The Devil Went Down to Austin

"Take it or leave it. What I'm saying, if that case bothers her— if she is down here trying to make some kind of moral amends—her motives are suspect. Her judgment might not be too clear. I'm not sure you should encourage her to represent your brother."



I looked down at my cold eggs, then the phone bill.



"Lopez, why did Jimmy Doebler call you in April?"



"What?"



"April 16. A short call, about five in the afternoon."



Lopez was silent, as if thinking back. "He wanted information— the files on the death of his mother."



"That didn't strike you as strange?"



"Jimmy said he'd been gathering information about his mom, wanted to understand her life. What makes a guy do that? I don't know. Jimmy's past with his mom ain't what you should be worried about, Navarre. It's Jimmy's past with your brother."



"Meaning?"



"The accident. Your brother blamed Jimmy for what happened to him."



I didn't respond.



"Come on, Tres. I've been doing my homework. Jimmy taught your brother how to jump trains. Then Jimmy didn't show up one night, left Garrett on his own, went up to see his mom. Your brother got maimed, didn't speak to Jimmy afterward for what—



years, right?"



"That was a long time ago, Lopez."



"Soured him pretty bad on the Doeblers. Maybe Garrett didn't take out his hostilities at the time, but there's no telling how long somebody's fuse is, or what'll finally set it off.



Ruby McBride, for instance. I suppose you know Garrett and she met at UT? they took some upperdivision math courses together. I suppose you know they were an item before Garrett had his accident."



"Yeah," I lied. "So what?"



"If that was an old wound," Lopez continued, "if Garrett got into business with Ruby and Jimmy after all those years, thinking he was okay, and then Jimmy started to get romantic with Ruby—a lady Garrett used to love . . . You see how it could go?"



"I see where you could put it, Lopez."



"Just tell Garrett I'd welcome a phone call, okay? Be good if he came to me voluntarily.



Maybe we could work something out."



Before I could respond, Lopez had hung up.



I checked my watch, found that my hands were trembling.



I grabbed my tai chi sword and went down the trail to the lake.



The morning was as cool as an oven door, just before the knob is turned to preheat.



I used Jimmy's concrete slab as my workout surface, started with basic stances, ten minutes each. It was therapeutic, getting the sting in my muscles, until I turned north and found myself staring at the unfinished kiln.



The remnants of the barbecue fire were still in the doorway. The little red kiln goddess grinned at me. She didn't seem to mind her left arm being shot off.



After ten years doing tai chi, I still rarely achieve a truly meditative state. This morning was no exception. All the way through the



Yang long form, I tried to push thoughts out of my head, but they kept crowding back again.



I thought about Maia Lee, the way she'd looked on Windy Point with the sun in her hair.



I thought about Matthew Pena and Victor Lopez, trying to decide who was more dangerous.



Mostly I thought about Garrett and Ruby on the deck in the meteor shower—the look of mutual recrimination they'd given each other. If Lopez was right, Garrett and Ruby had known each other as long as Garrett and Jimmy had—since college, at least. And yet, Garrett had never mentioned Ruby's name to me. There were only two explanations I could think of—that the relationship was not important enough to mention, or that the relationship was too important to mention. I wasn't betting on the first.



As I went into my sword set, the sun was coming up full force, turning the lake to metal.



Heat stirred the air, moving through the branches of the cedars with a sound like a distant nest of rattlers.



When I finished, I'd thoroughly soaked the Coral Reefer Tshirt with sweat. The exertion had brought Jimmy Doebler's smell out of the fabric—his copal incense and deodorant, smells I associated with trips to the coast as a child. I promised myself I'd work out in my own damn shirt tomorrow morning.



I sheathed the sword and was about to head back up to the dome, but I found myself staring at the kiln.



I walked over.



The mortar had dried in the bucket, Garrett's trowel embedded in it. The stack of bricks sat nearby, the copper binding snapped and sproinging to four sides as if the bricks had landed on and squashed a metal spider.



Nearby, Jimmy's wooden pottery rack was draped in plastic tarp. Underneath, the shelves were stacked with unfired pots—some red clay, some white clay, all glazed but unfired. They looked ugly that way, like Easter eggs dipped in too many dye pans.



Maybe another day of masonry. Then the gas lines would have to be hooked up. The iron doors would have to be hung.



I shook my head. You're crazy, Navarre.



Then I started up the path.



I knew something was wrong when I saw Robert Johnson on the porch, the front door cracked open. I never leave a door open and I never let Robert Johnson outside.



He looked like he didn't quite know what to do with himself. He was sniffing something on the porch—something gray and glistening.



When I got closer I caught the smell.



I stepped up, moved around the thing, quickly scooped up Robert Johnson. "That's not for you," I chastened.



I went inside, did a quick scan of the room, went directly to the kitchen counter and retrieved Erainya's gun.



