Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan (32 page)

She tried to look hurt. Then the tension became
unsustainable. She cracked a smile. “Your mother came by," she
admitted.

My expression must’ve been good. She started
laughing.

"You asshole," Maia said. "I’m still
mad at you."

Her eyes said otherwise.

"And—what did my mother say?"

" She was mad at you too," Maia said. The
smile was evil. "We commiserated. We--talked."

I sat down on the futon next to her, still frowning.
I tried to look threatening. "Talked?"

She did a bad job of covering up her smile. "We
buried the hatchet, more or less. She took me out as a peace
offering. This was right after you left."

I looked at the pantsuit again, the ribbons in Maia’s
hair.

"No!"

She nodded her head enthusiastically. “We went
shopping at Solo Serve."

"It’s over," I said. "Homicides,
disappearances, and now you’re going to Solo Serve with my mother."

Maia shrugged. Then she kissed my cheek.

"I was going to rell you that I’d decided to
leave tomorrow," she admitted. "I even made 
reservations. Now that I’ve seen the clearance rack, I may never go
away."

I needed a beer very badly. Of course Maia and my
mother had drunk them all.

"And here I thought you’d been crying," I
yelled into the refrigerator. "Your eyes are just red from
looking at price tags."

"Serves you right," she said. "And
this is for you."

She produced a yellow plastic Solo Serve bag from
under the futon, then pulled out an extra-large T-shirt that said
“WELCOME TO SAN ANTONIO" on the front in neon colors was a
depiction of San Antonio’s one claim to heavy metal history: Ozzie
Osbourne urinating on the Cenotaph in front of the Alamo.

"It spoke to us," she said. "It just
screamed ‘Tres’. "

"It’s lovely. How do you say ‘She-devil’
in Mandarin?"

I guess I looked suitably angry. Maia walked up,
pressed against me, and kissed my chin. "Okay, you’re forgiven
now."

"I’m forgiven?"

She smiled. "Show me the Riverwalk, Tex?"

Neither Carlon McAffrey nor Detective Schaeffer were
thrilled to hear from me, especially since I answered most of their
questions with "I don’t know," or promises to call them
back in the morning. My right ear hurt from the insults by the time I
hung up, but I was otherwise intact.

After the week I’d had, it was difficult to find
clothes without blood or Mexican food on them, but I still declined
to wear my new T-shirt to the Riverwalk. Maia just smiled, enjoying
her revenge as I searched the dregs in my closet. Robert Johnson
played kamikaze, dive-bombing my clothes from the kitchen counter
every time I made a pile. Otherwise he was no help as a fashion
consultant.

By sunset we were driving south on Broadway, into
downtown, Maia looking like several thousand dollars and me looking
like spare change. The streetlamps were just coming on and the sunset
was longhorn orange when we walked down the stairs of the Commerce
Avenue Bridge into the crowds on the Riverwalk.

Take away the glitz and tourist dollars and the Paseo
del Rio is basically a deep trench that winds through the center of
downtown San Antonio. just south of East Houston, the river gets
diverted from its course and makes a huge lowercase "b,"
looping all the way east to the Convention Center, then back past La
Villita to Main, where it reconnects with itself.

Put back the glitz and the tourist dollars, and even
a native has to admit it’s pretty impressive. Tonight the air was
warm and the mariachi music was everywhere. Colored lights reflected
off the murky green water and made the river look festive despite
itself. About a hundred thousand people were strolling the flagstone
banks past the fountains, stone bridges, and pricey new restaurants.

The kitchen smoke of ten or fifteen different
cuisines drifted up past the yellow and green patio umbrellas.
Tourists with cameras and souvenir sombreros, basic trainees on
leave, rich men with high-priced call girls, all happily stepping on
toes and spilling drinks on each other. This is what a San Antonian
thinks of when you say “river." I remember how much trouble I
had reading Huck Finn as a child, trying to imagine how the hell that
raft made it past all those restaurants and crowds, in water only
three feet deep and thirty feet across, without anybody noticing the
stowaway slave. Maybe that’s why I became an English major—sheer
confusion.

