Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(44)

I wouldn’t have believed that Tito could move so fast. He had the double-barrel half out of the Coca-Cola cooler and was turning toward Ralph when I slammed the metal seat of my stool into his face. Crude but effective. Tito’s nose flattened like a paper tent and he went down.

Ralph whistled. "They teach you that in kung fu c1ass?"

I shrugged.

Then I stepped back around the bar and unloaded the shotgun. Tito was making his motor boat sound again, blowing red bubbles against the red cement.

"Hijo, " said Silver-teeth.

Ralph smiled and turned the gun on him. "So what’s your name, vato?"

"Carlos, man."

"You got a bedtime story for us, my friend Carlos?"

Carlos’s dark face drained out until it was the color of heavily creamed coffee. He dropped his broken bottle-neck and held up his empty palms. He said: "You’re looking for Eddie, man. He ain’t here tonight. And I swear to God, I just heard about it. "

Carlos’s two friends were getting up now, wiping the blood and foam out of their faces. One had an inch-long fragment of beer glass sticking from his forehead like a rhino horn. I don’t think he even felt it, but he was pissed as hell.

"Jaime," Carlos murmured. "Cool it, man."

But Jaime wasn’t interested. He came at Ralph fast and stupid. Fortunately for him, Ralph was in a good mood now. Instead of putting a bullet in his face, Ralph just implanted the tip of his boot in Jaime’s gut. In slow motion, the wounded man curled up at Ralph’s feet like a faithful old dog.

Ralph turned back to Carlos. "Okay. Let’s try that again."

Carlos swallowed.

"Eddie Moraga," he said. "I heard he was in here a few nights ago with this lady. He’s a friend of Tito’s, man, a regular here."

Under my feet, Tito started making wet, half-conscious grunts.

"And?" Ralph asked.

"That’s it. "

Ralph waited, smiling.

"Shit, man," Carlos pleaded, "a friend told me about it. I don’t know."

Ralph’s next shot took out a healthy chunk of concrete in front of Carlos’s left foot. By sheer luck, none of the fragments killed anybody.

"You’d better tell me about Eddie," Ralph suggested. I thought I was hearing beer pouring off the tables from the broken bottles. Then I saw the stream coming out the bottom of Carlos’s jeans.

"Jesus, man," he said. “Eddie’s ex-Air Force. He’s a construction worker. What the f**k else do you want?"

I handed Ralph the photos of suspects from Larry Drapiewski's files. Ralph glanced at them, then held them up for Carlos to see, one at a time, leisurely.

"Which one is he?" Ralph said.

Carlos looked, then shook his head, almost reluctantly. “No, man. None of these. He’s about twenty-six, crew cut, kind of light-skinned. Tattoo. Heavy on top, you know? Pumps iron. Drives a green Chevy. Eddie’s here most nights by this time, man. I don’t know where the f**k he is."

Tattoo. Construction worker? Wait a minute. I tapped on the bar to get Carlos’s attention. "

"This tattoo," I said. “About here, eagle and a snake?"

Carlos glanced over at me, then nodded, very slowly.

“Que padre," said Ralph. "Now how about the story?"

Carlos addressed Ralph’s gun as he talked. "Eddie comes in Sunday night, I don’t know when, late. He’s got this girl by the arm, kind of skinny but good-looking, sort of blond hair. And she’s stumbling like she’s really wasted, so Eddie jokes with us that she’s got to go puke. She had jeans and a black shirt on, nice tits. So they go back to the Porta-john and he waits for her to come out. The pay phone’s right over there, you know? So he makes a call. Says to us he can’t stick around. But the funny thing is this lady kicks Eddie on the shin as they’re going back to the car, and we all start laughing. Then he sort of slaps her, you know, cuts her across the eye with his ring, and they get in the car. That’s it."

He said it matter-of-fact, like it happened every night at Tito’s. I swallowed. Maybe I would’ve gotten more emotional, but something about Ralph and that .357 kept me cool and sober.

"How did the girl act?" I asked. "Besides wasted."

Carlos looked at me like the question was in Japanese. "Her? Shit, I don’t know. Like they always act, you know? Pissed off, I guess—arguing, hitting him."

Instead of using my stool on him, I said: "Did it cross your mind she might be in trouble?"

He almost laughed at that, then he remembered the gun.

"With Eddie every lady’s in trouble," he said. "She didn’t scream or help or anything, man. Nothing like that."

"Did Eddie have a piece?"

Carlos looked helpless. "I didn’t even think about it, man. I don’t think so. I know he carries sometimes. He does some work for some friends of his sometimes; that’s what I hear."

“What friends?" Ralph said.

"I don’t have any idea, man. That’s the truth. He just said—yeah, he said one thing. That he had to get up early tomorrow, ’cause the lady had to make a phone call for him. That’s it, man."

Monday morning, when Lillian had supposedly left her message with Beau about Laredo. I pictured her making it with a gun pressed against her neck. I pictured Beau not giving a damn.