by Rick Riordan
Ines raised her eyebrows — a gesture that reminded me powerfully of Ana DeLeon. "Are you?" she insisted.
"I — no." And then added inanely, "I don't think so."
That brought a dry smile. "Safe answer. Love's not the blazing epiphany some people imagine, is it? I didn't realize I was falling in love with Aaron until we'd been seeing each other for two months. When I started to fall out of love with him, the process was just as insidious. Now that he's gone..."
Streetlights on Broadway started to blink on as the sky darkened. The round window behind the 410 bar glowed, the glass liquor-bottle shelves that crossed it making it look like some sort of giant military insignia.
Ines fixed her eyes on the traffic outside. "Aaron so desperately needed to prove himself. He would've destroyed our family, endangered Michael, not even realized what he was doing until it was too late. That was his real inheritance from his father. Aaron and Jeremiah — they were like children. They both took what they wanted. No matter who got hurt. It took me a long time to understand that about Aaron. Hector — I'm not sure I ever understood my brother. To him, I was just some family banner he had to keep from getting trampled. All I'm really sure of now is Michael."
The kids used their last quarters. They began gathering up their loot.
"Don't destroy us, Tres." It was a whisper. Sandra's voice.
From across the room, Jem rolled open a Felix the Cat sticker for me to admire.
Our waitress came out of the kitchen with our check. She took one read of the situation — the boys with their loot, Ines and me still deep in conversation — then knelt down to intercept Jem and Michael before they could start back toward us. She gestured for the boys to climb onto the metal toadstool seats at the dining counter, questioned them about their stickers. Jem and Michael were happy to oblige.
I reached across the table, picked the crumple of packing tape from Ines' sleeve. "You don't have to talk to the police alone."
Her shoulders stiffened. "You said you would help."
"I will. But I can't be silent."
"The only reason I've been talking to you—" She swallowed back her anger.
"Then we'll have to run. Michael and I."
"That won't help."
"I've done it before."
"You have a five-year-old now. Nobody's making you a new identity this time."
"Give me a one-night head start."
She tried to get up, but I caught her wrist.
Our eyes locked.
"What is it to you, Tres?" she demanded.
"People leave things behind by accident," I said. "But not you. Not that journal. Not the photograph George must've found."
She tugged against my grip.
"You left a trail," I said, "because you wanted to. You run again, you'll just leave another trail."
"Absurd."
"You said it yourself, Ines. You don't get away without a fight. You haven't had yours yet. Turn around and face what you left behind, take the consequences. Or you can run away again, talk tough about how you're somebody new, somebody who doesn't need help. If you're somebody new, then maldicion. You and Sandra Mara would've gotten along just fine."
Her eyes flashed murderously. "I won't risk my child. You can't promise Michael will be safe."
"Look at your son. Tell me he's safe right now, in that cave he's been making."
"God damn you," she whispered.
"Nobody can guarantee Michael will be safe, Ines. You might as well realize it here, where you've got some friends."
"I — I can't, Tres. I wish—"
The sound of little sneakers hushed her. The boys crashed into us, showing off their spoils. Their arms glittered with holographic stickers.
I let go of Ines' wrist and forced a smile. I complimented Jem on his Felix the Cat. The waitress brought our check and left us with a few more admonishing comments about what nice boys we had.
Michael climbed onto his mother's lap. He was a little large for the task, but he just about managed a fetal position. He tucked his head against Ines' chest and began picking at a silvery low-rider decal on his wrist.
"I want to go home," he mumbled.
Ines stroked his hair. Sweat had plastered it into curls over his ears.
"We will," she promised. "It'll be like a sleep-over. In the new apartment. And tomorrow—"
Michael turned his face into her bright shirt, rubbed his nose back and forth, then looked up at her again. "No. Home."
"Sweetheart—"
"You took it down, I bet," he muttered. "You said you wouldn't."
Ines' hand closed over Michael's on her chest. Her mouth began to tremble.
"Michael," I said. "We're inviting you and your mom over to Jem's house, kiddo. You can have your sleep-over there. What do you think?"
