Southtown (10 page)

So far, Pablo had resisted the urge to call his wife. He needed to be on the plane first, on his way to Mexico. He just hoped Angelina had read his letters from jail, and understood his veiled directions about what she should do if he ever got free.

But what if she’d burned the letters? He kept thinking about the look on her face the night he came home with the shotgun.

In the month or so leading up to that night, she’d acted cagey, nervous. Money had vanished from their checking account without explanation, and they never had any extra money to spend. She would go out and tell him she was visiting a sick friend, or seeing a doctor—little excuses that didn’t add up.

At first Pablo was too bewildered to be angry. He was used to Angelina depending on him for everything. She’d come to the country illegally years before, gotten separated from the rest of her family in transit, when they’d run into some vigilante ranchers in the high desert. She had only Pablo, who’d given her citizenship through marriage, a good home, all the love she could want. She would never betray him.

Then his next-door neighbor told him about the man who was visiting her while Pablo was at work—twice he’d come to see her, over the last week.

And when Pablo had walked in that last night, and found the man talking with her on their bed—on
his
bed . . .

Angelina had looked up, and screamed at Pablo to stop.

He would give anything to take back those few seconds, as the man rose to face him, and Pablo’s finger found the trigger.

“Yo, amigo. Wake up.”

Stirman’s presence jarred Pablo out of his thoughts.

“What’s wrong?” Stirman demanded.

“Bad news,” Pablo managed to say.

He told Stirman about their private eye, who had followed Erainya Manos out of town that morning. She’d taken I-35 north—her and her boy, Jem.

“Running?” Stirman asked.

“No. She came back.”

“Where did she go in Austin, then?”

Pablo shifted uncomfortably. “Our guy lost her when she turned off on Ben White. He missed the exit, never found her again. He drove back to San Antonio and sat on her house, in case she came back. She did—a few minutes ago. Without the boy.”

Pablo saw the rage building in Stirman’s face.

They both knew what the PI’s news meant. Erainya Manos had hidden her son. She was trying to protect him, insulate him from danger, which meant she probably wasn’t going to cooperate. She would try to double-cross them.

“The woman is a problem,” Stirman decided.

“She’s still got twenty-four hours,” Pablo said halfheartedly. The last thing he wanted was another death, especially a woman’s. “Maybe she’ll come through. We just got to stay low and wait.”

“No,” Stirman insisted. He took a deep breath, and Pablo knew he was filling himself with that cold, homicidal sense of purpose Pablo had seen too many times over the last few days. “Change of plans, amigo. We’ve got work to do.”

12

Robert Johnson was a great help going through the agency’s old files.

He would crouch at the far end of the living room, get a running start, and dive straight through them like a snowplow. Then he would look at me, wild-eyed, a manila folder tented over his head.

“Yes, thanks,” I said. “That’s much better.”

In terms of finding important information, however, neither of us was having much luck.

The only things that belonged to Erainya in the locked file cabinet were mementos of her transitional year, from Barrow’s wife to self-made PI. There were stacks of clippings about her defense trial in Fred’s murder. Her change-of-name paperwork, officially declaring her to be Erainya Manos. Her U.S. passport, stamped for Greece. Jem’s adoption paperwork from a Texas-based agency called Children First International. His birth date, which Erainya had told me was a guess—April 28, 1995. His birth parents’ names: Abdul and Mariah Suleimaniyah. The usual signatures and medical work. A letter from some government official in Bosnia-Herzegovina, authorizing Jem’s release to Erainya’s custody.

An early picture of Erainya and Jem. Jem looked about one year old. His dark eyes were wide with amazement as the woman with the frizzy black hair held him up to the camera and kissed his cheek.

I went through some of Erainya’s correspondence. Several notes of support from women’s advocacy groups. Fan letters from women who admired her for shooting her husband.

I put those down. They made me nervous.

The rest of the stuff was from Fred Barrow’s time.

I’d always thought of Fred as an old man, but the only photograph I found showed him looking not much older than me. It must’ve been from the early eighties. Fred’s greasy black hair was parted in the middle, too long at the collar. He had a square face, battered from years as an amateur boxer. His eyes were sly and shallow, his smile insincere. He looked like a wife-beater, in the middle of saying,
Look, officer, you know how these women are.

