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

word on the street he is back.' But do they listen to
me? No. They wait until Aaron Brandon is murdered, then they figure
it's time to ask me for help. What is that about?"
    "Go figure."
    "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"
    "Nope. You going to enlighten me?"
    "I probably shouldn't."
    "Probably not."
    The downtown skyline receded behind us, the landscape
ahead turning to a mixture of tract housing and salvage yards and
acres of scrub brush. Ozzie took the 410 split into the
unincorporated South Side. "Jimmy Hernandez down at city
homicide, he made it clear he wants a lid on this until his people
are ready to move."
    "And your career has been a tribute to following
orders from the brass." Ozzie's neck flushed. I thought we'd
entered dangerous territory until he glanced over and allowed the
corner of his mouth to creep up just slightly. "There's that.
You put any of the story together yet? "
    "SAPD's got two dead UTSA professors on their
hands. Everybody is assuming the Brandon murder at least had
something to do with campus politics. Except maybe it didn't. SAPD
suspects some kind of connection to the murder of the professor's dad
six years ago, something to do with a guy named Sanchez. Until they
run down that lead, SAPD sees no reason to tip their hand. They're
happy letting everybody think the political angle."
    "You're warm."
    "What I can't figure out, no offense, is why
everybody wants to talk to you."
    "You know what I did before this, Navarre?"
    Before this. Ozzie-code for the unapproachable
subject: Before I got busted back to patrol.
    "County gang task force," I recalled.
"Seventeen years, wasn't it?"
    I knew it had been fifteen, but the mistake pleased
him. Ozzie let it stand. "The reason everybody wants to talk to
me — I'm the expert on Zeta Sanchez."
    Ozzie said the first name Say-ta, Spanish for the
letter Z. He looked at me to see if it rang a bell.
    "Nope."
    "First part of Zeta's story reads pretty typical
— dad died young. Zeta was raised by his mom down at the Bowie
Courts, claimed a gang when he was twelve. Head of his set by age
fourteen. By fifteen he'd started piecing out some West Side heroin
action."
    Dispatch crackled a call for another unit. Ozzie
craned his ear to listen: 10-59 — suspicious vehicle report.
    "Over by Lackland." Gerson wagged an
accusing finger at me. "Probably some damn P.I."
    "You were saying?"
    Ozzie frowned at the MDT terminal, then back at the
freeway. He took the exit for South Presa.
    "I arrested Zeta Sanchez so many times when he
was growing up, I feel like I practically raised him. When he was
about seventeen he left the small stuff behind — the gang-banging,
the drugs — and got a job with Jeremiah Brandon."
    "Aaron Brandon's father."
    "Yeah."
    "He made amusement park rides."
    Ozzie laughed. "Yeah. You know anything about
the carnival circuit?"
    "You mean like candied apples? Duck shoots?"
    "The carnies are havens for cons. Smugglers.
Thieves. Murderers. Grifters. Name your flavor. Jeremiah Brandon did
business with all of them. By the time he died, Jeremiah was calling
himself the King of the South Texas carnivals. Had the amusement-ride
market sewn up all over the Southwest and northern Mexico. And he
wasn't just selling rides, kid. Brandon would fence stolen property
for his buddies on the circuit, launder their cash, make problem
employees go away. A whole network of people all over the country
owed him favors. You wanted some goods smuggled out of state, or you
wanted to disappear, or you needed to find some hired guns for a
quick job, Jeremiah could help. You worked for him, you could make
some big money."
    "Which Zeta Sanchez did?"
    "For a couple of years, Zeta Sanchez was
Jeremiah Brandon's right-hand
man."
    "A kid from the Bowie Courts."
    "Jeremiah always hired from the West Side. He
set himself up like a feudal lord down there — bought up the local
businesses for his cronies to run, slept with any of the women he
wanted to, recruited the