Curled against his mother, Michael just looked at me, his eyes as pale blue as his murdered father's.
Jem, however, perked up instantly. He started filling Michael in on all the games they could play once they got into his room.
"Sweetheart—" Ines interrupted hoarsely.
But Michael didn't want to hear her. He was too busy listening to Jem's descriptions of Sega-Wonderland. The little frown didn't leave his face, but he kept his eyes on Jem.
I glanced at Ines. "If you can't beat them..."
She closed her eyes for one second, two. When she looked at me again, I couldn't shake the impression that her irises were dark, fractured prisms.
"Perhaps just for tonight," she said.
Jem and I rode together in the Barracuda, leading the way back toward Erainya's. Every few seconds, I checked the rearview mirror. Each time I was surprised to find Ines' headlights still behind us.
As we drove, Jem told me how super-funny Michael was. Jem wanted to make a sheet cave like his.
"I don't know if that's the best idea, Bubba."
Jem disagreed. He told me how cool Michael's setup had been inside.
He said Michael had been trying to make the cave bigger and bigger, so that someday he would never have to come back out again. Someday, Michael would close up the entrance and just disappear. It hadn't worked out that way, but Jem still figured it was a great plan.
"I don't know, Bubba," I told him. "I think maybe Michael's mom was right to take down the sheets."
Jem was unconvinced. He said that, according to Michael, that wasn't even his real mom. His real mom had disappeared down the sheet cave years and years and years ago. That's where Michael had been going — following his mom into the dark.
FORTY-THREE
Plans were discussed. Erainya cursed and slapped the air a lot. Jem and Michael were sent off to play video games. Ines was force-fed a platter of Greek food to make up for the dinner she hadn't eaten, then browbeaten into taking the main bedroom.
While Ines was changing clothes and the children were playing in Jem's room, Erainya broke out a Heineken and the keys to her gun cabinet.
"You," Erainya said to me. "You go home."
I insisted on checking the boys one more time.
Through his bedroom doorway, I watched Jem sitting at his PlayStation, engrossed in a 3-D jungle with flying, basketball-dribbling dinosaurs. Michael wasn't participating. He sat cross-legged a few feet behind Jem, a stack of Jem's old Nickelodeon magazines and toy-store circulars by his side. Michael was cutting out the pictures with safety scissors.
I drove slowly all the way home.
Back at 90 Queen Anne, I stared reluctantly at the phone for several minutes, then called Ana DeLeon's work number, got her voice mail.
I left a cryptic message — I had new information, I might be able to share it soon, but first we needed to talk. Preferably over another pitcher of margaritas. DeLeon didn't call back.
I called Brooke Army Medical Center. No change in George's condition. Then I lay down on my futon and burned my eyes out reading The Woman in White. By page 200, I still couldn't fall asleep.
Maybe it would've been easier if
the Suitez family across the street had had another party and lulled me with the familiar sounds of Freddy Fender or Narcisco Martinez. Or if Mrs. Geradino's Chihuahuas had yapped at the moon. Or if Gary Hales' upstairs TV had blared out a John Wayne movie on the night-owl theater. These noises I could've dealt with. But not dead quiet on a Saturday night in San Antonio.
Robert Johnson had no insomnia worries. He'd curled up happily on my crotch, closed his eyes, and proceeded to increase his body temperature by a hundred degrees.
I stared at the ceiling. I counted the inches that the moonlight advanced across my wall.
I thought about the ventilator in George's hospital room, about Zeta lying in his jail cell, looking out olive-green bars at more rows of olive-green bars, his eyes empty and maybe his thoughts just as hollow. I thought of Ana DeLeon the night before, in those few moments when the ice in her demeanor had melted. Mostly, I thought about Ines and Michael Brandon.
Finally I slid Robert Johnson as gently as I could off my crotch. I got up and dressed — black sweats, black T-shirt, black Nikes, a fanny pack with a few select tools.
