The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,43
I could see her squinting at me through the rain, the sky black and unmerciful overhead.
I took the books from her hands and grabbed her arm and started running for the car. She tripped and fell, and I picked her up around the waist and held her against me, my arm tight around her ribs. When we reached the car, I pushed her across the seat and jumped in after her and slammed the door, both of us breathless, books spilling on the floor.
“Where did you come from?” she said.
“Home.”
“How did you know where I was?”
“Who else would be out in an electric storm in the middle of a field?”
She moved the strings of wet hair from her eyes and stared into my face. She smiled. Slowly at first. Then she looked through the windshield as we worked our way out of the park.
SHE GAVE ME two bath towels so I could dry off in the living room while she changed clothes upstairs. Then she went into the kitchen and got a bowl of potato salad and cold fried chicken out of the icebox. I couldn’t eat, not until I unloaded the nest of fish hooks in my head and the guilt that lived like weevil worms in my heart. “Grady Harrelson said some ugly things about you at the Copacabana.”
“What things?”
“Personal things about y’all being together.”
“Be specific, Aaron.”
“About making love with you.”
“He said he slept with me?”
I looked out the window at the raindrops sliding like quicksilver off the banana fronds, my eyes empty. “He went into detail. I hit him.”
“Whatever he told you, he made up,” she said.
“You didn’t sleep—”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“He claimed you told him we’d broken up.”
“Grady calls every day, no matter how many times I hang up. The other day he asked where you were. I told him I didn’t know because I wasn’t seeing either one of you. I’m sorry I said that.”
She waited for me to speak, but I didn’t.
“You’re still worried I wasn’t a virgin when we met?” she said.
“No, I don’t care about that at all.”
“The boy was a senior and I was a sophomore. We were going to be married. At least that was what we told ourselves. His reserve unit was called up just after his graduation. He was killed at Heartbreak Ridge.”
“I’m sorry, Valerie. I didn’t know any of that.”
“I’m all right now. I wasn’t for a long time.”
“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said. “Maybe you won’t like being around me anymore.”
“It can’t be that bad, can it?”
But I heard the resolve slip in her voice.
“Saber threw a brick out of my car at Grady’s convertible in Herman Park.” I could hear the rain beating on the window in the silence. “It hit a guy named Vick Atlas.”
“Vick Atlas from Galveston?”
“Yes.”
I saw the blood drain from her face.
“He might lose an eye,” I said. “A detective was at my house this morning.”
“Oh, Aaron.”
I looked away from her.
“Do your parents know?” she asked.
“Neither one of them has had a very good life. I try not to add to their problems.” I felt like a fool, someone who had gotten himself in trouble and wanted others to save him from himself. “I don’t see any way out, not unless I give up Saber.”
“He has to go to the cops. On his own. You didn’t do it,” she said.
“They’ll send him to Gatesville.”
“He didn’t mean to hurt anyone. They’ll take that into consideration.”
“Loren Nichols went to Gatesville for shooting a guy with an air pistol after the guy molested his sister.”
“Your friend is not acting like a friend.”
“Saber always stood up for me when nobody else would. He’d always get even with the bullies. He doesn’t have anybody except me.”
It was obvious she didn’t know what to say. How could she? She was seventeen. I wanted to go back into the ferocity of the storm and take her with me so we could disappear inside the rain or be gathered up by a giant funnel and carried out to sea.
“Maybe I could talk with Vick Atlas,” I said.
“My father knows the Atlas family. Don’t go near them.”
“How could your father know them?”
“He was with the OSS. It became the CIA. The Atlas family helped Lucky Luciano get out of prison. They also helped him set up gambling operations close to navy shipyards so the workers would lose their money and stay on the job. You don’t ‘talk’ to people like the Atlases.”