The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(17)

I thought about what Jimmy had told me the night he died, about wanting to make amends with his family. Maybe the background search he'd wanted me to do was simply that—family history. Still, something about the folder bothered me. I put it aside for later.

Robert Johnson was circling my ankles, purring, no doubt asking where his new friends with the weapons had gone.

Jimmy's memorial was tonight. Garrett would be there. Ruby McBride would probably talk to him sometime today, let him know

I was staying at the dome. Better to face him now, let him know I wasn't going to stay out of his problems.

Either that, or I could make the call I was dreading to San Francisco.

Robert Johnson looked up at me smugly, his eyes half closed. "You're lucky," I told him. "You never have to visit your siblings."

CHAPTER 8

Sunday at lunchtime, there shouldn't have been any rush hour heading into Austin from the lake, but I hit one anyway.

It was fortyfive minutes before I pulled in front of Garrett's apartment.

The Carmen Miranda was parked by the stairs, which may or may not have meant Garrett was home. If ballistics had come back positive, that might've been enough for Lopez to get an arrest warrant, start the indictment process, after which things would happen fast. I ran down all the possibilities I didn't like—all the things that could've gone wrong since I'd left Garrett on Friday afternoon. I hoped he'd gotten himself a lawyer.

I parked in the shade, sat with the engine idling, and thought about what to say if Garrett were home. Just checking in. Been indicted yet? Still in debt a few million?

Want to grab a beer?

I walked up the steps of The Friends.

When I knocked at Garrett's door, a woman's muffled voice said, "Just a minute."

Even then, I didn't see it coming.

I stood there stupidly as the door opened, the woman looking down at a fistful of bills, saying, "I don't have correct change."

And then she looked up.

She was barefoot, dressed in khaki walking shorts, an army green tank top. Her skin was a rich honey colour, her hair long and glossy black.

Some vestigial gland in my body started to work, dumping a few cc's of acid into my bloodstream—just enough to make every vein burn.

"Hello, Tres," Maia Lee said. "You're not the pizza man."

She wore no makeup, no jewellery. Her eyes glowed with that internal heat which makes her a formidable enemy, or friend. If she was at all ruffled to see me again, after nearly two years, she hid it superbly.

"Okay, I'll bite," I managed. "Why are you in my brother's apartment?"

"Nice to see you, too."

"Let me rephrase that. Where the hell is Garrett?"

She stepped back, out of the doorway, motioned me inside.

I brushed past her. Acid kept coursing around my circulatory system. My hands were sweating like an adolescent's.

Nobody was in the living room, just Dickhead the parrot up on his windowledge perch.

Music was playing—Buffett's greatest hits, but set to Maia's volume level, so soft, intimate, for Garrett's place that it struck me as insulting.

I walked through the kitchen, into the bedroom. No suitcase on the bed. No unpacked Maia clothes.

Out on the shoeboxsized deck, Garrett was sitting in a patio chair, the tails of an XXL

Hawaiian shirt melting around his waist, a John Deere gimme cap shading his eyes.

Papers littered the deck around him. He had an open beer at his side, a laptop set up on a TV tray, a joint hanging off the corner of his mouth. Hunter S. Thompson does South Texas.

"I see you made your calls," I told him.

He missed a stroke on the keyboard, glared up at me. He spoke with the joint still in his mouth. "I'm busy. Wait a minute."

He went back to typing—the way Garrett always types, with a vengeance, as if the keys needed to learn their lesson.

I stepped to the railing, tried to put aside the appealing idea of throwing Garrett's laptop off the balcony.

Of course, I wouldn't have been the first to have that thought at The Friends. The alley below was littered with broken couches, smashed TVs, mounds of clothes still on hangers.

Floorboards creaked behind me.

Maia stood in the doorway, her arms crossed, pizza money still crumpled in one hand.

The sunlight through the canopy of branches

made her face and shoulders look like camouflage. I resented the fact that she looked even better than I'd remembered.

She met my eyes—daring me to speak first.

"Where did we leave off?" I mused. "That's right—you were just telling me how much you hated visiting Texas."

"Garrett called me, Tres—months ago, when Matthew Pena first approached them."

"You represented Pena twice—got him off the hook twice."

She nodded. "And when Garrett asked my advice, I told him as much as I could without breaking attorneyclient privilege. I told him that under no circumstances, ever, should his company deal with Matthew Pena."

"That worked real well."

Anger flickered in her eyes. "Garrett kept me posted. When Jimmy Doebler— With what happened Thursday night, I felt responsible. I came down."

"From San Francisco."

"Yes, Tres. Modern conveniences, like airplanes, make that possible."