The Devil went down to Austin

CHAPTER 15

When the alarm clock went off the next morning, I slapped at the sleep button and hit only pillow.

I opened my eyes, saw the curve of a whitedomed ceiling, a blacklight Beatles poster taped to it.

My apartment didn't have a curved ceiling. I was pretty sure it didn't have an overhead blacklight Beatles poster.

I patted around. Flannel sheets, a mattress firmer and wider than my futon. In my sleep I'd gone almost spreadeagled, trying to find the edges of the bed.

The only thing familiar was Robert Johnson, curled around my head like a coonskin cap.

I sat up. Robert Johnson murred in protest as he slid off my scalp.

Sunlight sliced across the floor of Jimmy Doebler's loft. On the nightstand, the alarm clock was flashing 6:02 A.M.

Teaching class today, I remembered. UT Austin. The big time.

And on five hours' sleep, too. What more could a man want?

I got up, turned off the alarm, fumbled around for clothes. I'd unpacked my suitcase the night before, but couldn't remember where I'd stashed anything. I rummaged through the oak bureau, pulled on workout clothes before realizing they weren't mine. I looked down at Jimmy Doebler's Coral Reefer tour shirt, decided against changing.

Somehow, tai chi in a dead man's clothes seemed fitting this morning. I laid out slacks, a dress shirt, and a tie for later. Those I knew were mine. Jimmy wouldn't have owned any.

I climbed down the ladder to the ground floor. The dome was country quiet.

I made coffee, scrambled some eggs, and fried some corn tortilla strips for mi gas. I made a Friskies breakfast taco for Robert Johnson. We ate together at the counter, me standing up, reading the Austin AmericanStatesman on my laptop.

I scrolled down to tech news and there it was-the first story, posted only a few minutes before: AccuShield of Cupertino to Acquire Techsan. Ruby and Matthew Pena had wasted no time getting the sellout rolling.

The article chronicled Techsan's betatest problems, the lawsuits, the bad press-all of which would now be handled directly by AccuShield. Matthew Pena promised his client would have Techsan's software problems fixed and an industrystandard encryption program to market by the end of summer.

"It's a matter of resources," Pena said. "AccuShield has them. Techsan didn't."

The article also quoted Ruby McBride. She said the deal would be good for all parties involved. Pena would pay four million in AccuShield stock, with a lockin period of ninety days.

I copied the article, composed a quick email to Lars Elder at the First Bank of Sabinal.

I tried to sound upbeat, promised that Garrett could work out a new payment schedule for the ranch's mortgage soon. I didn't mention anything about possible murder charges.

I closed my laptop, drank some coffee, and stared at the pink cake box-the memorabilia Ruby McBride had almost pilfered the day before. Finally, either my breakfast or the photo of Clara Doebler had to go. I muttered an apology to Jimmy, then turned his dead mother facedown.

I needed to work out, then get ready for my morning class. Instead, I found myself sorting through Jimmy's Family folder-the queries he'd been making into the Doebler past. There was one letter to a local hospital, requesting inpatient records of Clara Ann Doebler's stays for clinical depression. Jimmy had written the AmericanStatesman for information about obituary archives. He'd written the Travis County clerk for Clara's death certificate, her will, the original deed to the lake property. He'd also asked if it were possible to do a birth certificate search without knowing the baby's name. He was interested in births from 1966 to 1968-mother's name Clara DOEBLER, or possibly Clara LOWRY.

Father's name LOWRY, or UNKNOWN.

I thought about what Ruby had said-how Clara had hung out with men her family didn't like. Given the years she'd been separated from her son, Jimmy, how little he must've known about her, the queries for a lost sibling struck me as sad. I could imagine the psychology-an only child, taken from his mother and overseen by relatives who primarily wanted him out of the way, raised in boarding schools. At a younger age, Jimmy probably fantasized about "real parents" somewhere else-parents who cared for him and would someday rescue him. At an older age, when the terrible reality set in that his mother was in fact for real, he could harbour a more mature fantasy-a sibling, someone out there who at least could share his misery, maybe someone who needed rescuing by Jimmy. And maybe, deep down, Jimmy had needed a reason for Clara stopping her journal to him in 1967. A baby would've been a less painful explanation than the idea that Clara just had stopped making the time.

I set the folder aside. I tried to remember Jimmy the way I'd always thought of him before-the permanently dazed beach bum, the wellmeaning screwup, as impervious, rootless, and free from worries as a chunk of driftwood. I couldn't quite reconstruct the image.

The last thing I reviewed from yesterday was the list of phone numbers Jimmy had called in April-his cousin W.B., the Doebler Oil offices, Aunt Faye, Garrett.

