His mind tossed up a line from a Michael Herr story about a mysterious Vietnamese woman who kept killing American officers on the streets of Saigon with a Colt automatic. Army investigators doubted the killer was really a woman; more likely a Viet Cong wearing an ao dai. One khakied sleuth trumped up this bit of logic: “A .45? Now that’s a big, big gun for a iddy-biddy Vietnamese woman.”

Acquired wisdom. Recalled just in time and under pressure. Showed that sweat wasn’t soaking his brain cells. Just his shirt. She eyed him slowly, keeping the Colt’s business end centered on his paunch. He pointed to the pine chair to his left. She nodded and he sat down. He glanced at the pack of Luckies on the table before him. She nodded again. When he looked at her through the curling, blue-gray smoke, she smiled.

“You Ed Earl Burch?”

“The same.”

“You say that proud.”

“Naw, just weary. Mind?”

He pointed the Lucky toward his glass of beer, its bubbles dying from smoke, heat and dead air. She didn’t nod. He waited. His back was hot, wet and stuck to the back of the chair. His forehead was clammy. The shock of having a gun pointed at him was wearing off.

He studied the woman’s face — handsome instead of pretty; heavy makeup, a long, flinty jawline and lots of eyeliner framing the kind of blue eyes you’d see on a Siamese cat. Those eyes were what you’d first notice if she didn’t have the gun — clear and permanently startled.

He took in the rest. Short, straight, swept-from-the-forehead hair –not quite dishwater blonde, not quite light brown. White blouse, rolled up sleeves and a brocade vest with a blue and purple paisley pattern. Tight jeans hugging muscular legs and flared hips. Wrangler, not Guess. Boots that used to be brown. Cracked leather vamps and a riding heel. And a brown leather shoulder bag big enough to hide the Colt, but small enough to match her tiny frame.

No answer to his question, but the tension had eased up. He reached for the glass. The gun came up, centered on his broad forehead. Those startled eyes got narrow and cold. Wrong again.

He parked his forearm back on the tabletop, resting both hands in front, thumbs inward, so she could see them. No tricks from me, lady, so no nervous tugs on that trigger. No calculated pulls, either, pretty please.

“My call, Big ‘Un.”

“You bet.”

“Want to know what’s up, right? Want to know why dinner’s been interrupted, right? Why Arturo would let someone like me in? You’d even like to know just who in the hell you’ve pissed off?”

Questions that had crossed his mind, delivered at a rapid pace that sure wasn’t East Dallas or Mesquite. Maybe Plano or Highland Park. Not the sound of a Yankee transplant, but not a pure Texas twang. Some up-holler South sanded smooth and buried near the back of her mouth.

He said nothing. He took another sweet drag of Lucky. Its hot tip was burning toward the knuckles of his left hand. Wonder if she’ll let me reach over and fetch the ashtray? Nah. He twisted the butt into his food, frowning at the task, drawing the silence down a little tighter.

Let’s do sums. Nothing in his current catalogue of jobs. Surveillance work for a jeweler who didn’t trust his partner. Some background work for a lawyer with a couple of drug-dealing clients. A flyer from a Houston firm trying to track down a fugitive scrap-metal merchant in hopes of grabbing his assets. A North Dallas divorce case he didn’t want to take.

More sums. If this were a pro hit, he’d be dead by now, a close-up shot to the back of the head with a .22, Ruger or Hi-Standard, not a Colt .45.

A simple case of an extremely pissed-off client would draw a shotgun blast or a bunch of bullets from one of the Wonder Nines. Probably a drive-by, probably in the parking lot, the signature of a Jamaican posse. Which made it the style of choice for anyone who wanted to make something that wasn’t look like a drug hit.

So she didn’t want him dead. Not right away, anyway. Most likely, she was sent to say something or take him some place. He relaxed and kept quiet, picking up details in the dim light. Her vest had buttons of silver or pewter. The second button of her blouse was un-buttoned, giving a glimpse of deep cleavage. Above her left eye was a tiny, crescent-shaped scar that makeup didn’t hide.

The silence continued. The heft of the big automatic didn’t seem to tire her. It always tuckered him. A few rounds at the range made his left wrist throb where that car wreck from a decade ago snapped it in two. But when it came to guns, he was wearied by more than the weakness of badly-mended bones.

