The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan (29 page)

Sanchez's eyes were gold ice. "I'm listening."

"Del wanted his father out of the picture. He
decided he wanted him dead. He gave you the bait about Sandra and you
made his kill. Del helped you out of town with a big thank-you
handshake and the hope that you'd stay gone forever. Guy with your
temper, it was a pretty safe bet you'd end up in prison somewhere. So
when you came back, Del got a little nervous. He'd been striking up
some business with Hector Mara and one of your old enemies, Chich.
None of them were sure they wanted you finding out about that, or
asking questions about what really happened to your wife. You
wouldn't feel good learning that you'd gone into exile for six years
for the murder of an old man who never even touched Sandra. Kind of
make you feel stupid, wouldn't it?"

Sanchez put his large hands on the table between us
and tapped his fingers slowly, as if trying to remember a keyboard
routine. His eyes stayed fixed on me. "You know something for a
fact?"

"Not yet."

"Then you got nothing to sell."

"You could help me along. Or you could keep
sitting there behind bars, quietly taking the rap, trying to convince
yourself that your old revolver just got into the police's hands by
some weird accident. Surely good old Del couldn't have set you up."

Sanchez's face darkened. "I'm a patient man."

"You're waiting to be sure of things before you
open your mouth. It bothers you, doesn't it — wondering if Sandra's
dead, or with somebody else in some other state, or maybe laughing at
you right here in town."

He sat forward an inch.

"You want a deal, pendejo?" he said calmly.
"Bring me the bitch. Or tell me where she's buried. Then we can
talk. Until then, you've got nothing I want."

Zeta stood. He strolled to the barred door, rapped
against the window, and told the guard he had a basketball game to
get back to.
 

THIRTY-THREE

Fifteen minutes after I'd decided she wasn't going to
show, Ana DeLeon walked into my apartment.

She wore boot-cut jeans, the hems tucked into black
Justins, her white collarless blouse overlaid with a denim work
shirt, the sleeves rolled up. Her short black hair was tied with a
red bandanna, the triangular flap hanging loose in the back. She
looked like a Sandinista poster girl.

"I'm here," she said, like she was trying
to come to terms with the fact.

I was sitting cross-legged on the floor between the
futon and the coffee table, the final stack of undergraduate papers
in front of me. I'd saved the freshman-comp gems for last. I had my
trusty red pen in one hand and a Shiner Bock in the other and Robert
Johnson draped across my shoulders like a fox stole — a habit that
was somewhat cute when he was a kitten but many years and twenty-one
pounds later had become chiropractically unsound.

On the kitchen counter, my aging Sears boom box was
blaring out Son Becky's blues band, live from a San Antonio roadhouse
in 1937.

I sized up DeLeon's outfit. "You look—"

"Different," she interrupted. "That's
the point. Anybody asks who doesn't need to know otherwise, I'm your
girlfriend."

"My girlfriend."

"That's right."

I started to laugh.

Her eyes flashed me a warning. "What?" she
demanded.

"Sorry," I said. "You just don't seem
like the girlfriend type."

"Oh really."

She came over and sank next to me on the floor.
Robert Johnson evaporated from my shoulders. DeLeon calmly grabbed my
neck with hard, warm fingers and pulled me forward. I figured my neck
was going to snap like a twig.

It was a rough kiss, meant to cut off circulation
rather than show affection. Her face smelled like apricot scrub. The
force of her mouth left me seeing black spots, left my lips doing
funny things for several seconds after she pulled away.

"What's the problem?" she asked. Her face
was completely dispassionate, freezer steel.

I tried to say, "Wow." What came out
instead was a muted honk.

"Sex crimes division, Navarre. Two years. I
learned to play a lot of roles. A woman with her own identity, not
belonging to anybody — people remember her. But somebody's
girlfriend? Girlfriends are invisible."

"Invisible. Sure. Just don't ask me to stand up
for the next ten minutes."

She tried to backhand me with her fist. I caught it.

"I'm your girlfriend," she repeated.

"Far be it from me to mess up a woman's cover."

I pushed her fist away.

On the boom box, Son Becky started pounding out
eighth notes on his barrelhouse piano with enough gusto to put Jerry
Lee Lewis to shame. "Black Heart Blues."

DeLeon looked down at my paperwork. "What are
you working on?"

My body kept circulating blood around at unnatural
speeds. Parts of me were just now feeling the punch of DeLeon's kiss,
notifying my brain that she was still sitting there, shoulder to
shoulder with me, and what the hell was I going to do about it? With
effort, I focused on the stack of essays. "Grading."

Her lips pursed in a controlled smile.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing. You just don't seem like the grading
type."

I showed her a hand gesture.

She picked up the paper I was halfway through,
flipped back to the title page. She raised her eyebrows at me. ' 'The
Symbolism of the Boiling Pot in Three Medieval Plays?"

"Aaron Brandon had a taste for the violent. I
suppose it got the better of him in the end."

She pressed her mouth into an M. "I didn't tell
you — I'm sorry about George. Kelsey caught the Hector Mara murder
from the night squad this morning."

"That makes me feel tons better."

"Don't underestimate him, Navarre. Kelsey's
dedicated."

I let it pass. "The shooting changed your mind
about coming with us?"

"My mind hasn't changed. It's still a shitty
idea."

"Then why?"

She got up from the floor, offered me a hand, then
pulled me into standing position. "Besides the fact it beats you
and Ralph Arguello on the loose by yourselves? Maybe if I had a few
more months, I wouldn't do it. I'd keep picking away. But since I
have exactly three days before they throw me to the cold-case squad,
I feel the need to get inventive."

"Just let me get my baseball bat."

