Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(64)

"Don’t hold your breath," I told him.

Garza held his breath.

If anybody in Happy Haven had heard the shot, or cared about it, we hadn’t had any indication of it so far. Nevertheless, my internal timer was telling me it was past time to leave. I used Red’s flashlight to make a quick check of the kitchen while Maia examined the dead man. Under the silverware tray in the left kitchen drawer was a six-month lease to Terry Garza of Sheff Construction. When I got back to Maia she was looking at a photograph she’d found on the dead man. She frowned when I interrupted her train of thought by showing her the lease.

"Chez Garza."

She looked at me, nodded as if I’d said something of absolutely no consequence, then looked back down at the photo.

"Hello?" I said.

"I apologize," she said at last. “Maybe you should tell me more about your father’s murder."

She handed me the photo. It was almost identical to the one I’d seen in Karnau’s portfolio, but in this one, the blond man’s face was turned toward the camera. I still didn’t recognize him. The two missing figures were slightly closer to him. On the back "6/21" was written in black pen.

"Last month’s bill from Mr. Karnau," I said.

Maia starting complaining in Mandarin about my ignorance. "—facial hair fooling you again. Look at the bone structure of the cheeks, the eyes."

I looked more closely at the face of the blond man. It was thin, with deep-set eyes, crooked nose. Cleanshaven and short slicked-back hair. I imagined him with longer hair, curly, and a darker beard.

Suddenly I realized what the blackmail had been about. The revelation wasn’t exactly uplifting.

"Randall Halcomb," I said.

"With his killers," Maia agreed.

38

I got no sleep the rest of the night. At sunrise I was lying on my futon memorizing the ceiling and getting cold from Maia’s breath condensing on my skin. Finally I extracted myself from underneath her arm and got up.

Robert Johnson looked amazed that, for once, I was the first one out of bed. He immediately began playing tackle football with my feet as I tried to walk toward the kitchen. I would’ve cursed at him except I knew he’d curse back loud enough to wake Maia. I stumbled here and there, righting the coffee table, picking up clothes, putting the fallen paperbacks back on the kitchen counter. I struggled into some underwear and stood in front of the bathroom mirror for a while, picking wood paneling out of my arm, then reapplying Mercurochrome to my busted cheek.

"What a looker," I told myself. Robert Johnson stared at me from the lid of the toilet and yawned. I slipped into shorts and a sweatshirt, then did a solid two hours of tai chi on the back porch, starting with the  low stance to shock my muscles into working. After a while the thighs and calves unknotted and I got too sweaty even for the mosquitoes.

I was just starting to feel better when the neighborhood woke up for Sunday. The two pairs of eyes reappeared in the upstairs window across the alley and stared at me through the miniblind slats. The lady next door came out to read her paper on the patio again. This time I hardly warranted a second look. She kept her coffee cup firmly in hand and tightened her terry-cloth robe. Then she smiled wickedly as she let a small herd of Chihuahuas out the back door. For the last half of my set, they threatened me from their side of the fence, yapping insanely and popping up into the air like a tireless row of Mexican jumping beans. Meanwhile their mother read aloud to them from Roddy Stinson, repeating the funny bits.

I tried to be grateful for the challenge to my concentration. Think emptiness, Navarre. Blue water trickling down through your body. Cultivate the chi. This morning, all I cultivated was a headache and the need to pee like a racehorse. I said my silent apologies to Sifu Chen and went inside.

Maia was making the last of the Peet’s coffee. Her hair was blown into a mass on one side of her head, as if she’d been walking on the beach. She was wearing my last clean T-shirt. She looked up, smiled, and for a second burned the images of dead bodies out of my mind. But only for a second.

"You look like hell, Navarre. And you just about wore this poor girl out last night."

"I’m always great in the sack after getting the shit kicked out of me."

"I’ll remember that." She pulled me closer by the elastic of my shorts, then kissed my face. I winced.

" Speaking of last night--" I said.

She smiled, a little sad. "Leave it alone for a while, Tex. Okay?"

I sat down with coffee at the counter, pushed Robert Johnson’s butt out of my face, and stared at the .45 Maia had taken from Red, the stacks of fifties I’d taken from Beau Karnau, the crumpled photo of Randall Halcomb we’d found on Terry Garza’s corpse.

I didn’t like the connections I was coming up with. Ten years ago my father somehow finds out about the scheme to fix the contract on Travis Center. Before he can make it public, the people behind the plan use Randall Halcomb to silence the Sheriff. Then, before the FBI can track down Halcomb, his employers silence him too. Maia and I looked at each other.

"First rule of assassination," I told Maia, "kill the killer."

Maia frowned. "And Beau Karnau just happens to be there with a camera—in a field in the country in the middle of the night. That’s a hell of a coincidence."

I agreed. It didn’t make sense. Neither did the fact that blackmail payments for a ten-year-old murder had only been happening for the last year.