Maia held on to my hand so we didn’t get separated.
In one of the rare moments when there was enough room for us to walk
side by side she pointed at the river and said: "I want to eat
on one of those."

A dinner barge went by—a huge red shoe-box lid with
an outboard motor. Fifty tourists smiled and raised their margaritas
from the white linen tablecloth. The waiters looked bored.

"No you don’t," I told her.

The operator in back turned the outboard just enough
to avoid an oncoming barge from a rival restaurant by a few inches.

“
Do they ever collide?" Maia shouted at me
over the crowd.

"Only when the operators are bored, which is
most of the time."

Occasionally people fell in too. My father used to
keep a record of how many drunk tourists he’d personally fished out
of the river working the Fiesta duty. I think he stopped counting at
around twenty-three. I was surprised how many of the older
restaurants had closed. The Union jack umbrellas of Kangaroo Court
were still up. Jim Cullum’s Happy jazz Band was still swinging at
the Landing like the 1920s had never ended. But almost everything
else had changed. We settled for a riverside table and a mediocre
plate of nachos at a place simply called La Casa. I should’ve
guessed we were in trouble when I saw the name. I knew it for sure
when I asked for Herradura Anejo and our waiter told me they didn’t
carry that kind of beer. Fortunately the people watching was better
than the food.

A group of blue-haired women in evening dresses and
summer minks went past, trying very hard to look glamorous while the
sweat was trickling down their necks. A family of Goodyear blimps
stopped long enough to stare jealously at our nachos. Two nuns in
full black regalia and fluted hats ran by, screaming in German,
followed closely by a group of very drunk and very naked pinheads,
followed closely by the SAPD beat patrol. The crowd opened and closed
around the chase. A few people laughed. Then more drinks were ordered
and life went on.

"Is it like this every night?" Maia asked,
clearly impressed.

"Saturdays it usually picks up."

"I should hope so."
 
Before it was full dark we headed back toward the
white tower of the Hilton Palacio del Rio. Ten stories of balconies
looked out over the water, most of them lit up and overflowing with
partying college kids. The main bar at river level was doing a brisk
business tonight despite the entertainment, three scruffy musicians
falling asleep into their microphones over a very slow rendition of
"Amie."

When we got to lobby level I’d been planning to
bribe the concierge anyway. It was just a bonus that I found an old
high school chum behind the desk. Mickey Williams took one look at me
and gave me the warm greeting I’d been expecting.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" he
said.

Mickey was the closest human equivalent to the
Pillsbury Doughboy I’d ever come across. He had no skin pigment to
speak of, and his hair was so yellow it was almost white. He was big
all over, an over-inflated kind of big, and although he looked soft,
in our days at Alamo Heights I’d seen plenty of high school
fullbacks bounce off Mickey’s body without leaving a mark. I’d
never quite gotten up the nerve to poke him in the stomach to see if
he would laugh. I had a feeling he wouldn’t.

Mickey had also dated Lillian for a brief time when
we’d broken up our senior year. Until I’d stolen back her heart.
Or, rather, until I’d stolen Mickey’s pickup. Lillian’s very
brief flirtation with kicker dancing in general and Mickey in
particular had come to an abrupt halt when they’d had to walk
halfway home from the Blue Bonnet Palace in Selma.

"Mickey," I replied, grinning.

He looked at me suspiciously. His pasty face flushed
red. Then he tried his line again: "What the fuck are you doing
here?"

"Came to see you, old buddy."

He looked behind him. Probably he was checking for
the hidden camera.

"Go away," he said. "I like my job."

"Come on," I said, "that was a long
time ago."

"I didn’t work for a fucking year after that
time at Maggie’s."

Maia smiled, not having a clue what we were talking
about. I shrugged as innocently as I could.

