Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(25)

The portfolio made for sad reading. On the first page, ArtNews and Dallas Herald articles from 1968 announced Beau’s arrival on the photographic scene: "New Visions of the West," “Fresh Perspectives on Ancient Vistas," “Dallas Native Follows Dream." The last one took a rags-to-riches angle: the tragic death of Beau’s father, Beau’s childhood with at well-meaning but alcoholic mother, his determination to work his way through community college in Fort Worth, buying film for his photography classes instead of food when he had to. The interviewer seemed to think it was charming that Beau had actually been on welfare. In the middle of the articles Beau’s picture stared back at me—young, dressed in black, his Nikon slung over his shoulder, and the beginnings of smugness on his face.

I flipped through several more pages of his photos--abandoned ranch houses, steers, dew on barbed wire. The announcements for new shows and the glowing reviews got fewer and further between. The last two articles Beau had clipped were from the Austin American-Statesman in 1976. The first, a lukewarm gallery review, commented sadly that "the refreshingly energetic, naive quality of Karnau’s earlier work has all but disappeared? The second, Beau’s letter to the editor, detailed exactly what the reviewer could do with her comments.

Beau’s more recent photographs, from his days as an assistant art professor at A & M to the present, looked like they could have been taken by Ansel Adams if Ansel Adams had downed enough tequila and dropped his camera enough times. More abandoned ranch houses, more steers, more dew on barbed wire. Finally, on the last portfolio page, was a glitzy-looking flier for "The Authentic Cowboy: A Retrospective by B. Karnau." A weathered cowboy peered out at me, trying to look authentic.

The opening was scheduled for July 31 at Blue Star, this Saturday. The list of underwriters showed how much Beau had relied on Lillian’s social connections: Crockett, her father’s bank; Sheff Construction; half a dozen other blue-blooded businesses and foundations. I folded up the flier and pocketed it.

I was just about to put aside the portfolio when I noticed the way the front cover felt between my fingers—a little bit thicker than the back cover, a slight bulge on the inside of the canvas. I found an Xacto knife on the floor and delivered by cesarean two eight-by-tens sandwiched between squares of cardboard. The photos were identical-—an outdoor shot, taken at night. Three people were standing in knee-high grass in front of an old Ford truck, its doors open and headlights on. One of the people was a tall skinny man with his face turned away from the camera. His slicked-back blond hair and his white shirt almost glowed in the headlights.

The other two people, whoever they were, had been carefully cut out of the picture with a razor blade. Nothing was left of them but vaguely human-shaped holes, side by side, slightly apart from the blond man.

From the angle of the shot, and a huge out-of-focus tree branch in one corner of the photo, it looked like the photographer had been uphill from the scene and fairly far away, using a telescopic lens.

The quality of the prints wasn’t bad, but the texture of the paper was wrong for photographs. Looking closely, you could tell they had been laser printed rather than developed. On the back of both photos someone had written “7/31" in black pen.

I was just folding the prints to fit in my pocket when keys rattled in the studio’s front door lock.

I moved to the door of the framing room and listened. Two steps, a moment of stunned quiet, then Beau Karnau cursed under his breath. He kicked something that shattered. A ceramic skull in a pink sombrero came skittering to a. stop at my feet and grinned up at me. When I came out into the doorway Beau was standing with one lizard-skin boot planted on an over- turned podium, surveying the damage. His balding forehead was bright red and yellow. It matched his silk shirt beautifully.

I cleared my throat. He cleared about three feet, straight backward.

“Ah!" he said. Out of some reflex he grabbed his ponytail and pulled it like a ripcord.

When he recognized me he didn’t exactly relax, but his face shifted gears from sacred shitless to pissed. For a minute I thought he might charge me.

“What the f**k—" he said.

“You were expecting the maid?" I asked. “Looks like you had quite a morning rush."

“What the f**k are you doing here?" he said, louder this time.

“Who did you think I was just now, Beau? You damn near wet your boots."

His eye twitched. "What the hell do you think, Mr. Goddamn Smart—ass? I come back from lunch and you’ve wrecked my place. How should I act?"

“Like you know better," I said. "Like you’re ready to tell me what it’s got to do with Lillian."

Beau swore at me. Then he made the mistake of coming up and pushing my chest.

“Where the hell do you get off--"

Before he could finish the sentence he was sitting down. From the tears in his eyes I’d say his balls connected with the stone floor pretty hard. I put my foot on his left kneecap and pressed down, just hard enough to keep him sitting.

He said: “Uhm."

“Lillian is missing," I said. “Now I find out her studio is trashed."

“My studio," he said. He packed a lot of hatred into those two words.

I put a little more pressure on the knee.

"Jesus!" he yelled. “You break into my goddamn place, you assault me, you blame me when that little princess runs out on you—leave me the hell alone!"