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he was about the man’s problems, Jack wasn’t about to shoulder responsibility for Winter’s political agenda.
    “What makes you think I have any control over that loudmouth?” asked Jack. “If I did, do you really think I’d let him make me trouble?”
    “Tell him you’re going to sue,” Paulo suggested. “Me and my backers, we’ll even foot the bill. We’re trying to get federal funds to revitalize the Plaza del Sol center, but we can’t do it with him running down the neighborho—”
    “I don’t have time for this,” Jack said, though somepart of him thought of all the jobs and money that would come back to the area if the flood-damaged shopping center were reopened. “Somebody trashed my SUV, and I’ve got to—”
    “Somebody messing with you? ’Cause I still got connections, connections that want to keep good doctors in the neighborhood, want to keep our people healthy. You’re one of our own, ’ mano. You say the word, we take care of you. You want to use a car, I got it. You need something else, we’re up for that, too.”
    A cold wave detonated in Jack’s nervous system, rolling outward to the tips of his fingers and his toes. From the day a hard-ass assistant principal had mocked his goals, Jack had turned himself inside out to show the sorry SOB he would not only graduate, but go to college. In retrospect, the man’s scorn had done Jack more good than a whole truckload of softhearted counselors, but none of his friends had a clue that his newfound studiousness was his own brand of rebellion.
    Especially not Paulo and his friends, who had stuck with raising hell the old-fashioned way. Though Jack occasionally ran into one or another of his former compadres , they rarely acknowledged his existence with more than a tight nod. Yet now, all these years after they’d become men, it seemed he had finally won some measure of their approval.
    Now that he couldn’t remember why he’d ever wanted such a thing in the first place.
    “Thanks,” he said carefully, “but I’d rather take care of this myself.”
    “Just so you do take care of it, man—and I was serious about helping you, if you think your old amigo’s good enough.”
    “Of course I do,” Jack told him, before saying goodbye. Though he had no intention of involving himself with Paulo’s business dealings, he’d be a fool to dismiss the offer out of hand. Especially since he hadn’t missed the undertone of threat…
    When someone cleared a throat behind him, he jerked, pulse pounding, and spun toward what he prayed was not some cranked-up thief looking for drugs.
    “ Pendejo! Luz Maria, you scared the liver out of me.”
    “All that schooling and you give me no better than gutter talk?” His little sister wrinkled her nose and deadpanned an impression of their mother, though no one would have mistaken the twenty-three-year-old social worker, with her dancer’s body and her fiery temper, for Candelaria Esmeralda de Vaca Montoya, the reigning queen of suffering. But never, regrettably, of suffering in silence.
    “I figured you’d left for the day when I didn’t see your car outside,” he said. “It hasn’t been stolen, has it? Someone did a real number on mine.”
    Luz Maria sighed. “I wish someone would take the thing. It’s in the shop again. Piece of trash failed the stupid smog inspection.”
    “Score one for Houston’s air quality index.” Luz Maria’s ugly orange hatchback had been belching black clouds for months.
    “Sure, that’s gonna cure the city’s problem.” Her sarcasm had lost all trace of playfulness. “And you don’t have to foot the bill on a lowly social worker’s salary.”
    “It’s not like my salary’s making a huge dent in my student loans—and now I’ll have a deductible to pay on my Explorer.” Jack’s medical school loans loomed likethe national debt in his nightmares. But Luz Maria looked so troubled, he couldn’t put his heart into their habitual drive-by potshots.