Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan

by Rick Riordan

  “The rent?" I said.

  “That’d be fine," said Gary.

  He shuffled a few steps behind me as we went into the in-law. If Mr. Hales had been harboring any last hopes that I was indeed an honest and upstanding young man, I managed to shoot them right to hell when I handed him a wad of fifty-dollar bills from my kitchen drawer.

  "No checking account yet," I explained.

  “Huh," Gary said.

  He peeked over the kitchen counter at the drawer, which was now closed. He looked disappointed. Maybe he was expecting some assault weapons.

  Then the phone rang.

  “Been ringing nigh on thirty minutes now," Gary said. “I reckon I’d answer that."

  Gary waited. The phone rang. I reminded Gary where the front door was. Then when I’d herded him out I picked up the receiver.

  "Jesus, Navarre, where in Christ’s name have you been?"

  “Carlon," I said.

  Behind him I could hear glasses clinking, Motown music, the sounds of a bar.

  "All right, Navarre. I agreed to twenty-four hours, not forty-eight. You put me off last night, man, and two hours later Karnau gets whacked. Dead bodies cancel our deal."

  My stomach twisted. "Carlon, if you’ve printed something—"

  “Shit, man. This is getting unfunny. ‘Help’ does not include doing time as an accessory to murder."

  “So you haven’t gone to press with this?"

  He laughed without much humor. “What I’ve done is put in some footwork for your sorry ass. So you want to know where Dan Sheff, Jr., is right now, getting himself schnockered on Lone Star, or you want me to go ahead and start the interview without you?"

  "Where are you?"

  “Some private dick, Navarre. You have a little patience, you do little stakeout time—"

  "Where the hell are you?"

  "Little Hipp’s."

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes."

  "Better make it five. I got some serious questions to ask the man and I might just—"

  I was out the door before he finished the sentence, hoping that in five minutes I wouldn’t have a good reason to break Carlon’s face.

  52

  Little Hipp’s wasn’t so much a San Antonio landmark as it was a surrogate landmark. When L. D. Hipp’s original Bubble Room got demolished to make room for hospital parking spaces back in 1980, L.D.’s son opened Little Hipp’s across the street and inherited most of the Hipp’s menu and paraphernalia. Despite the fact that the orange aluminum exterior made the bar and grille look like a drive-thru beer barn, the inside was faithful to the Bubble Room—multicolored bubbling Christmas lights, licenses plates, tinsel and neon, netted beach balls, and 195Os Pearl ads hanging from the ceiling. Major league tacky. You could get Hank Williams or Otis Redding on the jukebox, Shiner or Lone Star “gimmedraws" for pocket change, and shypoke eggs—round nachos with Monterey jack whites and longhorn yokes, the jalapenos hidden underneath. The whole place was maybe sixty feet square.

  The after-dinner crowd was sparse, mostly off-duty medical workers and a few assorted white collars. I spotted Carlon McAffrey at a table by the barber’s chair. He was dressed in what he probably thought was camouflage—dark glasses, khaki shirt and slacks, and a tie with only three colors. As I started over, he shook his head, then pointed at the bar.

  Dan Sheff occupied one of the three stools. He was hunched over a line of empty Lone Star bottles, ignoring the bartender’s attempts at conversation. Dan’s custom-made business suit was rumpled and one of his hand-stitched shoes was untied. He looked like he’d slept in his car last night.

  A tai chi principle: If you don’t want someone to run away from you, run away from them first. Become yin to make them become yang. I’m not sure why it works, but almost always they’ll follow you like air filling a vacuum.

  I walked up to Dan and said: "I’ll be over there."

  Then I retreated to a corner booth on the other side of the room from Carlon and ordered a Shiner Bock. I didn’t look at the bar. One hundred twenty-two seconds later Dan slid onto the bench across from me.

  He looked even worse close up. In the shadows his face looked half-dead, unshaven, the skin loose around his eyes and his short-cropped hair sickly white instead of blond. He’d been continually twisting his gold ring around on his finger until there were red grooves worried into the skin. He looked at me and tried to maintain some anger, or at least some suspicion, but it was too much effort. His expression fractured into simple grief.

