Rogues

BAD BRASS

Bradley Denton

1. Lost in the Woods

With only a fragment of moon above, and surrounded by the twisted limbs of live oaks and Texas cedars, I wasn’t worried that the five thieves in the crooked house might spot me. For one thing, I was forty yards away in the woods. For another, it was late on Saturday night—1:30 A.M. Sunday morning, really—and my targets were seventeen-year-olds who were oblivious to anything that wasn’t on their smartphones or in their pants.

As far as I could tell, the most dangerous thing about them was the Hank Williams III country punk that blasted out every time the front door opened. These kids were poor excuses for crime kingpins, which was one reason I liked the idea of taking their ill-gotten gains. I doubted it would be much trouble for me, and maybe it’d be a learning experience for them. Win-win. Besides, if my ex-wife called me to come teach again next week, and if any of these kids happened to be in my class, then ace substitute Matthew Marx would have the pleasure of seeing the hangdog expressions on their pimply faces.

At the moment, though, I thought I needed a better look. Besides the scrap of moon, the available light consisted of off-white beams stabbing from the house windows and a custard-yellow glow from a bulb on the front porch. Not bad. But I had been watching with my folding binoculars for almost forty-five minutes, and I had realized I was too far away to have a good view when the money changed hands. Especially if it happened inside. I needed to be sure I could tell which kid took the cash—and whether that kid kept it, split it with the others, or stashed it.

I also wanted to see how much they collected. There wasn’t much point in tailing a teenager for a lousy hundred bucks … or in burglarizing this dump later if there was nothing inside but empty beer cans and Cheetos bags. I had been in that situation before, and I had been bitten by a previously undetected Chihuahua for my trouble. Then the Chihuahua had only sold for twenty bucks, which hadn’t been enough to cover my pain and suffering. I hoped he had ended up in a stir-fry.

That misadventure had taught me that appearances could be deceiving. The Chihuahua’s house had been a minimansion occupied by successful marijuana importers, yet it had yielded next to bupkis. This rural house with the crooked frame, in contrast, was little more than an oversized Dogpatch shack. It had once been a spiffy guest cabin on the third-largest ranch in Kingman County, but now it was old, ugly, and warped. Yet it might contain a heart of gold.

I had swiped the directions here from a smartphone belonging to a Kingman High football star named Donny. In the hallway before one of my classes, I had heard him brag to a friend about his off-season criminal enterprises. That was the advantage of being an old dude at a high school, and a substitute old dude at that. Unless I stood right in front of them and yelled in their faces, the kids didn’t even see me. And they ignored the school rule against phone use during class. So I could eavesdrop, or walk past their desks and read their texts, as if I were a ghost.

Once I had the directions, some persistent Googling had revealed that the crooked house plus five acres currently belonged to the bidnissman-father of another high-school kid named Jared. I hadn’t laid eyes on that one at school, but I had figured out which one he was from my vantage point in the woods. Assuming Facebook photos didn’t lie.

It didn’t look as if Jared’s daddy was interested in mowing or other upkeep for this little country retreat. No doubt he’d bought the place as an investment before the latest real-estate bust. So now his seventeen-year-old heir had a clubhouse. And since the next occupied home was a half mile away, the club might as well indulge in some illegal activity.

I was pretty sure no hard drugs were involved, so I doubted that I needed to worry about assault weapons. Sure, this was Texas, so there might be a few shotguns or deer rifles inside. But I wasn’t too scared of anything that needed to be cocked between rounds.

I didn’t have a gun myself. I never do. Guns are a crutch for those who aren’t in good enough shape to run. I did have my Swiss Army knife, but that was just in case I needed a compact burglary tool.

And I didn’t think I would. So far, these kids didn’t seem bright enough to lock their doors.

2. Defective Merchandise

At 1:55 A.M. by my watch, a pair of headlights came toward the crooked house from the county road to the north, bouncing along the dirt-and-gravel driveway just east of my hiding place. I crouched behind a live-oak trunk until a grimy, rust-spotted white van with no side or rear windows passed by. This looked promising.

The van drove past a PT Cruiser, a Honda Civic, and a Ford pickup that were all parked in the grass on the other side of the driveway. It pulled off a wide patch of dirt at the end into the weed-tangled front yard, then backed up until its rear bumper was almost touching the porch steps. The rear doors opened.

On the porch, a skinny guy with shaggy brown hair—Jared—and a tall girl with long, straight blond hair had been making out on an old sofa beside the front door. Now they jumped up. Jared opened the door to wave at someone inside, and Hank Williams III fell silent. I could hear crickets and cicadas again, but the voices from the porch were just a mumble.

I closed my binoculars flat. No one would be looking in my direction now that the van had arrived. I jammed the binoculars into the back pocket of my black jeans, then zipped up my black sweatshirt and flipped up the hood. Late April in Central Texas, even in the middle of the night, was too warm for this ensemble. And the sports eye black I had smeared over my face made me itch. But sometimes comfort had to be sacrificed for style.

I left the trees and angled fifteen yards across the driveway in a low scuttle, ducking behind the PT Cruiser. I paused a moment, then made my way to the Civic. My knees didn’t hurt enough to slow me down, but I could still feel them more than I would have liked. At my checkup right after the move from Chicago, my new Texas doctor had said I was in decent shape “for a forty-three-year-old who smokes, drinks, and already has a touch of osteoarthritis.” This from a seventy-year-old G.P. with peanut-butter breath and a gut like a beach ball. I might not have minded if he hadn’t gone on to ask if I wanted to do something about my thinning hair. “At least mine’s still brown,” I’d said. “Tick-tock,” he’d replied. My kind of guy.

I stopped in a crouch behind the left-front fender of the Civic, holding my breath. I could hear hi-how-ya-doin’ chatter from the porch. But under that, there were soft voices from the bed of the Ford pickup on the other side of the Honda.

“What’s happening?” It was the whisper of a teenage girl.

“They’re about to make an offer,” a male whisper answered. “Don’t worry. Tyler’s got this.”

“Shouldn’t you be up there, too, Donny?”

“Naw, it’s cool. Come on, Marisa. Kiss me again.”

“Marisa” was a name I recognized from a few days before, when I’d subbed a college-prep comp-and-lit class. She had been a tiny, dark-haired young woman with huge brown eyes and a hint of a Tejano accent. She had said some perceptive things about D. H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking-Horse Winner.” I had been impressed enough to remember her.

But as it turned out, she was just another teenage criminal. It was disappointing because I hadn’t expected any of the kids involved in the theft to be smart. Sure, these particular thieves had been smart enough to get in and out of Kingman Rural High School at night without being picked up on security video—but there were only three working cameras, and two of them were aimed at the main entrance. It wouldn’t take any valedictorians to avoid them.

When I heard the wet sounds of Marisa and Donny gnawing at each other’s faces, I crept to the Civic’s rear fender and looked around it. I was within ten yards of the house now, and my angle was straight toward the west side of the porch. There wasn’t even a railing. If the kids and their buyers stayed where they were, I would see the whole deal.

In the pickup bed, Donny was doing his best to turn his make-out session with Marisa into something more. But Marisa was disengaging every few moments to rise up and watch the proceedings on the porch. I was amused. But I had to watch the porch, too.

Three Caucasian high-schoolers—Jared and the girl from the couch, plus Donny’s football buddy Tyler—stood with their backs to the open front door. Tyler was a lumpy-nosed, stubble-headed bruiser in blue jeans and a Toby Keith T-shirt who was destined for a career in either the NFL or the liquor-store-holdup industry. He hadn’t had jack to say about “The Rocking-Horse Winner.”

Two adult dudes stood with their backs to the van. One was a pink-faced, grizzled white guy wearing a NASCAR cap who could have been a less-beefy, much-older clone of Tyler. He looked about sixty-five or seventy, but some of that might have been due to hard living. I thought I recognized him as a long-ago skunkweed associate of my old man’s, but I couldn’t be sure.

The other guy was a slim, fair-skinned hombre with a grim expression and gunmetal-gray eyes. He looked to be in his mid-thirties. He was wearing a white cowboy hat, a gold-paisley-embroidered red jacket over a black shirt with white-pearl buttons, a gold bolo tie and wristwatch, crisp black slacks, and pointy-toed red rodeo boots. Here was another man who knew that comfort sometimes had to be sacrificed for style. Or maybe he had just come from a gig.

NASCAR-Cap Guy was talking. “—appreciate the offer, but we’d prefer to evaluate the goods out here. Carlos and I can drink our own beer, know what I mean?”

Tyler grinned and stuck out his hand toward the man in the cowboy hat. “Carlos, is it? I’m looking forward to earning your business.”

I winced. Tyler was doing an imitation of an appliance-store salesman. It was not good.

Carlos didn’t like it, either. His eyes narrowed, and his shoulders twitched. He did not extend a hand to meet Tyler’s.

NASCAR-Cap Guy gave a forced chuckle. “Uh, ‘Carlos’ ain’t his real name. I’m just calling him that for the purposes of this transaction. And you should call me Mr. Anthony, as I told you on the phone, on account of I’m your respected elder. Now, let’s get on with it.”

Yup, this was the guy I remembered from when I was a kid. Bobby Anthony. Daddy had called him Bobby Tone. He had gone to the pokey for a while. And my mama had not liked him even a little bit.

Tyler dropped his hand. The scowl on his face said that Carlos and Bobby Tone had disrespected him, and he was offended.

I winced again. Bad move, Tyler. These guys might pull your spine out through your nose.

Fortunately, the scowl passed in an instant, and Tyler turned into Willy Loman again. “Well, sure, of course! Let’s get on with it! Jared, you want to bring ’em out?”

Jared looked confused. “All at once?”

“Kaylee can help.” Tyler nodded toward the blond girl, who was looking down at her feet and brushing her hair from her eyes.

Now Carlos cleared his throat and spoke. He was dressed like a banda musician and standing on a porch in Texas, but his voice sounded as if it belonged to an Anglo news anchor in Connecticut.

“As I understand it,” he said, “you have three different models available. I suggest you bring them out one at a time, so I can evaluate them individually.”

Tyler and Jared stared dumbly, and Kaylee continued looking at her feet. Then Bobby Tone barked at them. “Goddamn, boys, what you waitin’ for?”

Tyler flicked a hand at Jared, and Jared hurried into the house. Kaylee scuffed her flip-flops, but otherwise didn’t move.

In the bed of the Ford, Donny grunted. I looked up and saw that Marisa had been watching the porch with her arms propped on the sidewall of the pickup bed. But now Donny was trying to pull her back down.

“Donny, no!” Marisa said, no longer whispering.

Donny grunted again and kept pulling. Marisa vanished downward, and I had the sick feeling that I might have to do something. Which would be really stupid of me.

“Donny! Basta ya!” This was accompanied by the sound of flesh being smacked. I guessed it was Donny’s face. And I relaxed a little.

On the porch, Carlos glanced toward the Ford. Which was pretty close to glancing toward me. I held my breath.

But Carlos didn’t let his gaze linger. He turned back toward Tyler, checked his wristwatch, and muttered something about amateurs.

Marisa rose up to look over the sidewall again.

Donny stood, hissed “Screw this,” and jumped to the ground. Then he stomped to the porch.

“ ’Bye,” Marisa whispered. Her back was toward me, but I had the sense that she was smiling.

I smiled too. Then I looked toward the porch again.

Tyler scowled again as Donny hopped onto the porch. “You need something, bro?”

“Yeah, but I ain’t gettin’ it.”

Bobby Tone cleared his throat. “If you boys could put your love lives on hold until we’re done, we’d appreciate it.”

Then Jared came back outside, lugging a trapezoidal black-plastic case that was almost as big as he was. He flopped it onto the concrete porch with a thud, and Tyler squatted down to snap open the latches.

“Feast your eyes on this, gentlemen,” he said.

The top of the case swung up so I couldn’t see what lay inside. But I could see the sour expression on Carlos.

“Uh, no good?” Bobby asked.

Carlos gave one slow, grim shake of his head.

“Mucho asso sucko,” he said. He still sounded like he was from Connecticut.

Bobby Tone took one step forward, put a work-boot-clad foot against the case, and kicked it off the porch. When it hit the ground, the big white bell of a sousaphone tumbled out, rolling a few feet in my direction before it came to rest facing the porch. The coiled white tubing of the rest of the instrument fell from the case, and then the case flopped over on top of it.

“Hey!” Donny yelled. “What the hell?”

Carlos regarded Donny and Tyler with a dark glare.

“Fiberglass,” Carlos said. His voice was a growl.

He reached behind his back, under the jacket, and came out with a revolver so big that it looked as if it belonged in a cartoon.

Then he cocked it and blasted away at the sousaphone bell.

He was a good shot, too.

3. Bull-shiit!

I ducked behind the Civic’s left-rear tire. The movement might give me away, but it was better than catching a pellet. Carlos fired five rounds in all, each one making a noise like a half stick of dynamite. I recognized the sound: .410 Magnum shotgun shells.

When the last echo had died away and my humming ears could make out the voices of shouting teenagers, I risked a look around the Civic’s bumper again. The sousaphone bell now sported five golf-ball-sized holes and a peppering of smaller wounds. The grass around it was dusted with white-fiberglass snow.

