Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(14)

“Hell—he’s got my—”

“Damn it!”

Sounds of scuffling, something heavy thrown against a cubicle wall. Then a bruised and bloody elf, now armed with the young detective’s Glock, burst into the office, Kelsey and two other detectives close behind.

Maia’s reflexes were slow. Before she knew what was happening, the elf was behind her, his arm clamped around her waist, the gun at her throat.

“Back off!” the elf screamed at the cops. “Back the hell off!”

The elf’s breath was sour and warm against her cheek. The muzzle of the Glock dug under her jaw. But at that moment, Maia was more scared of Kelsey. He had his pistol trained on the suspect, just an inch to the right of Maia’s ear. She saw no thought of negotiation in his eyes. No concern for her safety. He was hesitating only because he wanted a nice clean shot.

Maia grabbed the elf’s arm around her waist. She dug her thumb into the acupressure point at his wrist.

He screamed, his muscles loosening from the shock to his nervous system.

She drove her elbow into his ribs. He buckled forward and she rammed his head into the desk. He crumpled to the floor, the gun clattering onto the carpet.

The cops went slack-jawed.

“Gentlemen,” she said shakily. “If you’ll excuse me . . .”

They parted for her like a bead curtain.

Halfway through the homicide division, Kelsey caught up with her. “Counselor.”

His face was a beautiful shade of pomegranate. “What was—how did you . . .”

She took a shaky breath. “We have no further business, Detective. If I communicate with my client, I will advise him of our conversation.”

Kelsey looked at her as if reappraising her value. He rubbed the old scars on his fingers. “I didn’t tell you the deal, Miss Lee. Forty-eight hours.”

“Until?”

“Until the DNA test results from the Franklin White case are made public. Until we release the fact that Ana got shot because she was about to name her husband as prime suspect.”

“You wouldn’t.”

His expression stayed deadly serious. “This time Monday morning, Counselor. Navarre has that long to bring me Ralph Arguello. After that, believe me, I won’t have to worry about bringing Arguello to justice, or anybody who’s helping him. Guy White will take care of our problem for us.”

Chapter 4

RALPH AND I SPENT A COLD SLEEPLESS NIGHT WITH SOME transients under a bridge on West Main.

The homeless guys decorated a Christmas tree with beer cans. They roasted pecans over a trash can fire, tried to remember the words to “We Three Kings” and kept asking Ralph if he had the DTs because of the way he was shaking.

I tried talking to him about Ana and the Frankie White case. I told him Ana would be okay. We had other options besides running from the police.

I might as well have been talking to the transients’ shopping cart.

Ralph stared into the flames, every once in a while muttering the Rosary in Spanish, as if trying to draw ghosts out of the heat.

THE FIRST TIME I’D MET RALPH was also my first real experience with Frankie White. We were all juniors at Alamo Heights High School. Ralph got jumped by three Anglo linebackers outside a convenience store because he’d flirted with one of their girlfriends. I was on the football team, too, but I never liked unfair fights. I jumped in on Ralph’s side. He and I kicked some ass. One of the linebackers happened to be an overgrown blond preppie named Frankie White.

In typical Ralph fashion, he became friends with both Frankie and me after the fight. I was never sure what Ralph saw in Frankie, but I understood Frankie’s fascination with Ralph. Ralph was completely unintimidated by Frankie’s mobster family ties. No one in San Antonio had ever had the guts to punch Frankie in the face.

Several months later, Ralph invited Frankie and me to dinner at his house for the first time.

The Arguello family lived in a crumbling white adobe cottage on the wrong side of McCullough, ten feet from the train tracks. The skeet club’s shooting range was behind the back fence.

The tiny rooms were packed with a horde of smaller Arguello siblings, cousins and nephews whose names I could never keep straight. The extended family, Ralph informed me, lived with Mama Arguello full-time. Most had dead or missing or apathetic parents.

Frankie White gave me an amused look, like, Can you believe this shit?

Sleeping bags filled the living room. Three dogs lounged on the sofa. The walls were cluttered with family photos and crucifixes and portraits of saints. No air-conditioning. A hundred degrees inside, with a limp breeze pushing the pale yellow curtains. Ralph’s mother stood at the stove, making tortillas by hand and cooking them on a hot plate. She kissed me, though she didn’t know me. She smelled of gladiolas and cornmeal.

If it had been me, at age seventeen, I would’ve been embarrassed by the house, my mother, the way the kids clamored over Ralph and demanded piggyback rides and quarters and arm-wrestling rematches. Especially with Frankie White there, who lived in a mansion and drove his own Mercedes. But Ralph didn’t care. He grinned at the kids, laughed, joked around. He seemed as confident as he had when Frankie and the other linebackers tried to assault him. Nothing fazed him.

At least, not until we went into the backyard to set the picnic table and found his latest stepfather (the sixth) trying to kiss Ralph’s fourteen-year-old cousin. Apparently, it had happened before, because Ralph’s voice turned to ice. “I warned you, pendejo.”