The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(41)

I drew the sword. It was a Japanese Imperial officer's weapon— ornamental, 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.

CHAPTER 16

When I got to the University of Texas, Guadalupe Street was nearly deserted. A few homeless people were cocooned in sleeping bags in merchants' doorways. Two students were buying coffee at the sidewalk vendor. Pigeons practiced their serpentine manoeuvres across the pavement.

I had about fifteen minutes, so I grabbed some iced tea at Texas French Bread, checked over my syllabus and my notes, and tried to convince myself that the shower had really removed the stench of rotting catfish.

My classroom turned out be a miniature amphitheatre with seats for fifty, but nowhere near that many had trickled in. Most were middleaged—return students like the ones I was used to teaching at UT San Antonio. In the back row sat a few younger undergrads—hungover, sandyhaired guys in shorts and tees and hiking boots. As I was arranging my handouts, a man who must've been a septuagenarian wandered in—potbellied, frayed jeans and Tshirt, long ivory hair around a balding crown, a beard like Father Time. He smelled of patchouli, among other things.

He wheezed, "You the professor? Hell, I've got socks older than you."

I smiled, thinking he was probably wearing a pair of those right now.

Then Maia Lee made her entrance.

She wore a white cotton dress, sunglasses, espadrilles, black knit purse—the kind of outfit she preferred when visiting a potentially

helpful witness. She looked like a young single woman on her way to breakfast with friends: casual, attractive, nonthreatening. At least she looked nonthreatening if you didn't know, as I did, that Maia's purse contained a gun and pepper spray and several other deadly toys. She had a notebook and pencil. She walked up to my desk with a piece of paper that looked like a class admit slip.

"You still have space, Professor?"

I murmured, "What are you doing here?"

"Can't I watch? I'll try not to mess up things for you too badly."

I probably blushed, damn her.

"I think there's a seat in the back, miss," I said. "Just for today."

Maia smiled, then climbed the steps to the back tier. The younger dudes all checked her out.

By 9:05 I had nineteen students, not including Maia.

I started with my standard jokes, my standard disclaimers. I told the class it was impossible to sardine the whole of British literature into six weeks, but we'd try to hit the really salacious bits. I warned them there would be dirty jokes in the Corpus Christi cycle, bigotry and torture in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, a needlessly high body count in The Revenger's Tragedy.

One of the younger dudes said, "Cool."

Father Time wheezed and grinned at me from the first row like nothing could surprise him. He'd probably seen The Jew of Malta opening night.

"Right," I said. "Might as well start at the beginning."

I launched into the story of Beowulf.

By the third or fourth minute, most of the students were hooked. I'd figured this was better than asking them to read Beowulf cold, on their own tonight. Twothirds of the class would sink in the mire a long time before Grendel ever did.

Halfway through, a middleaged lady in the back raised her hand apprehensively. She asked what I was doing.

I said, "Telling the story."

She frowned. "Isn't that—" She fumbled for the right word. "Cheating?"

One of the younger dudes said, "Cool."

I suggested that the Saxon warriors who'd first heard Beowulf had probably not sat around in rows of desks analyzing it.

"This is storytelling," I said. "Entertainment. You have to imagine a filthydrunk audience on a cold winter night, demanding their skald give them a good riproarer or they'll cut his throat."

Inspired, one of the dudes raised his hand and asked if we could adjourn to the Hole in the Wall Saloon.