Big Red Tequila (Tres Navarre #1)(94)

“Okay."

Ralph nodded. “So anyway, I ask around about this green Chevy Eddie’s supposed to drive. His friend tells me it’s a ’65, fully restored. So I think, sure, the police are just going to find this Chevy sitting around on the streets after a week."

“So your friends just happened to come across it, strictly legit. "

“They were about to paint it white, man." Ralph’s frown told me he didn’t approve of the color choice.

“So I told them to wait awhile, leave it like it is."

“And how was that?"

He looked at me, grinning again. Then he took out a brown paper bag from his pocket and poured the contents onto the desk. White powder. I didn’t even have time to misread it as coc**ne before Ralph shook his head.

“No, vato, check it out."

I looked closer.

"It was all over the wheel casings, man. The outside was washed off but it was caked on thick inside. You know that rainstorm that came through last week?"

I smelled it. I tasted it. It seemed to be powdered rock.

"I give."

Ralph shook his head, disappointed.

"Oh,. man, " he said, “you didn’t live there. You didn’t go to Heights with your shoes covered in it. We lived in it, vato. Mother of God, my old man’s lungs collapsed because of this shit. It’s lime powder, man, pure lime."

It took a minute for that to register.

“As in the stuff they make cement from," I said. "Okay, vato," he said, trying to lead me to what he was thinking.

“Couldn’t that be any construction site?"

Ralph laughed and started repacking his desk.

"You goddamn white collars. No, man, who mixes cement on site? That much lime only comes from the factory."

As usual, the answer was something under my nose, something I’d lived next to most of my life. When I put it together I almost couldn’t believe how ridiculous the idea was, which probably meant it was the truth. Ralph and I looked at each other. God knows I didn’t have much to smile about. All I’d probably learned was where to find the body of the woman I thought I loved. But I looked at Ralph grinning like a fiend and I started smiling anyway.

"It’s pretty slim, man," I said.

"It ain’t goin’ to get any fatter, man," Ralph said. "You got to jump on it."

"Goddamn Cementville," I said.

Ralph grinned. "There’s no place like home."

58

The sign on the fence outside the factory said " Sheff Construction—Keep Out."

There was no movement inside the barbed wire. No trucks, no lights in the broken windows of the old factory. Ralph and I sat in his car for a while and just watched while the Cadillacs went by, old men going to the golf course, women going to shop Albertson’s and SteinMart. The new subdivision, Lincoln Heights, had its own private security, and after the same patrolman drove by us twice, real slow, Ralph and I decided it was time to move on.

“Tonight," I said. “I can’t do anything until then without being seen by half the North Side. Neither could they."

Ralph followed the security car with his eyes until it was out of sight. "How you know who ‘they’ is, man?"

"One way to find out."

As if he were reading my mind, Ralph reached into his backseat and produced a cell phone. I dialed a number I had memorized from Lillian’s datebook and got an answering machine.

“I’m thinking about visiting Cementville," I said. Then I hung up.

Ralph started the Lincoln and pulled it into traffic.

"You got the right person, they got to move her tonight," he said. "Or at least they got to look."

“Yeah."

"You want some backup?"

I started to say no, then I decided not to be hasty.

“I’ll call you."

Ralph nodded, then handed me a card.

“Two numbers," he said. "Cell phone and beeper."

“A beeper?"

Ralph grinned. “Hey, vato, the doctor is in."

When Ralph dropped me at home it was early afternoon. Several hours until dark, when I could actually do something. Rather than go crazy watching Robert Johnson run circles around the living room, I took my sword and walked down the street to the edge of Brackenridge Park.

The cicadas were the only thing stirring. Nobody was stupid enough to walk over a block in this heat, much less exercise in it. I crossed Broadway and jogged over to the Witte Museum where the old iron gates of the Alligator Gardens were hanging off their hinges. One of the less successful tourist attractions in San Antonio, the Gardens had seen ticket sales to the public schools drop off dramatically after the alligators had eaten a few hands off the trainers. Then the place had faded into obscurity and eventually closed. The gates were easy to climb, though, and the dried basin where the gators had been kept made a perfect shady tai chi surface. I did an hour and a half of high stance until I was sweating and about to pass out from the heat. Then I rested for a few minutes and did another two hours of sword. By the time the sun started going down, I had cleared my mind and worked the kinks out of my body. I knew what the plan was.

I bought some provisions from the Lincoln Heights Albertson’s, then I drove down to Vandiver and traded cars with my mother. More or less. Actually she’d taken her Volvo somewhere so I had to leave the keys to the VW in her mailbox and hot-wire Jess’s truck. With luck he’d need to run for beer between TV shows and would find it missing long before I could get it back to him. My evening was starting to look up.