Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(47)

I didn’t like the way he said that. Garza must’ve read my expression. He just shrugged.

"You made Dan angry this morning, Mr. Navarre."

So I said to him, ‘I’ll keep my eyes open.’ I close my eyes for a while and—" He snapped his fingers, then pointed at me. "I just think that’s funny."

He met my eyes and tried to look relaxed, like he was in charge. His teeth were as white as his mustache. His fingers had tightened on the gun a little too much for my taste.

"Hysterical," I agreed. I looked down at the family picture on his desk. "No other place to sleep, Mr. Garza? Problems at home, maybe?"

Garza’s smile hardened. His face turned the rusty color of Hill Country granite.

“Let’s talk about you," he said.

I was thinking about options for leaving Garza’s office without a police escort or a bullet in my anatomy. At the moment the alternatives seemed slim. I decided, for the moment, to confuse him with the truth.

"Dan wanted to hire me," I told him. “We talked this morning about Lillian Cambridge."

Garza stroked his mustache. "Do you always start a job by investigating your boss, Mr. Navarre?"

"Only when I have questions."

Garza leaned back in his chair. He propped one foot on the edge of the desk. I couldn’t help noticing the bottom of his boot—no grooves, pointed toe, maybe a ten and a half wide.

"Such as?" he asked.

"For starters, how you got the contract on Travis Center, and how you managed to win the fine arts complex before the bidding process even started. Last I checked, fixing city contracts was a legal no-no."

Garza said nothing. His smile had frozen.

"I’m also wondering who the two missing people in that picture might be, who the blond guy is, and why it might be worth ten thousand dollars a month to Sheff Construction. I keep thinking, if I were Beau Karnau, and my art wasn’t selling so well, and I somehow came across evidence that my studio partner’s fiancé was up to some very profitable, very illegal insider deals with city contracts—well, I might just be tempted to take some photos of him and whoever his partners were. I might just blackmail the hell out of them."

Garza rested the butt of his little silver gun on the top of the desk. In the light of the computer screen it looked blue and translucent, like a water pistol.

“Is that all, Mr. Navarre?"

"Except for one thing. What size boot do you wear, Mr. Garza?"

I smiled. Garza smiled. Keeping one eye on me, Garza slipped my disk into the computer.

"Eleven wide, Mr. Navarre. As to the rest, assuming you have any business asking, you’d have to talk to Mr. Sheff. "

"Which Mr. Sheff? The comatose one or the one with the Looney Tunes glass in his desk? They both seem equally well informed about the family business."

Garza shook his head, obviously disappointed in me. He showed me the hand that wasn’t holding the gun, palm out. "You see these?"

"Fingers," I said. “I count five."

He smiled. "Calluses, Mr. Navarre. Something you don’t see much these days. A blue-collar man who’s made a decent living—that’s a dying breed, a dinosaur." He tapped the family photo with the side of his gun. "Worked construction since I was fifteen, don’t have much formal education, but I manage to support my family pretty well. I like my employers for giving me that. And I don’t have much patience for privileged young Anglo shits who break into my office at three in the morning and try to tear it all up."

He was still smiling, his knuckles white on the gun. Legally, we both knew, he could shoot me right now for trespassing and the biggest complication he would face would be how to dry-clean the rug. Then Spider john wove its web across the computer screen one more time to the tune of "Havana Daydreamin’."

"Now let’s see what you’ve got here," Garza said.

"Before I erase it, and decide whether or not I need to erase you."

That’s when I saw the car.

When the headlights got near enough to shine through the window behind Garza’s desk, Garza glanced around briefly and scowled, probably wondering who the new early morning visitor could be. But he was more worried about me. He turned back to the computer screen. I couldn’t see anything but headlights, getting big, very quickly.

Let’s see what happens when it turns toward the gate, I thought.

Stupid, Navarre. The car didn’t turn toward the gate. I stood there frozen and watched it come straight through the fence, past my friend the cow, through the petunias, and down my throat.

I think I rolled toward the doorway before the window exploded. I don’t remember. When I opened my eyes, a few hundred years later, I was wedged between the wall and Garza’s overturned desk, about four inches shy of having been pressed into a human tortilla. The back of my head felt like it had rubbed off against the carpet. Somewhere close by, Terry Garza was groaning. His eleven wide boot was in my face. From floor level all I could see of the car that had nearly killed us was the ruined front end—radiator steam hissing out in several places, blue metal and tangled chrome teeth that looked like they were trying to eat Garza’s desk. I could smell gasoline. Finally I looked above me, hazily, and saw three small holes. It took me a while to realize that two of them were the security guard’s nostrils. The third was the barrel of his gun.