Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(31)

We would bring Stirman down.”

“You. Sam Barrera. Mr. By-the-Book.”

“Circumstances were different, eight years ago.” His voice was tinged with bitterness.

“Erainya knew about the frame-up?” I asked.

“Fred wouldn’t have told her.”

“Then why is she reluctant to cal the police?”

He hesitated. “We have too much to lose.”

“Your reputation. She did nothing wrong.”

He gave me a wary look.

There was more to it. He wasn’t worried about looking bad, having his frame-up exposed eight years later. Who would believe the truth anyway, or care? No prosecutor would be anxious to file charges against Barrera and an old Mexican lady for taking a demon like Wil Stirman off the streets.

We were back in the city now. Barrera turned south on I-10—not the way to my place.

He exited on Commerce and headed through downtown.

I didn’t want to talk to him, but final y I said, “Where the hel are you going?”

He drove to South Alamo and turned right, into Southtown.

Under different circumstances, this would’ve been fine with me. Invariably, Southtown was where I ended up whenever I had free time. I loved the dilapidated houses, the palm trees and crumbling sidewalks, old cantinas next to new art studios, tattoo shops, folk magic botánicas, pan dulce bakeries.

Back when I was stil speaking with my best friend Ralph, we would kick around down here, occasional y kicking heads when business cal ed for it. Two Northsiders, we would joke that this was the neighborhood we should have been born in. Southtown was where San Antonians came to remember why we lived in San Antonio.

Barrera parked on Cedar, in front of a big blue Victorian with a FOR SALE sign out front.

“What?” I asked.

He looked at me like the answer was obvious. “Home.”

I didn’t know what the hel he was talking about. Sam lived in an upper-middle-class two-bedroom in Hol ywood Park. His street was sleepy and safe and white-bread and about as far from Southtown as you could get.

“Look, Sam, as much as I love shopping for houses with you—”

“Real estate agent cal ed. She’s got an offer of a quarter mil ion. A quarter goddamn mil ion.”

I hesitated. “This is your family place?”

He kept his eyes on the house. “I was walking home as a kid—right on the corner there. Couple of cholos drove by and shot at me. The bul et ripped a hole in my jacket, embedded in our front porch. You can stil see the groove in the floorboards.”

“Wow,” I said. He was starting to scare me.

“Mom was too afraid to cal SAPD,” he continued. “They wouldn’t have done shit anyway. Next day at school, those cholos asked me how I liked the drive-by. They laughed, like it was a big joke. I beat the shit out of them. Otherwise, they would’ve tried it again. That’s the day I decided to become a cop. Not the local ass**les. Somebody bigger. FBI.”

“Sam?”

No response.

I touched his shoulder. “Sam.”

He started, as if I’d appeared from nowhere.

“Just remembering,” he said.

His face had gone pale. He looked sick with worry.

“Let’s cal the police,” I said. “You’re not in any shape to be running down Wil Stirman.”

“I’m fine. I’m just tired.”

He started the car, pul ed away from the curb. In a few minutes, we were back on 281, heading toward the North Side.

“What did you take from Stirman?” I asked Sam. “What is it he wants back?”

Sam kept driving, checking his rearview mirror as if looking for a tail. “I got a ful slate of meetings today.

Missed a lot, carting you around. Unlike Erainya, I’ve got accounts to handle.”

“You’re not sure,” I said. “Are you?”

He shifted the strap of his shoulder holster. Sweat stains had appeared in the armpits of his shirt. “I know where to find Stirman. I don’t need anyone’s help bringing him down. Not from you. Not from that goddamn Manos woman.”

It was something he might’ve said at any time during the years I’d known him, as his company rose to power at the expense of that goddamn Manos woman.

Same old Barrera. Irritating, arrogant, dependable.

But as he drove me home, I felt an uneasy pul in the pit of my stomach.

Barrera’s hands stayed steady on the wheel, his left turn signal stil blinking from the entrance ramp on Commerce, blinking al the way across town with a reassuring, meaningless rhythm.

Chapter 11

“That your old place?” Pablo asked.

Wil didn’t answer. He closed the car door, brushed the rain off his shoulders.

They had parked outside the abandoned plumbing supply shop on Avenue B—a big white building with a razor wire fence and stacks of corroding pipe in the yard.

Wil had walked the perimeter first. He’d noticed how much thicker the honeysuckle was on the fence, how the roof was fal ing apart. The windows on the second story, where he once lived, were now painted over.

There was stil a bul et hole visible in one pane of turquoise glass.

Final y, he’d built up the courage to go inside.

Upstairs, ratty sleeping bags, old needles, piles of clothes indicated junkies had been using the place to shoot up. Nobody there at the moment, which was fortunate for them.