The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan (43 page)

The three of us stood on the jailhouse steps long
enough for a silent prayer. Finally Ines put her hand on Michael's
head, then took a deep breath. "Let's go."

We walked into Visitors Receiving, through security
to the room with the divided Plexiglas wall and the green chairs and
tables.

The room was fuller than it had been on my previous
visit. There was a large pasty blond woman talking to a skinny
African American man on the other side. A young Anglo woman with two
babies — one under arm and one in a chest-pack — was chastising
her incarcerated boyfriend about somebody named Casey. The
boyfriend's dazed expression mirrored the babies' perfectly. Ines and
Michael and I went to space "B" in the middle. There was
one empty chair. None of us took it.

The longest five minutes in the universe followed.

Ines tried to smooth out Michael's hair with her
fingers and didn't have much success. Her breath was shaky. Michael
did small twists from his waist, swaying back and forth. He kept his
eyes on the cement floor.

The large blond woman next to us vivisected her
electric bill. The baby in the chest-pack on the other woman was
making frustrated "ehh, ehh" sounds, kicking tiny feet at
Mom's kidneys. The boyfriend seemed pretty upset about this person
Casey.

Finally the prisoner's entrance buzzed open.

Zeta Sanchez emerged in his orange prison scrubs and
plastic sandals. His gold eyes zeroed in on Ines and stayed there as
he walked toward us. His face was impassive. The beard had been
shaved away, and his bare chin looked strangely pale, vulnerable.
He'd cut himself shaving. One cheek sported a bandage, and that small
bit of first aid seemed ridiculous next to the other damage on his
face — the stitched and swollen lip, the fading black eye. Zeta
came up to the Plexiglas and sat on the table's edge. The guard at
the door looked like he was thinking about walking over, telling
Sanchez to use the chair, but he apparently decided against it.

Sanchez laced his fingers over his knee. "Sandra."

Silence.

Ines took in Sanchez with the same horrified
fascination as a crime-scene novice taking in her first corpse. Her
hands stayed on Michael's shoulders. Michael twisted his left thumb,
seeing if it would come off.

When Sanchez failed to get a response, he looked at
me. "Professor. What you told me on the phone true?"

"Talk to her, Zeta. Not me."

The golden eyes burned into mine, trying to find a
challenge.

He looked back at Ines, turned his palms up in his
lap, meditation style. "You got something to say to me?"

"You're shorter than I remember," she
muttered.

Zeta's mouth spread into an uneasy smile.

"What you think I should do to you, Sandra? Huh?
Tell me that."

His voice was thin, taut, dangerously dry. The fact
that he kept smiling didn't help at all.

The strength in Ines' body seemed to be channeling
down to her hands — into the fingertips that stayed on Michael's
narrow shoulders. She said, "I'm tired of being scared of you."

Zeta laughed. "Don't get tired yet."

"That person you married seven years ago,
Anthony — that was a different woman."

"Looked like you, Sandra."

She raised one hand and made a fist. "How long
would it have lasted, Anthony? How long would you have put up with
getting nothing from me? How long before you hurt me? If we'd had a
child, Dios me libre, how long before you hurt him, too?"

Zeta ran a knuckle along his jawline. He seemed
vaguely surprised to find his beard gone.

Next to us, the two babies started crying softly.

"I never lied to you, Zeta," Ines said. "I
never forced you to kill anyone. But you can't take responsibility
for any of it, can you? Couldn't be your fault."

Zeta curled his fingers into his palm, tightened them
until they turned white. "What do you want, Sandra? You come to
apologize or yell at me?"

"I came to tell you I'm leaving you."

He laughed. "Thought you did that six years
ago."

"I'm sorry. I was too afraid to say it then. I'm
saying it now."

"And if I get out of here? If I come after you?"

Ines didn't flinch. She said, "I won't run
anymore. I won't do that to my son."

I'm not sure which of us was caught off-guard most by
the certainty in her voice.

Zeta focused on Michael for the first time. "Hey,
chico, come here."

Michael didn't move.

Zeta cupped his hand inward, gesturing for the boy to
approach the glass. Michael stepped forward. He kept his head down.
He hooked a finger under his collar and scratched.

Zeta crouched a little. "Show me your eyes."

Michael didn't.

Zeta looked at Michael, then Ines. His expression
said, Kid sure as bell ain't mine.

"Somebody talks to you," said Zeta, "you
need to look them in the eyes, little man. It's respectful."

Michael looked up.

Zeta's face was deadly serious. No smile for the
little kid. He looked like he was trying to burn a message into
Michael's mind and I had a feeling he'd be able to do it pretty
successfully.

"What's your name, little man?"

"Michael."

"M-mml?" Zeta mimicked. "What's your
name? Speak up."

"Michael."

"You scared, Michael?"

"My daddy had that, too."

Zeta frowned. "What?"

Michael pressed one finger to the Plexiglas, pointing
at Zeta's face, then poked his own cheek. "Cut himself shaving.
My daddy let me put the Band-Aid on for him. Yes. I'm scared."

Ines' hands made a tent over her mouth.

Zeta cleared his throat. "I got to tell you
something, Michael. Okay?"

Michael shuffled.

"I want you to take care of your mom, little
man. You hear me?"

Michael milked his red-and-blue tie.

"You hear me, Michael? Will you promise me that?
That's a real important job."

"Okay."

"She gets scared, you're the man to protect her.
You hear me?"

Michael nodded.

"How about a 'yes, sir.'"

"Yes, sir."

"All right, then."

Zeta gestured toward the visitors' exit. "Good-bye,
Michael. Adios, Sandra."

Ines started to say something, then stopped herself.
Closure was a bull's-eye she could've easily overshot. She nodded to
Zeta Sanchez, then looked at me.

