Mission Road (15 page)

If he could take it back . . .

You’re lying to yourself,
Lucia said.
If you wanted to hurt Ralph Arguello, you could have done so years ago. Same with the Whites. If you wanted to hurt them, you’ve had chances. It’s not them you’re mad at. You meant to do exactly what you did. That’s why you took a .357, the same make as Arguello’s gun.

“Not true,” he said aloud. “I never meant to hurt her. She’s your daughter. She’s the only thing left of you.”

Exactly,
Lucia said.
Exactly.

He closed his eyes, tried to change Lucia’s voice. He wanted to remember the night they’d made love, the night he’d decided they might actually have a chance together. For a few weeks, before Frankie’s murder, it had seemed possible.

Everything I’ve done, I did to protect you,
Etch said.

Even that is not true, Etch,
Lucia said.
Even that.

He opened his glove compartment. The small glass vial was still there, the one he’d brought with him on his first visit to Ana’s bedside.

Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow, he would know what to do.

He drove toward home, the ghost of his partner riding beside him, silent and disapproving.

“WELL DONE,” MR. WHITE TOLD US.

Ralph, Maia and I stood in a semicircle around our prize.

The sauna room was tiled in milky white. Every drop of water or creak of the pipes echoed. Even White’s anemic voice resonated. The air was thick and warm. I was getting nostalgic for the tamale truck.

In the middle of the floor, the hit man knelt, his hands tied behind his back. His face had had a close encounter with a steering wheel. His left eye was swollen shut. I wasn’t inclined to feel sorry for a guy who’d tried to murder my girlfriend, but he was doing a pretty good job looking pathetic.

“Titus Roe,” Ralph said. “Washed-up assassin.”

“I know who he is.” Guy White leaned forward on his cane.

He looked like he’d been made up for the party by a skilled mortician. His wasted face glowed with an unnatural mix of rouge and cream. His silver hair was freshly trimmed. His collar was starched, his tuxedo perfectly pressed, the shoulders padded. No doubt this was supposed to give the impression that Guy White was still healthy and powerful. Instead, he reminded me of some frail, soft-bodied creature slipped into a shell much too large for him.

Alex Cole stood at his side. His tuxedo matched Mr. White’s down to the cuff links.

Madeleine was not present. As soon as we pulled into the gates, she’d been summoned for some “words with her father,” and we hadn’t seen her since.

“Roe was a suspect in Frankie’s case,” Ralph said. “The cop Drapiewski told us that. Now he’s tried to kill Maia.”

“And he refuses to speak,” White observed. “How surprising.”

Roe said nothing. He was doomed, and he knew it. His slumped posture told me he was conserving his energy for the last thing that would matter—withstanding pain.

“He’s a pawn,” Maia said.

A faint scowl played on White’s lips. “I respect your opinion, Miss Lee. But a pawn for whom? That’s what we need to know.”

White held out his palm. Alex placed a nine-millimeter pistol in it.

White checked the magazine of the gun. “Twelve shots. They can be measured out judiciously, I think.”

He offered the gun butt-first to Maia.

“No,” she told him. “I’m not going to be party to torture.”

“This man tried to kill you.”

“He’s an incompetent. Someone forced him to do it. He’s a diversion.”

White studied Maia, as if noticing small, unfortunate flaws in an otherwise valuable vase. “So . . .”

He turned to Ralph. “Titus Roe may be the man who shot your wife. At the very least, he is our best lead to find the one who did.”

“Yeah.” Ralph’s voice was ragged.

“Mr. Arguello—Ralph—I understand you want to separate yourself from your past life, now that you have a family.” White’s face took on a look of sympathy that seemed as unnatural as the makeup. “Trust me, my boy, you can’t. Neither of us can.”

He offered Ralph the gun.

All I could think: This was my fault. I had brought Titus Roe here.

I hadn’t looked any further than my gut reaction—to protect Maia by bringing her closer to me, to confront the man who’d dared to shoot at her. I hadn’t thought through the obvious: what would happen to the shooter once he was in Guy White’s grasp.

Water pipes shuddered. Somewhere above, someone was running a faucet, washing hands or scrubbing a wine stain from party clothes.

Ralph took the gun.

“Ralph, no,” I said. “Don’t.”

