BBH01 - Cimarron Rose (25 page)

I looked at his softly muted profile, his recessed,
liquid blue eye, the ridged brow that was like a vestige of an earlier
ancestor. My forearm rested on the butt of L.Q. Navarro's revolver. I
lifted the revolver from my belt, my palm folded across the cylinder,
and laid it on the workbench.

'Pick it up,' I said.

He lit a cigarette, picked a particle of tobacco off
his lip and dropped it from between his fingers.

'I cain't be hurt, boy. I live in here,' he said,
and pointed to the side of his head. 'I learned it when a
three-hundred-pound nigger stuffed a sock in my mouth and taught me
about love.'

I pulled a photograph from my shirt pocket and held
it up in front of him.

'Is the boy in overalls you?' I asked.

He lifted it out of my hand and smiled while he
studied it. He tossed it on top of the revolver and smoked his
cigarette, a merry light in one eye.

'My father taught you how to weld, didn't he?' I
said.

'He wasn't bad at it. I'm better, though.'

'I think a man like you must come out of a furnace.'

'That's the first thing you said today made any
sense.'

I took a six-inch bone-handled game knife out of my
pocket and pried open the single blade. Two days ago I had ground it on
an emery wheel in the barn and stropped it on an old saddle flap, and
the buffed ripples along the edge looked like the undulations in a
stiletto.

I lay the photograph down on his workbench and
sliced it in half.

'My father was a fine man. You're a piece of shit,
Moon. You don't belong in his past anymore than you do in our present,'
I said.

I pulled loose the severed image of the child who
had become the man standing before me and dropped it into the foundry.
It curled immediately into a film of ash and rose into the air like a
black butterfly.

Then I hit him across the mouth with the back of my
hand, my ring breaking his lip against his teeth.

Moon grinned and spit blood onto the molten rim of
the foundry. He blotted his mouth with his palm before he spoke. 'A man
got that much hate in him is a whole lot more like me than he thinks,'
he said.

Virgil Morales, the San Antonio Purple
Heart who
liked to call other people 'spermbrain', sat in my office with his
girlfriend from Austin, looking at his watch and waiting for me to get
off the phone. The girlfriend was named Jamie Lake and she had winged
dragons tattooed on both her sun-browned shoulders. She also smelled as
if she had been smoking reefer inside a closed auto-mobile.

Temple Carrol leaned against a table behind them,
her arms folded, looking at Jamie Lake as though Jamie had swum through
a hole in the dimension.

I finished talking to my friend whom I had paid to
run polygraphs on both of them.

'He says all indications are you're telling the
truth,' I said to Virgil.

'So that's supposed to make me feel good?' he
replied.

'The tests aren't always conclusive. Yours is,' I
said.

'Glad to hear it. When you want us back?'

'We empanel the jury in ten days.'

'I been this route before. No disrespect, but I
don't want to come up here every morning at seven-thirty and sit on a
bench in a hallway and play with my Johnson till somebody remembers I'm
a friend of the court,' he said.

'How about I send somebody for you? Will that be
okay?' I asked.

He stretched out one leg and rubbed the inside of
his thigh. 'Yeah, that's probably the best way to do it. Call first,
though, okay?'

Jamie Lake chewed gum with her mouth open. Her hair
was long and dark blonde and her face narrow, with a pinched light in
it. 'Why do I get the feeling I'm anybody's fuck here?' she asked.

'My friend, the man who ran the polygraph on you,
says he couldn't make a determination. It happens sometimes,' I said.

'Yeah? Well, I don't believe you. I think your
friend was trying to see down my tank top,' she said.

'Maybe he was.'

'So get fucko back on the phone. I told him the
truth. I didn't come all this way for y'all's bullshit.'

In the background, Temple cocked her head and looked
at me.

'My friend thinks you might have had contact with a
few pharmaceuticals before the test,' I said.

'You had us both UA-ed. You tell that asshole I have
an IQ of one-sixty and I remember everything I see, like in a camera.
Also tell him I think he's probably a needle dick.'

'I'll try to pass it on,' I replied.

'Do we get some expense money for gas and meals?'
Virgil said.

