'He was talking about getting even with Vanzandt. I go, "You mean Darl, 'cause of what he done at the country club?"
'He says, "Darl does them things 'cause his father lets him. His father gets away with it 'cause he's rich. That's the way this county works."
'I said, "It's Darl. There's something wrong with him. It ain't his daddy's fault."
'He goes, "You're a good boy, son. You make me proud. Jack Vanzandt's fixing to have his day."
'My father ain't ever talked like that before, Mr Holland.
His pistol, the one he brung home from the army, I looked and it ain't in his drawer.'
'I don't think your dad would kill anyone, Lucas.'
He looked around behind him again.
'You want me to leave?' Temple said.
I raised my hand. 'Go ahead, Lucas,' I said.
'He done it in the war. A lieutenant kept getting people killed. My dad threw a grenade in his tent.'
'Where is your dad now?'
'Getting a haircut down the street.'
I winked at him.
But my confidence was cosmetic. Neither I nor anyone I knew in Deaf Smith had any influence over Vernon Smothers. He believed intransigence was a virtue, a laconic and mean-spirited demeanor was strength, reason was the tool the rich used to keep the poor satisfied with their lot, and education amounted to reading books full of lies written by history's victors.
I was almost relieved when I asked in the barbershop and was told Vernon had already gone. Then the barber added, 'Right next door in the beer joint. Tell him to stay there, too, will you?'
The inside of the tavern was dark and cool, filled with the sounds of midday pool shooters, and at the end of the long wood bar Vernon Smothers sat hunched over a plate, peeling a hardboiled egg, a cup of coffee by his wrist.
I had rather seen him drunk. Under the brim of a white straw hat, his face had the deceptive serenity of a man who was probably threading his way in and out of a nervous breakdown, his eyes predisposed and resolute with private conclusions that no one would alter.
I waved the bartender away and remained standing.
'We found a couple of witnesses, Vernon. I think Lucas is going to walk.'
'You want an egg?'
'Jack Vanzandt doesn't have any power in that courtroom.'
'The hell he don't.'
'You won't trust me?'
'I trusted the people sent me to Vietnam. I come home on a troop ship under the Golden Gate. People up on the bridge dropped Baggies full of shit on us.'
'To tell you the truth, Vernon, I don't think you'd have had it any other way,' I said, and walked back down the polished length of the bar into the sunlight.
It was a cheap remark to make, one that I would regret.
I crossed the street to the courthouse and opened Marvin Pomroy's office door. He was talking to his secretary.
'Got time for some early disclosure?' I asked.
'No more deals. You've got all the slack you're getting,' he said.
'I'm filing a motion to dismiss.'
'I've got to hear this. I haven't had a laugh all day,' he replied.
I followed him into the inner office.
'I've got two witnesses who saw Lucas passed out at the murder scene when Roseanne Hazlitt was still alive,' I said.
'Winos?'
'A Mexican biker from San Antone who just passed a polygraph, and a gal who puts me in mind of a chainsaw going across a knee joint. By the way, I wonder what percentage of our jury is going to be Hispanic?'
Marvin leaned back in his swivel chair and pulled at his red suspenders with his thumbs.
'You feeling pretty good about yourself, huh?' he said.
'It's reasonable doubt. A kid who's so drunk three people can't wake him up doesn't suddenly revive himself and rape and beat someone to death.'
'Who says?' But he was looking into space now, and the conviction had dissipated in his voice.
'Why not cut your losses?' I asked.
'Because "the people" are the advocate of the victim, Billy Bob, in this case a dead girl who doesn't have a voice. I represent them and her. I don't cut my losses.'
'Lucas Smothers is a victim, too.'
'No he's your son. And that's been the problem since the get-go. He lied through his teeth about how well he knew her. What makes you think he's telling the truth now? Go look again at the morgue pictures. You think she did that to herself?' Then his face colored and he rubbed a finger in the middle of his forehead.
'You're going to lose,' I said.
'So? For me it's a way of life. Say, what kind of rap sheet does your Mexican biker have? Or does he just use his hog to go to and from Mass?'