While Bobby Tone reamed his ears with his pinky, Carlos flipped out the cylinder of the big revolver and dumped the empty shotgun shells. Then he reached into his jacket, brought out five more shells, and reloaded.

“This firearm,” Carlos said, snapping the cylinder back into place, “is called the Judge. And the Judge doesn’t like fiberglass.” He looked sidelong at Bobby Tone. “Didn’t you tell them the Judge wouldn’t like fiberglass?”

Bobby nodded. “I mentioned that low-quality instruments would not be considered.”

Tyler stabbed a finger toward the ventilated bell. “That’s a King! It’s a four-thousand-dollar horn!”

“If you say so,” Bobby Tone said. “This ain’t my area of expertise. I’m just the middleman.”

Carlos tucked the Judge behind his back again. “So, children,” he said. “What else do you have?”

While Tyler, Donny, and Jared conferred in a nervous huddle and Kaylee sat down on the tattered couch again, I glanced at the Ford. I didn’t think any of the shotgun pellets had pinged the truck, but I guessed Marisa had gotten a good scare. And sure enough, she was out of sight. I assumed she had flattened on the floor of the pickup bed.

Good. A smart kid like Marisa needed to be scared away from dodgy crap. Otherwise she might wind up in a hoodie with eye black all over her face, crouching in the weeds somewhere.

Up on the porch, Jared was dragging another big black case outside. This time, when Tyler opened it, I saw a gold-lacquered brass bell gleaming inside.

Carlos pursed his lips. “This appears to be acceptable,” he said. “But let’s find out.”

In a few smooth motions, Carlos had the sousaphone out of its case with the bell attached. He dropped the circular tubing over his head and onto his shoulders, then placed his fingers on the valve keys and his lips to the mouthpiece.

A fast, booming scale burst forth and made the Civic’s bumper rattle. I could feel it in my chest, too. It wasn’t as sharp as the sound the Judge had made, but it penetrated deeper. I was impressed.

Carlos stopped after thirty seconds, removed and disassembled the instrument, and replaced it in its case. He snapped the case shut, then stood up and looked at Bobby Tone.

“Twenty-two hundred,” he said.

Donny made a noise like a burro kicked in the balls, and Tyler exclaimed, “Bull-shiit!”

Carlos turned away and stared off into the night.

Bobby Tone extended his hands toward the boys, palms turned upward. “He says twenty-two hundred, it’s twenty-two hundred.”

“Aw, Jesus,” Tyler said. His appliance-store-salesman voice had morphed into a whine. “That’s a Conn. It sells for eight thousand new, and it’s only, like, four months old. It ain’t even been marched. You gotta give us at least four thousand. Especially since y’all shot up the King.”

Carlos remained stock-still.

Bobby Tone raised an eyebrow. “Boys, take it or leave it. And if you leave it, he will not be making another offer.”

Tyler and Donny both cussed. But Jared just looked at Kaylee, who was sitting on the couch with her hair in her face, staring down at her knees.

I saw her nod.

Then Jared and Tyler exchanged a look, and Tyler gave an exasperated groan.

“If we gotta, we gotta,” he said.

Carlos turned to face them and reached behind his back again. The boys flinched. But this time Carlos brought out a leather wallet the size of a small notebook. He opened it as if it were the Bible, counted out twenty-two bills, and handed them to Bobby Tone. Then he tucked the wallet back with the Judge.

Bobby peeled two bills from the stack and extended the rest toward Tyler.

“Dude, you’re shorting us,” Tyler whined.

Bobby Tone frowned. “Nope. My finder’s fee is 10 percent. So you still owe me twenty bucks.”

Tyler took the stack of hundreds and stuffed it into his back pocket.

“Now,” Carlos said, “did you save the best for last?”

Donny jerked a thumb at Jared, and Jared went inside.

“We did, sir,” Tyler said. The kid was doing his best to regain his composure. “This one is about three years old, but it’s in perfect shape. A new one would run you 15 K.”

Carlos raised an eyebrow. “Sousaphones don’t often cost that much.”

Tyler grinned as Jared dragged out the third case and set it on the porch beside the second.

“That’s because this sucker ain’t a sousaphone,” he said. He squatted, unsnapped the latches, and flipped open the lid with a flourish. “According to my band-geek colleagues, this right here is a Gronitz concert tuba. It’s the Kingman High band teacher’s pride and joy since he convinced some rich San Antonio asshole to donate it. But Mr. Garrett’s loss can be your gain.”

That made my teeth grit. Up to now, I had held out some hope that David Garrett might be part of the sousaphone-stealing conspiracy. After all, he was a low-paid teacher with access to high-cost instruments. But there was no sign of him here, and Tyler seemed amused by his potential discomfort.

Nuts. I hadn’t even been introduced to Garrett yet, but I was pretty sure he was sleeping with my ex. It would have made me happy if he were a criminal. All I’d seen for sure in the five weeks I’d been back in Kingman was that he was talented, handsome, popular, and drove an almost-new Nissan Maxima. Also, he was African-American, which gave him some heritage in common with Elizabeth. Of course, I knew that my European genes weren’t the reason our marriage had cratered. But then, I had wished I were black ever since I’d seen Freddie King play at the Armadillo in Austin when I was six. My father had shown me a few good things besides how to pick a lock.

Carlos leaned over, looked into the case, then gave a sigh.

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so.”

Tyler stood up bug-eyed. “Are you kidding? This thing is pristine.”

“And look at all that metal!” Donny said. “There’s more than in three sousaphones!”

Carlos looked into the case again. “This would be fine as a recording instrument, or for a symphony—but these are not my markets. I think you may have been misled by the fact that in Mexico, a sousaphone is simply called a tuba.” He gave Donny a disdainful glance. “As for the amount of metal, I assume you think I am in the scrap business. I am not.” He looked into the case a third time. “Eight hundred.”

Then Carlos turned away and stared into the night again.

This time Donny was the one who yelled: “Bull-shiit! Bu-ull-SHIIT!”

Bobby Tone held out his hands. “Boys, you got ten seconds.”

I watched as Tyler and Donny stomped and cussed some more. Then, as before, Jared looked at Kaylee, whose face was still hidden in her hair. She was picking at a piece of dead skin on her ankle. But she gave Jared another nod, and Jared passed it on to Tyler.

Tyler groaned and held out his hand.

As before, Carlos turned around, produced the big wallet, pulled out some bills, and handed them to Bobby Tone.

Bobby thumbed the top bill away and tucked it into his pocket. “Now you don’t owe me twenty anymore.” He handed Tyler the remaining seven hundred.

Tyler, as sullen as a neutered bulldog, stuffed it into his back pocket with the rest. The pocket bulged now, but that only seemed to make him sadder.

I would do what I could to relieve him of that burden. Twenty-seven hundred wasn’t a huge payday. But I’d often settled for less.

Carlos turned to Bobby Tone. “If there’s nothing else, we should be going.”

Bobby pointed at the house. “Y’all got anything else in there?”

“Naw, that’s all we could grab,” Donny said. “Kingman only has one other sousaphone anyway, and it’s old and beat-up.”

“In that case,” Bobby Tone said, “you might want to expand to other school districts. Carlos tells me we can use trumpets and trombones, too. But those won’t bring as much. If you want the big money, grab more sousaphones.”

Carlos made a dismissive gesture toward the blasted bell in the grass. His upper lip curled.

“But remember,” he said. “No fiberglass.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Bobby Tone kicked the lid of the tuba case closed. “All right, boys, load ’em up.”

Jared began to lean down toward the instrument cases. But Donny stepped in front of him. “I got it, clarinet-boy.”

Donny squatted and snapped the latches on the tuba case, then lugged it to the van and tossed it in. It landed with a bang.

“Take it easy!” Bobby Tone said.

Donny looked pissed. “Aw, it’s fine. It’s only worth seven hundred.” He kicked the left-rear van door, which slammed shut with another bang.

“Now, that’s just rude,” Bobby Tone said. Carlos glared.

Donny ignored them and reached for the sousaphone case.

At which point the van’s engine turned over. Then it bellowed, and the van spun away from the porch, its rear tires flinging dirt and grass, its right-rear door flapping. It fishtailed onto the dirt apron at the end of the driveway and blasted toward the county road.

As the van roared past me, I caught a glimpse of the driver.

Marisa.

I glanced back at the porch, expecting that Carlos would bring out the Judge again. But Carlos just stood there looking bemused while the other males on the porch hollered. Meanwhile, Kaylee had brushed her hair away from one eye and was watching the van make its getaway.

I watched it, too. Its lights came on as it squealed onto the blacktop road, and it roared away to the east. Its right-rear taillight winked as the open door swung over it and then swung back again. Then both taillights vanished among the live oaks, and the roar dwindled to a distant whine.

Up on the porch, the yelling and cussing dwindled as well. When it fell to silence, Carlos spoke. For the first time, he sounded as if he could be from Texas.

“Damn,” he said. “Whose girlfriend just jacked my tuba?”

4. Not a Pervert

I had no idea why Marisa had done it. Maybe she was mad at Donny for stomping off when she’d refused to put out. But for a smart kid, stealing the van seemed a stupid way of expressing her displeasure. Seeing as how Carlos and the Judge might decide to shoot up more than a fiberglass sousaphone bell.

Fortunately, Carlos didn’t seem to care about the van, and not much about the tuba. He just seemed happy that he still had the brass sousaphone.

Bobby Tone, however, was perturbed. I listened as he instructed Tyler to return the money for the tuba, plus another five hundred for the van.

“I stole that shitbox for the sole purpose of this transaction,” he said. “So it ain’t about the vehicle per se. It’s the principle. You invite a person to a business meeting, that person has a reasonable expectation of leaving in the same vehicle in which he arrived.”

The boys glanced at Kaylee, who gave a slight nod. Her hair fell over her face again.

Tyler, his shoulders hunched in misery, reached into his back pocket and pulled out the wad of bills. He counted off twelve and gave them back to Bobby Tone. Then Bobby counted off eight and extended them toward Carlos.

Carlos held up a hand. “No, you keep the finder’s fee.”

Bobby Tone peeled off a bill and handed over the rest. “That’s why I appreciate our association, Carlos.”

Carlos produced his wallet and tucked the bills inside. “You did your part.” Now he gave Tyler a cold stare. “But you’ll give me that hundred, pendejo.” The Spanish word didn’t sound natural coming from him. He put the emphasis on the first syllable instead of the second. “Then you’ll drive Mr. Anthony, me, and my sousaphone to our cars, which are parked in Kingman. And if I ever do business with you again, you’ll make sure the transaction proceeds in a more professional manner. Comprende?”

This time Tyler didn’t look to Jared or Kaylee. He just nodded, then handed Carlos another hundred.

I suppressed an urge to moan. Now the Kingman High sousaphone-stealing ring was left with a mere fourteen hundred. Plus some shot-gunned fiberglass.

And I wasn’t going to go after the cash on Bobby Tone and Carlos. I just wanted to steal candy from babies for a change. Especially after the Christmas mess in Chicago involving the Santa-with-a-Sig-Sauer. That payoff had financed my move back to Texas, but it still hadn’t been worth the near violation of Rule Number One: Don’t get killed.

Okay, so fourteen hundred wasn’t much. But it was something. And I had invested too much time to just let it go. So I had to stop pondering Marisa’s theft of the van. It wasn’t relevant to the goal.

Kaylee stood and took the remaining cash from Tyler’s hand. She didn’t speak, and she didn’t look up. She just smoothly … took it as she walked by. Tyler blinked and looked startled, but he didn’t say boo. Then Kaylee and Jared went into the house, closing the door behind them.

“All right, youngsters,” Bobby Tone said, slapping his hands together. “Time for me and Carlos to vacate Romper Room. Who’s drivin’?”

Donny mumbled and gestured toward the Ford pickup.

I eased away from the Civic’s rear bumper and moved up to the front end. Once there, I paused and listened long enough to hear the plastic-on-concrete scrape of the sousaphone case being picked up. Then, taking a quick breath, I scuttled past the Ford’s front end to the back corner of the crooked house. I squatted there, out of sight of the parked cars, with my back against the peeling wooden siding.

A glance around the corner revealed Tyler coming off the porch with the sousaphone case, followed by Donny, Bobby Tone, and Carlos.

“Hey, where’s Marisa?” Tyler asked as he hefted the sousaphone into the pickup bed. He wasn’t too bright.

“Gone,” Donny said.

Tyler climbed into the pickup bed with the instrument, and the other three got in front. When Donny started the engine, I ducked back around the corner before the headlights came on. Then I looked again while the Ford backed past the blasted fiberglass bell, shifted gears, and headed out to the road.

When it was gone, I remained still for a few minutes and listened. I heard Jared’s and Kaylee’s muffled voices inside the house, and no one else’s. I was pretty sure they were alone. I had watched the place for hours, and I had seen all of the vehicles arrive. The Ford was Donny’s, and Tyler had ridden shotgun. The Honda was Jared’s. And Kaylee had driven the PT Cruiser with Marisa as a passenger. I wondered how their friendship would evolve now that Marisa had screwed up what appeared to be Kaylee’s deal. And then I quashed that thought because, again, it wasn’t relevant to my goal.

