Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(93)

Ralph grinned. "Ethan Allan, maybe."

“Levitt’s."

“I’m sold. You can do all my shops, vato."

Lamar came back and spent a few minutes with Ralph over the books. I looked at the guns, then watched the traffic in and out of the flop house across the street for a while. Finally Ralph shook hands again and Lamar handed over the keys. Lamar started to leave but on his way out he looked at me, hesitated, then came over. He was so nervous his Adam’s apple disappeared above his jawline. The yellow bruises turned pink.

“I just—" he started. "Hey, man, it just wasn’t necessary. That’s all I got to say."

Then he left.

I looked at Ralph for an explanation. His eyes floated behind his round lenses, impossible to read. The smile didn’t change.

“Loco," Ralph said. “I guess he thought you were somebody else, man."

“I guess."

We went back to Ralph’s new office, a cheaply paneled closet with a window AC unit, two metal folding chairs, and an unfinished particle—board desk. Ralph sat down and started looking through the drawers.

“You always do property deals in under five minutes with no paperwork?"

Ralph shrugged. “Details, vato. That’s for later."

He fished out a half-empty bottle of Wild Irish Rose and a few .38 rounds, then a stack of ragged manila folders. When he was satisfied there was nothing else, he sat back in his chair and smiled at me.

"Okay," he said. “So tell me about it."

“What do you want first? You’ve got your choice of three murders, blackmail, several pissed-off policemen—"

Ralph shook his head. “I know all that. I mean the Chinese woman. Tell me about her."

I stared at him for a few seconds. I guess I’d forgotten who I was talking to. Ralph would’ve heard just about everything that had happened to me over the last week. He’d know about the dead bodies, the heat, the people I’d talked to. But the question about Maia took me off guard.

I must’ve looked pretty irritated. Ralph laughed.

“Come on, wzto. All I want to know is this--are you still looking for Lillian or aren’t you? ’Cause if you’re not, that’s cool. I can take you home and save us some trouble."

"Some trouble?"

He shrugged.

"And if I’m still looking?"

He thumbed through the stack of manila folders. The action sent puffs of dust up in front of his face. He kept looking at me. “Is that a yes?"

"That’s a yes."

He shook his head, like I’d made a bad business decision. "Then this is between you and me. A couple of people came up to me over the last two days, telling me about this guy that turned up dead, this pendejo Eddie Moraga who took Lillian that Sunday."

"You’ve been sitting on information for the last two days?" I tried to keep my voice even.

Ralph leaned forward and spread his hands on the desk, palms up. "Hey, vato, every time I come to see you, I find the Man there. Or you’re with him. It kind of cuts down on the quality time I want to spend with you, you know?"

I nodded for him to go on.

"Okay, so first I talk to this guy, old friend of Eddie’s. He’s pretty shaken up about it all being in the papers Friday morning. So fifty dollars later and he says, yeah, he talked to Eddie on Monday night. He was all alone at this bar down on Culebra, talking about this hot date he’d had the night before. A date, vato, like this rich white girl would go out with him."

I couldn’t talk. I was remembering a ra**st I’d brought down for a client of Terrence & Goldman two years ago, a ra**st who’d talked about his "dates" with his victims, two of whom later turned up in garbage cans.

Ralph must’ve thought that through too. He’d been on the streets long enough. He looked at my expression.

"Hey, man," he said. He probably wanted to say something consoling. He shifted in his chair. "Like I said, if you were with this other lady, I could have just walked from this, vato. This isn’t easy shit—"

"Keep going. "

For a minute we both stared at the bottle of Wild Rose, almost tempted. Then Ralph sighed. “Yeah, anyway, so Eddie was talking about coming into some money from this lady. I don’t know, man, maybe not like she was paying him, maybe he was just making a joke, like he was getting paid to take her away for somebody else. Anyway, Eddie said that this lady was a fire-eater, like you couldn’t turn your back on her or she’d either steal your shit or kick you in the balls. That’s what he said. And check this out, vato: He said they went to this place he knew, a construction site he worked at, real intimate?

I shook my head. “There’s only a few thousand of those, Ralph."

“No, man," he said. “I’m not finished?

“What else?"

“Like I said, some other people talked to me. Some people who like a low profile. Keep that in mind."

I thought about Ralph and his .357 Magnum. “Low profile like you?"

"More than me, vato. These people, they’re in the car business, you know?"

“As in chop shop? S.A., second highest auto theft rate in the country?"

Ralph shrugged. "I wouldn’t know, vato. But I wouldn't tell these people they’re in second place, man. It might offend them."