Bledsoe never lied, at least not about his one-man crusade against hypocrisy and phoniness. Sometimes I longed to know his secrets, but even at my young age, I knew he had paid a high price for them. âI donât know if this is a good idea.â
âYou got to do recon,â he said. âWrite down license numbers. See whoâs going in and out of the house. Iâve got connections at the motor vehicle department.â
âGrady Harrelsonâs father will have us ground into salt.â
âThatâs my point. Weâll get the coordinates on these guys and call in the artillery.â
âHave you lost your mind?â
âGrady is out to hurt you, Aaron. Iâm not going to let that happen.â He put his hand on my forearm and squeezed it, maybe for longer than he should. âYouâre the only real family I got.â
W E WERE NOW on the outer edge of River Oaks, in an area where the yards were banked and measured in acres, the houses three stories high with white-columned porches, the driveways circular andshaded by trees that creaked in the wind. The sky was a soft blue, the lawns deep in shadow, the air scented with flowers and chlorine and meat fires. The interior of every house tinkled with golden light.
Saber began reciting the encyclopedic levels of information he had on the Harrelson family; I would have dismissed most everything he said if it had come from anyone else. But he had a brain like flypaper and never forgot anything.
âSee, the old man isnât just a rice farmer and oil driller. Heâs mixed up with these Galveston mobsters whoâre moving out to Vegas,â he said. âYou know their names.â
âWhat do you mean, I know?â
âYour uncle is buddies with some of these guys. Itâs no big deal, Aaron.â
âDonât be talking about my family like that. You get this stuff out of menâs magazines with Japs on the cover, strafing naked women tied to stakes in the Amazon.â
âThe best source of information in the nation,â he said. âLook at what we read in school, Silas Marner and The House of the Seven Gables. I bet thatâs what people in hell have to read for all eternity. Hitler and Tojo and guys like that.â
He coasted to the curb, under the limbs of a spreading oak, the engine coughing like a sick animal. Up ahead we could see the floodlamps shining on the front of Gradyâs house and a party taking place by the swimming pool in the side yard. Saber took a pair of binoculars from the glove box. I could feel my heart thudding against my ribs. He read my mind. âThey cainât see us,â he said. âIâm going to read off these license plate numbers. You write them down.â
âThis is nuts.â
âTake off the blinders, Aaron. How do you think these people got their money? Hard work? I bet this place is full of gangsters. How did Grady get discharged from the Marine Corps?â
âGrady Harrelson was in the marines?â
âHe enlisted after he graduated. Except, when he was about to be shipped to Korea, he discovered he had asthma. His old man pulled strings. The guyâs not just a tumblebug, heâs yellow.â
âHe might be a bad guy, but I donât think heâs yellow.â
Saber began reading off license numbers, then stopped and took the binoculars from his eyes and wiped the lenses and looked through them again. âI donât need this.â
âNeed what?â
He squeezed his scrotum. âMy big boy just woke up with a vengeance. Check it out. You ever see a pair of cantaloupes like that? Those bongos were made in heaven.â
I took the binoculars from him and focused them on the pool. Nine or ten guys Gradyâs age were swimming or barbecuing or springing off the board. The obvious center of attention was a black-haired, dark-skinned woman who must have been in her late twenties. She was lying on
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