Southtown tn-5 Page 17

  “Batteries…” I looked in my bag of Whole Foods Market picnic supplies, which had seemed perfectly adequate a moment before. “What happened, the laser scope on your grenade launcher go out again?”

  “Ha, ha. You have no idea how many double-As a Game Boy can go through in twenty-four hours. Come in.”

  A meteor had impacted on the smooth surface of Planet Maia. In the middle of the living room’s milk-white carpet, Jem sat cross-legged, playing his Game Boy. He was surrounded by a debris ring of Nintendo cartridges and comic books and LEGO robots.

  “Hey, champ,” I said.

  He didn’t respond.

  I exchanged looks with Maia. She pursed her lips.

  “I brought lunch.” I sat next to Jem and unloaded my goodies with a series of ta-da flourishes. Checkered cloth. French bread, cheese, wine for the adults. A juice box, pizza Lunchables, and a cup of Dippin’ Dots futuristic ice cream for Jem.

  He glanced at each item I produced, then went back to his game.

  “Zapping good monsters?” I asked.

  He lifted one shoulder. “My Gyarados is level thirty-five.”

  I would’ve understood the statement just as well in Japanese, but I tried to exude enthusiasm.

  Maia sat with us. We munched on bread and cheese. I opened the wine. Jem let his bowl of ice cream dots melt.

  “This isn’t like you, Tres,” Maia said. “A picnic? Almost romantic.”

  “Yuck,” Jem muttered.

  “Really,” Maia agreed.

  I thought that might coax a smile from him, but his expression stayed serious, his attention funneled toward the Game Boy like he wanted to pour himself into the tiny screen.

  “Well…” Maia said. “I guess I’ll put these ice cream pellet things in the freezer, Jem, if you don’t want them right now.”

  “I don’t.”

  Maia arched her eyebrow at me, giving me a silent command. She took the melting snack-of-the-future into the kitchen.

  Jem kept playing his game.

  I waited for the best moment to say something. The best moment proved elusive.

  “Jem,” I said at last. “You remember the man we saw at the soccer field?”

  He pushed a few more buttons.

  “That man’s angry at your mother,” I said. “She didn’t do anything wrong, but he thinks she stole some of his money. Your mother is worried. When people are mad, they can do stupid things. Sometimes they might hurt people without thinking. She didn’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I know,” Jem said. “She told me.”

  “Your mother is with that man right now.”

  Black bangs fell in his eyes. “She’s at his house?”

  “I’m not sure, champ. He’s keeping her somewhere, like a hostage. He wants me to bring him money, to make up for what he lost. Once I do that, he’ll let your mom go.”

  “We don’t have any money.”

  “I’m working on that.” My throat felt dry. “I’m going to see the man tonight. I’ll make sure your mother is okay. I’ll convince him she didn’t do anything bad. I just wanted you to know-your mother loves you. That’s why you’re staying with Maia. More than anything, your mother wants to know you’re safe.”

  Jem pulled his legs in tighter. He cradled the Game Boy.

  “Light’s red,” he murmured. “I wish I had more batteries.”

  I tried to finish my wine, but it tasted like vinegar. “I’ll clean up this stuff,” I said. “Be right back, champ.”

  I found Maia at her kitchen window, staring out at the wooded canyon of Barton Creek. On her breakfast table was a spread of paperwork-her court cases, I assumed. Then I looked closer and saw they were news printouts about Will Stirman and the Floresville Five.

  She turned toward me, held out her arms.

  The wine tasted a whole lot better on her lips.

  I said, “Missed you.”

  “Stay the night.”

  “I can’t.”

  I told her why.

  Maia’s face got that battle-hardened look that always made me glad I was not the object of her anger. “Stirman asked for Jem?”

  “Yeah.”

  My tone of voice must’ve unsettled her. She said, “You’re not seriously considering-”

  “No. Jem’s safer here.” I tried to sound definite about it, but something nagged at the back of my mind, something that had been there since lunchtime, when I’d visited with Ralph Arguello and his baby daughter. “I don’t think Stirman would really try coming to Austin. If he did, he sure as hell wouldn’t bargain for you.”