I crept around to the south side of the house, following Jared’s and Kaylee’s voices. As I passed the concrete stoop on the east, I saw that the back door was standing open. There was a wooden screen door over it, but there was no latch or hook. I wouldn’t need my Swiss Army knife.

Once I was on the south side, I paused in the weeds under the second window. Like the back door, it was open but covered with a screen. A soft glow inside was accompanied by rustling noises, but the voices had fallen silent. It sounded as if Jared and Kaylee were going further than Donny and Marisa had gone.

As the sounds became rhythmic, I risked standing up far enough to look inside. I ignored the teenagers on the bed and scanned their clothes on the floor. The light from the lamp on the battered chest of drawers wasn’t great, but it was good enough for me to spot Kaylee’s white shorts in the doorway. The folded cash was visible in one of the pockets.

In the movies, a lone thief is often portrayed as an elegant schemer. But in the actual process of stealing, especially when stealing from other crooks, cleverness matters less than luck. Down and dirty gets the money.

I went back the way I had come, gingerly pulled open the screen door, and slipped inside.

The rest was easy. In a crouch, I passed through a small utility room and kitchen, entered the hallway, and followed the lamplight to the open bedroom door. Jared and Kaylee were busy, and it would have taken a hand grenade to distract them. So I snagged the shorts and crept back the other way until I was on the stoop. Thirty seconds, in and out.

Once I had eased the screen door closed, I removed the cash from the left rear pocket of Kaylee’s shorts and transferred it to my jeans. Then I found her smartphone in the right rear pocket. And now that I had the cash, I decided to allow myself some curiosity. I tapped the screen and it came to life, displaying the last text message Kaylee had seen before taking off her clothes.

GLAD U R OK, it read. ALL OK W ME 2. NO HAY PROBLEMA.

The sender was identified as MRSA.

Maybe Marisa hadn’t screwed up Kaylee’s deal after all. Maybe they had been working on something together.

I didn’t know what kind of deal took twenty-two hundred bucks and turned it into fourteen hundred. But whatever it had been, these kids now had nothing other than the bitter lesson that crime doesn’t pay.

Not enough, anyhow.

No longer worried about making a little noise, I jogged between the Honda and the PT Cruiser, across the driveway, and back into the trees. From there, with the aid of my trusty penlight, I would make my way along a few deer trails back to the side road where I’d parked my Toyota Corolla.

I left Kaylee’s phone and shorts on the stoop. I was glad there hadn’t been any underwear inside the shorts. That would have made me feel creepy.

As it was, I could tell myself that even though I was a lowlife, I wasn’t a pervert. I would cling to that.

That, and fourteen hundred dollars swiped from a gang of teenage sousaphone thieves.

5. No Puns Allowed

When I arrived at Kingman Rural High School on Monday morning, feeling like a fraud in khakis and a blue sport shirt, I encountered a sixtyish sheriff’s deputy just inside the front doors. He was blocky and big-nosed, and he occupied the center of the brick-and-tile foyer like a monument to local law enforcement. He was wearing aviator sunglasses with his deerskin-colored uniform and Stetson, and he was chewing gum with slow menace. The holster for the .357 revolver on his hip was unsnapped, and there was nothing else on the gunbelt except a handcuff holster. I hadn’t seen a cop carry a weapon other than a semiauto since I was a kid, and most were also adorned with radios, Tasers, collapsible clubs, mace canisters, and all sorts of other toys. But this guy was old-school.

I didn’t recognize him, even though I’d grown up in Kingman County, which meant that despite his age, he was new around here. So I decided to have a chat. Whenever possible, I like to be on friendly terms with potential problems.

“Some kinda trouble, chief?” I asked as kids poured into the building around us. I had to raise my voice to be heard over the yammering teenagers.

The deputy didn’t look at me as he answered. “Break-in and theft last Friday night. School property stolen.”

I cocked my head like a confused spaniel. “How’s standing here on Monday morning gonna help that?”

The deputy’s eyebrows pinched closer by a few millimeters. “Just doing what I can.” He looked at me over the top of the sunglasses. “I told the sheriff I suspect students. So her idea is the culprits will see me and get nervous. And nervous kids tell tales. In theory.”

I glanced around at the rushing influx of tall and short, fat and skinny, white, black, and brown teenagers. Half of them were staring down at their phones as they flowed past, and the other half were either engrossed in conversation or rolling their eyes at us.

“Well, good luck with that,” I said.

The deputy pushed up his sunglasses. “I’m well aware that these little bastards aren’t intimidated by a fat old man. But as I say, I’m doing what I can. And I get to have my second cup of coffee when the bell rings.” He glanced at the clock on the wall behind him. “Thirteen minutes.”

I nodded toward the unsnapped holster. “Just be careful you don’t shoot any of the little bastards in the meantime, hoss.”

One of his eyebrows rose. “So far, you’ve called me ‘chief’ and ‘hoss.’ I suspect sarcasm. So if I shoot anybody, it’s gonna be you.”

I checked my wristwatch. “I’ll take a rain check on that, colonel. The principal wants to see me, and as you’ve pointed out, I only have thirteen minutes to the bell.”

“That’s a shame,” the deputy said. “I’ve been so enjoying your company.”

“Name’s Matthew Marx, by the way.” I stuck out my hand. “Substitute teacher par excellence. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Deputy—”

I looked at the name on the rectangular tag over his badge.

“ ‘Beeswax’?” I asked.

He didn’t extend his hand. “As in none of yours.”

“But we have something in common, jefe. Our names both end in ‘x.’ ”

His face was like a big-nosed rock. “Ain’t no such thing as alphabet brothers.”

So I turned my attempted handshake into a salute and then moved into the main hallway, weaving through the throng until the brick wall to my left turned into glass panels. I cut across the hall, stopping twice to avoid kids who wouldn’t look up from their phones, and then opened the door to the school office.

Lester, the office manager—he didn’t like being called the secretary—was leaning on the long counter that split the room between his workspace and the waiting area. Lester was a retired history teacher and coach who had taken this job, he claimed, because his wife had threatened to stab him with her garden shears if he stayed home. At the moment, Lester had his bald head in his hands, propping his ruddy lump of a face in the steam from a jumbo travel mug. His necktie was slung over the shoulder of his plaid shirt so it didn’t hang down into the mug.

“She’s with a student,” Lester said without looking up. His voice was like gravel in a blender. “So just stand there and don’t say nothin’. I’m hungover like a mother.”

I leaned on the counter, too, facing him. “Did your mother get hungover a lot, Lester?”

“If you’d met my daddy, you wouldn’t ask. Now shuddup.”

I clucked my tongue. “Boy, everyone’s in a mood this morning. Deputy Beeswax out there nearly bit my head off, too.”

“That’s Ernest,” Lester said. “ ‘Beeswax’ is what they called him in the Houston P.D. Dunno why. Now he’s a Kingman deputy, which is his idea of semiretirement. The sheriff must agree, because Ernest showed up here this morning driving his own car. Now, it’s a nice new Chrysler, but it ain’t got a police radio or a prisoner cage or even a shotgun rack. So I think Ernest’s plan is to stand at the entrance in the morning and afternoon, looking vicious, and read Louis L’Amour paperbacks in the parking lot in between. Maybe catch a few winks. I reckon his driver’s seat reclines.”

“Maybe I’ll stick a firecracker in his tailpipe,” I said. “Like I used to.”

Lester’s eyes widened, and he let out a low whistle. “No, you don’t want to do that. I played football with him at Southwest Texas back in the Cretaceous period, and I saw him break a linebacker’s neck with a fair hit. Guy wound up driving a ButterKrust delivery truck he had to turn by blowin’ into a straw.”

The inner-office door at the far end of the counter opened, and a small, dark-haired girl in jeans and a bright red KINGMAN COUGAR BAND T-shirt stepped out. She juggled a blue backpack from one hand to the other and closed the door behind her, then looked at me. It was Marisa.

Her eyebrows rose. “Oh, hi, Mr. Marx.” Her Tejano accent was downright musical. “Are you teaching our comp-and-lit class again today?”

“I, uh, dunno,” I said. I was discombobulated. The last time I had seen this girl, she had been stealing a van with a tuba in the back. “I assume Eliz—uh, Ms. Owens will tell me where to go.”

At the counter, Lester made a choking noise.

Marisa smiled. She probably knew “Ms. Owens” and I had been married in the distant past. In fact, it had only been six years since Elizabeth had divorced me and I’d bugged out to Chicago. But to a seventeen-year-old, that would seem like ancient history. I wished it seemed that way to me, too.

“Well, I hope we have you again,” Marisa said. “I liked that D. H. Lawrence story. Mr. Morris would have made us write about ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ for the tenth time.”

“Poe you,” I said.

Marisa frowned. “Huh?”

The inner-office door opened again, and my ex-wife stood there in all of her tall, smooth-skinned, blue-pantsuited glory. Her hair was tied back, emphasizing her high forehead, dark eyes, and perfect cheekbones. It would have been nice if she’d let herself fall apart after we’d split, but no such luck.

“As I’ve told you before, Mr. Marx,” Elizabeth said, “no one likes puns. And I won’t tolerate them at Kingman Rural High.” She glanced at Marisa. “Don’t be late, now. They’ll need you to unlock the cabinets.”

Marisa said, “Yes, ma’am,” and started for the exit. She nodded to me. “See you later, Mr. Marx.”

I watched her as she went into the hall, and I saw what was silk-screened on the back of her band T-shirt.

In bold block letters, it said BAD ASS. But in a stylized scrawl, the letters “BR” were inserted before “ASS.”

BAD BRASS.

6. Sparks and Wildfires

I turned to Elizabeth. “If I’d worn a shirt like that back when I was a student here, I would’ve been suspended. After Lester here had smacked me upside the head.”

Lester snorted. “Well, it woulda been you.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “We’ve had one parent complain. Then that parent found out the shirts were gifts from our anonymous San Antonio band benefactor. When donations are the only way a school can maintain its music program, people find they can put up with a little vulgarity.”

“Even the Baptists?” I asked.

“Especially the Baptists. They embrace the fact that we’re all sinners. Come on in, Mr. Marx.”

I followed Elizabeth into her office and closed the door behind me as I heard Lester mutter, “Mister Marx?”

“You know,” I said as Elizabeth sat down behind her desk, “you might as well use my first name. Everyone knows we used to bump uglies.”

Elizabeth gave me a thin smile and gestured at the two black-vinyl chairs on my side of the desk. “Speak for yourself, Matt.”

I sat down sideways in one of the chairs and propped my feet on the other. “I love it when we banter, Lizbeth. That’s how I know the spark is still there.”

“This is Texas. Sparks start wildfires and ruin hundreds of lives.”

“You’re exaggerating,” I said. “At most, we only ruined my life. You, on the other hand, are running one of the twenty or thirty finest high schools between Conroe and Nacogdoches. How many badass students you got now, anyway? About 666?”

Her smile flatlined. “I take it you still think of Kingman as ‘Satan’s cornhole.’ But I’m grateful you brought me here. I was scared to death of any part of Texas that wasn’t Austin, but Kingman showed me there are good people everywhere.” She gave an annoyed sigh that I remembered well. “Why’d you come back, Matt? Your parents are gone, and I’m a thorn in your side. And you can’t be happy in that tiny apartment over the hardware store.”

“Casa de Kingman Bolt and Supply is temporary,” I said. “Regardless of living quarters, though, this is where I grew up. It’s home. But I can’t idealize it because I know what’s under all the rocks. Such as the fact that this county harbors more than its fair share of plain old-fashioned racism. You know how many people said unkind things about our marriage?”

Actually, what I had heard most people say was that I wasn’t good enough for her. I could go to UT, make the Dean’s List, and get a master’s in education, but I would always be a third-generation delinquent to the older folks. They weren’t wrong, of course, but it was still unkind of them to comment on it.

Elizabeth gave a short laugh. “If I let a few garden-variety racists drive me off, I couldn’t live anywhere.” Then she frowned. “But if I couldn’t have this job, I’d go where I could. Which brings me to something I’ve been wanting to tell you.” She leaned forward. “Maybe you’re thinking if you watch and wait, a space will open up so you can join the Kingman faculty again. But that won’t happen anytime soon. Whereas you could go full-time right now in, say, Dallas. Or Fort Worth, or Oklahoma City.” Her eyebrows rose. “Or Canada. If you liked Chicago, you’d love Canada. Snow. Ice. Moose. All sorts of things you can’t have here.”

I made a face. “Naw. Some of those people speak French. I have a hard enough time with Spanish.” I checked my watch. “Bell’s gonna ring. Where do you need me? Which you could have told me in voice mail, by the way. If you didn’t want to banter.”

“I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure,” Elizabeth said. “But I knew we’d have a few teachers calling in sick. That happens toward the end of the term as they realize they haven’t burned through their sick leave yet. I thought one of them might be Morris again, in which case you could continue doing some actual English teaching. Except he’s here after all.”

