The Devil Went Down to Austin Read Online Free

with that look of hazy consternation, as if he was still wandering among the sand dunes. But he got the message. And I felt petty.
    "If it makes you feel any better," he said, "I spent years resenting you, too. At least you and Garrett have each other. Maybe not much of a family, but it's more than nothing."
    My third margarita had started seeping into my bloodstream. A flash lit the sky and a peal of thunder rolled one way across the lake, then the other. God testing the balance on his speakers.
    "This was your mom's place," I said.
    Jimmy nodded.
    "Is it ever hard, living here?" I was thinking about the months after my father had died, when I'd been living alone in his house.
    Jimmy cracked a twig, sent one half spinning into the dark. "Getting divorced, watching my career fall apart. I start wondering— what have I got left, you know? In the end, there's just family and friends, and for me the family part has always been . . . difficult.
    I've got a lot of time to make up for."
    He paused uncomfortably.
    "What?" I asked.
    "I was thinking. You could do a favour for me. You can do background checks, right?"
    Most of my nightmares start with those words.
    I immediately thought: Divorce. Jimmy's family money, the settlement with Ruby final, but maybe not on terms Jimmy wanted. Knowing him, he'd allowed himself to get bled dry. He'd want detective work in order to appeal the court decision, maybe make his ex look bad.
    I said, "Jimmy . . ."
    "Forget it."
    "It's just, it's not a good idea working for a friend."
    He looked at me strangely, maybe because I'd used the word friend.
    "You're right," he said. "Forget it."
    I wanted to say something else, something that didn't sound like an excuse, but nothing came.
    We watched the storm roll above us, the air get heavier, and finally break with a sigh, the first few splatters of warm rain hissing at the edge of the fire.
    Jimmy stood. "It's too late to drive back to S.A. Take a couch in the dome. I got plenty of spare clothes and whatever."
    Staying overnight hadn't been part of my game plan, but when I tried to stand, I realized how the tequila had turned my legs and my anger into putty. I accepted Jimmy's offer.
    "Go on, then," he said. "I'll take care of the fire and the dinner stuff."
    "I don't mind helping."
    "No. Go on." More of a command now. "I want to stay down here a little longer."
    "Fix your kiln goddess?"
    He gave me an empty smile, picked up his Tupperware fajita bowl. "Thanks for your help today, Tres."
    He headed toward the lake to wash his bowl.

    I drove up the gravel road in the rain, parked behind Garrett's van, then got fairly well soaked running from the truck to Jimmy's front door.
    Inside, the dome smelled like copal incense. One large room—a small kitchenette to the right, sleeping loft in the back, four high skylights like the slits of a sand dollar. The curve of the south wall was sheered perpendicular at the bottom to accommodate a fireplace and Jimmy's pottery display shelves.
    Despite Jimmy's years as a programmer, there was no computer. No television. With Jimmy's jam box down at the lake, the most hightech appliance in the dome was probably his refrigerator.
    Garrett's sleeping bag was spread out on one of the canvas sofas by the fireplace, but Garrett wasn't there. Probably in the outhouse.
    I crashed on the opposite couch and listened to the thunder, watched the rain make milky starbursts on the windows above. Lightning flashed across Jimmy's pottery, turned the photos on his mantel into squares of gold. One of those photos showed Garrett
    before the accident that had made him a bilateral amputee. He was standing next to Jimmy on the Corpus Christi seawall. Another photo showed Jimmy's mother, Clara, a sadeyed woman I remembered vaguely, dead now for something like five years. Next to her was a picture of Jimmy with a redheaded woman I assumed was Ruby, his newly exwife. And in the middle of the mantel, taking the place of honour, was a signed