63.

I woke up with Larry Drapiewski waving a cup of coffee under my nose.

It took a year or two for me to remember where I was.

I was in my underwear, on a cot on a screened-in porch. The breeze from the ceiling fan above me was chilly on my bare skin, but the August sunlight was pouring in hot and low from the west, and the noisy refrigerator I'd been dreaming about was actually cicadas, humming by the thousands in the huisache trees outside. There was a grass fire burning somewhere. A brown and white heifer lay in the mottled shadow of a cactus patch twenty feet away, watching me. I was at the ranch in Sabinal. It must've been about three in the afternoon.

I felt dizzy as hell when I tried to move. With some difficulty, I lifted my head and saw my brother Garrett in his wheelchair at the foot of the cot. Or rather I saw Garrett and Jerry Garcia and Jimi Hendrix all blurred together. Until my vision cleared the two airbrushed faces on Garrett's T-shirt floated around with Garrett's own like some tie-dyed Holy Trinity.

"Come on, little bro," Garrett said impatiently, "we're waiting to flush the toilet."

I squinted and swallowed a taste like dead frogs out of my mouth. "What?"

"We haven't been flushing all day, man, so you'd have enough water pressure from the tank to take a nice hot shower when you woke up."

Larry handed me the coffee. The bags under his eyes and his uncombed hair told me Larry hadn't gotten much sleep last night, though he'd changed his deputy's uniform for jeans and a denim shirt. "You've been out for thirteen hours, son. We were starting to get worried."

It was another hour before I could stand up steady enough to take that shower. There was an overnight duffel in the bathroom that I'd apparently packed for myself the night before, though I remembered nothing about going by Queen Anne Street. Inside I found some reasonably clean blue jeans, my City Lights T-shirt, my toothbrush, and my father's old notebook. Some letters spilled out when I picked the duffel up. I put them carefully back inside.

Once I was dressed, Garrett and Larry gave me the courtesy of some time to myself. I rummaged around the kitchen for some potential breakfast. The candidates were two bottles of whiskey, one egg that had crystallized into a geode, a tangerine of unknown age, a jar of Sanka, and a variety pack of lunch-bag-sized snack chips. I wondered if whiskey poured over Fritos would make an acceptable breakfast cereal. I decided to opt for the tangerine instead.

While I ate the tangerine and drank instant coffee, Larry and Garrett sat in the living room with Harold Diliberto, our trusty overseer, and discussed the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana. Garrett was predictably in favor, Larry was predictably against. Harold seemed to think the whole issue was those damn Californians' fault and both Garrett and Larry seemed comfortable with that.

I must've been washing my hands in the stainless-steel sink for a good three minutes before I realized what I was doing. I kept separating my fingers in the water, watching it flow through, thinking about the sticky consistency of Dan Sheff's blood.

Finally Larry called from the living room: "You okay, Tres?"

I told him I was. Then I shut off the faucet and looked for dish towels. There were none.

When I joined Larry on the leather couch, he was pouring whiskey into four glass tumblers that all said JACK. Garrett was smoking a joint and looking out the screen door at the fading afternoon. I asked Harold if he'd get some wood for the fireplace.

Larry and Garrett looked at me strangely, but they didn't say anything. Harold went out to the wood pile.

By the time Harold had stacked the wood and started the fire with one of our Bics from the bucket-o-lighters, I was on my second glass of Jim Beam and the shivery feeling in my gut had just about faded. The fire burned it away completely. The mesquite wood, left over from last winter, was so dry after three months of summer that it ignited instantly and burned like a forge. The room got uncomfortably warm, until my fingertips felt almost alive again. I didn't even mind the smoke rolling out the front of the mantle from the poorly working flue. Harold excused himself to go work on the water pump outside. Sweat started beading on Larry's forehead, but he didn't complain. Garrett wheeled himself a little further away and sat watching the flames.

After finishing my second drink, I got up, went to the bathroom for my duffel bag, and came back out with my father's notebook. I removed the letters and set them aside. Then I squatted down and propped Dad's notebook against one of the burning logs.

Nobody protested. The smoke rolled through the pages of the binder, sucked inside by the cooler air. One canvas corner caught fire. Then the outside cover fell open, letting one page burn at a time, each blackening at the edges and curling inward to reveal the next. Dad's handwriting looked lively in the red light. The pictures he'd drawn of Korean planes and tanks for my bedtime stories seemed to jump right off the page. After a while the binder was reduced to a mass of black cotton candy at the edge of the fire.

When I turned, Garrett saw my eyes watering.

"Smoky?"

I nodded.

Garrett squinted, then blew pot smoke toward the ceiling. He kept looking up at the cedar rafters. "Yeah. Me too."

Larry poured us all some more whiskey. "I suppose that notebook might've been potential evidence."

"I doubt it," I said. "But maybe."

Larry grunted. "I suppose after what I helped you do last night, I shouldn't complain."

I had to think for a moment. Then fuzzy snapshots started coming into my head-Drapiewski getting me away from the investigation early, the two of us taking a long drive into Olmos Park, me having a conversation with someone on Crescent Drive, making a deal. I reached for my wallet, opened it, and found the handwritten piece of paper still inside. I put it back.

