Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(18)

He was right. Two uniformed deputies were pushing through the hostess’s line, knocking over baskets of pralines.

Fortunately, Ralph and I knew Mi Tierra better than most places on earth. I’d been coming here since age fifteen. I’d retched my first pitcher of margaritas into their men’s room toilet.

We burst into the kitchen, ran for the delivery ramp. Cops behind us yelled at the dishwashers: “Get down!”

Finally one of the smarter cops yelled it in Spanish, but by the time he got off a shot we were through the service exit.

I didn’t notice the uniformed officer outside the door until it was too late.

“Vato!” Ralph yelled.

The deputy was waiting to the side of the kitchen entrance, his gun drawn, ready to fire at whoever came through first. That happened to be me.

In a heartbeat, I registered his cocky smile, the gleam in his eyes that told me he intended to shoot first and make up a good story later. I watched him level the gun, then wham. I went flying sideways, the air slammed out of me. The pistol cracked.

When I looked up, the deputy was crumpled on the curb. Ralph’s knuckles were bleeding. I could hear the other cops still pushing and cursing their way through the kitchen, trying to shove through the mob of upset dishwashers.

“Come on!” Ralph ordered. He yanked me to my feet and ran.

I shook off my daze and followed. When I caught up, Ralph had already stopped a cab and pulled out the driver. I had just enough time to jump in the back before Ralph peeled out, the cabbie screaming and running after us, providing beautiful cover from the cops who were trying to take aim at us.

We heard a lot of sirens, saw a lot of lights, but they were too slow bringing around the helicopter. A critical mistake. We shot under Interstate 10 and into the labyrinth of the West Side, which opened up to embrace us like a mother.

EIGHT MINUTES LATER WE WERE SHIVERING in a storm drain off Palo Alto, listening to the police helicopter circle overhead and the sirens wail.

We’d left our cab half submerged in the lake of Our Lady of the Lake University, the car’s back end sticking up like the Iwo Jima Monument. The way Ralph and I figured it, SAPD would have to dispatch at least five cops to deal with that new neighborhood conversation piece, which left only two thousand and fifty on the force to search the West Side for us.

Ralph kicked the corrugated metal of the storm drain as if it were Larry Drapiewski’s face.

“You saved me back there,” I said. “You pushed me out of the way.”

The look Ralph gave me was the same he’d given Frankie White, years ago, when Frankie made a comment about Ralph beating up his stepfather. A blank stare—as if I were questioning something that was completely obvious. “What was I supposed to do?”

“You could’ve gotten yourself killed.”

Ralph shrugged.

Despite my gratitude, that made me angry. Here I was trying to save his butt . . . He was the one with the family. He was supposed to know better than to risk himself.

“What did Larry mean,” I asked, “about Frankie’s victims?”

Ralph wrapped his bleeding knuckles in his shirt. “That was after high school, ’round ’86, ’87. You seriously never heard?”

I shook my head. Those years had been a daze for me. My father had been murdered in ’85. Shortly afterward, I’d fled San Antonio for the Bay Area and tried to sever my Texas roots as much as possible.

“Frankie was getting into trouble,” Ralph said. “I mean . . . bad trouble.”

Some of my memories about Frankie White started weaving together—the image of him staring at Ralph’s fourteen-year-old cousin through the window, other things I hadn’t thought about in a long time. I remembered my dad’s old stories about Frankie’s father, Guy White, and some of the things Guy had done in his youth to prove his power. A few of those exploits had supposedly driven his wife to an early grave.

“Frankie’s trouble,” I said. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with women, would it?”

Ralph nodded. “When it started getting bad . . . I mean, so bad it was affecting his family, Mr. White talked to me about him. You know, helping him settle down. Finding a business he liked.”

“Mr. White came to you?”

“Maybe it was a little bit my idea. But Mr. White and I were square, vato. After Frankie died, I got nothing out of that. Took me five years to pay back Mr. White for the money Frankie had fronted me, but I did it. I paid off the pawnshops free and clear. I’m not crazy.”

I tried to imagine how much trouble Frankie could’ve been in for Guy White to see Ralph as a moderating influence on his son. It wasn’t easy.

The police helicopter made another pass overhead, the rotors’ noise making the loose rivets of the storm drain rattle.

Ralph said, “I am thinking about her, you know.”

“Ana?”

“The baby.” Ralph closed his eyes. “Drapiewski said I have a daughter to think about. I been afraid since the day she was born that something in my past would come back to hurt her. Last two years, vato . . . I felt like I’ve been loaned somebody else’s life, you know? Never deserved this kind of luck. Best two years I ever had.”

I didn’t answer right away. I wasn’t sure how. He was talking about the two years when I’d been part of his life the least.