voice and hated it.
“Fuck you.”
“Do it, Frankie.”
“You get on the ground, bitch.”
Lucia’s arm was bleeding. He’d broken the skin.
So much like his father, yet the anger in his eyes was more volatile—more like what Lucia saw when she looked in the mirror, when she thought about Mission Road.
You couldn’t arrest my father.
Frankie turned. He started back toward his car.
He would drive away, leave her standing there. She was meaningless to him. The years with the badge, the years building herself back up from a thousand shattered pieces, they meant nothing.
She was a girl again, abandoned in a cold ditch, her back snagged on a line of barbed wire, the orange moon glowing above her through the naked branches. Another man was walking away—a man in a beige suit who had just crushed her soul like a balsa wood toy.
Later, she would not remember raising the nightstick, but she felt the crack of wood against bone reverberate in her fingers. Franklin White crumpled.
Her rage left her. Years of police officer composure shed off her like winter clothes. She was alone, horrified.
Afterward, talking to Etch, she would realize how many mistakes she’d made. She would try to piece together what really happened and wonder if she was going crazy. Had she only hit him once? Hadn’t she left the murder weapon with her fingerprints on the handle?
At the time, she had no thought but getting away, running from that place.
She dropped the bloodied nightstick and fled.
THE STATE OF TEXAS LET ME KEEP MY PI LICENSE.
My less-than-heartening conclusion: They looked at how many times it had almost gotten me killed and decided that letting me keep my job was the best possible punishment.
As for Guy White, his only punishment was living his final months under his daughter’s care. Madeleine got him a private nurse, allowed no visitors without her permission. The fire damage Ralph and I caused to the White house was not that extensive, but Madeleine announced that the mock-presidential mansion which had been the symbol of her family’s power for a generation would be razed by New Year’s. She would rebuild to better suit her tastes.
A new police lieutenant was shuffled into Etch Hernandez’s homicide position, but Detective Kelsey became the true power in the department. He moved into Ana’s office. Word was he’d make sergeant by the end of the month. Given that the department had few options for positive publicity, they were using Kelsey as a hero—proof that the SAPD would not tolerate wrongdoing within its ranks, even if it meant busting a superior officer.
The real support of the rank and file went to Ana DeLeon. A cruiser was almost always parked in front of her house—some colleague, making sure she and the baby were okay. Gift baskets, home-cooked dinners, offers for baby-sitting poured in. The police fraternal organization set up a college scholarship fund for Lucia Jr.
Once, and only once, Johnny Zapata sent his lackey Ignacio around to talk to Ana, to see if she would sell off Ralph’s pawnshops. Within forty-eight hours, the SAPD had found reasons to shut down all of Zapata’s front businesses. Ignacio was tossed in jail on several outstanding warrants. Madeleine White personally visited Zapata’s mother at Mission San José to let her know that her son was bothering a defenseless widow who happened to be a close friend of the White family.
Johnny Shoes got the message. Ana never heard from him again.
As for Ralph’s legacy, nobody, even the cops, had a negative word to say about him. He’d given his life to stop the man who shot his wife. He was a hero. Who had ever doubted that Ana’s marriage to him had been the right choice?
I kept waiting for the shock to wear off. I kept busy, took new clients, spent a lot of time with Maia. I knew the pain was somewhere inside, waiting to rip me apart, but my heart felt like it had been given a shot of morphine.
I drove past Ralph’s old childhood home, now occupied by another enormous family. I brought marigolds to San Fernando Cemetery, where Ralph’s simple gray tombstone stood next to his mother’s, near a spot where we’d once had lunch during Día de los Muertos. I visited Sunken Gardens, the Blanco Café, the stadium at Alamo Heights High School—all the places that had defined our friendship. I kept remembering Ralph’s irreverent grin, his wisecracks, the way he treated the world as a dangerous toy.
And every day I talked to Ana DeLeon, until