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with Detective Madden about my husband's death. During our conversation,
your name came up. He said you were a witness. He also said you had other
information."
    I stirred my coffee for a moment while I gathered
my thoughts.
    "Erica, I, uh, nothing is certain right now.
What I have is really just a lot of innuendo and circumstance."
    "Does any of it concern John Brendan
Blake?"
    I hoped she didn't catch my surprised reaction.
"Well, his name did come up. However, as I said, nothing is certain."
Trying to shift things around, I said, "But tell me, where do you know
Blake from?"
    She opened a packet of Splenda and emptied it into
her coffee. After stirring it a moment, her eyes rose up to meet mine.
    She said, "What I'm about to tell you does
not leave this table." When I nodded, she said, "He came to Texas a
month or so ago. He wants to build a hotel on South Padre Island in the worst
way. I don't know if you know this, but it's a big, big tourist area." She
took a careful sip of coffee. From her grimace and quick exhale, I could tell
it was still way too hot. "Anyway, to make a long story short, he managed
to piss off both South Padre's Public Works Director and the Town Planner in
one meeting. And those are the very guys who can get you your building permits.
I don't know what he did, but the upshot of it was that they told him he would
never get a permit to build anything on South Padre, especially in District
D."
    "District D?"
    "That's the Gulf side, right on the open
water. Zoned for big hotels. It's where Blake wanted to build his resort."
    "Go on."
    "Anyway, if those two say you're out, you're
out." Her voice carried the singsong accent of border English. It drew me
in.
    "So the door was closed?"
    "Well, he came across the bridge to Port
Isabel looking for help. Did anyone tell you that I'm the mayor."
    "I'd heard that."
    She tried her coffee again. It had cooled a little
by then and you could see her relax as she swallowed it. She clasped her hands,
long, slender fingers interlacing in front of her on the table. Her French
manicure gleamed in the overhead coffee shop light.
    "So, I told Blake that I'm well-acquainted
with the South Padre people. You know, the small-town good-old-boy and girl network of friends on both
sides of the bridge."
    "Right."
    "Okay. Now, keep in mind, this was going to
be the nicest hotel on the island. A sixty million-dollar project."
    The way she uttered that figure, I could tell I
was supposed be impressed. Maybe even gasp at its very dimension. I wondered if
she knew she was sitting in a seven hundred million-dollar hotel, and that was
considered middle of the pack for Las Vegas.
    Her body contours softened, as her voice modulated
downward to hush-hush level. "Blake came to my office and told me he would
do anything to get those building permits. Anything. You get my drift?"
    My eyes told her I got it. "How much money
did he want to pay them?" I asked, suspecting that I knew the approximate
figure already.
    "A hundred thousand." Her
matter-of-factness surprised me. "And in fact, last week, to demonstrate
his good faith, he showed up in Port Isabel with a big envelope filled with
cash, the whole hundred thousand. He gave it to me one afternoon and I said I
would call South Padre and tell them the money was here."
    "And did you?"
    Her eyes shot me a sharp are-you-kidding-me glare.
"You're god-damned right I did."
    "Where does your husband fit in to all
this?"
    She looked away to the back of the coffee shop.
"Can we get the waitress? I'd really like something to eat."
    "Sure." I waved a couple of times and
finally flagged down our waitress. Erica ordered an egg-white omelet with
pancakes, toast, and orange juice. I ordered poached eggs and a refill on my
coffee.
    "So where was I?" she asked.
    "Your husband."
    "Yes. He's — he was a real
estate salesman in Port Isabel. But you know, even though that sounds like a
glamorous, big-money job — you know, selling real estate in a
warm-weather town