"How should I know Ms. Pacman could pick up so
much momentum going down one flight of stairs?"

Mickey appealed to Maia. "Fucker destroyed three
booths and nearly killed the general manager."

"I didn’t make you push it."

" ‘Just tip this up while I look for my
quarter,’ " he quoted.

I shrugged and took out two fifties. I put them on
his desk.

"I’ll get out of your way as soon as you tell
me which room Mr. Karnau’s in tonight."

Mickey stared. I smiled and set down another two
fifties. Mickey looked down very briefly. "You want the keys
too?" he said.
 

46

"Karnau," said Mickey. "Room 450.
Books that suite every weekend, pays in cash."

He slapped the keys into my hand. "And, Tres,
you fuck with me—"

I smiled. "Would I do that?"

"Shit." Mickey shook his head like his job
was as good as lost.

We watched the door to 450 from the service closet at
the end of the hall. The door stayed put. The freshly vacuumed maroon
rug in the hall outside was devoid of footprints.

Then somewhere around the corner at the end of the
hall another door opened and closed. The man who walked across the
hall and into the stairwell was wearing jeans and a striped Baja
shirt with the hood pulled up. He was moving briskly.

Maia and I exchanged looks.

“
A suite," she said.

"451," I said.

We raced each other down the hall. Maia’s gun was
out by the time she stopped at the door. I threw her the keys and
pushed into the stairwell, not even sure who I was following.

From the echoes he was about two floors below me,
going just fast enough to get the hell out without someone thinking
he might be running. I’ll say one thing for my worn-down deck
shoes—they’re quiet. I managed to follow him down without giving
him reason to speed up. When the blue-striped Baja exited on the
Riverwalk level, I was only twenty feet above him. I came out into a
service hallway and dodged a fat tourist in a sombrero. I almost
knocked a margarita pitcher out of the waitress’s hand as I ran
into the bar. The comatose folk trio was now doing the funeral dirge
version of Cat Stevens’s greatest hits. Baja Man still had his hood
up. He was navigating through the patio
tables
outside, heading into the crowds.

I stayed twenty feet back as we moved down the
Riverwalk. Baja didn’t look back. The Paseo was so narrow and thick
with people I couldn’t get at an angle to see his face. We passed
the Market Street Bridge and ke t going toward La Villita. For a
minute I lost Baja behind a slow-moving Oompa band. They had "Pride
of Fredericksburg” stitched into their green Bavarian britches and
painted on the side of their tuba, but they sure weren’t in a hurry
to get to whatever performance they had in mind. It’s usually worth
the time just to hear German spoken with a Texas twang, but not when
you’re chasing somebody. I finally got rude and shoved past. The
guy with the hairy white legs and the bass drum almost went into the
river.

"Gawdamn
scheisskerl
!"
he shouted after me.

The one with "Johann" on his feathered hat
tried to bean me with a handful of funnel cake. From the squeal
behind me I assume he hit a nearby call girl or debutante instead. I
kept moving.

The music changed from polka to full brass mariachi
as we rounded the corner and crossed another bridge, then ducked
through an alleyway and into the Arneson River Theater. We had
somehow come up on the performers’ side. There was a concert in
progress, like there is most nights. The spotlights were on, the
band’s panchos were Technicolor, and their horns were well
polished. Across the river, the old stone seats of the amphitheater
were almost full. Baja stopped for a minute, considering his options.
Then he sped up. So did I.

That’s when I made the mistake of running into
another old friend. Slamming into an old friend, actually. Carolyn
Smith was directing the KSAT mobile camera on its tripod at the wrong
moment to catch a particularly enthusiastic crowd response to my
favorite tune, "Guantanamera." What she caught instead was
my shoulder as I tried to squeeze past. That in itself probably
would’ve been okay, but as I kept running forward she stepped back
to get her balance and executed a beautiful piece of unintentional
tai chi
. Her leg went
under mine and my foot stopped. The rest of me kept going.