The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(36)

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I talked to some people, heard pretty much the same thing Ralph told you. Mara's been doing business with Chich Gutierrez — maybe running some heroin, though nobody could tell me exactly how or where or to whom. Maybe Zeta Sanchez coming back would cramp Mara's style. Maybe it would cut into Chich Gutierrez's business. Doesn't necessarily mean Hector and Chich would set Sanchez up for a murder."

"Whatever happened to Sandra?"

George peeled back some tinfoil. "You mean Hector's sister. Sanchez's wife."

"Yeah. The girl Jeremiah supposedly slept with. Whatever happened to her?"

George hesitated. I could see a change in his eyes — a distance that hadn't been there before. "Jeremiah Brandon had a reputation, ese. The young girls who worked for him, or were family members of men who did — Jeremiah liked making them his conquests. He'd always win. Eventually the men would find out, but they usually did nothing. What could they do? If they complained, they lost their jobs. If they threatened, somebody like Zeta Sanchez would come visit them in the middle of the night. Jeremiah had all the power."

"Lord of the manor."

"What?"

"Something Ozzie Gerson said. Go on."

George stared past me. "Jeremiah would get a girl pregnant, or maybe the affair would just go on long enough where the family couldn't tolerate it anymore — Jeremiah would solve the problem by making the girl disappear. He'd give her a nice wad of cash, put her on the next bus to somewhere, or hand her over to his carnival buddies on their way out of town. She'd be gone to a new life, anywhere in the country. Jeremiah would be on to his next conquest."

"And Sandra?"

"A couple of days before Zeta Sanchez killed Jeremiah Brandon, Sandra Sanchez disappeared."

"Ah."

"Yeah. Suddenly all these trips Jeremiah Brandon was sending Sanchez on — all these collections Sanchez was making all across the country, they started to have a new meaning for Sanchez. His boss had been using that time to get friendly with Sandra."

"Bad."

"Unforgivable. A loss of face like that for a guy like Sanchez — unforgivable, ese."

"Maybe for Hector Mara, too. Sandra was Hector's sister. Jeremiah Brandon used her and threw her away. Hector had as much reason to hate the Brandons as Zeta Sanchez. If Hector needed to get Sanchez out of the way and was looking for somebody to kill for the frame-up, what more logical choice than a Brandon?"

George was quiet for a count of five. "Possible."

"But you've got something else. What is it, George?"

"What do you mean?"

"You started to tell me something a minute ago, then decided against it."

Slowly, George put together a grin. "I'm thinking of a number between one and twenty, Navarre."

"Screw you."

George laughed. "Ask me tomorrow. I've got an aversion to talking about leads before they work out."

"It's damn irritating."

"It's exactly the way you operate."

"Rub it in."

We finished eating in silence. George worked on the carne guisada. I got through about half of my special. Nearby some pigeons fought over an old popcorn box while Jem walked Captain Chaos around the fountain, Jem's forearms getting speckled with water.

George crumpled his aluminum foil wrapper into a baseball-sized wad and began flipping it up and catching it.

"At some point we're going to have to talk to the SAPD again," I told him. "You find out anything more about Ana DeLeon?"

George raised his eyebrows, did an overhand catch. "Don't even think about it, Navarre."

"I'm only asking—"

"Yeah, I know." His eyes glittered. "I met your old girlfriend from San Francisco last Christmas — remember? Maia Lee?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That Ana DeLeon's just your type. And knowing that should be enough to warn you off."

"You're so far off base—"

"'S'okay, man." George flipped his aluminum foil ball. "You like the fortress women, the unapproachable ones. You like the challenge. Try to settle for somebody who can't out-think you and beat you at arm-wrestling — you're disappointed, can't stick with it. Annie, Carolaiyn, how many others didn't make the cut since Maia Lee, man? I've lost count."

There was no bitterness in his voice, no criticism. His smile was even a little wistful.

"I won't dignify that with a response," I told him.

"Don't need to."

He turned the aluminum ball in his fingers. His smile disintegrated.

"What?" I asked.

George shook his head. "Old Jeremiah Brandon. It's just that the more I hear about him, the stories, the way Sanchez brought him down—"

"I know."

George shook his head. "I don't think you do, ese. What Brandon could do to the people who worked for him, the young women especially, the things he got away with — it hits me in a place I don't want to be hit. I start feeling glad somebody shot the old man, start wishing I'd even been there to see it. I begin thinking of Zeta Sanchez as a hero. That scares me, ese. It scares me a lot." We sat listening to the water sluice into the fountain, the pigeons pecking at a potato chip under a nearby table.