Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(5)

I sat next to Lillian on the couch and tried mine. It had been a few years since I’d worked behind a bar, but the margarita was definitely passable.

"Well, it’s not Big Red . . ." I said ruefully.

Lillian’s smile was brilliant, a few new wrinkles etched around her eyes. "You can’t have everything? Her face had a little too much of everything, just as I remembered. Her eyes were slightly large, like a cat’s, the irises flecked with too many browns and blues and grays to call them only green. Her mouth was wide, her nose so delicate it bordered on being sharp. Her light brown hair, which she now wore shoulder-length, had so many blond and red streaks it looked off-color. And she had too many freckles, especially noticeable now when she had a summer tan. Somehow it all worked to make her beautiful.

“It sounds like your day was hell, Tres. I’m impressed you’re still standing."

“Nothing an enchilada dinner and a beautiful woman won’t cure."

She took my hand. "Any one in particular?"

I thought about it. "Green or chicken mole."

She slapped me on the thigh and called me names.

We knew better than to try making reservations at Mi Tierra on a Saturday night. You just throw yourself into the crowd of tourists and native San Antonians in the front room, wave money, and hope you get a table in under an hour.

It was worth it. We got seats close to the bakery, where trays of cinnamon-smelling pan dulce in neon colors were brought out of the ovens every few minutes. The Christmas lights were still up along the walls, and the mariachis were as thick as flies, only much fatter. I threatened Lillian with having them play "Guantanamera" at our table unless she let me buy dinner.

She laughed. "A dirty trick. And me a successful businesswoman. "

She had promised to show me her gallery the next day. It was a small place in La Villita she co-owned  with her old college mentor, Beau Karnau. They mostly sold Mexican folk art to tourists.

“And your own art?" I asked.

She looked down briefly, smiling still but not so much. Sore subject.

Ten years ago, when I left, Beau Karnau and Lillian had been talking big about her career—New York shows, museum exhibitions, changing the face of modern photographic art. As soon as the world rediscovered Beau’s genius (which they’d apparently appreciated for about three months during the sixties) Lillian would ride his coattails to fame. Now, ten years later, Beau and Lillian were selling curios.

"I don’t get as much time as I did in college," she said. "But soon. I have some new ideas."

I decided not to push it. After a large waiter with an even larger mustache came to take our order, Lillian changed subjects.

"How about you? Now that I’ve got you out here without a job, I mean. It can’t be that easy without an investigator’s license. "

I shrugged. "Some legal firms like that—informal help for the messy jobs, no records on the payroll. I’ve got a few leads. Maia has lots of friends of friends."

The minute I said her name I wished I hadn’t. It landed in the middle of the table between us like a brick. Lillian slowly licked some salt from the rim of her glass. There was no change in her face.

"You could always get a job evicting wayward tenants," she suggested.

“Or I could help sell art for you."

She gave me a lopsided smile. "When I have to pin a customer in a joint lock to buy my work, I’ll know it’s him; to put down the camera and the paintbrush for good."

The waiter returned quickly with a bowl of butter and a basket the size of a top hat filled with handmade tortillas. Unfortunately Fernando Asante came up to our table right behind him.

"I’ll be damned!" he said. “If it isn’t Jack Navarre’s boy. "

Before I could put down my half-buttered tortilla I was shaking hands with him, staring up at his weathered brown face and a row of smiling, gold-outlined teeth. Asante’s hair was so thin and well greased, combed back from his forehead, that it could’ve been drawn on with a Marksalot.

I stood up, introducing Lillian to San Antonio’s eldest city councilman. As if she didn’t know who he was. As if anybody in town who read the Express-News tabloid section didn’t know.

" ’Course," Asante said. “I remember Miss Cambridge. Fiesta Week. The Travis Center opening, with Dan Sheff. "

Asante had a gift for names, and that one fell onto the table like another brick. Lillian winced a little. The councilman just smiled. I smiled back. An Anglo man had come up behind Asante and was waiting patiently with that distracted, brooding expression most bodyguards develop. About six feet, curly black hair, boots and jeans, T-shirt and linen jacket. Lots of muscles. He didn’t smile.

"Councilman. You made it into the San Francisco paper a while back."

He did his best modest look. "The Travis Center opening. Millions in new revenue to the city. Friends called me up from all over the country, said they saw the coverage."

“Actually it was that piece about the secretary and you in Brackenridge Park."

Lillian suppressed a laugh by choking on her margarita. Asante’s smile wavered momentarily, then came back different—more of a snarl. We were all quiet for a few seconds. I’d seen him give that look plenty to my dad in the years they had been at each other’s throats. I was downright proud to see it turned on me. I figured wherever my father was he would probably be biting the end off a new cigar and laughing his ass off about then.