  Maia stared out the window. “Jem keeps talking about soccer. He wants life to be normal by the weekend. I can’t blame him.”

  She didn’t mention our last night together in San Marcos, or my promise to give her an answer about moving to Austin by this weekend.

  I wondered how it had been for Maia, putting Jem to bed last night, taking care of a child. I found it hard to imagine her telling bedtime stories.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Just nerves.” She waved toward the news clippings on the table. “This morning, I almost shot my neighbor when he came to borrow coffee. This is the first time I’ve opened my blinds since yesterday. I keep thinking, if Stirman had any skill with a sniper rifle…”

  She gazed at the ridge across the valley.

  The view was strikingly similar to the one from her old Potrero Hill apartment. The land fell away into a basin of green, hills on the opposite rim dotted with newly built mansions and condominiums. At night, the aquifer recharge zone below would be completely dark, but rimmed with lights, the Heart of Texas Highway strung red and gold across the void. A San Franciscan could easily imagine she was looking across an expanse of water at the Bay Bridge and the East Bay beyond.

  The interior of Maia’s new apartment was also a duplicate of the old-high ceilings, white walls, pristine tile work, milk carpet, a slight scent of jasmine in the air.

  She’d re-created her living environment in Texas with such eerie precision it belied the risk she’d taken coming here-the career and reputation she’d left behind, the savings she’d burned, the chance she was taking on a guy who’d let her down before.

  If asked, she would say the move was a life decision. The time had been right for her to reinvent herself. She hadn’t moved just to be closer to me.

  She would also swear her new home looked nothing like her old.

  Maia shed her white jacket, folded it over the kitchen stool.

  The gun in her holster looked enormous compared to the size of her hands, but I knew it fit her grip perfectly. The. 357 was her preferred weapon. Anything smaller, and she felt poorly anchored.

  “You can’t negotiate with Will Stirman,” she told me. “You know that.”

  I picked up one of the articles she had printed from the Express-News archives.

  Human Trafficker Brought Down by Local

  Investigators 4/29/95.

  Last night, working in conjunction with San Antonio police on the recent slayings at a Castroville ranch, two prominent local private investigators took part in a dramatic firefight leading to the arrest of Will Stirman, the alleged mastermind of a human trafficking operation which may have supplied the Castroville murderer with his victims.

  None of the information was new to me. Late April, just as Ana DeLeon had said. Barrera and Barrow were portrayed as heroes. The statement from the SAPD’s media relations officer was carefully restrained. While we never condone private citizens taking the law into their own hands…

  No reference to missing money or a dead child. Soledad’s death wasn’t mentioned until the last paragraph-a completely subordinate fact, like a broken window.

  “Tres.” Maia sounded more insistent now. “If Stirman lost his family… he’ll never let Erainya go. You’ll have to find him before he calls the meeting. You’ll have to kill him.”

  It was jarring, hearing her say that, but I wasn’t surprised. Maia was the ultima
te pragmatist when it came to sociopaths. She knew them. At her old San Francisco firm of Terrence amp; Goldman, she had been responsible for defending some of the richest sociopaths in the country. Under the right circumstances, Maia would have no problem putting a bullet through Will Stirman’s forehead. She would not lose a moment’s sleep.

  “I’ll find him,” I promised.

  But I was still looking at the article. Late April 1995.

  Nobody wants to live in hell, vato. Nobody.

  I imagined Fred Barrow-a big, brutish man with blood on his hands, his breath stinking of guilt and hate and violence, and a suitcase full of cash in the trunk of his car. I thought about what he might do with seven million dollars. I thought about Erainya’s note from H., the package from Fred.

  “You wasted time, coming up here,” Maia said, sadly. “Three hours you should’ve spent looking for Stirman.”

  Domino moments are rare. One seemingly incongruous piece of information slips into place, and suddenly you’ve got a chain reaction of unanswered questions that all go down, one after the other. Investigators live for domino moments. On the other hand, the pattern you discover can sometimes scare the hell out of you.

