Mission Road (13 page)

She dropped to one knee in the front lawn and opened fire—engine block, wheel, wheel, passenger’s side window. The .357 did its work. The Volvo spun sideways, plowed down a brick mailbox and shuddered to a halt in the front yard of the neighbor’s house. The windshield was shattered. Steam billowed from the hood.

The driver’s side window rolled down. A Colt pistol was thrown out. A tattooed arm appeared, feebly waving a bloody white rag.

Maia advanced, weapon trained on the driver. The neighbors were coming outside to see the excitement. One called, “Officer? You all right?”

It took Maia a moment to realize he meant her.

She looked at the man in the Volvo.

He was a middle-aged Anglo, an ex-con judging from his tattoos. His forehead was lacerated, his left hand a bloody bandaged mess. Maia had never seen a more miserable-looking assassin in her life.

“He didn’t tell me you carried a damn bazooka,” the man complained.

“Who didn’t tell you?”

He gave her hound dog eyes. “This is where it gets ugly, I guess.”

“You got that right, Tattoo,” she told him. “Get out of the car.”

I DIDN’T CARE IF THE COPS STAKED OUT MY HOUSE,
but I wished they’d be consistent about it.

Apparently they hadn’t been watching when some madman invaded and attacked Sam. But now that Sam was stuck inside, wounded and waiting for my help, Detective Kelsey and a uniformed officer had decided to camp out on South Alamo. They sat on the hood of a patrol unit, sipping coffee and having a nice little chat.

Fortunately we’d planned for this contingency.

I watched from the end of the block as Guy White’s henchman Alex drove a delivery van in front of my house. He slowed down next to Kelsey. Ralph rolled down the shotgun window, whistled, and the van took off.

The effect was absolutely brilliant. Kelsey managed to spill his coffee, tangle his gun in his holster and trip over his own shoelaces. By the time both cops were in their car and in pursuit, Ralph, Alex and the van were long gone.

“Pull around back,” Madeleine ordered our chauffeur. “And keep the engine running.”

“Alex
does
know how to evade police?” I ventured to ask.

Madeleine raised an eyebrow. “Alex’s first job was driving for a drug cartel in Houston. Ten minutes from now, your friend and he will have changed cars three times and the cops will pull over some little old lady in that delivery van. You watch.”

Not having much choice, I took her word for it.

We walked up the back steps of my house and entered Chez Bloodbath.

•                           •                           •

RED WAS SPRINKLED ALL OVER THE
linoleum. It made an arc across one wall and speckled the countertops.

In the midst of the carnage, Sam and Mrs. Loomis and my cat, Robert Johnson, were having chamomile tea at the kitchen table.

I said, “Holy Jesus.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Sam informed me. “Lot of blood, is all.”

“Your
ear.
”

“What?” Sam cupped his hand around the mass of bandages on the right side of his face.

“The bastard shot off your ear.”

“Only the lobe,” Mrs. Loomis corrected wearily. “I put iodine on it.”

“What?” Sam yelled.

Mrs. Loomis told me the story while Madeleine inspected the scene. Robert Johnson lapped spilt tea and milk from Sam’s saucer. Sam must’ve been more shaken up than he let on. He didn’t bother shooing away the cat.

When Mrs. Loomis was done, Madeleine held up a newly rinsed meat cleaver from the sink. “You stabbed the intruder with this?”

Mrs. Loomis shrugged. “I wanted him to leave.”

“Impressive,” Madeleine said.

“I don’t pay you enough,” I said.

Mrs. Loomis tried to give me a reproachful look, but she was blushing too hard.

She described the intruder as a wild-eyed Anglo, grizzled hair, leathery skin, grungy flannel shirt and heavily tattooed arms. Unfortunately, that sounded like half the people I knew and several of my relatives.

“He said something odd,” Mrs. Loomis added. “He said: ‘
Where is she?’
”

“Where’s who?” I looked at Madeleine for her opinion.

She shrugged. “Maybe wrong address. Maybe he was a random burglar.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Or maybe he was Frankie’s killer.”

Sam perked up. “Frankie White?”

I wasn’t sure what surprised me more—that he’d heard me, or that he knew who we were talking about. “Sam, you remember Frankie White?”

“What?”

