Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan Read online

  Garrett shook his head. "Unreal."

  "Can you look at the disk for us?" I asked Garrett.

  Cameras flashed as the first few bats flitted overhead like sparrows with hangovers. Garrett glanced up at them, shook his head to indicate that the real show hadn’t begun yet, then turned back to us. He pulled his tie-dyed shirt back down over his belly.

  "I don’t guess you want my advice," he said.

  "Not really, " I said.

  "Sounds to me like this is your old girlfriend’s gig," he said. "Turn this shit over to somebody else and walk, little brother."

  Somebody on the bridge shouted. When I looked up, a woman in pink was leaning over the railing with her arms dangling into a steady stream of bats.

  "They tickle!" she shouted to her friends. People laughed. More cameras went off.

  "Fuckers," said Garrett. "The flashes disorient the hell out of the bats. They run into cars and shit. Don’t they know that? Fuckers!"

  The last word he shouted into the crowd. Only a few people turned around. Nobody wanted to argue with him, maybe, but nobody wanted to pay him any attention, either.

  "Tres?"

  In the twilight Maia’s face was losing its features, so it was hard to guess her expression, but her arm still pressed against mine warmer than ever. She waited for me to say something. When I didn’t, she turned to Garrett.

  "Can you look at it, Garrett?" she asked.

  His scowl softened. Maybe it was Maia’s hand on his armrest. Maybe it was the joint.

  "Sure," he said. "Whatever. But it seems to me you got to get a life, little brother. Picking at old wounds--fuck, if I spent my life with that they’d’ve locked me up by now."

  He met my eyes only for a second, then he laughed and shook his head. Whatever pain was there, it had been buried a long time ago under drug abuse, wildness, testiness, and arrogance—all the Navarre family values.

  I couldn’t help it. I tried again to imagine Garrett at those dark railroad tracks twenty years ago. The confident train-hitcher, the intractable hippie, running away from home for the twentieth and last time—the one time he’d sprinted to the freight car and missed the rungs. I tried to see his face, pale with shock, looking desperately at the black glistening lake where his legs had been. I tried to imagine him for once without that cultivated son-of-a-bitch smile. But he’d been alone then and he was still alone with it. There was no way to imagine what Garrett had said or thought two decades ago, staring at those wet rails that had mercifully sealed the blood flow. He’d been alone and conscious for more than an hour by the time my sister Shelley found him.

  "Old wounds," he said now. "Fuck that."

  Then the bats came out for real. Cameras stopped flashing. People’s mouths dropped. We all just stared at the endless cloud of smoke drifting east into the Hill Country, smoke looking for a few jillion pounds of insects to eat.

  Garrett smiled like a kid at the matinee.

  "Un-fucking-real," he said.

  In ten minutes more bats passed over our heads than the total number of people in South Texas. Somewhere in that time Maia had taken my hand and I hadn’t pulled it away.

  The tourists unfroze. Then one by one, growing bored with the bats, they drifted off to the parking lot. Maia and I stayed perfectly still. Finally Garrett wheeled his chair around and pushed himself up the hill. Maia stood and followed him. Then I followed her. It was hard to miss Garrett’s VW safari van. In the dark, the mound of plastic pineapples and bananas that was hot-glued to the roof made the van look like it had hair. When we got closer I saw that the paint job was just the way it had been years ago, rows of Ms. Mirandas along the sides, all in outrageous Caribbean dresses.

  "They don’t dance like Carmen no more?" Maia suggested.

  Garrett grinned at her as he slipped his chair into the lift grooves. "Will you marry me?"

  A few minutes later we were sitting on beanbags and drinking Pecan Street Ale from Garrett’s cooler. My eyes teared over from the smell of mota and very old patchouli. Garrett had booted up his "portable" computer—several hundred pounds of wires and hardware that had years ago taken over the van’s backseat and whose generator required most of the luggage compartment. Then he stuck in our mystery CD.

  Garrett frowned. He thought about it for a minute. He tried a few commands. He cracked open some files and looked inside.

  “Slice and dice," he pronounced. "Easy to fix if you’ve got the other disk."

  Maia looked at me, then at Garrett. "The other disk?"

