Chasing Death Metal Dreams (32 page)

“It worked.”

Nate gave him a sideways smile that was still a bit wan. “Yeah. Although I’m on probation with your aunt.”

“Right here,” Tía Lisa said, waving her coffee cup at him. “You’re gradually earning points though.”

“Let’s try going through the Facebook crap again,” Carlos said. “Just a bit longer.”

They were browsing through six hundred party pictures one woman had on her Facebook when Nate clicked back to the previous one, his head tilted, squinting at it. “You know, could that be…?” He pointed at a face in the crowd.

Carlos looked, and his stomach dropped. “Maybe. Check the others from that party.”

Nate clicked through them, and then Carlos grabbed his wrist, lifting his hand from the touchpad. “Fuck. Foster.”

Tía Lisa looked up fast. “Foster from your band? Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Carlos checked the date. “A year ago, but yeah, that’s him.
Motherfucker!
”

“It might not be his fault,” Nate said in a rush. “Maybe he just knows the blog guy. Maybe he said the wrong thing and someone else took advantage.”

“Or maybe not. He said I’d be sorry.” Carlos felt sick. “At the concert.”

“Why not blackmail
you
then,” Nate suggested. “Why go to Eli? And why not ask for money?”

Carlos laughed bitterly. “He knows Serpentine got the contract, but he probably doesn’t know I’m part of it. He knows I’m flat broke. Maybe he wants to hurt us both, or maybe he’s going to come back and ask for money later.” He pushed his chair back, unable to sit still. “I wondered, you know?” He paced to the window and back. “Serpentine only played that song once in public, at Sparkfest. Yeah, there’s video, but still, the lyrics aren’t online or anything. I wondered how the bastard got the words almost right like that. But Foster knew them.”

Tía Lisa said, “Suspicion isn’t proof. Even strong suspicion.”

“What now?” Nate asked.

“I want to kill him.” Carlos pounded his fist in his palm. It stung, and it felt good. “I want to pound his lying, druggie face into the pavement.”

“I don’t know,” Nate said. “You’re tougher, but he’s bigger. I might have to help, and then I’d get hurt, and I hate getting hurt.”

“I don’t need help.”

“You could take your Aunt Lisa along. She’s the toughest of us all.”

Tía Lisa said dryly, “You can stop buttering me up. I’ve decided he can keep you.”

Carlos actually laughed. It caught him by surprise, bubbling up out of his chest, making him snort until his eyes watered, and then he wasn’t laughing at all. Nate knocked his chair over, jumping up to pull him into a hug.

“I’m fine,” Carlos said, despite the sobs that shook him, jolting out of his chest harder than the laughter had. “I’m o-okay.”

Nate just held him tight. “Maybe I’m not. You ever think of that?” His arms locked around Carlos, easing his tremors by their unshakable grip. “I want to pull Foster’s nails out at the roots. I want to shove the entire score of a bad opera down his throat till he chokes. I want to fill his best guitar with wet concrete.”

“Don’t hurt the guitar,” Carlos murmured.

“Okay. His jock strap then. God, I want him to get hives. And herpes. And whooping cough.”

Carlos pushed his nose in against Nate’s cheek, feeling the rasp of stubble, smelling the familiar scent he would never be able to name but recognized in his bones. “Love you,” he breathed.

They both froze. Nate eased back and laid his palm against Carlos’s jaw. “Me too. I plan to make sure you know that.” He kissed Carlos, hard, thoroughly, with tongue and teeth and powerful intentions. Carlos kissed him back just as fiercely.

Tía Lisa coughed. “Should I go for a walk?”

Carlos broke away, feeling his cheeks heat. “No. We’re done.”

Nate said, “We’re not close to done. But we can wait. So, Aunt Lisa, you’re the expert. What do you suggest?”

“Besides not getting arrested for assault or transmission of harmful diseases? I’d say call Eli and your lawyer or some other impartial witness, then have them find Foster and ask him.”

“Isn’t there a way you could, like, hack into his email and see if he sent the note?” Nate suggested.

She raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know what Carlos has told you about me, but I’m not Superwoman. Or Superhacker. Of course, you might also talk to the woman with pictures on that Facebook page. I’m ninety-nine percent sure the owner of the blog is a man, but she might know him and be willing to tell you who he is. Especially now that weed’s legal.”

“How would we find her?”

