Heartwood by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online Page A

deliberately scissored into strips threw a beer can in the direction of the picnickers.
    “Hey, man, the park’s closing,” he said.
    Then they pulled Max Greenbaum from his Jeep, lifted the cellular phone from his hand, and crushed it on the pavement.
    “Y’all leave that man alone. He ain’t done you nothing,” the black woman yelled.
    “Time to haul yo’ black ham hocks out of here, mama,” the kid in the scissored shirt said.
    The elderly black couple loaded their grandchildren into their car and backed out into the road, their faces staring in bewilderment at the scene taking place before them.
    One of the gangbangers tore Max Greenbaum’s priority mail envelope and the sheet of letterhead paper it contained into shreds and threw them in his face. Then they formed a circle around him and began pushing him back and forth as they would a medicine ball.
    But the terror that Max Greenbaum probably felt turned to anger and he began to fight, flailing blindly at the gangbangers with his fists, his glasses broken on thepavement. At first they laughed at him, then his finger scraped across someone’s eyeball. A gangbanger reeled backwards, the heel of his hand pressed into his eye socket as though it had been gouged with a stick.
    The circle closed on Greenbaum like crabs feeding on a piece of meat.

5
    The Houston homicide detective who called the next afternoon was a woman named Janet Valenzuela.
    “The early word from the coroner is it looks like heart failure,” she said.
    “How’d you get my name?” I asked.
    “The gangbangers picked up most of the pieces of the priority envelope. But a couple were under the victim’s Jeep. We could make out your zip code and the last five letters of your name. Do you know why he would be writing you?”
    “I think he had knowledge that would exonerate a client of mine,” I said.
    “Does this have to do with stolen bonds?”
    “How’d you know?” I said.
    “Greenbaum told his rabbi an uneducated working-man was being set up in an insurance claim. It’s a muddy story. It has something to do with a guy being provokedat a luncheon, then stealing a watch, and a rich guy claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonds were stolen, too. Are the gangbangers tied into this somehow?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “You were a city cop here?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Keep in touch.”
    An hour later Cholo Ramirez pulled his customized Mercury to the curb in front of my office, the stereo thundering. His sister, Esmeralda, got out and walked into the portico on the first floor.
    A moment later she was standing in my office, dressed in the same jeans and maroon shirt, now thoroughly rumpled, she had been arrested in the day before.
    “You’re sprung?” I said, and smiled.
    “They’re not filing on me.”
    “How about the rock under the seat?”
    “The cop was lying. Who’d be crazy enough to drive around in Cholo’s car with crack in it?”
    “They’re bad guys. Who sicced them on you?” I said.
    “I just came to thank you for what you did.”
    “Sit down a minute, will you?”
    “I’m not feeling too good. There was noise in the jail all night.”
    Her face was pretty, her eyes turquoise. She pushed her hair up on her neck with one hand. A package of cigarettes stuck out of the front pocket of her jeans.
    “You had a reason for being out by the Deitrichs’ place?” I asked.
    “I want Mr. Deitrich to leave my brother and Ronnie … Ronnie’s my boyfriend … I want Mr. Deitrich to leave him and Cholo alone.”
    “You were going to tell him that?”
    She blew her breath up in her face and sat down on the corner of the chair. “Look, he’s a bullshit guy. Guys like him didn’t make their money worrying about people who eat refried beans,” she said.
    “Earl Deitrich’s got another agenda?”
    “Hey, I’m glad you weren’t hurt too bad yesterday. That’s it,” she said, and walked out of the office without saying goodbye.
    Temple Carrol