  "Yeah. You split your data between two disks. The program to reassemble it’s pretty simple. But you read one disk alone, it’s all nonsense codes, man, scrambled eggs. Pretty safe way to store sensitive stuff."

  I took a drink of my Pecan Street and thought about that. "So you can’t tell anything about what’s on there?"

  Garrett shrugged. “It’s big. That much data usually means detailed graphics."

  “As in photographs?

  Garrett nodded.

  Maia stared at the dingo balls around Garrett’s windows.

  "Garrett," she said, "if I was using photos to blackmail somebody--"

  He grinned. "You just keep looking better, honey."

  "If I was, why a CD? Why not just keep the negatives?"

  Garrett took a long drag on his joint. His eyes glittered. You could tell he was enjoying figuring out the devious possibilities.

  "Okay. You can’t encrypt negatives. You can’t lock them so that nobody but you can make copies. Somebody finds them, then they’ll know exactly what they’re looking at, right? If it was me, shit yes, I’d scan everything in, keep that as my master print, then shred the negatives. You got your two disks, you got your program to reassemble. In a couple of minutes you can print up as many hard copies as you need, or, even better, upload those suckers onto the net and pretty soon they’re printing out at every news desk and police station in the state, if that’s what you want. But if somebody comes looking through your stuff, unless they’re very good or they know exactly what they’re looking for, they don’t find shit."

  Garrett stopped and took another hit. "So who’s got the other disk?"

  I took out a flier that had been folded in my pocket for a long time. I looked at the date—July 31, tonight. Nine to midnight. Driving like bats out of hell, we could be there just when things started cooking. No offense to the bats.

  Besides, Garrett was leering at Maia’s legs again and about to offer her another beer. If I didn’t make a counteroffer we’d be here all night.

  "You like art openings?" I asked her.

  34

  Even with the windows rolled down at ten at night the Buick felt like the inside of a blow drier. I sat shotgun and watched the subdivisions go by while a cold triangle of sweat glued my shirt to the back of my seat. The smell of dead skunks and brushfires blew through the car.

  I guess I was being too quiet. When we passed Live Oak, Maia finally reached out and touched my arm.

  “You still thinking about Garrett?"

  I shook my head.

  In fact I hadn’t thought about much else since we’d left Austin. I’d been foolish to think I’d get away from Garrett without one of his lectures. While Maia retrieved the rental car from the Marriott parking lot, Garrett had given me his philosophy on old girlfriends. Then for the millionth time he’d cataloged Dad’s offenses against the family; how Dad had basically abandoned Garrett and Shelley after their mother had died, left them with his abusive second wife for years while he went out drinking, politicking, falling in love with whores and junior Leaguers. How Garrett took to running away and Shelley took to abusive men.

  "By the time he married your mom it was too fucking late to make any difference," Garrett said. "Shelley and I were out of the house and your mom was too damn nice to change him. She never told you the last straw, did she? You were in what--tenth grade? The bastard took your mom to some party at the McNay Museum, then disappeared. When your mom and her friend
s finally found him, he was down in the woods by the old fish pond screwing the lights out of junior Leaguer number seven. He just smiled, zipped his pants, and went back into the party to get another drink."

  Garrett laughed weakly. Then he looked down at where his lap should’ve been. "Let the bastard stay dead, little brother. It’s the only thing that’s ever given me a sense of justice."

  Maia exited in downtown San Antonio. We drove past the decaying mansions of the King William District, then across East Arsenal where the San Antonio River flowed by sluggish and polluted with tourist left-overs. Its banks this far south were empty except for the crack addicts.

  When we pulled up in front of Blue Star the gravel lot was already full to bursting with BMWs and Ferraris. Women in evening dresses did coke on the hoods of their cars; men in black sweated in the heat and drank champagne on the old loading docks of the renovated warehouses. An apathetic handwritten sign in front of one of the larger galleries announced Beau’s opening upstairs at a loft space called Galleria Azul, perched at the top of a narrow iron fire escape.

  Inside the gallery, halfhearted Western swing warbled from a few wall speakers. Somebody had put an old saddle on the table next to the sign-in book. Twenty or thirty people were drifting around the room looking at bad photos of authentic cowboys. One of the guests was wearing a starburst Jerry Garcia tie, clipped with a wrinkled green press pass that had been old during Watergate. He came up next to me from behind the beer keg and quietly belched garlic.

