Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(58)

He showed me his gold teeth. Up close, his breath smelled like used motor oil.

"I’ll file that in the proper place," I promised.

Asante took his beer from the top of the statue, nodded politely to Maia. "Good night, Jack."

He walked away with his bodyguard in tow.

Maia raised her eyebrows. She looked like she was about to exhale for the First time in ten minutes when Carlon came up, hands still full, and nudged me with his elbow.

"Okay. Back window, now."

I stared at him.

He kept walking toward the back of the room, not waiting to see if we would follow. When we caught up he was standing on the tips of his huaraches, peering down through a tiny metal-barred window into the alley behind the warehouse.

"Okay," he said, "Dan’s blond, right, drives a silver Beamer?"

“Yeah."

Carlon frowned. "You want to tell me why he’s delivering a sack lunch to Beau Karnau in the alley?"

Maia and I looked out. It took a few seconds for our eyes to adjust to the darkness outside before we saw the two figures, one blond, sitting with arms folded on the hood of the silver BMW, the other a balding brunette, visible because of his stark white tux shirt. Sure enough, Beau was holding a brown lunch bag, shaking it in Dan Sheff’s face like he was unhappy with it.

"Maybe Dan forgot to pack a dessert," I said.

Dan just sat there, silent. In the shadows, I couldn’t see his face, but his body looked stiff, tense with anger. Then, while Beau was midsentence yelling at him, Dan delivered the same haymaker swing he’d tried on me in Lillian’s front yard last Sunday. This time it connected. Beau went over backward and the lunch bag spilled thick green bricks of cash across the alley, into the light from the gallery windows.

“Or maybe he didn’t," said Carlon.

35

After Dan Sheff’s taillights disappeared down East Arsenal and Beau started staggering back through the alley, Carlon paid the gallery owner with the yellow shirt and the genie pants fifty dollars for the use of his office. It was probably the most money the gallery owner had seen all night.

We waited less than five minutes before Beau came in to clean up. His tux shirt was stained and half-untucked from his jordaches, his left hand was cupped over the eye Dan Sheff had just punched, and he was cursing somebody’s great-grandmother. I stepped in next to him and slapped his good eye with my open hand. I probably could’ve just punched him, but I was in a bad mood. The palm strike in tai chi is arguably the most painful attack. It’s a soft strike, the way a whip is soft. Sometimes it takes a layer of skin off. I didn’t want any more stand-offs with Mr. Karnau.

Beau’s cursing cut off in a startled grunt. Now blind, he stopped walking, but I kicked his legs out from under him and kept him going forward, directing his fall into a director’s chair. The chair groaned but didn’t break.

"Shit," said Carlon.

I took the brown paper bag off the floor where Beau had dropped it and spilled the contents on the desk in front of Carlon. The green bricks were stacks of fifties. For a second I thought Carlon would have a coronary. Beau stayed very still, both eyes covered, head down. He sounded like he was struggling to remember the tune of a song. When he finally looked up out of two swollen eyes, he had to stare at me for two minutes before he realized who I was. Blood washed through his face. He thought about getting mad, then seemed to realize he didn’t have the energy for it.

"Great," he mumbled. "Wonderful."

I touched his right eye. He winced.

"Dan decided to charge some interest this time," I observed. "What’s the problem, Beau? Eddie couldn’t

be your delivery boy this time?"

"Tres—" Maia began. I ignored her.

With a pair of rapidly swelling eyes it was hard for Beau to look mean, but he was trying his best. I took the ceramic steering wheel from the broken road-trip statuette out of my pocket and tossed it in Beau’s lap.

"I didn’t plan on it, but it seems I’ve started collecting your stuff. "

Karnau’s face was paralyzed for a moment, then there was a glimmer of recognition.

"What the hell—"

"Beau," I said, "let me give you some perspective here. I have one disk; you have the other. Without both of them, I’m betting you don’t have shit to keep the people you’ve been blackmailing from eating you alive. You want to talk about that?"

"I don’t—" he started to yell.

Then he just stopped and stared at me. He brought his fingers to his temples and started making little circles with them.

Maia said: "Mr. Karnau? It would be best if you talked to us."

He focused on her, dazed. Then his face hardened.

"You sound like a f**king lawyer," he said finally.

Maia tried a smile. "I’m not representing anyone."

That made Beau laugh, a shrill little sound.

"Wonderful," he said. "That’s all I need."

He picked up the ceramic steering wheel and threw it back at me. "I don’t have shit to say to you. And I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about."

I looked at Maia.

" ‘I’m not representing anyone,’ " I repeated. "Great line. Opened him right up."