“Too bad. Some of those kids verged on being bright.”

“I know.” She looked down at her desk. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter. “However, someone I didn’t expect to bail … did. He sent an ‘I can’t come in’ text this morning with no explanation. And now he isn’t answering texts or phone calls, either.”

I waited. Given the way Elizabeth was talking, it wasn’t hard to guess who the culprit was. But I wanted her to say it.

“It’s the band instructor,” Elizabeth said. “David Garrett.”

I swung my feet down. “You mean the guy you’ve been riding like a rodeo bull?”

It didn’t faze her. “That’s a gross mischaracterization,” she said. “And no one else knows. So don’t say anything.”

I gave a chuckle that came out a little bitter. “Hell, Lester probably has tiny red X’s on his calendar to mark the mornings when you and Mr. Garrett happen to arrive within five minutes of each other. This is a small town, Lizbeth. If the high-school principal is playing the slide trombone with the duke of the band dorks, I’m not the only one who’s noticed.”

Now Elizabeth gave me a look that could have cut glass.

“All I need to hear from you,” she said, “is whether you’ll take symphonic band for first hour, then kill an hour, then cover two back-to-back history classes. Ms. Conley left a Gettysburg DVD she says will be fine for both. After that, you can go home with a half day’s pay. Or you can take two study halls this afternoon. Final exams start in a week, and a few real teachers could use the planning periods.”

I tried to give her back the same stare she was giving me. But she was a whole lot better at it. “First of all, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout teaching no band. Second, kudos on the ‘real teachers’ shot. Third …” If only my weekend adventure had been more profitable. I could use the full eighty bucks. “Okay. I can do the afternoon, too.”

Elizabeth regained her leader-of-the-pack composure. “Don’t worry about the band. That’s why Marisa was here. She’s only a junior, but even the seniors respect her. So does David. I gave her a key to the instrument cabinets, and she’ll be running the rehearsal. All you have to do is make sure no one disrupts it. The spring concert is this Friday, and they have to play well. The bake sale and barbecue are right after, and people buy more cookies if they like the show. Our benefactor has provided some nice instruments and T-shirts, but we still need gas money to get the band to football games and district competitions next year.”

“You think your, uh, Mr. Garrett will be back by Friday?” I asked. “I mean, it’s worrisome that he wouldn’t say why he skipped today, don’t you think? Ditto the fact that he’s gone out of cell-phone range?”

These were neither nice nor helpful questions for me to ask. But then, I wasn’t as nice or helpful a guy as I had once been.

This time, Elizabeth stayed cool. “David has a brother in some sort of difficulty. He hasn’t volunteered details, and I haven’t asked. But I think that’s why he’s absent. In any case, he won’t let down the band. In fact, he was here yesterday, on a Sunday. We both were, installing new padlocks on the instrument cabinets. David paid for them out of his own pocket, by the way.” She took a breath. “And now I’m asking myself why you should care.”

“Hey, I just want to help out if I can,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I could learn how to conduct by Friday.”

“Ah. I’ll keep that in mind.” She was ready for me to leave.

But I wasn’t. “Speaking of new padlocks, the deputy out front told me about the instrument theft.” He hadn’t, exactly. But it was only a small lie. “That gonna be a problem for my class today?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “No. In fact, one of the stolen instruments—the tuba—has been returned. It magically appeared on the cafeteria loading dock yesterday morning. I guess the thief realized the banda black market doesn’t want sit-down instruments. When you mash polka, cumbia, ranchera, and pop together, nobody sits. Especially not the bass-horn players.”

I knew it had to be Marisa who had returned the tuba although I didn’t know why. And I had already figured, even before seeing how Carlos had been dressed, that the sousaphones had been stolen for resale to banda players—maybe in Texas, maybe in Mexico. Who the hell else would want them? “That’s why I prefer electric blues. You can sit or stand, you don’t have to pucker or blow, and you don’t drip spit all over the place. Unless you’re a drummer. Plus you don’t have to take orders from bass players.”

Now Elizabeth gave me a small but genuine smile. “I remember,” she said. Then she stood, stepped to the door, and put her hand on the knob. “As it happens, we have a pretty good bass-horn player here in our little school band. You’ll see.” The bell rang, and she opened the door. “Now you’re late.”

I stood up, looked at her, and had a pang. “I’ll bet Annie would have played something.” The words were out before I knew I was saying them.

Elizabeth closed her eyes, and I wished I had bitten off my tongue instead of thinking out loud.

Then her eyes were open again, and we were back in the present.

She opened the door. “The band room is in the new annex, away from the other classrooms. Just this side of the hallway exit to the rear parking lot. Go down the hallway between the cafeteria and the gym, and then—”

I stepped past her. “I’ll just follow the sound of puppies being kicked.”

Elizabeth closed the door behind me, and I strode past the counter where Lester was still leaning over his coffee.

“You able to hear all of that?” I asked.

He gave me a bleary look. “I have to find my entertainment somewhere. It’s not like I get to stay home and watch the soaps with my wife. She’d stab me.”

“I don’t blame her, Lester.”

“Nobody does.”

I hit the outer office door and stepped into the now-empty hallway. I would have been feeling pretty good if I had only left Elizabeth’s office a minute sooner. After all, spending time with Elizabeth always made me feel good. The key was to keep it short.

But then, some things tend to be self-limiting.

7. Cetacean Flatulence

Marisa was short and slight, and the Gronitz tuba looked bigger than she was. When she held it propped on her lap in playing position, all I could see was a tangle of brass with a pair of feet in white sneakers.

But from the top row of the terraced band room, she bellowed orders and counted off time like a drill sergeant. And just as Elizabeth had said, the other kids respected her.

There were only fifty-six of them, but that was the biggest band Kingman had ever had. And they were good. Especially Marisa. She even took the solo on “Stars and Stripes Forever” that you usually hear played by a piccolo. And every note from the tuba was rapid-fire, articulate, and perfect.

Well, to be honest, every note sounded like a whale fart to me. But it was a rapid-fire, articulate, and perfect whale fart.

I was impressed. Also puzzled. The kid obviously loved playing in this rinky-dink high-school band. So how could she be part of the sousaphone-stealing ring that had ripped it off? Had she regretted it since she had brought back the tuba? Or had she only brought back the tuba because she had realized she wouldn’t have a decent horn to play otherwise?

Her co-conspirators and their buyer knew what she’d done. And their buyer packed a stupid-huge pistol loaded with shotgun shells. Which he wasn’t afraid to use. Regardless of her reasons, shouldn’t that have made Marisa think twice about returning the Gronitz?

None of those questions should have mattered to me. Marisa was a little crook, so I had stolen from her and her little-crook friends because stealing from crooks was what I did. Her motives weren’t my problem. Nor were her consequences.

But sitting in on the band rehearsal made it tough to quash my curiosity. Two of Marisa’s fellow gangsters were here with her. Kaylee, wearing another BAD BRASS T-shirt and playing trumpet, was seated one level down from Marisa. And Jared was on the bottom level, to the left of the conductor’s stool where I was perched. He was one of eight clarinet players, seated in the first chair. I assumed that meant he was hot stuff.

When I had come into the room at the top of the period, the first thing I had seen was the back of Jared’s KINGMAN COUGAR BAND T-shirt. It read WICKED WOOD.

“Guess it ain’t bragging if it’s true,” I had said.

Jared’s response had been, “Huh?”

Now, as the period wound down and “Stars and Stripes Forever” ended with a huge whale fart from the entire band, I rubbed my ears and pondered how to spend my upcoming free hour. Not the teacher’s lounge, where substitutes were treated like chicken-pox carriers and naps were impossible. The janitor’s closets smelled funny. And my Toyota didn’t have reclining seats like Deputy Beeswax’s Chrysler. So the band instructor’s office, marked by a door and a blind-covered window in the rehearsal room’s south wall, was my first choice.

Besides, what I really wanted was a chance to rummage through David Garrett’s desk. Maybe “Know your enemy” didn’t quite apply, but “Know your replacement” did.

Of course, the door might be locked. Which wouldn’t stop me. But I would have to wait until the kids were gone.

When the last note had stopped reverberating, Marisa stood with the tuba propped on her left hip, leaning far to the right for balance. “All right, let’s make sure Mr. Garrett doesn’t cancel the show!” she yelled. “Woodwinds, don’t leave your cruddy old reeds on the floor! Brass, mop up your spit! Percussion, get out of the way! If your instrument stays here, pack it up fast. Three minutes!”

She leaned down to the tuba mouthpiece and played seven quick notes: Shave-and-a-hair-cut, two-bits!

Not a single student looked toward me for confirmation but began following Marisa’s orders with case-snapping clatter. I just stayed where I was and kept watching Marisa, Kaylee, and Jared. None of them looked guilty or nervous as a result of their criminal weekend. But then, I supposed I didn’t either.

Nor did they look upset or depressed because their payoff had been stolen. That bugged me.

As the kids finished packing up, Kaylee and Jared joined Marisa at the north wall, which was dominated by a huge five-door oak cabinet. Trombones, French horns, baritone horns, and a few trumpets went inside, and Marisa and her friends locked the doors with the brand-new padlocks. The tuba went in last. After that, Kaylee and Jared followed the other kids out through the room’s big double doors, and Marisa threaded her way through the folding chairs to pick up her backpack. She paused beside my conductor’s stool on her way to the exit.

“Thanks for babysitting us,” she said. “Will I see you in English class later?”

“Afraid not. I’m a babysitter all day long. But getting a paycheck for doing nothing is …” I swept my hand in a gesture taking in the entire room. “How should I put it in this setting? Doing nothing is … my forte?”

Marisa gave me a sardonic grin. “A musical pun. Very clever, Mr. Marx. But don’t let Ms. Owens hear it.”

She began to step away, and I decided to try something.

“I’m curious,” I said. “How’d you get the thieves to bring back the Gronitz?”

She stopped and frowned. “What makes you think I’d have anything to do with that?”

“You’re the only tubist in the band,” I said. “So if I’d swiped a tuba, you’re who I’d hit up for ransom.”

Marisa took two steps toward the exit. “That wouldn’t work. I’m broke.”

I tried something else. “So who do you think took the horns?”

Marisa looked back at me and she didn’t blink. “There’s no telling. You never know who might be a thief.”

She pivoted, looking more like a ballerina than a tuba player, and was gone.

8. Teeny-Purple-Bikini Good

I went to the doorway and watched until Marisa vanished around the corner toward the cafeteria. Now there was no one else in the annex hallway. I stepped back into the band room and pulled the double doors closed.

Then I tried the door to the band director’s office and found that it was indeed locked. So I pulled two paper clips from my pocket and was inside in twenty seconds, closing the door behind me and relocking it. A switch set into the cinder-block wall turned on a pair of fluorescent bulbs, and they illuminated a jam-packed space that was barely ten by ten. That would have been without the filing cabinets, stacked boxes, desk, and industrial-strength office chair.

I sat in the chair and tried the center desk drawer. It was locked, too, which made me happy.

It took about a minute. Pretty slow for a desk drawer, but I had time. I also wasn’t searching for anything in particular. But if I happened to run across something that would make Garrett look bad, I wouldn’t mind. I had a fantasy that involved anonymously sending Elizabeth proof that she was making a terrible mistake.

At first, I didn’t see anything in the drawer worth locking up. Pens, dimes and pennies, clarinet and saxophone reeds. A pink eraser, a broken conductor’s baton. A few brass-instrument mouthpieces.

But underneath all of that was a spiral notebook. I pulled it out, opened it, and found a jumble of scribbled comments about ranking the woodwind section. It was as thrilling as a driver’s-license test.

Then two business-sized envelopes fell from the notebook’s back pages. They weren’t sealed, so I opened them.

Okay, I would have opened them anyway.

The first envelope contained a stack of five photographs that had been produced on a home printer from digital pictures. They were of Elizabeth, and they were naughty.

Well, not really. But they weren’t safe for school, either. Even Baptists had their limits when it came to how kids saw the principal. Or how much of her. The pictures had been taken on a summer day at the beach in Galveston, and Elizabeth had looked good. Teeny-purple-bikini good. Teenage-boys-would-scan-and-post-these-on-the-Internet good.

I was annoyed. Did Garrett really have to print these out and bring them to work? Couldn’t he last eight hours without glimpsing Elizabeth’s belly button? Hell, I’d been holding out for six years, and I was doing all right. More or less.

I tucked the purple-bikini photos back into their envelope, having decided against scanning them myself. I knew where to find them again.

Then I opened the second envelope. It contained just one photograph, but this one was much older. It had been taken with an actual film camera and developed and printed at an actual photo lab. That was how old it was.

It was of David Garrett at high-school age, standing in front of a large ranch-style house with another dude who was a few years younger. Teenage David was grinning for the camera and holding—or more accurately, wearing—a gleaming brass sousaphone. He’d been handsome then, too, and probably talented and popular despite being a band geek. So I still wanted to reach back in time and slap him.

Except for that urge, though, I was more interested in the other guy.

