The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,27
with perspiration. “Not exactly,” I said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I might have seen the lady who’s sitting on the rug in front of the fire.”
“She’s on your paper route and she pays you in trade?”
“I don’t think she’s that type of lady,” I said.
“Son, did your mother’s doctor drag you out of the womb with forceps? Where did you see this woman?”
“I don’t remember. I just remember seeing a woman who seemed kind and looked like her, that’s all.”
“This woman was kind? The woman wearing no clothes?”
“I’m probably mixed up,” I said.
“That photo was taken from the suitcase of a dead man. He was frozen in a snowbank two thousand feet above Reno, Nevada. He was so scared he tried to get over the Sierra Nevada Mountains barefoot with no coat on. You saw this woman in Houston?”
“At Grady Harrelson’s house in River Oaks,” Saber said.
I wanted to yell in Saber’s face, stuff a cork in his mouth, use his head for a kettledrum.
“You’re talking about the home of Clint Harrelson?” Jenks said.
Saber nodded. “Two days ago. They were having a swim party. Grady has a hard-on for Aaron because he thinks Aaron took his girlfriend. We thought we’d straighten things out.”
“You’re sure it was her?”
“How many women look like that?” Saber said.
“You’re in the know when it comes to women?” Jenks said.
“I’ve been around,” Saber said.
Jenks propped the photo on the dashboard and studied it. “This is Cisco Napolitano, boys. She’s screwed every major wop in the Mob. How tight are y’all with the Harrelson kid?”
“Not at all,” I replied.
“You just happened to go to his house in River Oaks while he was having a swim party?”
“I think Grady sicced Loren Nichols on me,” I said.
“Why would Harrelson be mixed up with a northside punk like Nichols?” Jenks said.
“That’s what we cain’t figure out,” Saber said.
“Why didn’t you want to tell me you’d seen the naked woman?” Jenks said.
“She seemed nice. She kept Harrelson’s guys off us,” I said.
“He’s got hard guys around?” Jenks said.
“I’ve seen them spread-eagle a guy on a car hood and put out his lights.”
Jenks crumpled an empty package of Pall Malls and threw it out the window, then fumbled another pack out of the glove box. He peeled off the red cellophane strip while he stared at nothing, my words lost in the wind.
“Sir, did you hear me?” I said. “I’ve seen Grady and his friends gang up on a guy and hurt him real bad.”
“Okay, I got it.”
“What do you want us to do, sir?”
His skin had the texture of ham rind. “Get out. Pick up that beer bottle while you’re at it.”
“Did we say something?” I asked.
“Don’t go near Cisco Napolitano. She’ll have your body parts hung on hooks. How did you dipshits get involved in this?”
“I don’t think we’re the problem,” I said.
He gave me a look, then drove away as though we weren’t there. Saber was writing in the notebook he carried in his shirt pocket. “He said Cisco Napolitano? How do you spell that? I’ll be haunted by those lovely eggplants the rest of my life.”
“She’s mixed up with Vegas and the syndicate,” I said.
“So what? She seems to go for younger guys. Maybe she’s a nympho. Did you see the way she was eyeing my heap? I think she dug us.”
Chapter
7
SIX DAYS LATER, school was out for the summer, and all I could think about was Valerie Epstein. I had three hundred and eighty-five dollars in a checking account and thirteen silver dollars in an army-surplus ammunition box, and because I was now a senior, my father had given me permission to buy a 1939 Ford from a neighbor who’d just been drafted and probably headed for Korea. So I had my own heap and could drive up to the Heights whenever I wanted. The Ford wasn’t just a heap, either. It had twin pipes and Zephyr gears and a Merc engine with milled heads and a hot cam and a high-speed rear end. It could hit sixty in five seconds.
I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Each evening I bathed and changed clothes after work and motored into the Heights to pick up Valerie Epstein, arguably the most beautiful and intelligent teenage girl in Houston. Her name had the melodic cadence of a sonnet or a prayer. I went to bed with Valerie on my mind and woke with images of her printed on the backs of my eyelids.