I didn’t want to find anything that would make me like him, but he did seem to have a soft spot for illegal immigrants. His first job out of college was ten years with the Border Patrol, and the experience must’ve affected him. After opening the PI agency, he’d taken on a number of cases, either pro bono or at reduced fees, to help families in Mexico find missing kin in the north, or to help prosecute coyotes like Will Stirman.

He liked fishing and hunting.

He relished divorce cases. Even his enemies admitted he was a tenacious investigator.

He almost lost his PI license once when he’d assaulted a federal agent who’d questioned his integrity in a high-profile drug trafficking case. Fred Barrow had been working for the defense. The federal agent made a comment about Barrow’s testimony being “the best fabrication money could buy.” Later, at a bar near the courthouse, Barrow decked the agent with a left hook. A judge friendly to both parties managed to smooth things over, at least legally. The federal agent’s name was Samuel Barrera.

There was nothing to indicate the two men had framed Will Stirman. Just meticulous notes on their interviews with Gerry Far and Dimebox Ortiz, outlining Stirman’s operation, and confirming that McCurdy had been a regular client. In exchange for their testimony, Far and Ortiz had escaped prosecution. Far had taken over Stirman’s operation. And Dimebox Ortiz . . . what had he gotten out of the deal?

I wrote on my otherwise blank notepad:
Dimebox Ortiz?

I set that question aside for the moment. If Dimebox had any brains, he was several hundred miles away by now.

Robert Johnson dive-bombed the stack I’d just gone through and sent papers flying.

“Thanks,” I said.

As I was picking them up, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. It was a piece of stationery that must’ve been stuck between envelopes in Erainya’s correspondence. The note was from a woman. I could tell that from the handwriting. She wrote:

Irene, You’ll be acquitted and back with us before you know it. Don’t worry. And the package from Fred—relax. It’s safely hidden.

Love, H.

The package from Fred?

I read the note again. It still said the same thing.

Will Stirman wanted something from Barrera and Barrow, something Erainya felt guilty about.

I looked at the cat. “You’re a genius.”

He looked at me wild-eyed. He probably couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to catch on.

I needed to strong-arm somebody for more information. Somebody who wasn’t Sam or Erainya; they would only lie to me more. Somebody who knew Will Stirman, and wasn’t dead yet.

I looked at my notes. I’d written two words:
Dimebox Ortiz?

At this point, under normal circumstances, I would’ve called my friend Ralph Arguello, Ana DeLeon’s husband. He specialized in finding lowlife scumbags. He delighted in strong-arming them. But I hadn’t talked to Ralph in almost a year. The longer the silence got, the more stubborn I felt about not breaking it. Besides, I had an unreturned message from his wife on my answering machine, asking why I hadn’t shown up at the police station last night like I’d promised.

I’d have to go this one alone.

Was it worth searching for Dimebox?

I looked at the cat. “If he has any brains, he’ll be far, far away.”

The cat’s expression told me I’d just answered my own question.

“You’re right,” I said. “He’ll be in town.”

I told Robert Johnson to sort the rest of the files for me. Then I grabbed my car keys.

The normal axiom is
Follow the money.
In the case of Dimebox Ortiz, it’s
Follow the poultry.

Dimebox might’ve been a bail jumper hiding from a crazed killer, but he still had to place his cockfighting bets. Sooner or later, I knew he would show up at the pits, or with a bookie. I asked around, said I had a couple of grand to spend on the right bird, and within an hour I had a list of places to try.

I found Dimebox back in Southtown at Rosario’s restaurant, about to enjoy a skillet of sizzling fajitas with a particularly oily cockfighting bookie named Travis the Spur. There were various rumors about how Travis had gotten the nickname, none of which involved the local basketball team.

I came up behind Dimebox, pulled his arm behind his back, and slammed his head onto his flour tortilla, making sure his face was close enough to the heated skillet so he would catch the pops from the grease.

I told Travis the Spur to cluck off. He was only too delighted to oblige.