'You bet. The secretary's got it. Y'all have been
real helpful,' I said. I didn't look at Jamie Lake.

'Kiss my ass,' she said.

Just then, my secretary buzzed me on the intercom.

'Billy Bob, it's Lucas Smothers,' she said, and
before I could respond, Lucas opened the inner office door and walked
inside.

'I'm sorry. I didn't know you was in here with
anybody,' he said.

'It's all right,' I said.

Jamie Lake's eyes seemed to peel Lucas's clothes off
his skin. Then she turned her glare on me.

'Ask him what other time he had that shirt on,' she
said.

'Excuse me?' I said.

'The night we saw him in the picnic ground. That's
all he had on. His pants were around his knees and he was passed out,
and he had that blue-white check shirt on, with the little gold horns
on the shoulders. He was passed out, with his underwear down on his
moon, and she was puking in the bushes,' she said.

Lucas's face turned dark red.

'Yeah, she's right. But I don't understand what's
going on,' he said.

Temple walked from behind Jamie's chair and put one
hand on Jamie's shoulder, her fingers stroking the tattoo of a winged
dragon.

'Let's talk about long-sleeve blouses, kiddo. What
do you wear, like a medium or a ten?' she said.

After Jamie and Virgil had gone, Lucas
sat down in
front of my desk.

'It's my dad. He don't usually drink. But last night
he sat out on the windmill tank and drunk durn near a pint of whiskey,'
he said.

'This has been hard on him,' I said.

'That ain't it.' He turned around and looked at
Temple.

'Go ahead. It won't leave this office,' I said.

'He wouldn't come in. He slept out there on the
ground. This morning he showered and ate some aspirins and I fixed him
some breakfast, and he sat there eating it like it was cardboard.'

I waited. Lucas pulled at his shirtsleeve and
snuffed down in his nose, as though the room were too cold.

'He was talking about getting even with Vanzandt. I
go, "You mean Darl, 'cause of what he done at the country club?"

'He says, "Darl does them things 'cause his father
lets him. His father gets away with it 'cause he's rich. That's the way
this county works."

'I said, "It's Darl. There's something wrong with
him. It ain't his daddy's fault."

'He goes, "You're a good boy, son. You make me
proud. Jack Vanzandt's fixing to have his day."

'My father ain't ever talked like that before, Mr
Holland.

His pistol, the one he brung home from the army, I
looked and it ain't in his drawer.'

'I don't think your dad would kill anyone, Lucas.'

He looked around behind him again.

'You want me to leave?' Temple said.

I raised my hand. 'Go ahead, Lucas,' I said.

'He done it in the war. A lieutenant kept getting
people killed. My dad threw a grenade in his tent.'

'Where is your dad now?'

'Getting a haircut down the street.'

I winked at him.

But my confidence was cosmetic.
Neither I nor anyone
I knew in Deaf Smith had any influence over Vernon Smothers. He
believed intransigence was a virtue, a laconic and mean-spirited
demeanor was strength, reason was the tool the rich used to keep the
poor satisfied with their lot, and education amounted to reading books
full of lies written by history's victors.

I was almost relieved when I asked in the barbershop
and was told Vernon had already gone. Then the barber added, 'Right
next door in the beer joint. Tell him to stay there, too, will you?'

The inside of the tavern was dark and cool, filled
with the sounds of midday pool shooters, and at the end of the long
wood bar Vernon Smothers sat hunched over a plate, peeling a hardboiled
egg, a cup of coffee by his wrist.

I had rather seen him drunk. Under the brim of a
white straw hat, his face had the deceptive serenity of a man who was
probably threading his way in and out of a nervous breakdown, his eyes
predisposed and resolute with private conclusions that no one would
alter.

I waved the bartender away and remained standing.

'We found a couple of witnesses, Vernon. I think
Lucas is going to walk.'

'You want an egg?'

'Jack Vanzandt doesn't have any power in that
courtroom.'

'The hell he don't.'

'You won't trust me?'

'I trusted the people sent me to Vietnam. I come
home on a troop ship under the Golden Gate. People up on the bridge
dropped Baggies full of shit on us.'

