Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(105)

The only person I called was Maia Lee.

It was six o’clock San Francisco time. Maia was just about to go to dinner. At least that’s what the man who answered her home phone said.

"You want me to get her?" he said.

"Just tell her Tex called. She asked me to let her know when it was over."

The guy made a small grunt, like he was leaning over to tie his shoe, or maybe finish straightening his tie.

“What’s over?" he asked.

I hung up.

The sunset was almost gone when I drove into Monte Vista, to an address I knew only by reputation.

It was a gray adobe house, three stories high, with two Cadillacs in the drive and a huge live oak in the front yard sporting a homemade plywood treehouse. A little Hispanic boy was grinning down at me from the top, pretending to hide. He had his father’s smile. I pretended to shoot him as I walked by underneath. He giggled hysterically. When I got to the door I could smell homemade tamales cooking inside.

When Fernando Asante came to the door, dressed in his jeans and a Cowboys jersey, I said: “Is there a place We can talk?"

His other child, a little girl, came up and hugged his thigh. Asante glanced at me, then motioned me inside.

"What is it, Jack?" he said after we were seated in his office.

Asante was a football fan—even the light on his desk was a Cowboys helmet, the kind of thing a kid might keep in his room. The room was cozy, a little messy. It wasn’t what I’d expected.

Asante looked almost sleepy now, no trace of the politician’s smile.

“I don’t like loose ends," I told him.

He laughed, shook his head. "After the last two weeks, after the last ten years, you say this, son."

I took out a piece of paper I’d received last night when I’d conducted some business in Olmos Park. I held it up.

Asante looked unimpressed. "What is it now? More old notes from your father’s grave?"

He tossed me the front page of the morning paper.

"Already seen it," I said.

Asante smiled. Asante could afford to smile—there was as yet no mention of him.

“Here’s what I think, Councilman. I think you’re going to weather the storm."

Asante’s eyes were like black marbles. He might’ve been blind for all I could read in them.

“I think you can pull in enough favors and manipulate the investigation enough to get yourself off the hook. I helped out by tampering with most of the evidence myself—your lawyers will have a great time with that. Unless those CDs show up, and you know they haven’t yet, there isn’t enough legally obtained direct evidence to implicate you in anything. The Sheffs and the Cambridges may or may not go down for defrauding the city, they’ll try to take you with them, but I’m betting you’ll survive. Unless those CDs show up."

“Let it rest," Asante told me. "You’re going nowhere with this, son. If you had any such evidence, you’d’ve brought it to your own friends in the police department by now. Then we’d just have to let justice prevail in the courts, wouldn’t we, Jack?"

I shrugged. “Maybe."

Asante looked at the piece of paper I was tapping on the table. His smugness wavered, just for a moment.

"And what have you got there, son?"

There was a knock on the door. Asante’s son scampered into the room, around the desk, and into his daddy’s lap. Suddenly shy, the boy hid his head in his hands. Then he whispered something in his daddy’s ear, got a kiss, and ran off.

Asante’s face softened as he watched the boy leave. Then he looked at me again, his eyes hard.

"My dinner is ready, " he said.

I nodded. "Then I’ll be brief. I couldn’t sit around waiting for you to come claim the disks from me, Mr. Asante. Eventually you would try. Even if I destroyed them—you’d never be sure. For your own peace of mind, you’d come looking. I could’ve turned them over to the police, but I somehow don’t trust the police or the courts with this one. They never did much good with my father’s murder the first time around, did they? That’s why I decided to make a deal."

I unfolded the piece of paper. I slid it across the desktop to him.

Asante looked at the signature, frowned, then tossed it back on the desk. He didn’t get it.

"And this is?" he asked.

“A receipt for my disks. Guy Wliite always writes receipts. It’s one of the few ways he’s decent."

Asante stared at me for a minute, still not comprehending.

"White’s been pretty mad at you for ten years," I explained. "Sending all that heat his way about my father’s murder, then trying to do it again with Garza and Moraga. So we made a deal. Mr. White and I have just bought controlling interest in Fernando Asante."

As it started to sink in, Asante’s face went pale. That was all I wanted to see. I stood up to leave.

"I don’t know what Guy White’s demands will be to keep these disks from going into circulation, Councilman, but here’s mine, for now anyway. Tomorrow morning you call a press conference and renounce any plans to run for mayor. You’re going to tell them you’re happy right where you are—a frustrated little man in a little job. I’m not sure what else you’re going to do yet, but you’ll hear from me. You can plan on that for the rest of your life."