The Last King of Texas - By Rick Riordan Page 0,75

He zeroed in on Kelly's hand in mine, then after a very long half second seemed to dismiss the sight.

"Vato." He acknowledged me.

He picked off his glasses. This in itself was a rare event, and his naked eyes looked huge and dark, as if the lenses had somehow contained them. Ralph might've been close to legal blindness, but his stare revealed a fierceness you never saw through his glasses - an honest warning of the kind of violence he was capable of.

He held out his arms. Kelly went to him, tried for a stiff, perfunctory hug, but Ralph wouldn't let her pull away. He held her until she melted against him in earnest and started crying.

He looked at me over her shoulder. There was one question in his face, a calm demand that I'd seen before and understood perfectly. When?

Back at her desk, Erainya said a few weary "thank-yous" to the ICU nurse and hung up the phone.

She ruffled Jem's hair, then stared across the room at us. Surprisingly, she did not throw anything at Ralph to drive him from the office. She merely said, "Mr. Arguello."

Ralph nodded, acknowledging the truce. "Ms. Manos. Quepasa?"

"You have to ask?"

He shook his head, then disengaged from Kelly. "And you, mi chica?"

"I'll be okay," Kelly whispered.

He gathered the back of Kelly's hair in his fist - a gesture that would've seemed threatening, proprietary, from anyone else. From Ralph, the gesture was still proprietary, but the tenderness and affection for his niece was unmistakable. He let the glossy black hair fall through his fingers, then nodded at me. "Let's talk."

Erainya said, "Wait."

The silent demand in her eyes was as clear as Ralph's. We will not do anything rash. We will not make things worse.

I nodded assent. "It's okay, Erainya."

She closed her hand around Jem's small fingers, hugging his shoulder tight with the other arm. "Honey, nothing is okay," she told me.

Outside, the afternoon was heating up, the air scented with roasting lamb and pepper from Demo's Greek restaurant next door.

Ralph said, "Sorry about your car."

"The car is nothing."

He looked at me dubiously. Ralph knew about me and the VW. He'd known me when I'd first gotten it from my mother, my third year of high school. He'd driven in it with me drunk, sober, in danger, on dates. He'd teased me about it mercilessly while he went yearly from luxury car to luxury car and I continued clunking along in my mother's hideous orange hand-me-down. And he knew that the car had been part of who I was.

"Tell me the score," Ralph said.

He listened while I told him of my last few days.

When I was done he took a joint and a lighter from his shirt pocket and lit up. He took a long toke before speaking. "I don't know much about the chiva business, vato. Some things, I got no desire to learn. But I got some ideas where we can find the guy you want."

"Chicharron?"

He nodded.

"And Chich will happily give us a confession?"

"Shit, no, vato. That we take."

The ferocity in his eyes made me shudder.

Through the office window, Kelly and Erainya were standing by my desk now, talking. Jem was making sure all his toys were still there in the bucket.

"I want to keep things legal, Ralphas."

Ralph stared at me.

"I want DeLeon in on what we're doing," I explained. "I don't want to blow her case."

For once, Ralph seemed at a loss for words.

"Ana, huh?" He flicked some ashes toward the pavement.

"You know her," I said.

"Did you ask Ana about that?"

"She said about as much as you are. You object to her coming with us?"

He shrugged. "You want Ana to come along, vato - good luck. You know the rules of association. How you figure she's going to want to spend time around me?"

I tried to read his tone of voice, failed. "You've got no criminal record."

"On the books - no. You figure that matters?"

"I'll tell her we're going to ask around. She wants any control over the process, she'd better come along."

"Should be fun."

"You and DeLeon used to date, or what?"

Ralph took one last hit from his joint, then pinched the end out with his fingers. "How you getting around town these days, vato?"

I pointed to George's red Barracuda.

Ralph put on his glasses, then nodded approval. "Step up. George would appreciate you keeping her company."

"George would shit."

Ralph chuckled. "We meet at the Boots, say four o'clock?"

"I've got classes. Let's make it five-thirty. And you