Pete and two of his friends had come over to ride Beau that evening. I saw the three of them, mounted in a row on his back, turn Beau up the embankment on the rim of the tank, then disappear through the pasture where it sloped down toward the river. A half hour later I heard Beau's hooves by the windmill, then on the wood floor of the barn. I walked out into the yard.
'Y'all didn't want to stay out longer?' I asked.
'There's a man fishing by that sunk car. He's standing in the water in a suit,' Pete said.
A boy and girl Pete's age sat behind him on Beau's spine. They both kept looking back over their shoulders, through the open doors behind them.
'What color hair does he have, bud?' I asked.
Pete pulled his leg over Beau's withers and dropped to the ground and walked toward me, his expression hidden from the others. He kept walking until we were on the grass in the yard, out of earshot of his friends.
'It's red. We was letting Beau drink. Juanita was up on the bank, pulling flowers. This man standing in the water says, "That your girlfriend?" I say, "I ain't got no girlfriend."
'He says, "She's a right trim little thing. You don't get it first, somebody else will."
'I said I didn't know what he meant and I didn't want to, either. I told him I was going back to my house. He says, "Old enough to bleed, old enough to butcher."
'It was the look on his face. He kept watching Juanita. I ain't never seen a grown person look at a kid like that.'
I put my hand on the back of Pete's head.
'Y'all go inside and fix yourself some peach ice cream,' I said.
I drove the Avalon down the dirt track, past the tank, and through the field to the bluffs over the river, the grass thropping under the bumper. Five feet out from the bank, submerged to his hips, in his blue serge suit with no shirt under his coat, was Garland T. Moon. He flung his bait with a cheap rod out into the current.
I got out of the Avalon and looked down at him from the bluff. Against the late sun his skin looked bathed in iodine.
'This waterway is public property. State of Texas law,' he said. A brown, triangular scab had formed on his bottom lip where I had hit him.
'I'm going to have you picked up anyway.'
He had to lick the scab on his lip before he spoke. 'Thought you might want to know I got me an ACLU civil rights lawyer from Dallas.'
'You know who Sammy Mace is?' I said.
'A greaseball out of Houston?'
'He's in town. I think you've stumbled into his business interests. Maybe I'm wrong.'
He retrieved his bait out of the water and flipped it in an arc back into the current.
'Fore you hit me, you said your daddy was a fine man. That "fine" man run me off the job. Sixteen years old, carried me out on the highway, told me to get out of his truck. Without no home, food, people, nothing.'
'If he ran you off, you probably stole from him or did worse. I suspect it was "worse".'
He was quiet a long time, smiling at nothing. Then he said, 'You ever asked yourself why your daddy hepped out a jailhouse kid like me?'
'He was kind to animals and white trash. That was his way, Moon.'
'My hair is darker red than yours, but maybe that's 'cause my mama was a redhead. Think about it, boy. Your daddy ever pipeline around Waco fif
teen years or so before you was born?'
I got in the Avalon and drove back to the house and called 911, a wave of nausea surging into the bottom of my throat.
By the time a deputy in a cruiser got to the house and I went back down to the river with him, Moon had disappeared.
'What's wrong, Billy Bob?' Pete said later in the kitchen.
'Nothing, bud. Everything's solid.'
Don't let Moon wound you, I told myself. That's his power over people. He makes them hate themselves.
'You want some ice cream?' Pete asked.
'Not tonight.'
He continued to stare at me with a puzzled look, then I heard Temple's car in the drive and a moment later Pete going out the screen door for his ride back to her house.
It's the moment every decent cop dreads. It comes unexpectedly, out of nowhere, like a freight train through a wall. Later, when you play the tape over and over again, seeking justification, wondering if there were alternatives, you're left invariably with the last frame on the spool, the only one that counts, and it tells you daily what your true potential is.
Mary Beth went back on duty after only two days' rest.
The 911 call reporting a trespasser and disturbing-the-peace incident at the skeet club should have required little more than the dispatch of a cruiser, perhaps a mediation, perhaps escorting someone off the property or even putting him in jail for twenty-four hours.