He was white. He and David were both wearing blue jeans and Jimi Hendrix T-shirts. The T-shirts were different colors, but the boys still looked as if their clothes had been purchased for them by the same person at the same store.

It took me a minute although it shouldn’t have. Maybe the other guy’s dark blond hair threw me since I hadn’t seen it before. But then I recognized him, too. He wasn’t wearing a red jacket or a cowboy hat, but his gray eyes and grim expression hadn’t changed much.

In the photo, he had a fiberglass sousaphone on his shoulders. Maybe, since he didn’t have the shiny brass one, that accounted for his expression.

He was the banda buyer from Saturday night. The dude with the humongous pistol he called the Judge.

He was Carlos.

9. A Weak Embouchure

I was still looking at the photo of Garrett and Carlos when I heard the double doors in the band room open.

I glanced to my right. The office door was closed and locked, and the blinds over the window were drawn. Whoever was out there couldn’t see inside. They might not even be able to see that the light was on. So I just stayed quiet and listened.

“Make it quick, Donny.” It was Marisa. “I don’t want to be too late. I can get away with six or seven minutes, but not ten.”

“So why’d you drag me down here?” Donny asked. “And where’s Mr. Marx? You said he subbed. But we didn’t pass him in the hall.”

“I guess he went to the back lot to smoke a cigarette,” Marisa said. “Or whatever. He’s gone, and so is everyone else. There’s no class in the annex this period, which makes this the safest place to talk. So what do you want? And why couldn’t you just text me?”

To the back lot to smoke a cigarette? That struck me as presumptuous. I didn’t smoke. Not cigarettes, anyway, and not at school.

“What’s my problem?” Donny’s voice cracked. “Are you kidding? You stole Mr. Anthony’s van, you brought back the tuba, and you left the van in a ditch. So I had to drive those dudes back to town. Now Kaylee claims she doesn’t have the money from the Conn. And you haven’t answered my texts since you took off.”

Marisa’s response was cool and steady. “First of all, it isn’t Mr. Anthony’s van. He stole it, and stealing something from someone who stole it himself isn’t really stealing. Second of all, Kaylee warned you guys not to show the buyers anything but the sousaphones. She and I both could have told you they’d lowball the tuba before you even stole it if you’d let us know you were going to do it.”

“I couldn’t say anything before we did it!” Donny said. “Besides, Mr. Anthony didn’t tell us not to get the tuba. But at least the tuba didn’t make Carlos mad. That was a sousaphone. And then running off with the van made Mr. Anthony mad. That was you!”

Marisa muttered something in Spanish that I couldn’t make out, and then she said, “I don’t understand these fiberglass snobs. But as for what I did—well, I couldn’t let them buy a Gronitz so cheap. It wasn’t right.”

“But Kaylee nodded!”

“That wasn’t a signal to take the deal. Mr. Anthony is Kaylee’s second cousin or third uncle or something, and she says he’s worked the shady side of Kingman County since before our mamas were born. She could tell from the way he acted that they had offered the best deal they were going to offer. That’s all she meant.”

This time, when Donny spoke, his voice was lower and darker. “Well, she was wrong. Tyler got a text from Mr. Anthony before first period. Turns out Carlos will give us a good price for the tuba after all, if we bring it back tonight. Twenty-five hundred.”

There was a pause before Marisa spoke again. “No me digas!”

“I’m serious,” Donny said. “And listen, Kaylee has to bring the fourteen hundred and hand it over to Tyler. Then, when we get the twenty-five hundred to add to it, we’ll give you guys a share. But we can’t trust Kaylee to hold it anymore. Tyler says if she doesn’t show up with it, he’s gonna beat the shit out of Jared. Like a serious beatdown, broken bones and teeth. He wants to make Kaylee watch. Then he says he’ll e-mail her dad and tell him she and Jared have been hooking up, so the old man will cut off her college fund. We heard he’s sending her to Baylor, but only if she’s a virgin. Is that his rule or Baylor’s, do you think?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Marisa said. “But I know somebody broke into the house and took the money while Kaylee and Jared were asleep. They didn’t even know it was gone until Kaylee’s mom called and woke them up. And they found Kaylee’s phone on the back porch.”

Donny wasn’t buying it. “How do we know they didn’t make up that story so they could keep the money?”

Marisa was indignant. “How do we know it wasn’t you and Tyler who came back and took it?”

This part of the situation was my doing, and it had the potential to become ugly. But it wouldn’t have happened if the kids hadn’t been larcenous little punks. So I didn’t feel too bad about it.

“You’ll have to take my word for it,” Donny said. His tone shifted to a ridiculous coo that he probably thought sounded seductive. “I wouldn’t shit you, Marisa. I like you too much. That’s why I wanted to bring you in on this. But Kaylee and Jared were your idea, so if they ripped us off, it’s your fault.”

Marisa gave a sharp laugh. “You didn’t bring me in because you like me. You brought me in because you and Tyler didn’t know how much the horns were worth. But Kaylee’s the one who knew how to read Mr. Anthony. And Jared is a package deal with Kaylee. So if you don’t want band geeks around next time, then next time don’t steal band instruments.”

I pictured Donny giving a shrug. “We thought it’d be easy. And honest to God, Marisa, I wanted you to have a share. I knew you’d have to play that twenty-year-old junk sousaphone after we took the good ones, so I felt bad. I really like you …”

A moment later, I heard the sound of flesh being smacked, just as I had on Saturday night.

“You know what?” Marisa said. “We’re not going out anymore. You have a weak embouchure. And I should know. I play brass.”

Donny grunted. “Okay, so you’re good for something. You get to take that tuba home to practice, right?”

“No. When I practice with the Gronitz, I do it here. And Mr. Garrett is usually around.”

“But not today,” Donny said. “So no one would stop you from taking it. Not even that deputy out front. And Ms. Owens must have given you the cabinet key. So take the tuba home this afternoon, and we’ll sell it tonight.”

Marisa was not on board. “Then I’ll be the first one they interrogate.”

“No problem,” Donny said. “You’ll be catching a ride with Kaylee in that stupid little PT Cruiser, right? Just say it was stolen from her car when you guys stopped for a Coke or something. I’ll even bust out one of her windows for you.”

“You’re so sweet, Donny.”

“Let me prove it.”

“Like you said, I’ll have to take your word for it.”

Donny grunted again. “Okay, whatever. Meet us at Jared’s ranch tonight at 11:30. If you have to sneak out past your mom, do it. Kaylee and Jared need to bring the fourteen hundred—”

“They don’t have it.”

“—and you need to bring the tuba. Don’t be late.”

“This is a mistake,” Marisa said. “Don’t you remember how cheap that Carlos guy was? What makes you think he’ll pay twenty-five hundred for a horn he didn’t even want a day and a half ago?”

“All I know,” Donny said, “is what Mr. Anthony told Tyler. He said if we mess up again, Carlos will hunt us down and use that giant pistol to blast us some extra assholes.”

This time when Marisa spoke, her voice was quiet. “Quizás sí, quizás no,” she said. “But I guess we don’t want to find out.” She took a quick, audible breath, and then her voice was normal again. “All right, I’ll figure something out. Now we’d better get to class. You go first.”

“Huh? Why?”

“So no one sees us coming out of the annex together. If the tuba’s going to disappear again, we don’t want anyone saying they saw us together near the band room. You’re not in the band. I play the tuba. See the problem?”

“Oh. Okay.” One of the double doors to the hallway creaked. “Don’t forget—11:30. Get there early if you can.”

The door clunked shut, and then I listened for Marisa to go out, too.

Instead, I heard her fumbling with her backpack. And then I heard her speak again.

“I’m leaving voice mail so you know nobody else is texting with my phone,” she said. “You were right. They want the Gronitz. So I’ll bring it. Tonight, 11:30. Jared’s country place. But they want the money, too, and we don’t have it. So don’t leave us hanging, or it’ll all go to mierda.”

There was a soft snap, and then one of the double doors opened again. After that, silence.

I took one last look at the photo of the teenage Garrett and Carlos. Except for the fact that they had divergent skin tones and were holding different instruments, they sure looked a lot alike.

Then I replaced the photo in its envelope, tucked both envelopes into the notebook, and put everything back the way I’d found it. I made sure to lock the drawer.

I had some time now, but I wasn’t going to get a nap after all. Instead, I would think about how I was going to spend my evening.

It might be worth twenty-five hundred bucks to me. I had a lavish lifestyle over the hardware store to maintain.

10. The Fluffy Bunny Land Solution

By 10:00 P.M., I was in the woods northwest of the crooked house again, once more wearing my dark clothes and full-face eye black. I was aware of the extra lump in my back pocket and feeling stupid for having it.

The house was dark, and there were no vehicles parked along the driveway. So I decided to begin my vigil at the same vantage point where I’d started on Saturday. I was early. But I had the complete recorded works of Otis Rush on a thumb-sized mp3 player. So I was good.

Or I would have been, if I hadn’t fallen asleep. That was what I got for skipping a nap at school.

I awoke to “Crosscut Saw” in my earbuds, with the right side of my face mashed against a live-oak trunk and the itch of ants crawling up my shins. I yanked out the earbuds, jammed them into my jeans pocket with the mp3 player, then slapped at my legs until I couldn’t feel anything crawling anymore. My watch said 11:15.

Across the driveway, illuminated by the weak moonlight and a dull lemon glow from the crooked house, sat Donny’s pickup, Jared’s Honda, and Kaylee’s PT Cruiser. The sounds of their arrivals had been masked by Otis in my ears. I wondered how they were all getting along since the missing fourteen hundred couldn’t have rematerialized—unless the band geeks had raided their parents’ cookie jars.

Then a set of headlights stabbed into the driveway. At least, I thought, I had awakened in time for the arrival of Bobby Anthony and Carlos.

But the almost-new Maxima that cruised past my position wasn’t bringing Bobby Tone and Carlos, although it did have two occupants. I couldn’t get a good look at the driver, but I knew the car belonged to David Garrett, Kingman High band director and amateur purple-bikini photographer. So it was a reasonable bet that he was driving. And the passenger, whose face was just illuminated enough for me to see, was Principal Elizabeth Owens, dedicated educator and amateur purple-bikini model.

Whatever this meant, and whatever the result might be, there was almost no chance it would make me happy. But at least I was wide-awake now.

The Maxima pulled off the driveway between the PT Cruiser and the house. Garrett and Elizabeth got out. They were both wearing jeans and T-shirts, as if on a weekend painting project. They stepped onto the front porch and went inside without pausing. I couldn’t tell whether the door was unlocked or whether one of the kids let them in. But there was no Hank Williams III playing in there tonight.

It looked as if the crooked house’s windows had been opened to let in a little of the muggy April air. And since there was no one on the porch, I didn’t have to be as stealthy as I had been on Saturday night. So less than two minutes after Garrett and Elizabeth walked into the house, I was crouched under a front-room window on the north wall.

I had caught a glimpse inside as I had scuttled up from the woods, so I knew that Donny, Tyler, Kaylee, Jared, and Marisa were all in there with Garrett and Elizabeth. The band kids had looked relaxed and were staying quiet, so I had the impression that they were fine with the new arrivals. But Donny and Tyler were upset. They were doing a lot of cussing and whining. And it was easy to understand why. The principal and her boyfriend were ruining the whole operation.

“This is the way it’s going to be, boys,” Elizabeth said. “If the two missing instruments are returned, we won’t press charges.”

It sounded odd to me. Letting punks off the hook was not the Texas way. Elizabeth was from Austin, which is the Fluffy Bunny Land of the Lone Star State—but even she wouldn’t just say “Oh, well, kids will be kids” in the face of grand larceny.

“Somebody ratted!” Tyler said. He was trying to sound like a gangster, just as he had tried to sound like a salesman two days earlier. He wasn’t any better at it. “Donny, it was your goddamn girlfriend!”

I heard the scrape of a chair on floorboards, and then David Garrett spoke. His voice was deep, strong, and commanding. I liked him less than ever.

“Sit down, Tyler,” Garrett said. “Back in the day, I had to make a choice, and I chose band over football. But I still know how to hit.”

The chair scraped again, but with less volume.

“That’s better. First of all,” Garrett continued, “there were no rats. Rats would have told the sheriff instead of coming to me. But I would have known what was going on anyway because I saw Donny’s pickup driving through town at 3:00 A.M. Sunday with you and a sousaphone case in the back. And when I spoke with my musicians and they described your buyer, I knew who he was. So I asked some friends to let that person know that a Corpus Christi banda with a recording contract was in the market for an actual tuba. And sure enough, you got the word. So here we are.”

My guess was that Garrett really had seen Donny’s pickup hauling the sousaphone … while he’d been driving back to his place after spending most of Saturday night at Elizabeth’s. It wouldn’t do to drive to church from the principal’s house on Sunday morning, now, would it? Even if everyone already knew you were sleeping with her.

But the part about rats not being rats if they tell the teacher instead of the cops was a little dicey. On the other hand, maybe ratting on the gang wasn’t really ratting if you were never really a member of the gang in the first place.

Besides, I knew something that Tyler and Donny, team players, couldn’t grasp: The only way to guarantee a “No Leaks” policy is to work alone.

