Faithful Unto Death (12 page)

“Your grandfather came to see me today.”

“Which one?”

“As it turned out, I saw them both. Your grandfather Parker made an appearance at the juvie jail and caught me up.”

Alex gave a snort. “That wasn’t an appearance. I heard it was a full-blown scene. I heard HD has been kicked out of the Miss Congeniality contest.”

“You always call your granddaddy HD?”

“Everyone does. Everyone but Mom.”

“He is a piece of work, your grandfather. Does he always come off like that?”

Alex worked his hands under the collar around Baby Bear’s scruff, kneading and pulling the loose skin. Baby Bear made little grunting noises. That’s a contented noise for Baby Bear.

“He doesn’t. No. He never used to. He’s always thrown his weight around, but not like this. He’s . . . I don’t know. We’re kind of worried about him. When I was a kid . . .”

When he was a kid?

“HD is the greatest thing on earth. I’ve met Muhammad Ali, Yao Ming, Tiger Woods, tons of those guys—HD would make a donation to their favorite charity, and we’d get invited to some function. HD took me to Scotland to play Turnberry and Saint Andrews. It’s not like I’m even that good a golfer. I’m about fifth on the team.”

So much for the negative three handicap.

“But HD thinks I’m the next Jack Nicklaus.” Alex gave a laugh. “He’d pull me out of school in the middle of the day and take me to a business lunch at Tony’s. He said listening to negotiations was a better education than anything I could learn in school.”

Baby Bear gave a great yowling yawn and shook his head, making his tags jingle. He settled down in the grass and Alex knelt next to him.

“It made my dad crazy. He wanted Mom to take HD off the safe list at school so he couldn’t take me out without their permission. Dad said sitting around watching old men drink martinis and eat quart-sized bowls of seafood gumbo was not an education. But it was. I learned a lot.”

The bench gave a crack when I shifted my weight but it held.

“Yeah? What did you learn at Tony’s?” I’d been there. Once. Thirty-four dollars for a Philly cheesesteak. I don’t care if it is Kobe beef.

“Ha! For one thing, putting a drink in a martini glass doesn’t make it a martini, there’s no such thing as a chocolate martini, and only girls drink vodka martinis. How’s that for an education?”

“You could write a Chelsea Handler book with that kind of education. I think I’m with your dad on this one.”

“Who is Chelsea Handler?”

“Never mind.” My sister-in-law, Stacy, loves those books. I read a chapter of
Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang
.
I don’t think I’m the target audience.

Baby Bear rolled over and offered up his belly for Alex’s ministrations. Alex started a slow tickle over the expanse that made Baby Bear wriggle and groan with pleasure.

“HD got Jenasy a Mini Cooper when she turned sixteen. He bought me that truck last birthday. Dad hates it. Dad was okay with HD getting Jenasy the Mini, but he wants me to drive a used Volvo. I mean, he wanted—”

“I know what you mean, son.”

“Jenasy was always Dad’s princess.” He blew through his nose. “But after HD said what he wanted to give me for my birthday, Dad gave me this big talk about how much gas was going to cost me, and how he was afraid I would wipe out an entire trailer of immigrants with that truck, and all about conspicuous consumption and all, so I said, okay, whatever he wanted, and then on my birthhday, HD comes roaring up the front drive in that truck, big bow on it like in a car commercial, Fredrick following him in the Bentley, and HD hands me the keys and a gas card. Not one of those twenty-five-dollar gas cards, either. A credit card in HD’s name. I’ve got a bottomless gas tank.”

He put his sneakers against Baby Bear’s back and shoved. “That’s enough, Baby.”

Baby Bear got up and ambled over to me. He laid that huge, heavy head on my lap and sent up his pathetic look. That was meant to convey that he hadn’t had any affection all day long and there was this place behind his left ear that really needed some attention. Normally, he would have gotten to me with those eyes, but I was feeling sore about the secrets he’d been keeping from me. When he saw I wasn’t going to come through, he wandered off to gnaw on a young sapling that would have liked to grow up to be a tree, if only there weren’t random tree-eating Newfoundlands in the neighborhood.

“What was I going to do? I mean, HD had already bought the thing. He’d driven it off the lot. I really couldn’t say no.”

I couldn’t have said no to that monster truck at sixteen. Even at my age, I’d find it hard to say no to limitless free gas.

