Southtown (20 page)

26

That bastard Will Stirman stole my truck.

While I was busy getting chewed out by DeLeon, and the paramedics were tending to Sam Barrera, and the police were fanning out across every square foot of riverfront behind the museum, Stirman crept around the side of the building—exactly where it was most suicidal to go. He found my F-150 by the river, found the extra key I kept in the wheel well, pulled away over the Grand Avenue Bridge and disappeared.

It was twenty minutes before I noticed the truck was missing and we figured out what had happened.

By then, Stirman was long gone.

That same night, two hours later and twenty-five miles northwest of town, in the lightest rainfall of the month, Medina Dam broke.

The old McCurdy Ranch was right in the path of forty billion cubic feet of water. Century trees were uprooted. Boulders disappeared. New gorges and ravines were carved into the rock, and the cabin of Gloria Paz was reduced to a concrete slab and a few dark gold cinder blocks.

I don’t know what happened to Gloria. I’d like to think she got out, but somehow I imagine her standing on her front porch with her shotgun and her tin cup of goat’s milk and coffee, her milky eyes staring north as the wall of water came toward her. I imagine her smiling, thinking of her long journey on the Green Highway.

Perched on its high hill, the McCurdy ranch house itself was spared.

I didn’t need to go into the basement to see that Will Stirman had been there. The tarp had been stripped off the abandoned building supplies. Dug out from the middle of the lumber and paint cans was a lockbox—now busted open and empty, a box the perfect size to fit a duffel bag full of cash.

Fred Barrow was the San Antonio businessman who had purchased the McCurdy property. The mildewed fishing painting over the mantel was one of his, just like the ones hanging in Erainya’s study.

After shooting Will Stirman, Barrow had only lived a few weeks, but in that time he had managed to buy the land, set up a trust, and allow Gloria Paz a safe place to live for the rest of her life. Barrow had planned to use his stolen millions to cleanse and remake the murderer’s ranch. A feeble, guilty gesture, but I knew Fred had been trying to put the victims’ spirits to rest, to make amends.

This did not make Fred Barrow a good man. It did not excuse the way he treated Erainya, or make me sorry that the asshole was dead. But he had redeemed one life, one small cinder block cabin. He’d been remembered as honest by an aging blind woman. It made me wonder if I could’ve done any better with dirty money.

Much to the Fugitive Task Force’s relief, Will Stirman’s body was found forty miles downriver. The Green Highway had, for once, reversed course, its cleared lanes providing the path of least resistance for thousands of tons of flotsam swept south by the flood. Many of the dead were never recovered, their bodies buried deep under a new geological layer of silt and debris. But Stirman’s body was easily identified—tangled in downed power lines, his arms wrapped around the cables as if he had intentionally held on—as if he wanted to be sure there was no public doubt about his death.

My truck, being heavier, had not been carried quite so far. It had melded into a sandbank half a mile downstream from the McCurdy Ranch entrance. Only the back fender showed.

Will Stirman had found his money. He died reclaiming something from Fred Barrow. But the duffel bag was not in the truck, nor on his person. Whatever was left of Stirman’s seven million dollars floated away in the flood, and is still buried somewhere in the South Texas landscape.

The final incidents in the Floresville Five case were pretty unsatisfactory for law enforcement. The first was a shoot-out at a Wisconsin hunting cabin where an unidentified man resisted arrest, opened fire on police and was killed by an FBI sniper. The slain man was not, as originally thought, one of the escaped convicts, but he fit the description of an Anglo who had been seen in the company of Elroy Lacoste and Luis Juarez in Omaha. Perhaps he was one of Stirman’s old associates. Embarrassed police were still working to establish his identity.

The fourth convict, C. C. Andrews, was discovered when rain eroded his shallow grave in an Oklahoma riverbank. A farmer went out to dig some new fence posts one morning and was startled to find a dead African-American in an expensive Italian suit floating in the middle of his creek.

This left only one escapee unaccounted for—Pablo Zagosa. Publicly, police remained confident of his eventual capture, but when pressed, they admitted they had no solid leads. Pablo’s estranged wife in El Paso had disappeared, and family members said it was because she feared her husband’s vengeance. But this did not explain the yellow cloth police found tied to Angelina Zagosa’s front porch rail. Privately, Ana DeLeon told me the Task Force was baffled. They were starting to reconcile themselves to the idea that Pablo Zagosa might be the little fish that got away.