'To tell you the truth, Vernon, I don't think you'd
have had it any other way,' I said, and walked back down the polished
length of the bar into the sunlight.

It was a cheap remark to make, one that I would
regret.

I crossed the street to the courthouse
and opened
Marvin Pomroy's office door. He was talking to his secretary.

'Got time for some early disclosure?' I asked.

'No more deals. You've got all the slack you're
getting,' he said.

'I'm filing a motion to dismiss.'

'I've got to hear this. I haven't had a laugh all
day,' he replied.

I followed him into the inner office.

'I've got two witnesses who saw Lucas passed out at
the murder scene when Roseanne Hazlitt was still alive,' I said.

'Winos?'

'A Mexican biker from San Antone who just passed a
polygraph, and a gal who puts me in mind of a chainsaw going across a
knee joint. By the way, I wonder what percentage of our jury is going
to be Hispanic?'

Marvin leaned back in his swivel chair and pulled at
his red suspenders with his thumbs.

'You feeling pretty good about yourself, huh?' he
said.

'It's reasonable doubt. A kid who's so drunk three
people can't wake him up doesn't suddenly revive himself and rape and
beat someone to death.'

'Who says?' But he was looking into space now, and
the conviction had dissipated in his voice.

'Why not cut your losses?' I asked.

'Because "the people" are the advocate of the
victim, Billy Bob, in this case a dead girl who doesn't have a voice. I
represent them and her. I don't cut my
losses.'

'Lucas Smothers is a victim, too.'

'No he's your son. And that's been the problem since
the get-go. He lied through his teeth about how well he knew her. What
makes you think he's telling the truth now? Go look again at the morgue
pictures. You think she did that to herself?' Then his face colored and
he rubbed a finger in the middle of his forehead.

'You're going to lose,' I said.

'So? For me it's a way of life. Say, what kind of
rap sheet does your Mexican biker have? Or does he just use his hog to
go to and from Mass?'

Pete and two of his friends had come
over to ride
Beau that evening. I saw the three of them, mounted in a row on his
back, turn Beau up the embankment on the rim of the tank, then
disappear through the pasture where it sloped down toward the river. A
half hour later I heard Beau's hooves by the windmill, then on the wood
floor of the barn. I walked out into the yard.

'Y'all didn't want to stay out longer?' I asked.

'There's a man fishing by that sunk car. He's
standing in the water in a suit,' Pete said.

A boy and girl Pete's age sat behind him on Beau's
spine. They both kept looking back over their shoulders, through the
open doors behind them.

'What color hair does he have, bud?' I asked.

Pete pulled his leg over Beau's withers and dropped
to the ground and walked toward me, his expression hidden from the
others. He kept walking until we were on the grass in the yard, out of
earshot of his friends.

'It's red. We was letting Beau drink. Juanita was up
on the bank, pulling flowers. This man standing in the water says,
"That your girlfriend?" I say, "I ain't got no girlfriend."

'He says, "She's a right trim little thing. You
don't get it first, somebody else will."

'I said I didn't know what he meant and I didn't
want to, either. I told him I was going back to my house. He says, "Old
enough to bleed, old enough to butcher."

'It was the look on his face. He kept watching
Juanita. I ain't never seen a grown person look at a kid like that.'

I put my hand on the back of Pete's head.

'Y'all go inside and fix yourself some peach ice
cream,' I said.

I drove the Avalon down the dirt track, past the
tank, and through the field to the bluffs over the river, the grass
thropping
under the bumper. Five feet out from the bank, submerged to
his hips,
in his blue serge suit with no shirt under his coat, was Garland T.
Moon. He flung his bait with a cheap rod out into the current.

I got out of the Avalon and looked down at him from
the bluff. Against the late sun his skin looked bathed in iodine.

'This waterway is public property. State of Texas
law,' he said. A brown, triangular scab had formed on his bottom lip
where I had hit him.

'I'm going to have you picked up anyway.'

He had to lick the scab on his lip before he spoke.
'Thought you might want to know I got me an ACLU civil rights lawyer
from Dallas.'

'You know who Sammy Mace is?' I said.