Cimarron Rose

'You going to lose it here?' he asked.

'Can't ever tell,' I said.

'Don't.'

'Your kid's a coward and a sadist. But you probably already know that. I just wanted to tell you he's hooked up with Garland T. Moon now.'

'You want to eat, or insult me some more?'

Felix Ringo and the man named Sammy Mace were at the end of the dock, watching a yellow pontoon plane come in low over the hills and skim across the water.

'Sammy Mace is mobbed-up, Jack,' I said.

'Then why isn't he in Huntsville? Look, I don't feel good about some things Darl has done. So I've tried to help out.'

'Oh?'

'Felix Ringo is an old friend I knew at Be

I didn't reply. I looked into his eyes.

'Eat with us. Let's end all this foolishness,' he said.

'Found which kid?' I asked.

'A biker. Belongs to a gang called the Purple Hearts. He's had a couple of beefs with Bu

Then Felix Ringo and Sammy Mace were under the shed, smiling, nodding, while the black man ladled steaks onto metal plates. Out on the boat, Emma Vanzandt stepped out of the cabin with sunglasses on and shook out her hair.

Sammy Mace was in his fifties now, his hair silver and combed straight back on his head, his face distinguished, almost intellectual with the square, rimless glasses he wore. Except for his eyes, which did not match his smile. They studied me, then flexed at the corners with recognition.

'You were a uniform in Houston? A Texas Ranger got in some trouble later?' he said.

'Good memory, Sammy,' I said.

'You remember me?'

'You bet. You killed a Houston cop.'

'Hey,' he said playfully, raising a finger on each hand, as though he were warding off bees. 'I shot a guy coming through my bedroom window without no shield in his hand, in the middle of the night, in a neighborhood with ca

'What's with this guy?' Felix Ringo said.

'Nothing. Billy Bob's all right. He's just trying to work some things out,' Jack said.

'You take it easy, Jack,' I said.

I walked back down the dock toward my car. The wind was warm on my back, the water sliding through pebbles and sand onto the grass. I heard Jack's leather sandals behind me.

'That kid's going to come to your office. His name's Virgil Morales,' he said.

'Why are you doing this?' I asked.

'Because you keep laying off your problem on Darl. Don't make it hard. Take the favor.'

'Does Sammy Mace come with it?'

'He's got the biggest chain of computer outlets in south Texas. I lit up villages in Vietnam; you killed people in Mexico. Why don't you get your nose out of the air?'

When I drove away I saw Felix Ringo screw a cigarette into a gold holder, then stop what he was doing and rise from his chair when Emma Vanzandt joined their table. The black cook took a bottle of chilled wine from an ice bucket, wrapped it in a towel, and poured into the goblets on the table. The diners cut into their steaks and ate with the poise of people on the cover of Southern Living.

I wanted to take Jack Vanzandt off at the neck.

After di

I went to Marvin Pomroy's office in the morning and got him to pull Garland T. Moon's jacket. The first of many mug shots was paper-clipped to the second page. I pulled it loose and dropped it and the two photos from my mother's album on Marvin's desk.

'This mug shot was taken when Moon was seventeen. Look at the kid in the pictures of my father,' I said.

Marvin propped his elbows on the blotter and peered down through his glasses at the photos, his fingers on his temples.

'You called it. He knew your old man. But I don't know what difference it makes,' he said.

'I think he's got some kind of obsession with my father.'

'So what? Jack the Ripper was probably a surgeon or a Mason or the queen's grandson. The bottom line is he eviscerated hookers.'

'You're really a breath of fresh air, Marvin. You ought to get a Roman collar and start counseling people,' I said.

'This isn't Mexico. You stay away from Moon, Billy Bob.'

'You want to spell that out?'

'We don't have free-fire zones in Deaf Smith. You get into any of that Ranger-danger dogshit here, you're going to be in front of a grand jury yourself.'

I picked up the photos of my father from his desk blotter and put them in my shirt pocket.

'Sammy Mace is in town. Hanging with Jack Vanzandt and this Felix Ringo character. I'd give it my attention,' I said, and didn't bother to close the door when I left.

That afternoon I was staring down from my office window into the street, wondering if I would ever extricate Lucas from the legal process that was about to eat him alive, when a Mexican kid on a Harley pulled to the curb and walked into the archway on the first floor. A minute later my secretary buzzed me and I opened the door of my i

'You're Virgil Morales?' I said.

He was tall, his bare arms clean of jailhouse or biker art, his Indian-black hair curly on the back of his neck. His face could have been that of a male model's, except for one eye that had a lazy drift in it.

'How'd you know?' he asked.

'Oh, you hear things.' I gri

He looked at the glass-encased guns of my great-grandfather on the wall.

'I want to do the right thing,' he replied.

'Good for the conscience, I guess.'

'They re-filed some old charges against me in San Antone. Mr Ringo says he can square it.'

'What charges?'

'Holding some reefer and a few whites. I'm on probation, see, and my PO can stick me back in county. I might get consecutive time, too.'

'It all makes sense,' I said.

'They get you in the system, they jam you up. It's like they only got so many names in the computer and these are the guys they keep jamming up.'

'What have you got for me, Virgil?'

He wore a sleeveless purple T-shirt and jeans and shined, half-topped leather boots. He sat down and rubbed his hands up and down his forearms.

'The night Rosea

'Anybody else see this?'

'Yeah, some college girl from Austin. She was on my bike. That's why I couldn't give Rosea

I nodded while he talked. His eyes wandered around the office; occasionally he squeezed the inside of his thigh, high up by his scrotum. I had the feeling he could eat a hot cigarette and not miss a beat.

'Why didn't you tell someone this earlier?' I asked.

'I was in county.'

'You got into Bu

'I just got out. You don't want the information, I'll boogie. Where'd those old guns come from?'

'Out at Shorty's you called Bu