The rumble of the Barracuda's engine seemed obscenely loud in the nighttime quiet. I headed down Broadway, past a group of low-rider Chevies in the Lions Club lot, a few teenagers smoking and talking outside Taco Cabana, the usual late-night crowd at Earl Abel's Coffee Shop. Otherwise, the town had shut down. I drove south, under I-35, past Southern Music, then turned right on Jones. Unless Del Brandon had another nighttime transaction under way, I planned on resolving some unanswered questions tonight. If possible, I also planned on finding something I could use to nail Del Brandon's fat ass to his Super-Whirl. RideWorks looked closed up, even the office. There were no cars on the street.
I parked at the gates, got out of the car, and was just examining the chain and padlock when headlights swung onto Camden behind me, about fifty yards back. The obvious didn't occur to me — that I should get back in the Barracuda and get the hell out of there. Instead, stupidly, I squandered five or six seconds watching the white van pull up alongside the Barracuda. Before it had even come to a stop the side door slid open and five Latino men unloaded. One was Chicharron — still a Child of the Night in his black leather and silver, his trench coat conveniently covering the damage Ralph's fan-throwing practice had done to his arms. The self-confident burn in Chich's eyes told me he'd coked himself up just enough to make this encounter enjoyably bloody.
His four friends were the teenagers I'd met at the Poco Mas — Porkpie, with the hat and loose-cut cholo threads, his Taurus P-11 drawn with no preliminaries this time. The other three formed a right flank — all smooth young faces and wispy black beards, jeans, white tank tops, expensive sneakers. I focused on little differences — one had a hairnet. One a gold nose ring. The third held a length of bike gear chain. No visible guns except for Porkpie's. Not yet.
"I hear you're a professor." Chicharron smiled at me with what looked like artificially pointed teeth. "For a teacher, you learn slow."
I said nothing. With Porkpie's Taurus trained on me, there didn't seem much point, I chose to stay standing, back to the gate, arms free, George's car between me and them.
Chich kept smiling, measuring me. He wouldn't be sure if I was carrying a gun or not, if I were alone or not. He'd want to be sure my situation was really as hopeless as it looked, that I'd truly been stupid enough to drive out here on my own, unarmed.
He gestured toward the Barracuda. "Nice wheels."
"A nice guy used to drive them."
Nosering cracked his knuckles. Hairnet and his friend with the gear chain both glanced over at the vampire, waiting for a signal.
"Funny," Chich said. "I start asking around, I didn't have no problem finding some people wanted to hurt you. Maybe we do you, then we go looking for your friend Ralph."
Porkpie said, "One round. Chest."
Chich held up his fingers for patience. His smile widened.
"You scared of the odds?" I asked him.
My only chance was to keep it close-range, keep them thinking I was a nothing job — blood sport. And then hope like hell to surprise them. The private eye as moron.
Porkpie chambered a round.
"Nah," Chich said. "Get him in the van."
The news that they preferred me alive failed to comfort me. It only meant they preferred the bloodstain to be somewhere of their choosing.
Hairnet and Bikechain went around either side of the Barracuda. Nosering pulled a blackjack. He opened my passenger's-side door, stepping onto the seat like it was a doormat.
Chicharron leaned against his van and watched. Porkpie's gun kept making a warm spot in my gut.
I had no intention of waiting to be surrounded on three sides. I stepped toward the hood of the Barracuda to meet Bikechain. He was the least prepared, his hands committed to the chain, probably thinking he would garrote me while I was busy with the others. Before he could change his strategy I feinted a punch at his face, forced his hands up, then shoulder-butted him in the sternum with my full body weight. I turned and ducked as his friend's blackjack slashed air next to my ear. I grabbed the blackjacker's pierced nose between my thumb and forefinger and yanked. The blackjacker screamed, dropped his sap. I dropped the bloody nose ring, then rolled the guy with the hairnet over my shoulder and onto the pavement.
I retreated, stepping over Bikechain, putting my back to the RideWorks gate, now fifteen feet away from the Barracuda. Porkpie's gun was still aimed at me. Chich was still smiling.
The guy who'd had the nose ring was making a hand-tent around his face, blood striping his chin and speckling his white T-shirt. The guy with the hairnet was getting up off the street. Bikechain limped forward, rewinding the chain around his fist. He scraped the gear links across the Barracuda's red paint job, then kept coming. His friends were close behind.