  "I didn’t," he said.

  "Beau?"

  He closed his eyes tightly, opened them, then nodded. He looked around for a beer and realized he’d left it at the bar. He almost got up. To keep him there, I started telling him what had happened after he’d run from the Hilton, what I’d told Schaeffer. I didn’t mention the decade-old letter from his mother that was still in my pocket. When I was finished he just stared forward like a sleepwalker.

  "It’s only a matter of time before they ID you, Dan. There were cameras rolling, for God’s sake."

  He kept turning the gold ring like it was a screw that just wouldn’t tighten.

  "How much do you want?" he said.

  I shook my head. “I’m not Karnau, Dan."

  He accepted the rejection with a listless shrug. He looked down at the checkered tablecloth.

  “He was lying there, you know? I came in angry, saying I was going to kill him." He laughed weakly, wiping the water off his lower eyelids. “And then all I could think of was to hold the wound, but it was his head, and I couldn’t—"

  The waitress came up. She was about fifty, with a beer gut and a golf hat that had been through the wash too many times. She got out her order pad. Then she noticed Dan’s expression.

  I held up my Shiner Bock bottle and two fingers. The waitress disappeared.

  “I’m supposed to be at a damn party tonight." Dan laughed again, almost inaudibly. “Mother’s invited the mayor, everyone important. I’m supposed to drink champagne and dance with their wives and all I can think about is—I mean—"

  He shrugged, unable to finish the thought.

  “I know about the photographs, Dan. Three times I’ve seen you with Karnau. The second time you hit him. The third time he ended up dead. You want to avoid taking the fall, you’ve got to level with me."

  The waitress came with our beers. When she left, Dan was staring nowhere again, getting lost in the memory of that hotel room. He got teary and drooped his head like he was going into shock. I reached across the table and pressed my thumb on the meridian point in the base of his palm. The jolt registered in his face like a cup of strong coffee.

  "Tell me about the photographs, Dan."

  His eyes refocused on me, a little irritated. He pulled his hand away.

  “Last spring I was looking through the finances. Garza had said something that made me angry, something about me and my mother taking up space."

  "He said this to his employers?"

  Dan’s focus drifted down to the tabletop and stuck there, like he was trying to drill a hole through the wood with his eyes.

  "Garza worked for my dad for years. He gets "—Dan squeezed his eyes shut—“he got a lot of leeway. Mother insisted on that. But I looked at the accounts and saw--I mean it wasn’t hard to find—"

  “You saw the ten thousand dollars a month that was going to Karnau."

  The jukebox cranked out a Merle Haggard song.

  “I couldn’t believe it. All my mother would tell me is that Karnau had been threatening to publish some old photos of my father. I don’t know where he got them. She said the photos could ruin us. She told me not to get involved; she wanted to protect me."-

  When he talked about his mother he started mumbling, head down. It was as if he were five years old, recounting to a playmate how he’d gotten in trouble. I took out the photo from Garza’s trailer and put it on the table. Dan’s forehead turned scarlet.

  "You’ve seen this before?"

&n
bsp; "One like it. In Garza’s files."

  "But you don’t know what it’s a picture of."

  Dan looked down at his beer. "No. She wouldn’t tell me. She wanted—"

  “She wanted to protect you."

  Dan looked miserable.

  “You found out right before the River Parade," I guessed. “And you told Lillian. She didn’t take it well."

  He swallowed. “I thought she had a right to know. She was working with this guy, for God’s sake. And we were practically engaged. I’d just given her a diamond ring. I showed her the photo, explained what I knew to her. I told her I’d deal with it, but—" He shook his head, blushing. “I guess I can’t blame her. She didn’t want to see me anymore."

  "Dan, did it occur to you Lillian might’ve been shocked because she already knew about those photos? Karnau was her partner for ten years. Maybe she just didn’t realize he was using them for blackmail. Maybe she thought they were destroyed; maybe Karnau had agreed to destroy them, then when she found out he hadn’t—she didn’t know what to do. Maybe—"

  I stopped. I had been thinking aloud, trying to sculpt an answer I could live with. Dan was looking at me like I’d just spoken in Arabic.

