Heartwood (Billy Bob Holland 2)

“Yeah, this guy burned kids up in a school bus, looks like a penis stuffed inside a suit, what’s his name …” He snapped his fingers at the air. “Skyler Doolittle, he’s telling lies about Earl Deitrich. We don’t like that, man.”

He leaned over and picked up his tennis ball, then stepped closer to me, kneading the ball like a sponge in his palm. There was a tattoo of a death’s head on one side of his throat and on the other side a knife that was made to look like it had cut into the flesh and was dripping blood. The wind had dropped, and the heat rising from the pavement carried his odor into my face, a smell like reefer and unwashed hair and motor oil.

“Put it in a letter, bud, and I’ll get back to you on that,” I said.

“Bud? Who you think you’re fucking with, man?” he said.

“You got me.”

“My name’s Cholo Ramirez. You heard of the Purple Hearts?”

“Cholo the warlord, right? There was a gal around here last Saturday by the name of Ramirez. She was with Earl Deitrich’s son and a kid named Ronnie Cruise. You related?”

“Esmeralda? What you mean she was around here? She’s going to the Juco. She don’t have nothing to do with—hey, man, don’t try to sling and bing with me. I can break your sticks.”

I sat back down behind the wheel. But he grabbed the window jamb before I could pull the door shut.

“You telling me my sister was with Jeff Deitrich?” he said.

“Stand away from the car. I don’t want to hit you backing out,” I said.

“You pick the shit out of your teeth and answer me.”

I dropped the Avalon into reverse, cut the wheels in a circle, and backed out into the light by the gas pumps, leaving Cholo Ramirez staring at me with his fists clenched by his sides, the veins in his arms pumped with blood.

Early the following Monday I tapped on the frosted glass of Marvin Pomroy’s office on the first floor of the courthouse. He sat behind his desk in his rimless glasses and blue suspenders and immaculate white, starched shirt, his hair neatly combed, his jaws ruddy and closely shaved, his eyes as placid and secure as a Puritan theologian’s.

“Hugo Roberts redecorated Wilbur Pickett’s house late Friday afternoon. He also stuck a nine-millimeter down Wilbur’s fly,” I said.

“I see Hugo Roberts five times a day. You don’t have to tell me about his potential.”

“I think he’s more interested in a confession than in recovering stolen bonds.”

“You’re saying Hugo is on a pad for Earl Deitrich and Earl Deitrich is running a scam on the insurance company?”

“You know, that actually crossed my mind,” I said.

His eyes rested calmly on my face. “We both know why you don’t like Earl,” he said. “But Peggy Jean asked you out there for that lunch, didn’t she? How many women ask their old boyfriends to their husbands’ business lunches? That doesn’t strike you as peculiar?”

“Not with Peggy Jean. She’s a decent and fine person.”

Marvin got up from his chair and pulled open the window. He leaned on the sill and looked out at the oaks on the courthouse lawn and the mockingbirds flying in and out of the shade. “I’m coaching American Legion this year,” he said. “For some reason I can’t teach those boys not to swing on a change-up. Meanest pitch in baseball. The pitcher holds the ball in the back of his hand and messes up your head every time.”

For lunch I walked over to the saloon and pool room next to the barbershop and ate a sandwich and drank a cup of coffee at the bar. The saloon was dark and had wood floors and an old mirror over the bar and was cooled by electric fans mounted on the walls.

Skyler Doolittle walked in from the glare of the street and stood at the end of the bar, twisting his torso one way, then another, his fused neck turning with his shoulders, until he saw me in back.

“This fellow Deitrich is trying to have me sent to the sylum. I want to hire you. Ain’t nobody else around here gonna represent me. I want my watch back, too,” he said.

“Why would Earl want to send you to an asylum, Mr. Doolittle?” I asked.

“The fellow’s a cheat. I confronted him with it. In the Langtry Hotel di

ning room. In front of all them businessmen.”

“I’m primarily a criminal defense lawyer. I don’t know if I’m the right man for you, sir.”

His eyes looked about the saloon, wide, frenetic. The pool players were bent over the tables in cones of light.