Dimebox struggled.

I applied a little more pressure to his arm. “Nothing like a good fajita.”

“Navarre?” He was blinking from the grease, drooling on the tortilla. “Jesus, thank God it’s you.”

“Saved you again, have I?”

“Stirman’s looking for me. He got to Kiko and Lalu—I think . . . shit, he might’ve killed them, man. I was just leaving town—”

“You seem to have trouble finding the city limits.”

“Just gonna make a couple more grand for the road. You know. How the hell did you find me?”

“Talk to me about the night Stirman was arrested.”

“What?” He tried to shrug, which was not easy to do in his position. “What’s there to say?”

“Your face needs garnishing, Dimebox. How about some of these?”

I made a lightning grab for the jalapeño bowl, poured them on Dimebox’s face, then reapplied pressure to keep his head against the plate.

“Agghh!” he said. “Jesus!”

The juice started running into his eyes.

I let him struggle.

There wasn’t much of a crowd in the restaurant, this time of afternoon—a few guys drinking margaritas at the bar; a couple of businessmen having a late lunch. They’d been admiring the wraparound view of the corner of Alamo and Presa, but they all stopped watching that and started watching me.

A waiter came over nervously and asked if there was a problem. Did he have to call the police?

“Everything’s fine!” Dimebox groaned, blinking pepper juice out of his face. “No police! Everything’s cool!”

“Cable company,” I informed the waiter. “He’s three months behind on premium service.”

“Oh.” I could see the waiter’s mind working, trying to remember if he’d paid his cable bill. He left quickly.

“You testified against Stirman at his trial,” I said to Dimebox.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay. Jesus, Navarre. Lemme up.”

“Gerry Far took over the operation. What was in it for you?”

“Stirman was a maniac. You guys would get along. You think I liked working for a maniac?”

“Not good enough. What does Stirman want from Erainya and Sam? What did they take from him?”

“I don’t know.”

I picked up some
pico de gallo
and splashed it in his face.

He struggled a little more, spit the tomato chunks out of his mouth. “Jesus, Navarre!”

“You’re looking pretty appetizing, Dimebox,” I said. “I think we’re about ready to pour on this sizzling meat here.”

“No! Look— His wife. Stirman’s wife.”

“What wife?”

“Soledad. She died in the gunfire. One of the PIs shot her. I don’t know which.”

“I heard the woman who died was a prostitute.”

“Yeah, well—she was more to Stirman. She was . . . you know . . . pretty fine. They killed his woman.”

Something in his tone . . .

“That’s what you wanted,” I decided. “You wanted her.”

“No. Hell, no.”

“You figured with Stirman out of the way, you would get his woman. You set him up because you wanted to get laid.”

“No!”

Which meant yes. I cranked up on Dimebox’s arm. He yelped.

A businessman in one of the booths got out his phone. He dialed a short number—three digits. I was pretty sure he wasn’t calling directory assistance.

“What else?” I told Dimebox. “Quick.”

“Nothing. Honest.”

“They took something from Stirman. Something he wants back. What is it?”

“Money, maybe. I don’t know.”

“How much money?”

“Hell, I don’t know. The guy used cash for everything. He was leaving the country. I told them that. I said, ‘You get him arrested now, tonight, or he’ll be gone.’ But look, I never thought they’d . . . well, they went overboard. Okay?”

I glanced down South Presa. Some beat cops were strolling along, coming our direction. The businessman with the cell phone had hung up. I had maybe four seconds.

I let Dimebox up, pushed his chair around so he was looking at me,
pico de gallo
chunks dripping off his face. The jalapeños had made burn rings on his cheek.

“You’re holding back on me, Ortiz.”

“Honest to God.”

“Why would Stirman go after Erainya? She wasn’t even part of it.”

Dimebox stared at me, incredulous. “Are you kidding? When I called the night Stirman was going to escape . . . shit, don’t you know . . . ?”

“Speak, Dimebox. Don’t I know what?”

He wiped the salsa off his chin. “Erainya was the go-between for me and Barrow. She’s the one I called. When they took down Stirman without waiting for the police—hell, yes, she was part of that. It was her goddamn idea.”