  "The beer is free," Carlon McAffrey said, "but these little sandwich things suck."

  In one hand Carlon had a spiral notebook pinched between two fingers and a stack of canapés in his palm. He handed me his cup of Lone Star from the other hand so he could shake with Maia.

  "Carlon McAffrey," he said. “You’re not Lillian."

  Maia smiled. "Likewise, I’m sure."

  Carlon nodded. He was nice enough to puff his cheeks out for the next belch, holding it in.

  "You hear about your buddy Sheff?" he asked me.

  "Somebody made his office into a drive-through morgue last night."

  "I heard."

  Carlon waited. I looked disinterested. Finally Carlon’s blue eyes detached from my face and made a circuit of the people in the room, looking for new prey.

  "Okay," he said. “I’ve seen ranches, I’ve seen cows, I’ve seen Councilman Asante schmoozing it up in back. So far I see nothing worth a headline."

  I looked around the corner, into the back room of the gallery. Sure enough, against the side wall, his beer set casually on top of a metal sculpture, Fernando Asante was holding court. He had on an after-hours outfit--black jeans, white silk shirt over his huge belly, a denim jacket with the Virgin Mary embroidered in sequins on the back and on the breast panels. Two plump ladies in satin dresses stood on either side of him. A few businessmen laughed at his jokes. The curly-haired Anglo bodyguard I’d seen at Mi Tierra lounged nearby. He was the only one who didn’t look enchanted to be in Asante’s presence.

  What the hell. I gave Carlon back his beer.

  "Keep your eyes peeled, Lois Lane," I told him. "I have to go say hello to somebody." .

  I looked at Maia to see if she was coming.

  Maia looked at Fernando Asante, who was laughing at his own joke and patting the rump of the nearest satin cherub. Then she looked at Carlon, trying to eat canapés out of his palm. She let me steer her toward the back room.

  Asante gave me his best gold-toothed smile as we came up. He gave Maia a head-to-toe appraisal and seemed to End her a good risk. When he nodded at his fan club, they excused themselves in unison, all except for the bodyguard.

  "Jack," Asante said. "Good to see you again, boy."

  He loosened the silver Texas-shaped bola around his neck. He offered me a well-manicured hand to shake.

  I declined.

  "Councilman," I said. "Hell of an outfit. That jacket weep on holy days?"

  He just smiled and shook his head, then leered at Maia. "I like patronizing the arts, ma’am. I always do admire beautiful things."

  Maia smiled warmly. “You must be Mr. Asante."

  Asante looked gratified. His face just oozed Charming Elder Statesman.

  "That’s right, princess," he said. "And you are?"

  "Endlessly amused by the tabloid stories Tres reads me," she cooed. "Is it true, the one about you and your secretary in the same pair of underpants?"

  Asante’s pupils dilated down to pinpoints. His genitals probably followed suit. Somehow he managed to keep his smile intact.

  “I can see Mr. Navarre has been around you a little too long, princess," he said.

  Maia leaned close, as if to tell him a naughty secret. "Actually I taught him everything he knows. And if you call me ‘princess’ again I’m going to throw up on your Virgin Mary."

  "Speaking of nausea," I said, "I didn’t know you were a fan of Beau’s work, Mr. Asante. Do you know him?"

  He wasn’t quite sure who to look at now. He regarded Maia like a dog might look at a snake, trying to determine how dangerous this little thing was. The bodyguard had moved a little closer, just enough to share the gallon or two of Aramis on his chest. My eyes began to tear.

  Asante looked from Maia to me. "Why, Jack? You looking for an autograph?"

  "Just curious," I said. “I wanted Beau’s professional opinion on some photos I’ve come across."

  I waited for a reaction, but I might’ve been talking about the Rangers’ chances in the finals.

  A man in a yellow silk shirt and black genie pants came up to us, apologized, and peeled a red sticker off a sheet of labels. He pointed to a photo behind the councilman. "This one, Mr. Asante?"