He had killed four times in twenty years. All four deserved it. All except one were trying to kill him. And the one exception would have, given the chance. It wasn’t death brought about by his own hand that bothered him. He was square on that.

It was all those other deaths seen while knocking around the fringes of that oxymoron known as law enforcement. The baby crushed in the head-on that spared her drunk mother, an expert in the field of check kiting. The maid lying lifeless in the living room of her shotgun house, her sightless stare at the ceiling matched by the third eye her ex-lover put in the middle of her forehead with a .32 revolver. The son of a high-powered builder, garroted in his bathtub by his male lover, a crystal meth addict and sculptor who wanted the boy to lever more money from the old man and flipped when he got turned down. The stock-scam queen who looked like his first ex-wife, her throat cut by a greedy partner.

And one more he didn’t want to talk about. Ever again. That’s what made his wrist weary when he pulled down with his own Colt automatic. That’s what made it tough to stay sharp on the range, making a grim and gritty business out of practice that used to bring on a professional’s pride.

He was getting annoyed. His beer was warm and flat, his food was cold and skewered by a dead butt, white and crumpled in the center of the refried beans.

He reached for the pack of Luckies. She put a hole in the wall near his left ear, causing the sheetrock to explode a cloud of white powder across his shoulder, the side of his face and the tabletop. He heard his own grunt, felt his heart lurch and knew the warm feeling in his crotch wasn’t just sweat.

“Goddamit. Why in the fuck did you do that?”

She smiled. The echo of the Colt made his voice sound small and telescoped the distance between him and her. He could smell burnt powder and piss. He could see a wisp of smoke curl from the gun barrel, its dark eye on him again.

“Awww, your pants are wet, Big ‘Un.”

“Mind if I do something about that?”

“Just so long as it’s slow and easy.”

“How `bout this?”

He edged his left hand off the tabletop, spreading his fingers wide as he moved his arm up and back, reaching for the bandana in his hip pocket. He pinched the square of cotton between his thumb and forefinger, drawing it from the taut confines of his jeans. He kept his other fingers flexed open as his hand came back into her view.

“Very good. You’re learning, Big ‘Un. Might not have to pull any more nasty surprises.”

“One’s plenty.”

He wiped his crotch, hoping to sop up some of the piss that was making a spreading dark spot on his jeans. Fool’s work. He draped the bandana across his lap. The smell of piss drifted up through the cloth.

“You finished? Squared away? Ready to hear what I have to say? Well, are you, Big ‘Un?”

He kept quiet but lit another Lucky. The hand that held his Zippo shook. He looked up. Her startled eyes had narrowed again. For a second, he thought she’d send the second round right into his brainpan. He remembered what Pete Makovy, the academy’s ageless rangemaster, used to say about the stopping power of a 9 mm and a .45 — one’s like getting hit by a fast-moving sedan, the other like a slow-moving freight train.

She chuckled drily and grabbed a rickety bentwood chair to sit down.

“You son of a bitch. You piss in your pants, then you try to piss me off. I’m starting to like you, Big ‘Un. You’re ugly, you’re shaky, but you got cojones. Too bad you pissed on them.”

Then she said a name. Teddy Roy Bonafacio.

Four

It was a name from his past. Not recent. But not so distant either. From a time like this one. Between wives. Alone, but on the force. Making the mindless shuttle between work and a one-bedroom on one of the M Streets off Greenville. Driving a faded red Impala then, a dented red Ford pickup now. Carrying the same Colt in the same shoulder holster.

Teddy Roy was a bad boy who wore his diapers in Del Rio but did most of his growing up in West Dallas, in a tiny pocket of barrio just north of I-30, that bumpy beeline of concrete to Fort Worth. Centered on the Gabe P. Allen Elementary School and flanked by Singleton Boulevard, the neighborhood was pure, hard-working Chicano poor, separated from the gleaming towers of downtown by the concrete sluiceway of the Trinity River, rusty railroad tracks, a belt of low-slung warehouses and lots of long green.

Some called him T-Roy. Ladies mostly. Others called him Boneface — the bloods and homies he took on in knife fights and other turf battles as a kid. His mother was from Monohans — part West Texas oil-field trash, part Mexican ranch hand. T-Roy got her red hair and bad temper. His father was a carpenter from Nueva Rosita, an illegal who crossed the river near Del Rio, then brought his baby son and his ill-humored American wife to Dallas. T-Roy got his high cheekbones and lean body, but none of his nose for honest work.