I scanned it again, kept coming back to one number I almost recognized-an Austin number, a twominute call on April 16, sandwiched between two shorter calls to Garrett. On a lark, I picked up my cell phone and dialled.

The pickup was immediate. "Homicide. Lopez."

I hesitated.

"Hello?" Lopez's tone told me he was about to hang up.

"This is Navarre." Then I added, "Tres."

"Well. Aren't we the early birds?"

The only thing that didn't surprise me was that a homicide detective would be at his desk at 6:30 A.M. That was the only time they could catch up on paperwork.

I stared at Jimmy Doebler's phone bill. Two minutes, twelve seconds. April 16.

"Just got off the phone with Detective Angier in San Francisco," Lopez told me. "She sends her regards."

"The Selak drowning?"

"Angier said we're welcome to keep Pena and his attorney, the lovely Miss Lee, in Texas just as long as we want."

"She look at the inhouse files for you?"

"Nothing earthshaking. Pena and his girlfriend were bickering at dinner. Boat had a few dozen people on it, mostly computer execs. It was one of those big commercial charters-room for several hundred, so when Pena and Selak went for a walk they didn't have to go far to get out of range of witnesses. There's general agreement that Adrienne Selak had had too much to drink. She was slurring her words, stumbling, was plenty pissed at her wonderful millionaire boyfriend. Pena's account, he took her aft to cool off and to sober up. She was embarrassing him. She wasn't rational, kept calling him names, trying to hit him. Anyway, the boat was cruising the north part of the Bay, due east of Sausalito. Pena and Selak left the stern bar around 11:00 P.M. Around 11:30, Pena's employee, guy named Hayes, got worried, decided to go aft. The way Hayes told it, he heard the couple arguing, turned a corner and there they were Pena with his hands raised, trying to calm Selak down. She was throwing weak punches at him, crying. Then she turned like she was going to run away from him but she stumbled against the railing, hit one of those spots where it's a rubbercoated chain-where they put the stairs up for boarding, right? And she fell over the side.

Hayes swears Pena lunged for her, caught her sleeve for a second, but over she went-about a twentyfoot drop from the deck. Hayes ran for help. Pena threw a life preserver, yelled for the boat to stop. But Selak never surfaced. Straight over and she was gone. Coast Guard helped with the search, but no body was recovered. Then your friend Maia Lee got involved in the case. That's it."

"Angier think Pena pushed Selak overboard?"

"You know how it is, Navarre. We detectives are totally objective. We go simply on the facts."

"Uhhuh. You think he pushed her?"

"I wouldn't doubt it. This guy Hayes-he either saw nothing, or he saw the push, and his boss bribed or forced him into silence. But can SFPD

prove it? This happened in January. Mr. Pena is still a free man. What do you think?"

"Dwight Hayes ever treated as a suspect?"

"Not that I heard. The only thing Angier said about him, what troubled the investigators the most, is that they couldn't shake Hayes' story, no matter how they tried. They couldn't catch him in an inconsistency, and Hayes didn't strike them as the ironwilled type. He was shaking, sweating, terrified of the cops. If he'd been hiding a lie, they should've been able to get it out of him, you know? He was the best proof, the only real proof Pena was innocent."

"You filing charges on my brother?"

Half a minute of silence. "Navarre, there was something else the good folks at SFPD told me, about your friend Maia Lee."

"Such as?"

"I hear you two used to be together. Sorry if you don't want to hear this. Your exgirlfriend apparently burned an awful lot of bridges in San Francisco defending Pena. A lot of people who used to respect her, they're in agreement that Miss Lee crossed the line on that case, sold her ethics. Happens to every defence lawyer eventually, Tres, even the decent ones."

"You sound like a homicide cop talking."

"Take it or leave it. What I'm saying, if that case bothers herif she is down here trying to make some kind of moral amends-her motives are suspect. Her judgment might not be too clear. I'm not sure you should encourage her to represent your brother."

I looked down at my cold eggs, then the phone bill.

"Lopez, why did Jimmy Doebler call you in April?"

"What?"

"April 16. A short call, about five in the afternoon."

Lopez was silent, as if thinking back. "He wanted information- the files on the death of his mother."

"That didn't strike you as strange?"

"Jimmy said he'd been gathering information about his mom, wanted to understand her life. What makes a guy do that? I don't know. Jimmy's past with his mom ain't what you should be worried about, Navarre. It's Jimmy's past with your brother."

"Meaning?"

"The accident. Your brother blamed Jimmy for what happened to him."

I didn't respond.

"Come on, Tres. I've been doing my homework. Jimmy taught your brother how to jump trains. Then Jimmy didn't show up one night, left Garrett on his own, went up to see his mom. Your brother got maimed, didn't speak to Jimmy afterward for what years, right?"