  The photo was about eight by eleven, with Beau’s name scrawled at the bottom. It showed an abandoned ranch house on a hill overlooking the Texas plains. In the nighttime sky behind the house was a bloated full moon and a single meteor streak. In the foreground, rusty iron gates rose up; the name “Lazy B" was arced across the top in black metal cursive. One gate was open and unhinged.

  Asante looked back at it lazily. "Sure, son. That’s fine."

  The gallery employee marked the picture sold, apologized again, and left.

  "Lazy B," I said. “That stand for ‘Bastard,’ maybe?"

  Asante ignored me. "Good bargain. I’m told it’s one of Karnau’s best, one of his older shots," he said to Maia. "I always buy something, long as it’s small and priced to sell."

  He leered at her like that was a private joke. Then he looked back at me.

  "And how’s the job market for you, son? Haven’t given up yet?"

  "Actually," I said, "I was wondering if your friends at Sheff Construction could find me some work."

  Asante stared. "Pardon?"

  "I figure there’ll be a lot of money in this new North Side arts complex you’re planning. Biggest pork barrel since Travis Center, bigger maybe. I also figure it’s a sure thing Sheff will get the contract. That’s your arrangement with them, isn’t it?"

  Asante looked at his bodyguard, nodding that he was ready to move on. The Aramis Man came and stood next to me.

  "Misinformation is a dangerous thing, Jack." Asante said it almost blandly. "The City grants contracts by anonymous bidding. When we approve a bond package for a new project, we only then look for the right firm--goes through numerous committees and the Chamber. I really have very little to do with it. Does that clear things up for you?"

  "Shucks," I said. "No kickbacks or anything?"

  Asante couldn’t have smiled colder.

  "You know if I were you, Jack," he said, leaning forward to deliver some private advice, "I’d take this young lady back to California. I’d go back where the prospects are better, the life expectancy is longer."

  He showed me his gold teeth. Up close, his breath smelled like used motor oil.

  "I’ll file that in the proper place," I promised.

  Asante took his beer from the top of the statue, nodded p
olitely to Maia. "Good night, Jack."

  He walked away with his bodyguard in tow.

  Maia raised her eyebrows. She looked like she was about to exhale for the First time in ten minutes when Carlon came up, hands still full, and nudged me with his elbow.

  "Okay. Back window, now."

  I stared at him.

  He kept walking toward the back of the room, not waiting to see if we would follow. When we caught up he was standing on the tips of his huaraches, peering down through a tiny metal-barred window into the alley behind the warehouse.

  "Okay," he said, "Dan’s blond, right, drives a silver Beamer?"

  “Yeah."

  Carlon frowned. "You want to tell me why he’s delivering a sack lunch to Beau Karnau in the alley?"

  Maia and I looked out. It took a few seconds for our eyes to adjust to the darkness outside before we saw the two figures, one blond, sitting with arms folded on the hood of the silver BMW, the other a balding brunette, visible because of his stark white tux shirt. Sure enough, Beau was holding a brown lunch bag, shaking it in Dan Sheff’s face like he was unhappy with it.

  "Maybe Dan forgot to pack a dessert," I said.

  Dan just sat there, silent. In the shadows, I couldn’t see his face, but his body looked stiff, tense with anger. Then, while Beau was midsentence yelling at him, Dan delivered the same haymaker swing he’d tried on me in Lillian’s front yard last Sunday. This time it connected. Beau went over backward and the lunch bag spilled thick green bricks of cash across the alley, into the light from the gallery windows.

  “Or maybe he didn’t," said Carlon.

  35

  After Dan Sheff’s taillights disappeared down East Arsenal and Beau started staggering back through the alley, Carlon paid the gallery owner with the yellow shirt and the genie pants fifty dollars for the use of his office. It was probably the most money the gallery owner had seen all night.

  We waited less than five minutes before Beau came in to clean up. His tux shirt was stained and half-untucked from his jordaches, his left hand was cupped over the eye Dan Sheff had just punched, and he was cursing somebody’s great-grandmother. I stepped in next to him and slapped his good eye with my open hand. I probably could’ve just punched him, but I was in a bad mood. The palm strike in tai chi is arguably the most painful attack. It’s a soft strike, the way a whip is soft. Sometimes it takes a layer of skin off. I didn’t want any more stand-offs with Mr. Karnau.