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  “At least until a more permanent solution could be found, huh?”

  Pirano made a tut-tutting noise. “Come now, Captain Spur. You speak of my principals as though they have no head for business. Impregnating a couple of strippers is not enough to get you dead if you are an otherwise productive and valuable employee. Sure, you get a strong lecture. Maybe your annual bonus takes a haircut to reflect the fact that you already took your bonus out in pussy. But your job you keep. Not to mention your life.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No. I don’t believe I am.”

  “Where were you around two in the morning?”

  “This morning? I was over at the Egyptian Lounge, playing a friendly game of Texas Hold’em with Mr. C and some of the boys.”

  “They’d back you up on this?”

  “Hell yes. I make it a policy to stay off the streets on the Friday night of Texas-OU weekend. Too many drunk frat boys driving around town looking to get themselves killed in a car wreck. You cops ought to do something about that, you know. Put a few of those kids in jail. Serve as an example to the rest of ’em.”

  Jeremiah was sorely tempted to tell Pirano that he had been spotted at the Silver Garter late last night, but that would do violence to his pledge to protect O’Brien. Nor was he sure what good it would do him. He would need more evidence than that to bring down the likes of Pirano.

  “Karcher have any family?”

  “Not to my knowledge. He was a loner. Spent all his time at the club. Very dedicated to his job. A model employee, leaving aside his raging horniness.”

  The waiter arrived to remove the salad plate and replace it with a fresh martini and a steak big enough to feed an entire third-grade class.

  Jeremiah said, “I’ll leave you to your lunch. But you ain’t heard the last of this.” He got to his feet and took his slicker down off the hook. He shrugged it on as he watched Pirano. The man had tucked into his steak. He sat chewing, a look of dreamy contentment on his face.

  He appeared not to have one care in the world.

  There were four Rosemary Evanses in the white pages. The first two he called on were dusters. One worked at a big accounting firm and the other was a nurse. They were both sizable women who were in no way exotic-dancer material, even under the most desperate of circumstances.

  The third Rosemary listing was an address at a class-C apartment complex off Greenville Avenue, over on the wrong side of North Central. Jeremiah stepped out of his vehicle and eyed the building from the safety of the sidewalk. It was the kind of place where the cockroaches carried sidearms. The rain had all but stopped. He left his slicker in the car as he proceeded up the sidewalk, pausing to study the tenants’ mailboxes by the front door.

  Rosemary Evans was listed as the occupant of apartment 14B.

  When she answered the door, he knew he had come to the right place. Not only was this Ms. Evans possessed of the kind of frame appropriate to a stripper, but she was dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.

  Seemed like word about Larry was making the rounds.

  Jeremiah doffed his Stetson out of respect. “Ms. Evans? My name is Jeremiah Spur. I’m a Texas Ranger and I’d like to ask you a few questions about an acquaintance of yours, Larry Karcher. I take it you’ve heard what’s happened.”

  She nodded her head and led him into the little apartment. It was a studio but she had gone to some trouble to fix the place up and it looked clean enough.

  They sat in chairs on either side of a little table and she began to bawl. Jeremiah waited for her tears to subside, which, at length, they did.

  “It’s just so awful,” she sniffed as she wiped the tears from her cheeks. “To love someone and then to lose them like—like that.”

  “You heard, then, how they found him?”

  She nodded again and blew her nose. She stared down at her hands for a few moments, then looked up. “I saw him just yesterday. He seemed so happy. So alive. He was so sweet to me. You see, he had changed his mind and, and—”

  The crying commenced again. She fairly shook with it.

  “You was hopin’ he’d marry you.”

  “He said he would. And then he said he wouldn’t. And then just a few days ago he said he’d like to get together, and when we did he said he’d been thinking about it and he’d decided he was in love with me after all and he’d just been afraid of the, you know, commitment. We would have been so happy together. And now—now he’s gone. Gone forever.”

  She shook her head as though unable to bring herself to believe her own words.

  “Leaving you alone. And in a family way, from what I understand. Which brings to mind something else I heard. Karcher managed to get another one of his dancers pregnant. Is that true?”

  “Yes. That’s yet another sad story!” This exclamation provoked further tears. She cried so hard she bent over double. The woman seemed incapable of holding it together.

  Jeremiah stood to go. He figured he might as well leave this woman to do her grieving alone. He put his Stetson on his head and squared it there.

  “Thanks for the time. Condolences on your loss.” When he got to the door, he paused, then turned back toward Rosemary. “Any chance you might know where I could find this other girl that Karcher knocked up?”

  She heaved a sigh. “In a graveyard in Paris, Texas, where she came from.”

  “You sayin’ she’s dead?”

  “Overdosed on sleeping pills after Larry left her for me. It was just awful. Her own brother found her. She’d been dead for three days. Poor man. He took it terribly hard.”

  “Any idea where I might find the brother?”

  “Yes sir. At the Silver Garter. He’s a bartender there, named Paul O’Brien.”

  It took Jeremiah less than an hour to track down Victor Pirano again. He found the man in a booth at the Egyptian Lounge. Jeremiah slid onto the opposite bench and took out his cigarettes.