“Easy, peasy.” Tía Lisa stood, came over and reclaimed the keyboard. “This one? Patricia? Okay, she has her full name on there. We look her up…” Tía Lisa clicked though a few screens. “And there she is. Sea-Tac address and all. Even a listed phone number.”

“Wow. You look like Superhacker to me,” Carlos said.

Tía Lisa shook her head. “You’d be amazed what’s sitting out there online. I had someone find my cell number once, because it was listed in someone else’s reference list on their posted resume. It’s hard to be anonymous these days.”

Nate turned to Carlos. “Now what? It’s your call.”

Carlos still felt shaky, but he tried to pull his thoughts together. “Eli’s the one being blackmailed. Or extorted or whatever.”

“It’s your song. Your band guy.”

“
Ex–
band guy.” Foster’d once been the guy he spent hour after hour with, writing songs, polishing, practicing, sharing a beer and hopes and dreams. “
¡Chingado!
”

Tía Lisa said, “I recommend leaving it to your lawyer.”

Carlos shook his head. “I can’t. That’ll be days or weeks. I need to know now. I need Eli to know.”

“We can probably convince Eli,” she suggested.

“
¡Dios mío!
No!” His face warmed at the shrillness of his tone, but he still meant it. “No,” he repeated more quietly. “I want to go talk to this woman and to Foster and settle this myself. Tonight.” He didn’t want to wait. This lie, this theft of the thing that mattered most to him, hurt more than he’d imagined it could.

“Well, you’re not going alone,” Nate said.

Tía Lisa grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper. “Let me make a few notes, and we can see if there’s a logical approach. Then we should eat something, if you two are really going to go out tonight.”

“Can’t you come too?” Carlos felt a bit dumb, asking for his tía to come hold his hand. But she had all the good ideas. He could imagine him and Nate ending up on this woman’s doorstep without a clue what to do next.

“I want to.” She rubbed her eyes. “But my back is killing me. I need a few hours flat out on a heating pad, before I turn around and drive back home. Big meeting at work tomorrow.”

“But…” Carlos looked blankly at her. “You just got here. You can’t drive all that way back, especially if you’re sore.”

She reached over to pat his shoulder. “I’ll be fine. If I didn’t believe you were going to be okay, I’d stay. But this meeting at work is really important, and you don’t need me now.”

“I always need you,” he muttered.

“Thanks, boychik.”

Nate said, “You’ll give us some hints, though, won’t you Aunt Lisa? About how to deal with this Patricia party person?”

“Sure. First hint? Stay calm and remember she may not be involved directly. I don’t want to sic two angry young men on a woman who may have done nothing more than write ungrammatical posts in favor of legal marijuana.”

“We wouldn’t hurt her,” Carlos protested.

“I didn’t say you would. But you might scare her. This is going to take finesse not force.”

“I can be finessical,” Nate quipped.

“I hope so.” Tía Lisa scribbled some notes on the paper, messed with the computer for a minute, then shut it off. “Okay, got her address and some stuff that might help. Now dinner.”

“You want me to eat?” Carlos’s stomach was too tight to even think about food.

“Yeah.” Tía Lisa stood and touched his arm. “I threw together some soup at lunch. I’ll heat some up. You’ll think better if you eat.”

He’d have sworn it was impossible to choke down a bite, but when she set a bowl in front of each of them, he managed half of it before running out of resolve. Tía Lisa sighed and pitched the remains. “Better than nothing. I nipped out and bought some ice cream for when we’re done. It’s in the freezer.”

Nate finished off his own bowl and set it in the sink. “I want to see you make Carlos eat pure sugar and fat.”

“I’m a mom. I can force my kids to eat ice cream if I have to.”

Carlos had to smile. “She’s evil that way sometimes. And y’know, I’m not a fanatic.” Hearing her say
my kids
like that felt really good right now. He’d happily eat ice cream to be part of her family that way, without questions, without distinctions.

Tía Lisa went over to the couch and stretched out her legs, wiggling her feet. “Come on, Nathaniel, sit here. Strategy meeting.” She patted the sofa beside her.

“Me?” Nate glanced back and forth between them. “Shouldn’t you and Carlos decide?”

Tía Lisa smiled crookedly. “I think we might have to trick this woman, to find out what she knows. One of you might have to lie to her. Who’s it going to be?”

Carlos was going to say, “
Me
”
,
but Nate beat him to it.

“Me, because Carlos really is the Boy Scout in the room.”

“I was never a Boy Scout,” Carlos muttered. He remembered desperately wanting to be, and covered with, “The uniforms are ugly.”

