Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

30

Ronnie Cruise called me at my office the day after Rita Summers cut his handcuffs.

“I want you to know what can happen when you dime a guy, Mr. Holland,” he said. “The two county fucks that nailed me? One of them popped a black guy on a back road and told people he tried to escape.”

“I told Marvin Pomroy you might try to take down a couple of Jeff’s friends. I’m sorry he sicced those guys on you,” I replied.

“What’d you think was gonna happen?… Where’s Lucas and Essie?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“A friend picked up Cholo’s Mercury to give it to Essie. But I drove by their place and they ain’t there and neither is the Merc.”

“You’re in town?” I said.

“Don’t worry about where I am.” He paused, the surfaces of the receiver squeaking in his grip. “They’re at your house, ain’t they?”

“Don’t bring Cholo’s car here.”

“That’s what you’re not hearing. The guy

driving Cholo’s car is a friend, but he’s got yesterday’s ice cream for brains. You hearing me on this, Mr. Holland? You fucked it up.”

“Meet me at my house,” I said.

But he had already hung up the phone.

Why had I asked him to meet me at my house? To tell him what? I wasn’t sure myself.

That afternoon I began building the trellised, crossbeam entrance to the driveway that my father had wanted to build before he died at Matagorda Bay. The western sky was purple and red, the hills a deeper green from last night’s rains, and pools of gray water stood in the driveway gravel. I twisted the posthole digger into the lawn and piled the dirt on the grass, all the time trying to focus on a troublesome thought that hung on the edge of my mind, one that had to do with human predictability.

That’s why I had wanted to talk with Ronnie Cruise. He didn’t buy easily into illusion and certainly not the subterfuge of his enemies.

L.Q. Navarro stood in shadows, his ash-gray hat low on his forehead, a gold toothpick in his mouth.

“It’s that spoiled puke Jeff Deitrich that’s bothering you. His threats don’t add up. He don’t know no bikers. Not real ones,” L.Q. said.

“He’s got the stash they took off the Jamaicans. He’ll use it to hire pros. The Deitrichs cover their ass. They don’t leave vendettas to amateurs, L.Q.,” I replied.

“I think you got it ciphered, bud. The question is who’s the shitbag he’s hiring.”

“The mercenary, Fletcher Grinnel?”

“Grinnel works for the old man. Wire up a shotgun out at your boy’s place. See whose parts you pick up out of the yard.”

L.Q. was grinning when he said it and expected no response.

But neither did he hide what he really wanted from me. He removed his custom-made, double-action revolver from his holster and spun it in his hand, toward him, then in the opposite direction, the yellow ivory handles slapping into the heel of his palm.

“Your great-grandpa Sam could hang from the pommel at a full gallop and shoot from under the horse’s neck like an Indian,” L.Q. said. “You’re as good a shot as he was. Why waste talent?”

I dropped two shaved fifteen-foot posts into the holes I had dug, then shoveled a wheelbarrow-load of gravel around the bottoms for support, tamped down the gravel with a heavy iron bar, and added more. I was sweating and breathing hard, my face perspiring in the wind. When I turned around and looked into the shade of the myrtle hedge, L.Q. was gone.

The phone rang in my library late that night.

“You mind if we fish on the back of your property in the morning?” Wilbur said.

“Help yourself,” I said.