Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(19)

“I think he wants you to have it," I said. “It fits your decor better anyway."

Mother’s green eyes sparkled mischievously. She dropped the statuette into her massive gold lamé purse. "I’l1 trade you for dinner, dear. "

Then we walked down to the corner of Queen Anne and Broadway.

Sad but true. I’d lived in San Francisco for years, gone to Chinatown almost daily, but I’d never found lemon chicken as good as the kind they serve at Hung Fong. Maia Lee would throttle me for speaking such sacrilege, since I’m including her own family recipe in the comparison, but there it is.

The restaurant had doubled in size since I’d been there last, but old Mrs. Kim was still the hostess. She greeted me by name, not fazed a bit by the fact I hadn’t been there in a decade, then gave us our favorite table under the neon American and Taiwanese flags entwined on the ceiling. It was Tuesday night after the dinner rush and we had the place to ourselves except for two large families at corner booths and a couple of guys who looked like basic trainees eating at the counter. Five minutes after we ordered, the tablecloth was buried under platters piled with food.

"Isn’t it odd that Lillian left for Laredo the day after you arrived?" Mother asked. Mother had dressed informally tonight: a brilliant gold and black kimono over a black cotton bodysuit. Every time she reached over the table the gold and amber bangles around her wrists slid down over her hands and caught on the lids of the covered dishes, but she didn’t seem to mind.

"All right, " I said. “So we had a small fight. Not even a fight, really."

I told her about Dan Sheff, hunk from hell. Mother nodded.

"I remember his mother from the Bright Shawl." She waved her chopsticks dismissively. "Horrid woman. Never trust anyone named Cookie to raise a child properly. Now what else happened?"

I shrugged. “That’s it."

She frowned. “It doesn’t sound like anything worth leaving town over."

"Beau Karnau probably had something to do with it. He seems to like capitalizing on emotional stress."

"You just be persistent," she advised. "Here, I’ll read the tea leaves for you."

Actually I’d been drinking beer, but Mother was never one to let technicalities stop her. She poured me a cup of tea, drank it herself, then turned the cup over on a napkin. I could never figure out whether she was playing a game for her own amusement, or whether she really had a system for making sense of the sediment from beverages, but she studied the little brown flecks intently, making meaningful 'hmm' sounds.

The basic trainees at the counter looked over briefly while she was doing her divination. One made a joke under his breath. Both laughed.

“Not good, my son," Mother said in her best gypsy accent. "The leaves spell ‘Adversity.’ A troubled time is ahead."

“Profound," I said. "And so unexpected?

She tried to look offended. "Scoff if you must."

"I must, I must."

At the end of dinner Mother insisted on picking up the tab. Since I was down to spare change and a few maxed—out credit cards, I didn’t argue too hard. The two men at the counter paid for their meal and walked out behind us.

When you train long enough in tai chi, you get to a point where your eyes and ears start feeling like they wrap around you 360 degrees. You have to develop this unless you want to get hit over the head from behind while you’re protecting yourself in front, or turn a few inches too far and run yourself through on your opponent’s sword. My senses switched into that mode the minute we walked out of the restaurant, but I wasn’t consciously worried until we got to the corner of Queen Anne.

Mother was talking about the sorry state of the arts in San Antonio. The two men from the restaurant were coming up behind us, but they seemed to be at ease, joking to themselves, not paying us much attention. The neon lights from Broadway dropped into darkness once we walked onto my street. The two men stopped talking, but turned the corner with us. Without looking back, I could tell they were quickening their pace. They were about twenty-five feet behind us now. My apartment was at the end of the block.

“Mother," I said casually, "keep walking."

She had just been warming up on the subject of limited downtown gallery space. She glanced up at me, puzzled, but I didn’t give her time to say anything. Instead, I did an about-face and went back to meet our new friends.

They didn’t like their timing being messed up. When they saw me coming toward them they stopped, momentarily off-balance. Both were in their mid-twenties, with bland, square faces. They wore jeans and untucked denim shirts. Both had crew cuts. Their upper body development made it obvious they were bodybuilders.

They were trying hard to be twins, but one was a red-headed Anglo, the other a Hispanic with a tattoo on his forearm—an eagle killing a snake.

When I was five feet away they moved apart slightly, waiting for me to act. Behind me I heard my mother call, more than a little nervous: "Tres?"

“Tres?" the one with the tattoo mimicked. The red-head grinned. `

"Either you’re following us to get your tea leaves read," I speculated, “or you’ve got something to say to me. Which is it?"

I let Tattoo come closer, putting his chest close to my face. He was still grinning. Red moved around to my left.