Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(56)

He grinned. "You just keep looking better, honey."

"If I was, why a CD? Why not just keep the negatives?"

Garrett took a long drag on his joint. His eyes glittered. You could tell he was enjoying figuring out the devious possibilities.

"Okay. You can’t encrypt negatives. You can’t lock them so that nobody but you can make copies. Somebody finds them, then they’ll know exactly what they’re looking at, right? If it was me, shit yes, I’d scan everything in, keep that as my master print, then shred the negatives. You got your two disks, you got your program to reassemble. In a couple of minutes you can print up as many hard copies as you need, or, even better, upload those suckers onto the net and pretty soon they’re printing out at every news desk and police station in the state, if that’s what you want. But if somebody comes looking through your stuff, unless they’re very good or they know exactly what they’re looking for, they don’t find shit."

Garrett stopped and took another hit. "So who’s got the other disk?"

I took out a flier that had been folded in my pocket for a long time. I looked at the date—July 31, tonight. Nine to midnight. Driving like bats out of hell, we could be there just when things started cooking. No offense to the bats.

Besides, Garrett was leering at Maia’s legs again and about to offer her another beer. If I didn’t make a counteroffer we’d be here all night.

"You like art openings?" I asked her.

34

Even with the windows rolled down at ten at night the Buick felt like the inside of a blow drier. I sat shotgun and watched the subdivisions go by while a cold triangle of sweat glued my shirt to the back of my seat. The smell of dead skunks and brushfires blew through the car.

I guess I was being too quiet. When we passed Live Oak, Maia finally reached out and touched my arm.

“You still thinking about Garrett?"

I shook my head.

In fact I hadn’t thought about much else since we’d left Austin. I’d been foolish to think I’d get away from Garrett without one of his lectures. While Maia retrieved the rental car from the Marriott parking lot, Garrett had given me his philosophy on old girlfriends. Then for the millionth time he’d cataloged Dad’s offenses against the family; how Dad had basically abandoned Garrett and Shelley after their mother had died, left them with his abusive second wife for years while he went out drinking, politicking, falling in love with whores and junior Leaguers. How Garrett took to running away and Shelley took to abusive men.

"By the time he married your mom it was too f**king late to make any difference," Garrett said. "Shelley and I were out of the house and your mom was too damn nice to change him. She never told you the last straw, did she? You were in what--tenth grade? The bastard took your mom to some party at the McNay Museum, then disappeared. When your mom and her friends finally found him, he was down in the woods by the old fish pond screwing the lights out of junior Leaguer number seven. He just smiled, zipped his pants, and went back into the party to get another drink."

Garrett laughed weakly. Then he looked down at where his lap should’ve been. "Let the bastard stay dead, little brother. It’s the only thing that’s ever given me a sense of justice."

Maia exited in downtown San Antonio. We drove past the decaying mansions of the King William District, then across East Arsenal where the San Antonio River flowed by sluggish and polluted with tourist left-overs. Its banks this far south were empty except for the crack addicts.

When we pulled up in front of Blue Star the gravel lot was already full to bursting with BMWs and Ferraris. Women in evening dresses did coke on the hoods of their cars; men in black sweated in the heat and drank champagne on the old loading docks of the renovated warehouses. An apathetic handwritten sign in front of one of the larger galleries announced Beau’s opening upstairs at a loft space called Galleria Azul, perched at the top of a narrow iron fire escape.

Inside the gallery, halfhearted Western swing warbled from a few wall speakers. Somebody had put an old saddle on the table next to the sign-in book. Twenty or thirty people were drifting around the room looking at bad photos of authentic cowboys. One of the guests was wearing a starburst Jerry Garcia tie, clipped with a wrinkled green press pass that had been old during Watergate. He came up next to me from behind the beer keg and quietly belched garlic.

"The beer is free," Carlon McAffrey said, "but these little sandwich things suck."

In one hand Carlon had a spiral notebook pinched between two fingers and a stack of canapés in his palm. He handed me his cup of Lone Star from the other hand so he could shake with Maia.

"Carlon McAffrey," he said. “You’re not Lillian."

Maia smiled. "Likewise, I’m sure."

Carlon nodded. He was nice enough to puff his cheeks out for the next belch, holding it in.

"You hear about your buddy Sheff?" he asked me.

"Somebody made his office into a drive-through morgue last night."

"I heard."

Carlon waited. I looked disinterested. Finally Carlon’s blue eyes detached from my face and made a circuit of the people in the room, looking for new prey.

"Okay," he said. “I’ve seen ranches, I’ve seen cows, I’ve seen Councilman Asante schmoozing it up in back. So far I see nothing worth a headline."