The Devil Went Down to Austin

Garrett popped his wheelchair open, shoved the Velcro cushion in, then eased himself onto it. He'd taken off his tie. The untucked flaps of his dress shirt hung from the edge of the seat like elf shoes.



Ruby produced two Shiner longnecks from an ice chest and passed them to us. The light from the empty kitchen silhouetted her hair like redhot filaments.



"Hell of a step up from a houseboat." She leaned against the railing, rested her fingertips lightly on Garrett's shoulder. "Next winter I'll be able to shoot deer from here.



I swear to God, they walk right up my driveway."



"Sportsmanlike," Garrett mumbled.



She drank from her Sprite can. "It's either shoot them or wait for them to run in front of my Miata, dear heart. The gun is more humane."



We watched a meteor streak across the western sky, fade and die.



Crickets and owls were sounding off. The air smelled of pinon smoke from the dried cedar deadfall collected and burned daily in the Hill Country.



Down below, I watched the small form of Clyde Simms emerge from the drystack warehouse, stand in a pool of light by the fork lift. He was smoking a cigarette, maybe looking up at the moon. Maybe watching us.



"We can't sell Techsan," Garrett told Ruby. "You know that."



She smiled frailly. "I know we don't have much choice."



"We can hold out. We prove the bastard sabotaged us."



Ruby looked much sadder now than she had at her exhusband's funeral.



She ran a finger along Garrett's beard. Garrett stayed stone still, as if her touch was an ice pick.



"There was a time, Tres," Ruby said, "when your brother and I actually got along.



Before Jimmy— Well, Jimmy was a sweet man. He had a talent for GUI, graphic interfaces. But Garrett is the genius. If he'd applied himself to the job ten, fifteen years ago, he could've written industry standards. I've never seen anybody better."



Garrett didn't look happy with the compliment. He took Ruby's finger, pushed it gently away.



"What's your specialty, Ruby?" I asked. "Public relations?"



"I'm the QA person."



I looked at Garrett.



"Quality assurance," he translated. "She breaks things. We write a program, Ruby figures out how to screw it up. That way we find the glitches and fix them before the product goes to market. And yeah, she's pretty fucking awesome at breaking things."



Ruby nodded her thanks.



"We were a good team," Garrett said. "We could prove Pena sabotaged us, pull things out of the hole. We could still do it."



Ruby moved away from the railing. "With you under investigation for murder? It's only a matter of time before they charge you."



A meteor streaked past the tail of Canis Major. Garrett kept his eyes on the sky long after the trail was gone. "You think I killed Jimmy. Don't you?"



"Of course not," Ruby said.



He looked at me. "You both think I killed him."



I wanted to speak up for him, say something optimistic, but the truth was, I didn't understand why Lopez hadn't already filed charges. Garrett looked guilty as hell. Most likely, with Maia's appearance, her reputation as a defence attorney, Lopez had simply decided to take his time building an airtight case.



"I'm sorry, Garrett," Ruby said. "With Jimmy's murder. With the betatesters suing us.



With investors treating us like the Black Plague. I don't see it, Garrett. I don't see how we can stay in business."



"Pena screwed us," he said, "and you still want to deal with him."



"If we'd taken his first offer, dear heart—"



"He killed Jimmy. Do you care about that?"



Her expression turned brittle. "I can't believe Matthew would go that far."



Again, the first name. The way she spoke it, I couldn't help thinking of Mrs. Hayes, sitting obliviously on her couch, extolling young Matthew's virtues.



"He stands for everything Jimmy and I hate," Garrett told Ruby. "He's a vulture capitalist. He feeds off other people's talent."



Ruby pursed her lips. "Unfortunately, dear heart, he's also our only hope—he's doing us a favour. Either sell Techsan or go under."



Down at the lake, a small motorboat came toward the marina, its forward light cutting an arc across the water. The prow was shiny



white, pinstriped blue. From here it looked like a bathtub toy. The night air carried up the sounds of its outboard motor, laughter, a radio playing the Dixie Chicks.



Clyde Simms flicked his cigarette into the dark, went to meet the newcomers.



From a nearby deck chair, Ruby picked up a sheaf of paperwork, tossed it into Garrett's lap.



"I won't sign it," he said.



The motorboat veered to port. The engine cut out and the boat glided silently toward home. Passengers kept laughing. Music kept playing.



"You have to sign it," I told him. "You have no choice."



Garrett glared at me. "Your idea of help, little bro?"



"I don't like it. But she's right. Pena has backed you into a corner. You don't have time to find the problem in the software. Especially if you insist that the program isn't at fault, if you don't let anyone help you look."



"The code is solid. I can do one thing well—I can program. I will not let Pena steal that from me."



Clyde Simms was at the dock now, one foot on the prow of the boat, tying up the line.



I wondered what the boaters thought of him as they strolled off deck for a last drink of the evening—if they even paid attention to the big Viking with the bloodied nose.



