Cimarron Rose (Billy Bob Holland 1)

'You got into Bunny Vogel's face the other night. You weren't in county then.'

'I just got out. You don't want the information, I'll boogie. Where'd those old guns come from?'

'Out at Shorty's you called Bunny a pimp. Why would you do that?'

'I don't remember saying that.'

'Other people do.'

He shook his head profoundly. 'It don't come to mind. Maybe I was just hot. Bunny and me had some trouble over Roseanne once.'

'He took her away from you?'

Virgil shrugged. 'Yeah, that about says it. I still liked her, though. She was a good girl. Too good for all them rich kids.'

I tried to read his face, his voice, the apparent genuine sentiment in his last statement.

'How old are you, Virgil?'

'Twenty-one.'

'I think you got a lot of mileage.'

'You gonna tell Mr Ringo I hepped out?'

I pushed a yellow legal pad and a pencil across the desk to him.

'Write this stuff down for me, will you?' I said.

After he was gone, I walked to the window and watched him start his Harley. and roar off the square, his exhaust echoing between the buildings. When I turned around, L.Q. Navarro was sitting in the deerhide chair, throwing cards from his Ranger deck into the crown of his hat.

'You believe him?' he asked.

'He can bust Marvin's case.'

'That boy's jailwise, bud.'

'Right. So why would he trade off a chickenshit possession charge against perjury in a homicide trial?'

'Picking up the soap in a county bag ain't no more fun than it is in Huntsville.'

'L.Q., you could have out-debated Daniel Webster.'

He cut his head and grinned, as he always did when he had decided to desist, and with two fingers flipped the joker into the hat.

Through my library window the sun was red and molten over the hills, th

e willows on the edge of the tank puffing in the wind. Mary Beth and Pete had been making dinner sandwiches in the kitchen. I didn't hear her behind me.

She saw L.Q.' s revolver, the belt wrapped around the holster, on top of my desk, next to Great-grandpa Sam's open journal. I had removed the old cartridges from the leather loops and inserted fresh ones from a box of Remingtons. Then I had taken apart the revolver and cleaned and oiled the springs and mechanisms in it and run a bore brush through the barrel until a silver luster had returned to the rifling.

'I didn't think you kept any guns in your house,' she said.

'It belonged to L.Q. Navarro,' I said.

'I see.'

'I had it in a safe deposit box. I was afraid it might rust.' I put it and the box of Remingtons and the bore brush and the can of oil inside the desk drawer and closed the drawer.