Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(52)

Then the living-room wall rang. Maia frowned. I pulled down the ironing board and took the receiver.

"Mr. Navarre," the man said.

It took me a minute to recognize Terry Garza’s voice. It sounded like someone had mixed it with a few quarts of water, like Garza had been driving around all night in the same Thunderbird as me and was getting a little shaken up by the company.

"I think it’s time we talked," Garza said.

I looked at Maia.

Her eyebrows came together. She silently mouthed: What?

"I’m listening," I said into the phone.

"No. In person," Garza said. "This has to be in person."

"Because you want me to bring the statuette."

I waited for him to confirm it. Obviously Garza didn’t feel it was necessary.

"I’m a good employee, Mr. Navarre. I told you that. But I didn’t sign on for this. I have a family—"

"Who shot Eddie Moraga?"

Behind Garza I heard the drone of highway traffic, the background buzz of a pay phone connection.

"Let’s just say two parties are interested in what you have, Mr. Navarre. When the other party breaks into your apartment in the middle of the night, you won’t wake up the next morning. Do you understand that?"

I looked at Maia.

“I’ll be at Earl Abel’s tomorrow morning at seven,"

Garza said. "I tell you what you need to know about your girlfriend, you give me what I need to smooth things over. We might be able to get things . . . back to normal."

"If your employers don’t release Lillian Cambridge, there’s not going to be any normal."

Garza exhaled sharply. Or maybe it was a nervous laugh. "We need to have a talk, Mr. Navarre. We really do."

He hung up.

I stared at Maia. She looked at me, her eyes intensely black.

"Tell me," she said.

I looked down at the front page of the paper again, where Eddie’s dead face was a circle of fuzz in the bottom corner. I told Maia what Garza had said. She mixed cream into her coffee by turning the cup in little horizontal circles.

"Garza’s desperate to set things right before he becomes the next sacrificial lamb," she said.

I nodded.

Maia studied me over the top of her cup. "You still think we’re not dealing with the mob?"

"It’s convenient. Homicide will look at how Moraga was killed, then they’ll bring in Vice, then the FBI task force. Pretty soon everything is focused on Guy White. just like it was ten years ago, with my father’s murder."

Maia paused, choosing her words carefully. "Tres, I want you to think about this. What if this is separate from your father’s death? What if you’ve walked into something that has nothing to do with that, or your questions about the investigation, something that isn’t K your fault?"

I stared at her. When I swallowed, it felt as if I were back in the dentist’s chair, someone’s big awkward hands rearranging my mouth, sending muted but persistent jabs of pain down the nerves of my jaw. “Do you think that would matter now?"

She lowered her eyes. Her voice grew hard around the edges. "I think it should. Lillian has had her own life, Tres, and she can create her own problems. You’re both grown-ups now. Maybe you should start thinking about it that way."

"Grown-ups," I repeated. "So why the hell are you following me around like my damn mother?"

I guess I deserved it. At least the coffee had cooled off a little before she threw it in my face. Then, since there wasn’t really any place to go to get away, Maia walked out the back door and sat down on Gary Hales’s patio. I took a long shower and changed before I went out to apologize. I put the ceramic road-trip statuette on the table and sat across from Maia. We both stared at it. The two skeleton lovers grinned back at us from the front seat of their little orange car. A few blocks away the ice cream truck went by, playing a warped rendition of "La Bamba."

“This is hard," I told Maia. "I’m sorry."

Her eyes were only a little red. I could almost convince myself it was just from the sleepless night.

She forced a smile. "I liked you better with the busted mouth."

"You and half of Texas," I said.

I noticed Gary Hales looking out his bedroom window at us, his face so drooping and soft with amazement it seemed about to melt off. I waved. After another minute of silence Maia picked up the statuette and turned it around. The skeletons in the convertible kept grinning, grotesque and shiny white.

“If you’re· right, somebody wants this back very badly," Maia said. "And not just for the artistic quality."

"So let’s assume the obvious."

"Yes."

I let her do the honors. The statuette hit the pavement. I’m not sure what I was expecting to find inside when the ceramic car cracked open. At first I didn’t see anything but clay. Then I nudged it with my toe and the back seat broke neatly open along a crack as thin as a piggy bank slot. Maia picked up the small silver disk by the edges and held it up to her eye, looking through the hole like a monocle.

"Don’t suppose you have a CD—ROM drive?" she said. When I heard the slovv shuffle of my landlord’s feet I looked up.

"I reckon you’ll be cleaning up that mess now?" Gary Hales asked mildly.