James Burke: Heartwood

It was dusk now, and the only other people at the lake were an elderly black couple and their grandchildren picnicking on the grass. The gangbangers' stereos roared with such ear-pounding volume that the water in the lake trembled. A kid who wore a bodybuilder's shirt deliberately scissored into strips threw a beer can in the direction of the picnickers.

"Hey, man, the park's closing," he said.

Then they pulled Max Greenbaum from his Jeep, lifted the cellular phone from his hand, and crushed it on the pavement.

"Y'all leave that man alone. He ain't done you nothing," the black woman yelled.

"Time to haul yo' black ham hocks out of here, mama," the kid in the scissored shirt said.

The elderly black couple loaded their grandchildren into their car and backed out into the road, their faces staring in bewilderment at the scene taking place before them.

One of the gangbangers tore Max Greenbaum's priority mail envelope and the sheet of letterhead paper it contained into shreds and threw them in his face. Then they formed a circle around him and began pushing him back and forth as they would a medicine ball.

But the terror that Max Greenbaum probably felt turned to anger and he began to fight, flailing blindly at the gangbangers with his fists, his glasses broken on the pavement. At first they laughed at him, then his finger scraped across someone's eyeball. A gangbanger reeled backwards, the heel of his hand pressed into his eye socket as though it had been gouged with a stick.

The circle closed on Greenbaum like crabs feeding on a piece of meat.

The Houston homicide detective who called the next afternoon was a woman named Janet Valenzuela.

"The early word from the coroner is it looks like heart failure," she said.

"How'd you get my name?" I asked.

"The gangbangers picked up most of the pieces of the priority envelope. But a couple were under the victim's Jeep. We could make out your zip code and the last five letters of your name. Do you know why he would be writing you?"

"I think he had knowledge that would exonerate a client of mine," I said.

"Does this have to do with stolen bonds?"

"How'd you know?" I said.

"Greenbaum told his rabbi an uneducated working-man was being set up in an insurance claim. It's a muddy story. It has something to do with a guy being provoked at a luncheon, then stealing a watch, and a rich guy claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonds were stolen, too. Are the gangbangers tied into this somehow?"

"I'm not sure."

"You were a city cop here?"

"That's right."

"Keep in touch."

An hour later Cholo Ramirez pulled his customized Mercury to the curb in front of my office, the stereo thundering. His sister, Esmeralda, got out and walked into the portico on the first floor.

A moment later she was standing in my office, dressed in the same jeans and maroon shirt, now thoroughly rumpled, she had been arrested in the day before.

"You're sprung?" I said, and smiled.

"They're not filing on me."

"How about the rock under the seat?"

"The cop was lying. Who'd be crazy enough to drive around in Cholo's car with crack in it?"

"They're bad guys. Who sicced them on you?" I said.

"I just came to thank you for what you did."

"Sit down a minute, will you?"

"I'm not feeling too good. There was noise in the jail all night."

Her face was pretty, her eyes turquoise. She pushed her hair up on her neck with one hand. A package of cigarettes stuck out of the front pocket of her jeans.

"You had a reason for being out by the Deitrichs' place?" I asked.

"I want Mr. Deitrich to leave my brother and Ronnie… Ronnie's my boyfriend… I want Mr. Deitrich to leave him and Cholo alone."

"You were going to tell him that?"

She blew her breath up in her face and sat down on the corner of the chair. "Look, he's a bullshit guy. Guys like him didn't make their money worrying about people who eat refried beans," she said.

"Earl Deitrich's got another agenda?"

"Hey, I'm glad you weren't hurt too bad yesterday. That's it," she said, and walked out of the office without saying goodbye.

Temple Carrol could find a chicken feather in a snowstorm. Early Wednesday morning we drove out of the hill country toward San Antonio. She had already put together a folder on both Cholo Ramirez and Ronnie Cruise, also known as Ronnie Cross.

"Ronnie is a California transplant. He came out here with his uncle in '88. This customized car business they run may be a front for a chop-shop operation. Boost them here and sell them in Mexico," she said. "Anyway, Ronnie was in Juvie once in L.A. County, but that's his whole sheet."

"Jeff Deitrich says he threw a couple of guys off a roof," I said.

"My friend at San Antonio P.D. says two Viscounts got splattered all over a cement loading dock about a year ago. The word on the street is Ronnie did it. Supposedly the Viscounts had tried to molest Cholo's sister in a movie theater. Ronnie 'fronted them on the roof because Cholo was his warlord. Later Ronnie and Esmeralda developed the hots for each other. The stuff of great romance."

"I still don't get the tie to Earl Deitrich," I said.

"Maybe Earl's just helping out disadvantaged kids, Billy Bob. Maybe he's not a total bastard, even though some people would like to think so." She gave me a deliberate look.

I kept my eyes straight ahead. The country was rolling and green, and red Angus were grazing on a hill. A moment later I heard Temple take some papers out of a second folder.

"This kid Cholo is a walking nightmare," she said. "The mother's boyfriend threw him against the wall when he was a baby and probably damaged the brain. He has epileptic seizures and refuses all medication. He's been in the reformatory three times and a mental ward twice. My friend at San Antonio P.D. says every cop in the city treats him with extreme caution."

"What about that story Cholo told you, the one about taking down rich marks at a phony poker game?" I said.

"Nobody seems to know anything about it. He's been on crystal and acid half his life. He probably sees snakes in his breakfast food," she said.

The car garage where Ronnie Cruise worked for his uncle was in a Mexican neighborhood just outside of town, one with dust-blown streets and untrimmed banana and palm trees and stucco houses with tin roofs and alleyways that groaned with unemptied garbage cans.

Ronnie Cruise was taller than he had seemed at the drive-in restaurant in Deaf Smith, his arms heavy with muscle, his bare chest flat, his lats thick, tapering away to a narrow waist. The inside of the shop was filled with antique cars that were either being restored or customized and rebuilt with high-powered, chromed engines. Ronnie Cruise walked outside with us into the shade, away from the noise, wiping his hands on a rag. He wore a red bandanna wrapped around his hair. His upper left arm was ringed with scar tissue like a band of dried putty.

"I had barbed wire tattooed there. Bad example in a time of AIDS. I had a doctor take it off," he said.

He leaned against the side of the building, one work boot propped against the stucco. He stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth.

"Smoking bother you?" he said.

"Go ahead," Temple said.

He played with his lighter, then dropped the cigarette back in the package and put the package in his pocket.

"What's between the Purple Hearts and Earl Deitrich?" I asked.

"Nothing," he answered. He looked down the alley at a banana tree moving in the breeze.

"You just drive up to Deaf Smith to hang around with Jeff?" I said.

"How'd you know I been with Jeff?" he asked.

"I saw you and Esmeralda with him at Val's Drive-in," I said.

"Oh, yeah," he said, and nodded absently. "Look, my uncle don't want me taking off too long."