“Here’s what needs to happen.” Elizabeth again. “Before the buyers arrive, Donny and Tyler will take the tuba out to the porch. We want the buyers to see it when they pull up, with people they recognize. We want them out of their vehicle and on the porch. Then the two of you can come back inside. At which point Mr. Garrett will deal with them.”

“Like how?” Tyler asked. “Make a citizen’s arrest or something?”

“Nobody’s getting arrested,” Garrett said. “There’s no need, because we’re going to put everything right. I just need to talk with the buyers to make that happen. One of them in particular.”

Now Marisa spoke up. “The Gronitz doesn’t have to come out of its case, does it? These guys won’t be careful with it.”

“The boys can just open the lid,” Garrett said. “The buyers might get nervous and take off if they don’t see it. And if that happens, we really will have to get the sheriff involved to recover the Conn sousaphone. Which won’t work out well for anyone. It’s bad enough that the King is damaged. But it’s just the bell, and we’ll see about having that replaced.”

There was silence for a few seconds. Then Donny said, “Uh, the guy named Carlos shot the King just because he was surprised by the fiberglass. So if he gets surprised again, he might start shooting again.”

Garrett made a noise between a grunt and a groan. “Don’t worry. He won’t hurt anyone. He probably borrowed the gun to look tough.”

I heard a rumble and rattle from the county road, and I looked back to see another pair of headlights turning into the long driveway.

It was tuba-time again.

11. You Will Not Take My Tuba

I scrambled to the north and got between the PT Cruiser and the Honda. Then I watched as a battered, dirt-smeared Plymouth minivan rattled past. It pulled onto the apron at the end of the driveway, then backed up to the porch just as the white van had done two days earlier. No doubt this decrepit old rust bucket had been stolen just for tonight’s purpose, too.

I still had a scrap of hope that I might find a chance to steal more dirty money, although it was looking problematic. Garrett had set up a false sale, and no money was going to change hands. On the other hand, Bobby Tone and Carlos were supposed to be arriving with twenty-five hundred in cash on them. So as long as I was here, it was worth sticking around to see how this played out. Based on the photo I’d found in Garrett’s desk, he and Carlos had a possibly contentious history. So maybe the shock of their reunion would make Carlos drop his wallet. Or at least his guard.

Besides, like Lester, I wasn’t able to watch soap operas. My hardwarestore apartment didn’t have cable.

I tucked in beside the PT Cruiser’s rear bumper and watched as Tyler and Donny came out of the crooked house’s front door and closed it behind them. Donny had the tuba case, and he set it on the porch as the minivan’s engine fell silent and Bobby Tone and Carlos emerged from the vehicle. I noticed that everyone was dressed almost exactly as they had been dressed on Saturday night. It was as if they had specific uniforms for the exchange of hot brass. Carlos was even wearing his cowboy hat.

Donny bent down, opened the tuba case, and began to lift the instrument from it. Bobby Tone and Carlos stepped up to the porch, and Bobby Tone opened the minivan’s hatchback.

Then the front door opened again, and Marisa burst out in apparent violation of Garrett and Elizabeth’s plan. She shoved Donny away from the case and closed it over the Gronitz.

“This instrument,” she said, “is no longer for sale.”

At that, Carlos darted in front of Marisa, grabbed the case, and flung it into the minivan. Then Bobby Tone slammed down the hatchback as Carlos reached behind his back and brought out the Judge. I tensed.

“Since you have attempted to renege,” Carlos said, “we will be changing our terms. The price is now five hundred dollars.”

I had a feeling that the price had really been five hundred dollars all along.

Bobby Tone gave the kids a snaggle-toothed grin. “Same situation as before. Take it or leave it. But if you leave it, Carlos and I might be taking it anyhow.”

Then, finally, David Garrett stepped onto the porch.

“Everyone under the age of thirty, back into the house,” he said.

Donny and Tyler complied, but Marisa stood her ground, glaring at Bobby Tone and Carlos.

“No tomarás mi tuba,” she said.

You didn’t have to know Spanish to know what she was saying. If Bobby and Carlos tried to leave with the Gronitz, they were going to have ninety pounds of Bad-Brass wildcat on their backs.

I liked that kid.

But Carlos was looking past Marisa. He and Garrett had locked stares like a couple of angry chickens.

“Tell your student that I don’t speak Spanish,” Carlos said. He said the word “student” as if spitting out a mouthful of bat guano.

“Marisa, you should go inside,” Garrett said.

“They’ve got the Gronitz,” Marisa said.

“They won’t take it. Go on in with Ms. Owens and the others, and I’ll get this straightened out.”

Marisa took a few slow steps backward, keeping her gaze fixed on Carlos. Then she turned and went inside. Garrett closed the door behind her.

I relaxed a little.

Garrett sighed. “Charlie, I don’t know what you think you’re doing with that silly-ass pistol. It looks like something Yosemite Sam might carry.”

Carlos/Charlie glowered. “You always did want to be Bugs Bunny.” The Judge remained hanging at his side, but his hand twitched.

Bobby Tone cleared his throat. “Uh, Carlos, I have the sense that this situation has transformed into something other than a business transaction. And since you seem to harbor some personal animosity toward this gentleman, I’m going to ask you to return the Judge. A firearm can be useful for making a point, which is why I was happy to lend it. But business should never involve personal animosity.” He held out a hand.

I almost let out a whistle. The Bobby Anthony I had known when I was a kid had carried a .25-caliber pistol in his back pocket and a shotgun behind the seat of his International Harvester. So perhaps I should have guessed that in his old age, he had decided to combine the two. And I also should have guessed that a man who spoke and dressed like Carlos wasn’t really a Judge kind of guy.

Carlos/Charlie had a pained expression, as if a dance partner had drilled a heel into the arch of his foot. But then he flipped the Judge to hold it by the barrel and extended it to Bobby Tone.

Bobby took it, turned the cylinder while squinting at the shells, then tucked it into his waistband. He nodded at Garrett. “Go ahead and straighten out whatever you have to straighten out. Then maybe I’ll have a further proposition. This has been a complicated enterprise, but I’ve invested too much time and energy to walk away now.”

I felt the same way. It was almost as if Bobby Tone and I were cut from the same bolt of cloth. He’d gone to jail and I’d gone to UT, but there are those who would argue there’s not much difference.

Garrett took a step toward Carlos/Charlie, who took a step back and almost fell off the porch. Garrett stopped and shook his head.

“Look, Charlie,” he said, “I’m not mad about your taking the money. I don’t know how you got the PIN number, but it’s okay. I was just glad to know you were back in Texas. I didn’t think you were ever coming home.”

Now I was a little envious of Charlie. As far as I could tell, nobody was glad I had come home. And I hadn’t even broken into anyone’s bank account.

“I had to,” Charlie said darkly. “California isn’t what it was. Texas is where the music I want to play is happening now. I’m starting my own banda, David. I’ve been in Baja with the real guys, learning to play the real songs.”

“Really? Say something in Spanish, Charlie.”

Charlie’s chest puffed out. “No. How’s that? See, as long as you’re not the singer, the real banda guys don’t care what words you’re able to say. It’s about what notes you’re able to play. So now, while you’re tucked away in your school in the sticks, teaching scales and marches, I’ll be making music in the real world for real people.” He pointed a thumb at himself. “No more second-chair fiberglass for me.”

Now Garrett was pissed. “So you’re going to skim from Mom’s bequest and buy and sell instruments ripped off from schools? Instruments that Mom’s money helped pay for in the first place?”

“Mom left that money to help musicians,” Charlie said. “Not just school bands. And you were supposed to consult me. But you did it all yourself. So I’m expressing my disagreement.”

Bobby Tone interjected. “Hold on, now. Are y’all saying that the two of you have the same mother? I find that chromatically unlikely.”

I almost spoke up to tell him he was being rude, then decided that would be rude as well.

Garrett gave Bobby a quick glance. “Not your business,” he said. Then he looked back at Charlie. “You’re really going to get what you want by stealing from kids?”

Charlie’s upper lip warped into a sneer. “Just from kids who don’t care. If they did, they wouldn’t be selling their school’s brass.”

“It’s not the band kids,” Garrett said. “They tried to call me as soon as they found out what was going on. But I—I had my phone turned off. So they did what they thought best. And they didn’t call the sheriff because they didn’t want their friends to go to jail, for which you should be grateful.”

“New girlfriend?” Charlie asked. “That’s usually what it means if someone needs you and you’ve found something better to do.”

Oh yeah. These guys were brothers.

“What I’m telling you is, the band kids didn’t steal anything,” Garrett said. “The only thing they did wrong was try to protect a couple of white-trash jocks.”

There were shouts of protest from inside the house. Donny and Tyler both objected to the characterization. As a member of that tribe myself, though, I felt the term was accurate.

Bobby Tone cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir, but that’s a term I, too, find offensive.”

This time Garrett didn’t even look at him. “Tell me you’ve never used an equivalent term for black people and I’ll apologize.”

Bobby scratched his jaw. “Point taken,” he said. “But we’re getting off topic. Have you boys got your shit straight enough so we can complete our transaction?”

Garrett turned on him. “Don’t you get it? There isn’t going to be a transaction. You and Charlie are going to remove the Gronitz tuba from your car, and then you’re going to return the Conn sousaphone. You’ll also provide money for a new bell for the King. In exchange, nobody’s going to jail.”

“And what am I supposed to do then?” Charlie asked.

Garrett turned back to him. “You’re my brother. So come stay with me. Return as much of the money as you’ve still got. We’ll figure it out from there.”

Charlie gave a short, sardonic snort. “On your terms,” he said. “With no banda for me.”

“Like I said, we’ll figure it out.”

Bobby Tone stepped in between them, clucked his tongue, and pulled the Judge from his waistband.

“What I’m hearing,” he said, “is that whatever the two of y’all decide to do, I’m gettin’ nothing. Not from a purchase today, and not from resales down the line. And I was being so careful not to be greedy, too, since this was a new line of business for me. I was happy just to be a facilitator and to be paid accordingly.”

Garrett eyed the gun. “I’ll give you seventy-six dollars for your trouble. That’s all I have on me.”

Bobby kept the Judge pointing downward, but he cocked it.

“Seventy-six bucks?” he said. “Man with a charitable bank account and all? No, I’ll need at least a thousand to release the tuba from the custody of this minivan.” He paused and scratched his jaw with his free hand again. “Actually, I’ll need the thousand just to walk away without shooting you. And I’d have to shoot both of you, so no one could accuse me of racial bias. One thousand dollars. And then y’all can do whatever you like with the tuba and the sousaphones and the glass fuckin’ harmonicas and whatever else you got.”

Charlie looked at him. “You know I only have five hundred tonight. There isn’t a thousand dollars on this porch.”

Bobby Tone raised the pistol. “Then one of you needs to go get it.”

“Or you could have five hundred and seventy-six dollars right now,” Garrett said.

Bobby didn’t seem to hear the offer. He began swiveling the barrel of the Judge back and forth, pointing it first at Charlie and then at Garrett.

“Eeny,” he said. “Meeny. Miney. Moe.”

Then the front door opened, and Elizabeth stepped out. She had her cell phone in her hand, and she looked straight at Bobby Tone.

“Do you want the sheriff out here?” she asked.

Garrett groaned. “Elizabeth, no—”

Bobby stopped swiveling the Judge, and he lowered it a bit. But he gave Elizabeth a wry look. “Ma’am, nobody from the sheriff’s office could be out here in less than thirty minutes. And if you were to make me worry that you’d accuse me of wrongdoing, why, I could just shoot all of you to prevent that.”

I tensed again. Bobby Tone didn’t know I was there. So if my knees cooperated, I might be able to be on him before he could react. Or I might not. I prepared to flip a mental coin.

At that moment, I heard the crunch of tires coming from the driveway again.

Well, good. I had been wondering how this situation could get any more complicated. Now I was about to find out.

12. Everybody’s Beeswax

No one on the porch seemed to hear what I heard. They were all wrapped up in their four-way Texican standoff.

A slow, black Chrysler 300 came idling up the driveway past my hiding place. Its lights were off. And except for the soft crunch of its tires, it was almost silent.

I had a premonition that this new development meant the Judge was going to express its opinion again.

So as the car idled past me, I came out in a crouch and tucked in behind its rear bumper. Maybe, if I got close enough, I could at least try to jump onto the porch and shield Elizabeth.

Then someone—Carlos/Charlie, I thought—finally spotted the Chrysler and yelled. So I was ready when the car came to a halt, and I didn’t whack my head on the trunk.

I looked around the glowing left brake light just as the Chrysler’s headlights came on, flooding the porch. Bobby Tone, Charlie, Garrett, and Elizabeth all winced in the glare.

Then the driver’s door opened, and the driver stepped out. He kept the open door between himself and the porch.

“Everybody just stay right like you are,” he said in a deep, phlegmy voice. “I suspect I’m gonna have to arrest somebody. But let me get a look so we can figure out who.”

It was Ernest, also known as Deputy Beeswax. At some point after I had encountered him that morning, he had apparently decided he ought to do more than stand around. But he had just made a tactical error.