“But this ‘master of the universe’ thing he’s been doing lately? I don’t know where that comes from. It’s weird. It’s like he’s channeling Jett Rink.”

“You’ve seen
Giant
?”

“Like fifty times. It’s HD’s favorite movie. It’s practically his only movie. ‘Money isn’t everything, Jett.’ ‘Not when you’ve got it.’”

He had the voices down and I gave a laugh.

“HD, he wasn’t always all about the money and what he could make happen with it. That stuff was cool, but . . . he’s got a cabin over in Johnson City. Have you been to Johnson City?”

“I’ve gone through on my way to Pedernales Falls.”

“I love that place. That’s my favorite Texas park. That’s why HD bought the Johnson City place, a long time ago when my mom was young, because it’s so close to Pedernales Falls. Two bedrooms and then one room that’s kitchen and living room all together. It’s nothing fancy. Window unit air conditioners. It looks like he furnished it out of the Salvation Army. In one room there’s four sets of bunk beds—one on each wall. My cousins are all a lot older than me, and when HD took them out to the cabin, he would fill every bunk. By the time I was old enough, it was just me and him. My cousins were in college or off and married. I didn’t mind. HD would tell stories about the tricks my cousins would play on him, and what it was like in Texas when he was growing up. The house HD grew up in? Didn’t have any air-conditioning. Imagine Texas in the summer with no air-conditioning.”

There are lots of people in Texas who live through our monstrous summers with no air-conditioning. Not by choice.

Alex lay back in the grass, his knees up.

“Jenasy hated the place. She said it smelled. She and Beanie would go shopping when HD took me on trips.”

“Last time I went to the cabin, it was me and Dad. Right before Christmas. Johnson City isn’t much, but they do a big deal over Christmas lights. We hiked the State Park all day. Each night we had dinner at the Friendly Bar Bistro. Live entertainment, and on Sunday night, all these cool old people get together and play every instrument you can think of. Keyboard and fiddle and steel guitar, mandolin, and ukulele. I swear, one old dude was playing the ukulele. And they were
good
. It’s not Dad’s kind of thing at all, but he
loved
it. He had such a great freaking time. He was happy. He acted like everything was okay. Like he wasn’t—my dad is almost never happy. Not with me.”

Silence. Alex’s knees went up to his chest and he rolled over on his side and wrapped his arms around his head. His shoulders shook. Baby Bear stopped chewing on the tree and loped over. He pawed at Alex’s arms and snaked his tongue over the kid’s face, making a worried rumble. I stood over the kid, not happy with him, either, feeling his heartbreak, and not wanting to. I gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“Hey. Alex. I know you miss him.”

“I don’t know if I do.”

“What?”

“I don’t think I knew my dad. Not really. I don’t think any of us did.” He shook his head.

“Alex, it’s natural to have some confused feelings—”

He sat up and looked at me. One arm holding Baby Bear, the other fending off the dog tongue.

“Are you going to tell me you understand?”

I stopped.

“Because you don’t. You don’t understand anything. You don’t know enough to understand.”

Fair enough. I squatted down. My running shorts didn’t give me as much protection from the prickles and burrs as Alex’s jeans, so I balanced on the balls of my feet.

“I’m off track,” I said. “I did see HD today, but it was Dr. Garcia who came to see me.”

Alex didn’t change position, but he got a sort of listening intensity about him. “Yeah? What did Granddad want?”

“He’s worried about you.”

Alex gave a snort and threw his hands out.

“Yeah? Well, this would be a good time to be worried about me. I’m worried about me, too. I’ve never even had a traffic ticket before. What do you think; is there a spin I can put on all this? Work it as some kind of ‘life experience,’ use it as an edge to get into UT?”

He crossed his legs in the grass and started picking at the rubber on his shoes. The full moon was high now and shining on his straight, fair hair. Baby Bear laid his heavy head on the boy’s lap. Alex massaged the silky black ears. Seeing as good as he was with Baby Bear, he couldn’t be all bad, even if he was a murderer.

“You know what?” he said. “I’m worried about him, too—not for the same reason he’s worried about me, I mean, I don’t think he killed Dad or anything—”

I interrupted. “Your grandfather does not think there’s any chance whatsoever of your having killed your dad.”

