Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(23)

Ralph dressed more expensively than Lennon ever had, though—today he was wearing a white linen guayabera that almost managed to hide his belly and a gold chain around his neck so thick you could lock up a bicycle with it.

He held out a meaty hand. I shook it.

Then he sat back, still grinning. His black eyes swam around beneath several inches of prescription glass. Maybe he was looking at me, maybe at the stack of business papers in front of him. I couldn’t tell.

When he spoke it was in Spanish.

"You remember jersey and those other pendejos came after me for slashing their tires?"

I was thinking about Lillian, about her empty bedroom lit up the color of blood. I wanted to scream at Ralph to get to the point, but that wasn’t the way he worked. He talked in circles and you just had to hang on for the ride.

I sat down.

"Yeah," I said. "They came at us outside Mr. M’s, didn’t they, right after school."

"Us?"

He laughed—a small, sharp sound like a cat’s sneeze.

"You could’ve walked," he said. “Never figured out why this scrawny white boy was stupid enough to back up my Mexican ass against four redneck linebackers."

"I knew someday you’d be rich and famous," suggested.

"Damn right. "

“And there were only three of them."

Ralph shrugged. “That’s what I said. Ain’t that what I said?"

He shouted at the waitress for two more Big Reds. Then he leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, his smile gone. I caught the distinct, heavy smell of bay rum on his clothes.

"So last night," he said, "I’m talking to this girl who owes me some . . . back rent, you know?"

I nodded. Ralph paused while a waitress clunked two sweating soda bottles in front of us.

“And this girl says she’s low on cash but she’s come across some credit cards maybe I can use. I tell her maybe so. Then I see the name on the cards and it rings a bell. I think about you."

Ralph spread his hands in a “what could I do?" gesture.

"She’s a good lady, this friend of mine, but you know, sometimes she needs encouragement to stay honest. So we talk for a while about how she really found this stuff, but it seemed to me like she was telling the truth—out on Zarzamora like I said."

Ralph put the wallet on the table. It was a Guatemalan billfold, now stained and muddy, embroidered with blue and green trouble dolls. It was Lillian’s. Ralph took out several credit cards, then her license. Lillian’s face stared up at me from the yellow Formica—a bad picture, washed out and unfocused, but it still captured her lopsided smile, her amused multicolored eyes.

"Was there any money?" I asked.

Ralph shrugged. "Cash evaporates fast with this lady friend of mine; you know how that is. But yeah, I think there probably was."

“Then the wallet wasn’t stolen. She dropped it, or somebody dropped it."

“Vato, billfolds full of credit cards and money don’t sit very long in the middle of the road. Especially my side of town. Couldn’t’ve been dropped too long before my friend picked it up—a little before midnight on Sunday, say."

“Could you find out anything else?"

Ralph showed his teeth. "Maybe I could ask around. Sunday night not too many white girls are strolling around the West Side, vato. If it was really her that dropped it, could be somebody saw her."

The cold from the Big Red bottle was going into my fingers now, spreading up my arm toward my chest. I was trying to imagine Lillian on Zarzamora late at night, or other ways her wallet could have traveled there without her. I thought about the sudden trip to Laredo that Beau had told me about, the unused car in the driveway, the half-wrecked house.

"I can’t pay you anything, Ralphas," I said.

He grinned, tapping Lillian’s Visa card against the Formica. "Maybe I’ll just put it on the lady’s tab if you find her, eh? Now tell me what’s going on."

“I wish I knew."

But he waited, and twenty minutes and two Big Reds later I had told him everything that had happened my first week in town.

Talking to Ralph was like talking to a priest. He knew how to listen. He’d heard the sins of man so many times nothing could shock him. His grin never changed. With the priest, whatever you said went straight to God. With Ralph, it went straight into public domain. Therein lay the absolution. At least I figured the rest of the town would listen. With God I wasn’t so sure.

"Hard to go to Laredo for three days without your wallet," Ralph said when I’d finished. “Hard to disappear anywhere, unless somebody makes you disappear. "

I couldn’t even nod.

Ralph studied Lillian’s Visa card. He said: "Your friend Detective Rivas was in El Matador night before last. He mentioned about your dad’s death. Said you wanted to kick up some very old dust in a lot of people’s faces."

"Rivas is full of shit."

"Vato," Ralph said, "you think about putting two and two together, eh?"

When he said what I’d been thinking, it made it seem less outrageous. That made me want to shut out the idea even more.

“Why would somebody take Lillian to get at me? What the hell for?"