Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

“Ah, the testosterone boys in uniform at work and play. Hugo, you sorry sack of shit, please give me an excuse to blow your other lung out,” she said.

At the same time that I, an officer of the court, was brawling with rednecks, a small man with thick glasses named Max Greenbaum was leaving a synagogue in the old Montrose district of South Houston. The rabbi, who had known Greenbaum for years, waved goodbye from the doorway. Greenbaum stopped at a post office and picked up a priority envelope, then drove into Herman Park and stopped by a tree-shaded lake and was writing on a legal pad when three cars filled with Mexican gangbangers pulled into the parking area, sealing off Max Greenbaum’s Jeep.

It was dusk now, and the only other people at the lake were an elderly black couple and their grandchildren picnicking on the grass. The gangbangers’ stereos roared with such ear-pounding volume that the water in the lake trembled. A kid who wore a bodybuilder’s shirt deliberately scissored into strips threw a beer can in the direction of the picnickers.

“Hey, man, the park’s closing,” he said.

Then they pulled Max Greenbaum from his Jeep, lifted the cellular phone from his hand, and crushed it on the pavement.

“Y’all leave that man alone. He ain’t done you nothing,” the black woman yelled.

“Time to haul yo’ black ham hocks out of here, mama,” the kid in the scissored shirt said.

The elderly black couple loaded their grandchildren into their car and backed out into the road, their faces staring in bewilderment at the scene taking place before them.

One of the gangbangers tore Max Greenbaum’s priority mail envelope and the sheet of letterhead paper it contained into shreds and threw them in his face. Then they formed a circle around him and began pushing him back and forth as they would a medicine ball.

But the terror that Max Greenbaum probably felt turned to anger and he began to fight, flailing blindly at the gangbangers with his fists, his glasses broken on the pavement. At first they laughed at him, then his finger scraped across someone’s eyeball. A gangbanger reeled backwards, the heel of his hand pressed into his eye socket as though it had been gouged with a stick.

The circle closed on Greenbaum like crabs feeding on a pi

ece of meat.

5

The Houston homicide detective who called the next afternoon was a woman named Janet Valenzuela.

“The early word from the coroner is it looks like heart failure,” she said.

“How’d you get my name?” I asked.

“The gangbangers picked up most of the pieces of the priority envelope. But a couple were under the victim’s Jeep. We could make out your zip code and the last five letters of your name. Do you know why he would be writing you?”

“I think he had knowledge that would exonerate a client of mine,” I said.

“Does this have to do with stolen bonds?”

“How’d you know?” I said.

“Greenbaum told his rabbi an uneducated working-man was being set up in an insurance claim. It’s a muddy story. It has something to do with a guy being provoked at a luncheon, then stealing a watch, and a rich guy claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonds were stolen, too. Are the gangbangers tied into this somehow?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You were a city cop here?”

“That’s right.”

“Keep in touch.”

An hour later Cholo Ramirez pulled his customized Mercury to the curb in front of my office, the stereo thundering. His sister, Esmeralda, got out and walked into the portico on the first floor.

A moment later she was standing in my office, dressed in the same jeans and maroon shirt, now thoroughly rumpled, she had been arrested in the day before.

“You’re sprung?” I said, and smiled.

“They’re not filing on me.”

“How about the rock under the seat?”