Heartwood

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 the hots for each other. The stuff of great romance."

"I still don't get the tie to Earl Deitrich," I said.

"Maybe Earl's just helping out disadvantaged kids, Billy Bob. Maybe he's not a total bastard, even though some people would like to think so." She gave me a deliberate look.

I kept my eyes straight ahead. The country was rolling and green, and red Angus were grazing on a hill. A moment later I heard Temple take some papers out of a second folder.

"This kid Cholo is a walking nightmare," she said. "The mother's boyfriend threw him against the wall when he was a baby and probably damaged the brain. He has epileptic seizures and refuses all medication. He's been in the reformatory three times and a mental ward twice. My friend at San Antonio P.D. says every cop in the city treats him with extreme caution."

"What about that story Cholo told you, the one about taking down rich marks at a phony poker game?" I said.

"Nobody seems to know anything about it. He's been on crystal and acid half his life. He probably sees snakes in his breakfast food," she said.

The car garage where Ronnie Cruise worked for his uncle was in a Mexican neighborhood just outside of town, one with dust-blown streets and untrimmed banana and palm trees and stucco houses with tin roofs and alleyways that groaned with unemptied garbage cans.

Ronnie Cruise was taller than he had seemed at the drive-in restaurant in Deaf Smith, his arms heavy with muscle, his bare chest flat, his lats thick, tapering away to a narrow waist. The inside of the shop was filled with antique cars that were either being restored or customized and rebuilt with high-powered, chromed engines. Ronnie Cruise walked outside with us into the shade, away from the noise, wiping his hands on a rag. He wore a red bandanna wrapped around his hair. His upper left arm was ringed with scar tissue like a band of dried putty.

"I had barbed wire tattooed there. Bad example in a time of AIDS. I had a doctor take it off," he said.

He leaned against the side of the building, one work boot propped against the stucco. He stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

"Smoking bother you?" he said.

"Go ahead," Temple said.

He played with his lighter, then dropped the cigarette back in the package and put the package in his pocket.

"What's between the Purple Hearts and Earl Deitrich?" I asked.

"Nothing," he answered. He looked down the alley at a banana tree moving in the breeze.

"You just drive up to Deaf Smith to hang around with Jeff?" I said.

"How'd you know I been with Jeff?" he asked.

"I saw you and Esmeralda with him at Val's Drive-in," I said.

"Oh, yeah," he said, and nodded absently. "Look, my uncle don't want me taking off too long."

"Some gangbangers caused the death of an accountant down in Houston. You and Cholo hear anything about that?" Temple said.

"I don't get to Houston much. Anyway, I'm signing off on this stuff. So excuse me and maybe I'll see you some other time," he said.

"Cholo got Esmeralda out of jail. You didn't want to be there for her yourself?" I said.

"We're not getting along real good right now," he replied.

Then I took a chance.

"Is Jeff getting next to your girl? She got busted out by his house," I said.

He looked at the tops of his hands, his face impenetrable.

"I heard you took some whacks for her. That's the only reason we're talking now. But anything between me and Jeff is private business. I don't mean nothing personal by that," he said.

He untied the bandanna from his head and shook it out and walked back into the garage.

Temple watched him go back to work on the shell of a 1941 Ford, the flats of her hands inserted in her back pockets.

"That kid's a piece of work. You see him throwing two guys off a roof?" she said.

"With about as much emotion as spitting out his gum," I said.

That afternoon I walked over to Marvin Pomroy's office in the courthouse. His secretary told me he was at the Mexican grocery store that was located just off the square. When I cut across the lawn toward the store, I thought I saw Skyler Doolittle walking on a side street, in his Panama hat and wilted seersucker, his upper torso bent forward, as though he wanted to arrive at his destination sooner than his body could take him.

I found Marvin Pomroy at a table under a wood-bladed fan in the back of the store, eating a taco while he read a book.

"I hope this is about baseball," he said.

"Was that Skyler Doolittle out there?" I asked.

"He came by and gave me a book. About Earl Deitrich's great-grandfather. Evidently the great-grandfather was an Alsatian diamond miner and slaver for the Belgians."

A uniformed deputy sheriff came in and bought a package of Red Man at the counter. He gave both of us a hard look before he went out.

"Esmeralda Ramirez isn't bringing sexual battery charges against Hugo's office, provided they don't charge you for punching out the deputy. Did you know that?" Marvin said.

"No, I didn't," I said. Marvin lifted his eyes into my face when I pulled out a chair and sat down without being invited. "Cut Wilbur Pickett loose."

"The state attorney's office seems to think he's a guilty man. I've gotten calls from a few other people, too." His eyes left mine and looked at nothing.

"Tell both them and Earl Deitrich to get lost," I said.

"Oh, yeah, that kind of statement makes people with money and power go away every time," he said.

We stared at each other in the silence. The breeze from the overhead fan ruffled the pages of the book he was reading. Marvin Pomroy was a good man who believed the system represented a level of integrity that somehow transcended the people who constantly manipulated it for their own ends. No amount of arguing or the personal battering of his soul had ever affected that faith. I knew nothing I said now would change that fact.

"Why'd Skyler Doolittle give you the book?" I asked.

"Hell if I know. I guess the great-grandfather was a genuine sonofabitch. He even wrote a handbook for the Belgian government on how to capture starved natives at night when they snuck into their gardens for food. Take a look at this picture. He used human skulls to border his flower beds… You all right?"

"Wilbur Pickett's wife talked about the same thing. She saw the picture inside her head. It has something to do with spirits that want revenge."

He pinched his temples gingerly, then signaled the waitress for his check.

"I think I'll stroll on back to the office. Don't get up. Stay and have some iced tea. It's on me. Really," he said.