  "Why would she have known?" he said.

  I stared at him. I probably looked as dazed as he did. “All right," I said. “You said your mother told you to stay out of it. You obviously didn’t."

  Dan tried to look defiant, but his voice got quivery.

  “It’s my damn company. My fiancée. When Lillian,. . .when she told me to go away, it just made me more determined to resolve things. I confronted Beau. I told him he’d gotten all he was going to get and I wanted the photographs. I just didn’t know—"

  He rubbed his eyes slowly, like he couldn’t quite remember where they were. A sleepless night and too many pitchers of Lone Star were catching up with him.

  "You didn’t know what?"

  "Beau kept stalling. He asked for more money, then promised he’d bring the disk, then asked for more. He promised if I came to the Hilton that would really be it. He was leaving town. But already he’d done something with Lillian, and then that carpenter, then Garza. It just kept getting worse. If I hadn’t pushed on him so hard—"

  “Wait a minute," I said. “You think Karnau killed those two men. You think he kidnapped Lillian."

  Dan stared at me. “It’s obvious." .

  "Obvious," I repeated. “Who killed Karnau then? Who else knew you were going to the Hilton, Dan?"

  "No one."

  “Except your mother?"

  He didn’t respond. I wasn’t sure he was even listening.

  “When Lillian turned up missing," I said, "your mother talked to the Cambridges. She insisted on no

  police."

  He frowned. "We both did. We knew it wouldn’t help."

  "That’s not why she wanted the police out, Dan."

  His eyes became unfocused. "What the hell do you know about her? You have any idea how much strength it takes—her husband about to die, some lowlife black-mailing her family, a hundred damn cousins and second cousins and nieces and nephews ready to take over the company as soon as they see the chance? She kept a million-dollar business together, Navarre. She’s done that for me."

  It sounded like a speech he’d heard a thousand times. He recited it without much conviction.

  I tried to imagine the world as Dan saw it: Beau Karnau capable of shooting Eddie Moraga through the eyes, but scared enough of Dan to not try anything even alone with him in a dark alley. Dan able to save the family business single-handedly, even though he’d looked at the books maybe once. Lillian ignorant of her mentor’s darker side, just too delicate to handle dating a man who was being blackmailed. The fact that Karnau was the one who’d been blackmailing the Sheff family for a year nothing but an odd coincidence. Dan’s mother a frail and besieged protector of Dan’s inheritance. I wondered how many of his mother’s speeches it had taken over the years to make that vision of the world seem obvious to Dan. I wondered how much longer it would be before that vision caved in on him.

  “I’d talk to your mother, Dan. She’s been protecting you again."

  The Merle Haggard song ended. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Carlon staring over at us, trying to look like he wasn’t.

  Dan drained his beer glass.

  "Get away from me," he mumbled. "Just leave."

  I stood up from the bench. I threw down a five and started to go.

  "Ask her, Dan. Go to your party tonight and ask her if the blond man in the picture is named Randall

  Halcomb."

  When I stopped at the exit and looked back, Dan was slumped over in the booth, his forehead cupped in his hands, furrows of blond hair sticking up between his fingers. The waitress with the beer gut and the golf hat was trying to console him, giving me a dirty look. Carlon had left his table and was walking toward me as quickly as he could without actually breaking into a run.

  We went out together and stood next to Carlon’s car in the nighttime heat. The blue Hyundai was parked on McCullough with two wheels on the curb.

  "So what do we know?" Carlon said.

  "We don’t know much, Carlon. just that Dan’s a victim."

  Carlon laughed. “Yeah, poor guy. Forced to put a bullet in Karnau’s head. Give me a break, Tres."

  "Dan didn’t kill Karnau. He just isn’t capable."

  Carlon took off his inconspicuous tie, rolled it up, and shoved it in the front pocket of his khakis, never taking his eyes off me.

  "I’m listening."

  "Carlon, what would it take for you to give up on getting a story out of this?"

  He laughed again. “You don’t have that much, Navarre. This is the spiciest shit I’ve had since the last Terlingua Cook-off. Murder, blackmail, the mob. We’re talking 40-point orange headlines here."

