Cimarron Rose (Billy Bob Holland 1)

'I can't stop what yo

u're doing here. But somewhere I'm going to square this down the line,' I said.

'Yeah, that's going to be a big worry of ours,' Wilcox said.

The man in shades began rifling my desk. He removed L.Q. Navarro's holstered .45 revolver and flipped open the loading gate on the brass bottom of a cartridge.

I fitted my hand around his wrist.

'That belonged to a friend of mine. He's dead now. You don't mind not handling it, do you?' I said, and squeezed his wrist until I saw his lips part on his teeth and a look come into his eyes that his shades couldn't hide.

'We're done here,' Wilcox said, raising his palm pacifically. 'Don't misunderstand the gesture, Holland. Touch a federal agent again and I'll put a freight train up your ass.'

I waited for her call, but it didn't come.

I worked late at the office that day. Through the blinds I could see the sun, like a burning flare, behind the courthouse and the tops of the oak trees. At just after seven Temple Carrol came by.

'I'll buy you a beer,' she said.

'I still have some work to do.'

'I bet.' She sat with one leg on the corner of my desk. She lifted her chestnut hair off her neck. 'It's been a hot one.'

'Yeah, it's warming up.'

'She blew Dodge, huh?'

'I don't know, Temple. Not everybody reports in to me.'

'You want to talk business, or should I get lost?'

I pushed aside a deposition I was reading and waited.

'I took Jamie Lake shopping for some clothes that make her look half human,' she said. 'At first she's looking at these see-through things and I tell her, "Jamie, it might be the nature of prejudice and all that jazz, but tattoos just don't float well with juries."

"Oh I get it," she says. "Upscale people tell the truth. Trailer court people lie. Wow! Tell me, which kind was that needle-dick polygraph nerd who was trying to scope my jugs?" .

'I say, "We do what works, kiddo."

'She goes, "There's nothing like being sweet, is there? I once told a narc, 'Gee, officer, I wouldn't have smoked it if I had known it was harmful to my health.' He was such a gentleman after that. He took it out of his pants all by himself."

'Billy Bob, this gal is major off the wall.'

'Most of our clientele is. That's why they're in trouble all the time,' I said.

'Here's the rest of it. She had her nose really bent out of joint by this time. So she takes out her MasterCard and buys four hundred dollars' worth of clothes I couldn't afford.'

'It doesn't mean she's dirty.'

'Yeah, and Jack Vanzandt and this greaseball Felix Ringo brought her to us out of goodwill.'

I rubbed my forehead and looked at the soft orange glow of the sunset over the trees. Mockingbirds glided by the clock tower on the courthouse.

'Yeah, this guy Ringo doesn't fit. He's a friend of Jack, he was hanging around Sammy Mace, and he's hooked up with the G at the same time,' I said.

I felt the fatigue of the day catch up with me. I tried to think straight but I couldn't. I felt her eyes on my face.

'Go to supper with me,' she said.