Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(13)

"Believe it or not," I said, "I’m back here seeing Lillian."

Carlon whistled. "Sandy over at the society page is going to love that. She’s been getting a lot of mileage out of Lillian and ole Dan the Man Sheff lately."

"You put my picture on the same page as the debutantes and I’ll rip your nuts off."

"I love you too," he said. "So why the warm and friendly call, if not to fill me in on your romance?"

"Tell me about the newspaper morgue. I’m looking for information on my father’s murder and the investigation. "

“Mm. That was what, ’84?"

He asked someone behind him a question I couldn’t catch.

“Yeah," he told me, “anything before 1988 is still on microfiche. After that we joined the computer age. Public access, but it would be a lot faster if I got one of the mole people down in Archives to round it up for you."

"That would be great, Carlon."

"So you owe me. What else is new? Now tell me why you’re digging up family history, Navarre. I thought you wanted nothing to do with that."

The tone of his voice told me the question was more professional than personal.

"Ten years makes a difference," I said. "Especially if I’m back here to stay."

"You got something new on the case?"

"Nothing that would work for the entertainment section."

"I’m serious, Tres. You got anything on the case, I’d like to know."

"This from a man whose biggest scoop in college was a breakthrough in onion-growing technology?

"Some friend," Carlon said, and hung up.

I tried Lillian’s studio and got Beau Karnau instead. At first he pretended not to remember me. Finally he admitted that Lillian was not in.

“When do you expect her?" I asked.

“Day after tomorrow."

I was silent for a moment. “I don’t think I got that."

“Yes you did, " Beau said. I pictured him smirking—it wasn’t a pretty image. "She went on a buying trip to Laredo, left a message on the studio machine this morning. I might add it’s the least she can do after stabbing me in the back like she’s doing."

“Yeah, you might add that, mightn’t you?"

“The least she can do. Drops everything in my lap, thinks she can actually make a living—"

He had more to say but I put the receiver down on the ironing board. He might be talking to himself for hours before he figured out I was no longer there. When my mind started aching this bad I knew it was time to abuse my body instead. I put on running shorts and a Bay to Breakers T-shirt, then headed down New Braunfels toward the Botanical Center. The really hot part of the day was yet to come, but after two miles I was drenched in sweat. I found a little stand that sold coconut paletas and bought one, letting the icy chunks of fruit slide down my throat as I sat in the shade of a pecan tree near the entrance to Fort Sam Houston. I stared across at the army base, wondering if Bob Langston was in there somewhere, laughing about a prank call he’d made to me last night. I hoped that was the case.

When I got back to Queen Anne the phone was dead from being off the hook so long. Evidently Beau had finally got tired of his own voice. I put the receiver back in the cradle.

I did push-ups and crunches, then decided to tackle cleaning the kitchen. The memory of Bob Langston lived on in the fruit keeper of the refrigerator, where several black bananas had turned into oblong mounds of mush. He’d also left two sandwich bags filled with some kind of meat slices, congealed in what I assume had been a barbecue sauce. Not even Robert Johnson was interested.

The place was looking almost clean by that evening when the phone rang.

“I’m very close to being pissed off," Jay Rivas said. “In fact, I’m downright perturbed, Navarre."

"I’m not a qualified therapist," I warned him. “Maybe there’s some kind of inferiority complex for incompetent bald fat men with large mustaches."

"Or maybe there’s some kind of ass**le who keeps smearing his shit all over town where I have to step in it."

I sighed. "Do you have a point to make, Jay?"

He blew smoke into the phone. "Yeah, kid, I got two points. First, yesterday evening you assault a young man whose family is heavyweight on the Chamber of Commerce. Said young man will not press charges, otherwise you and I would be having this chat in person right now. Second, I hear about you digging for information on a ten-year-old murder, bothering people who have better things to do than help you come to terms with your f**king manhood."

I counted to five before answering. "You’re talking about my father’s murder. I think I’ve got a right to know."

“You had a right to know ten years ago," Rivas shot back. "Where the f**k were you when it mattered?"

There were a lot of things I wanted to say to that, but I waited. Finally Rivas swore under his breath.

“Look, Navarre, let me save you some time. On the record, nobody can prove who whacked your old man, okay? You’re not going to get the goddamn case files, but if you did, that’s what they’d tell you. Off the record, it’s no big secret. Your dad spent the last two years of his life putting thumbscrews on the mob in Bexar County. It’s one of the few things he did well. The mob finally hit back. Nobody can prove it; everybody knows it. That’s the short and shitty truth, and after all this time nobody’s going to do any time for the killing. So unless you got some indisputable reason why this case needs to be looked into again, which you don’t, and the goodwill of the SAPD, which I promise you you don’t, then you lay off. Go marry your high school sweetheart and get a nice job teaching college somewhere, but stay the hell out of my sight."