I remembered to look upstairs this time. There was no one in the house. I checked the back—the outhouse, the shed. Nobody there. I walked the circumference of the dome, looked at the driveway for new tire tracks, checked my truck. Nothing.



Nothing—except for what was on the porch. I went back and stared at the thing, tried to breathe through my mouth to keep the stench out of my nostrils. Robert Johnson kicked his hind claws into my stomach, trying to get down.



The catfish was nearly three feet long—as big as the hotdogfed monsters I'd seen at the bottom of Lake Travis. Its whiskers were limp gray whips. Judging by the smell, the fish had been allowed to rot overnight before being dumped here.



Its belly had only just been gutted, the rancid innards allowed to spill across Jimmy Doebler's porch. There were undigested pieces of hot dog in the milky fluid. Fish eyes usually strike me as expressionless, but this one's seemed terrified, amazed, like it still could not get over the fact that its demise had not come by fishhook.



The thing had been impaled—as if speared by a scuba diver.



Date: Mon 12 Jun 2000 02:36:40 0000 From: [email protected]/* */ To:



[email protected]/* */ Subject: the private eye Ah, the private eye.



I remember a late afternoon in January, not long after my incident in the snow.



I'd gone home. It would've looked bad if I hadn't. And of course, once home—I found myself alone.



I was in a foul mood. My night in the country had left a bad taste in my mouth—hollow victory. I hadn't seen their faces, hadn't been able to let them know I was there.



Many nights thereafter, I'd found myself in the bathroom, the Old Man's straight razor pressed against my wrist. Or I would be standing at the medicine cabinet, staring at bottles. Never any shortage of prescription drugs around the old homestead.



I felt cheated. The only thing left worth destroying, I didn't have the courage for.



So when I answered the doorbell that afternoon, I pitied whoever it was—a nuisance.



A policeman. A family friend.



Instead, I got a small balding man in a threadbare suit, his eyes blinking excessively.



He held a briefcase in one hand, a business card ready in the other. The line on the card, right under his name, read: Discreet Investigations.



He hadn't come looking for me, but when he learned who I was, he asked to come in.



What could I say? He intrigued me with his card and his demeanour. I wondered if he were good at his work, simply because he was so small. So unimposing.



The private eye complimented the house, which seemed strange to me. I'd lived there so long I'd never thought of it as nice.



He sat on the sofa. I sat in a chair across the coffee table. I remember the curtains were drawn, not that it mattered. No one ever looked in those windows.



The little man showed me photos of people I did not recognize, dropped names I did not know.



And then, when he saw that I wasn't responding, he told me a story that spelled out the connections. He told me who he was looking for, and why.



It was as if a magnifying glass had been held up to my eyes. The world expanded twenty times, got fuzzy around the edges, perfectly focused in the centre. I looked at the pictures again, realized what they had to do with me. I realized this small man had done something I could never have done on my own—he had crystallized my hatred into something coherent.



He must've read the change in my face. There was no way I could hide it. He said, very carefully, "You know the name, don't you?"



I admitted that is was familiar.



"There's money to be had," the private eye suggested.



It was the wrong thing to say, and I think he realized it.



He'd gotten too excited at the possibility of a lead.



The shabby private eye was an entrepreneur. He had gone beyond what he'd been paid to do. He'd found himself a tawdry secret, and he meant to exploit its market potential.



I told him I had some papers he might be interested in, asked if he would excuse me.



I could see his apprehension lift. He was thinking he'd finally caught a break. He would get home in time for dinner now. It was probably a long drive.



"Would you like a drink?" I offered."Hot chocolate?"



He declined.



That negated my easiest option, but no matter. I smiled, said I would be right back.



I went into the study. The Old Man's things were there, his World War II trophies. My eyes fixed on one possibility, and I took the thing down from its display rack. I grabbed a box of papers—I don't remember what they were. It didn't matter.



I went back into the living room.



The anger inside me felt like a steel rod, as stiff and old as the blade in my hand. It was a horrible choice, but I hadn't had any time to think. I had to improvise.



The private eye looked at the sword curiously.



"You'll see the connection," I promised."It's a family heirloom."



He put the box of papers on his knees, began flipping through them."I don't—"



"Toward the bottom," I apologized."! didn't sort them."



I drew the sword. It was a Japanese Imperial officer's weapon— ornamental, but functional. It said much about the Old Man that the metal was brown with age except the point, the blade. The ornamental dragon, the clouds and demons some craftsman had worked so hard to fashion down the spine of the blade—the Old Man had had no use for them. He had only maintained the punishing side.



The private eye looked up, uneasy, but still not alarmed. I was, after all, a kid. A kid who had been helpful, offered him hot chocolate. Perhaps, in the back of his mind, he suspected that I might be the one he was looking for. That would be valuable to him.



Very valuable.



"Incredible workmanship," I told him."The family connection is right here. There's an inscription near the point."