The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan (3 page)

"Jellied fruits," I added.

"Jellied fruits," Hernandez agreed. He
clamped a very strong hand on my shoulder and didn't seem to mind at
all that he was stopping my blood flow. "So what I'm saying
here, Mr. Navarre, is, things change. Friends move on, the paperwork
keeps coming across my desk, favors get depleted, my patience gets
thin. You understanding me here?"

"Clear as Cuervo," I promised.

"Outstanding. I hope the rest of the semester
goes well for you, Professor."

Hernandez gave my shoulder one more crush, nodded to
DeLeon, and went to see about the media who were gathering outside
the police tape by the elevator. The other way down the hall, the
bomb squad was still hanging out, drinking Dr Peppers, talking about
the length of their respective pipe bombs and TNT Ping-Pong balls and
occasionally weaving in references to DeLeon's legs and her probable
lingerie preferences.

"First case?" I asked her.

It took DeLeon a few seconds to focus on me. "I
worked agg. assault for a year, Mr. Navarre. Sex crimes for two. I've
seen plenty."

"First time primary on a homicide?"

Her jaw tightened.

"Hell of a case to cut your teeth on," I
agreed.

"Don't patronize me."

I held up my hands. Even that much movement made the
soreness in my left arm flare. "Kelsey seems pretty sure the
Feds will take a pass."

She stared down the hallway. "Like I said, Mr.
Navarre, you've got no special privileges."

"He mentioned somebody named Sanchez. Who would
that be?"

DeLeon almost smiled, thought better of it. "I'll
see you around, Mr. Navarre."

The paramedic got up, began packing his kit, and said
he should be getting me to the hospital. DeLeon nodded.

She turned toward the bomb-squad guys, who were still
leering at her, then took something from her blazer.

She hefted the thing in her hand for a split second —
long enough for the bomb squad to register what it was and notice
that its weight was too heavy, but not long enough for them to
rationalize that DeLeon wasn't really that insane. I'll be damned if
I know where she got the Ping-Pong ball, or what she'd filled it
with. Maybe she'd lifted it from the student rec center when she went
to wash up. Maybe she'd been carrying it in her pocket for months for
just such an occasion. Police are nothing if not resourceful.

DeLeon said, "Hey, Hills, catch."

Then she did a fast underhand pitch at the chest of
the blond sergeant. You've never seen a bomb squad scatter with so
little room to maneuver and so much Dr Pepper spraying into the air.
The Ping-Pong ball hit Sergeant Hills in the chest and bounced
harmlessly to the floor.

Hills' face went the color of chalk dust as he looked
up at DeLeon. "You crazy fucking bitch."

His fingers splayed open. A large Dr Pepper stain was
seeping into his crotch and down his left thigh.

DeLeon responded so softly you almost had to read her
lips. She said, "Boom."

Then she turned and walked steadily down the hall,
toward the news camera lights.
 
 

THREE

By the time I got to Erainya Manos' office, the
codeine Tylenol from the Methodist Hospital was working fine. My face
had softened to the consistency of tofu and I could only feel my feet
because in my VW convertible, I can feel everything.

I pulled into the strip mall on Blanco and 410 and
found the nearest empty space, thirty yards down from Erainya's
office. The agency itself is never busy, but it's wedged between a
Greek restaurant and a leather furniture outlet that both draw good
crowds.

On the office door, stenciled letters read:

THE ERAINYA MANOS AGENCY YOUR FULL-SERVICE GREEK
DETECTIVE

Inside, George Berton was sitting at his desk. Kelly
Arguello was sitting at mine, reading Spin magazine. Between them,
blocking the aisle that led back to his mother's command center, Jem
Manos was kneeling on the floor, constructing a monstrous
triple-decker windmill out of Tinkertoys.

As I walked in, Kelly and George gave me a standing
ovation. The phone started ringing.

Behind the huge desk at the back of the office,
Erainya said, "Can we answer that?"