"I'll be there," I promised. "Go on."

She looked like she wanted to protest that, but her
desire to get Michael out of the room was stronger. She held out her
arms to reclaim her son. She took Michael's hand and led him toward
the exit.

Zeta watched her go. "Shorter than she
remembers," he murmured. "Chingate."

Sanchez wore the same expression I'd seen once on a
lion on Wild Kingdom — right after the tranquilizer dart hit, the
beast stumbling around in irritated bewilderment on the savannah,
just before Marlin Perkins said it was safe to approach and the
sleepy lion mauled the hell out of Jim or Bob or whatever the hell
the assistant's name was. Marlin had had to cut to a Mutual of Omaha
commercial pretty quick after that segment.

I said, "If word gets around you let her go—"

Zeta raised a cautionary finger. "My call. You
remember that."

"You think Ines knows why you really came back
to San Antonio? She wasn't the only piece of your past you needed
closure on."

His eyes were getting sleepier and angrier by the
second. "Go home, Professor."

"Your mother worked for Jeremiah Brandon until
just after you were born. Jeremiah kept track of you as you grew up.
Have you ever known for sure who your father was?"

Zeta didn't answer.

I strove to see some resemblance between Zeta Sanchez
and the old photos of Jeremiah Brandon. I didn't see any.

"For what it's worth," I said, "you're
more like him than Aaron or Del. You're the one who inherited his
character."

I could tell that my words were no consolation. They
simply sank in, probably joining the army of similar thoughts that
Zeta had been amassing most of his life and still hesitated to put
into the battlefield.

"You did something good today," I said.
"Thank you."

Zeta stood. "I didn't do nothing, Professor.
I'll be out of here sooner than you think. You wait until then before
you decide to thank me."

Then he walked to the exit and disappeared back into
the county jail.

I tried to convince myself that he'd needed to say
those parting words to save face, that we'd come to a resolution
despite that. I sat there listening to the crying babies and the fat
woman grouse about her electric bill. But I kept watching the door
Zeta had gone through, just to make sure it stayed closed.
 

FIFTY-TWO

Woodlawn Lake cuts a green, quarter-mile U through
the near West Side. The area had been affluent once. When my father
was a kid back in the 1940s, the water had been pristine, the
circular Casting Pond stocked with fish for children to catch. Dad
once told me he'd beaten his friends in a rowing race around the
lake's miniature red and white lighthouse, an idea I found
incredulous, given Dad's massive beer gut in his later years.
Neighborhood families had held their debutante parties and upscale
Christmas posadas at the now boarded-up community center. My father
and mother had gone to their first dance there.

Now the palm trees dotting the shore were dying. The
Casting Pond was choked with watercress and cattails and old shoes.
Most of the Spanish villas and Southern plantation homes fronting the
water had long ago been divided into apartment blocks, their lawns
gone to crabgrass and wild pyracantha.

Still, in the fresh light on a late spring morning,
the place glowed with a kind of faded dignity.

Along the shore, joggers did their routes.
Preschool-aged children toddled after the flocks of grebes and geese.
The smell of roasted buttered corn filled the air from vendors'
wagons.

We parked across from the old docks, in front of Ines
and Michael's new apartment.

It didn't look like much — a two-story brownstone
cube with white-framed windows and a briar patch of TV aerials on the
roof. The first time I'd seen it, I'd been reminded of those
buildings in atomic bomb test films, a few seconds before
annihilation. I hadn't shared that observation with Ines.

On the doorstep, we found a wicker basket full of
food, heavily cocooned in Saran Wrap. Ines' name was on the tag.
Erainya's handwriting.

"Greek leftovers," I pronounced.

Ines hefted the new addition to her larder. "But
she brought us a basket this big yesterday. We haven't even started—"

"Erainya is relentless," I warned her. "Now
that you're on her list, she won't stop until your breath permanently
smells like gyros."

I followed Ines and Michael upstairs to number five.
Across the hallway, their neighbor's door was cracked open just
enough to let out the sound of Spanish soap opera and the smell of
cooking beans.

Ines unlocked the door to number five and Michael
pushed through immediately, tugging at his tie as he disappeared
around the corner. Ines leaned against the doorway. She hugged the
basket of food to her stomach and closed her eyes. Pain tightened in
her face. I got the uncomfortable impression that she was passing
through a labor contraction. Congratulations, sir. It's a dolma
platter.

Finally she murmured, "I don't know what to do."

"Buy some fresh yogurt. A couple of bottles of
ouzo."

She smiled wanly. "You know what I mean. I don't
trust myself to stop moving. I'm afraid I'll fall apart."

"The worst is over."

She opened her eyes and looked straight through me,
as if calculating the distance to the horizon. "Is it?"

She didn't sound like she expected an answer. That
was just as well.

"You want me to stay for a while?" I asked.

She shook her head. "You don't have to."

"I could keep Michael company, if you want to
take a nap or something. You look like you could use one."

She moistened her lips, tasting the idea, then asked
almost timidly, "A hot shower?"

"A hot shower," I agreed. "Followed by
several million calories of spanakopita. Just what Hippocrates
ordered."

She laughed despite her weariness.
 
After Ines had disappeared into the bathroom, I
unpacked Erainya's Greek food plates, put them with their brethren in
the refrigerator, then walked over to the living-room windows.

The apartment was saved by its view — three wide
picture windows looking out over Woodlawn Lake, just above the fronds
of the palm trees. You could see the Y-shaped piers below, the
lighthouse, the jogging trails, clusters of waterfowl, sunlight
turning the water to hammered silver. On the eastern horizon, rising
above the live oaks, the yellow-capped spires of Our Lady of the
Mount gleamed. I could just make out the tiny iron Jesus who stared
down at the Poco Mas Cantina.