Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(46)

Whatever it did, when I put the disk in and Spider john’s black web wove across the screen, to the muted tune of "Havana Daydreamin’," Mr. Garza’s computer suddenly smiled at me and mellowed out something considerable. Anything I punched in for a password seemed perfectly groovy now. MICKEY MOUSE, I typed. COOL, it said, and showed me Sheff Construction’s personnel files.

Eddie Moraga was listed on the payroll as a half-time carpenter. No health benefits. No special duties noted, such as abducting women from their homes or intimidating English Ph.D.s in front of Chinese restaurants. Twelve thousand dollars a year. But that wasn’t including a ten-thousand-dollar monthly item labeled “expenses".

A carpenter with an expense account. Not since Jesus, I figured.

I tried to access a description for that field, hit another roadblock, typed EAT ME for a password. Even then the computer didn’t offer much of an explanation for what Sheff Construction expected Eddie to spend his petty cash on, just a familiar address--HECHO A MANO GALLERY, 21 LA VILLITA WAY. The expense account had been drawn on at the end of each month for the last year, in regular cash installments, and was authorized by the man whose chair I was borrowing--Terry Garza. The date for the next withdrawal was marked "7/31." I took out the two cut-up photos I’d retrieved from Beau’s portfolio. They were marked on the back in black pen: "7/31."

I looked up at Garza’s picture.

"Supporting the arts?" I asked him.

Garza’s picture smiled back, looking a little nervous. I typed a few more insults for passwords and started skimming through the Sheffs’ financial spreadsheets. There wasn’t much to look at—very few jobs had been done this year, very little money was coming in. In fact, Sheff Construction seemed to have been surviving until last year on one bread-and-butter contract alone: Travis Center. Hmm.

I looked at the company profits for the last decade. From ’83-’85 there hadn’t been any. Just some fairly massive debts, probably some fairly nervous corporate creditors. Then, almost overnight, the debts disappeared quietly and completely. In their place had been the Travis Center project.

Sheff’s long and healthy profit margin for the past decade until last year suggested that Travis Center had gone way over budget and way behind schedule. Your tax dollars at work. But now Travis Center was completed and it looked like Sheff Construction was heading back into the red.

I looked at their projections for next year—there was only one pending deal. The entire resources of the company were already committed to building the city’s new fine arts complex. Sheff Construction had done their cost estimates based on the bidding price the city had approved, figured their payroll based on that income, and had a pretty good estimated timetable for their sub-contractors. They would be back in the black again easily.

The only problem was that the bidding process for the fine arts complex project, according to my radio chum Carl Wiglesworth, hadn’t even started yet. I stared at the computer screen, wondering how Sheff had monopolized a huge city works project like Travis Center. And, more importantly, how they could be so damn sure they would get the next one. I was just about to ask the computer those questions when the office door swung open.

"Before I call the security guard," the man in the doorway said, "maybe you’d explain why you’re sitting at my desk."

Terry Garza didn’t look as good as his picture. His silver hair was flat on the left side and he had red lines on his cheek like he’d just been sleeping on a corduroy-covered pillow. He was wearing the same dark blue suit pants he’d had on that afternoon, half untucked from his gray justins. His shirt was wrinkled and his tie was hanging loose around his neck. In the picture he also wasn’t holding a tiny silver .22.

I shut down Spider John and spit out the disk. Then I stood up very carefully.

"Sorry," I said. "I talked to Dan earlier, said I’d be coming by tonight. I thought he’d cleared it with you. Tim out front didn’t mention you were still here." I held up my key chain, as if it were proof that I’d come in legitimately. I looked innocent, meeting Garza’s stare.

Garza’s dark eyes narrowed. The gun lowered a few inches, then came back up again.

"I don’t think so," he said.

"Maybe if I was wearing a tie?"

A smile flickered across the left side of Garza’s mouth. "Timothy is his last name. Sam Timothy. Nobody calls him Tim."

"Shit. Missed the comma."

"Yeah."

Garza motioned for me to come around the desk, turned me around, then did a pretty professional job of patting me down with one hand. He took the computer disk out of my pocket.

"They teach you frisking in contractors’ school?" I asked.

He gave me another half smile. We were buddies now. Then he went around the desk to reclaim his leather chair and left me standing on the other side. His face looked calm, still half-asleep, but his dark eyes were alert, maybe a little anxious. They got more anxious when they saw Beau Karnau’s photos on the desk. Garza looked quickly from me to the photos, to the computer, then back at me.

"So," he said thinly, "who have we got here?"

"We’ve got Jackson Tres Navarre. No comma."

Garza stared at me for a minute. Then he actually smiled all the way. "No kidding."