The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga 2)

“You want some cake?”

“Whose birthday is it?”

“Mine. We have ice cream. You want some?”

“That’s nice of you. But I already ate.”

“Did somebody hurt you?”

I had to think about her meaning. “You mean this bandage? A bull did that.”

“Are you a cowboy?”

“Not really. Maybe a weekend cowboy. What’s your name?”

“Esmeralda.”

“Happy birthday, Esmeralda.”

“Are you sad about something?”

“No, it’s a fine day. A grand one for your birthday.”

“You talk funny.”

“It’s the way my father talks.”

“Your father must be funny.”

“You can say that again. I don’t have a present for you. But here’s a quarter. How’s that?” I stood up, the tops of the trees tilting; I wondered if I had been asleep.

“Thank you,” she said. She started to run away, then stopped and said, “Don’t get hurt no more. Bye-bye.”

I watched her run back among the other children. I wanted to join them, to give up a decade of life and return to my childhood during the darkest days of the war, when gold stars hung in people’s windows and we were united against those who would extinguish the light of civilization and transform the world into a slave camp. I walked to my heap like a drunk man and drove to a bar and poolroom in the middle of the Heights.

TO SAY IT was a rough place doesn’t get close to it. Back then, Houston was the murder capital of the world. It was only forty miles from a town called Cut and Shoot, supposedly named because of a fight among the townspeople over the design of their church building. Violence was an inextricable part of the culture; it hung in the air, perhaps passed down from the massacres at Goliad and the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto or the feuds during Reconstruction or the systematic extermination of the Indians. One of Houston’s most famous beer joints was called the Bloody Bucket.

The patrons at the place in the Heights were nine-ball hustlers, drifters, grifters, gamblers, and midnight ramblers. Driven less by passion than necessity, they had an encyclopedic knowledge of bail bondsmen, local flatfeet (whom they called roaches), shylocks, floating craps games, call girls (there were no brothels in Houston), hot-property fences, money washers, Murphy artists, jack-rollers, street dips, safecrackers, prizefight fixers, arsonists, and dope dealers. In its way, the bar and poolroom represented another country, one that didn’t quarrel with human nature and the perfidious tendencies that hide in the unconscious.

I went inside the phone booth in back and closed the folding door and dialed Vick Atlas’s number. There was no answer. I had a cup of coffee at the bar and waited fifteen minutes and called again. This time he picked up.

“Hey, Vick,” I said. “I’ll try to make this brief.”

The line was silent.

“Are you there?”

“I assume this is my favorite hemorrhoid calling.”

“I just came from the police station and wanted to update you, Vick. They were talking about your hit man, the one who used to murder people with your father for a hundred dollars a hit. His name slips my mind.”

“Like always, I got no idea who or what you’re talking about. You trying to be cute again? That’s what we’re doing here? You got a tap on this?”

“Your man had an accident at the church campground, Vick. He got knocked in a gully by the church bus while driving a stolen car. I remember now. His first name is Devon.”

“Where are you?”

“It’s Devon Horowitz,” I said. “The cops said he’s an imbecile, just like you and your father. They said y’all have the reverse King Midas touch. Everything you touch turns to shit.”