Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(32)

Maia hesitated. “Tres, I know you want to find the connection between this and your father."

"But?"

"But maybe there isn’t one."

I stared at the ceiling. just above the stove, there was a water stain in the shape of Australia, bowing in the middle like it was desperately clinging to the bottom of the world. When I spoke I tried to keep my voice even.

"You think I want it that way?"

"You want it to be your problem and your responsibility to fix," she said. “I know you. But maybe Lillian was into something all by herself. It happens, Tres."

I know you. The three most irritating words in the English language. When I didn’t answer, Maia muttered a few curses in Mandarin. I think she switched the receiver to her other ear.

"All right then," she said. “Let’s talk about your father. Do you really think one of his political enemies could be involved?"

For a moment I envisioned Councilman Fernando Asante in an extra large brown leisure suit trying to squeeze himself through my kitchen window, his Lucchese boot in my sink, his well-fed belly wedged between crape myrtle branches. It almost cheered me up.

"Even in Texas the politics aren’t usually that colorful," I told her. “Asante, the most likely candidate, has enough trouble just keeping his dick in his pants."

"The drug trafficker, then, the man whose house you so debonairly barged into at gunpoint?"

I had to think longer about that one. "If it was Guy White, I can’t figure his logic. Why murder a retiring sheriff, especially when you know you’re going to get the heat for it? And why get nervous about me now when the Feds couldn’t find anything?"

“You don’t sound convinced?

“Maybe it’s worth another visit."

She paused. “But you can’t just walk up to a Mafia boss twice in one week and start shaking him down for information on assorted felonies—"

I was quiet.

"Oh, Christ," she said. "Don’t even think about it, Tres."

“It’s either that or retrace some leads from these police files I stole."

"Excuse me?"

"Okay, you didn’t hear it."

“Christ," she said.

“Urrr," said Robert Johnson, in sympathy.

"This is information about my father. I consider it an inheritance."

“Insanity was your only inheritance, Navarre."

I protested. “I worked hard for my insanity, Ms. Lee. Nobody handed it to me on a silver p1atter."

“How the hell did I ever fall for you?" she wondered.

Things were awkwardly quiet for a while after that.

Finally Maia sighed. “Tres, I’m thinking about a time you were lying in an alley off Leavenworth with a Balinese knife in your lungs— — "

“Grazed them, actually."

"—because you insisted on going to talk to a crazy hashish dealer by yourself. "

“It would’ve been fine if the illustrious April Goldman had been straight with me."

“You would’ve been dead if she hadn’t sent me after you."

"Good old Terrence & Goldman. Your bosses must miss me," I said.

A little more Mandarin swearing. Then Maia made her final plea bargain. "Is this friend of yours any good in a fight?"

I laughed. "Ralph, you mean? Ralph is a sneaky son of a bitch who fights about as fair as a cornered weasel."

“Good. Will you take him along?" `

“Ralph has business interests. He likes a low profile."

"I don’t want you going into this any further alone, Tres."

"Maia, I’m not exactly living across the Bay Bridge anymore."

She hesitated. “Then what if I were to come down there?"

Silence on my end.

“What happened to a nice clean break?" I asked. “The quiet acceptance of my choice to move?"

Maia thought about that. "Have you ever known me to lie, Tres?"

“Only to get what you want."

She didn’t argue the point.

I stared at the ceiling. “I’ll be fine. Besides, this is my hometown. They can’t touch me here."

“You’re a true ass**le, Navarre."

"So I’ve been told." But she’d already hung up.

I picked up an old Texas Monthly with Anne Richards on the cover and shook it. Anne revved her white motorcycle and dropped the notes I’d stolen from Drapiewski’s files.

There were a dozen or so Xeroxed faces of men who had been under investigation by the FBI—various cons who were at large around the time of the shooting, some of whom had been put behind bars by my father and who possibly knew Randall Halcomb, the probable stealer of the Pontiac used in the drive-by. The faces stared back at me, telling me nothing.

Finally I took out the last page of Lillian’s datebook and looked at it again, at the third line where she’d erased a phone number and a street address in the Dominion.,

I put on my best clothes, my Sunday visiting T-shirt and my least torn jeans, then headed out to pay a call at the Sheff family mansion.

22

The Dominion is where your ordinary run-of-the-millionaire Texan dreams of going when he dies. George Strait lives there, along with a few congressmen, a few Howard Hughes types, and anyone else willing to pay six or seven figures for a design-your own mansion on a spacious lot of former sheep ranch land. No black sheep, obviously.