By his late teens, his daddy was dead and T-Roy had already done county time for a nasty bit of knife work on an older blood named Oscar Moon. During a gang all-skate, T-Roy stabbed Moon in the eye with a horn-handled hunting knife he carried in his boot.

Moon refused to press charges so the most they could get T-Roy on was some minor-league assault beefs from the free-for-all. He bided the time of T-Roy’s jail term with loud boasts at the Red Dog Lounge and Social Club. Knocking back slugs of bad scotch and milk, breakfast of hookers. Moon would see the patch over his dead eye and yell to the other patrons.

Gonna get that Boneface. Cut his balls off. Stuff em down his throat. Fuck him uppppp. Cut his balls offfff.

The scotch roared through his head. The milk made him belch.

Two days after T-Roy hit the street, Moon’s body was found on the Trinity riverbed, stuffed in an old refrigerator. His patch was missing. So were his pants. His severed cock was stuffed in the socket of his dead eye. His balls were carefully placed in the egg tray of the refrigerator door.

Working the riverbed with two patrol guys, Burch and his partner, Wynn Moore, found two items of interest — a Nesbitt orange soda bottle and a used condom in exotic black and gold — and the expected panorama of rusty box springs, abandoned cars and splintered fruit and vegetable boxes.

No weapon. No witnesses. No matter. Looked like T-Roy beat Moon to the punch. Looked like a likely reason to talk at T-Roy. That’s how his partner saw it.

Wynn Moore was his mentor back then, a wiry guy with long sideburns and slicked-back black hair — an ex-Marine who rolled his own and had a long face puckered with acne scars. In his off-hours, he made furniture and painted miniatures.

Burch was the cub detective, a year or so out of patrol, following the master. The Colt was new.

Moore didn’t give much of a damn about seeing T-Roy fry for Moon’s murder.

“A wetback knifing a nigger — I could give a shit, right, sport model?”

Moon’s murder did provide an opening for what Moore was interested in — a lever on Neville Ross, a citizen of South Dallas who dabbled in hookers, narcotics, chop shops, illegals and the occasional contract hit. T-Roy was a spotter for Ross, who plugged illegals into the manpower gap of construction crews, restaurants, factories and warehouses. T-Roy also ran a small squad of teen dealers, selling grass, `ludes and crank bearing the Neville Ross brand.

The killing marked T-Roy as enforcer material. But the finishing touches were too jarring and splashy. It showed T-Roy was a lethal comer. It also made him a liability. Ross would put him on ice for a while, then bring him back as mean muscle.

Unless Moore got to him first.

“See it this way, sport model. Our boy might be mean, but he might be scared shitless, too, first killin’ an’ all.”

A pause to pick his stained teeth. They were eating at Sonny Bryan’s. Beef brisket for Burch, ribs for Moore. Pearl for both.

“Don’t know, Wynn. The little shit cut Moon’s cock and balls off. Placed them just so. Don’t strike me as the scared shitless type. I think he found his callin’.”

“Lookit. We pick him up, dust him up, scare piss out of the boy.”

“What with? A picture of Ol’ Sparky and stories ’bout the way things used to be when you could fry a man for killin’ somebody?”

“Cute, sport model. You ought to be on the furniture what talks — late night.”

Wynn took a pull from his bottle.

“We use what we got, son. Your ugly puss, my natural meaness. We convince the boy we’re ten times worse than Neville Ross. Take him for a ride. Shove a gun barrel down his throat and dry fire a few times. Whip the shit out of him. Who knows what the boy might give us?”

Maybe something on Ross. Maybe not. Maybe a pop for Moon’s murder. Or not. Maybe something on Ross and a pop for the murder, if they were real good and real lucky.

“That would make my dick as big as a beer can, sport model. But let’s not get greedy, right? Just put the ball in play and see what turns up.”

Simple stuff. Nothing complex. See an opening, take a shot. To Moore, this was the main maxim of detective work. Moore wanted to nail Ross but had nothing. He didn’t want T-Roy but could lean on him and get something. Maybe. That was all he asked.