The first shot from the Judge took out the Chrysler’s left headlight. Its roar was still rattling in my skull as I jumped forward, grabbed Ernest by his gunbelt, and shoved him into the car facedown on the front seat. His deputy hat fell to the floorboards, exposing a scalp the color and texture of a bathroom scrub brush in the blue glow from the dash.

Up on the porch, everyone was shouting and the front door was slamming.

“Get the hell off me!” Ernest yelled into the passenger-seat cushion. “Whoever you are, you’re interfering with an officer of the law.”

I held Ernest down with a forearm across his neck and a knee on his rump. “I don’t think you’re even on duty,” I growled, trying to disguise my voice. I was going for something between Winston Churchill and Batman. “This isn’t a squad car. There’s no radio.”

“I got one in the glove box,” Ernest said. “All I got to do is turn it on. And it don’t matter if I’m on duty or not. All I need is a reason to believe a crime is in progress. Getting a headlight shot out and your knee up my ass both qualify.”

The Judge exploded again, and I heard the other headlight shatter. I glanced up through the windshield and saw that the porch light and the lights in the crooked house had been turned off, too.

“Listen, Deputy,” I said. “I’m an innocent passerby, but I happen to know the only things at stake here are a few band instruments. Nothing worth getting shot over.”

Ernest tried to shake me loose. “I agree,” he said. “So let me up so I can shoot back.”

That struck me as a bad option. Bobby Tone hadn’t hit anything but headlights. But if Ernest returned fire, somebody might get killed. And it might be me.

Bobby Tone shouted from the porch. “Hey! I’m guessing y’all are associated with these kids, and that you don’t know your heads from your taints any better than they do. My suggestion is you get that vehicle off the driveway so I have a clear exit. I’ll give you—oh, two minutes. That sounds generous to me. That sound generous to y’all?”

“That’s fine!” I bellowed.

Ernest increased his efforts to dislodge me, but I held firm.

“Listen here,” he said, panting. “As long as we have two minutes, Mr. Innocent Passerby, I want you to understand something. I’ve been a Texas law officer for forty years, and there are rules I’m bound to follow. One of those rules says if a suspect discharges a firearm in my direction, I, by God, discharge one right back.”

I groped for Ernest’s .357 with my free hand. “I respect that,” I said. “But all of my own rules are devoted to self-preservation. So I’m gonna work with that.”

Sure enough, the strap over the grip of Ernest’s .357 was still unsnapped. The pistol slid into my hand as slick as a pumpkin seed.

“I dunno what you think you’re gonna do now,” Ernest said. “That ain’t loaded with nothin’ but empty cartridges.”

I was baffled. “Why on earth would you do that?”

Ernest managed a chuckle that came out more like a grunt. “I’m semiretired in Kingman County. I generally find that the intimidation factor of a pistol works just fine without actual bullets. Besides, this way, some asshole grabs my gun, joke’s on him.”

“That’s funny, all right,” I said. “Almost as funny as a deputy approaching what he thinks is a crime in progress without live cartridges or backup.”

“There’s crimes, and there’s crimes,” Ernest said. “I observed a scrawny old redneck and some guy dressed like Roy Rogers driving a scabrous minivan with a WOMEN FOR OBAMA bumper sticker. Looked suspicious, so I followed. And now you’ve implied that in addition to stealing a twenty-four-dollar Plymouth, they’re involved in a recent case of grand theft tuba. But until now, neither situation would have seemed to call for live ammo. What should I have hoped to shoot, a sousaphone?”

“You wouldn’t be the first,” I said. “But I guess that line about a Texas lawman always firing back was bullshit.”

Ernest tried to swing his left fist back at me, but human arms don’t bend that way. “I don’t want to kill anyone over a decrepit mommy-mobile or an oversized bugle,” he said, “but I’m not a fanatic. I’ve got live rounds handy. But I ain’t telling you where.”

“The glove box,” I said. “With the radio.”

Ernest grunted again. “Just let me up, genius.”

I chucked the .357 backward as far as I could, and I heard it hit the ground past the other cars. Then I felt along Ernest’s belt and found his handcuff holster. And after thirty seconds of struggle, I managed to get his wrists cuffed behind his back.

“I’m gonna tell you something in the interest of fairness,” Ernest said then. “If I find out who you are, you’re gonna have to run until you hit ocean. At which point you will want to start swimming for Cuba.”

The Chrysler was still idling. I sat up on Ernest’s lower legs, waved at the silhouettes on the dark porch, and threw the car into reverse without trying to close the open door. It would have hit Ernest’s feet.

I punched the gas, and the car lurched backward, switchbacking like a panicked squirrel, the open door flapping. When we were past Donny’s pickup, I cranked the wheel to the left, and the Chrysler bounced into the rough grass along the east side of the driveway. Ernest cussed as we hit bump after bump, and I finally stomped the brakes so that we came to rest about twenty yards off the driveway, near the eastern tree line. Then I killed the engine and threw the keys into the night.

“You have bashed up my brand-new car’s oil pan and exhaust system,” Ernest said. “So once you’ve swum to Cuba, you better keep doing the crawl all the way to the goddamn Canary Islands.”

I got out without answering, tucked Ernest’s feet inside, and closed the door. I felt bad about the damage, but none of it had been my fault. So I didn’t think it was fair of Ernest to blame it on me, especially since he had ruined my own evening.

I scuttled along the tree line back toward the crooked house. I had realized there was no more money here for me. But before I ran back across the driveway and made my way to my Toyota, I wanted to be sure Elizabeth and the band kids were all right. Screw the rest of them. They were all crooks, except for Garrett. And he was Elizabeth’s boyfriend, so screw him, too.

I was about halfway back when, up at the porch, the Plymouth minivan spun its tires. Then its lights came on, and it clattered up the driveway toward the road at high speed. There was a lot of yelling from the crooked house as this happened, and I assumed that Bobby Tone was cutting his losses and taking off with the tuba.

I paused to watch as the minivan sped past my position, and there was just enough light for me to see that once again, the Gronitz’s getaway driver was Marisa.

“Man,” I said aloud. “She really loves that tuba.”

The minivan reached the road and rattled away. And I was just about to turn back toward the crooked house when I heard a metallic click a few yards to my left.

It sounded a whole lot like a pistol being cocked.

13. Meet the Boyfriend

As I turned, a sudden flashlight beam caught me full in the face.

“Whoever you are,” David Garrett’s voice said, low and angry, “you have just created more problems than you could possibly—”

He stopped. The bright disc of the flashlight moved in closer.

Then Garrett spoke again.

“Are you seriously wearing blackface?” he asked.

I decided to fight fire with fire. “Are you seriously pointing a gun at me?”

He lowered the flashlight.

“I’m not pointing it,” he said. “I’m just holding it. I found it on the ground over there.”

I could see it now, in his left hand, pointing at the ground. But I had heard him cock it, so I knew he wasn’t “just” holding it. Or at least he didn’t think he was. If Ernest hadn’t lied to me, there weren’t any live rounds.

Garrett’s face became clearer as my eyes adjusted, and I could see that he was peering at me with a puzzled frown.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

I’d only seen Garrett at a distance at school, and I doubted that he’d noticed me at all. There was a chance he’d seen me in some of Elizabeth’s photos, but those were all more than six years old. So maybe aging, plus the full-face sports black and bad light, would keep him from recognizing me.

When I answered him this time, I used the same Churchill/Batman voice I’d used with Ernest.

“No,” I said. “But I’m on your side.”

His frown deepened. “What the hell side is that?”

“The side that gets your brass back and keeps everyone out of jail. Without getting anyone shot.”

“What’s any of that to you?” he asked.

“Let’s assume I’m a concerned parent.”

“One who runs around in the dark wearing blackface?”

“All right,” I said. “A concerned parent with a hobby.”

Garrett shook his head. “I get sent out here by a hick with a giant handgun, and I find a lurker dressed like a ninja. While I’m doing that, one of my students drives off in a stolen minivan to keep the hick from taking our tuba. My estranged brother has become a black-market sousaphone smuggler to get back at me for a crappy adolescence. My girlfriend doesn’t want her students in trouble with the law, so we’re making deals with the gang who couldn’t shoot straight instead of calling the sheriff. And now I have to go back and report that I’ve found a concerned parent in blackface, but that I still don’t have the money the hick is demanding for his time and trouble.” He sighed. “I moved to a rural school district because I wanted a simpler life. Jesus.”

“Where’d you teach before?” I asked.

“Chicago. Twelve years. Just came here two years ago.”

The universe was full of coincidences. “Never been to Chicago,” I lied. “But I hear it’s nice. Low sousaphone-theft rate.” I held up my hands. “I’m going to reach into my back pocket now. Don’t get excited.”

Garrett hefted the .357, but didn’t aim it at me. That was nice of him.

I pulled the stack of fourteen one-hundred-dollar bills from my back pocket. I unfolded it, took four bills off the top, and put them back in my pocket. Then I extended the other ten toward Garrett.

“If you give this to the gentleman on the porch,” I said, “he’ll go away. Although you might have to give him a ride. The rest of it—getting back your instruments, punishing larcenous students, resolving sibling rivalries, and all that horseshit—that’s your problem.”

Garrett stared at the cash. “You playing Robin Hood or something? How dirty’s this money, anyway?”

It annoyed me that he wouldn’t just shut up and take the dough. “It’s as clean as any you’re going to get. And this offer expires in about five seconds, bubba.”

He took it. “Okay. Thanks, I guess.”

I knew Elizabeth and the kids would be all right now. So I turned and started for the driveway.

“Hey!” Garrett said. “Hold it. Whoever you are, I think you’d better stay.”

I paused, glanced back, and saw that he had raised the .357.

I gave him a big smile, and I hoped the moonlight was strong enough for him to see my teeth.

“In the first place,” I said, “that pistol’s got nothing in it but brass. In the second place, you’re going to have to rescue the deputy sheriff I handcuffed in that Chrysler. Oh, and you’re going to want to blame everything that’s happened on the mysterious stranger who cuffed him. Maybe you can spread a little blame onto the boys who stole the instruments in the first place, if you’re careful about it. But if you tell the deputy about the hick, the hick will see to it that your brother and all the kids go to jail with him. I know the guy, so you can trust me on that. Got it?”

Garrett lowered the .357. “Got it.” He looked down at the pistol. “I thought this thing felt a little light. But I don’t know much about guns. I’m a schoolteacher. And a musician.”

“So at least you’re rich.” I pointed at the crooked house. “Go pay the man and get him out of here. Then look after the deputy.”

“I can handle them,” Garrett said. “It’s my damn brother who’s going to be a problem. We had the same mother, but she never could make us get along.”

I shrugged. “People tend to be less trouble when they get what they want. I overheard some of your conversation, and I gather he wants something called banda. So give him banda.” I turned away again. “But no fiberglass.”

Then I jogged across the driveway into the woods where I’d started the evening. This time, Garrett didn’t say anything to stop me, and it was a good thing. I’d had a stupid, altruistic impulse, and now I was pissed off about it.

I didn’t like the feeling. So I tried to convince myself that the whole mess had been worth the four hundred dollars I was walking away with.

But instead, I only managed to convince myself that being a nice guy is a big pain in the ass.

14. Old Friends in Need

I wasn’t in a hurry, and I took my time getting through the woods. After about fifteen minutes, I emerged onto the side road where I had parked my Toyota. It was hidden in a shallow ditch under the low canopy of a huge live oak, almost invisible. So at least I had done one thing right tonight.

“Hold up there, friend.”

The voice was behind me, and I recognized it.

I turned with my hands held out to my sides. Bobby Tone stood at the edge of the road. The barrel of the Judge gleamed even in the weak moonlight.

“I sure am glad I caught up with you,” Bobby said. “See, now that I’ve been paid, I need a ride. I didn’t want to bother the others on account of there turned out to be a deputy sheriff on the premises. So I thought it best to depart immediately.”

“I see,” I said. “And you knew I was here because—?”

“Oh, that band-teacher fellow mentioned you. And sure enough, here you are.” Bobby Tone took a step closer and peered at me. “My goodness, is that little Matty Marx? I ain’t seen you since your daddy and me moved our last load of East Texas Canna-Bliss. That’s been a few years.” He made a “tsk-tsk” sound. “I was sorry to hear he passed, by the way. I was a guest of the state at the time, or I would’ve gone to the funeral. Lord rest him, though, and your mama, too.”

I lowered my hands. “Thank you, Bobby.”

“And while we’re on the topic,” he said, “I want to say I was also sorry to hear about your baby girl. Terrible thing, that sudden infant syndrome business. No fault of yours or the missus, and nobody thinks it was. But it seems the loss took a toll on your marriage, and I was sorry to hear about that as well. I, for one, happen to approve of interracial unions.”

I looked at Bobby Tone’s eyes. I didn’t think I saw any compassion there. But I wanted to believe there was.

“I appreciate the condolences,” I said. “But you don’t mind my saying so, you could probably lower that big-ass hand cannon now.”

He took another step closer. “Well, if it’s all the same to you,” he said. “I’ll wait ’til you drop me off in town.”