“I should return to my party,” White said. “Miss Lee, Mr. Navarre, accompany me.”

“Ralph,” I said, “wait—”

“Go on,
vato.
” He looked at the nine-millimeter pistol in his hand as if it were a new part of him, a prosthetic limb he’d have to learn to live with. “You don’t want to see what I’m cut out for.”

“You heard him, Navarre.” Alex smiled at me. He brushed his tuxedo jacket so I could see the other gun tucked in his cummerbund. No shortage of persuasion tools in the White household. “You need to enjoy the party.”

I left my best friend alone with the hit man, Ralph’s voice echoing richly against the tiles as he told Titus Roe he had five seconds to begin talking.

•                           •                           •

MAIA PUSHED PAST MR. WHITE BEFORE
he could speak.

She stormed out the double glass doors, down the veranda steps into a throng of guests. Some of the tuxedoed men I recognized as business magnates, some politicians, some criminals. Mariachis strolled across the back lawn playing “Feliz Navidad.”
Luminarias
glowed along the walkways. The pavilion tent was lit up white. The woods glittered with Christmas lights.

“Fine woman you have,” White remarked.

I said nothing.

Alex hovered behind his boss. He kept a respectful distance, but near enough to hear every word.

White accepted a glass of champagne from a waiter. He held it up, studying the bubbles as if trying to remember the taste, but he didn’t drink. “What did your lady friend expect, Mr. Navarre, bringing Titus Roe to me? Did she believe I would turn him in to the police?”

“My fault,” I said. “I have trouble sometimes, thinking like you.”

“You lost someone close to you once, Navarre.” White’s eyes were as glacial blue as his daughter’s. “As I recall, you took revenge.”

He was right. White knew many things about my past that I’d prefer he didn’t.

“That wasn’t cold-blooded murder,” I said. “And I didn’t get someone else to pull the trigger.”

White smiled. “I understand Ralph Arguello. If you believe I gave him the gun because I did not want to do the killing myself, then I think I understand him better than you.”

“You’re a bitter old man.”

He gazed across the lawn. Madeleine was down there in a red evening gown, a crowd of young men trying to gain her attention. She was ignoring them, staring up at me with a baleful look.

“I understand people, Mr. Navarre,” White told me. “We only have two choices ever. To act, or fail to act. We feel better when we act. I have confidence Ralph Arguello is a man who will feel very good tonight.”

“And if Titus Roe isn’t the man who killed your son?”

“Oh, he isn’t,” White said. “One look at him, and I was certain of that. But if there’s anything to be learned from him, your friend will find it. After that, let him get some satisfaction from vengeance. Titus Roe is worth nothing.”

“The women Frankie murdered,” I said. “Were they worth nothing, too?”

No change in White’s eyes. No remorse. My comment wasn’t even worthy of anger.

“My son didn’t mean to kill anyone. He had trouble controlling his passions. I was much like him when I was young.”

“A monster, you mean?”

“Think what you like, Navarre. It doesn’t change the fact that some people are expendable. It’s always been so. My son’s life was worth more than any of the women he took.”

Took.
In the back of my mind, behind the cloud of anger, I found it an interesting choice of verbs.

“Frankie
wasn’t
like you,” I said. “He was broken inside. You knew exactly what he was doing to those women, and why.”

“One thing about a terminal disease, Mr. Navarre. It makes you quite conscious of wasting time. If you’ll excuse me—”

“What about your daughter?” I asked.

Down below, Madeleine was hard to miss in her swirl of red velvet, her blond hair and her angry expression. At the moment, she appeared ready to punch a young man who was trying to tell her a joke.

“Is she worth as much as your dead son?” I asked.

White set his champagne on the marble railing. His fingers trembled with rage. “I’ve done more to protect her than you can possibly know.”

“Protect her from whom? Her own family?”

“Fortunately for you, Mr. Navarre, tonight is about keeping up appearances. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have guests to greet. But be assured. When I find the one responsible for my son’s death, I will not be handing over the gun to someone else.”

He gestured at Alex to follow, then made his way carefully down the steps, where a city councilman was waiting to greet him.

Before Alex could leave, I took his arm.

“Where’s the Secret Service?” I asked. “They weren’t outside when we pulled up.”