Nate smiled at him, and there was a softness in it that had Carlos’s objection dying on his lips. “I spent an awful night coming to the conclusion you’re the last honest man. If anyone’s going to tell believable lies, it’ll be me.”

“Not to mention, if she knows Foster she might recognize you, Carlos,” Tía Lisa said. “You’d better wear a shirt that covers those tats and kind of stand behind Nate.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Now. Planning meeting.”

Nate glanced at Carlos, then went and sat on the couch beside Tía Lisa. “So, what do you recommend?”

“I can think of a couple of options. Maybe you’ll come up with more.” Tía Lisa shot a considering look at Carlos, but when he stood there like he was glued to the floor, her gaze softened. She and Nate bent over her notes, heads together, talking quietly enough that Carlos only caught half the words. He should have joined them, but his head felt too full to add anything more, more words, more thoughts. He just stood in the kitchen, watching Tía Lisa talk with her hands, waving and gesturing, watching Nate nod and point to something. She dug more paper out of her bag and wrote a paragraph, tapping pen on paper. Nate nodded again slowly.

The two of them sitting on his couch working together, working for
him,
made Carlos stupidly happy, even under these crappy circumstances. When Tía Lisa ruffled Nate’s hair, just like she used to do with Carlos’s, he had to retreat to the bathroom to put on a work shirt. There was no reason at all that should bring tears to his eyes, but it took him a few minutes to quit smiling and blinking at the dumb pinstripes.

When he came back out, Nate was on his feet stuffing the papers into his pocket. “Hey, you drive, okay? I need to study up. I love the nerdy shirt.”

“You should.” He tugged the cuffs lower. “You picked it.”

“Got one I could borrow?”

He waved at his closet. “My shirts are yours.”

As Nate grabbed one and went into the bathroom, Tía Lisa smiled. “Not bad, Carlos. Button the neck too, and how about a pair of glasses?” She reached into her bag and found a case. “Here, put these on. You’ll look different, less threatening.”

“I thought I was supposed to be able to drive,” Carlos said, reaching for the case anyway.

“Dumbass. Put them on when you get there.” Tía Lisa looked at Nate as he came back out wearing the plain blue shirt. “You will take care of him, right? And explain the brilliant plan we came up with that he couldn’t be bothered to listen to?”

“It wasn’t that I couldn’t bother,” Carlos objected.

“I know.” She stood and hugged him, and her embrace was too wonderful to step away. “Tough day, boychik,” she murmured. “Let Nate work off some guilt by helping look after you, okay?”

“Hey, I’m tougher than he is.”

“I’ll protect him,” Nate said to Tía Lisa, flexing a muscle and completely ignoring Carlos’s snort.

“I’m sure you will. Text me if you need anything.” Tía Lisa rubbed her shoulder and eased back down on the couch. “Carlos, do you have a heating pad by any chance?”

“Um, sure.” Carlos dug it out of the bathroom closet and plugged it in for her. “Don’t you want the bed?”

“This is fine.” She tucked it under her back with a sigh and lay flatter, stuffing a cushion under her head. “I’m getting old. I once drove across the country in four days, pretty much nonstop.”

“You’ll never get old.” Just the idea made Carlos worry. There were little lines around her eyes that hadn’t been there last time he looked, and the skin of her hands was less smooth, and it was unfair that anything could slow Tía Lisa down.

“Well, I’m not turning myself out to pasture yet. But I’ll have a nice rest while you young men go solve your own problems.”

“We could wait, I guess. Maybe we should stick around here.”

She chuckled. “I’ve got you switching from worrying about yourself to worrying about me. My job is done. But no, if you want evidence to give to Eli before he speaks to the lawyer or the label, you should get going.”

“Right.” He’d almost forgotten for a moment. His burning anger had dulled but thinking of Eli brought it back. “I do. Want that.”

“Nate had some good ideas. Go talk to Patricia. I have my phone. Keep in touch.”

Nate said, “Feel better, Aunt Lisa. And thanks for the brilliant help.”

“You’re not stupid yourself. I like that in a guy. Drive carefully.”

They took the Pinto, so Nate could study his notes while Carlos drove. Carlos followed the GPS directions through the city streets, in the mellow gold light of the early evening. Traffic was still heavy, and the trip was slow, but they sat in a silence that was comfortable and oddly calm. Here they were, driving out to confront someone who might be a blackmailer, and it felt like a trip to the supermarket.