Larry propped his boots up on the coffee table. He stared at the fire, then started laughing easily, as if he were remembering all the clean jokes he'd heard that week.

"Last time I was out here with your daddy, boys, Good Lord it must've been '82 ..." He proceeded to tell us about the big tornado that had ripped through Sabinal that year and how Dad had invited Larry out to help inspect the damage. The ranch house had been spared, but my father and Larry had spent the afternoon trying to extract a dead cow from the top of a mesquite tree with a chain saw. Larry thought it was so funny I couldn't help but laugh along, although last time I'd heard the story it'd been a horse in the tree, and a hurricane instead of a tornado that had done the damage.

Finally Larry raised his glass. "To Jack Navarre. He was a lovable bastard."

"He was a bastard," Garrett amended. But he raised his glass too.

"To Dad."

I drank my drink, then took the stack of letters off the mantel and held up the one on top-a pink envelope that had faded to brown. I set it in the fire and watched the old love letter flutter restlessly while it burned. It was gone in no time.

Larry nodded as if he were agreeing with something I'd said. "I didn't see that. That was most definitely an evidential document and I didn't see you burning it."

"We both know this isn't going to get resolved in the courts," I said. "It couldn't be. Rivas will be sacrificed for the new murders. The people who count will hire the expensive lawyers. Their defense will have a field day with the lack of clean evidence."

"Huh. Whose fault is that, son?" But he couldn't seem to muster up much annoyance. The deal we'd made last night still didn't sit right with him, but I suspected he knew it was the closest we'd get to justice.

In the firelight Larry's red freckles were invisible, perfectly camouflaged so his face looked clearer and whiter and more open than I'd ever seen. He looked nineteen years old. I suppose some people are naturally born to be thirty; it's the ideal age for their temperament. Other people are born to be twelve, or sixty. For Larry, nineteen seemed just about right.

"Your dad was a good man," he said. Then he added grudgingly: "You did right by him, Tres."

"Good man, huh?" Garrett wondered. He looked at me apprehensively. "I don't suppose you found out."

I knew what he meant. Would Dad have covered up the Travis Center deal? If Cookie Sheff had agreed to run away with him like he asked, would he really have turned a blind eye to that much graft?

"No," I said. "Meaning no, I didn't find out. There's no way I could. You'll just have to credit Dad with as much virtue as you can, then predict how he would've acted."

Garrett scratched his beard. "That's what I was afraid of."

I stood in front of the fireplace for a while, looking at the remaining letters in my hand. There were eleven envelopes of blue marbleized paper, the first postmarked in May and the most recent two weeks ago. All of them were addressed to my old Potrero Hill apartment. All were written in that familiar, rounded, backward-slanting cursive I'd loved since junior high.

I kept looking at the letters and feeling the whiskey knit itself into my joints. I was thinking about my dad stashing things in a mantelpiece hole because he couldn't quite make himself get rid of them. I was thinking about him chasing kiddie train bandits with a shotgun and chainsawing cows out of trees and telling stupid jokes with Carl Kelley. It took me a while to realize that the memories, for the first time, weren't all overlaid with the image of him sprawled on the sidewalk in front of his house, that old gray Pontiac pulling silently away. I liked the way that felt.

I reached down and stuck Lillian's letters carefully between two burning logs, so they wouldn't fall out. When Harold Diliberto came back inside, I told him he could cement up that hole in the fireplace whenever he got the chance.

64.

For once, Garrett seemed in no mood to speed. We started following Larry's red Jeep back toward town, but quickly lost sight of the deputy's taillights when he turned onto Highway 90. The Carmen Miranda drove on leisurely while a brilliant Texas sunset flared up over the edge of the plains.

When Garrett dropped me back at Queen Anne Street, I found a courtesy copy of today's Express-News on the doorstep. I took it inside and tried to read the front page while Robert Johnson, after one unenthusiastic "roww" of greeting, began practicing his "slide-into-home-plate" routine with the other sections, seeing how many square feet of the living-room carpet he could effectively cover with paper.

"Don't you have anything better to do?" I asked.

He looked up, wide-eyed, like he was shocked by the very idea.

The Express-News said that Dan Sheff, Jr., heir to Sheff Construction, had apparently uncovered a scheme by his own family and their associates to defraud the city of millions in bond monies for the proposed fine arts complex. Dan Jr. had, in the process of heroically confronting the alleged conspirators, been shot once. A policeman was involved in the incident, name not yet released, and there was some indication that the construction scam might extend back as far as ten years. The mayor was already being hounded for an extensive investigation to ferret out any wrongdoing on the part of local officials. I was mentioned briefly as being at the scene of the shooting. The article said Dan was presently in critical but stable condition at the Brooke Army Medical Center, where he was receiving flowers and praise from a number of well-wishers. The location of Lillian Cambridge, who had been missing for several days and whose parents were implicated in the scheme to defraud the city, was still unknown.

I threw section A to Robert Johnson. He used it for a triple play.

