The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(13)

"Two shots with a .45, in a quiet residential neighborhood. Sanchez just strolls out the back door and is nice enough to leave a witness. This after he was smart enough to stay hidden since when — '93?"

"Revenge makes you stupid. Thing about gang-bangers, they're smart only in the ways that they're smart. Kind of like academics."

"Hey—"

"I'm telling you, Navarre. I know Sanchez. He's good for the murder. SAPD looks where I told them to look, they'll nail his ass. Let's get some food." Ozzie cut across Military Drive and pulled into the parking lot of a Circle K that squatted at the entrance of a particularly bleak subdivision.

When the big-haired cashier saw Ozzie, she rolled her eyes. "Where the hell you been all week?"

"Busy, Mabel. Hot dogs warm? Damn near gave me E. coli last time."

"Oh, the hell they did," Mabel grumbled. "You wish some bacteria'd eat off that extra flesh of yours, Ozzie Gerson."

"Balls." Ozzie went behind the counter and pulled two foam cups from the special cop dispenser.

I kid you not. There is a special cop dispenser. The cups say FOR POLICE USE ONLY.

He tossed me one. "You're honorary today, Navarre. Help yourself."

I got some Big Red. Ozzie went for Pepsi. For police use only. Do not try this at home. We are trained professionals. We know how to pour soda into these special cups.

Ozzie grabbed two hot dogs and offered me one. I declined.

Ozzie began chewing on both of them. He eyed a couple of large Latinos in construction clothes who were buying cigarettes from Mabel.

"What about the pipe bomb at UTSA?" I asked him. "The death threats?"

Ozzie kept chewing. "You mean was that Sanchez? Why not? Solidox bomb is an old gang scare tactic. Lot of the veteranos know how to make them."

"They learn how to craft political hate mail, too?"

Ozzie dabbed the ketchup off his jowls with a Circle K napkin. He kept his eyes on the Latinos at the register, who were now asking for a fill-up on number four.

"I don't know, Navarre. Don't waste your time trying to figure out Zeta Sanchez. He's a gang-banger. He passed the exit for humans a long time ago." "Bullshit."

Ozzie shrugged. "You don't want to hear it, don't. Jeremiah and Aaron Brandon weren't white, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. We'd let Sanchez go on killing his own. Tell me it ain't so."

I tried to control the swell of anger in my throat, the feeling that I was back in my father's patrol car again, arguing social issues until common sense started to bend like light around a black hole. Ozzie was one of the last of my father's generation on the force, the last who could give me that feeling. Maybe that's why I'd kept in touch with Ozzie over the years. A sort of negative nostalgia. Ozzie met my eyes, tried to soften his look of obstinance. "Listen, kid. It's like I told Erainya — leave this murder to the SAPD. All your friend Berton's got to do is dig around UTSA a little, talk to some Mexican activist groups, decide they've got nothing to do with the case and UTSA is safe. And I'm telling you — this has got nada to do with campus politics. UTSA will be grateful, you'll get paid for doing squat, we'll get Sanchez in custody, everybody will be happy."

"Except Aaron Brandon, his wife, his kid."

Ozzie's eyes were the color of frozen vodka. "So the prof had a family. You become a cop, Navarre, you take that reverse gear and you rip it out of your transmission. You don't go backward. You don't think about what you can't change."

"Like the days before you worked patrol?"

Gerson's doughy face mottled with red.

"Why'd they demote you, Ozzie? You never talk about it."

"Drop it, Navarre. You weren't the son of the guy that hired me, you'd be walking home right now."

The Latinos got their cigarettes and paid for their gas and left. Ozzie looked disappointed. He wadded up his hot dog paper tray and made a basket in the trash can. "Screw it, anyway. I protested some bullshit evaluations from the new chief. It was all f**king politics, okay?"

He started toward the door, waved for me to follow. "See you, Mabel."

"Can't wait," she called.

We hadn't gone half a mile in Ozzie's unit before the call came through, not over the radio but on the cell phone, which meant Dispatch didn't want the media overhearing.

Ozzie said "Yeah" a few times, then checked the information that was clicking across his MDT in glowing orange. "36; P-32. Got it."

The patrol car was accelerating before he even hung up.

"Speak of the devil," he said. "They just got a warrant. Sanchez is bunking at his brother-in-law's house, just off Green Road."

"That's close to here."

He smiled. "Sheriffs jurisdiction. SAPD is requesting uniformed presence from us immediately. You up for this?"

He didn't wait for an answer. We hit eighty mph and subdivisions started falling away, the land turning to farms, rows of ripening watermelons, horse ranches.

"Trees," Ozzie murmured. "I retire, man, my place is going to have trees in the lot."

Then we careened in frightening silence onto Green Road and west toward Zeta Sanchez.