The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(26)

"The call just happened to come in while we were talking and—"

"Wherever you go tonight, you're taking me."

"I'm going home."

"I brought my 9mm. Stop now and I might not use it."

I shut up. Jem squeezed me around the neck from behind and told me he was glad we were going to have fun together tonight. I mumbled my halfhearted agreement, then started the engine.

We did a U on Garraty and headed south through Terrell Hills.

Erainya said, "Full story."

The full story took us all the way to Broadway. Erainya loved it. She asked me where I wanted to go now and when I told her, she loved that even more. She muttered Greek words of disgust all the way to the Hildebrand intersection. Jem asked where we were going.

I glanced at Erainya for guidance.

Having the mother he did, Jem had been on excursions that most kids would've found boring or nightmarish or both. His nap and sleep cycles were completely unpredictable, much like his mother's verdicts on what was safe and appropriate for him. At the moment he seemed happy, ready for anything. The place I wanted to go, however, might not be so kid-friendly.

"He's fine," Erainya promised. "I got to baby-sit you and him at the same time, I can do that. Uncle Tres is taking us somewhere, honey."

"I am?"

"Tell the boy."

I tried for a smile as I looked back at Jem. "You want to see where they make amusement-park rides, Bubba?"

Jem hit the roof shouting hurray.

We continued south on Broadway toward downtown. Jem talked about the latest Sega games. We passed underneath I-35 and into an area of repair shops and used-car dealerships.

A couple of hookers stood on the corner of North Alamo outside a vacuum cleaner repair shop. The hookers had seen better days. Something about their garish makeup, the black stockings and yellow dresses, the drug-enhanced fiery smiles — that display in front of the grimy windows filled with aging Hoovers and Electroluxes — there was probably a joke in there somewhere, but tonight it seemed a little too pathetic to make.

I took a right on Jones.

The buildings were dilapidated warehouses, long and low, nothing on the horizon but palm trees and the blinking spikes of radio towers.

We followed the old Southern Pacific tracks past the Brewery Art Museum, then over the river and right on Camden. The address we wanted filled the 300 block. A dimly lit sign out front said RIDEWORKS, INC., with the R and the W drawn like roller-coaster loops. Underneath, smaller letters proclaimed: KING OF THE SOUTH TEXAS CARNIVAL BUSINESS.

At the near end of the lot was a long portable building, facing in toward a cement yard fenced off by ten-foot-high chain link. Beyond that was a corrugated-metal warehouse the size of a small airplane hangar. Lining the side of the street, four insanely tall palm trees cut black silhouettes against the sky at gravity-defying curves, like Dr. Seuss trees.

I pulled across the street from the yard gates. A single light glowed behind the white-paned side window of the RideWorks office. One floodlight on a telephone pole threw a yellow oval of illumination on the closed hangar doors of the warehouse. Other than that the place was dark. Several cars lined the side of the street next to the warehouse — a Pontiac, an old Chevrolet, a Ford double-wide pickup.

Jem stuck his head over the front seats.

"They make rides?" he asked me excitedly.

"Yep."

"Can we go in?"

"Not right now," Erainya said. She was watching the buildings, getting impatient. "Honey, if you were thinking we could just..."

She stopped. We both focused on the same thing — the tiny flame of a lighter flaring up in the cab of the pickup truck across the street. The flame briefly illuminated a cigar, shadowy red jowls, the brim of a cowboy hat. Then it flicked out, replaced by the fainter glow of the cigar tip.

Before I could comment, a new set of headlights cut in directly behind us, coming up Camden. Del Brandon's red Fiat convertible glided up to the RideWorks gates and stopped.

"Someday, honey," Erainya told me, "I'm gonna decide whether you got the best timing in the world or the worst."

Del Brandon got out of his sports car. He looked the same as he had that afternoon, storming out of Ines' house — same greasy wedge of gorilla hair, same yellow shirt, now snagged on a side-holstered gun. His face was large and washed out and marked with a terminal heartburn scowl.

He looked warily at my VW.

Then the Fiat's passenger's-side door opened and Del's companion got out. Erainya said, "Mother of Jesus."

Del's friend was a boulder of a man with incongruously girlish hair — tight blond cornrows curled up at the bottom and tied off with little blue rubber bands. Bo Peep on steroids. His facial features were thinly applied to a block-shaped head — his eyes shallow, dull dents; his smile an accidental mark. Gray running clothes. Height maybe six-five, density three or four tons. I didn't see any gun, and I didn't have any illusions that it mattered. Bo Peep was not a man who would bother with, or be bothered by, weapons smaller than a ballista. They were both still staring at us when the cigar smoker in the truck opened his cab door and called, "Del."

In the sudden illumination of the dash light, the man in the truck appeared weathered and dour, maybe sixty years old, rough and thick as a granddaddy oak. He resembled any number of Texas ranchers from here to Brownsville, his mouth mostly lower lip and cigar.