When I pulled down the ironing board and checked my answering machine I found about half an hour of messages. Bob Langston, Number 90's former tenant, claimed he now had enough pinhead friends together to effectively kick my ass. Carlon McAffrey warned me I'd better get him that exclusive interview with Dan Sheff soon in case Dan decided to die. Carolaine Smith, the TV news lady I'd knocked into the river, said KSAT was willing to forgive the whole incident in exchange for an interview with Dan Sheff, if I could arrange it. Detective Schaeffer from the SAPD had left several messages-wondering where the hell I'd disappeared to last night, letting me know that the Cambridges had signed a testimony about some disks that had turned up missing at the scene. Schaeffer wanted to know if I had any ideas about the disks or if he just needed to arrest me. One message from my mother, pleading for me to come over to dinner and please bring Jess's truck back with me. One from Ralph that simply said: "She's fine. Que padre, vato."

The only person I called was Maia Lee.

It was six o'clock San Francisco time. Maia was just about to go to dinner. At least that's what the man who answered her home phone said.

"You want me to get her?" he said.

"Just tell her Tex called. She asked me to let her know when it was over."

The guy made a small grunt, like he was leaning over to tie his shoe, or maybe finish straightening his tie.

"What's over?" he asked.

I hung up.

The sunset was almost gone when I drove into Monte Vista, to an address I knew only by reputation.

It was a gray adobe house, three stories high, with two Cadillacs in the drive and a huge live oak in the front yard sporting a homemade plywood treehouse. A little Hispanic boy was grinning down at me from the top, pretending to hide. He had his father's smile. I pretended to shoot him as I walked by underneath. He giggled hysterically. When I got to the door I could smell homemade tamales cooking inside.

When Fernando Asante came to the door, dressed in his jeans and a Cowboys jersey, I said: "Is there a place we can talk?"

His other child, a little girl, came up and hugged his thigh. Asante glanced at me, then motioned me inside.

"What is it, Jack?" he said after we were seated in his office.

Asante was a football fan-even the light on his desk was a Cowboys helmet, the kind of thing a kid might keep in his room. The room was cozy, a little messy. It wasn't what I'd expected.

Asante looked almost sleepy now, no trace of the politician's smile.

"I don't like loose ends," I told him.

He laughed, shook his head. "After the last two weeks, after the last ten years, you say this, son."

I took out a piece of paper I'd received last night when I'd conducted some business in Olmos Park. I held it up.

Asante looked unimpressed. "What is it now? More old notes from your father's grave?"

He tossed me the front page of the morning paper.

"Already seen it," I said.

Asante smiled. Asante could afford to smile-there was as yet no mention of him.

"Here's what I think, Councilman. I think you're going to weather the storm."

Asante's eyes were like black marbles. He might've been blind for all I could read in them.

"I think you can pull in enough favors and manipulate the investigation enough to get yourself off the hook. I helped out by tampering with most of the evidence myself-your lawyers will have a great time with that. Unless those CDs show up, and you know they haven't yet, there isn't enough legally obtained direct evidence to implicate you in anything. The Sheffs and the Cambridges may or may not go down for defrauding the city, they'll try to take you with them, but I'm betting you'll survive. Unless those CDs show up."

"Let it rest," Asante told me. "You're going nowhere with this, son. If you had any such evidence, you'd've brought it to your own friends in the police department by now. Then we'd just have to let justice prevail in the courts, wouldn't we, Jack?"

I shrugged. "Maybe."

Asante looked at the piece of paper I was tapping on the table. His smugness wavered, just for a moment.

"And what have you got there, son?"

There was a knock on the door. Asante's son scampered into the room, around the desk, and into his daddy's lap. Suddenly shy, the boy hid his head in his hands. Then he whispered something in his daddy's ear, got a kiss, and ran off.

Asante's face softened as he watched the boy leave. Then he looked at me again, his eyes hard.

"My dinner is ready," he said.

I nodded. "Then I'll be brief. I couldn't sit around waiting for you to come claim the disks from me, Mr. Asante. Eventually you would try. Even if I destroyed them-you'd never be sure. For your own peace of mind, you'd come looking. I could've turned them over to the police, but I somehow don't trust the police or the courts with this one. They never did much good with my father's murder the first time around, did they? That's why I decided to make a deal."

I unfolded the piece of paper. I slid it across the desktop to him.

Asante looked at the signature, frowned, then tossed it back on the desk. He didn't get it.

"And this is?" he asked.

"A receipt for my disks. Guy White always writes receipts. It's one of the few ways he's decent."

Asante stared at me for a minute, still not comprehending.

"White's been pretty mad at you for ten years," I explained. "Sending all that heat his way about my father's murder, then trying to do it again with Garza and Moraga. So we made a deal. Mr. White and I have just bought controlling interest in Fernando Asante."

As it started to sink in, Asante's face went pale. That was all I wanted to see. I stood up to leave.

"I don't know what Guy White's demands will be to keep these disks from going into circulation, Councilman, but here's mine, for now anyway. Tomorrow morning you call a press conference and renounce any plans to run for mayor. You're going to tell them you're happy right where you are-a frustrated little man in a little job. I'm not sure what else you're going to do yet, but you'll hear from me. You can plan on that for the rest of your life."