They scouted T-Roy’s haunts. Tough work to keep a low profile for two Anglo cops in a Chicano neighborhood. Mostly, they tapped Moore’s snitches, working the older cop’s broken Tex-Mex and his beefy frame.

Nothing until they talked to Jaime Quinones, a part-time bartender and full-time weenie flasher. Jaime had a flattened nose from club fights as a welterweight. He also had a whiny, raspy voice that wanted to give them useless advice and no information.

“You want to watch this T-Roy fucker. He’s mean. He’s slick. A little puke. Skinny like a goat. You know he did that blood, don’ you?”

“That a true fact? You there?”

“Nah. Nah. Just givin’ you the talk, man. I don’ run with no shit like him.”

“Just kiddies and old ladies, right pard? Scare them clear to Christmas with a flash of your Johnson.”

“I tole you I don’ do that no more. Verdad.”

Jaime held up two fingers, Boy Scout style, then crossed himself. He was backlit by a fluorescent lamp that hung over the rack of bottles behind the bar. A single customer hunched over a beer at the far end, next to the men’s room. They stood near the front door.

“Maybe it’s smooth, young boys now.”

Jaime glared at him, then forced his face to relax. Moore kept quiet, watching the banter, keeping a steady gaze on Jaime’s puffy face. When Moore finally spoke, his voice was soft.

“Seen you down by the park, Jaime. Near the swing sets and them kiddies. Boys at vice wouldn’t like that. Might have to ruin your day. Might have to ruin your parole officer’s day.”

“Man, I’m straight. Don’ know where T-Roy’s at.”

“Just tell what you do know.”

Two names and one address. Chita Alvarez and Consuela Martinez. The address was for Alvarez, T-Roy’s ex-main squeeze. Said to be pissed. Said to hate T-Roy and the puta who stole him away. Said to be a looker who could pick up quarters with certain parts of her body.

She lived in a small apartment off Henderson, not far from the Baylor Medical Center. She worked the night shift as a practical nurse. She hated cops. She hated T-Roy more.

“You tell that cabron he’s got the dick of a monkey and the breath of a dog. You tell him I hope he likes it in prison. You tell him some big black son of a bitch is gonna fuck him in the ass and make him his punk. And you tell him that daughter of a whore has the clap.”

“You bet. Just tell us where he’s at.”

“You’re cops. Sons of whores. Why should I tell you shit?”

“Cause you hate him a whole lot.”

Moore was talking. His voice was soft and soothing. Burch was standing to the side, keeping an eye on the courtyard of the two-story building and the iron-and-concrete catwalk that wrapped around the inside of the second floor. Architecture by Holiday Inn.

Low-angle light from the setting sun caught the rusted ends of rebar poking through breaks in the catwalk. Cracks showed in the building’s brick veneer. Work by the boys at Slap-Em-Up Construction.

She lived in a first-floor unit. When they knocked on her door, she let them do a fast check of her two empty rooms but herded them out when they were done. She stood outside the open door, clutching a white terrycloth robe around the curve of her hips and breasts. Her feet were bare, her dark hair pulled back into a loose pony tail.

She thought about Moore’s last line. Her eyes flashed. She hissed out an address in South Oak Cliff, near Polk Street.

“Consuela’s?”

“No. The place of a friend. The whore lives someplace else.”

The anger was gone from her voice. It had the flat tone of sadness and regret. Moore caught the change, nodded at him and brushed past Chita on his way to the door. She grabbed Moore’s arm and started to curse in fast-forward Spanish. Burch wrapped both arms around her from behind, hoisting her up on his right hip.

Moore pulled out a Case pocket knife, sliced Chita’s phone line then put a twenty-dollar bill next to the disabled phone and walked outside. Chita spat in Moore’s scarred face. She struggled against the strength of Burch’s arms. Her robe gaped open. Her large brown breasts spilled out in the twilight.

“Adios, bonita. Money’s for the phone man. And the peek.”

He let her go, stepping away quickly in case she aimed a foot at his balls. She did. She missed.

“Got to move, got to move, sport model. She’ll make that call from someplace.”

They cut across town. Moore drove. Burch watched the view from the window change from apartment complexes to the office towers of downtown. Nieman Marcus flashed by. He could see the winged horse on the Magnolia Petroleum building, red and riding across the city skyline. As they turned onto Polk, the quality of buildings quickly downshifted to boarded-up storefronts, discount shops and dark bars.

