The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(14)

SIX

If you didn't know better, you might think the right side of Green Road is lined with rolling hills — gray dunes covered with worn-out toupees of spear grass and skunkweed and now, in late April, an occasional stroke of wildflowers. But there are no hills in this part of Bexar County. What lines Green Road are mounds of landfill, compliments of the BFI city dump. When the wind blows in your direction, that quickly becomes apparent.

On the left side of the road were shacks of impoverished farmers, county welfare recipients, Texas backwoods families who'd been there for generations before the dump moved in. Their dirt yards were littered with plastic children's toys bleached white from the sun, stunted chinaberry trees, and patches of wild strawberry. Many had handmade cardboard signs in front that read BFI STINKS! Watermelon fields stretched out behind mobile homes that leaned and sagged at weird angles on cinder-block foundations.

On one front porch, a flock of half-naked toddlers, tanned the color of butterscotch pudding, scampered around, climbing in and out of an old clawfoot tub. Pale hairy adult shapes, also half-naked, moved through the interior of the shack.

Ozzie kept checking the telephone poles for block numbers, only occasionally finding evidence that we were going the right way. The idea of these shacks having mailing addresses seemed about as unlikely as them having Web sites. Click here for a virtual tour of my hovel!

After a half mile we got stuck behind a caravan of yellow BFI garbage trucks. Ozzie cursed and blasted his bullhorn, but there wasn't much space for the trucks to go on the shoulderless two-lane. Finally Gerson punched the gas and pulled into oncoming traffic. In the space of eighty yards we came close to smearing three truckloads of migrant fieldhands and ourselves all over the road. We swerved back into the right lane nanoseconds before colliding with a wide-eyed farmer in a Ford.

"Have a nice day," Ozzie grumbled without slowing down. I pried my fingers loose from the dashboard.

The land flattened to field and fence, shacks and farmhouses spaced farther apart. We left the dump behind.

"When we get there," Ozzie said, "we do nothing stupid. If we're the first, we sit on the house and wait for backup. If it gets bad, you stand behind the passenger's door, use it as a shield. Got it?"

"What's the brother-in-law like?"

"Hector Mara. West Side veterano like Sanchez. They go way back."

"Dangerous?"

"Everybody's dangerous. Show me a wife in a domestic disturbance call, I'll show you dangerous. But Hector Mara? Next to Zeta Sanchez he's a big old pan dulce."

Then we were on top of 11043 Green, and we weren't the first. The property sat on the Y intersection of Green and another, smaller farm road. Thick tangles of banana trees and bamboo lined both sides. The only visible entrance was blocked by an SAPD patrol car with both doors open and the headlights on. Two more cars, unmarked blue Chevrolets, were pulled off the shoulder nearby. Four people stood in the shade of the banana trees to the side of the driveway—two SAPD uniforms and my good buddies from homicide, DeLeon and Kelsey.

We pulled in behind the SAPD unit.

Through the break in the foliage I could see two houses on the lot. The nearest, about thirty yards up the gravel drive, was cinder block from the waist down and unpainted drywall from the waist up, still decorated with the green tattoos of different building-supply companies. The building made an L around a covered cement porch that overflowed with mangled bicycles and broken lawn chairs. Bedsheets covered the windows.

Twenty yards farther out was a small mobile home of corrugated white metal. The field around both buildings was overgrown with yellow sticker-burr grass and swarmed with gnats. One car was visible on the lot — an old silver Ford Galaxie parked under an apple tree. No signs of life except for three chickens in a coop. Near that, a well-tended garden patch of sunflowers, cabbages, tomatoes. Ozzie and I joined the SAPD party in the shade. In the afternoon heat the huge banana plants exuded sticky, bubbly goo at the joints and smelled disconcertingly of sex.

DeLeon had changed into new clothes — rust-colored blazer and skirt, a fresh white silk blouse. She leaned calmly against a fence post, gently slapping a folder full of paperwork against her skirt.

Her partner Kelsey had shed his coat. His baby-blue dress shirt had half-moons of sweat around the armpits and his tie and collar were loosened. In the sunlight I could see the fine red network of capillaries in his nose. He glared at me as I walked up.

"What the hell is this doing here?" He looked at Ozzie Gerson. "You brought a f**king civilian?"

Ozzie took a pack of Doublemint from his shirt pocket and shook a stick loose, unwrapped it and put it in his mouth. "He's with me, Detective. Don't worry about it."

"I'm worrying."

"Leave it," DeLeon ordered. "What's the twenty on the other units?"

One of the uniformed officers spoke into his field radio, got an answer. "Five minutes, maybe."

"Maybe?"

The uniform stifled a yawn. Probably, like Ozzie, he'd been pulling fiesta duty all last week. "Half the shift called in sick at the substation, ma'am. We're covering the whole South Side today."

DeLeon sighed, turned to Kelsey. "I wanted SWAT here. Where are they?" \

"No point," Kelsey said. "I told the lieutenant not to bother."

DeLeon stared at him. "You what?"