He smiled. “I made a few calls. I explained about Mr. White’s party. Some of Mr. White’s friends applied pressure. It was agreed surveillance on the night of Mr. White’s party would be pointless. They could spare us for twenty-four hours so as not to embarrass a man of Mr. White’s stature while he entertains his guests.”

“You think of everything.”

“I try.”

I watched Mr. White hobble down the stairs, leaning on his silver cane. “This party was your idea, too, huh?”

Alex shrugged, trying to look modest, which immediately ruined his resemblance to Frankie. “As you heard, it’s important for people to see that Mr. White is still in charge.”

“No,” I said. “I think it’s important for you that they see firsthand how weak and old he is. And they see you walking behind him, directing him, calling the shots.”

“I help as much as I can.”

“And when the old man dies, there’s Madeleine. Marry her off to the right man, and the dynasty could be on a solid footing again.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Unless she doesn’t want to.”

“Choices,” Alex said regretfully. “We never really get to control our own choices, do we?”

“I hope they find your corpse floating in the river someday.”

Alex clapped me on the shoulder as if we were old friends. “If you’ll excuse me, Navarre. As Mr. White said, tonight is about appearances.”

•                           •                           •

I MET MAIA AT THE BOTTOM
of the landing.

She was watching the party guests circulate across the lawn, chatting and drinking and pretending they weren’t freezing their asses off.

“Why do I keep listening to you?” she asked.

“My intoxicating charm,” I guessed.

She was as beautiful as ever in a blue wool dress, her hair loosed from its ponytail, falling in a silky sheet down her back. She had a bandaged cut on her face from her gunfight with Roe. She’d arrived at the mansion not realizing she had a two-inch splinter sticking out of her cheek, just below her eye. The bandage made her look a bit like a refugee, a noblewoman fleeing a war, battling to maintain her composure

“Ralph is down there killing a man I delivered,” she said. “If he doesn’t finish the job, one of White’s men will. Tres, you have to get out of here
now.
With me.”

“I can’t leave Ralph.”

“Ralph’s a criminal. He belongs here.”

“Where would we go, the police?”

She looked like she was contemplating socking me in the gut. Instead, she wrapped her arms around my waist and pulled me toward her.

She was shivering.

The familiar scent of her hair made me wish I could leave with her—head up to Austin and forget everything, especially my old friend in the sauna room with the borrowed gun.

I told her about my day—Madeleine, Zapata, Sam and Mrs. Loomis. She told me about the old scrapbooks she’d looked through in Lucia DeLeon’s garage, the women Guy and Frankie White had casually destroyed, the murder of the medical examiner Jaime Santos, the fry cook Mike Flume who’d had a crush on Ana’s dead mother.

I thought about it all, trying to put the pieces together. The pieces didn’t cooperate.

I tried to stay focused on Frankie White’s murder, to imagine the nightstick that had clubbed him to death, but I kept coming back to what Ralph had told me earlier in the evening—that I had stayed away from Ralph, not the other way around.

I remembered his wedding reception. I’d stood next to Lieutenant Hernandez, watching the newlyweds cut the cake, and I’d heard him mumble, “This is a bad idea.”

As Ralph’s friend, I should’ve risen to his defense. One look at Ralph and Ana and you could tell they were in love. They shouldn’t have belonged together. Their worlds should’ve exploded on contact. But you looked at the two of them, feeding each other cake, and you couldn’t help having a sense of wonder, as if you were watching a juggling act with flaming torches—some impossible number of dangerous variables held aloft without a mishap.

I should have pointed that out to the lieutenant. Instead, I looked at his worried expression and a moment of agreement passed between us.
The marriage
was
a bad idea.

It would never last. The pressure would be too much. Ralph would get restless. Ana would lose her job. Something would go wrong.

But really, those weren’t my objections.

The marriage changed Ralph. It changed one of the constants in my universe, and it made me wonder if I would have to change, too.

Ralph was right. That had scared the hell out of me.

A bitter wind blew through Mr. White’s party. Out on the lawn, guests moved toward the heated pavilion while mariachis belted out a
ranchera
version of “Silent Night.”

“I have to tell you something,” Maia said. “Something that might make a difference.”

Her tone was like the edge of a thunderstorm. It made my senses crackle. I remembered our conversation in front of the Southtown office, what seemed like a lifetime ago—the desperate look Maia had given me.