Read Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan for Free Online

program somehow switched from baseball
coverage to a rerun of Buckner Fanning’s morning sermon from
Trinity Baptist. I had dragged the phone across the living room as
far as the cord would reach and was now trying to reach the
television controls with my foot, hoping I could either turn the set
off or find another channel. So far Buckner was thwarting my efforts.
Tan and immaculately dressed, he was smiling and admonishing me to
accept God.
    "Yeah," I said to Carl at the appropriate
moments. “That sounds pretty bad." After a while Carl
presented me with an opening. He asked me what I was doing back in
town.
    “ If I were to want some case files on Dad’s
death, who would I talk to?"
    A long pull on a cigarette. A rumbly cough. “Christ,
son. You’ve come back to look into that?"
    "No," I said. “But maybe now I could read
about it fresh, more objectively, maybe put it behind me."
    I could hear him blow smoke into the receiver.
    "Not a week goes by I don’t see him in my
sleep," Carl said, "lying there like that."
    We both got quiet. I thought about that eternal five
minutes between the time my father had fallen to the ground and the
first paramedic unit had arrived, when we’d stood there, Carl and
I, watching the groceries roll down the sidewalk with the lines of
blood. I’d been completely frozen. Carl had been the opposite. He’d
started pacing, rambling about what jack and he had been planning on
doing that weekend, how the hunting was going to be, what Aggie jokes
jack had told him the night before. All the while he was wiping away
tears, lighting and crushing cigarettes one after the other. A jar of
jelly had rolled into the crook of my father’s arm and nestled
there like a teddy bear.
    "I don’t know about putting it behind you,"
Carl said.
    Buckner Fanning started telling me about his latest
trip to the Holy City of Jerusalem.
    “ Who would I talk to to see the files, Carl?"
    “ It’s in-house, son. And it’s been too long. It
just ain’t done that way."
    "But if it was?"
    Carl exhaled into my ear. "You remember
Drapiewski? Larry Drapiewski? Made deputy lieutenant about a year
ago."
    "What about for SAPD?"
    He had a coughing fit for a minute, then cleared his
throat.
    “ I’d try Kingston in Criminal Investigations, if
he’s still there. He was always in debt to jack for one favor or
another. There was an FBI review of the case a few years back too. I
can’t help you there."
    I remembered neither Drapiewski nor Kingston, but it
was a place to start.
    “ Thanks, Carl. "
    “ Yeah well, sorry I can’t help much. I thought
you were my son calling from Austin. He ain’t called in over a
month, you know. For a minute there, you sounded like him."
    "Take care of yourself, Carl."
    “ Nice way to spend an afternoon," he said.
"You kept me talking all the way up to 60 Minutes."
    I hung up. I couldn’t help picturing Carl Kelley,
sitting in some house alone, a cigarette in his withered hand, living
for television shows and a phone call from Austin that never came. I
sat for a minute, Robert Johnson instantly on my lap, and we watched
Buckner talk about spiritual healing. Then I turned off the set.
 

    9
    "Little Tres?" Larry Drapiewski laughed.
"Jesus, E not the same seven-year-old kid who used to sit on my
desk and eat the custard out of the middle of my donuts."
    As soon as he said that I had a vague memory of
Drapiewski—a large man, flat-topped red hair, friendly smile, a
sweating face that looked like the Martian landscape. His big hands
always full of food.
    "Yeah," I said, "only twenty years and
a lot of donuts later nobody calls me ‘little'."
    "Join the club," the lieutenant said. "So
what’s on your mind?"
    When I told him why I was calling he was quiet for an
uncomfortable amount of time. An oscillating fan on his desk hummed
back and forth into the receiver.
    “ You understand everybody has looked at this,"
Larry said. "Half the departments in town, the county, the FBI.
Everybody