From the higher pitch I could tell it was the
alternate number, the one Erainya calls her "dupe" line.

As it rang a second time, Jem ran up and grabbed my
fingers and told me he was glad I hadn't exploded. He tugged me
toward his windmill.

Kelly and George started barraging me with questions.

When the phone rang a third time, Erainya stood and
yelled at us across the room. "What — you people can't hear?"

Everyone fell silent. Kelly went back to my desk.
George went to his and checked the Caller ID display. Jem pulled me
toward his Tinkertoys.

On the fourth ring, George waved to Erainya, warmed
up his fingers, then picked up the receiver with a flourish. "Pro
Fidelity Credit — Collections — Samuelson."

He listened, looked up at me, winked. "Yes, that
is correct."

George leaned back. Two wide vertical stripes ran
down his golf shirt and made his flat upper body look like a bike
lane. He nudged his Panama hat farther up his forehead.

I'd developed this theory about Berton — the white
leather shoes, pencil mustache, Panama hat, Bryl-ed hair. I suspected
George only worked at the turn of the twenty-first century. Each
evening he secretly teleported back home to 1962.

"Yes," he continued. "We can verify
that. Let me transfer you to Mrs. Donovan."

He punched a button, held up a finger.

Erainya said, "Go, already."

The phone on her desk rang. Erainya answered in a
voice that sounded ten years younger and half as testy. "Donovan.
Yes, Mr. LaFlore. I have it right here. Yes. We were interested in
seeing if he'd been the same sort of problem for you. Frankly, we're
considering a lien."

She then sat back and proceeded to get some poor
schmuck's credit history. Jem whispered to me about his Tinkertoys.
Apparently I'd been wrong about them being a windmill. He was trying
for a perpetual motion engine.

"Where'd you learn that?" I demanded.

Jem grinned up at me. Erainya hadn't cut his hair in
a month, so his silky black bangs hung in his eyes like a Muppet's.

"Secret," he said.

Jem is advanced for a five-year-old. Erainya thinks
he'll do great next fall in kindergarten. I think he'd do great next
fall at MIT if they had a better playground.

George logged in some paperwork. I sat on the edge of
my desk and looked at Kelly Arguello. She'd gone back to reading her
Spin. Her hair was purple-tinted this week, tied back in a ponytail.
She was wearing white denim cutoffs and white Adidas with ankle socks
and an extra-large black T-shirt that read LIBERTY LUNCH in reggae
colors.

Kelly never dresses to show off, but you can't help
noticing her swimmer's figure. Even in an oversized shirt and old
cutoffs, she has the kind of smoothly muscled body that George, a
shamelessly dirty old man, likes to call "Padre Island Spring
Break contest-winning material."

Kelly looked over the top of her magazine at me. Her
eyes are beer-bottle brown. She focused on my stitched cheek, then
wrinkled her nose. "You smell like you're still on fire."

Berton laughed as loudly as he dared. Any more volume
and Erainya would've thrown a crisscross directory at his head. I
speak from experience. "Always nice to have your coworkers'
sympathies."

"We're glad you're okay," George assured
me. "Tell us about it."

I told them about the bomb, about Detective DeLeon,
and about my decision to accept the UTSA job.

"Instead of P.I. work?" Kelly asked.

"In addition to. Erainya seems to think I can
make her money at two jobs now."

" Professor Tres ?"

"Be nice to me, impudent one. Soon I will have
access to grades for the entire UT system." I did the mad
scientist finger-wiggle in her face.

She said, "Bullshit."

Law students. No sense of fear.

Kelly had been taking classes up at UT Austin this
semester on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Tuesdays and Thursdays
she'd been driving down to San Antonio to help at Erainya's office.
My bright idea. UT was giving her credit for it — legal-related
fieldwork.

