Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan (44 page)

Thar’s it, isn’t it?"

His voice was anything but confident. He looked at
the Cambridges for some confirmation—a nod, a smile, a "yes."
They didn’t give him any. Dan turned to Lieutenant Rivas. “You’re
going to arrest him or something, aren’t you?"

Rivas nodded. "Or something."

Dan’s face started doing its muscle tests again. He
looked at me uneasily.

"My father made a big mistake, Dan," I told
him. "Ten years ago he let your mother know what he’d found
out about the Travis Center scam. Maybe when you’re old
enough—forty-five or so—these folks will tell you how my dad
stumbled across the information in your mother’s bedroom. When
Cookie found out, she ran straight to your father, who was still
healthy enough to recognize the danger, and he ran straight to his
new bosses." I looked at Zeke Cambridge. "Whose idea was it
to use Halcomb for the killing—yours or Asante’s?"

For a moment Zeke Cambridge’s eyes darkened, taking
on a little of the old ferocity that had frightened me as a teenager.
“You think you really knew your father, boy? He ruined people’s
marriages, their careers, his own damn family. You think he’s worth
defending?"

"No," I said. “He probably isn’t.
Fortunately, this isn’t about knowing my father. It’s about
people telling me for ten years that I couldn’t do anything about
his murder, and me knowing it wasn’t true. Sooner or later I had to
come back and try. Whether or not my dad was worth the effort isn’t
really important. Maybe instead we should talk about how you shot
Randall Halcomb while Fernando Asante looked on, how your daughter
happened to be watching from the hilltop nearby, how she’s lived
with that knowledge for ten years, hiding it from you and everyone
else because she couldn’t turn in her own father. You think you
were worth defending?"

"That’s enough." Mr. Cambridge tried to
put the old tone of command back into his voice. It failed him. I
looked at Dan. "I suppose you get to a point where you can’t
do anything more about a problem, Sheff, and then you just have to
acknowledge the brick wall in front of you and let it go. Maybe
you’re at that point. You keep thinking you can set things right
with your family; you keep screwing up. Maybe you just need to admit
that the situation is out of the scope of things you can fix. If
that’s where you are, I feel sorry for you, because either you
won’t live long or you’re going to live exactly the way these
people want you to."

Mrs. Cambridge looked like she wanted to hug me. Her
eyes had gotten paler as she cried, like all the green was being
washed out. "You don’t understand, Tres. Zeke didn’t
intend—he was trying to save his own family, dear. He never
thought—"

"Shut up," Mr. Cambridge said.

Rivas cleared his throat. “I’m still waiting for
that disk, Danny."

Dan lifted his hands, moving them in front of him
uncertainly as if he were trying to remember just how big a fish he’d
caught. He looked bewildered.

"I won’t believe any of this," he told
me.

"Sure you will," I said. "You believe
it already. You’re remembering how violently Lillian reacted when
you told her about the blackmail, and you suspect it wasn’t just
the shock of finding out you had a dirty family secret. It was her
secret, Dan, and you let her know it was blowing up in her face after
all these years. No wonder she wasn’t happy with you—she probably
thought those photos had been destroyed. Beau would’ve promised her
that. He would’ve agreed to keep the secret, even to get rid of the
negatives of Halcomb’s murder, only he couldn’t make himself do
it."

“
Karnau was scum," Mr. Cambridge said almost
to himself.

I shook my head. "Scum would’ve cashed in on
those photos immediately, knowing what they were worth. Beau cared
enough about Lillian not to use them for a long time, until year
after year he got more obscure in the aft world, more dependent on
Lillian’s social connections and money for any kind of exposure at
all, while Lillian grew less and less enamored with him. That can
make a guy like Beau bitter. Then last year Lillian told him she
wanted to move on. Beau got violent. It got so bad Lillian asked for
a restraining order against him. Eventually they reconciled, for a
while, but Beau had already started taking his revenge. He’d
started sending you and Asante copies of the old prints, demanding
payments. You both must’ve had coronaries when you opened up that
first blackmail letter, especially since you’d just started
planning your encore performance—the fine arts complex."