  “It wasn’t a waste of time,” I said. “I have to-”

  I stopped.

  Jem was standing in the kitchen doorway, holding his Game Boy.

  “The batteries are dead,” he announced.

  Maia held out her arms. “Come here, sweetheart.”

  Jem came over and let her hug him, but his eyes were on me.

  The kitchen floor was turning to liquid under my feet.

  I said, “How long were you listening, champ?”

  “Awhile,” he admitted. “I want to go with you.”

  Maia tried to stroke the bangs out of his eyes to no avail. “You can’t, sweetheart.”

  He pulled away from her. “That man wants me to come. I want to help my mother.”

  Maia looked to me for support.

  I remembered Will Stirman’s voice on the telephone, his tone that I hadn’t quite been able to decipher: We’ll all be better behaved with the kid around.

  “I’ll tell the man to let her go,” Jem continued. “He won’t hurt me. I’ll talk to him first. Then if you have to, you can shoot him. That will be fairer.”

  His chin jutted out stubbornly, like his mother’s. He sounded like he was describing a game plan rather than asking permission.

  Not for the first time, I marveled at how much he’d changed since his preschool days.

  He’s still only eight, I reminded myself.

  So what had I been doing at eight years old? I’d already found the keys to my dad’s gun safe. I’d shot and gutted my first deer at the ranch. I’d spent hours hanging around the guards’ desk at the Bexar County Jail, where my dad had his office. I already knew the difference between a con and a civilian. I’d had plenty of conversations with guys like Will Stirman, and I’d known instinctively-or at least I thought I knew-which ones would hurt a kid, and which ones wouldn’t. If somebody had told me, at eight years old, that Will Stirman had taken my mom and I couldn’t try to help her

  …

  I could see Maia’s disbelief growing as she realized what I was thinking.

  “Tres…” she warned.

  “Go pack your bag, champ,” I said. “No mess on Maia’s floor.”

  “Tres!” Maia said again.

  “Okay,” Jem said. “The uniform, too?”

  I looked at him.

  “It was in the bottom of the bag,” he said. “You brought the goalie vest. That means everything will be better by Saturday. I’ll get to play.”

  Maia glared at me as if I’d just sold the kid some real estate at the North Pole.

  “I hope so,” I told him. “We’ll hope, okay? Now go get packed.”

  He hustled off, showing more energy than he had in days.

  “How can you?” Maia asked.

  When Maia got angry, she got cold. At the moment, her eyes could’ve frozen mercury.

  “I need to use your phone,” I said. “Local call.”

  “If you think, for one minute, I’m going to let you-”

  “Thanks.” I picked up her phone, dialed a friend of mine at the Texas Department of Human Resources. It took all of four minutes to ask an easy question, and get an easy answer. The organization I was inquiring about didn’t exist. Nor, according to the state’s records, had it existed eight years ago. I hung up, no doubt now, but feeling worse than ever.

  “Well?” Maia demanded.

  It would’ve been best to tell her.

  I knew Maia would help me, if I explained. She would come to San Antonio, watch my back, fight my battles, do whatever she could to help save Erainya.

  But it would be a mistake. I was already treading too far over the invisible line that separated our relationship from my work in San Antonio-the job Maia quietly resented. If I relied on her for more help, I’d be pushing us in the wrong direction. On some level she might never admit, Maia would take it as a sign of disrespect.

  “Jem has to come with me,” I said. “He’s right. It may be the only way to resolve this without blood.”

  “You’re absolutely insane.”

  “Stirman won’t hurt him.”

  “You’re sure of that.” Her words were like mist off a glacier. “You’re willing to risk his life.”

  Out her window, a hawk circled through the slow persistent drizzle over Barton Creek.

  For the first time, I understood Erainya’s dilemma as a parent-her sometimes crazy choices about what was best for Jem. The safest thing, the right thing, was rarely obvious.

  I knew now why I had come to Austin. I knew exactly why Jem had to come back with me.

