The Jealous Kind by James Lee Burke Page B

dust and old fabric. With his fedora and necktie and suit coat on, he looked like he wouldn’t fit inside the car and was about to break the seat or headliner or steering wheel with his size and weight. “Close the door.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œYou beat the crap out of the Nichols kid?”
    â€œI defended myself.”
    â€œYou use a two-by-four?”
    â€œI got lucky. Is he all right?”
    â€œNo thanks to you. You ought to be in the ring. Know who Lefty Felix Baker is?”
    â€œThe best boxer in Houston. Middleweight Golden Gloves champion of Texas five years running.”
    â€œI was one of his coaches.Lefty is a good kid. He could have gone the wrong road, like some kids he grew up with. But he didn’t.”
    â€œAm I in trouble, Detective Jenks?”
    â€œAs a detective, I cover the entire metro area. You know the kids I have the most trouble with? You pissants in Southwest Houston. You think you’re better than other people. I’ll take the nigras or the Mexicans over y’all any day. They might steal, but some of them don’t have much choice. Y’all vandalize property because you think it’s your right. Sometimes I fantasize about stuffing the bunch of you into a tree shredder.”
    â€œWhat do you want from me?”
    â€œFor starters, you’d better choose your words more carefully.”
    As bad luck would have it, Saber’s 1936 Chevy roared out of a side street and bounced up the dip into the station lot. Saber had a bottle of Jax in one hand, the radio and the stolen speakers from the drive-in theater blaring. His face lost its color when he saw me in the car with the detective.
    â€œTurn off your engine, lose the beer, and get in the backseat,” Jenks said to Saber.
    Saber got out and set the beer down by his front tire.
    â€œI said, lose it.”
    â€œYes, sir,” Saber said. He threw the bottle up on the patch of lawn by the boulevard and opened the back door of Jenks’s car and sat down as though taking up residence in a tiger’s cage.
    Jenks turned around. “You going to give me a bad time, Bledsoe?”
    â€œNo, sir,” Saber said.
    â€œWhen we’re done, pick up that bottle and put it in a trash can.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œWould you boys like to continue drag racing, feeling up the girls at the drive-in, running your money through your peckers on beer and whores, and maybe even graduating from that brat factory you call a high school?”
    â€œYes, sir, we’re on board for all of that,” Saber said.
    Shut up, Saber.
    Jenks went to the trunk of the car and returned with a canvas haversack full of file folders. He sat behind the wheel, the door hanging open, and began sorting through sheaves of typewritten pages and black-and-white photographs. “Here’s a mug shot you’ve already seen. I want you to look at it again. This is one time in your life you don’t want to lie. Did you ever see this girl?”
    â€œThat’s the girl named Wanda, Loren Nichols’s cousin, the one whose neck was broken,” I said.
    â€œWhere did you see her?”
    â€œI saw her in that mug shot you showed me,” I said.
    â€œNowhere else? You haven’t changed your mind?”
    â€œNo, sir.”
    â€œBecause I think she pulled a train for a bunch of high school guys more than once. You know what I mean by pulling a train?”
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œHow about you?” he said to Saber.
    â€œSame as Aaron.”
    Jenks scratched the tip of his nose. “Strange she ends up with a broken neck two blocks from where you boys might have torched Loren’s vehicle.”
    â€œWe didn’t do that, sir,” I said.
    â€œI admit that might take more smarts than either of you seems to have,” he said. “I got some other photos in here.”
    He pulled out about fifteen of them, all of different sizes and origins, like