The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(58)

"Let me guess. Ruby named her after her car."

His ears turned bright red. "Fucking disgrace. You don't go out of here talking about this, you understand?"

I crossed my heart.

Clyde's living room was a cozy combination bike garage, poker den, and army surplus centre. Tables overflowed with greasy wrenches, nuts and bolts, cartridge boxes, and pieces of disassembled weapons. Somebody had played 52pickup across the rug.

There was one sofa that looked like a piece of chewed gum.

Clyde told me to sit down. I chose the edge of a table. Clyde offered me a drink—raw egg shake, Gatorade, or beer. I declined.

He plopped himself onto the chewing gum couch, popped open a beer. "Before I kill you," he said, "what were you doing on Ruby's boat?"

"Just visiting. Finding out Ruby's a lot closer to Matthew Pena than she lets on."

Clyde sipped his beer, got some white foam on his moustache. "Ruby's a good woman. Don't judge her."

"She sold out her company, went behind Garrett's and Jimmy's backs—"

"If I thought Ruby had done something to hurt Garrett, I'd talk to her."

"You must have a pretty narrow definition of hurt."

Clyde studied me, the tape on his broken nose making him look slightly crosseyed.

"Your brother's a standup guy. The Buffett summer tour this year—he got tickets, swung some for me and some friends, too. You think I like this shit with the police? I want him free to go."

He said free the way a con says free—like it was a kind of weather.

Miata the ferocious dog was closing her eyes. She was just about to go to sleep when the weight of her snout closed her jaw around the pink bunny and made it squeak. She lifted her head, looking around sleepily for the intruder.

"There's a thing about Matthew Pena," I told Clyde. "People think they can work with him. They find out they're wrong."

Simms scratched the Doberman's muzzle with his toes. "Ruby knows enough to call her own shots."

"You care for her."

His eyes got dangerously hot. "She's a good boss."

"That's not what I meant."

He finished his beer, crumpled the can, tossed it somewhere behind the pink sofa. "I got discharged from the Marines in '82, Navarre. I spent a few years hanging with bikers, striking with the Diablos. Then I started bumming with dock rats at the lake. I met all kinds of people. You know what I figured out? Only friends worth having are the ones who can hurt you, man, hurt you worse than any random shithead in a bar fight. I hang with Ruby because she stands by me? she tries to be good to me. Is she dangerous? Fuck, yes. Is she a little screwed up, all that shitty family history? Sure.

But you want to boil it down to—hey, Clyde's got the hots for her, well you go ahead, man. That's how you think, you'd never understand anyway."

The Doberman was looking at me mournfully, chewing her pink bunny.

"I apologize," I told Clyde.

He grunted.

"You mentioned Ruby's family," I said. "You knew them?"

"Only stories. The grandfather was the one that sold out, left them with this little piece of land. He sat on the money he'd made from the sale, pretty much pissed it away on drink and gambling. What Ruby's dad inherited wasn't a third of the value. He tried a lot of things, ended up starting the marina, never made much of a go of it. Toward the end of his life, Ruby was running the place, trying to make it pay off for the sake of her old man. Ruby did it, too. Wasn't her dream to get rich, or to keep the land. But by the time her dad was gone, she couldn't get away from the place. Building that house up there on the hill—you don't understand what a big

deal that is for her, Navarre. It's Ruby admitting she's here for keeps? she ain't going to get away."

The sound of a motorboat went by out on the lake. The smell of burnt pork and beans was slowly giving way to cedar from the open windows.

"Where is she now?" I asked. "Do you know?"

Clyde gave me a look I couldn't quite read. "Yeah, I know. She don't always let me tag along."

"Like when she goes to meet with Matthew Pena?"

Clyde shook his head. "I ain't your enemy, Navarre. I ain't Garrett's enemy. But you ask me, you're barking up the wrong pole. I seen Garrett around Ruby, how they dance around each other. I seen how Garrett looked when she told him she was marrying Jimmy Doebler. You want to help your brother—maybe you should start by thinking: Hell, yeah, he killed the guy. Go from there. You understand me?"

"This advice from you, who wanted to kill Matthew Pena months ago?"

But when I met Clyde's eyes, I understood what he was saying. Clyde could believe Pena deserved to die. He could also believe Garrett had murdered Jimmy Doebler. He could also believe that Garrett was a decent man who deserved to be free. These ideas were not mutually exclusive. For Clyde, murder was no more astonishing than chicken pox, certainly no reason to judge a man.

I stood. "I'll keep your advice in mind, Clyde."

"And I won't kill you," he decided. "But stay off Ruby's boat, hear?"

I left Clyde on his chewing gum couch, Miata the ferocious dog sleeping at his feet.

Outside, the lake spread out glittering and blue, but for once I couldn't help seeing it the way Ruby must've seen it all her life—as a cool heavy funeral cloth over a million acres of land.