Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan (6 page)

“
Hello—" I said. My mind was fuzzy, but I
could hear the sounds of a bar in the background—glasses clinking,
men talking in both Spanish and English, a jukebox playing Freddy
Fender. No one said anything into the receiver. I waited. So did the
caller. He waited much too long for a typical prankster, or an
honestly confused drunk with a wrong number.

"Leave," he said. Then the line went dead.

Of course it was just the fact that I was
half-asleep, probably still half-drunk, and that I’d been thinking
about things way too much. But the man’s voice sounded familiar to
me. It sounded a little like my father.
 

10

The next morning I made the mistake of practicing
tai
chi
sword in the backyard. By nine o’clock
I had served as breakfast for a small army of mosquitoes and scared
the neighbors half to death. The woman next door came outside in a
blue terry-cloth bathrobe around eight-thirty, dropped her coffee cup
when she saw me swinging the blade, then went back in and locked the
door. She left the coffee cup broken on the back porch. Across the
alley, two pairs of large dark eyes were following my movements
cautiously through the miniblinds on the second floor.

Finally Gary Hales shuffled out in his pajamas and
asked me, in a listless voice, what I was doing. He might’ve been
sleepwalking for all I could tell. I stopped to catch my breath.

“
It’s a kind of exercise," I said.

He blinked slowly, looking at the sword. "With
big knives? "

"Sort of. It makes you exercise very carefully."

“
I reckon so. "

He scratched behind his ear. Maybe he was trying to
remember why he’d come outside.

"You think maybe it’s better if I don’t
practice out here?" I suggested.

“
I reckon maybe," he agreed.

Before I went inside, I looked up at the people
behind the miniblinds and pretended to stab at them with the sword.
The lifted slat flicked down instantly.

After a shower I tried Lillian’s number and got her
answering machine. I figured she was in transit to work, so I tried
an old number for Carlon McAffrey at the
Express-News
.
I was bounced back to the main operator for the newspaper, who told
me Carlon was now working for the Friday entertainment section. She
transferred the call.

“
Yo," McAffrey answered.

"Yo?" I said. "Is that the way all you
slick entertainment writers answer the phone, or do you just have
trouble with words over one syllable?"

It took him three beats to place the voice.

"Navarre, do the words ‘piss off’ mean
anything to you?"

“
Not when you hear them as often as I do."

“
Hang on," he said.

He covered the phone for a second and yelled at
someone in his office.

"Okay," he said. "So where the flying
fuck have you been the last decade or so?"

Carlon and I had been in high school together, then
had worked for the A & M newspaper in college. He’d layed the
star journalist while I, one of the very few human beings ever to
major in both English and physical education, had written a sports
editorial column. Young and stupid, we drank to excess and terrorized
the cows of Brian, Texas, by pushing them down hills while they slept
with their legs locked. After I moved out to California my sophomore
year we had eventually lost touch.

"Believe it or not," I said, "I’m
back here seeing Lillian."

Carlon whistled. "Sandy over at the society page
is going to love that. She’s been getting a lot of mileage out of
Lillian and ole Dan the Man Sheff lately."

"You put my picture on the same page as the
debutantes and I’ll rip your nuts off."

"I love you too," he said. "So why the
warm and friendly call, if not to fill me in on your romance?"

"Tell me about the newspaper morgue. I’m
looking for information on my father’s murder and the
investigation. "

“
Mm. That was what, ’84?"

He asked someone behind him a question I couldn’t
catch.

“
Yeah," he told me, “anything before 1988 is
still on microfiche. After that we joined the computer age. Public
access, but it would be a lot faster if I got one of the mole people
down in Archives to round it up for you."

"That would be great, Carlon."

"So you owe me. What else is new? Now tell me
why you’re digging up family history, Navarre. I thought you wanted
nothing to do with that."

The tone of his voice told me the question was more
professional than personal.

"Ten years makes a difference," I said.
"Especially if I’m back here to stay."

"You got something new on the case?"

"Nothing that would work for the entertainment
section."

"I’m serious, Tres. You got anything on the
case, I’d like to know."

"This from a man whose biggest scoop in college
was a breakthrough in onion-growing technology?

"Some friend," Carlon said, and hung up.

I tried Lillian’s studio and got Beau Karnau
instead. At first he pretended not to remember me. Finally he
admitted that Lillian was not in.

“
When do you expect her?" I asked.

“
Day after tomorrow."

I was silent for a moment. “I don’t think I got
that."

“
Yes you did, " Beau said. I pictured him
smirking—it wasn’t a pretty image. "She went on a buying
trip to Laredo, left a message on the studio machine this morning. I
might add it’s the least she can do after stabbing me in the back
like she’s doing."

“
Yeah, you might add that, mightn’t you?"

“
The least she can do. Drops everything in my lap,
thinks she can actually make a living—"

He had more to say but I put the receiver down on the
ironing board. He might be talking to himself for hours before he
figured out I was no longer there. When my mind started aching this
bad I knew it was time to abuse my body instead. I put on running
shorts and a Bay to Breakers T-shirt, then headed down New Braunfels
toward the Botanical Center. The really hot part of the day was yet
to come, but after two miles I was drenched in sweat. I found a
little stand that sold coconut
paletas
and bought one, letting the icy chunks of fruit slide down my throat
as I sat in the shade of a pecan tree near the entrance to Fort Sam
Houston. I stared across at the army base, wondering if Bob Langston
was in there somewhere, laughing about a prank call he’d made to me
last night. I hoped that was the case.