Which was what I’d figured. “Let’s go,” I said.

As I started the Toyota’s engine and the lights came on, Bobby Tone waggled the barrel of the Judge at me.

“Son, I thought I was imagining things,” he said, “but you’ve got your face done up in black, haven’t you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

Bobby cleared his throat. “Well, it’s highly inappropriate, I’ll have you know. And since we’ll have a little time here as we drive, I’ll explain why. Then, once we’ve reached our destination, I’ll require a good-faith demonstration that you’ve received and accepted my message of understanding and tolerance.”

I looked at him. “How much?” I asked.

“Depends on how much you got,” Bobby Tone said. He faced forward and tapped the Judge on the Toyota’s windshield. “Come on now, son. I parked my new truck behind the propane dealership. I can’t wait for you to see it. It’s a big old silver Dodge Ram, and I’m just tickled to death with it.”

I pulled the Toyota onto the dirt road and began my drive back to empty pockets.

15. It’s the Music, Not the Instrument

Elizabeth didn’t call me to school for the rest of the week. But I went to the spring concert Friday evening, even though it was three bucks to get in. I was curious to see how the sousaphone gangsters were doing.

I don’t know what I expected. Marisa, Kaylee, and Jared were in their places along with the rest of the band, and they played well. As far as I could tell. The Kingman Rural High gymnasium had terrible acoustics, especially from my perch at the top of the bleachers. But David Garrett seemed pleased with his players, and so did the crowd of parents and grandparents. Many bows were taken, and there was even an encore: “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

I had the strong sense that it was a setup.

Marisa’s tuba solo was amazing, though. Even in the echoey gym. I don’t know how she made each whale-fart note sound better in there than it had in the band room. But she did.

When the encore was over and Garrett and the band had received their applause, Elizabeth stepped out from her seat in the front row and faced the crowd.

“Once more for the Cougar Band!” she cried, and everyone applauded and whooped again. “Now, for those of you who can stick around, the annual bake sale and barbecue dinner will take place in the faculty parking lot, just through the rear doors. And I’m told that some members of the band will have a surprise for us.”

I stayed where I was as the band packed up and everyone else filtered down from the bleachers. Almost all of them went out the back, so apparently the bake sale really was a big deal. But I wasn’t planning to stay. I was just waiting for everyone to clear out of my way so I could climb down and head for the front doors.

Then I noticed that the band kids were placing their packed-up instruments next to the folded bleachers on the far side of the gym. And standing next to the growing pile of instruments were Donny, Tyler, and Deputy Beeswax.

This, I had to check out.

As the last of the band kids dropped off their cases, I came down and crossed the gym. Ernest’s head moved ever so slightly in my direction.

“Attention, gentlemen,” Ernest said as I approached. The boys pressed their backs against the folded bleachers and stared at a point somewhere on the distant ceiling.

“Deputy,” I said, extending my hand as I came near. “Haven’t seen you since Monday morning, so I thought I’d say hello.”

Once again, Ernest did not acknowledge my hand. “Are you someone I should remember?”

I gave up on the handshake. “Probably not. I’m Matthew Marx. Both our names end in ‘x,’ which makes us alphabet buddies.”

Ernest tilted his head downward to give me a baleful stare over the top of his sunglasses. “No such thing,” he said. “Now, is there something I can help you with? I have a chore to attend to.”

“I can see that,” I said. “Did these boys volunteer to help the band with their equipment?”

Ernest nodded. “Indeed they did. And then they’re going to do anything else I ask them to do for the foreseeable future, including shine my shoes and execute a few automotive repairs. They have volunteered to perform these and other tasks to serve as shining examples to all young men in the Kingman community who wish to continue to breathe free and have a snowball’s chance of playing football next season. Isn’t that right, gentlemen?”

“Sir,” Donny and Tyler said in unison. “Yes, sir.”

I couldn’t help grinning. And I wished I had heard the conversation after Garrett had freed Ernest from the handcuffs. At some point, though, Donny and Tyler had been presented with a choice of penance or arrest. I wasn’t sure they were going to conclude they’d made the right choice.

“Something funny, Mr. Marx?” Ernest asked.

I shook my head. “No, sir. I just wanted to say howdy.”

“I see.” Ernest pushed up his glasses. “Well, you probably don’t want to say anything further. You’re starting to sound familiar.”

Once again, I gave him a salute. Then I turned away and started for the front doors.

But I saw Elizabeth and Garrett standing at one of the back doors. And Elizabeth was gesturing for me to come over.

I didn’t see any way out of it. So I went.

“I don’t think the two of you have officially met,” Elizabeth said. She was speaking rapidly, the way she did on those rare occasions when she was feeling nervous. “Matthew Marx, this is David Garrett. David, Matt and I used to be married.”

Garrett and I shook hands. “I used to be married, too,” he said.

“But not to Elizabeth.”

“I wasn’t that lucky.”

I looked at Elizabeth. “How’s the banter so far?”

She looked upward as if praying for strength. Then she said, “Okay, that’s out of the way. And now I need a piece of cake. David?”

“You go on,” he said. “I’d like to have a quick private word with Mr. Marx.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “Oh, that’s such a bad idea.”

“I promise to play nice,” Garrett said.

I gave him my best this-smile-really-means-up-yours smile. “I will if he will.”

Elizabeth raised her hands in surrender. “There’s a deputy sheriff right over there. Just sayin’.” She went outside.

“Okay,” Garrett said then. “Even without the blackface, I recognize you.”

“I figured.”

“And I can only assume the reason you were out there was because you were stalking Elizabeth and me. You followed us there.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that Garrett would jump to that conclusion. I even opened my mouth to tell him he was wrong—and then realized I might as well let him think that.

“It was stupid,” I said. “And it’ll never happen again.”

“Better not,” Garrett said. “I’m going to let it go this time because you helped me out. But I’m not paying back the thousand bucks, mainly because I can’t. For one thing, I’ve got my brother living with me now. People seem to think I’m rich, but I’m just the trustee for my mom’s estate. What I have of my own is schoolteacher money, which means I for damn sure don’t have an extra thousand. And I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be,” I said. “It was my choice.” And it was your mom’s money.

Garrett nodded. “All right. I won’t say anything to Elizabeth about your being there the other night. And you and I are starting from scratch.” He held out his hand again.

We shook hands again for the briefest of moments, both hating it. Then he pushed open the door and gestured outside. “You joining the party?”

I was about to decline. Then I looked at the crowd and the tables of food in the small rear parking lot. And I saw Bobby Anthony at the cookie table. He was wearing a “Guns & Ammo” gimme cap and an “I ? Rodeo” T-shirt under a washed-out denim jacket.

So I nodded to Garrett and stepped outside. I glanced back long enough to see him join Elizabeth at a table full of cakes.

I followed Bobby Tone to the edge of the crowd. He saw me coming and stopped under a light pole, leaning against it and pulling the plastic wrap from a paper plate of oatmeal cookies. He took a bite of one as I came near.

“You know,” he said, “most folks zero in on the chocolate-chip ones. But I say there ain’t nothin’ like a good oatmeal cookie. It’s all wholesome and brown-sugary, you know?” He held the plate out toward me. “Go on, Matty. It’s on me.”

I took one and had a taste. “It’s good,” I said. “Not four hundred dollars good. But not bad.”

Bobby gave me his snaggle-toothed grin. “Now, if I thought for a second that you’d earned that four hundred dollars through honest work, I might feel bad. But I know who raised you. I personally don’t believe in hell, though, so I think he’s enjoying an oatmeal cookie and a reefer at the right hand of my Lord. Even as we speak.”

“That’s a special heaven you have there, Bobby.” I glanced around. “A special earth, too, where you can walk among people you’ve messed with and know they won’t touch you.”

He nodded and polished off his cookie. “My Lord is merciful,” he said, pointing skyward. “That’s why I know your little girl is up there, too. So remember, Matty. When something precious is stolen from you, you can’t steal it back. Not from anyone in heaven or on earth. Don’t even try.”

I turned to head back toward the food tables. “I’ll see you around, Bobby,” I said.

“Not if I see you first, Matty.”

There was a commotion across the lot at the cafeteria loading dock, and as I crossed in that direction, David Garrett’s brother Charlie came out onto the dock dressed as he had been dressed at the crooked house. He was followed by a dozen band kids with instruments, with every kid dressed just like him. I saw Kaylee with her trumpet, Jared with his clarinet … and Marisa carrying a white-fiberglass sousaphone with five ragged holes in the bell.

Down at ground level, Garrett whistled to get the crowd’s attention, and Elizabeth raised her hands.

“Here’s the surprise I promised,” she said. “Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time ever—Banda de Pumas!”

Charlie raised his arms and brought them down like twin axes. Then Banda de Pumas blasted out three of the loudest, brassiest, bass-horn-and-drum-heavy Mexican tunes ever heard in Kingman County. They had put the whole thing together in four days, but they looked and sounded as if they’d been doing it for years. Kaylee even sang on the second number, but it was in Spanish, so I had no idea what it was about. But I knew Marisa’s sousaphone was dominant and perfect, and I knew Banda de Pumas would be sticking around.

Just before the final number, Charlie disappeared for a moment and reappeared with the brass Conn sousaphone on his shoulders. Then he and Marisa played harmonizing bass lines, which I hadn’t even known was possible.

After that, the banda members vanished back inside. All except Marisa, who stepped down from the dock so the audience members could stuff fives, tens, and twenties into her sousaphone bell.

I searched my pockets and came up with two crumpled ones. I had been thinking about a slice of brisket, which smelled pretty good. But what the hell. So when the mob around Marisa thinned, I stepped up and added my bills.

“I assume this is all going to a good cause,” I said.

Marisa nodded. “Sí. Mr. Garrett’s brother Carlos is going to manage the banda, and anything we make after expenses will go to a scholarship fund.” She touched the collar of her red jacket. “The outfits were donated by our benefactor, so we didn’t waste any money there. And if you come to our next gig, I promise we’ll know more than three songs.”

“Y’all sounded swell,” I said. I reached out and touched one of the ragged holes in the sousaphone bell. “Despite a defective tuba made out of fiberglass.”

Marisa gave me a bright smile.

“Es la música,” she said. “No el instrumento.”

I looked around and saw no one else within fifteen feet.

“You knew I’d be there with the money Monday night, didn’t you?” I said. “You must have spotted me Saturday as you drove off in the van. And you knew I was in Garrett’s office when you brought Donny to the band room Monday morning.”

Instead of answering, she pressed her lips to the sousaphone mouthpiece and played seven quick, low notes.

Shave-and-a-hair-cut, two-bits!

Then she spun away, once again like a ballerina. No mean feat while wearing a sousaphone.

“I knew you were smart when you made D. H. Lawrence your bitch,” I called after her. I got a few sharp looks from some of the parents in my vicinity, but I didn’t care.

Then I went to the gymnasium door and ran into Lester coming out. He had a stunning brunette woman on his arm who was a full head taller and at least thirty years younger than he was.

“Any barbecue left, Mister Marx?” Lester asked. “My lovely spouse insists upon some brisket. So I got to get her fed in a big goddamn hurry.”

The stunning brunette smiled. It was dazzling. “Otherwise,” she said in the sweetest of voices, “I’m going to stab him.”

I told them that my share was still there, and I stepped aside and held the door for them. As I did, I looked back toward the loading dock and saw Garrett and Elizabeth talking and laughing. I thought about going over to say good night. But then I went on through the gym, into the foyer, and out to the main parking lot.

The week had not turned out as I’d hoped. I had done much better in much tougher circumstances in Chicago, so I wasn’t sure why I’d had so much trouble in my own hometown. Maybe I could only thrive someplace where I wasn’t comfortable. Like Chicago.

But as I slid into my Toyota, I looked across the Kingman Rural High parking lot … and there, at the gray edge of the artificial light, saw Bobby Tone handing his plastic-covered plate of oatmeal cookies to a chubby guy with a ponytail. Simultaneously, the chubby guy handed Bobby something that Bobby tucked into his denim jacket. I noticed then that the plate of cookies looked bulkier than it had before.

Bobby Tone watched the chubby guy climb into an SUV and drive off. Then Bobby climbed into his big silver Dodge Ram and drove off as well.

It occurred to me that I still didn’t know where he was living these days. And since he was an old friend of the family, that didn’t seem right.

No, I wasn’t going back to Chicago or anywhere else for a while. I was curious about too many new developments in the land of my birth. Things like Lester’s unlikely marriage to his possibly violent showgirl wife. Things like Donny’s and Tyler’s indentured servitude to Deputy Beeswax. Things like whether Kaylee would choose Jared or Baylor. Things like Marisa’s burgeoning banda career.

And of course I should at least stick around long enough to see if Elizabeth needed me to teach on Monday.

Besides, I hadn’t liked it when Bobby Tone had told me I couldn’t steal anything back. I didn’t think that was his call.

I waited until the Dodge’s taillights were almost out of sight out on the highway. And then I started up my Toyota, flipped on my headlights, and followed Bobby Tone into Kingman.

I didn’t know what he had slipped into his jacket.

But I knew it was going to be mine.