Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan (14 page)

I couldn’t ride back in the truck. I had to walk
behind it as my father led me home. I spent one day in the shower,
another day bathed in cortisone. And I’d never fired a gun since
that Christmas. The other lesson, the one about avoiding the dead,
had been harder to learn. Then the scene of the dream changed from
Sabinal to the A & M campus. I saw Lillian at eighteen, leaning
in the doorway of her freshman painting class, barefoot, her hands
behind her. Her denim overalls and her short off-blond hair were both
flecked with red acrylic.

A week earlier we’d had another one of our epic
fights. I’d stormed out of the Dixie Chicken in the middle of
dinner. Lillian shouted at my back that she’d never talk to me
again. Now she just stared at me as I walked closer.

When I came up to her she brushed my face with her
fingers, lightly, and left sticky red acrylic streaks on my left
cheek. Then, keeping a straight face, she decorated the other side,
like war paint. She laughed.

“
Does this mean I’m forgiven?" I said.

Her eyes turned bright green. She put her head so
close to mine that her lips brushed my chin as she talked. Her breath
smelled like cherry Life Savers.

“
Not even close," she said. "But you
can’t get rid of me. Remember that next time you walk away."

The phone was ringing.

I woke up sideways on the futon with the receiver
already in my hand. The blinds above me were open and sunlight was
pouring onto my face as strong and hot as gasoline. I squinted.
Before I could make my voice work, Robert Johnson was on my head
talking for me.

"Mur," he said.

Maia Lee said: “Oh, good, Robert Johnson, you’re
home."

"Sorry," I croaked. “Should I get off the
line?"

She laughed. The sound was a hard one to wake up to;
it brought back Sunday mornings on Potrero Hill, drinking Peet’s
coffee, watching the fog recede from the Bay. It made me remember a
city for runaways where you didn’t have to think about the past, or
home, or who had disappeared from your life.

"You’re a hard person to get in touch with,
Tres," Maia said.

I sat up, knocking over the empty tequila bottle.
Then I looked across the room and noticed the kitchen window.

Maia was waiting for a snide remark. When I didn’t
offer one, her tone changed. "Tres?"

I walked into the kitchen as far as the phone cord
would go. The rusty metal frame window above the sink was hanging
wide open at a crazy angle. Its bottom hinge had been neatly pried
away, so the ancient turn-crank that was supposed to hold the window
shut could be stripped.

"Tres?" Maia said again. “What is it?"

I sat on the kitchen counter and stared out into the
crape myrtles. A few of their pink petals were floating in
yesterday’s coffee cup next to the soap dish. A few more were
smashed into the single muddy footprint that was in my sink--110
grooves, pointed toe, a large boot, maybe a ten and a half wide.

"Maia," I said, "how much time have
you got?"
 

21

I blamed Robert Johnson for not being a Great Dane.
Maia blamed me for being a heavy sleeper.

"I told you so often," she complained, “if
a burglar had ever come in while we were sleeping—" She caught
the we part of that statement a little too late. Her voice tangled on
it like silk on barbed wire.

When she spoke again it was in her professional tone,
careful and even. "All right. Tell me the whole story."

I told her what little I’d learned about my
father’s death. I told her about Lillian’s disappearance, my talk
with Guy White, the threats against me, Beau Karnau’s mystery
photos and his ride with Dan Sheff, the boot print at the gallery and
in my sink.

Maia was silent for a minute. Behind her somewhere, a
foghorn sounded.

“
Did they take anything? These photos you found,
for instance?"

"Whoever it was came and left quickly. I don’t
think they were looking for paperwork. None of it was touched.
Nothing else was taken."

"Not even your life."

I tried to believe there was no disappointment in her
voice.

“
It’s nice to be loved," I said.

After she had fumed silently for a while, she said:

"Tres, your friend Drapiewski is right. Leave
this to the police. Get the hell out of there."

I didn’t answer.

"But naturally," she said, "you’re
not going to."

I didn’t answer.

She sighed. "I should’ve left you where I
found you—tending bar in Berkeley. "

“
I was the best person you ever trained."

"You were the only person I ever trained."

It’s hard for a Texan to argue with someone who
insists on sticking to the truth. Robert Johnson jumped onto the
counter and started smelling the boot print in the sink. He gave me
an insulted look that was probably a close approximation of Maia’s
expression right then. Two against one.

"All right," Maia said, “let’s assume,
even if I don’t agree, that you pull on the two ends of this,
Lillian’s disappearance and your father’s death, and you find out
they connect somewhere in the middle. That would mean someone besides
this dead convict—"

“
Halcomb."

"—
it would mean someone besides him was
involved in the killing ten years ago, and is now nervous about your
questions. Whoever it is, they’re worried enough to threaten you,
perhaps to kidnap someone you--someone you know, but not willing to
kill you. Why?"

I picked a crushed crape myrtle petal out of the sink
and looked at it. Thinking about why I was alive this morning didn’t
help the empty acidic feeling the tequila had left in my stomach. The
half memory of somebody looking down at me in the night had started
to crawl across my skin like the smell of dead
javelina
and the sticky feel of red acrylic paint.

“
I don’t know," I said. “Why does someone
search the art gallery, then Lillian’s house, then my apartment?
Why does Dan Sheff hang around Lillian’s front yard ready to beat
up new boyfriends when Lillian’s datebook declared the relationship
dead months ago? Why does Sheff give Karnau a ride? I don’t know
yet."

Maia hesitated. “Tres, I know you want to find the
connection between this and your father."

"But?"

"But maybe there isn’t one."

