Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(51)

31

When I woke up the next morning all the police records and news clippings were stacked in neat piles around Maia’s bare feet. She’d changed into a beige sundress, and her hair was loose around her shoulders. Robert Johnson sat on her lap, sticking out his tongue at me.

“So which one is Halcomb?" Maia said.

She looked up and smiled. I tried to focus on the mug shots she was showing me.

"Halcomb?" I repeated.

I tried to lift my head. It throbbed, but the swelling around my jaw had gone down to nothing larger than a Mexican lime. My new teeth felt slick like the side of a pool. I looked up at Maia’s very awake face.

"Shit," I mumbled, "I can’t believe you’re here."

It almost felt good to resent something so familiar for a change. I’d forgotten the way she woke me up with her pop quizzes, always at the bedside, fully dressed no matter how early I tried to rise, ready to pummel me with questions about cases I was working on, world politics, the PGSCE bill. I stared glumly at Maia’s coffee mug.

"Wait a minute," I said, catching the scent. "You brought Peet’s?"

She raised her eyebrows. "You get none until you talk to me."

“That’s inhuman. "

"Talk," she ordered.

I muttered some of her own Mandarin curses, then sat up and straightened my T-shirt.

"All right. That one’s Randall Halcomb."

I pointed to the mug shot of a scraggly-looking man--shoulder-length blond hair, darker beard, thin face, a nose that had been broken at least once. Halcomb’s eyelids were heavy and his mouth upturned at the corners, as if he had been pleasantly stoned when he was booked. He looked much too content to steal a Pontiac, or to drive it past a sheriff’s house with the intent to kill.

"One of the others could’ve been Halcomb’s accomplice in the drive-by," I said. "There had to be at least two people in the car—one to drive, one to shoot. All those guys knew Halcomb in prison, all are still alive and free as far as I can tell, and if you don’t give me that coffee now I’ll have to kill you."

"You can try."

She poured me a cup only after she had poured a little more into Robert Johnson’s saucer.

"He definitely does not need caffeine," I warned her.

"You’re just jealous," she said.

Maybe it was true. The traitor required exactly the right mix of Blend 101 and whole milk, a recipe only Maia had had the patience to master. He lapped at his cafe au lait and stared at me smugly.

"So," said Maia, "maybe one of these men was involved in your father’s death and got past an FBI investigation. "

"Right."

She shook her head. "Or maybe the FBI knew what they were doing, Tres. Maybe this line of suspects goes nowhere."

I drank my coffee.

On the table in front of me, the Express-News headlines for the Thunderbird murder glared in lurid color. Detective Schaeffer was answering questions. Terry Garza was looking battered, trying not to look terrified. Garza told the paper that yes, the dead man Eddie Moraga had worked for Sheff Construction, but that Moraga had been laid-off several months ago.

Right.

Eddie’s face had been fuzzed out of the newspaper photos just enough to titillate the gentle reader. You could vaguely see the dark holes of his eyes. "The trademark execution style of a well-known South Texas crime syndicate, " one caption declared. Guy White’s name was mentioned. The nature of the death would lead to speculations about mob involvement. This would be a PR nightmare for Sheff Construction. There was no mention of me, which might explain why Carlon McAffrey wasn’t sitting in my lap yet.

I spent a few minutes bringing Maia up-to-date on what I’d learned from Mr. Garza’s computer. When I finished she stared at her bare feet for a minute, flexing her toes against the stack of police reports.

"Mr. Sheff is involved with some bad people," she said. "These fixed city contracts—I’ve seen two cases like it before in the Bay Area, Tres. Both times the mob was behind it. They give the construction firm an assurance that the city project will go to them with the price tag they want, and with no labor problems. The mob provides the bribery and the arm-twisting; in return, they cut themselves in for several million. The project always goes way over budget and behind schedule. Huge profits all around."

I stared at her. "And you know about this because—"

She shrugged. "One of those cases, I was defending the contractor. We won."

"Terrence & Goldman, always fighting the good fight."

"Tres," Maia said, "if Beau Karnau messed up a profitable arrangement between Sheff and the mob by trying blackmail, and if Sheff’s people got blamed for letting it happen—or botching the payoff . . ."

She looked down at the picture of Eddie Moraga’s corpse.

I nodded, trying to believe it. I remembered Dan Sheff behind his father’s big desk, looking nine years old, his hair sticking up like canary wings. I tried to imagine him playing some kind of hardball game with Guy White’s organization—making millions illegally off fixed bids on city projects, then ordering his employees to kill, abduct, wreak havoc on any who might find out, all while he was drinking Chivas from a Foghorn Leghorn glass.