I capped my pen, threw it on the essays, then went to
get my car keys and wallet off the kitchen counter. Son Becky's
"Black Heart Blues" segued into "Midnight Trouble."

DeLeon walked over to the tai chi swords on the wall,
dismissed them, then checked out the books on my shelf. She pulled a
title — Marquez's Cien Anos de Soledad. Colombian first edition.
DeLeon's eyes fixed on the bookplate on the inside cover — Ralph
Arguello's inscription.

"Are you going to make me ask you again?" I
asked.

She looked up at me, caught my meaning, then looked
back at the book, flipping a few pages. "There's nothing to
tell."

"How serious was it?"

"Ralph and I went out together. Once."

I stared at her.

"Go ahead and laugh. I'd never heard of him
before. I ran his name and license plate through TCIC, came up with
nothing. I was stupid. I didn't look any further."

"You wouldn't have had to look far — pawnshop
detail, theft, vice."

If I hadn't spent some time around her the last few
days, I probably wouldn't have noticed the hesitation.

"Ralph lied to me," she said. "I
bought it. When I found out, I wanted to kill him. End of story."

I still couldn't get an image of DeLeon and Ralph
together. I wasn't sure I wanted to.

DeLeon flipped the Marquez novel shut. "I told
you that because now that we're about to see him it's less awkward to
tell you than not."

"Of course."

"Now can we drop it?"

I held up my house key and locked my lips with it.

DeLeon put the book back on the shelf. She looked
over at the futon, where Robert Johnson was kneading himself a
sleeping spot. "My mother was a cop for twenty-seven years —
one of the first women in the department to do something besides
youth services. You know that? She expected me to follow in her
footsteps, wanted me to be the first daughter to inherit her mother's
shield number."

"And did you?"

DeLeon nodded.

"Must've made her proud."

Ana's face stayed blank. "If she'd lived that
long, I think she would've been proud. I've never ignored a lead,
Tres. I've never backed off anything because it was risky or
unorthodox. But I'm not lying — going anywhere with you and Ralph
could end my career."

"You want me to tell Ralph to forget this?"

"You'd do that?" DeLeon locked eyes with
me.

"I'd try. The thing is, it's personal now. Ralph
knows George Berton."

"That's worse," she said. "Personal
makes it worse."

Son Becky kept singing — "Mistreated Washboard
Blues." Robert Johnson reclaimed his place on the futon, sniffed
it cautiously, then curled into a ball. DeLeon kept looking into me,
trying to assess how serious my offer to call our expedition off was.
I could see what she was thinking, and in the end I don't know what
disturbed her more — the realization that I was serious, or the
realization that she wasn't going to take me up on it.

She glanced over wistfully at Robert Johnson, now
sound asleep.

Her face hardened. "Are we going or what?"
 

THIRTY-FOUR

Tell any San Antonian, "Meet me at the Boots,"
and they'll instantly know what you mean — the three-story-tall
pair of white-and-brown shitkickers standing outside North Star Mall
at Loop 410. It's a popular place for radio announcers to do live
broadcasts, or occasionally for P.I.s to use as an easy rendezvous
point. This afternoon we were lucky enough to have both.

Those crazy folks from KJ97, "all kinds of
country," had set up a trailer platform next to the right heel.
Two scraggly DJs with beards and black KJ97 T-shirts and headphones
were bantering with each other into the mikes, making vapid jokes and
promising fabulous giveaways and otherwise trying to lighten up the
homeward commute of all the schmucks fifty yards away, crawling down
410.

Ana parked her Miata in the covered mall lot and we
walked across the driveway to the asphalt island from which the Boots
rose.

About fifteen people had gathered to watch the DJs.
As we skirted the crowd, one of the DJs introduced a new song by
rising local star Miranda Daniels. "This is — what, Joey, the
third cut from her debut album to hit the charts?"

"That's right, Bear."

"Man, this girl is hot. We're talking about
'Tell Me Something,' right here on your country station, KJ97."

I clenched my fists and kept walking. It was the
fourth time I'd heard the song that week, and I didn't even listen to
country stations. Never do an investigation for a singer, especially
an investigation that goes bad. I'm sure I'll be sixty years old
riding in a department-store elevator someday and the Muzak version
of "Billy's Senorita" will come on, and I'll see the blood
and hear the shots in that warehouse all over again.

We pushed by a couple of ladies who were asking the
soundman for freebies. Ralph Arguello was waiting for us just between
the tips of the Boots. He was still in his milky suit, the black
shade overlays on his glasses giving the impression that someone had
shot him cleanly and bloodlessly through the eyes. He gave me a
cross-thumbs handshake. "Glad you made it, vato. I had to listen
to one more pinche redneck song, I was going to shoot somebody."
Then he sized up Ana DeLeon. "Long time, chica."

"Not long enough."

He spread his hands. "She loves me, vato. We got
to excuse the lady's broken heart."

"Fuck you, Ralph," DeLeon said.

The last time I'd heard someone say that to Ralph, in
a barroom on South St. Mary's, the resulting scene had not been
pretty. This time Ralph's razor stayed in its sheath. Ralph gave
DeLeon his standard demonic grin.

"Sure, Ana." He held up his pinky, touched
between his eyes, then pointed toward DeLeon's head. "But we
know, eh?"

DeLeon said, "Let's get to business."

I agreed.

Ralph said, "Chicharron."

"You know where he is?"

Ralph looked at me.

"Of course you do," I corrected.

"Hector's salvage yard. Hector's dead, guess
who's minding the store, tying up some loose ends before the cops
come by. And taking whatever he can get."

"First," Ana cut in, "we need to lay
some ground rules."

Ralph turned his palms up. "Such as?"