Vernon Smothers started looking for Jack Vanzandt at his office, then his home and the yacht basin and the country club. It was late afternoon when he found his way to the skeet club and parked by the pavilion in front of the row of traps that sailed clay pigeons toward a distant treeline.
Bunny Vogel saw him first, saw the energy in his face that was like both anger and fear at the same time, and walked from the pavilion to intercept him.
'You a guest here this evening, Mr Smothers?' Bunny asked.
Vernon's khakis and denim shirt were pressed and clean, his white straw hat tilted on the back of his head, his eyes wide, unblinking. A heated, dry odor seemed to envelop his skin and his clothes.
'You got to be a member or a guest, Mr Smothers. You can go over to the clubhouse there and see about a membership…'
'I see Emma Vanzandt there. Where's her husband at?' Vernon said.
'Sir, I don't think this is a good idea. I'm sorry for what happened to Lucas. I mean, I'm sorry for my part in it…' He gestured in the air, then his voice trailed off.
Jack Vanzandt, Sammy Mace, and a middle-aged man with a ponytail and thick lips and glasses that magnified his eyes walked out of the squat, green building that served as a clubhouse and approached the pavilion. Jack had the breech of a double-barrel shotgun cracked open on his forearm.
Vernon put one hand on Bunny's shoulder and moved him aside, as he would push open a door.
'I ain't up to no traveling shit storms today, Mr Smothers. I got orders about-' Bunny began.
But Vernon was already walking away from him as though he were not there.
Jack and Sammy Mace and the man with the ponytail sat down at a plank table with Emma Vanzandt. None of them paid attention to Vernon Smothers until he was three feet from their table.
'How you doin', Vernon?' Jack said.
'Your boy and his friends vandalized my house and humiliated my son,' Vernon said.
'I don't think that's true,' Jack said.
'Go ask Bunny Vogel. He's the little Judas Iscariot hepped Darl do it.'
Jack blew out his breath.
'This isn't the place for it. Come to my office,' he said.
'I know you for the type man you are, Jack Vanzandt. That man next to you is a goddamn criminal,' Vernon said.
'Hey! This is a private club here. You watch your language,' Sammy Mace said.
'Get up, Jack,' Vernon said.
The man with the ponytail put his hand on top of Jack's forearm. 'It's all right. I'll walk this guy to his truck. Is that your truck there, big man?' he said.
'No,' Jack said. 'Listen, Vernon. Kids get into trouble. It doesn't make it any better if the parents fight. Now-'
Vernon reached out and, with the flat of his hand, popped Jack on one cheek.
'You ain't no war hero. You just a rich man bought all the right people,' he said.
'Jack, put an end to this,' Emma said.
But Bunny Vogel had already called the sheriff's department, and Mary Beth's cruiser had been only two hundred yards from the skeet club when the dispatcher's voice came over her radio.
She turned off the highway and drove onto the grass almost to the pavilion, got out of her cruiser and slipped her baton through the ring on her belt.
She went straight for the source of the problem, Vernon Smothers.
'You're trespassing, sir… No, there won't be any debate about it. You get in your truck and drive back on the highway,' she said.
'Hey, we got the marines here,' Sammy Mace said.
'You shut up,' Mary Beth said.
'What?' Sammy said.
'In your truck, Mr Smothers,' Mary Beth said.
'Hey, what'd you just say to me?' Sammy Mace asked.
'I said you stay out of this unless you want to go to jail,' she replied.
Sammy opened his hands and made a shocked expression to the man in the ponytail.
'You believe this broad?' he asked.
'Last chance,' Mary Beth said.
'You got no right to be impolite. We're not the offending parties here,' the man in the ponytail said.
'We're out of here, Jack. Right now,' Emma said.
Mary Beth cupped her hand around Vernon's arm.
'Walk with me, sir,' she said.
But she knew it was unraveling now, in the way that dreams take you in high-speed cars over the edges of canyons and cliffs.