Dan turned toward Mr. Cambridge, imploring him one
more time for an alternative answer.

Mr. Cambridge tried to soften his expression, but it
didn’t come easy for him. "You’ll have your company back,
son. Don’t you see that? You can marry Lillian, bring the families
together. We’re doing this for both of you, to protect your
future."

“
Protect my future," Dan repeated. His voice
cracked when he laughed.

“
Everything prearranged," I said. "You
get to carry on the traditional family scam and if Lillian doesn’t
cooperate maybe they’ll let you keep her doped up, locked in a room
somewhere so she doesn’t cause you any social embarrassment. How’s
that sound, Dan?"

Rivas raised his 9mm Parabellum. He seemed to be
picking just the right spot on my face. "Enough. Danny Boy, get
the fucking disk."

"No, Daniel," said Zeke Cambridge. "Leave
the room now. Let us handle this."

Dan still didn’t move. He was looking at me,
working something out in the back of his mind. “What do you mean
about Lillian?"

“
They had to hide her away," I said. "The
Cambridges had to protect her after she’d screwed things up between
them and Asante. What was your deal with Karnau, Zeke—a year of
payments maybe? Then Beau gives you and Asante each a disk. Beau gets
out of town a wealthy man, and with the photos scrambled neither you
nor Asante could double-cross the other. Is that it? Only Dan found
out, and once Lillian learned about the blackmail from him, she had
to do something. She had no one to turn to—not Karnau, not her
parents, not the Sheffs. The only thing she could think of was to
bring in someone who had just as much of a stake in setting things
right as she did—me."

The veins on Zeke Cambridge’s nose were turning
scarlet. “My baby girl has nothing to do with this."

He said it to me but he was looking at Rivas.

"Sure," I said. "Keep saying that and
maybe the lieutenant will start believing it. Lillian did make it to
dinner last Sunday night, didn’t she? She’d just given me the
disk she’d discovered, just gotten up the courage to break off from
the gallery again, and Sunday night she must’ve confronted you—told
you what she’d seen ten years ago, probably told you she was going
to do something rash, like go public. That’s when you knew you had
to put her away for a while. Asante wouldn’t be so understanding
with her. He might send Rivas to make sure that Lillian kept quiet
for good."

"Tres," said Mrs. Cambridge, still crying,
"Lillian loved you so much . . . she wanted a second chance with
you. Don’t—"

“
She was very alone," I corrected. “She
needed I someone to solve the problem for her."

“
And you did a hell of a job," said Rivas.
“Now, Danny Boy, at the count of five I want that disk. You can
bring me the one on the coffee table, while you’re at it."

Zeke Cambridge’s eyes, which had been getting
watery, now turned hard as sapphires as they focused on Rivas.
Cambridge took one step toward the couch.

"Wait just a damn minute."

Rivas trained the 9mm on the older man. "Wait
for what, Mr. C.? What are you going to tell me that’s going to
make this better? We kept our part of the bargain. We paid good money
for that little statue, then Karnau tells us Little Miss Cambridge
swiped it. He tells us she’s going to spill what she knows about
Travis Center, pin it all on your partners to get you off the hook.
And we say: ‘No way, not good old Zeke Cambridge. Old Zeke’s too
smart for that.’ Only then we find out you’ve taken your precious
daughter out of commission, got your people searching for both disks
like you’re getting greedy on us. That’s a real pisser."

"Which is why you killed Moraga and Garza,"
I said. Rivas flicked ashes onto the couch. "I’m counting to
one, Danny Boy."

Dan suddenly became very calm, very composed. The
change made me uneasy. His face closed up with a kind of frozen
dignity that reminded me uncomfortably of his mother. He took the
disk off the coffee table, then started walking toward me.
 
"We had an arrangement that is still valid,"
Zeke Cambridge insisted. "Daniel is no part of this, nor is
Lillian. You can’t ignore ten years of solid profits just
because—you can’t seriously think—"

Rivas shrugged. “There are other construction firms
ready to make those kind of profits, Mr. C. Maybe you get whacked, it
goes down as another mob killing, Mr. Asante gets a law-and-order
speech ready to go in the morning. He can ride this one all the way
to the mayor’s office. I’m counting two, Danny Boy."