As for Dimebox Ortiz, he was spending a few nights in the county jail, but he was confident that his brother-in-law would eventually soften and bail him out. And I was confident I would be bounty-hunting him again soon after that.

Saturday, two days after the Medina Dam broke, the sun blazed down at the Lady Bird Johnson YMCA field.

After six billion dollars in damage, thirty-seven lives lost, the attention of the network news, the president, the governor and the National Guard, the floods decided they’d had enough fun. Like spoiled children, they went off to throw a tantrum somewhere else.

Jem manned the goalie box in his yellow vest.

The rest of my team clumped midfield around the ball as the Saint Mark’s coach yelled orders to his kids about crossovers and wings and a bunch of other maneuvers I’d never heard of.

“Get ’em!” Erainya yelled next to me.

Which pretty much summed up our strategy.

Technically, parents weren’t allowed on the players’ side of the field, but Erainya had decided she was now my assistant coach.

The Garcia twins slammed into each other, but got up before the ref could halt play. Jack fell down in one of his slide-into-home kicks, shooting the ball straight toward the Saint Mark’s guards, who just shot it right back.

“I love this,” I said. “So much more relaxing than a firefight.”

Erainya said, “Huh.”

Her dark eyes glittered as she scanned the field. “All right, honey. What’s that kid’s name—Peter?”

“Paul.”

“
That’s
it, Paul!” she shouted. “To the goal!”

By that time Paul had run past the ball, let Saint Mark’s intercept, and was busy checking out a really cool rock he’d found on the field.

“J.P. got off the ventilator today,” Erainya told me. “We talked a whole ten minutes.”

I heard the relief in her voice—the return of that love-struck optimism that had infuriated me for months whenever she talked about her boyfriend.

J. P. Sanchez had beaten the odds. His friends at the Medical Center had called in a few favors. They’d imported the best specialists from Houston and Los Angeles to oversee the reconstructive surgery. Sanchez would be in the hospital for weeks, physical therapy for months, but his long-term prognosis was good.

“I’m glad,” I said. And then, when she gave me a skeptical look, I added: “Seriously.”

“He’ll be asking you to serve as best man,” Erainya said. “Just so you’re warned.”

The sun suddenly felt a lot warmer. “Me?”

“I’d ask you to be a bridesmaid, honey, but the dress would look terrible on you.” Then she shouted, “Come on, Laura! Good!”

The ball made another futile loop around the field. It sailed toward Jem. It bounced off Maria.

Erainya turned to me. “Honey, look, J.P.’s only got his daughter. No male friends he’s really close to. He knows how Jem and I feel about you. He wants you there. Think about it.”

I felt a weight on my chest, the unresolved need to say something I couldn’t quite say.

Jem crouched at the goalie net, his hands down, knees bent—the exact position I’d told him to keep. He wore the same crazy grin he always got whenever he was on the soccer field. Saint Mark’s had only scored one goal off him so far. Then again, we’d scored zip.

“Guess you’re closing the agency?” I asked Erainya.

She shrugged. “I can’t run it anymore.”

“Oh. Right.”

She looked completely unconcerned. “You’ll get along.”

I had expected this. I should not feel bitter. Maia Lee would be delighted.

“Besides,” Erainya said, “I’ll be around if you need advice. I ain’t going to turn it over to you just to let you run it into the ground.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t look at me like that, you big idiot. I’m giving you the Erainya Manos Agency. My clients. My files. My fabulous resources. My unpaid bills. With both me and Sam retiring, we’ve got to have one decent PI in town. And if you’re smart, you’ll keep the name. It’s lucky.”

Paul was taking the ball in the right direction. Somehow, he managed to kick it to Jack.

“Well?” Erainya asked me. “You’re not gonna disappoint me, are you?”

Will Stirman was gone. Erainya was happy.

I could say nothing.

But the weight was there still, smooth and hard as a river rock.

“Laura!” I yelled. “To the middle! Help him out!”

Only because it was her love interest Jack, Laura followed directions.

Jack passed. Laura kicked. The ball sailed into the net.