Then a metallic rumbling started in the RideWorks courtyard behind me — the warehouse door grinding partially open. I heard Del Brandon's voice, midconversation. My attackers froze.
A few footsteps, more of Del's voice — then nothing.
I chanced a look over my shoulder. Del and Ernie, the human boulder with the blond cornrows, were stopped in their tracks, both staring at the battle scene outside their gates. Ernie had his hand protectively on Del Brandon's shoulder. Del hadn't changed his clothes since dinner at the 410. If anything he was more disheveled, and a lot drunker.
Slowly, Del put his hand on his gun. Probably from his angle, in the dark, he couldn't see Vampire and Porkpie with the P-11 — just me and the three homeboys at his gate.
"Well, well," Del called to me. "Fucking private dick came back already. You figure I sleep? I don't. Not no more."
I glanced at the three locos. Still frozen.
"Listen, Del," I said. "Let's talk inside. You can beat the shit out of me there, okay? You and Ernie come on over."
Silence.
"Come on, Del," I called. "You want to prove you're on the good guys' team, this is your chance."
I was mentally running through wild possibilities — Del would walk over, I'd roll and run, they'd start an inadvertent crossfire, I would escape in the confusion.
Instead, Del laughed bitterly. "You hear anything worth listening to, Ernie? I didn't hear nothing. Must've been a dog."
Then their steps resumed across the courtyard. The stairs creaked. The office door slammed shut.
Two more seconds of miserable, heavy silence, then Bikechain and Hairnet charged. Hairnet grabbed my arm and found himself grabbed instead, his face yanked down and slammed into my upraised knee. My left hand intercepted Bikechain's punch and directed it aside, the chains raking the skin on the back of my hand. I slammed my other palm against his jaw, tried to step sideways. But Hairnet was up too fast, tackling my waist and sending me into the fence in a full-body slam. I landed a double chop on his ears that almost loosened his grip but Bikechain lunged at me too, knocking all three of us down on the pavement. There is no greater terror tha
n being completely prone, out of control, caught in a tangle of bodies.
It didn't last long — I remember gouging, kicking, elbowing, yelling, getting my head free of someone's choke hold just long enough to catch an image of the man with the bloody gash in his nose, raising the blackjack for a second try. There was a whish sound, then my head turned to ice. My eyesight faded. The pavement and feet walking around me became an afterglow in the darkness, like a television screen turned off in a dark room.
Somewhere, the bored voice of Chicharron was commenting to Porkpie — not about me, or the fight, but about George's red 70 Barracuda and how best to repaint it.
FORTY-FOUR
I was surprised to wake up, even more surprised to realize I had been awake for some time without my mind registering the fact.
My eyes burned from staring at a patch of yellow in the darkness. After a while I recognized the patch as a streetlight. I couldn't remember how to blink. There were moths fluttering around the streetlight. I stared at them for centuries. Some part of me knew that I should be concerned, should move, but I couldn't remember exactly why. I just lay there on my back, anesthetized, waiting for the dental surgeon to start drilling, for the doctor to amputate my leg, my brain. Whatever. I had a nice streetlight to stare at.
The side of my head felt warm and wet, like a very affectionate leech had been attached there. I was pleased to have the company.
I'm not sure how many decades I lay like that. The sky had started lightening to gunmetal when I became aware of voices — two males, very close to me. They talked in conversational tones. Every once in a while their words were interrupted by the ker-ploink of liquor being tipped into a mouth and then settling back into the bottle.
I thought it would be just dandy to turn my head and look at the two men, but my head wouldn't cooperate.
Finally an upside-down face hovered above me in the morning gloom. The young man had two beautiful nostrils. The rest of his face was shadowy but one eye seemed darker than the other. I could tell he wore a hairnet. I thought I'd seen him somewhere before.
The mouth under the beautiful nostrils scowled at me, then told someone in Spanish that my eyes were open. An offstage voice said it was probably time to drag me inside.