"That was a long time ago, Lopez."

"Soured him pretty bad on the Doeblers. Maybe Garrett didn't take out his hostilities at the time, but there's no telling how long somebody's fuse is, or what'll finally set it off.

Ruby McBride, for instance. I suppose you know Garrett and she met at UT? they took some upperdivision math courses together. I suppose you know they were an item before Garrett had his accident."

"Yeah," I lied. "So what?"

"If that was an old wound," Lopez continued, "if Garrett got into business with Ruby and Jimmy after all those years, thinking he was okay, and then Jimmy started to get romantic with Ruby-a lady Garrett used to love… You see how it could go?"

"I see where you could put it, Lopez."

"Just tell Garrett I'd welcome a phone call, okay? Be good if he came to me voluntarily.

Maybe we could work something out."

Before I could respond, Lopez had hung up.

I checked my watch, found that my hands were trembling.

I grabbed my tai chi sword and went down the trail to the lake.

The morning was as cool as an oven door, just before the knob is turned to preheat.

I used Jimmy's concrete slab as my workout surface, started with basic stances, ten minutes each. It was therapeutic, getting the sting in my muscles, until I turned north and found myself staring at the unfinished kiln.

The remnants of the barbecue fire were still in the doorway. The little red kiln goddess grinned at me. She didn't seem to mind her left arm being shot off.

After ten years doing tai chi, I still rarely achieve a truly meditative state. This morning was no exception. All the way through the

Yang long form, I tried to push thoughts out of my head, but they kept crowding back again.

I thought about Maia Lee, the way she'd looked on Windy Point with the sun in her hair.

I thought about Matthew Pena and Victor Lopez, trying to decide who was more dangerous.

Mostly I thought about Garrett and Ruby on the deck in the meteor shower-the look of mutual recrimination they'd given each other. If Lopez was right, Garrett and Ruby had known each other as long as Garrett and Jimmy had-since college, at least. And yet, Garrett had never mentioned Ruby's name to me. There were only two explanations I could think of-that the relationship was not important enough to mention, or that the relationship was too important to mention. I wasn't betting on the first.

As I went into my sword set, the sun was coming up full force, turning the lake to metal.

Heat stirred the air, moving through the branches of the cedars with a sound like a distant nest of rattlers.

When I finished, I'd thoroughly soaked the Coral Reefer Tshirt with sweat. The exertion had brought Jimmy Doebler's smell out of the fabric-his copal incense and deodorant, smells I associated with trips to the coast as a child. I promised myself I'd work out in my own damn shirt tomorrow morning.

I sheathed the sword and was about to head back up to the dome, but I found myself staring at the kiln.

I walked over.

The mortar had dried in the bucket, Garrett's trowel embedded in it. The stack of bricks sat nearby, the copper binding snapped and sproinging to four sides as if the bricks had landed on and squashed a metal spider.

Nearby, Jimmy's wooden pottery rack was draped in plastic tarp. Underneath, the shelves were stacked with unfired pots-some red clay, some white clay, all glazed but unfired. They looked ugly that way, like Easter eggs dipped in too many dye pans.

Maybe another day of masonry. Then the gas lines would have to be hooked up. The iron doors would have to be hung.

I shook my head. You're crazy, Navarre.

Then I started up the path.

I knew something was wrong when I saw Robert Johnson on the porch, the front door cracked open. I never leave a door open and I never let Robert Johnson outside.

He looked like he didn't quite know what to do with himself. He was sniffing something on the porch-something gray and glistening.

When I got closer I caught the smell.

I stepped up, moved around the thing, quickly scooped up Robert Johnson. "That's not for you," I chastened.

I went inside, did a quick scan of the room, went directly to the kitchen counter and retrieved Erainya's gun.

I remembered to look upstairs this time. There was no one in the house. I checked the back-the outhouse, the shed. Nobody there. I walked the circumference of the dome, looked at the driveway for new tire tracks, checked my truck. Nothing.

Nothing-except for what was on the porch. I went back and stared at the thing, tried to breathe through my mouth to keep the stench out of my nostrils. Robert Johnson kicked his hind claws into my stomach, trying to get down.

The catfish was nearly three feet long-as big as the hotdogfed monsters I'd seen at the bottom of Lake Travis. Its whiskers were limp gray whips. Judging by the smell, the fish had been allowed to rot overnight before being dumped here.

Its belly had only just been gutted, the rancid innards allowed to spill across Jimmy Doebler's porch. There were undigested pieces of hot dog in the milky fluid. Fish eyes usually strike me as expressionless, but this one's seemed terrified, amazed, like it still could not get over the fact that its demise had not come by fishhook.