Dan knelt down in front of me and got the other disk.
He kept his hands in plain sight, well away from the Sheridan
Knockabout. When he stood up, though, I saw in his eyes what was
coming. I tried my best to tell him “no" just by the way I
looked back at him, but he’d already turned away.

I said: "You don’t get Lillian, Jay. You don’t
get any assurance that the disk I brought tonight is real. You kill
me, you’re leaving loose ends."

Jay grinned underneath the mustache. He pointed the
gun at me.

"It’s worth it, Navarre. Loose ends we can
handle later."

"I should also mention—some friends of mine
from the Sheriff’s Department are on their way here."

"Then we’ll just have to make it a quick
good-bye."

Dan was back where he’d started, standing next to
Rivas with the couch between them. Dan dropped the two CDs on the
cushions.

“
Good boy," Rivas said. He still had the gun
trained on me. He didn’t notice Dan’s face, the tension in Dan’s
shoulders.

I wanted to yell no but it wouldn’t have helped.

"What now?" I asked Rivas, trying to keep
his eyes on me. "Asante finally gets you that promotion to
captain?" Jay looked like the idea pleased him.

Whatever he was going to say next, it never got said
because Dan grabbed his gun. It was an extremely stupid move, done
exactly wrong. Dan seized the 9mm by the barrel and made the mistake
of pulling it down, toward his own body. I don’t remember actually
seeing the force of the discharge take off the edge of Dan’s right
hand, or the bullet ripping an exit wound out the back of his thigh.
I just remember the new red spray pattern that appeared like magic on
the flowery pillows of the couch and on Mrs. Cambridge’s yellow
dress, and the way the back of Dan’s khakis were suddenly dark and
slick as he charged headlong over the sofa into Rivas. The Parabellum
went off again but by then I was already in motion.

Nothing else is very clear, looking back on it. I
remember a sound like a watermelon rind snapping when I brought the
butt of the old .22 down on Rivas’s head. I remember a lot of blood
seeping between my fingers as I tried to keep pressure on the large
hole in Dan’s leg, yelling at him to keep still as he writhed
around on the carpet, clamping what was left of his right hand
between his legs. I vaguely recall the sirens and the paramedics
coming in to relieve me, and later as I crouched in the corner, I
remember Deputy Larry Drapiewski calling my name and gently taking
away the Sheridan Knockabout that I was cradling against my cheek.
 

63

I woke up with Larry Drapiewski waving a cup of
coffee under my nose.

It took a year or two for me to remember where I was.

I was in my underwear, on a cot on a screened-in
porch. The breeze from the ceiling fan above me was chilly on my bare
skin, but the August sunlight was pouring in hot and low from the
west, and the noisy refrigerator I’d been dreaming about was
actually cicadas, humming by the thousands in the huisache trees
outside. There was a grass fire burning somewhere. A brown and white
heifer lay in the mottled shadow of a cactus patch twenty feet away,
watching me. I was at the ranch in Sabinal. It must’ve been about
three in the afternoon.

I felt dizzy as hell when I tried to move. With some
difficulty, I lifted my head and saw my brother Garrett in his
wheelchair at the foot of the cot. Or rather I saw Garrett and Jerry
Garcia and Jimi Hendrix all blurred together. Until my vision cleared
the two airbrushed faces on Garrett’s T-shirt floated around with
Garrett’s own like some tie-dyed Holy Trinity.

“
Come on, little bro," Garrett said
impatiently, "we’re waiting to flush the toilet. "

I squinted and swallowed a taste like dead frogs out
of my mouth. "What?"

“
We haven’t been flushing all day, man, so you’d
have enough water pressure from the tank to take a nice hot shower
when you woke up."

Larry handed me the coffee. The bags under his eyes
and his uncombed hair told me Larry hadn’t gotten much sleep last
night, though he’d changed his deputy’s uniform for jeans and a
denim shirt. "You’ve been out for thirteen hours, son. We were
starting to get worried."