I stared at the ceiling. just above the stove, there
was a water stain in the shape of Australia, bowing in the middle
like it was desperately clinging to the bottom of the world. When I
spoke I tried to keep my voice even.

"You think I want it that way?"

"You want it to be your problem and your
responsibility to fix," she said. “I know you. But maybe
Lillian was into something all by herself. It happens, Tres."

I know you. The three most irritating words in the
English language. When I didn’t answer, Maia muttered a few curses
in Mandarin. I think she switched the receiver to her other ear.

"All right then," she said. “Let’s talk
about your father. Do you really think one of his political enemies
could be involved?"

For a moment I envisioned Councilman Fernando Asante
in an extra large brown leisure suit trying to squeeze himself
through my kitchen window, his Lucchese boot in my sink, his well-fed
belly wedged between crape myrtle branches. It almost cheered me up.

"Even in Texas the politics aren’t usually
that colorful," I told her. “Asante, the most likely
candidate, has enough trouble just keeping his dick in his pants."

"The drug trafficker, then, the man whose house
you so debonairly barged into at gunpoint?"

I had to think longer about that one. "If it was
Guy White, I can’t figure his logic. Why murder a retiring sheriff,
especially when you know you’re going to get the heat for it? And
why get nervous about me now when the Feds couldn’t find anything?"

“
You don’t sound convinced?

“
Maybe it’s worth another visit."

She paused. “But you can’t just walk up to a
Mafia boss twice in one week and start shaking him down for
information on assorted felonies—"

I was quiet.

"Oh, Christ," she said. "Don’t even
think about it, Tres."

“
It’s either that or retrace some leads from
these police files I stole."

"Excuse me?"

"Okay, you didn’t hear it."

“
Christ," she said.

“
Urrr," said Robert Johnson, in sympathy.

"This is information about my father. I consider
it an inheritance."

“
Insanity was your only inheritance, Navarre."

I protested. “I worked hard for my insanity, Ms.
Lee. Nobody handed it to me on a silver p1atter."

“
How the hell did I ever fall for you?" she
wondered.

Things were awkwardly quiet for a while after that.

Finally Maia sighed. “Tres, I’m thinking about a
time you were lying in an alley off Leavenworth with a Balinese knife
in your lungs— — "

“
Grazed them, actually."

"—because you insisted on going to talk to a
crazy hashish dealer by yourself. "

“
It would’ve been fine if the illustrious April
Goldman had been straight with me."

“
You would’ve been dead if she hadn’t sent me
after you."

"Good old Terrence & Goldman. Your bosses
must miss me," I said.

A little more Mandarin swearing. Then Maia made her
final plea bargain. "Is this friend of yours any good in a
fight?"

I laughed. "Ralph, you mean? Ralph is a sneaky
son of a bitch who fights about as fair as a cornered weasel."

“
Good. Will you take him along?" `

“
Ralph has business interests. He likes a low
profile."

"I don’t want you going into this any further
alone, Tres."

"Maia, I’m not exactly living across the Bay
Bridge anymore."

She hesitated. “Then what if I were to come down
there?"

Silence on my end.

“
What happened to a nice clean break?" I
asked. “The quiet acceptance of my choice to move?"

Maia thought about that. "Have you ever known me
to lie, Tres?"

“
Only to get what you want."

She didn’t argue the point.

I stared at the ceiling. “I’ll be fine. Besides,
this is my hometown. They can’t touch me here."

“
You’re a true asshole, Navarre."

"So I’ve been told." But she’d already
hung up.

I picked up an old Texas Monthly with Anne Richards
on the cover and shook it. Anne revved her white motorcycle and
dropped the notes I’d stolen from Drapiewski’s files.

There were a dozen or so Xeroxed faces of men who had
been under investigation by the FBI—various cons who were at large
around the time of the shooting, some of whom had been put behind
bars by my father and who possibly knew Randall Halcomb, the probable
stealer of the Pontiac used in the drive-by. The faces stared back at
me, telling me nothing.

Finally I took out the last page of Lillian’s
datebook and looked at it again, at the third line where she’d
erased a phone number and a street address in the Dominion.,

I put on my best clothes, my Sunday visiting T-shirt
and my least torn jeans, then headed out to pay a call at the Sheff
family mansion.
 

22

The Dominion is where your ordinary
run-of-the-millionaire Texan dreams of going when he dies. George
Strait lives there, along with a few congressmen, a few Howard Hughes
types, and anyone else willing to pay six or seven figures for a
design-your own mansion on a spacious lot of former sheep ranch land.
No black sheep, obviously.

It was a thirty-minute drive from Queen Anne, forty
with the VW fighting a hot north wind. As I passed Loop 1604 the land
opened up and you could see the storm coming in. Blue-black clouds
rolled off the Balcones Escarpment in a perfect line. The pastures
turned dark green. A dry white branch of lightning cracked off from
the sky and hit the horizon, then evaporated. I did what any sensible
person would do. I put on my sunglasses.

When I pulled up to the development gates I stopped
right in the entrance and got out to put up the ragtop. The condition
it was in, it wouldn’t stop the rain but it might slow it down. And
putting the top up here was just the kind of non-thinking thing a
Dominion resident would do—not rude exactly, just not realizing
anybody else of importance could possibly exist in your space.

Two Cadillacs pulled up directly behind me and
waited. Nobody honked. The security guard wavered in the doorway of
his little booth, not sure whether he should yell at me or help me. I
could be a rich person in disguise. I could be a friend of George’s.
I was wearing Ray-Bans in a rainstorm.