Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

“What’s shakin’, Slim?” she said.

“You want a taco?”

“Why not?” she said.

We walked across the square to the Mexican grocery and sat at a table in back under a wood-bladed fan.

“Wesley Rhodes told me Warren Costen’s father is involved in pornography in Houston. I’d like you to check it out,” I said.

“What for?”

“Skyler Doolittle had child porn pictures planted on him when he was arrested. I wonder if Hugo’s deputies got the pictures from Warren Costen or Jeff Deitrich.”

“Where am I supposed to start?”

“Search me. The Costens are supposed to be an upstanding, pioneer family.”

“Yeah, they always let everybody know their shit didn’t flush,” she said, and bit into her taco. She saw me watching her. She looked down at her clothes to see if something had fallen on them. “What?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“Why are you staring at me?”

“I’m not. You look great, Temple.”

Her eyes fixed on mine, blinking uncertainly.

She called me long-distance two days later.

“I got a tip from a reporter at the Houston Chronicle who covers real estate and the zoning board. Costen and several partners run a couple of companies that manage slum rentals in the Third Ward. But during the oil recession in the eighties a lot of p

roperty on the west side was sold off to HUD. Costen and his friends bought low and expanded their slum rentals and put in video porn stores in what used to be middle-class and upscale neighborhoods.”

“What’d you find out about Costen and child pornography?”

“Nothing. But if video porn is there, so is the clientele for the rest of it. You want me to keep looking?”

“No, come on back up to God’s country,” I said.

“Just out of curiosity, I went out to Rice University and talked to a history professor about Costen’s ancestors. This professor belongs to a historical society that keeps track of all the documents from the Texas Revolution and the descendants of everybody who fought in it. Costen’s family was the real thing, friends of Sam Houston and Jim Bowie and Stephen F. Austin.”

I felt myself yawning. “You did a good job. Come on back home,” I said.

“Hear me out. I asked the professor to check out Skyler Doolittle. Doolittle was telling the truth. His ancestor died in the Alamo with Travis and Crockett and the others. His survivors were given a section of land after the war, which was the promise Sam Houston made to everyone who served with him to the end.”

“I’m not with you, Temple.”

“You remember describing to me the lunch out at the Deitrichs’ place, when Earl Deitrich humiliated Wilbur Pickett at the table by taking that antique watch out of his hand, like Wilbur didn’t have the right to be looking at it?”

“Yes.”

“You said Wilbur told a joke about his ancestor fighting in the Battle of San Jacinto, except the ancestor was a horse thief and sold horses to both sides.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said.”

“It wasn’t just a joke.” I could hear her turning pages on a notepad. “Wilbur’s ancestor was named Jefferson Pickett. I don’t know if he was a horse thief or not, but he survived the Goliad Massacre and was with Houston when Santa Anna was captured on the San Jacinto.”

“He received a section of land, just like all the other Texas soldiers?”