The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,103
bring your own lunch?”
“You must not have worked in a restaurant.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“If you do, you’ll never eat out again. Half the people in the kitchen are winos who sleep at the mission. If the meatballs get spilled, somebody sweeps them up in a dustpan and sprinkles them with shredded cheese. They wipe the tables down at night with the bathroom mop because it takes too long to hand-wipe them. You here for your chaps?”
“Yeah. And I wondered how you’re feeling.”
“About the kid who got stabbed?”
I didn’t reply.
“I saw his picture in the paper,” he said. “To be honest, I cain’t get his face out of my head.”
“Valerie and I are going to play miniature golf tonight. We thought you might want to join us.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You don’t like miniature golf?”
“It’s not my first choice.”
“I brought you something.”
He looked down at my hand. “A book?”
“It’s called The Song of Roland.”
“What’s it about?”
“Courage and the battle of Roncevaux. My cousin Weldon carried it with him during the war. He had three Purple Hearts and the Bronze and Silver Star.”
He scratched his cheek, his gaze leaving mine. He took the book from my hand. “Thanks. You’re not trying to talk me into going to church or something?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Come in back a minute.”
We went into his workshop behind the house. He set his lunch box on the workbench and took Grandfather’s chaps off a wood peg and handed them to me. “I had to rethink some stuff after that kid was killed. I shouldn’t have given you the thirty-two. You don’t need blood on your hands. You wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
“I really appreciate that,” I said.
“Shut up. A couple of friends came by this morning. They said you’re in the wind. Bledsoe, too.”
“In the wind how?”
“Grady Harrelson and Vick Atlas were at Prince’s drive-in with a pair of sluts. They’re buds now. The word is you called up Atlas and told him Harrelson’s friends boosted Atlas’s car. One of my friends knows Atlas pretty good. My friend says Atlas saw you with this broad from Vegas. Atlas says she’s Mob property.”
“She lives in Atlas’s apartment building. I drove her to a pharmacy in the Fifth Ward Sunday morning.”
“She has to go to the middle of colored town to fill a prescription?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“You’re talking about Mexican skag?”
“Yep.”
“You busted a vessel in your brain or something?”
“I thought I was doing a good deed. She used to be an item with Merton Jenks. He’s dying of cancer or emphysema.”
He tapped at the air with his finger. “That bull, what’s-his-name, Original Sin, he must have stepped on your head.”
“I hope you enjoy the book.”
“I’m not done,” he said. “Your man Bledsoe is dealing horse for a couple of Mexicans. They’re not piecing it off, either. They’re going down, man. Both Bledsoe and the Mexicans. You don’t deal heroin in Houston or Galveston without permission.”
“I can’t change that.”
“I just tried to join the navy,” he said. “They told me to beat it.”
“You think somebody is going to take you out, too?”
“It’s a possibility,” he said.
I hung Grandfather’s chaps over my shoulder. “Val and I will pick you up at seven.”
“I don’t know how to say this, Aaron. I think they’re going to kill you. Atlas’s old man might put a bomb in your family car.”
“My father was at the Somme and Saint-Mihiel.”
“I got no idea what that means. Blown apart is blown apart. Dead is dead.”
“Seven o’clock,” I said.
When I fired up my heap, my stomach felt as though I had poured Drano in it.
I HAD THE NEXT day off. I called the Houston Police Department and asked for Detective Jenks.
“He’s out today,” a sergeant said.
“Is he all right?”
“Who’s calling?”
“Aaron Holland Broussard. I’m a friend of his. Could you give me his home number?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard him speak of you,” the sergeant said. He hung up.
I waited an hour and put a pencil crossways into my mouth and called again. The same cop picked up.
“This is Franklin W. Dixon, features editor at the Houston Press. Our photographer is supposed to do a shoot at Detective Jenks’s home. Evidently he screwed up the address, and the staff writer is out of the office. Can you confirm Detective Jenks’s address for me?”
“Hang on,” the sergeant replied. “I got it in the file.”
THE HOUSE WAS located in an old rural neighborhood off the Galveston highway. It was a place of tin roofs and slash pines and dirt streets and