her," I said.

Ozzie glanced over, frowning, then turned his
attention back to the gun. "Recognize who?"

"Ines Brandon. Sandra Mara. When she was at the
river with me, when they pulled out the VW."

Ozzie finished loading the second chamber. "No.
No, I didn't. I saw Sandra maybe once or twice back in the old days.
She looked a lot different then — longer hair. Dyed black, I
think."

"Four men were all shot by one gunman — Aaron
Brandon, then Hector Mara and George Berton, then Del Brandon. None
of them fought back, except maybe Hector. None of them expected this
guy to be their assassin."

"Argues that it could've been a woman."

"Except I know where Ines was the night Del was
killed."

Ozzie prepped the gun for firing, but lowered it and
sighed. "Chich Gutierrez, then. I told you, kid. You can't
figure gang-bangers like that."

"Attila the rat."

His eyes glistened like ice over his smile.
"Absolutely. Let them beat it out of Chicharron, once they haul
him in. Or give them Sandra Mara if you really want. One of them will
have the answers."

The nausea was starting to fade. I managed to get
back on my feet. "A girl at the Poco Mas told me about a guy
Hector Mara was arguing with a few weeks ago — big Anglo guy, dark
hair, she thought his name was something like Branson."

"Del Brandon."

"That's what I thought too. Now I'm not sure."

Harold Diliberto had just about reassembled the .357,
but the magazine wasn't going in right. It was jamming on something.
Harold was listening to us with half his attention, trying to get the
gun working with the rest, and his IQ divided by two projects yielded
some pretty small numbers.

"Chich had an insider with the police
department," I said. "I wondered if it was Kelsey."

Ozzie turned toward the target, examined it placidly.
"Who's paying you to speculate, kid? UTSA isn't writing any more
checks for this investigation." Ozzie was right. I could've left
it alone. Instead I kept wondering aloud, watching Harold's hands as
they refitted Gerson's .357.

"Del Brandon wasn't smart enough to run heroin
through RideWorks by himself. He didn't have the steel to set up his
dad's murder, or his brother's, or anybody else's. He must've had
somebody behind him telling him what to do, a silent partner. I'm
thinking this silent guy went to Jeremiah Brandon first, back in '92.
He had a great idea — use talent from the local gangs to help run
drugs through the carnival circuit. Only Jeremiah wouldn't have
anything to do with it. When Mr. Silent got insistent, Jeremiah
flexed a little muscle and ruined this guy's day job. Mr. Silent held
a grudge. He figured RideWorks would be a whole lot easier to profit
from with somebody stupider at the helm. He helped set up Jeremiah's
murder, told Del exactly how to do it. When the dust settled, he told
Del how to pressure Hector Mara into the heroin deal. Later, when
Aaron Brandon came back to town and got a little too hard to control,
it was Del's partner who killed him and framed Zeta Sanchez. How does
that sound so far?" Ozzie had lowered the gun, apparently not
happy with the sight. He made one more adjustment, lifted the rifle
again. "I'd rest your mouth, kid. You're still weak."

"Hector Mara must've found out the gunman's
identity. Or maybe Hector had known all along and hadn't been brave
enough to do anything about it. After Aaron Brandon was murdered,
Hector got scared for his sister. He started talking with George
Berton. Hector had two keys of Chich's heroin which he'd been
planning to use as a getaway fund for himself and his sister. George
persuaded him to bring it over instead, use it as evidence against
Del. Unfortunately, Hector's partner got wind of what was happening.
He went to Berton's house to take care of things. He wanted to leave
two corpses, but he screwed up. Chich's men moved in a little faster
than he expected, or maybe it was a little harder to kill George than
he'd figured. The gunman retrieved the heroin for himself, killed
Mara, but he left Berton alive, a loose end. The gunman figured
Chicharron was good for the murder, but he couldn't wait around
hoping that George would die before he ID'ed his shooter. Besides,
Del was getting nervous. As dense as he was, Del was starting to
realize he'd be the one on the spot if his partner cut out. So Del
started talking to the police — not yet giving away his partner,
but it was only a matter of time. So the gunman killed Del. Then he
decided to cut his losses, take a little vacation with his winnings."

Ozzie laughed. "You definitely need to be out of
the sun, kid. Let's ride back together."