The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(75)

When I looked again at Kelly, she was staring at my chin — maybe tracing the network of tiny cuts there I'd received from my tumble into the drainage ditch last night.

"What are you thinking?" I asked.

She gave me a small, sad smile. "It's nothing."

"Look, if you really want to leave—"

"No, no. I'm staying with Tio Ralph overnight. I should be glad to be out of the apartment. He's in a pretty black mood."

"About?"

"Oh — some woman."

She waited for a response. I didn't give her one.

"I was hoping Ralph had done himself a favor and forgotten this lady. Apparently they ran into each other today. You wouldn't think a woman could affect Ralph very much, would you?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Mmm."

The monitor lights continued blinking green. I found myself watching the digital numbers of George's heart rate wavering between 51 and 52. Occasionally the beat faltered and the numbers blinked off completely, then came back on. After a few minutes of watching this, I had to look away. Kelly took something out of her pocket. "Before I forget. Maybe this is nothing. We found it when we were sorting George's files."

She handed me a carbon copy of a While-you-were-out message from Erainya's phone record book, written in George Berton's immaculate cursive, dated Wednesday. The note said, Poco Mas. Brandon. Mami called back. "Make any sense to you?" Kelly asked.

"No, but I'll follow up."

Kelly nodded. With what was obviously great force of will, she leaned toward the bed and touched George's forearm in the free space between the hospital wristband and his IV plug.

She blinked, then withdrew her fingers, apparently satisfied that Berton was really there.

"You think all George's friends balance out?" she asked me.

"Against what?"

"Melissa. I was thinking about something Jenny told me — how different George was before he lost his wife. You didn't know him back then?"

"No."

"Apparently not many people did. Jenny made him sound like a completely different person — tender with Melissa but arrogant with everybody else. Very few friends. Heavy drinker. A hell-raiser. According to Jenny, George used to act like this air force hotshot and a lot of people hated him. Can you imagine?"

I admitted that it didn't sound like the George I knew.

"Then he lost Melissa and it just — made him gentle. Charity work. New friends. Always time for anybody. Most thoughtful guy you'd ever—" Kelly stopped, exhaled a shaky breath. "So do you think it balanced out, Tres? You think the friends ever made up for losing that one person?"

"I'd guess it doesn't work that way."

"Kind of scary that one person can count for so much. I hear about a couple like George and Melissa and I don't know. Maybe I'm jealous, or maybe I'm scared as hell and thankful that I don't have somebody that important. Does that make sense?"

I didn't answer.

She smiled sadly, examined my face some more, then reached up and rubbed her thumb against my lower lip, along the side of my mouth.

Her thumb came away tinted red from Ana DeLeon's lipstick. Kelly wiped the color off on her jeans.

We stayed next to George until two of his friends from the Big Brother program came to relieve us.

FORTY

The Poco Mas Cantina was a different place on Saturday morning. Only one battered pickup truck sat in the front lot, and the music coming from inside the bar was subdued, a soft instrumental corrido. In the daylight the bar's facade showed its age. Pastel stucco walls were bleached and cracked like a grandmother's makeup; the air-conditioner units whined asthmatically as they dripped condensation onto the gravel.

Inside, one customer, a muscle-bound Latino man in T-shirt and shorts, was sleeping at the center pink Formica table amid wadded-up dollar bills and empty beer bottles. The old bartender with the silver grease-mark hair was placing last night's dirty glasses into a washer rack. A younger assistant stood at the liquor display with a clipboard, doing inventory. At the back booth, where I'd encountered Mary and the armed locos three nights before, a chubby, fiftyish Latina woman was counting money into a cash box. She was one of the women I'd seen Wednesday evening, lap-hopping at the bookies' tables. She still wore the same uniform — tight red dress, red hose, smeared peach makeup, hair like a blowtorch.

Neither of the bartenders looked thrilled to see me. The older man reminded me about the new management, then told me the bar was closed.

"I'm looking for Mami," I told him.

His right eye developed a tic. He glanced nervously over at his assistant, then back at me. "Closed. Eh?"

"No Mami?"

"Closed all day."

I slid one of my Erainya Manos Agency cards across the bar. "When you see Mami, tell her I'm a friend of the man she talked to earlier in the week — the man with the Panama hat. Tell her I need to talk."

The old man gave no sign of comprehension. He scooped his hand toward the door, like he was bailing water, then told me a few more times how new the management was and how closed the bar was.

I stepped outside into the graveled lot. Across the street, two women in sack dresses trudged down the sidewalk, lugging plastic La Feria bags. A man in a filthy butcher's apron smoked a cigarette in front of a little meat market. Down on the end of the block, the yellow-capped towers of Our Lady of the Mount rose up against the gray sky. The clouds moved just fast enough so that the iron Jesus seemed to be pushing through the gray like the masthead of a ship. I crossed the street and walked toward the church.