The Last King of Texas - By Rick Riordan Page 0,41

is it true you're a private investigator?"

I looked back at George, who was slicing his hand horizontally across his throat, mouthing: No. No.

"It's true," I said.

The class shifted in their seats. Nobody followed up with questions. Nobody asked my trench coat size.

"Well - " I said. "Okay then. See you Friday."

At that, Jem put down his action figure and began clapping for me. The students looked back uneasily and began collecting their things. Jem kept clapping until the room was empty except for him, me, and George. George grinned. "Bravo, Professor."

"What are you guys - "

George held up his bulging paper bag. "Join us for lunch?"
Chapter 17-18
Chapter 17

"You want the special or the beef?"

The question was a mere formality. George nudged the Rolando's Special my way, grabbed the came guisada for himself, then leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs at the ankles.

He unwrapped the end of the mega-taco and took a bite, staring thoughtfully across the UTSA patillo.

The white patio tables were abandoned this late in the afternoon, the sunken courtyard quiet except for the flutter of pigeons and the sound of the stone monolith fountain sluicing water off its slanted top into the pool below.

Overhead, reflected light from the water pulsed across limestone pillars, up the two-story roof of opaque plastic bubbles. Lines of wooden slats hung from above like weird, Mondrian stalactites.

According to UTSA folklore, the campus had been laid out following an ancient Aztec city design, which put the patillo in the center of the community and the fountain right where the altar would've been. Jem, who had already taken two bites of his kid's taco and pronounced himself full, was now tightrope-walking his Captain Chaos doll around the rim of the pool, right about where the bloody heads of the sacrificial victims would've rolled.

I looked down at my Rolando's Special - a giant flour tortilla stuffed with eggs, guacamole, potato, bacon, cheese, and salsa. Normally it would have been enough to elevate me into Taco Nirvana. Today, all I could think about were sheet caves, the desolate interior of the Brandon home, and the things George Berton wasn't saying.

He'd offered no comment on my morning's activities. Without expression, he read the short article I'd found in Aaron Brandon's desk about the IRS investigation in West Texas, then tucked it into his olive-green shirt pocket along with his cigars. He'd been animated enough talking about my classroom performance, the virtues of Rolando's, the great things Jem had been making with his Tinkertoys, but when the conversation had turned toward the Brandon case, George had closed up.

Not that George didn't sometimes close up about his cases-in-progress. Every investigator does. But after our free conversation last night, his remoteness today made me uneasy.

"The IRS article," I prompted. "Mean anything to you?"

"You mean like was Aaron Brandon interested in drill bits?"

"No, doofus. I mean like was Aaron Brandon getting ideas about turning his brother Del in to the IRS. If so, and if Del found out about it, Del might've wanted to stop him."

"I don't know."

"Okay," I said. "Hector Mara. What about him?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I talked to some people, heard pretty much the same thing Ralph told you. Mara's been doing business with Chich Gutierrez - maybe running some heroin, though nobody could tell me exactly how or where or to whom. Maybe Zeta Sanchez coming back would cramp Mara's style. Maybe it would cut into Chich Gutierrez's business. Doesn't necessarily mean Hector and Chich would set Sanchez up for a murder."

"Whatever happened to Sandra?"

George peeled back some tinfoil. "You mean Hector's sister. Sanchez's wife."

"Yeah. The girl Jeremiah supposedly slept with. Whatever happened to her?"

George hesitated. I could see a change in his eyes - a distance that hadn't been there before. "Jeremiah Brandon had a reputation, ese. The young girls who worked for him, or were family members of men who did - Jeremiah liked making them his conquests. He'd always win. Eventually the men would find out, but they usually did nothing. What could they do? If they complained, they lost their jobs. If they threatened, somebody like Zeta Sanchez would come visit them in the middle of the night. Jeremiah had all the power."

"Lord of the manor."

"What?"

"Something Ozzie Gerson said. Go on."

George stared past me. "Jeremiah would get a girl pregnant, or maybe the affair would just go on long enough where the family couldn't tolerate it anymore -