  “Captain Spur,” said Pirano. “Twice in one day, and on a Saturday at that. Have you ever given thought to taking a weekend off? Leave the law enforcement to someone else till Monday? Watch a little college football?”

  Jeremiah lit his cigarette and looked around the restaurant. “I might do that someday, when all the bad guys is behind bars. Speakin’ of which, where’s ol’ Joe?”

  “He said something about going to a fundraiser for the mayor.”

  Jeremiah took a drag and tapped ash. “He’s plugged in way up the chain, ain’t he?”

  “I’d find something else to do with my time, were I you, Captain Spur. Like I said. College football. Notre Dame plays later today. I can even place a bet for you, if you’d like.”

  Jeremiah grunted. “Got something I need to tend to first. If I was to tell you I had an eyewitness that puts you out back of the Silver Garter at two o’clock this morning, what would you say?”

  “I would say your eyewitness is a lying cocksucker and a four-flushing son of a bitch.”

  “You Yankees got a way with words, I’ll grant you that. Can you prove you weren’t there?”

  Pirano held up a hand and motioned for a waiter to join them. “Maurice,” he said to the man when he arrived at tableside, “where was I at two o’clock this morning?”

  The waiter shrugged. “Out back, playin’ poker with Mr. C and a few of the other boys.”

  Pirano looked at Jeremiah. “You want the names of the others, so you can ask them?”

  “I don’t believe that will be necessary.”

  “Thank you, Maurice.”

  “Any time, Mr. P.”

  When the waiter was out of earshot, Pirano said, “A man with your superlative deductive skills will no doubt by now have figured out that someone is trying to set me up to take the fall for the recent capping of Mr. Larry Karcher. As you can imagine, I would very much like to know who that is.”

  Jeremiah stubbed out his cigarette and leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “I’ll tell you, but I need you to promise to do something for
me first.”

  * * *

  By the time Jeremiah got back to the strip bar by the stadium, it was beginning to fill up with college boys dressed in burnt orange and crimson and cream. They all looked waterlogged and whiskey-logged. The game had ended in a draw, 15–15, thanks to a last-second Longhorn field goal.

  A tie, the retired Texas football coach Darrell Royal had famously said, is like kissing your sister.

  A man kissing his sister—maybe not all that exciting, but certainly not illegal. In some places, it even seemed like it was encouraged.

  Arkansas came to mind.

  But a man killing another, as revenge for his sister?

  That wasn’t okay anywhere Jeremiah could think of.

  Paul O’Brien was standing at the bar in back and he watched as Jeremiah weaved his way through the place. There were women all around the big Ranger with their private parts on display. Jeremiah paid them no mind. His sweetheart was and always would be his wife Martha, who was back home at his ranch in Washington County.

  When he got to the bar, he nodded at O’Brien, who watched him warily.

  “You got a phone I could use?” Jeremiah said.

  O’Brien reached under the bar and produced a telephone. He set it down on the bar before Jeremiah, who had lit up a cigarette and was shaking the match out.

  “How about a phone book?”

  Out came the phone book.

  “Do me a favor. Look up the phone number for the Egyptian Lounge.”

  “Joe Campagnolo’s place?”

  “Yep.”

  O’Brien paged through the phone book for a few seconds, then handed it to Jeremiah.

  “Now,” Jeremiah said, “I’m fixin’ to call over there and ask for Victor Pirano. And when he comes on the line? I’m gonna let him know you told me you saw him out back last night.”

  O’Brien’s eyes bugged out. “But, but—you promised you wouldn’t do that!”

  “I did indeed. But since you was lyin’ about what you saw, that fact renders my promise null and void.”

  Jeremiah reached for the phone, but O’Brien grabbed it away. “I can’t let you do that!”

  “He’s bound to find out sooner or later. Might as well tell the man now.”

  “But what makes you think I’m lying?”

  “Because you’re the one that done Larry Karcher. As revenge for how he treated your sister: first knocking her up, then dumping her for another gal. And the fact that she took her own life over it.”

  As the barman spoke, Jeremiah studied his eyes. He could see the guilt that was lodged there.

  It was always the same. Their eyes gave them away every time.

  The man threw the phone on the floor and went running down the length of the bar. He vaulted over the top and turned and disappeared through a door leading to the back.

  He was no doubt headed for his car, figuring to do a runner.

  Jeremiah stayed where he was, smoking his cigarette and not looking at the naked women that were everywhere to be seen.

  Pirano and the two boys he had brought with him would want a few minutes alone with O’Brien when he came bursting out the back door of the Silver Garter.

  When Jeremiah was done with his cigarette, he stubbed it out in the ashtray.

  He headed around the bar to the door that led out back. He figured he’d better get out there before Pirano took it upon himself to finish off O’Brien.

  That was a job that rightfully belonged to Old Sparky, down in Huntsville. Not to some greasy Big D mobster.

  If he got high and behind it, Jeremiah thought he just might get O’Brien booked for capital murder and still make it back to his hotel room in time to catch the kickoff of the Aggies game on the radio this evening.

  He figured he’d earned the night off.

  He would go back to law enforcement in the morning.

