Rick Riordan - The Devil went down to Austin

While I was thinking about this, I found myself staring at a poster on Ruby's bedroom wall. It was a huge topographical map of the lake with longitude and latitude coordinates. Depths were noted. Boating hazards. I got up to take a closer look.

There was a green pushpin marking Point Lone Star, and out in the water, five red pins, making a curve from the shore to a point close to the boating channel. The pins were equidistant-about one hundred yards apart.

Her flooded family land, I guessed. I remembered what she'd said about mapping the old property lines, and about taking Matthew Pena down there.

And then a voice behind me said, "There is no Mr. White at this marina."

Clyde Simms stood in the doorway. His nose had a butterfly pattern of bruises around it from our encounter at Scholz Garten. There was a tire iron in his hand.

"Thank God," I said. "I must've taken a wrong turn. I was on my way to Jimmy's-"

"If I liked police," Simms snarled, "they'd be hauling your ass away right now."

"And since you don't?"

He lifted the tire iron, patted it against his palm. "You're walking with me over to my place. Nice and friendly, no scaring the customers. No joint locks. And then we'll see."

Clyde's homestead was set back in the woods about fifty yards from the marina, just enough to be out of sight of the paying customers.

Along the gravel path, we passed two Chevrolet carcasses, three cow skulls nailed to mesquite trees, and a bikinied store manikin who'd been given a lobotomy and an appendectomy by shotgun. The joys of simple country living.

The house itself was an overgrown portable shed with a plywood porch and a corrugated tin roof heaped with fuzzy brown cedar fur. Parked out front was a HarleyDavidson hog. On the front porch post, a sign read FEROCIOUS DOGS -NO UNANNOUNCED VISITORS.

"Come in," Clyde told me. "And don't think I won't kill you, you try any more of that kung fu shit on me. You know how much I snore when I get my nose broke?"

Clyde opened the screen door and the smell of burning pork and beans came wafting out.

He cursed, pushed past me toward the stove. Apparently he'd forgotten a culinary experiment in his haste to apprehend me.

I stepped into the dark kitchen area, and one of the advertised ferocious dogs appeared from the hallway.

It was a Doberman-sleek black, tan muzzle, little devilhorn ears. It took one look at me with its sad, milky eyes and squeaked the toy in its mouth-a pink rubber bunny.

Then the Doberman plodded forward a few steps, collapsed on the rug as if it had been shot, and sighed.

"Vicious," I said. "Terrifying."

Clyde glowered at me. He picked up a spatula with baked bean crust on the edge, took his black, smoking pan of lunch off the electric stovetop.

"I had me two other asseating Dobes," he growled. "Mean ones-Harley and Davidson. Both died since Christmas. Now all I got left is Miata."

"Let me guess. Ruby named her after her car."

His ears turned bright red. "Fucking disgrace. You don't go out of here talking about this, you understand?"

I crossed my heart.

Clyde's living room was a cozy combination bike garage, poker den, and army surplus centre. Tables overflowed with greasy wrenches, nuts and bolts, cartridge boxes, and pieces of disassembled weapons. Somebody had played 52pickup across the rug.

There was one sofa that looked like a piece of chewed gum.

Clyde told me to sit down. I chose the edge of a table. Clyde offered me a drink-raw egg shake, Gatorade, or beer. I declined.

He plopped himself onto the chewing gum couch, popped open a beer. "Before I kill you," he said, "what were you doing on Ruby's boat?"

"Just visiting. Finding out Ruby's a lot closer to Matthew Pena than she lets on."

Clyde sipped his beer, got some white foam on his moustache. "Ruby's a good woman. Don't judge her."

"She sold out her company, went behind Garrett's and Jimmy's backs-"

"If I thought Ruby had done something to hurt Garrett, I'd talk to her."

"You must have a pretty narrow definition of hurt."

Clyde studied me, the tape on his broken nose making him look slightly crosseyed.

"Your brother's a standup guy. The Buffett summer tour this year-he got tickets, swung some for me and some friends, too. You think I like this shit with the police? I want him free to go."

He said free the way a con says free-like it was a kind of weather.

Miata the ferocious dog was closing her eyes. She was just about to go to sleep when the weight of her snout closed her jaw around the pink bunny and made it squeak. She lifted her head, looking around sleepily for the intruder.

"There's a thing about Matthew Pena," I told Clyde. "People think they can work with him. They find out they're wrong."

Simms scratched the Doberman's muzzle with his toes. "Ruby knows enough to call her own shots."

"You care for her."

His eyes got dangerously hot. "She's a good boss."

"That's not what I meant."

He finished his beer, crumpled the can, tossed it somewhere behind the pink sofa. "I got discharged from the Marines in '82, Navarre. I spent a few years hanging with bikers, striking with the Diablos. Then I started bumming with dock rats at the lake. I met all kinds of people. You know what I figured out? Only friends worth having are the ones who can hurt you, man, hurt you worse than any random shithead in a bar fight. I hang with Ruby because she stands by me? she tries to be good to me. Is she dangerous? Fuck, yes. Is she a little screwed up, all that shitty family history? Sure.

But you want to boil it down to-hey, Clyde's got the hots for her, well you go ahead, man. That's how you think, you'd never understand anyway."

The Doberman was looking at me mournfully, chewing her pink bunny.

"I apologize," I told Clyde.

He grunted.

"You mentioned Ruby's family," I said. "You knew them?"

"Only stories. The grandfather was the one that sold out, left them with this little piece of land. He sat on the money he'd made from the sale, pretty much pissed it away on drink and gambling. What Ruby's dad inherited wasn't a third of the value. He tried a lot of things, ended up starting the marina, never made much of a go of it. Toward the end of his life, Ruby was running the place, trying to make it pay off for the sake of her old man. Ruby did it, too. Wasn't her dream to get rich, or to keep the land. But by the time her dad was gone, she couldn't get away from the place. Building that house up there on the hill-you don't understand what a big deal that is for her, Navarre. It's Ruby admitting she's here for keeps? she ain't going to get away."

The sound of a motorboat went by out on the lake. The smell of burnt pork and beans was slowly giving way to cedar from the open windows.

"Where is she now?" I asked. "Do you know?"

Clyde gave me a look I couldn't quite read. "Yeah, I know. She don't always let me tag along."

"Like when she goes to meet with Matthew Pena?"

Clyde shook his head. "I ain't your enemy, Navarre. I ain't Garrett's enemy. But you ask me, you're barking up the wrong pole. I seen Garrett around Ruby, how they dance around each other. I seen how Garrett looked when she told him she was marrying Jimmy Doebler. You want to help your brother-maybe you should start by thinking: Hell, yeah, he killed the guy. Go from there. You understand me?"

"This advice from you, who wanted to kill Matthew Pena months ago?"

But when I met Clyde's eyes, I understood what he was saying. Clyde could believe Pena deserved to die. He could also believe Garrett had murdered Jimmy Doebler. He could also believe that Garrett was a decent man who deserved to be free. These ideas were not mutually exclusive. For Clyde, murder was no more astonishing than chicken pox, certainly no reason to judge a man.