  And I knew something else, too.

  Standing in Maia’s kitchen, so much like her old kitchen on Potrero Hill, looking out at the vista she swore was not the ghost image of her lost home, I knew where to find Fred Barrow’s seven million dollars.

  19

  Will didn’t mean for it to happen.

  All he wanted was food and cash.

  He passed up two convenience stores, convincing himself he needed to get farther away from the hideout.

  He got on I-35, cruised down to Hot Wells Boulevard, turned into the South Side neighborhood he knew so well.

  At the corner of South New Braunfels, the blue jeans factory he’d once used as a holding facility had been burned to crossbeams. The adobe house that belonged to his friend the Guide had been repainted lime green.

  Farther down, on a ridge overlooking a swollen creek, the Estrella Barbecue Pit stood abandoned, its back deck sagging over the water.

  Will had done business on that deck. He’d smoked cigars and drank Bacardi with clients while the air filled with brisket smoke, sulfur from the hot springs bubbling up in the creek bed, making soft milky rings in the mud.

  Will and his clients would sit around the picnic table, negotiating the price of women.

  Panamanian girls fought harder than Guatemalans. Girls from Coahuila turned the best short-term profit. The ones from the central mountains lasted longer. Twelve was too young to be reliably trained. Eighteen, too old. Glossy hair was a sign of health. Good teeth were a premium. Stirman wrote special orders on a yellow legal pad.

  The following weekend, when Will got across the Rio Grande, he would find every girl on his shopping list, as if writing their descriptions made them appear-hopeful and eager and willing to believe his lies.

  He made a right on South Presa, passed several more ice houses. He rejected one because he used to know the owners; another, because too many kids were Rollerblading outside.

  His own hesitation irritated him. He should just pick a place and hit it.

  He wasn’t worried about being recognized. Since kidnapping Erainya Manos, he’d bleached his hair and shaved his five-day stubble. He’d gotten himself a pair of black rubber sunglasses, a blue Hawaiian shirt and jeans, boots that made him an
inch taller. He doubted anyone would identify him right away, even in his old home turf.

  Still he kept driving.

  He turned on Dimmit Street because the name sounded familiar, and realized why only when he found himself in a dead end, facing a pink clapboard house. The hand-painted sign in the front yard

  read: TEXAS PRISON MINISTRY.

  Will stopped his car in the middle of the cul-de-sac. He stared at the sign.

  Pastor Riggs had always called his ministry headquarters Dimmit Street. Like it was some great central command, like the Pentagon or the White House.

  But Will had never pictured it. He’d never realized where it was.

  The front window had two bullet holes for eyes. Empty beer bottles littered the flower bed. Parked in the driveway was the Reverend’s black Ford Explorer, a dent in the fender where Elroy had backed into the Floresville Wal-Mart dumpster the first day of their escape.

  Will’s jaw tightened. He remembered Pastor Riggs fighting them in the chapel, forcing them to get violent. All of Will’s plans had started to unravel from that moment.

  After the head-bashing they’d given Riggs, the old man couldn’t be alive. None of the news reports Will heard ever mentioned Riggs’ fate. But if Riggs was alive, if he saw Will here…

  Back up, Will’s instincts told him.

  He didn’t.

  He sat there stupidly as the door of the ministry house opened.

  The tip of a bamboo cane appeared first, then Pastor Riggs, tapping at the stoop. Behind him, a scowling black dude, an ex-con judging from his posture, held the door as the preacher climbed down onto the porch.

  Riggs had aged a decade in a week. The pastor’s head was shaved and bandaged where Zeke’s soldering iron had split the scalp. The left side of his face drooped like a Halloween mask.

  The black dude carried a stack of books under one arm. Will wondered if they were donations for a prison library. Surely Riggs couldn’t be doing outreach work anymore. His program was ruined. He’d been disgraced, discredited. No warden would let him within a mile of an inmate.

  Suddenly, Riggs looked up. The preacher’s eyes were unchanged-pale and startling blue. They stared straight at Will.