  “I don’t want it like that."

  "It’s already there, man. It might as well be me that pops the cherry on it."

  I looked over at him. just for the moment I wished I had a bayonet.

  “Friday, then," I offered. “At the earliest. This is more complicated than I thought."

  “Getting publicity has a funny way of making things unravel, man. I’ve still got about an hour to make copy for the morning edition."

  "Look," I said, trying to keep my voice even, “if you stir things up now, if you get the wrong kind of heat onto the wrong people, somebody else is going to die. I need time to make sure that doesn’t happen."

  "Lillian, right?"

  “Yeah."

  Carlon hesitated. Maybe he was thinking about Lillian, or maybe he was thinking about the black eye I’d given Beau Karnau. I didn’t really care which.

  “You promise me this will be mine?" he said.

  "It’s yours."

  “Promise me it’s big."

  “Yeah."

  Carlon shook his head. “What is it makes me believe you when I know you’re going to screw me around again?"

  “Your innate benevolence?"

  “Shit."

  When I got home I sat down and started feeling very alone. Robert Johnson fighting with my ankles didn’t help. Neither did another half pint of tequila.

  I tried to push the thoughts of Cookie Sheff and my father out of my mind, but the only thoughts that replaced them were of Maia Lee. I looked around the room and saw places she had stood, or eaten pan dulce, or kissed me. In her hurry to pack, she’d left a few articles of clothing in the bathroom. I’d folded them neatly on the kitchen counter. I wondered where she was right now, back at work, talking to a client, cursing at a cable car operator, having dinner at Garibaldi’s. Half of me was pissed off because I cared at all. The other half of me was pissed off because I didn’t care enough to do anything about it. All of me agreed it was time to get out of the house.

  53

  My friend at the Dominion gates was learning his lessons. This time, he remembered to check the list before letting me in.

&n
bsp; "B. Karnau," I said. “For the Sheffs."

  “Yes, sir." I guess he didn’t get too many VW bugs through there. He frowned at my car. “Wasn’t it the Bagatallinis before?"

  I smiled. “Sure. I know a lot of people here."

  He nodded, his smile quivering as if he was afraid I might hit him. He checked his notebook, then looked up with great regret.

  "Ah, I don’t see—"

  I snapped my fingers, then said something in Spanish that sounded like I was scolding myself. What I actually said was that the guard’s mother had obviously mated with a learning-disabled javelina. Then in English: "No, man, they would’ve put it under Garza. I forgot."

  He stared at me, trying to figure out how I could go from German to Hispanic in under twenty seconds. I smiled. I had black hair, I spoke the language, and it was dark. I guess I passed the inspection. He checked his list again.

  Evidently nobody had thought to cross the dead man off the party list. The guard looked relieved.

  "Okay, Mr. Garza. Straight ahead half a mile, turn left."

  “Cool."

  I shot him with my index finger. Then I kicked up as much smoke as the VW could make just to piss off the jaguar behind me.

  I won’t tell you that San Antonians are the only people who love to throw a party. Garrett says Mardi Gras is great. Lillian always talked about Times Square at New Year’s Eve. But in most cities they’re content to have one major party season and the rest of the year is normal. In San Antonio, the normal year is about two weeks long in the middle of March. The rest of the time it’s party season.

  The Sheffs’ party that night may have been a little classier than most, but it was just as packed and just as crazy. I could tell they were deeply in mourning for their dead employees Mr. Garza and Mr. Moraga. The walkway up to the mansion was lit with multicolored luminarias. The huge glass front of the building blazed gold, and a country band was cranking out the Bob Wills tunes from somewhere inside. A mob of rich folk spilled out the front doors and into the gravel front yard, laughing, drinking by the gallon, planning sexual escapades that wouldn’t ruin their designer clothes. I guess I stood out a little. I’d put on a fresh T-shirt and jeans, but the tequila bottle in my hand was easily the most expensive thing I had on. Or maybe it was the look on my face that made people stop talking as I walked through the front yard. I pushed past a few city councilmen, some local business leaders, a group of elderly women criticizing the younger women’s dresses. A lot of the people I recognized from the old days. Nobody said hello.