Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(103)

Dan knelt down in front of me and got the other disk. He kept his hands in plain sight, well away from the Sheridan Knockabout. When he stood up, though, I saw in his eyes what was coming. I tried my best to tell him “no" just by the way I looked back at him, but he’d already turned away.

I said: "You don’t get Lillian, Jay. You don’t get any assurance that the disk I brought tonight is real. You kill me, you’re leaving loose ends."

Jay grinned underneath the mustache. He pointed the gun at me.

"It’s worth it, Navarre. Loose ends we can handle later."

"I should also mention—some friends of mine from the Sheriff’s Department are on their way here."

"Then we’ll just have to make it a quick good-bye."

Dan was back where he’d started, standing next to Rivas with the couch between them. Dan dropped the two CDs on the cushions.

“Good boy," Rivas said. He still had the gun trained on me. He didn’t notice Dan’s face, the tension in Dan’s shoulders.

I wanted to yell no but it wouldn’t have helped.

"What now?" I asked Rivas, trying to keep his eyes on me. "Asante finally gets you that promotion to captain?" Jay looked like the idea pleased him.

Whatever he was going to say next, it never got said because Dan grabbed his gun. It was an extremely stupid move, done exactly wrong. Dan seized the 9mm by the barrel and made the mistake of pulling it down, toward his own body. I don’t remember actually seeing the force of the discharge take off the edge of Dan’s right hand, or the bullet ripping an exit wound out the back of his thigh. I just remember the new red spray pattern that appeared like magic on the flowery pillows of the couch and on Mrs. Cambridge’s yellow dress, and the way the back of Dan’s khakis were suddenly dark and slick as he charged headlong over the sofa into Rivas. The Parabellum went off again but by then I was already in motion.

Nothing else is very clear, looking back on it. I remember a sound like a watermelon rind snapping when I brought the butt of the old .22 down on Rivas’s head. I remember a lot of blood seeping between my fingers as I tried to keep pressure on the large hole in Dan’s leg, yelling at him to keep still as he writhed around on the carpet, clamping what was left of his right hand between his legs. I vaguely recall the sirens and the paramedics coming in to relieve me, and later as I crouched in the corner, I remember Deputy Larry Drapiewski calling my name and gently taking away the Sheridan Knockabout that I was cradling against my cheek.

63

I woke up with Larry Drapiewski waving a cup of coffee under my nose.

It took a year or two for me to remember where I was.

I was in my underwear, on a cot on a screened-in porch. The breeze from the ceiling fan above me was chilly on my bare skin, but the August sunlight was pouring in hot and low from the west, and the noisy refrigerator I’d been dreaming about was actually cicadas, humming by the thousands in the huisache trees outside. There was a grass fire burning somewhere. A brown and white heifer lay in the mottled shadow of a cactus patch twenty feet away, watching me. I was at the ranch in Sabinal. It must’ve been about three in the afternoon.

I felt dizzy as hell when I tried to move. With some difficulty, I lifted my head and saw my brother Garrett in his wheelchair at the foot of the cot. Or rather I saw Garrett and Jerry Garcia and Jimi Hendrix all blurred together. Until my vision cleared the two airbrushed faces on Garrett’s T-shirt floated around with Garrett’s own like some tie-dyed Holy Trinity.

“Come on, little bro," Garrett said impatiently, "we’re waiting to flush the toilet. "

I squinted and swallowed a taste like dead frogs out of my mouth. "What?"

“We haven’t been flushing all day, man, so you’d have enough water pressure from the tank to take a nice hot shower when you woke up."

Larry handed me the coffee. The bags under his eyes and his uncombed hair told me Larry hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, though he’d changed his deputy’s uniform for jeans and a denim shirt. "You’ve been out for thirteen hours, son. We were starting to get worried."

It was another hour before I could stand up steady enough to take that shower. There was an overnight duffel in the bathroom that I’d apparently packed for myself the night before, though I remembered nothing about going by Queen Anne Street. Inside I found some reasonably clean blue jeans, my City Lights T-shirt, my toothbrush, and my father’s old notebook. Some letters spilled out when I picked the duffel up. I put them carefully back inside.

Once I was dressed, Garrett and Larry gave me the courtesy of some time to myself. I rummaged around the kitchen for some potential breakfast. The candidates were two bottles of whiskey, one egg that had crystallized into a geode, a tangerine of unknown age, a jar of Sanka, and a variety pack of lunch-bag-sized snack chips. I wondered if whiskey poured over Fritos would make an acceptable breakfast cereal. I decided to opt for the tangerine instead.

While I ate the tangerine and drank instant coffee, Larry and Garrett sat in the living room with Harold Diliberto, our trusty overseer, and discussed the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana. Garrett was predictably in favor, Larry was predictably against. Harold seemed to think the whole issue was those damn Californians’ fault and both Garrett and Larry seemed comfortable with that.

I must’ve been washing my hands in the stainless-steel sink for a good three minutes before I realized what I was doing. I kept separating my fingers in the water, watching it flow through, thinking about the sticky consistency of Dan Sheff’s blood.