The thing had been impaled-as if speared by a scuba diver.

Date: Mon 12 Jun 2000 02:36:40 0000 From: charity@orphan. com To: charity@orphan. com Subject: the private eye Ah, the private eye.

I remember a late afternoon in January, not long after my incident in the snow.

I'd gone home. It would've looked bad if I hadn't. And of course, once home-I found myself alone.

I was in a foul mood. My night in the country had left a bad taste in my mouth-hollow victory. I hadn't seen their faces, hadn't been able to let them know I was there.

Many nights thereafter, I'd found myself in the bathroom, the Old Man's straight razor pressed against my wrist. Or I would be standing at the medicine cabinet, staring at bottles. Never any shortage of prescription drugs around the old homestead.

I felt cheated. The only thing left worth destroying, I didn't have the courage for.

So when I answered the doorbell that afternoon, I pitied whoever it was-a nuisance.

A policeman. A family friend.

Instead, I got a small balding man in a threadbare suit, his eyes blinking excessively.

He held a briefcase in one hand, a business card ready in the other. The line on the card, right under his name, read: Discreet Investigations.

He hadn't come looking for me, but when he learned who I was, he asked to come in.

What could I say? He intrigued me with his card and his demeanour. I wondered if he were good at his work, simply because he was so small. So unimposing.

The private eye complimented the house, which seemed strange to me. I'd lived there so long I'd never thought of it as nice.

He sat on the sofa. I sat in a chair across the coffee table. I remember the curtains were drawn, not that it mattered. No one ever looked in those windows.

The little man showed me photos of people I did not recognize, dropped names I did not know.

And then, when he saw that I wasn't responding, he told me a story that spelled out the connections. He told me who he was looking for, and why.

It was as if a magnifying glass had been held up to my eyes. The world expanded twenty times, got fuzzy around the edges, perfectly focused in the centre. I looked at the pictures again, realized what they had to do with me. I realized this small man had done something I could never have done on my own-he had crystallized my hatred into something coherent.

He must've read the change in my face. There was no way I could hide it. He said, very carefully, "You know the name, don't you?"

I admitted that is was familiar.

"There's money to be had," the private eye suggested.

It was the wrong thing to say, and I think he realized it.

He'd gotten too excited at the possibility of a lead.

The shabby private eye was an entrepreneur. He had gone beyond what he'd been paid to do. He'd found himself a tawdry secret, and he meant to exploit its market potential.

I told him I had some papers he might be interested in, asked if he would excuse me.

I could see his apprehension lift. He was thinking he'd finally caught a break. He would get home in time for dinner now. It was probably a long drive.

"Would you like a drink?" I offered."Hot chocolate?"

He declined.

That negated my easiest option, but no matter. I smiled, said I would be right back.

I went into the study. The Old Man's things were there, his World War II trophies. My eyes fixed on one possibility, and I took the thing down from its display rack. I grabbed a box of papers-I don't remember what they were. It didn't matter.

I went back into the living room.

The anger inside me felt like a steel rod, as stiff and old as the blade in my hand. It was a horrible choice, but I hadn't had any time to think. I had to improvise.

The private eye looked at the sword curiously.

"You'll see the connection," I promised."It's a family heirloom."

He put the box of papers on his knees, began flipping through them."I don't-"

"Toward the bottom," I apologized."! didn't sort them."

I drew the sword. It was a Japanese Imperial officer's weaponornamental, but functional. It said much about the Old Man that the metal was brown with age except the point, the blade. The ornamental dragon, the clouds and demons some craftsman had worked so hard to fashion down the spine of the blade-the Old Man had had no use for them. He had only maintained the punishing side.

The private eye looked up, uneasy, but still not alarmed. I was, after all, a kid. A kid who had been helpful, offered him hot chocolate. Perhaps, in the back of his mind, he suspected that I might be the one he was looking for. That would be valuable to him.

Very valuable.

"Incredible workmanship," I told him."The family connection is right here. There's an inscription near the point."

I was standing over him. I held the blade up, the tip resting flat against my left hand, the hilt raised high in my right. I held it close for the private eye to inspect. I moved my left hand, guided the point so it was just above his collarbone, not an inch above.

He said, "I don't see-"

I moved both hands to the hilt, used the weight of my entire upper body. The blade met surprisingly little resistance. The carapace of a beetle would've been much, much harder.

His little eyes opened wide, as if to overcompensate for a lifetime of blinking. He tried to rise, but I had leverage on my side. We held that position, nose to nose, his breath growing faint against my lips.

His briefcase alone was worth all the trouble. The files I found later in his office-just before I put the match to the kerosene rags-opened up the world.