Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(10)

"God damn it," he said. “You got no right."

He turned and started back toward his car. From the way he walked, his lower back must’ve been in a lot of pain.

The windows of his BMW were tinted almost black, so it was only when Dan opened the door that I saw the older woman with bright gold hair sitting in the passenger seat. Her face rested in her left hand as if in total mortification. As the door slammed Dan was growling to her: "Don’t start!"

Then he drove over half the Rodriguezes’ front lawn and over the curb getting back on the street. The BMW swerved slowly down Acacia like a drunk shark. The Rodriguez brothers looked at me and grinned, raising their beer cans in a salute.

Lillian was in her bedroom, pretending to read.

"Just a little man-to-man talk?" she asked coldly. "Did you mark off your territory for him?"

"Lillian—" I started. I stopped, realizing I sounded like Dan had a few minutes before.

She threw down her magazine. "I don’t like being told to go to my room while the big fellas fight it out, Tres."

"You’re right. I shou1d’ve let you handle it."

"You think I couldn’t have?"

No answer would’ve worked, so I didn’t try one.

She got up and looked out the window. Finally, she walked over to me and put her arms around my waist. Her eyes were still angry.

“Look, Tres, this hasn’t been a real great day for me. I think I need a hot bath and a night alone with a book."

"I love you, " I said.

She kissed me as lightly as you’d kiss a Bible.

“I think we should talk more tomorrow," she said quietly. "I don’t want any more surprises from my past."

I closed the front door quietly on my way out.

Back at home, I checked my newly installed answering machine. Mother had called twice, upset that I hadn’t given her a report yet on my first date with Lillian. Bob Langston had left a cryptic message threatening me with bodily harm and legal action.

I unwrapped the ceramic skeleton-driven car Lillian had given me and put it down on the carpet in front of Robert Johnson. He hissed at it, puffing up his tail as thick as a raccoon’s, then walked backward into the closet, still staring at the new monstrosity.

Two days back home and I’d managed to mess up my fragile relationship with Lillian, aggravate my mother, traumatize my cat, and make at least three new enemies.

"Just about par," I told myself.

There was only one other thing I could possibly stir up to make myself feel worse. I called directory assistance and asked for Carl Kelley, retired deputy sheriff, my dead father’s best friend.

8

“I’ll be damned," he said. “I never thought I’d hear from you again, son."

Years of smoking hadn’t been kind to Carl Kelley’s voice. Every word sounded like it was being scraped across a metal file as it left his throat.

Before I could tell him why I had called, he began a long gravelly sentence without periods, telling me about all the people he and my father had known who were now either dead, in the hospital, or afflicted in their old age with ungrateful children. I got the feeling Carl was living alone now and probably hadn’t gotten a phone call in a long time. I let him talk.

One of God’s little jokes: as soon as I had reached Carl on the phone the TV program somehow switched from baseball coverage to a rerun of Buckner Fanning’s morning sermon from Trinity Baptist. I had dragged the phone across the living room as far as the cord would reach and was now trying to reach the television controls with my foot, hoping I could either turn the set off or find another channel. So far Buckner was thwarting my efforts. Tan and immaculately dressed, he was smiling and admonishing me to accept God.

"Yeah," I said to Carl at the appropriate moments. “That sounds pretty bad." After a while Carl presented me with an opening. He asked me what I was doing back in town.

“If I were to want some case files on Dad’s death, who would I talk to?"

A long pull on a cigarette. A rumbly cough. “Christ, son. You’ve come back to look into that?"

"No," I said. “But maybe now I could read about it fresh, more objectively, maybe put it behind me."

I could hear him blow smoke into the receiver.

"Not a week goes by I don’t see him in my sleep," Carl said, "lying there like that."

We both got quiet. I thought about that eternal five minutes between the time my father had fallen to the ground and the first paramedic unit had arrived, when we’d stood there, Carl and I, watching the groceries roll down the sidewalk with the lines of blood. I’d been completely frozen. Carl had been the opposite. He’d started pacing, rambling about what jack and he had been planning on doing that weekend, how the hunting was going to be, what Aggie jokes jack had told him the night before. All the while he was wiping away tears, lighting and crushing cigarettes one after the other. A jar of jelly had rolled into the crook of my father’s arm and nestled there like a teddy bear.

"I don’t know about putting it behind you," Carl said.

Buckner Fanning started telling me about his latest trip to the Holy City of Jerusalem.

“Who would I talk to to see the files, Carl?"

“It’s in-house, son. And it’s been too long. It just ain’t done that way."