The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga 2)

THE NEXT MORNING I went to Cisco Napolitano’s high-rise apartment building, located on a flower-planted traffic circle in the Montrose district. When she opened the door, she was still in pajamas and not wearing makeup. She leaned against the jamb. I could see the tops of her breasts, but she didn’t seem to care. I wasn’t even sure she was going to speak. “What’s the haps, kid?” she said.

“No haps.”

She didn’t invite me in. Her face looked older, dry, on the edge of flaking, her eyes red-rimmed and set more deeply, as though she were staring out of a mask.

“May I come in?” I said.

“May I? That’s why I love you. Yes, you may come in, you little honey bunny.”

I wondered if she had crashed and burned on some toxic goofballs. She closed the door behind me and pointed at the bandage below my eye. “You get out of line with what’s-her-name?”

“Valerie? We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“You got hurt at the rodeo?”

“I went to the buzzer, but I got disqualified.”

“Let me get dressed. I’m a little sick this morning. I’d like you to drive me somewhere.”

The curtains were closed, the ornateness of the room suffused with a warm yellow light that accentuated its colors and clutter of Oriental and Arabian-style furnishings. “I came here to tell you about Detective Jenks,” I said.

“Him again?”

“I think he’s got emphysema or cancer in his lungs. I think he’s going down for the count.”

She was looking through a crack in the curtains at the traffic circle or the flowers inside it or the cars on the street. “Why tell me about it?”

“Because I know y’all were an item in Reno or Las Vegas. I think he’s a good fellow in spite of his redneck manners.”

“You have your nose in too many things. Where’d you come up with this emphysema stuff?”

“He sounds like he has metal filings in his chest, and there’s blood on his cigarette butts.”

“Let me tell you something about Merton Jenks, kid.”

“Can you call me Aaron?”

“Merton was undercover vice in Vegas. Believe me, he fit right in. Catch my meaning?”

She waited. When I didn’t answer, she said, “He gave me up in court. I spent eleven months in county jail as a material witness. I’m lucky I wasn’t killed.”

“Maybe that’s why you bother him.”

“You’re a laugh a minute.”

“Where are we going?”

“To La Farmacia, in the Fifth Ward, honey bunny. I’ve got a mean case of something.” She paused, her face empty. “Merton’s really going under?”

“What do I know?”

She closed and opened her eyes as though she had lost the thread of the conversation. I could not remember if I had ever seen her arms uncovered. I knew the signs. Drugs were just starting their journey from the slums and the border to middle-class neighborhoods throughout America. The culture had always been in Houston in cosmetic form. Hoods put lighter fluid on a folded handkerchief and walked around sniffing it, both for show and for a 3.2 high. Sometimes there were reefers at a gig. Shit-kickers had been rolling Zig-Zags since they were knee-high to a tree frog. But smack or H or horse or joy juice or tar or China pearl, as we called it indiscriminately, was the dragon just firing up.

Miss Cisco went into the bedroom to dress. Her drawstring bag was on the table by the window. I had never looked into a woman’s purse without permission. The drawstring was loose, the top of the bag drooping over. I put my little finger inside and widened the opening. I was sure I’d find her works—a spoon or a hypodermic needle or a rubber tourniquet, at least a cigarette lighter. Wrong. Among her cosmetics and Kleenexes and wallet and car keys and loose change was an army .45 automatic, the same 1911 model my father had purchased when he thought we were in danger, the same-caliber weapon that killed Grady Harrelson’s father.

I stepped back from the bag and folded my arms across my chest, as though I could undo the discovery I had just made.

“What are you doing?” Miss Cisco said.