They did a fast pass down a side street, looking for the address Chita gave them. They found it and parked a half block away, on the opposite side of the street.

It was a mustard-colored house, once a grand Victorian dame, now faded and split into two apartments — one above, one below. A dark, muddy alley ran off to the left. A streetlamp four doors down cast weak light across the right side of the front porch but heightened the shadow of shrubbery that ran along the walkway and wrapped round the left front corner.

The top floor was their target. On the left side of the house, where the bushes ended in deep shadow, a darkened iron staircase ran from the ground to a dormer window that had been converted into a doorway. It looked like the only way out, unless an interior staircase led to the front door.

“Don’t like it, Wynn.”

“Don’t worry, sport model.”

To do what Moore wanted to do, they had to play it alone. Backup would mean questions from up top. Backup would make their business T-Roy and murder instead of a grab for a lever on Ross.

“Don’t like it ay-tall, Wynn.”

Moore grunted and got out of the car.

“Bring the pump.”

He grabbed the 12-gauge Winchester, jacked a round of buckshot in the chamber and joined Moore. They circled the block on foot and searched for the alley. They worked their way down the muddy track, hoping a dog didn’t bark.

There was a garage behind the house. Its closed door faced the alley. Ten yards of mud, grass and bushes stood between the garage and the house. The mud and grass were a guess. The bushes were smudges of black against the light color of the house.

Light streamed from a window at the left rear of the house, probably the kitchen of the bottom-floor tenant. The top floor was dark. They could hear the accordion runs and waltz-time beat of Tex-Mex music from one of the rear windows.

Moore motioned him to a shadowy spot on the far side of the alley, a position that let him cover the dormer door and the rear porch. It also gave him quick access to the front. He thumbed off the shotgun’s safety. He pulled the thumb catch off the holster of the Colt, but kept the gun in leather.

Moore pulled his own gun of choice, a Smith & Wesson wheelgun in .44 Special, and slipped off his hand-tooled boots. Burch watched as his partner eased up the staircase in his socks, pausing every two or three steps to listen and catch his breath. The staircase faced the street, forcing Moore to keep his head cocked up and to the left to keep an eye on the windows and door above. The music played on.

Moore made it to a small deck that topped the first flight of stairs. The deck also marked a sharp turn for the second flight. Moore climbed the first three steps, facing the door and windows head on, arm and pistol extended.

The door slammed open. He heard the boom of a shotgun and saw its flash stab down toward Moore. Burch brought his own gun up and started to fire. The nude body of a young woman filled his sights. Her head was thrown back. Someone was holding her by the hair, using her body as a shield. A second somebody was throwing buckshot at Moore, who was sprawled on the stairs, his gun pointed toward the girl and shooter.

The girl pitched forward, pushed from behind. She tumbled down the stairs, slamming into Moore as the shooter let loose another blast. Burch fired his first shot toward the door. As he pumped the next round into the chamber, he saw a flash of white scoot out and swing over the railing.

Another flash and boom from the door. Lead shot whickered into the tree branches above his head. Burch pumped two more rounds that way and heard a wet smack, a grunt and the sound of metal clattering on iron. He looked toward the bushes below the staircase, searching for whoever had dropped over the side. He heard a car fire up with a rattling roar.

A black `63 Impala peeled away from the near curb as he lumbered toward the street. He fired two rounds, blowing out the back window and the left tail light. The car swerved, sideswiped a parked pickup and sped out of range.

He heard a loud groan from the staircase. Moore was sprawled on the deck, facing the door with gun still in hand. His sock-clad feet were on the stairs, his shoulders and head jammed against the bottom of the deck railing. The girl’s body rested across Moore’s stomach. A long bloody groove ran a ragged path up her back. He started to climb the stair and check out the shooter. Moore stopped him with a raspy voice.

“Sumbitch is dead.”

Quick, ragged breaths.

“Saw his chest blow open, sport model.”

“Easy, Wynn. Save it.”

“Ahhhh, I’m gone. Always did want to die with my boots off and a young girl on top of me.”

Moore’s gun dropped out of his hand with a loud, solitary clank. Burch heard the first siren in the distance.