'The kid you delivered up like a trussed hog.'
The color flared in his cheeks. I turned to walk away.
'Maybe I'm a Judas goat, but there's a question you didn't ask,' he said at my back.
'What might that be, sir?'
'How come he went out there to begin with. It's 'cause Darl got the girls to tell him you were gonna be there. So maybe I ain't the only one hepped pour cow shit on that boy.'
* * *
chapter twenty-one
I drove from Bunny's house to Jack Vanzandt's office. His secretary said he had already gone for the day. She went back to her work, concentrating her gaze on a computer printout as though I had already left.
'Where did he go?' I asked.
'To one of the lakes, I think.'
'The yacht basin?'
'I'm not sure.'
'Do you know if Darl is with him?' I asked.
She stared thoughtfully into space. 'I don't think he mentioned it,' she said.
'I'd really like to have a talk with them. Both of them. Would you get Jack on his cell phone?'
She removed her glasses, which were attached to a blue velvet cord around her neck.
'Please, Mr Holland. I'm just the secretary,' she said, her face softening to an entreaty.
'Sorry,' I said.
She smiled at me with her eyes.
The lake where Jack usually kept his sailboat was in a cup of wooded hills that sloped down to cliffs above the water's edge. The western cliffs were in shadow now, the stone dark with lichen, but out in the sunlight a solitary boat with enormous red sails was tacking in the wind, the hard-blue chop breaking like crystal needles across its bow.
Jack Vanzandt stood barechested behind the wheel, his skin golden with tan, his white slacks tight across his hips and the ridges of muscle in his abdomen.
I waited for him at the boat slip, where a black man was grilling steaks by a plank table under a shed. If Jack was uncomfortable with my presence, he didn't show it. In fact, he seemed to take little notice of me. He was talking to his two guests, who sat in chairs by the cabin with tropical drinks in their hands—the M
exican drug agent, Felix Ringo, and a man from Houston by the name of Sammy Mace.
Jack stepped off his boat, laced a rope around a cleat, and walked toward me. His eyes were flat, but they took my full measure and watched my hands and expression.
'You going to lose it here?' he asked.
'Can't ever tell,' I said.
'Don't.'
'Your kid's a coward and a sadist. But you probably already know that. I just wanted to tell you he's hooked up with Garland T. Moon now.'
'You want to eat, or insult me some more?'
Felix Ringo and the man named Sammy Mace were at the end of the dock, watching a yellow pontoon plane come in low over the hills and skim across the water.