Book of Secrets by Chris Roberson

threadbare carpet. Though I doubted the vapid puppet of an anchorman had understood the importance of what he had just said, to me it was clear. Vista Incorporated, which Pierce had begun by purchasing up distressed real estate with his daddy's oil money back in the thirties, had always been the cornerstone of his financial empire. It was the parent company of all his oil production, real estate and property management, brokerage and consultation operations. With the sale of Vista, Pierce was left with a big house, a fleet of cars, a private jet and lots of money in the bank. But no financial power, and no leverage to obtain anything more. For any normal human being that would be well and good, to live out life driving a different car every day of the week and using hundred dollar bills as scratch paper, but Pierce wasn't exactly a normal human being.
      I got dressed and scooped the pile of photos and notes back into the box. I had decided that the answer to a lot of the questions I kept tripping over was somewhere in that box, and I just needed to go to the man who could find it for me. And that meant a trip to New Orleans.

    Back in the car, driving along the wide road to Louisiana, I found the same spectrum of religious broadcasting, but this time with Christian Hip Hop added into the mix. I switched it off and smoked one cigarette after another, the smoke drifting in a wide circuit around the interior of the car before being drawn out the cracked window.
      I kept coming back to the story I'd read the night before. I wondered if my grandfather had kept the Black Hand magazine because the character had his same name, or whether the character had been named after him in the first place. I wasn't aware that the old man had known any writers in his life, but then I didn't know much about him at all. Still, another Texan high roller with the same name seemed an unlikely coincidence. The only major difference between the two was that, as far as I knew, my grandfather was never lunatic enough to go around playing Zorro. When I had the chance, and had nothing better to do, I figured I could check into Walter Reece, the writer of the story, and see what I could find out.
      In the meantime, I was on my way to New Orleans to ask the help of the greatest man I'd ever met.
      At the age of fourteen, I ran away from home. I suppose I'd had enough of living in San Antonio with the old man, and my brother was starting to get on my nerves, so I packed up a few things in a duffel bag and hit the road. I went to New Orleans, which I'd seen once in a movie, and after my money ran out in the first couple of days was reduced to eating out of dumpsters. The city lost a lot of its luster from that angle, so I decided to try a different approach. Remembering my life long dream, I decided to become a burglar.
      The whole idea of sneaking into people's houses, and sneaking out with all their good things, seemed daring and romantic, like Errol Flynn in a ski mask. I half expected to meet some beautiful girl doing it, just coming out of the shower, wrapped up in a towel. She'd fall in love with me, help me mend my evil ways, and we'd take off together for Paris or somewhere like that.
      As it turned out, I only broke into one place, and I didn't meet the girl of my dreams. Instead, I got a kiss in the mouth with a steel cane and lost a couple of teeth. I still rub my tongue over the gaps in my smile whenever I get too cocky, just to remind me never to let dreams run away with me. My first night on my new career as a burglar, I broke into Tan Perrin's house.
      Once upon a time, Tan was the greatest cat burglar this country had ever seen. He was a legend, but nobody knew his name. The papers, the cops, they all knew his handiwork, but nobody had ever caught him. Tan was an artist. He'd break into museums just to rearrange the paintings, and come back the next morning to see how folks liked them. He once broke into the Federal Reserve