Sammy Mace walked up behind her and punched her with one finger between the shoulder blades.
'No cunt talks to me like that. Hey, did you hear me? I'm talking here. Turn around and look at me,' Sammy said, and punched her again with his finger.
She slipped her baton from its ring and whipped it across Sammy's left arm. Even from ten yards away, Bunny Vogel said he heard the bone break.
Sammy's face went white with pain and shock. He cradled his arm against his chest, his mouth trembling. Then he extended his right hand, like an inverted claw, toward the man in the ponytail.
'Give it to me!' he said.
Mary Beth pushed Vernon Smothers away from her.
'Down on the ground, on your face! Do it, both of you, now!' she said to Sammy and the man in the ponytail.
Then she saw Sammy lunge toward his friend and try to pull a. 25-caliber automatic from a small holster inside the friend's coat. She swung the baton again, this time across the side of Sammy's face, and shattered his jaw. It hung locked in place, lopsided, blood that was absolutely scarlet issuing off his tongue. His glasses lay broken on the grass.
Sammy collapsed to his knees, then grabbed at her legs and at the nine-millimeter on her hip, while the man in the ponytail at first pushed her, then watched stupidly as his. 25 automatic fell from its holster into Sammy's lap.
The man in the ponytail tried to disentangle himself and back away while Sammy pulled the trigger impotently on the automatic and fought to get the safety off.
Mary Beth gripped her nine-millimeter with both hands but fired high with the first shot at Sammy Mace and hit the man in the ponytail in the groin. He stumbled away, his face rearing into the sky, his hands clutched to the wound as though he wanted to relieve himself.
Her second round entered Sammy's eye socket and blew the back of his head out on the grass.
Suddenly there was no sound in the skeet club except the wind fluttering an American flag on top of the pavilion. chapter twenty-five
It was hot that night, and still hot at false dawn, as though the air had been baked, then released again on the new day. I got a handful of molasses balls from the tack room and fed them to Beau in
the lot, then turned him out and walked down to the river and watched the darkness go out of the sky. The current was dark green and swirling with froth from dead cottonwood trees that were snagged along the shore, and I could hear bream popping the surface where the riffle channeled under the tree trunks.
I tried to think clearly but I couldn't. I had stayed with Mary Beth until eleven last night. The man with the ponytail had lived three hours and died on the operating table. His name was Sixto Dominque, and his sheet showed only one felony conviction, for extortion in Florida, for which he had received a gubernatorial pardon. His wallet contained a permit for the. 25-caliber automatic.
'They thought they were in Dog Patch. They got what they deserved,' I told her.
'I should have hooked up Vernon Smothers and taken him to the cruiser and called for backup,' she said.
'Listen, Mary Beth, you're an officer of the law. When a lowlife puts his hand on your person during the performance of your duty, you bounce him off the hardest object in his environment.'
'I blew it.'
I offered to stay with her.
'Thanks, anyway. I've got to spend some serious time on the phone tonight,' she said. In the electric lighting of her apartment the color seemed washed out of her face, her freckles unnatural, as though they were painted on her skin.
'Don't drink booze or coffee. Don't pay attention to the thoughts you have in the middle of the night,' I said.
'Was it this way with you?'
'Yeah, the first time it was.'
'The first time?' she said.
My stare broke, and I tried not to let her see me swallow.
Now, the next day, I squatted on my boot heels in the grass and tossed pebbles down into the water on top of the submerged car that had once contained the bodies of two members of the Karpis-Barker gang, nameless now, buried somewhere in a potter's field, men who thought they'd write their names into memory with a blowtorch.
What was it that really bothered me, that hid just around a corner in my mind?
The answer was not one I easily accepted.
I had made a career of living a half life. I had been a street cop, a Texas Ranger, a federal prosecutor, and now I was a small-town defense lawyer who didn't defend drug traffickers, as though somehow that self-imposed restriction gave a nobility to my practice that other attorneys didn't possess. I was neither father nor husband, and had grown to accept endings in my life in the way others anticipated beginnings, and I now knew, without being told, that another one was at hand.
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