13

The phone rang for the third time as Erainya was loading her gun.

Tres’ voice on the answering machine: “Okay, now I’m sure you’re home. Pick up.”

She pushed .45 cartridges into the magazine. It was strange looking in the drawer and not seeing Fred’s photo, but it had felt damn good to rip the bastard up and throw him away after so many years.

“I’m coming over,” Tres said. “See you in ten minutes.”

The line went dead.

In ten minutes, she would be gone. Now that Jem was safe in Austin, she knew exactly what she would do. She would start on the South Side, with a heroin supplier whose little girl Erainya had once rescued. He had excellent contacts at the Floresville State Pen. If anyone could find out who Stirman’s friends were, where he might be hiding, this guy could.

She slapped the magazine in place, felt the heft of the gun. She would have to use both hands. After firing a clip, her forearms would be sore.

But she could still place a cluster in a man’s chest at fifty feet. She was confident of that. She’d let a lot of things slip, over the years, but not her Saturday mornings at the range.

She aimed at the blasted television, kept her sights steady.

Eight years ago, in this room, she had not been so prepared. It almost cost her life. She’d vowed never to let that happen again.

She remembered her right eye stinging with blood. Her mouth had been salty with the taste of her own busted lip.

Fred had never hit her so hard before.

Then again, she’d never threatened him like that before.

You will not do this to me,
he told her.

What am I supposed to do?
she screamed.
You
destroyed
that family.

You
destroyed them, Irene. That’s what you wanted all along, isn’t it? And now you want to blame it on me? I’ll kill you both.

He meant it, too. His face was distorted with rage, his limbs heavy with bourbon.

He knocked her backward into the desk, and she heard one of her own ribs crack.

She clawed open the drawer, found his gun.

In that moment, Irene died—docile Anglicized Irene, who’d married Fred because he needed a good helper, who’d cleaned his house, filed his papers, answered his phone. Irene told herself Fred didn’t hit her
that
much. He wasn’t really as bad as the spouses they were hired to investigate.

Her fingers closed around the butt of the Colt, and Erainya came back—her childhood self, half remembered like her mother’s Aegean lullabies, a little girl who had known how to fight.

She turned on Fred and fired. Once in his shoulder, but he kept coming. So again, into his hip.

He got his hands around her neck, started to squeeze the life out of her as her third shot blew through the side of his chest.

He collapsed on top of her, wet and warm, crushing her, as if he wanted to prove his ownership.

She pushed him off, sat trembling on the desk.

Finally, she called her best friend, Helen Malski.

She heard herself saying, “Listen, honey, I need your help.” She realized she’d already formulated a plan. She’d known what she was going to do even before she pulled the trigger.

Self-defense. An easy sell to the jury. Erainya had walked free eight months later.

She raised the matched grip of the Colt, shoved her palm against the butt, imagining a fast reload.

Now, it would not be so easy. The stakes were higher. The man she was fighting was more deadly, but she felt a strange sense of calm.

She would kill Will Stirman.

He would never threaten her or her son again.

The doorbell startled her.

Even Tres couldn’t drive that fast. Besides, that damn truck of his always rattled the windows when he pulled in the driveway.

Couldn’t be J.P., either. As much as she wanted to see him, she’d begged off his dinner invitation. She’d made it clear she needed the night alone.

She curled her finger around the trigger of the Colt.

She was halfway down the hallway when her visitor knocked—shave-and-a-haircut, slow and heavy. Too familiar for a solicitor or a deliveryman.

She slipped out the back door, moved barefoot through the soaked grass, and sneaked around the side of the house.

No car was parked on the street. That meant her caller had either walked or pulled into the driveway.

She cursed the ranch house design that Fred had always loved. The front bedroom jutted out in a useless fin of bricks so she couldn’t see the driveway or front door. If Stirman had someone with him, a helper parked and waiting, she would be stepping into crossfire.

She would only have a millisecond for decisions. If he was alone, she would call his name, watch him turn so she wouldn’t have to shoot him in the back. She would put a bullet in the center of his chest.