“Franklin White!” I yelled.

“Yeah. Kid who got clobbered to death, right? Good money. I was the fourth or fifth PI the dad hired. Crazy damn family.”

Madeleine’s eyes narrowed. She was still holding the meat cleaver. “Who
is
this old man?”

I wondered if I should risk asking Sam more questions.

I’d learned never to assume he remembers anything, but also never to underestimate him. At times, he could tell me every fact about a case from thirty years ago. Other times, his memory was a house of cards. Put too much weight on it, and the whole thing collapsed.

“Sam, do you remember what you found out?”

He scowled at me over the rim of his teacup. “About what?”

“About Frankie White.”

“He died. It was the father’s fault.”

Silence.

Robert Johnson pushed the empty saucer around with his tongue.

I said, “Um, Sam—”

“The father was bad news. Other PIs were afraid to tell him the truth. I think he knew, deep down. I tried to tell him, but hell, he didn’t want to listen. He’d already decided it was some business rival did the hit. Nobody likes to hear, ‘It’s all your fault. You screwed up your own kids.’ ”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks, Sam.”

“Daughter and son.” Sam shook his head. “Both mental cases. Adolescent girl was institutionalized—manslaughter, I think.”

Madeleine stared at her leather pumps. She seemed to notice for the first time that she was standing in a puddle of blood.

“Madeleine,” I said. “Put the cleaver down, okay?”

She kicked over one of the kitchen chairs. The cat vaporized from the table.

“Madeleine,”
I said again.

She threw the cleaver. It twirled past my head and impaled itself with a
THWOCK
in the corkboard by the oven.

The edge of the blade sank into the wall maybe two inches. The handle shuddered.

“I’ll be in the car,” she said gruffly.

The back door slammed behind her.

My heart started beating again.

“New girlfriend, Fred?” Sam asked cheerfully. “I liked the Chinese lady better.”

Mrs. Loomis studied me with concern.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “If I leave, will you two be all right?”

She glanced apprehensively at the meat cleaver in the corkboard. “Nothing I can’t clean up, dear. Just you be careful.”

She’d never called me “dear” before. I tried not to think of it as a bad sign—the sort of kindness you’d extend to the recently deceased.

I pointed a finger at Robert Johnson, who had reappeared on the table the instant the offending visitor departed. “You take better care of these people.”

The cat gave me a smug look. Translation:
As long as the tea and milk keep coming, I’m good.

When I was at the door, Sam called: “Hey, Fred, be careful with that White family, okay? I’m pretty sure they got mafia connections.”

I promised I’d be careful. Then I went out to the backyard where the black limo was waiting.

•                           •                           •

“DON’T ASK,” MADELEINE SNARLED.

“I didn’t.”

She slumped in the back seat.

I’d expected her to ride up front now that Ralph was gone, but she’d climbed in back with me again. I guess she enjoyed torturing herself.

“I had a classmate in middle school.” She exhaled shakily. “She made some comments . . . a particular comment about my brother. I lost control.”

We drove past Alamo Plaza.

Shivering tourists were gathering for the evening ghost tour. Homeless men huddled like grubby gifts at the base of the forty-foot Christmas tree. Behind them, the old mission’s facade glowed white—a frozen chunk of 1836, melting and forlorn in the middle of downtown.

Madeleine turned toward me, her eyes hungry. “I wasn’t
institutionalized.
My dad’s lawyers had to pull strings to keep me out of juvenile detention. They got me into a residential therapy program. Stokes-McLean. Four years.”

Garlanded lampposts went by on Houston Street.

I knew something about Stokes-McLean. The facility was a former state sanitarium, a massive brick haunted-house-looking place not far from Mission San José. I’d seen what they did with problem kids—intense behavior modification sessions, usually six to nine weeks. I’d never known anybody who’d been sentenced to the program for four years.

“This was just before Frankie’s murder?” I asked.

She nodded.

“You were trying to defend him.”

She was silent through the next stoplight. “My dad promised me Frankie wasn’t doing anything wrong. Right up to the end . . . he told me to ignore anything I heard.”

“He also promised Frankie would stop hitting you.”

She looked down, scratched a fleck of blood off her knuckle. “Shut the fuck up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Those bruises you sported in middle school weren’t from your classmates.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything to you. I shouldn’t even have tried.”