"You need to cut your losses," I told my brother. "You're in a bad place with the police.



You put yourself into debt. You have to take responsibility."



"Responsibility. My little brother's lecturing me on responsibility. Despite your awesome credentials in that department, man, I am not selling."



Ruby sat down on the edge of her hot tub, laced her arms around her knees. "Here's the thing, dear heart. You don't really have a choice."



Garrett pivoted his chair toward her. "And why would that be?"



"Because, as per our incorporation agreement, I'm buying out Jimmy's share in the company. Unless, of course, you are in a position to make a counteroffer. In the event one of us died, that's how it was supposed to work, remember?"



Garrett was silent long enough to replay her words several times. "You're buying control."



"I'm sorry, Garrett. I've already called my lawyer."



"You coldblooded—with Jimmy not even in the ground two hours?"



"By tomorrow, I expect to control two thirds of Techsan. You can sign the sellout agreement or not, dear, but I'm afraid you're outvoted. We are selling Techsan to Matthew Pena's client, AccuShield."



Garrett made a fist around his beer bottle, then drained it.



He chunked the empty Shiner off the deck. It spun in the light, a brown pinwheel, landing somewhere below with a metallic CLANKCLANK.



"That better not have been my convertible," Ruby told him.



"I should be so lucky."



Garrett produced a pen from his wheelchair pouch, clicked it, signed the papers.



I looked down at my untouched beer. Condensation had soaked a cold ring through my jeans.



When Garrett finished the signatures, he tossed the papers at Ruby's feet.



"Another divorce, Ruby. That's what this is. Pay me off. Then leave me the fuck alone."



The night air between them was radioactive—glowing with grief and rage and recrimination so intimate I felt like a voyeur. I tried to convince myself two people could make each other so miserable merely through a business deal.



Ruby turned toward me, managed a crooked smile. "Well, Tres. Your ranch is saved."



Garrett's face was murderously calm. "You said the plumbing's working?"



"Yes, dear heart. It is."



"Little bro, I'll be inside. You want to leave, come get me. Something about being in Ruby's place too long—I start feeling sick."



He wheeled himself toward the sliding glass door, spun inside.



The night got intensely quiet.



Ruby rubbed her face. She still had that naturally quizzical look, but the impishness had been replaced with sour dissatisfaction.



"Your brother is impossible," she said.



I imagined her looking like this as an older woman—in her sixties, handsome and stern, the red hair turned to steel, cut short, that



eyebrow still raised in disapproval, her aged eyes like a falcon's, critically watching other people's grandchildren, thanking her stars that she didn't have any.



She fished something out of her pocket—a medication bottle. She popped out three pink pills and swallowed them dry.



I watched the pill bottle disappear back into Ruby's pocket.



She crossed her legs at the ankles, looked up at the stars. "Tonight at Scholz Garten, you almost killed Clyde."



"I wouldn't have killed him."



"The way you say that—like you could have killed him if you wanted to. Tres, why did you get involved?"



"I don't like uneven fights. Too many Underdog cartoons as a kid."



She laughed.



"What were you popping?"



She looked confused, then remembered the bottle. "Popping. God, that sounds so dirty. Just my attitude medicine, Tres. I'm a real nasty redheaded bitch without it, I'm afraid. I know that must be hard for you to imagine."



"Jimmy's autopsy report," I said. "He'd been taking tricyclic antidepressants."



She pushed her legs straight on the deck, pointed her toes toward me. "Jimmy and I were quite a compatible match. Both fuckedup rich kids. You want to know why I couldn't live with him? We were too much alike."



"You got along with Matthew Pena."



She stared at the sellout papers, still untouched at her feet. "Give Pena credit, Tres.



He understands people. He understood how we'd overextended ourselves—how desperate Garrett must have been to mortgage that family ranch, for instance. He can sense immediately what's important to someone. He's the first person I ever met who really understood why I dive."



"And why is that?"



She came back to the railing, looked toward the water. "You have your ranch. Jimmy had that lakeside property—that damn shrine to his mother. I have this."



"The marina."



"Not just the marina, Tres. My family, the McBrides—we used to be big landowners out here on the Colorado River. This was in my grandfather's time, the 1930s, before that.



When the state built Mansfield Dam, they bought out the farms, the orchards—every damn thing. Eminent domain. What you see here, this little point of land, is the one percent that wasn't flooded. That's my inheritance out there—under the lake. That's what I showed Pena, the day he wanted to take me diving. I said, 'Come see the property line.' Our orchards are still down there. Trees my greatgrandfather planted.



Pieces of the original barbed wire fence. Eventually, I intend to map the whole estate."



She stared out at the water as if peeling back the flood, trying to see the land that had been there seventy years ago.



"And Pena understood that," I said.



"He understood why I needed money to build this house, why I'd never had the courage to build before. It's hard to put down roots on land when you've spent your life hearing about a flood."