Read The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan for Free Online

no sense of style."
    By my standards the in-law looked great. On the
futon, the laundry was clean and folded. Stacks of agency paperwork
were tidily arranged on the coffee table. My tai chi swords were
polished and in their wall rack. Stuck on the refrigerator, like a
normal home and everything, was a kid's watercolor (Jem's) and a
postcard (my brother Garrett's, with the endearing inscription IN KEY
WEST WITH BUFFETT — GLAD YOU AIN'T HERE!!!). The only possible
eyesore was Robert Johnson, who was now lying on the kitchen counter
with his feet curled under his chest and his tongue sticking out.
    "Track lighting," Ozzie advised. "White
carpet. A big mirror on that wall. Go for open. Light and airy."
    "I feel it," I said. "I really do. You
want to sit down while I call the decorator?"
    He pointed over his shoulder. "We can talk and
ride."
    I turned to Robert Johnson, who had seen Ozzie too
many times to get excited by him or his designer tips. "Lock up
if you leave."
    Robert Johnson curled his tongue in a tremendous
yawn. I took that as an assent.
    My landlord, Gary Hales, was now on the front porch
of the main house, cracking pecans into a large metal pail. The
spring afternoon wasn't particularly hot, but Gary had one of those
head-mounted mist sprayers slung across his balding skull. The thing
must've been on full blast. Droplets floated around him like a swarm
of gnats, dripping off his nose and chin and speckling his Guayabera
shirt. Gary looked up apathetically as Ozzie Gerson and I walked by,
then went back to his work. Just Tres Navarre getting picked up by
the police.
    Nothing out of the ordinary.
    "Last week fucking parade detail," Ozzie
told me. "Today I been on duty an hour and already three calls.
I need a hot dog."
    "Life on the edge," I sympathized.
    "Balls." He unlocked the passenger's door
of his patrol car, realized he had about sixty pounds of equipment on
the seat, then started transferring it to the trunk with much
grumbling.
    Inside, the unit was about as spacious as a fighter
jet cockpit. The area between the seats was filled with cellular
phone and ticket pad and field radio. In front, where the drink
holder and my left leg should've gone, an MDT's monitor and midget
keyboard jutted out from the dashboard. The overhead visors held
about a foot of paperwork, maps, and binders. The big book, the one
with the whole county vectorized, was wedged between Ozzie's headrest
and the Plexiglas shield that sealed off the backseat. I had just
enough room to buckle my seat belt and breathe occasionally.
    Ozzie took a right on Broadway, then a quick left on
Hildebrand.
    The week after fiesta and the streets were deserted.
Over the weekend, three hundred thousand revelers had trickled out of
town, leaving the locals drained, hungover, red-eyed, and stiff from
a week of intense partying. The pedestrians all moved a little
slower. The curbs were still littered with confetti and beer cups.
Pickup trucks passed with empty kegs in their beds. Streamers dangled
from trees. It would be at least Friday before San Antonio rebounded
for another major party. That, for San Antonio, was an impressive
period of austerity.
    Ozzie took the McAllister Freeway on-ramp and
propelled us south at a speed somewhere between the legal limit and
the barrier of sound. The city floated by in detached, tinted silence
— Trinity University, Pearl Brewery, the gray and brown skyscrapers
of downtown.
    "So," Ozzie prompted.
    "So. The Brandon family attracts bullets."
    Half a mile of silence. "You and Erainya. SAPD.
The Feds. Suddenly after six years everybody wants to talk to me
about the Brandons."
    "We just love you, Ozzie."
    Ozzie picked up his transmitter and told Dispatch to
show him 10-8, back in service.
    "Our unit number's twenty-thirteen," he
told me. "Case I get shot or something."
    "There's positive thinking."
    "I tell the detectives six years ago — I say,
'Look out, this guy will be back.' Three weeks ago, I tell them,
'Hey, there's