The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(100)

Zeta curled his fingers into his palm, tightened them until they turned white. "What do you want, Sandra? You come to apologize or yell at me?"

"I came to tell you I'm leaving you."

He laughed. "Thought you did that six years ago."

"I'm sorry. I was too afraid to say it then. I'm saying it now."

"And if I get out of here? If I come after you?"

Ines didn't flinch. She said, "I won't run anymore. I won't do that to my son."

I'm not sure which of us was caught off-guard most by the certainty in her voice.

Zeta focused on Michael for the first time. "Hey, chico, come here."

Michael didn't move.

Zeta cupped his hand inward, gesturing for the boy to approach the glass. Michael stepped forward. He kept his head down. He hooked a finger under his collar and scratched.

Zeta crouched a little. "Show me your eyes."

Michael didn't.

Zeta looked at Michael, then Ines. His expression said, Kid sure as bell ain't mine.

"Somebody talks to you," said Zeta, "you need to look them in the eyes, little man. It's respectful."

Michael looked up.

Zeta's face was deadly serious. No smile for the little kid. He looked like he was trying to burn a message into Michael's mind and I had a feeling he'd be able to do it pretty successfully.

"What's your name, little man?"

"Michael."

"M-mml?" Zeta mimicked. "What's your name? Speak up."

"Michael."

"You scared, Michael?"

"My daddy had that, too."

Zeta frowned. "What?"

Michael pressed one finger to the Plexiglas, pointing at Zeta's face, then poked his own cheek. "Cut himself shaving. My daddy let me put the Band-Aid on for him. Yes. I'm scared."

Ines' hands made a tent over her mouth.

Zeta cleared his throat. "I got to tell you something, Michael. Okay?"

Michael shuffled.

"I want you to take care of your mom, little man. You hear me?"

Michael milked his red-and-blue tie.

"You hear me, Michael? Will you promise me that? That's a real important job."

"Okay."

"She gets scared, you're the man to protect her. You hear me?"

Michael nodded.

"How about a 'yes, sir.'"

"Yes, sir."

"All right, then."

Zeta gestured toward the visitors' exit. "Good-bye, Michael. Adios, Sandra."

Ines started to say something, then stopped herself. Closure was a bull's-eye she could've easily overshot. She nodded to Zeta Sanchez, then looked at me.

"I'll be there," I promised. "Go on."

She looked like she wanted to protest that, but her desire to get Michael out of the room was stronger. She held out her arms to reclaim her son. She took Michael's hand and led him toward the exit.

Zeta watched her go. "Shorter than she remembers," he murmured. "Chingate."

Sanchez wore the same expression I'd seen once on a lion on Wild Kingdom — right after the tranquilizer dart hit, the beast stumbling around in irritated bewilderment on the savannah, just before Marlin Perkins said it was safe to approach and the sleepy lion mauled the hell out of Jim or Bob or whatever the hell the assistant's name was. Marlin had had to cut to a Mutual of Omaha commercial pretty quick after that segment.

I said, "If word gets around you let her go—"

Zeta raised a cautionary finger. "My call. You remember that."

"You think Ines knows why you really came back to San Antonio? She wasn't the only piece of your past you needed closure on."

His eyes were getting sleepier and angrier by the second. "Go home, Professor."

"Your mother worked for Jeremiah Brandon until just after you were born. Jeremiah kept track of you as you grew up. Have you ever known for sure who your father was?"

Zeta didn't answer.

I strove to see some resemblance between Zeta Sanchez and the old photos of Jeremiah Brandon. I didn't see any.

"For what it's worth," I said, "you're more like him than Aaron or Del. You're the one who inherited his character."

I could tell that my words were no consolation. They simply sank in, probably joining the army of similar thoughts that Zeta had been amassing most of his life and still hesitated to put into the battlefield.

"You did something good today," I said. "Thank you."

Zeta stood. "I didn't do nothing, Professor. I'll be out of here sooner than you think. You wait until then before you decide to thank me."

Then he walked to the exit and disappeared back into the county jail.

I tried to convince myself that he'd needed to say those parting words to save face, that we'd come to a resolution despite that. I sat there listening to the crying babies and the fat woman grouse about her electric bill. But I kept watching the door Zeta had gone through, just to make sure it stayed closed.

FIFTY-TWO

Woodlawn Lake cuts a green, quarter-mile U through the near West Side. The area had been affluent once. When my father was a kid back in the 1940s, the water had been pristine, the circular Casting Pond stocked with fish for children to catch. Dad once told me he'd beaten his friends in a rowing race around the lake's miniature red and white lighthouse, an idea I found incredulous, given Dad's massive beer gut in his later years. Neighborhood families had held their debutante parties and upscale Christmas posadas at the now boarded-up community center. My father and mother had gone to their first dance there.