“The situation speaks for itself, doesn’t it?” Hopkins said.
“I gave her two dollars because she had no food,” I said to my father.
He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was looking at Hopkins in a way I had never seen him look at anyone.
“I say something against the grain?” Hopkins asked. There was a smirk at the corner of his mouth.
My father touched me on the arm. “Let’s go, son.”
Don’t let him get away with it, Daddy, I thought.
But he picked up his fedora from the table, and we walked silently side by side down the corridor. I looked over my shoulder. Hopkins was talking to several cops in uniform, his back to us. They were laughing as though listening to a joke. My eyes were shimmering, my heart a lump of ice.
Then my father said, “Stay here, Aaron.”
He walked back down the corridor. I followed him, disregarding his instruction. The attention of the cops in uniform shifted from Hopkins’s story-in-progress to my father. “Forget something?” Hopkins said. One uniformed cop laughed.
“I’ve known every kind of man,” my father said. “Desperate men in transient shelters, convicts in Angola Penitentiary, psychopaths who enjoyed mowing down German farm boys. But there was an explanation for all of these men. You’re of a different stripe, Detective Hopkins. You flaunt your power and gloat at your misuse of it. You see humor in the suffering of others. You have the tongue and the instincts of both the coward and the bully. One day these men will realize that you dishonor everything they stand for. When that day comes, they’ll turn on you. Don’t you dare come near us, and don’t you dare slander my son.”
We walked away, his arm across my shoulder. There was not a sound in the corridor except the man yelling for toilet paper. Then even he was quiet.
Chapter
29
I HAD THE NEXT day off at the filling station. The police department put a guard on our house. Valerie and I drove down to Freeport and waded into the waves and fished with cane poles and bobbers and shrimp for drum and catfish and speckled trout. The wind was up, the waves yellow and cascading with sand, gulls cawing and wheeling overhead. We caught one gaff-top and one stingray and turned them loose and ate po’boy sandwiches in an open-air beer joint on the beach that had slot machines and a jukebox and a shuffleboard inside. It was wonderful to be away from all the problems that awaited us in Houston.
I didn’t want to think about Vick Atlas and what I had done to him. Nor did I wish to think about possible retaliation. I had started to wonder about all the events that had happened as a result of my argument with Grady Harrelson at the Galveston drive-in. I had thought the issue was jealousy. To an extent, it was. But the larger pattern seemed linked to money or power and not the angst of teenage romance.
How about the shooting death of Clint Harrelson? The more I thought about it, the more I felt there were elements in the story that I hadn’t given adequate scrutiny. For example, the theft of Grady’s convertible, the one loaded with currency and gold. In a city the size of Houston, how had Saber found out where Grady and the wife of the wrecker driver were making out? What about Grady’s ties with Mexican girls and Mexican gang members? Was Grady a lot smarter than I thought? Were Saber and I getting played?
After we got back to Valerie’s, she went upstairs to shower. Her father was gone. I used the phone in her hallway and dialed Grady’s number. “I need a minute of your time,” I said.
“If you’re looking for a life preserver, you called the wrong guy,” he said.
“Why should I want a life preserver?”
“Because you pounded the shit out of a sadist and five-star nutcase? What’s in your head? You thought he was going to leave you alone after you kicked his ass?”
“Harsh words for a guy who was at your side right after your father was killed.”
“I’m looking at my watch. I’ll give you fifteen more seconds,” he said.
“Why aren’t you making a stink about the investigation into your father’s murder?”
“Because I know why he was killed.”
I wasn’t ready for that one. “You know who did it?”
“Not specifically. My father liked boys. Just like that closet stool-packer Krauser. Those kids in his indoctrination camps were given multipurpose roles, get it? He was a geek and deserved to die the way he did. Any other questions?”
“You killed Wanda Estevan.”
“Yeah? Who’s in the cookpot, pal? Get a life. Oh, I forgot. You don’t have one. Vick is about to strip your skin off. That’s not a figure of speech.”
“I think her death was an accident. I think you can get loose from all of this, Grady, if you’re willing to get honest.”
He hung up.