"Because you're the ‘real' son, and she was merely a cousin. Because you're the well-behaved, dutiful straight-A student type, and she's always been so troubled. I imagine your father and mother treated her a little differently than they treated you."
Clay shook his head. "My parents divorced when I was in junior high school. I don't see her much. Truth is, she treated me and Emmie exactly the same-with complete indifference."
Tess had forgotten about the divorce, the "Galveston girl" who had retreated to California. It was one of the rare bits of truth Marianna had let slip. "I'm sorry."
"Why? It's just more history. The social history of the latter part of the twentieth century. Half of all marriages, etc., etc." He paused, stuck on his own statistic. "I've never quite believed that, actually. What does it mean? Does someone like Elizabeth Taylor skew the results? Do you count Richard Burton twice? Even if you don't, in her case, one hundred percent of marriages end in divorce. See, that's the problem with anecdotal evidence."
"Not one hundred percent. Seven-eighths, not quite 90 percent."
"Huh?"
"Mike Todd died in a plane crash. So, divorced seven times, widowed once. Nick Hilton, Michael Wilding, Michael Todd, Eddie Fisher, Richard Burton, Richard Burton, John Warner, Larry Fortensky. So far."
Clay looked genuinely aghast. "You shouldn't have that in your brain. It's taking up space where something useful might go."
"I don't seem to have much say about what gets lodged in there," Tess said, hitting her head lightly with her palm, as if to shake out the offending factoid. "Nope, it's stuck, right next to the lyrics from the theme song from The Flintstones. Then again, you'd be surprised at the kind of information that proves useful. Why, I bet there are things Emmie told me the one time we talked, or even you and your father, which seemed meaningless, but may yet help me find her."
She had thought her bluff hit just the right note of implicit menace, but Clay wasn't impressed. "Sounds like urban archaeology to me. But at least they have a reason for doing things the way they do."
"What do you mean?"
"There's a hotel down Alamo Street, the Fairmount. It used to be an old flophouse, on the other side of town, and they moved it from one site to the other over two days. I think it made Guinness-not the largest building ever moved, but the largest one ever moved on rubber tires across city streets."
"Now that's the kind of stat Baltimore specializes in. Distinction through compound modifier." The longer she stayed in San Antonio, the more she saw how much the two cities had in common. "But what does it have to do with archaeology?"
"They were clearing the site when they realized the land was essentially a trash pit from the battle of the Alamo. Broken china, weaponry, even an unfired cannon ball. But the hotel move couldn't be delayed. So, toward the end, they just began shoveling it all up and carting away truckfuls of dirt, to be sifted through later at the University of Texas-San Antonio. Not an ideal way to work, but sometimes it's all you've got."
"Is there a point to the story, Clay? Is there a big pile of dirt I should be sifting through somewhere?"
He was suddenly, inexplicably, quite angry. "I'm saying that you can dig forever, but all you're going to find is garbage. Even if you did find something of significance, you wouldn't really know where it fit without years of study. You can't just come someplace and get to know it right away. You can't come into a family, any family, and think you know them because you heard some gossip, or read some sleazy book. You don't know my dad, or me, or Emmie. You don't understand anything you've seen. You're just a dumb, gawking tourist. Too bad there's not a gift shop for you to visit. At least you might leave with a nice keychain for your troubles."
And with this, he pushed himself off the bench and ran for the exit, toward the very wall a handful of men had scaled when William Barrett Travis had drawn the line that separated the men from the boys. Assuming, Tess thought, that had ever really happened.
Chapter 24
"He lives on Bikini."
"Huh?"
"This detective, Marty Diamond," Rick Trejo said, heading up Austin Highway. Tess realized she knew where she was, for once.
"He lives in a bikini? You means he hangs around the house in one?" Tess envisioned a too-brown old man, greased-up and dessicated at the same time, his stomach cascading out of a tiny magenta swimsuit. It wasn't an image that sat well on a late lunch from La Calesa. Rick had given her another taco tutorial-actually, the menu had been Mexican-Mexican according to his lexicon, the same sort of food that Espejo Verde had served. Despite that unhappy association, it had been all she could do not to stand up on the breezy patio and belt out: "How Long Has This Been Going On?" One thing was certain: She was never going back to ground beef, cheddar cheese, and chopped lettuce in an Old El Paso shell.
"Bikini is the street name," Rick said. "All the streets in this subdivision have some kind of Hawaiian theme. Waikiki, Molokai. Lots of retired military around here. I think the Pacific Rim theme makes them feel at home."
The houses in this northeast-side neighborhood were small ranches. Some had fallen on hard times, but most were fastidiously maintained. The lawns, in particular, seemed a kind of fetish here. Tess wondered how much work it took to keep one's yard so green and lush in a climate like San Antonio's. Rain hadn't threatened once in all the time she had been here.
They were on Molokai now. A witch, two tiny skeletons, and some cartoon superhero that Tess didn't recognize were walking down the street with Mylar bags.
"It's Halloween," she said. "I'd completely forgotten. Lots of tricks, but no treats at La Casita. "
Rick grunted. He was in a rotten mood and had been preoccupied throughout their lunch, barely touching his food. Tess had finished his carne tampiquena for him. He had mentioned a fight with Kristina, but Tess didn't understand how that could bother him. Bickering seemed to be a cornerstone of their relationship.
"He must have a good porno name," she remarked, just to be saying something. "Our detective friend, Marty Diamond. A good porno name, but not a good soap opera name."
"What?"
"Don't you know how to get your porno name? You take your childhood pet and the name of the street where you lived as a child, and that's your ‘nom de nekkid.' I don't have a good one unless I cheat and take the cross street where I currently live. Then I'm Tweetie Shakespeare. What's yours?"
"Your dog's name is Esskay," Rick pointed out.
"You weren't listening. Childhood pet, childhood street. I think those are the rules. Besides, I said I was cheating. The porno names are problematic. But the soap opera names always work. That's middle name plus current street. Then I'm Esther Bond. So boring. Sounds like the old lady who runs the dress shop and never gets in on one of the big plots."
"I'm…Midnight Zarzamora." He scowled when Tess laughed. "I think it's pretty."
"Oh, very pretty. But you're going to need implants."
He was turning onto Bikini now. Two blocks in, a paunchy man with a cigarette was standing in his driveway. He had a bristly gray flat-top, a baby blue Banlon shirt that hugged his bulging stomach, and baby blue suede loafers that no one would ever dare step on. Even if Tess hadn't known it was Marty Diamond, she would have known that this was a man who had spent most of his life in uniforms, official or otherwise.
"Even my own house is no smoking," he said when they got out of the car. "So I stand out here and smoke, and then I see some weed I missed and I want to start dragging out all my gardening stuff."
"Detective Marty Diamond?" Rick asked, offering his hand.
"That's me. You the lawyer? I've heard a lot about you."
Diamond didn't take Rick's outstretched hand. Rick didn't take the bait, although Tess thought his good ol' boy accent seemed a little more pronounced when he spoke again. She couldn't tell if Rick used this way of speaking to mock people or to ingratiate himself. A little of both, probably.