“What did Sam mean about your father being to blame?”

Before she could answer, or more likely hit me, the limo lurched to a stop.

In front of us, traffic had backed up behind a police barricade. Half a block ahead, Main Plaza was filled with people and the glow of
luminarias.

Las Posadas.

I’d told Alex and Ralph to meet us in Main Plaza, figuring it would be deserted this time of night. I’d completely forgotten about the Christmas celebration.

Our driver apologized. He said this was as close as he could get us to our rendezvous point.

“Let us out here,” Madeleine ordered. “Circle the block. We’ll be back in five minutes.”

“And if we get spotted by the police?” I asked.

She glared at me. “Good point.” Then to the driver: “If we get spotted by the police, Mr. Navarre will be dead and
I’ll
be back in five minutes.”

•                           •                           •

THE SCENE IN THE PARK WAS
surreal enough to curl Salvador Dali’s mustache.

Tourists mixed with candle-bearing pilgrims and carolers dressed like Hebrew shepherds. Children chased each other around the trees. Vendors worked the crowd with
fajitas, atole
and
cerveza.

Through the middle of it all, Joseph and Mary led their donkey while mariachis sang at them in Spanish to go away; there was
no posada.
No room in the inn.

I couldn’t help thinking:
This is San Antonio, man. We have three million hotel rooms.

At the edges of the park, a dozen cops stood on duty. None of them paid us any attention. A public Christmas celebration probably wasn’t the first place they expected dangerous fugitives.

Ralph and Alex were sitting on a park bench, watching the mariachis serenade the Blessed Couple.

Alex wore a navy blue suit and aviator’s shades that must’ve left him completely blind in the dark.

My skin crawled when I saw him. He looked so damn much like Frankie. Or maybe my skin crawled because I realized he was about my size, and the accountant’s clothes I was wearing might very well belong to him.

“You’re late,” he said.

“Any trouble?” Madeleine asked.

“With the getaway, no. With
you
supposed to be at your father’s party half an hour ago, yes.”

“He knows where I am.”

Alex snorted.

“What?” she demanded.

“Nothing. Let’s get out of here.” Under his breath, he muttered something that rhymed with
itch.

Madeleine grabbed his lapels, hauled him to his feet. “Navarre and Arguello, will you excuse us a minute?”

She dragged Alex away through the crowd.

Ralph didn’t pay any attention. He was holding his wallet open like a tiny hymnal, staring at a photo of Ana and the baby.

I’m not sure why, but a wave of irritation washed over me. I told myself that wasn’t fair. Ralph had every right to miss his family, to feel shock and grief. Maybe he even had the right to shoot at Johnny Zapata. It had been my choice to follow him out the window . . .

I stopped a vendor, bought a couple of beers.

I sat next to Ralph and handed him one of the cups.
“Salud.”

It took him a minute to focus on me. “Sam okay?”

I told him the story. I apologized that he’d risked getting captured just so I could check out a shot-off earlobe.

“S’okay,” he said. “Friends help each other.”

“Is that what we’re doing?”

Ralph stared at me. I hadn’t meant to sound so angry.

“Something you want to tell me?” he asked.

I should’ve shut my mouth, but I’d been saving up hurt I hadn’t even known about. Now it was boiling over. Too many hours on adrenaline. Too many frayed nerves.

“Been a pretty shitty reunion. Longest we’ve spent together since you got married. Look what we’re doing.”

“You saying it’s my fault we haven’t been hanging out?”

“You got a family,” I said. “I understand that.”

“I wonder if you do.”

“Christ, Ralph, you pushed me away when you got married. You amputated your whole goddamn past. Watching you today with Zapata—I don’t know. Maybe you weren’t meant for a regular family life.”

Ralph blinked. “I wasn’t meant . . .
Vato,
if you were anybody else telling me this shit—”

“You’d what?” I demanded. “Prove my point? Shoot me?”

“You don’t want to be here,
vato,
that’s cool. I didn’t ask you. But don’t start jacking with me about who cut off who.”

“Aw, come on—”

“We invited you over a dozen times, man. Whenever Ana saw you she’d ask you. I left messages on your machine. Don’t tell me you didn’t get them.”