Our team erupted into cheers, dog barks, taunts about Saint Mark’s being poop-butts.

The ref blew the whistle.

The kids swarmed us—sixteen hot sweaty little bodies, dying for water and a chance to play forward.

The last quarter: 1–1. Jem wanted to keep the vest.

I hated the idea. Saint Mark’s only needed one goal. I didn’t want Jem responsible for losing the game.

Still, nobody else wanted the job. We ended with seven forwards and Jem as keeper.

“You doing okay, champ?” I asked him.

“Yeah.” He looked up a moment longer, squinting into the sun, like he understood he needed to prove to me that he really was okay. Something silver glinted around his neck—a Saint Anthony medallion I’d never seen before. He said, “I’m good. Watch.”

They went out on the field again.

Erainya stood next to me, cupping the sun out of her eyes. I thought about how many times she’d whacked me with that hand, or cut the air at some stupid comment I’d made.

“Stirman talked to Jem,” I said, “the night at the museum.”

She kept her eyes on the field. “Yeah?”

“They had maybe a minute alone together, out on the roof.”

“Miracle Jem wasn’t hurt.”

“No miracle. Stirman never wanted to hurt him. I wouldn’t have brought Jem along otherwise. Stirman wanted to take him.”

The ref’s whistle blew. Saint Mark’s kicked off. The ball was lost in a forest of little cleats and shin guards.

Erainya looked at me the way she normally looked at Sam Barrera—as if I was about to snatch away her last bread-and-butter contract.

“So,” she said, her tone carefully neutral. “What do you figure he told Jem, in that one minute?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he told Jem the truth.”

Saint Mark’s drove the ball toward our goal. Their coach yelled for their best kicker to stand ready at the penalty line.

Erainya was silent, watching me.

“Jem’s birth date was the same day Stirman was arrested,” I said. “Other than that, the adoption papers were a pretty good forgery. You never went to Greece that year, did you?”

She hesitated a couple of heartbeats. Then the shield she’d been trying to put up melted. “Fred didn’t want me to keep the baby.”

“That’s what your last argument was about—why you shot him,” I guessed. “He wasn’t just threatening you. He was threatening the baby, too.”

She flexed her hand, as if remembering the trigger of the gun. “That night in Stirman’s apartment, the baby had stopped breathing. I guess the shock of the gunfire . . . I don’t know. I did CPR. I brought him back to life. Fred . . . well, I wasn’t going to lose the child after all that. After I shot Fred, I sent Jem to stay with a friend of mine, lady named Helen Malski, until the trial was over.”

“I found a letter she wrote you. Jem was the package she was keeping safe.”

Erainya nodded. “Once I was released, Jem and I disappeared for a while. I’d done enough work on adoption cases. Faking Jem’s paperwork wasn’t hard. I made up his birthday. I kept thinking somebody would question . . . Stirman would raise hell. Barrera would squawk. But nothing like that ever happened. Eventually, I figured Stirman thought the child was dead, or he just didn’t care enough to protest. I felt safe enough to come back home, take over the agency. I couldn’t have left a baby like that, with his mother dead.”

“You made Jem’s birth date a clue.”

“I know. Stupid.”

“Classic guilt. Part of you wanted to get caught.”

“Stop talking like a PI.” There was a challenge in her eyes, but it was frail.

She was a few weeks away from a whole new future. She was about to re-create herself for the second time. I could bring it all crashing down if I wanted to.

“You caught me,” she said. “Question is: What are you going to do about it?”

The game caught my attention. I shouted, “Jem, heads up!”

He crouched, ready for a challenge.

The Saint Mark’s kicker drove the ball straight toward the goal.

Jem dove. The ball sailed right past him into the net.

The other team cheered like crazy.

Jem picked up the ball, ran it to the line, and threw it like it was still in play. He kept smiling like everything was good. The Saint Anthony medallion had come untucked from his collar. It gleamed silver against his goalie vest.

“Honey?” Erainya said to me, her voice growing tense. “What do you want to do?”

Maybe everything
was
good. I caught Jem’s eye and gave him the thumbs-up sign.

He grinned, delighted.

I didn’t know what Stirman had told him. It didn’t matter.

The ref blew the whistle. Game over: a 2–1 loss.