connection
with this morning's bombing or the recent murder of UTSA's Professor
Aaron Brandon, but unnamed sources confirmed that indictments on both
counts were imminent. Rumors had surfaced about Sanchez's onetime
employment by the Brandon family and Sanchez's possible role in the
1993 murder of Aaron's father, Jeremiah, none of which the SAPD would
comment on.
"But the UTSA campus," Chris Marrou assured
me, "is breathing a collective sigh of relief tonight."
Chris seemed mildly disappointed that he couldn't
offer a more detailed explanation for Zeta Sanchez's actions, but
what the heck. The footage was good. The news cameras kept zooming in
on Hector Mara's bloody front porch, the bloody back wall of his
house, the bullet holes in the door. Grade A local news. A mug shot
of Anthony "Zeta" Sanchez looked a lot better than Zeta had
in person — a handsome, sharply angular face, mustache and beard no
thicker than marking pen around his jaw and mouth. He had the
heavy-lidded eyes and deceptively calm expression of a well-fed
carnivore.
Marrou told us that Deputy Oswald Gerson was in
critical but stable condition at Brooke Army Medical Center, that
Hector Mara of 11043 Green Road had been questioned and released by
police, and that the D.A. was praising the efforts of the detectives
involved in today's arrest. I turned off the news. I fixed myself a
margarita, took it out to the back patio, and sank into my well-worn
butterfly chair.
I sipped painkiller-on-the-rocks while the sun went
down over Mrs. Geradino's garage. The webworm patches in her pecan
tree glittered orange. Her sprinkler sliced across the yard. The
Geradino babies — six Chihuahuas that resembled boiled and shucked
armadillos — yapped mutely at me from the other side of their
mother's glass patio doors. Your basic romantic sunset at 90 Queen
Anne.
I thought about Jeremiah Brandon — the old turkey
buzzard with his seedy connections to the carnival circuit and his
appetite for underage women that had eventually gotten him killed. I
kept envisioning his face from the 1967 photograph, stuck on a body
with no chest — a broken pinata thrown into the corner of a West
Side barroom, surrounded by stone-faced employees who hadn't seen a
thing. I thought about Jeremiah's two sons, Del and Aaron, and what
it might've been like growing up in a family that made amusement
rides. A kid's dream. Maybe Aaron Brandon had fond memories. Maybe
he'd taken his own five-year-old son Michael to Uncle Del's shop from
time to time to try out the products.
Or maybe growing up around the carnival business had
been an endless series of encounters with people like Zeta Sanchez,
carny owners with the same hungry eyes as Jeremiah Brandon. Maybe
that kind of childhood produced an adult who studied medieval gore
and monster stories and Crusade massacres. Maybe Aaron Brandon kept
his little boy the hell away from that shop.
I took a long hit on my margarita.
The sun had almost disappeared behind Mrs. Geradino's
garage. I checked my watch. Two hours before I was supposed to pick
up George Berton for our double date. Enough time to visit my worried
mother, maybe make one other stop before that.
I began the almost impossible task of getting out of
a butterfly chair with a margarita in one hand. I wasn't making much
progress when the back door creaked open and a man's voice said,
"Undignified, vato. Somebody was to shoot you like that, you'd
spout like a wine sack."
I turned my head. "Your perception of the world
is overly grim, Ralphas." Ralph Arguello grinned in my doorway,
his knuckles rapping lightly on the frame as if some long-dormant
instinct was reminding his body that it was polite to knock.
Ralph's chili-red face was completely clear of life's
little worries — self-consciousness, doubt, morality. His eyes
floated behind thick round glasses and his salt-and-pepper hair was
pulled back in a tight ponytail. He wore an extra-large white linen
shirt and black jeans. Several
with this morning's bombing or the recent murder of UTSA's Professor
Aaron Brandon, but unnamed sources confirmed that indictments on both
counts were imminent. Rumors had surfaced about Sanchez's onetime
employment by the Brandon family and Sanchez's possible role in the
1993 murder of Aaron's father, Jeremiah, none of which the SAPD would
comment on.
"But the UTSA campus," Chris Marrou assured
me, "is breathing a collective sigh of relief tonight."
Chris seemed mildly disappointed that he couldn't
offer a more detailed explanation for Zeta Sanchez's actions, but
what the heck. The footage was good. The news cameras kept zooming in
on Hector Mara's bloody front porch, the bloody back wall of his
house, the bullet holes in the door. Grade A local news. A mug shot
of Anthony "Zeta" Sanchez looked a lot better than Zeta had
in person — a handsome, sharply angular face, mustache and beard no
thicker than marking pen around his jaw and mouth. He had the
heavy-lidded eyes and deceptively calm expression of a well-fed
carnivore.
Marrou told us that Deputy Oswald Gerson was in
critical but stable condition at Brooke Army Medical Center, that
Hector Mara of 11043 Green Road had been questioned and released by
police, and that the D.A. was praising the efforts of the detectives
involved in today's arrest. I turned off the news. I fixed myself a
margarita, took it out to the back patio, and sank into my well-worn
butterfly chair.
I sipped painkiller-on-the-rocks while the sun went
down over Mrs. Geradino's garage. The webworm patches in her pecan
tree glittered orange. Her sprinkler sliced across the yard. The
Geradino babies — six Chihuahuas that resembled boiled and shucked
armadillos — yapped mutely at me from the other side of their
mother's glass patio doors. Your basic romantic sunset at 90 Queen
Anne.
I thought about Jeremiah Brandon — the old turkey
buzzard with his seedy connections to the carnival circuit and his
appetite for underage women that had eventually gotten him killed. I
kept envisioning his face from the 1967 photograph, stuck on a body
with no chest — a broken pinata thrown into the corner of a West
Side barroom, surrounded by stone-faced employees who hadn't seen a
thing. I thought about Jeremiah's two sons, Del and Aaron, and what
it might've been like growing up in a family that made amusement
rides. A kid's dream. Maybe Aaron Brandon had fond memories. Maybe
he'd taken his own five-year-old son Michael to Uncle Del's shop from
time to time to try out the products.
Or maybe growing up around the carnival business had
been an endless series of encounters with people like Zeta Sanchez,
carny owners with the same hungry eyes as Jeremiah Brandon. Maybe
that kind of childhood produced an adult who studied medieval gore
and monster stories and Crusade massacres. Maybe Aaron Brandon kept
his little boy the hell away from that shop.
I took a long hit on my margarita.
The sun had almost disappeared behind Mrs. Geradino's
garage. I checked my watch. Two hours before I was supposed to pick
up George Berton for our double date. Enough time to visit my worried
mother, maybe make one other stop before that.
I began the almost impossible task of getting out of
a butterfly chair with a margarita in one hand. I wasn't making much
progress when the back door creaked open and a man's voice said,
"Undignified, vato. Somebody was to shoot you like that, you'd
spout like a wine sack."
I turned my head. "Your perception of the world
is overly grim, Ralphas." Ralph Arguello grinned in my doorway,
his knuckles rapping lightly on the frame as if some long-dormant
instinct was reminding his body that it was polite to knock.
Ralph's chili-red face was completely clear of life's
little worries — self-consciousness, doubt, morality. His eyes
floated behind thick round glasses and his salt-and-pepper hair was
pulled back in a tight ponytail. He wore an extra-large white linen
shirt and black jeans. Several
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