She crept to the edge of the bedroom wall.

Her front door creaked. The bastard was opening it.

One.
She exhaled.
Two . . .

She swung around the corner, crouching into firing position as her visitor called into the house, “Erainya?”

His voice saved his life.

J.P.’s back was to her. Her Colt was leveled at the stretch of white broadcloth between his shoulder blades.

She caught her breath.

He sensed her, turned in time to see the gun drop to her knee.

He held up his hands, one of which held a bouquet of snapdragons. “May I request a last meal with a beautiful woman?”

She was trembling.

She had almost killed the only man she would never consider killing.

She was furious with him. What the hell was he doing here?

She wanted to drive him off, tell him to go the hell away. Right now she was as dangerous as a downed power line. Murder danced in her nervous system.

J.P. smiled.

How could he look at her like that?

Here she was with her bare wet feet, her grungy work clothes, her bloodshot eyes and her runny nose, ambushing him with a goddamn .45—and he was looking at her like she was the best thing he’d ever seen.

“I could’ve killed you,” she said.

“I was thinking Italian.”

She rose, took a shaky breath, and let the gun fall uselessly to her side. “If the last meal is
that
good, honey, I suppose I’ve got to share it.”

According to the radio, half the West Side was underwater. Woodlawn Lake had overflowed, manhole covers burst open, storm drains exploded into geysers. Hundreds of residents were stranded on rooftops. Four teenagers had disappeared, sucked into the current while trying to body-surf a drainage ditch.

Even the affluent North Side had not been spared. Right down the street from J.P.’s chosen restaurant, at the corner of Basse, an elderly couple’s Cadillac had turned into an underwater coffin. Erainya could see the police lights flickering through the treetops.

But you could tell none of that from the crowd at Paesano’s. The parking lot gleamed with eighty-thousand-dollar cars. Inside, the elite of San Antonio packed the dining room, laughing and talking without concern, the air infused with oregano and expensive cologne.

J.P. made everyone’s face light up as he walked through the room.

“Dr. Sanchez!”

Surgeons, trial lawyers, politicians rose from their tables to shake his hand. J.P. introduced Erainya, though it was clear none of them cared about her. J.P.’s arm around her waist, his complete deference toward her, seemed to irritate his acquaintances.

J.P. politely cut short each conversation, declining their offers for a drink.

“You must excuse me,” he told them. “When I am with Miss Manos, my time becomes very valuable.”

Erainya loved him. She loved the way his friends’ mouths hung open, the way their wives stared after her as they wrung their diamond bracelets.

J.P. had managed to reserve the restaurant’s best table—a corner spot with windows overlooking the golf course and, across Basse, the man-made canyon that had once been the Alamo Cement Quarry. She could just make out J.P.’s house, there on the far rim of the canyon, its windows bright with buttery light.

Erainya wondered if this was a subtle invitation, eating dinner within sight of his bedroom. But no—she would think that way. J.P. wouldn’t.

Last night he had comforted her so patiently, asked no questions, expected nothing in return. He had completely understood when she wanted to sleep next to Jem, so they ended up camping out in his living room, all three of them—down sleeping bags on his plush carpet, bowls of popcorn, flashlights,
Yu-Gi-Oh!
DVDs instead of ghost stories. All night, Erainya lay awake, listening to the easy breathing of her child and her lover, and pondering how she would kill Will Stirman.

J.P. ordered dinner—shrimp Paesano, Parmesan salad, fettuccine Alfredo. He waved aside the wine list and ordered a magnum of ’97 Brunello di Montalcino, not making a big deal out of it, but Erainya knew the vintage would cost more than she earned in a week. She’d made a point of learning about wine since she’d started dating J.P.

The bottle arrived. He declined a taste test, sent away the waiter, and poured Erainya a generous glass as if it were Kool-Aid or Strawberry Ripple. “So did you get Jem settled?”

“I suppose. He loves this lady . . . Maia Lee.”

“Tres’ girlfriend.”

“Yeah.”

J.P. placed his hand on hers. “If I had to pick
one
eight-year-old to watch my back in a fight, I’d pick Jem. He’ll be fine.”

