The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(6)

I pulled into the strip mall on Blanco and 410 and found the nearest empty space, thirty yards down from Erainya's office. The agency itself is never busy, but it's wedged between a Greek restaurant and a leather furniture outlet that both draw good crowds.

On the office door, stenciled letters read:

THE ERAINYA MANOS AGENCY YOUR FULL-SERVICE GREEK DETECTIVE

Inside, George Berton was sitting at his desk. Kelly Arguello was sitting at mine, reading Spin magazine. Between them, blocking the aisle that led back to his mother's command center, Jem Manos was kneeling on the floor, constructing a monstrous triple-decker windmill out of Tinkertoys.

As I walked in, Kelly and George gave me a standing ovation. The phone started ringing.

Behind the huge desk at the back of the office, Erainya said, "Can we answer that?"

From the higher pitch I could tell it was the alternate number, the one Erainya calls her "dupe" line.

As it rang a second time, Jem ran up and grabbed my fingers and told me he was glad I hadn't exploded. He tugged me toward his windmill.

Kelly and George started barraging me with questions.

When the phone rang a third time, Erainya stood and yelled at us across the room. "What — you people can't hear?"

Everyone fell silent. Kelly went back to my desk. George went to his and checked the Caller ID display. Jem pulled me toward his Tinkertoys.

On the fourth ring, George waved to Erainya, warmed up his fingers, then picked up the receiver with a flourish. "Pro Fidelity Credit — Collections — Samuelson."

He listened, looked up at me, winked. "Yes, that is correct."

George leaned back. Two wide vertical stripes ran down his golf shirt and made his flat upper body look like a bike lane. He nudged his Panama hat farther up his forehead.

I'd developed this theory about Berton — the white leather shoes, pencil mustache, Panama hat, Bryl-ed hair. I suspected George only worked at the turn of the twenty-first century. Each evening he secretly teleported back home to 1962.

"Yes," he continued. "We can verify that. Let me transfer you to Mrs. Donovan."

He punched a button, held up a finger.

Erainya said, "Go, already."

The phone on her desk rang. Erainya answered in a voice that sounded ten years younger and half as testy. "Donovan. Yes, Mr. LaFlore. I have it right here. Yes. We were interested in seeing if he'd been the same sort of problem for you. Frankly, we're considering a lien."

She then sat back and proceeded to get some poor schmuck's credit history. Jem whispered to me about his Tinkertoys. Apparently I'd been wrong about them being a windmill. He was trying for a perpetual motion engine.

"Where'd you learn that?" I demanded.

Jem grinned up at me. Erainya hadn't cut his hair in a month, so his silky black bangs hung in his eyes like a Muppet's.

"Secret," he said.

Jem is advanced for a five-year-old. Erainya thinks he'll do great next fall in kindergarten. I think he'd do great next fall at MIT if they had a better playground.

George logged in some paperwork. I sat on the edge of my desk and looked at Kelly Arguello. She'd gone back to reading her Spin. Her hair was purple-tinted this week, tied back in a ponytail. She was wearing white denim cutoffs and white Adidas with ankle socks and an extra-large black T-shirt that read LIBERTY LUNCH in reggae colors.

Kelly never dresses to show off, but you can't help noticing her swimmer's figure. Even in an oversized shirt and old cutoffs, she has the kind of smoothly muscled body that George, a shamelessly dirty old man, likes to call "Padre Island Spring Break contest-winning material."

Kelly looked over the top of her magazine at me. Her eyes are beer-bottle brown. She focused on my stitched cheek, then wrinkled her nose. "You smell like you're still on fire."

Berton laughed as loudly as he dared. Any more volume and Erainya would've thrown a crisscross directory at his head. I speak from experience. "Always nice to have your coworkers' sympathies."

"We're glad you're okay," George assured me. "Tell us about it."

I told them about the bomb, about Detective DeLeon, and about my decision to accept the UTSA job.

"Instead of P.I. work?" Kelly asked.

"In addition to. Erainya seems to think I can make her money at two jobs now."

" Professor Tres ?"

"Be nice to me, impudent one. Soon I will have access to grades for the entire UT system." I did the mad scientist finger-wiggle in her face.

She said, "Bullshit."

Law students. No sense of fear.

Kelly had been taking classes up at UT Austin this semester on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Tuesdays and Thursdays she'd been driving down to San Antonio to help at Erainya's office. My bright idea. UT was giving her credit for it — legal-related fieldwork.

It wouldn't have been a bad arrangement except Kelly's Uncle Ralph thought I was doing him a favor by being Kelly's big brother. Uncle Ralph has a variety of sawed-off double-barrel weapons that I try not to get on the receiving end of. Kelly, for her part, doesn't always buy into the "big brother" scenario.

Back at her desk, Erainya was still playing Ms. Donovan, bemoaning the state of the personal-insurance industry with some cherished colleague.

"I know," Erainya consoled. "They might as well rob us at gunpoint."