Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(17)

Larry pointed to the extra breakfast plates he’d ordered.

He kicked out a chair for me. “Wasn’t enough you shot a doctor this week, huh? You’re riding a shit avalanche, son.”

“Good to see you, too, Larry.”

Since retiring from the Sheriff’s Department, Larry had gone completely gray. He’d gotten a hearing aid, grown a scraggly beard and cultivated a potbelly. He looked like Santa Claus after boot camp.

Ralph sat across from him and spread a napkin in his lap. He started heaping huevos rancheros into a tortilla.

Larry glanced at him with distaste. “Tres, if your father could see you now—”

“Can you help us or not?” I asked. I’d already told him everything over the phone. Some of it he’d already heard from cop friends. None of it seemed to surprise him.

Larry ran his finger around the edge of his Bloody Mary glass. “Your friend here is a killer.”

“You can talk to me, Drapiewski.” Ralph took a bite of eggs. “I speak inglés.”

Larry’s eyes turned steely. I remembered something my dad had said once about Larry Drapiewski being better than a cattle prod when it came to scaring the shit out of suspects.

“Arguello,” he said, “if it wasn’t Tres asking me this, if I didn’t owe his father my life a dozen times over—”

“My wife. Can you get me in to see her or not?”

Larry stared across the plaza, toward the parking garage where we’d come in. “Not possible.”

“Your guys work hospital security when an officer is shot,” I said.

“We rotate with SAPD. Professional courtesy. The answer is still no.”

“Is Ana stabilized?” I asked.

“She’s still alive. That’s all I know.”

“Then she needs protection,” Ralph said.

Larry glared at him. “Why do you think the cops are on round-the-clock guard duty, Arguello?”

“And if the guy who shot her is a cop?”

Larry blinked. “You’re some piece of work. Why don’t you be a man and turn yourself in? You have a daughter to think about.”

Ralph started to get up.

I grabbed his arm, pushed him back into his seat. “Larry, promise me you’ll keep Ana safe. Promise me the deputies looking after her are good men.”

“I’m retired, Tres.”

“Every man in the department owes you something.”

He sipped his Bloody Mary, checked his watch. His eyes drifted again toward the parking lot. “I’ll do what I can. In exchange, Arguello surrenders.”

“We’re talking about Frankie White’s murder,” I said. “You know what’ll happen to Ralph once word gets out.”

“He made that bed.”

“He didn’t,” I said. “You must’ve heard something about the case back then—some rumor. Something.”

“This is crazy, Tres. Don’t get sucked into it.”

“White’s enemies, maybe?”

“Just talk.” He checked his watch again. “Zapata—you probably already know that. Or the Zacagni family out of Houston. There was something about a hit man, Titus Roe, maybe hired by the family of one of Frankie’s victims.”

“What do you mean—Frankie’s victims?”

Larry glanced uneasily at Ralph, then back at me. “Hell, Tres . . . You don’t know? Forget it. Nobody on the right side of the law is going to help you with this. You’ve got to surrender.”

Something about the way he said it—the way he kept glancing at the parking lot.

I pushed my chair out. “It’s time we left,” I told Ralph.

“Eat first,” Larry said. “I paid for that and you haven’t touched it.”

“Since when have you worn a hearing aid, Larry?”

Ralph put his hands in his lap. “It’s a trap.”

There was a glint of movement on the roof of Mi Tierra, just at the corner of the building.

“I’m sorry, Tres,” Larry said. “I don’t have a choice. Mr. Arguello, put your hands on top of your head, please, very slowly.”

“A cross fire,” I grumbled. “Damn you, Larry.”

“Why don’t you use that little two-way radio in your ear,” Ralph said evenly. “Tell your friends I got a pistol under my napkin, aimed straight at your dick.”

“Shoot,” Larry dared him. “Sniper on the parking garage roof will take off your head. Otherwise, put your hands up and we’ll wait for the SWAT team to join—”

Ralph overturned the table into Larry’s lap.

I rolled to the ground and got up running.

Ralph was way ahead of me. He dove behind the only other occupied table—the family of startled tourists—and burst into the restaurant where the crowd was thicker.

There was no snap of gunfire. No clear shot.

We wove through the dining room, knocking down waiters and kicking over breakfast platters. Larry Drapiewski was yelling and cursing behind us.

I glanced back long enough to see two SWAT guys in full combat gear jump the patio railing. Both were carrying assault rifles.

Nice to feel wanted.

“Not the front,” Ralph warned.