  AN ANGEL FROM HEAVEN

  BY FRAN HILLYER

  Northpark

  This is what it came down to, just Luke and the breaths, starting and stopping, with long, silent spaces between. The end was hovering, circling the bed. He took the old man’s hand and said what he always said.

  “You can go now. You did the very best you could no matter what. It’s all going to be good.”

  He touched the old man’s brow, and the breathing stopped. The low growl of Luke’s cell phone broke his concentration. It would be a few minutes before the old dude was technically gone. He looked at the second hand on his watch and tried to put the cell phone out of his mind. Two minutes should do it. He had been wearing the stethoscope all night, and he put the two prongs in his ears and touched the old man’s chest with his chest piece. No sound. The face slackened, the mouth fell open.

  “You’re free now, Old Dude.” He walked to the oversized chair he had lived in for the last three days and sat down hard.

  Three days’ work this time. It could have been done so much quicker, but you had to draw it out a little—not too much—to convince them that it was the real deal. They want it soon but slow, the same way women want sex. He could probably be out of here in a couple of hours if the old dude’s family came soon.

  He removed his cell phone from his shirt pocket and read the text. R U coming home 2day? Geez, she’d been sending texts since five a.m. Didn’t she ever give it a rest? Now he had to clean up, take the empty vials and syringes to the dumpster, put the unused medications in his car. One thing he had learned was that with the really old ones, no one is paying much attention. When it comes right down to it, nobody cares what kind of drugs these old bodies have in them. He worked around the bed, picking up used wipes, bagging the trash, wiping down the furniture, which the old man had become a part of now. Not such a bad old dude. He put the bagful of medical waste next to the front door, then went into the bathroom to shave. He used the old man’s electric razor because it was a really nice one. He’d been using it on the old man, and he liked it. He guessed they’d miss it if he took it with him.

  He wanted to put on one of the old man’s monogrammed shirts, but that probably wouldn’t be such a good idea either. They were the best quality, and he knew they fit him because he’d tried on the old dude’s clothes while he was drugged out. Anyway, what if they did give the shirts to him? He’d still have to pull out all those monograms, and that’s a lot of work. He’d made his deal, and it was a good one. Hell, get a few more gigs like this, and he could even get a monogrammed shirt for himself. He rubbed his hand over his newly shaven cheek. Nice shave. He had his own toothbrush in the bathroom. He would never use a dead man’s toothbrush. He needed to call Cynthia to tell her this job was over, see if she had anything else lined up.

  * * *

  The room on the nursing floor where Anne’s mother lay looked like any hospital room except for the chair-rail molding and the vanilla walls. Sally rose from the mahogany dining chair and offered it to Anne. Most of her mother’s valuable things—the paintings she had collected, her books, and the remnant of her antiques—had been moved to a storage locker. Her old TV, which she never watched, and the single mahogany dining chair were the only personal items in the room. Her mother had been stripped of everything she ever cherished.

  “Just sit down, Sally,” Anne said. Anne chose to sit in the wheelchair because it was next to the bed, and from it she tried to meet her mother’s vacant gaze. Her mother’s arms sagged between the railings of the hospital bed, scaly and speckled with purple splotches. Everything on her body looked wilted: the pouches under her eyes, the droop of her underlip, even her earlobes, which looked too big for her face.

  “Well,” the old woman said when she saw her daughter, “what’s going on over there?”

  Over there might describe the gulf between the two women or Anne’s house with its broken dishwasher, but it probably didn’t mean either one of those things, one being too abstract and the other grounded in a world where people talk with each other about the everyday progress of their lives.

  “Where?”


  “You know,” she said, and her eyes widened. Even the blue of her eyes had faded. Her body hunched into a question mark. She looked at the window, at the vanilla wall, at the framed photo of David’s four-year-old. Outside the window, the branches of a live oak reached sideways and reminded Anne of the trees she used to climb on vacation at the coast.

  “If you knew what they do to me here. There’s a big fight every day.” The old woman turned her pale gaze on Anne, pleading. “You have to get me out of here.”

  Anne looked at Sally. Sally shrugged. “They change her diaper. They dress her. It’s over in three minutes.” Anne wished she could get her out of there today, but there was wheelchair accessibility in the house to consider. She wished for an angel to carry her mother away.

  “We’re working on it, Mother. We’re having David’s old house fixed up for you.” It wasn’t so much to make her mother happy because happy was something she wasn’t going to get, never even had, despite marrying two handsome, rich men and seeing the entire world except the north and south poles, including Kashmir twice. But at least the house would be part of her estate, and with the right kind of care, it could save them all money in the long run, especially if they could get hospice to take her.

  “I think we have someone who wants to buy the Livingstone Road property,” Anne said. She didn’t know why she was bothering to tell her mother this, but there were days when the woman seemed to know things. She knew her daughter. She knew everyone in the family, even when she got their names wrong. Sometime last week Michael had become Matthew, but he was reliably Matthew now. One of these days, she might just check in and demand to have a full accounting of everything: tenants, bonds, her four checking accounts, and what the accountant said to do about taxes.

  “We really need to take this offer, Mother. We won’t get another one like this.”