She managed a smile. A small knot of worry was twisting in her throat. Jem had never spent the night away from her—at least not since he was very small, before she’d taken permanent custody of him. Baby-sitters, sleepovers . . . she couldn’t deal with them. She’d never been able to shake the fear that he would disappear somehow, leave her life as suddenly as he’d entered it.

J.P. seemed to understand how she felt. He knew what a serious emergency it would take for her to send Jem out of town. But still he had asked no questions. He just made himself available, in case she needed him.

She realized that was why he’d shown up on her doorstep tonight, despite her refusal. He knew she shouldn’t be alone.

“Hey,” he said gently. “I thought you liked shrimp.”

She looked down. Appetizers had appeared and she hadn’t even noticed.

“I haven’t been fair to you,” she said. “I’ve haven’t explained anything.”

“We agreed not to talk about our jobs. I’m sure you don’t want to hear about the sinuses I cleared today.”

“Sinuses won’t kill you.”

“I don’t know. There was this big nasty one—”

“I’m serious, J.P.”

“You don’t have to explain anything,” he said. “I trust you. If you don’t tell me, you have a good reason.”

She wanted to cry. She knew so much about him. Once she’d realized she might actually love this man, she’d run a complete background check. She knew all about his school days, his career, his wife, who had died in childbirth twenty years ago and whose name he had never so much as mentioned. J.P. had never remarried. He’d devoted his life to raising his daughter, who had just recently graduated from college. Except for the one horrendous tragedy of his wife’s death, the man had no secrets, no enemies, no skeletons in the closet.

Erainya’s closet, on the other hand, was loaded. There was so much she couldn’t tell him.

It was easier to concentrate on the wine and the shrimp Paesano.

The sky darkened. Traffic on Basse subsided to an occasional streak of headlights, the rattlesnake sizzle of tires on wet asphalt.

J.P. twirled his fork in the fettuccine. “Have you told Tres our plans?”

Their plans.

“I haven’t said anything,” she admitted. “Not yet.”

He kept his attention carefully focused on achieving the perfect bite-sized forkful of pasta.

“I’ll tell him soon,” she said.

“Only if it’s still what you want.”

He tried to sound casual, but she heard the fragility in his voice. He had opened himself up for emotional hurt, for the first time since his wife’s death. The fact that Erainya had so much power over him scared her.

They had agreed to get married in the fall. She would quit working, close the agency. He would provide for her and Jem. He had more money than they would ever need.

Did she really want this?

She only had to look at J.P. to know the answer was yes. No one had ever loved her so much. And the sex . . . well, she’d almost consigned herself to a life of celibacy until J.P. came along. The sex was fantastic.

At first, she had resisted the idea of quitting work. She told herself she needed the job. It was part of her identity. But she believed that less and less.

For a few years after taking over the agency, she’d felt good about the work. She’d been exorcising Fred’s spirit, becoming a PI in her own right to prove that she could. But business soon began to go sour, deteriorating into a petty grudge match between her and Barrera.

Despite her way with people, her contacts, her face-to-face talents, she wasn’t much of a businesswoman. She hated the Internet, computers, information brokers. She liked the human part of the PI business, and that part was disappearing. She was rapidly becoming a dinosaur.

She’d been contemplating quitting, in fact, the day a young man named Tres Navarre had walked into her office, looking for work. Something about him had reinvigorated her—made her want to teach him the trade. He had made the work interesting again, fresh, good. But now . . . she wanted an escape. She wanted to believe she could slip out from under Fred Barrow’s legacy, with Jem safely in her arms, and start a new life at age fifty-one.

Almost as soon as she made that wish, Will Stirman had reappeared in her life.

J.P. pushed his plate aside, took a long drink of wine. “All right. I lied.”

Erainya realized she’d been silent too long. “What?”

“I
do
want to know. Let me help. Tell me what’s going on.”

She wanted to. Her anger at Stirman had faded to a dull ache. Her confidence was starting to slip. The enormous Colt in her purse seemed ridiculous in this elegant restaurant, with the affluent people and the candlelight, the shrimp and fettuccine and wine.