“Glad to hear that. Eat your ice cream.”
“Was Grady’s car hurt?”
“The brick went through the windshield and caught a guy named Vick Atlas in the eye. He might lose it.”
“Lose his eye?”
“That’s what I said. Makes you wonder why anybody would do that. You got something you want to say?”
“No, sir,” I replied, my insides turning to water.
“This is my guess. If you did it, you’ll tell me. If Bledsoe did it, you won’t. You’ll turn DDD on me.”
“What’s that?”
“Deaf, dumb, and don’t know.”
I didn’t reply.
“Two guys say they saw your car. These are Harrelson’s friends, not Atlas’s. Atlas says he didn’t see anything but the brick. He also says he never heard of you or Bledsoe. What does that tell you, Aaron?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
The ice cream was melting in my cup. I had eaten none of it. I felt sick all over, as though a toxic cloud had invaded my lungs and fouled my blood.
Jenks set his ice cream cup on the brick step. Snuggs and Bugs walked out of the hydrangeas and looked at him. Jenks picked up Bugs and petted her. “I’m going to tell you some things I normally wouldn’t tell a suspect in an investigation. You think your problem is with the Harrelson kid. It’s not. It’s his father. He’s the closest thing to a Nazi we have in Texas. You wonder why Loren Nichols came after you? Nichols’s brother works in one of the Harrelson rice mills. You wonder why Grady is hanging with a lowlife like Atlas? The Mob does Clint Harrelson’s dirty work. Harrelson is building youth camps around the country. If he has his way, your children will be brownshirts.”
“You’re going to arrest me, sir?”
He set Bugs down on the walk. He looked at me for a long time. I had a hard time holding his eyes. His gaze dropped to my stomach. “I like your belt buckle. You a rodeo man?”
“Amateur ranking only.”
“The Atlases will hurt you. Maybe not kill you. But they’ll do something to you that you’ll carry with you a long time. Both the father and the son are depraved. If I had my way, I’d cap both of them. But people like me don’t get their way.”
The sky seemed a darker blue than it should be, too pure and unblemished to be real, more like bottled ink than air, the trees a deeper green, every color of the rainbow spilling out of the flower beds along the street, sunlight dancing crazily on the neighbors’ rooftops, all of it deceptive and not to be trusted. “My grandfather was a Texas Ranger. He put John Wesley Hardin in jail.”
“Talking about what our ancestors did isn’t going to he’p. Talk it over with your parents. Don’t try to handle this on your own. They’ll cannibalize you, boy.”
“My parents don’t need this kind of grief.”
“Then confide in me. Learn who your friends are.”
“Saber Bledsoe is my friend.”
I saw Jenks’s jawbone flex. He placed the cover on his ice cream cup and put it and the spoon into my hand. “Stick this in the trash for me.”
“I know you’re trying to help, Detective Jenks. I just don’t know any good way out of this.”
He wiped his hands with a handkerchief. The tips of his cowboy boots had been spit-shined into mirrors. He cracked his knuckles. “You know why young men go to war?”
“They want to defend their country?”
“No, war
s are there to solve a young man’s problems. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”