When I got back to Queen Anne the phone was dead from
being off the hook so long. Evidently Beau had finally got tired of
his own voice. I put the receiver back in the cradle.

I did push-ups and crunches, then decided to tackle
cleaning the kitchen. The memory of Bob Langston lived on in the
fruit keeper of the refrigerator, where several black bananas had
turned into oblong mounds of mush. He’d also left two sandwich bags
filled with some kind of meat slices, congealed in what I assume had
been a barbecue sauce. Not even Robert Johnson was interested.

The place was looking almost clean by that evening
when the phone rang.

“
I’m very close to being pissed off," Jay
Rivas said. “In fact, I’m downright perturbed, Navarre."

"I’m not a qualified therapist," I warned
him. “Maybe there’s some kind of inferiority complex for
incompetent bald fat men with large mustaches."

"Or maybe there’s some kind of asshole who
keeps smearing his shit all over town where I have to step in it."

I sighed. "Do you have a point to make, Jay?"

He blew smoke into the phone. "Yeah, kid, I got
two points. First, yesterday evening you assault a young man whose
family is heavyweight on the Chamber of Commerce. Said young man will
not press charges, otherwise you and I would be having this chat in
person right now. Second, I hear about you digging for information on
a ten-year-old murder, bothering people who have better things to do
than help you come to terms with your fucking manhood."

I counted to five before answering. "You’re
talking about my father’s murder. I think I’ve got a right to
know."

“
You had a right to know ten years ago," Rivas
shot back. "Where the fuck were you when it mattered?"

There were a lot of things I wanted to say to that,
but I waited. Finally Rivas swore under his breath.

“
Look, Navarre, let me save you some time. On the
record, nobody can prove who whacked your old man, okay? You’re not
going to get the goddamn case files, but if you did, that’s what
they’d tell you. Off the record, it’s no big secret. Your dad
spent the last two years of his life putting thumbscrews on the mob
in Bexar County. It’s one of the few things he did well. The mob
finally hit back. Nobody can prove it; everybody knows it. That’s
the short and shitty truth, and after all this time nobody’s going
to do any time for the killing. So unless you got some indisputable
reason why this case needs to be looked into again, which you don’t,
and the goodwill of the SAPD, which I promise you you don’t, then
you lay off. Go marry your high school sweetheart and get a nice job
teaching college somewhere, but stay the hell out of my sight."

He hung up.

I stared at the wall for a while, seeing Jay Rivas’s
face. I thought about Lillian’s sudden trip to Laredo, the way our
reunion wasn’t quite going as I’d planned, the way Maia Lee had
sounded on the phone, and the way people kept sending me these loving
phone calls. When I put my fist through the Sheetrock, I missed the
stud by less than an inch. I think it surprised me more than it did
Robert Johnson. Clearly unimpressed, he stared up at me from his nest
of freshly unpacked clothes on the futon. I checked for broken
knuckles.

“
Ouch," I told him.

Robert Johnson got up and stretched. Then he showed
me the kind of sympathy I was used to. He left the room.
 

11

Yielding to Robert Johnson’s hungry cries Tuesday
morning, I walked to Leon "Pappy" Delgado’s grocery on
the corner of Army and Broadway. The rest of the block had gone up
for lease years ago, but it restored some of my sense of universal
justice to see Pappy’s Christmas lights still blazing around the
pink doorway of his dilapidated adobe storefront.

My father, always suspicious of any store larger than
two thousand square feet, had been a patron of Pappy’s for years,
but since I had spoken no Spanish when I left San Antonio and Pappy
knew little English, we had never said a word to each other beyond
"
Buenos tardes
".

He was amazed, maybe a little suspicious, when I
started talking to him
en Espanol
.
He rubbed his paddle-shaped nose, perplexed, then gave me a crooked
grin.

“
San Francisco," he said. “You talk just
like my wife’s brothers now, Senor Tres."

As I searched in vain for Robert Johnson’s brand of
food, Pappy told me about his seven boys and two girls. The youngest
had just had her confirmation. The oldest was in the Air Force now.

I looked in my wallet after paying for my two small
bags of food. It was a sobering moment.

"So what are you doing back in town, Senor
Tres?" asked Pappy.

“
It would seem," I said, "that I’m
looking for a job."

"Always need counter help," Pappy said,
grinning. I promised to keep it in mind.

Back at home, I found the list of leads Maia had
given me and starred making calls. After an hour on the phone, I had
talked to a dozen voice mail services, one receptionist who couldn’t
spell my name but was free on Saturday night, and two personnel
directors who promised not to throw my résumé in the trash if I
mailed it in.

"And you say you’re a paralegal?" the
last man on the list asked me. He had graduated from Berkeley with
Maia.

"Not exactly."

"Then—what is it that you do?"

"Research, investigation, I’m bilingual,
English Ph.D., martial artist, congenial personality."

I could hear him tapping his pencil.

"Maia employed you for what, then—discussing
literature? Breaking arms?"

"You’d be surprised how few people can do
both."

"Uh-huh." His enthusiasm was not
overwhelming.

"Do you have a Texas P.I. license, then?"

"My work for Terrence & Goldman was more
informal than that."

"I see—" His voice seemed to be getting
farther and farther away from the receiver.

"Did I mention I was a bartender?"

To prove it I started giving him the recipe for a
Pink Squirrel. By the time I got to the sugar on the rim he had hung
up.

I was taping over the hole in my wall and pondering
my limitless job opportunities when Carlon McAffrey called from the
Express-News.