“No?” He lifted his head up to look at me. “Well, that’s good to hear. He got pretty exercised last night when he talked to me after the police let me go and gave me my truck back. Truck is cleaner than it has been since the day HD gave it to me. And my lighter is gone and someone took the twenty dollars I had in the console.”

Alex made a fist and stretched one of Baby’s great ears over the closed hand. He stroked the ear while Baby Bear pushed into his hand, moaning with gratitude.

“Granddad is an old man, you know. I don’t think about that most of the time. He’s still working at the free clinics, you know, couple a days a month, and he still skis, if you can believe that. He’s good, too. He taught me when I was three. He shouldn’t ski. It’s crazy for an old guy to go flying down a mountain.”

He paused. Those had been better times for the Garcia family.

“Last night, though, he looked old. His hands were trembling. This has been a terrible shock for him.” There was a pause. “Shit.”

He tilted his face up and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to keep the tears in. He was as fair as his grandfather was dark, but at the moment, Alex reminded me of Dr. Garcia, of his father, the three men, their gestures so alike. He didn’t look a bit like HD.

I said, “Alex, I’m real sorry about your dad. I know I told you all that at the house, but I really am, for you and your mom and your granddad. For Jenasy. I’m even more sorry that you’ve been drawn into all this. And . . . Alex, was Jo with you that night?”

His fine-boned face shot up and he stared at me like he meant to stare me into consternation. It didn’t work.

“Was she?” I asked.

Another snort and he shook his head, not in denial but over the unreasonableness of adults in persisting to butt in where they didn’t have any business.

“The reason I’m asking, Alex, it’s not that I think I have the right to know everything Jo does, everywhere Jo goes, who she’s with. I do have that right, but we won’t go there right now.”

This time he made the sound that used to be written as “pshaw” and plucked a long grass and nibbled its root. I wanted to remind him that people walk their dogs on the levee.

“The reason I’m asking is because Detective Wanderley is going to want to question her. I hope you don’t think she’d lie for you—”

“In a heartbeat,” he shot back.

Just more and more good news.

I said, “Would you want her to?”

Silence, a long one this time, but I let it drag on. I wanted the answer to my question. It would tell me a lot about the young man sitting in front of me.

When he broke the silence, it wasn’t to answer my question. He asked one of his own.

Alex said, “If I tell you something, and it’s not about the”—he stumbled over the word—“the murder, it didn’t have anything to do with Dad dying, would you swear not to tell anyone? Not the police, not Mom, and never, ever Granddad. Most of all, you can’t tell Jo. Could you swear that? On the Bible?”

It was my turn to be quiet. I don’t make promises lightly. They matter to me.

I said, “Alex, you know we don’t operate like the Catholic Church. I’m not a priest, and if you confess—”

“It’s nothing I did.”

“My not telling, that’s not going to put anyone in any danger?”

“I’m trying to keep someone safe.”

So, I mean, this was a sticky situation I could be letting myself in for. Whatever Alex wanted to tell me could be dangerous information, dangerous to someone anyway. I don’t think a sixteen-year-old is the best judge of . . . anything. But if the kid told me, at least he’d have a grown-up on his side to help him.

And I might be able to talk him into telling the right person, once I knew what the problem was. There was Jo, too, another reason to make this promise. Whatever it was, if Jo was involved, I wanted to be in a position to help.

I silently asked God to guide me but I didn’t feel anything more specific than a strong urge to know what it was Alex was hiding and that was as likely to be coming from me as from Him. More likely.

Alex was waiting, his eyes intent on mine.

“All right,” I said, reluctant to let the binding words out of my mouth, “I promise.”

He kept staring at me, trying to decide if he could trust me or not, and I didn’t look away. Either my word was good enough for the boy or it wasn’t. After a minute, he nodded and stood up to take his cell phone out. Again, he made no attempt to keep me from hearing what he was saying.

“Jo.” His voice was soft and gruff when he said her name. “Yeah, everything’s fine. I mean I’m okay, everything isn’t fine but nothing you don’t know about. No, I’m not at the truck, that’s why I’m calling, I’ll be a little longer than I said. Yeah, he’s here”—he flicked a look at me, and pushed his thick hair back—“but it’s okay. Listen, I have to go. No, I’ll tell you later. I’ll call you soon. I love you, Jo, and listen, I am so freaking proud of you. Don’t worry about anything. It’s all going to work out, no matter what”—another look at me—“bye.”