The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(48)

I called George's number. Sure enough, he wasn't reachable, though his answering machine did give me a great recipe for sopa de ajo.

I sat down at the kitchen counter with my coffee and eggs and my stack of essays. I put on some early B.B. King to help me concentrate. This was my day to grade.

As I ate, I read the first paragraph of the first essay four times. I made one mark in the margin that said Good point. B.B. sang about his woman and his guitar. Robert Johnson ate his Friskies taco noisily.

I looked at the phone.

"To hell with it."

I went back to the ironing board and called SAPD. Ana DeLeon's number in homicide rang five rings, clicked, then a man's voice said, "Kelsey."

I tried to contain my excitement. I told Kelsey who I was and asked for DeLeon.

"She's not here right now, Navarre. She's getting her beauty sleep. You want to send her flowers or something, I can give you the address."

"It's about the Brandon case, Kelsey. It's important."

"So talk to me."

I tapped my red pen on the essays. "She's going to want this information, Kelsey. I mean today."

"I'm not hearing anything important yet, Navarre."

I told him about my evening at the Poco Mas, about the connection between Del Brandon and Hector Mara.

Kelsey was quiet long enough to write the information down. "Mary what?"

"Ramirez, maybe. Or Rios."

"Maybe?"

"There's about five surnames in the family. I don't remember. You can try the sister's address and the friend's. There's no guarantee she'll be at either place." "Assuming it's worth looking. Fifteen-year-old witness, a runaway who'll do anything for a few bucks. Probably drunk when and if she saw anything — Hector Mara with some white guy with a B name and you planted the idea the name might've been Brandon. Even a public defender will laugh his ass off."

I didn't like admitting that he was right. "Substantiate the link another way."

"You don't think we've looked at Hector Mara? We spent the day together on Tuesday, Navarre. You don't think we've looked at Del Brandon? We had Del down here days ago — him and three of the best Jewish lawyers money can buy. They knew the drill, made it pretty clear we wanted to stick any shit to Del, we'd have to mix it with superglue."

I looked down at my unfinished eggs, pushed them away. "Just tell DeLeon. Mara's the key. Break him the right way, he'll talk."

"Damn, Navarre, let me write this all down. Can I share your pointers with the other guys down here in homicide? Is that okay?"

I hung up the phone.

I looked at Robert Johnson, then at the essays.

"I shouldn't go out," I told Robert Johnson.

Smack, smack. Carnivorous head shake.

"You're right. Better me than you." I put my red pen down next to his food dish. "Try to have half of them graded by the time I get back, okay?"

I got my car keys and went out to see a sick friend.

TWENTY-THREE

Ozzie Gerson's apartment was everything mine wasn't — modern, stylish, devoid of character. It sat off Thousand Oaks Drive and Highway 281 in a housing development still new enough to have the plastic multicolored pennants flapping out front and the banners that said NOW LEASING and MODEL UNITS and IF YOU LIVED HERE YOU'D BE HOME RIGHT NOW. That last had always sounded like some kind of Zen threat to me.

The neighborhood was about as far from the West Side and the Poco Mas as you could get — wide boulevards cut from the hill country, glistening with Lexuses and SUVs. New upscale strip malls with Starbucks and Le Boulanger, the Texas elements of cactus and limestone and live oak neatly carved down to median strips and parking lot entrances.

Ozzie's apartment was on the third floor of Thousand Trails Villa, overlooking the street. There was a hibachi grill and a pair of muddy police shoes on the landing and a Bexar County Sheriff's Department sticker below the door knocker. I rapped loudly, called out my name, then let myself in.

"Bedroom, Tres," Ozzie hollered. "Take off your shoes and come on back."

I looked down. Three pairs of boots were lined up neatly on a linoleum strip by the door. The rest of the living-room floor was pristine white carpet — not a grease mark or spill or streak of dirt anywhere. I put my present for Ozzie down momentarily, pulled off my boots, and left them next to Ozzie's.

Walking across the living-room carpet was like walking across marshmallow. There was a cream-colored couch and matching love seat placed at a V in front of the fireplace, a neat stack of Handloader and Police Ammo magazines on the glass coffee table next to a vase of fresh-cut bluebonnets. On the mantel were years of photos from Ozzie's ex-wife and two kids in California. The ex-wife, Ozzie'd once told me, was very dependable about sending photos every Christmas, but each one had her in it, too, along with the kids. Every year, Ozzie carefully cut her out with an X-Acto knife and inserted a picture of himself instead. The photos were odd to look at — Ozzie floating between his kids, slightly off in color and size and resolution, overlapping their Christmas Day like some alien beaming in from Star Trek.

The dining room was dominated by a state-of-the-art, polished oak-and-glass gun locker filled with every manner of hunting rifle and handgun. Around it were more gold-framed pictures — Ozzie with my father at our family ranch in Sabinal, standing on either side of a dead buck; a much younger, slimmer Ozzie receiving his detective's shield from my dad; Ozzie with his latest girlfriend Audrey, the large redheaded manicurist who Ozzie swore "had a shot at Miss Texas once."