It wouldn't have been a bad arrangement except
Kelly's Uncle Ralph thought I was doing him a favor by being Kelly's
big brother. Uncle Ralph has a variety of sawed-off double-barrel
weapons that I try not to get on the receiving end of. Kelly, for her
part, doesn't always buy into the "big brother" scenario.

Back at her desk, Erainya was still playing Ms.
Donovan, bemoaning the state of the personal-insurance industry with
some cherished colleague.

"I know," Erainya consoled. "They
might as well rob us at gunpoint."

"Gunpoint," George Berton whispered.
"That's good."

Erainya glared over at Berton, twisted her fingers
upward in a gesture I could only assume had highly negative
connotations in Greece.

George grinned, looked back at me. "She's
sending me after your terrorist, you know."

"Terrorist?"

"Whoever. Your death-threat writer. Should be
fun."

I studied him to see if he was serious, if he felt at
all nervous about tracking down someone who pipe-bombed offices and
shot holes in English professors. George had dealt with worse, I
knew. He'd done a couple of tours with the Air Force Special Police
in Saudi Arabia in the eighties. During the Gulf War he'd been
standing just outside the bunker in Bahrain when an Iraqi missile
blew it to hell. After Berton returned stateside and tested for his
P.I. license, his wife had been killed in some kind of camping
accident, leaving George ownership of her small title company and a
rather sizable life insurance policy. For the past seven years,
George had worked investigations only when he felt like it —
usually for Erainya, tracking down skips on the West Side when it was
clear Erainya and I couldn't get to them ourselves.

In San Antonio, that happened a lot. Anglo
investigators could go through the Latino side of town, offering
reward money for locating an heir to a big estate, and they'd come up
with nothing. Flip it around — a Latino working the white
neighborhoods, same thing. You do P.I. work in S.A., you learn
quickly you'd better have a partner on the other side. George Berton
was one of the best.

"You know where you'll start?" I asked him.

"Activists, radicals. I can find some. They
usually come out from California, stay for a while spouting the La
Raza stuff. Then they figure out South Texas isn't L.A. and they go
home."

"You know anybody named Sanchez?"

"This is San Antonio, man. I know seven thousand
anybodies named Sanchez.

Why?"

"SAPD let that name drop."

Berton shrugged. "I'll ask Erainya. She's been
making some calls to the police."

"You worried about this at all?"

"Oh, yeah. You know the last time the FBI had
something to do in San Antonio besides polish their sunglasses?
They're going to love this. Even if I find this guy first, I won't
have time to submit one report before the Feds come in busting heads.
UTSA doesn't have much to worry about, Tres. They want to pay us to
duplicate efforts, that's fine by me."

"SAPD seems to think the Feds will take a pass."

George laughed.

"That's what they said," I insisted.

George waved the comment away. "Give me a break,
Navarre."

Jem kept working on the perpetual motion machine. He
had one wheel that turned two others and made the top spin around
like a helicopter. He was now trying to figure out how to stabilize
the base.

Kelly flipped a page in her magazine. "So, Tres
— you still going on that double date tonight? With your face
looking like that?"

I flashed George a look to let him know I would
murder him later.

He held up his hands. "Hey, Tres, I told her you
were doing me an act of charity, man. That's all."

"What a guy," Kelly agreed. "Always
giving. Who was the recipient last month — Annie?"

George said, "Yeah. The banker."

Kelly made her lips do a long silent M. "If your
love life was a disease, Tres Navarre, it would have killed you long
ago."

"You prescribe chicken soup?"

"Among other things. Not that you listen."

George cleared his throat loudly. Erainya gave him
another look-of-death. "Hey," Berton whispered to Kelly,
"you get tired of waiting, chica—" He curled all his
fingers toward his chest.

Kelly actually blushed.

"She did great on the background files for this
UTSA case," George told me. "Stuff on the professor, his
family. Amazing what this girl can pull together in a morning. You
know this dead professor, this Aaron Brandon guy — you know he's
part of the same Brandon family that was in that thing a few years
ago? "