James Burke - Heartwood

The deputies took off their hats when they addressed her.

"You mind if we clean up inside, Ms. Summers?" one said.

But she knew that was a secondary reason for going inside. They ate free whenever they stopped at the restaurant.

"What did he do?" she asked.

"Oh, he's just a bad Mexican kid wants to give the Deitrich boy some trouble. Plus he's got a half dozen moving violations against him in San Antone," the deputy said.

Inside, the deputies gave their food order to a waiter and went into the men's room. Rita covered her head with a newspaper and walked down to the shed. Someone turned on the flood lamps in the oak trees, and the mist looked like iridescent smoke blowing out of the leaves.

She leaned against the cedar post at the corner of the shed and drank from her gin glass.

"What's your name?" she said.

"Ronnie," the man cuffed by one wrist said. "You work here?"

"If I want to. My father owns it."

"Impressive," he replied.

So this was the famous Ronnie Cross, she thought. He sat on the cement pad, barefoot, one knee drawn up before him. He had wide shoulders and big arms, Indian-black hair cut short, lips a little like a classical Greek's, and muscle tone and skin that made her think of smooth, tea-stained stone.

"What will they do to you?" she asked.

"Take me back to San Antone on a couple of bench warrants."

His dark eyes never blinked. They were lidless and devoid of any emotion that she could see. But it was his mouth that bothered her. It stayed slightly parted, as though he looked upon the world as a giant, self-serving deception that only a fool would respect.

"You think you're big stuff, don't you?" she said.

"I'm chained up here. I might get county time. These guys will burn me with the bondsman so I got to wait in the bag for my court date. You're drinking gin or vodka with cherries in it. Maybe your shit don't flush, but I ain't big stuff."

"You want a cigarette?"

"I don't smoke no more."

"Anymore."

"What?"

"'Anymore' is the correct usage. You're a lot smarter than you pretend. You're just up here to say nighty-night to Jeff Deitrich?"

He stuck his little finger in his ear and let water drain from it.

"You want to do me a favor?" he said. "I put my car keys under the dash. Keep them for a guy I'm gonna send. Otherwise, some local white bread will chop up my car or these two county fucks will have it towed in."

"I heard you were a piece of work," she said.

"My friend's a wetbrain. But if you'll keep the keys, he'll find you."

"Why trust your car to a wetbrain?"

"In case nobody told you, it's open season around here on Purple Hearts."

"I'll think about holding your keys," she said.

She balanced her glass on a pile of sawed mesquite wood and walked into the shadows, out of the light that shone from the oak trees. She found the ax leaning handle-up against the corner post. The flat sides of the blade were streaked with wisps of wood and dried sap, but the edge had been filed and honed the color of buffed pewter.

She lifted it with both hands and walked back into the electric light. Her shadow fell across Ronnie Cross's upturned face.

"What's the worst thing that ever happened to you?" she asked.

"Dealing with people who are full of shit."

She smiled at the corner of her mouth.

"You ever have a fling with white bread?" she said.

"I'm a one-woman man. Her name's Esmeralda."

"Put out your right hand and close your eyes."

He studied her face, his joyless, dark eyes seeming to reach inside her thoughts. Then his gaze dropped to her mouth, his lips parting indolently. She felt a flush of color spread in her throat, a tingle in her thighs. Her eyes brightened with anger and her palms closed on the ax handle.

"Put your wrist on the stump," she said.

He paused momentarily, then lifted his cuffed right hand so that the left manacle came tight and clinked inside the U-bolt embedded in the chopping block. He spread his fingers flatly on the wood, his eyes never leaving hers. The veins in his wrist looked like purple soda straws.

She raised the ax above her right shoulder, her hands gripped uncertainly midway up the handle, and swung the blade down toward his face.

She felt the filed edge bite into metal and sink into wood.

In seconds he was on his feet, the severed manacle glinting like a bracelet on his right wrist. He paused just beyond the roof of the shed, his face half covered with shadow.

"For white bread, you're a class act," he said.

Then he was running barefoot down the slope in the rain. The iridescent light radiating from the trees glistened on his body. She watched him sprint down the riverbank, gaining speed, and dive like a giant steel-skinned fish into the middle of a rain ring.

Ronnie Cruise called me at my office the day after Rita Summers cut his handcuffs.

"I want you to know what can happen when you dime a guy, Mr. Holland," he said. "The two county fucks that nailed me? One of them popped a black guy on a back road and told people he tried to escape."

"I told Marvin Pomroy you might try to take down a couple of Jeff's friends. I'm sorry he sicced those guys on you," I replied.

"What'd you think was gonna happen?… Where's Lucas and Essie?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"A friend picked up Cholo's Mercury to give it to Essie. But I drove by their place and they ain't there and neither is the Merc."

"You're in town?" I said.

"Don't worry about where I am." He paused, the surfaces of the receiver squeaking in his grip. "They're at your house, ain't they?"

"Don't bring Cholo's car here."

"That's what you're not hearing. The guy driving Cholo's car is a friend, but he's got yesterday's ice cream for brains. You hearing me on this, Mr. Holland? You fucked it up."

"Meet me at my house," I said.

But he had already hung up the phone.

Why had I asked him to meet me at my house? To tell him what? I wasn't sure myself.

That afternoon I began building the trellised, crossbeam entrance to the driveway that my father had wanted to build before he died at Matagorda Bay. The western sky was purple and red, the hills a deeper green from last night's rains, and pools of gray water stood in the driveway gravel. I twisted the posthole digger into the lawn and piled the dirt on the grass, all the time trying to focus on a troublesome thought that hung on the edge of my mind, one that had to do with human predictability.

That's why I had wanted to talk with Ronnie Cruise. He didn't buy easily into illusion and certainly not the subterfuge of his enemies.

L.Q. Navarro stood in shadows, his ash-gray hat low on his forehead, a gold toothpick in his mouth.

" It's that spoiled puke Jeff Deitrich that's bothering you. His threats don't add up. He don't know no bikers. Not real ones," L.Q. said.

" He's got the stash they took off the Jamaicans. He'll use it to hire pros. The Deitrichs cover their ass. They don't leave vendettas to amateurs, L.Q.," I replied.

"I think you got it ciphered, bud. The question is who's the shitbag he's hiring."

"The mercenary, Fletcher Grinnel?"

"Grinnel works for the old man. Wire up a shotgun out at your boy's place. See whose parts you pick up out of the yard."

L.Q. was grinning when he said it and expected no response.

But neither did he hide what he really wanted from me. He removed his custom-made, double-action revolver from his holster and spun it in his hand, toward him, then in the opposite direction, the yellow ivory handles slapping into the heel of his palm.

" Your great-grandpa Sam could hang from the pommel at a full gallop and shoot from under the horse's neck like an Indian," L.Q. said. " You're as good a shot as he was. Why waste talent?"