The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(70)

"You know who I am, Chich?" Ralph asked.

"Arguello."

"Then you know to get the f**k up."

Chich's eyes slid to Ana DeLeon. They dismissed her, then focused on me. I smiled.

Slowly, Chich stood.

His face was dead still except for his mouth, which kept twitching at the corners — from fear or amusement, I couldn't tell which. He said, "You going to  make this a small mistake or a big one, Arguello?"

Ralph motioned for him to move to one side. I frisked him, removed two switchblades and a tiny 9mm from his pockets. Ralph found some keys and a cash box in the desk. We threw it all in the corner with the .38.

"You can sit down now," Ralph told him.

Chich sank back into his chair.

"You ice Hector?" Ralph asked.

Chich's mouth twitched. "That supposed to be a joke?"

"You the man in the white van, Chich. You better start telling me some things about last night."

"Fuck off, Arguello."

Ralph moved to the wall fan. He ran a fingernail thoughtfully along the plastic grill, then slid his .357 back in his belt. "I knew a guy once, got his hand stuck in one of those old metal fans. You know the round ones? Nowadays everything is f**king plastic, man. Look at this."

Ralph put his left hand on top of the fan, worked the fingers of his right into the holes of the grill, and pulled. The top wasn't fastened very well and bowed out. On Ralph's second pull, the grill ripped away with a watery zing, exposing the white circular haze of spinning fan blades. Ralph dropped the grill to the floor. He had little bloody lines on the pads of his fingers.

Ana stood in the corner of the room, her black Justin boot resting on Chich's .38.

"Cheap Taiwanese shit," Ralph said. "You think it'd do much damage, Chich?"

Chich tried for a smile. "You're full of it. Fuckin' pawnshop man."

He wasn't so chatty when Ralph picked up the open-faced fan and heaved it at him.

The spinning blades caught Chich's upraised forearms, grinding into him. The sound was like an outboard motor hitting a sandbar. Metal and plastic shuddered and Chich screamed. He lurched backward out of his chair, flailing, cursing, brushing himself violently like he was covered with fire ants, dragging the fan with him, a blade snagged on his tux shirt, the cord ripped free from the outlet. The fan clattered at his feet.

"You f**king lunatic!"

Chich held up his arms. They were ridged from wrist to elbow with smile-shaped contusions, some merely deep welts, a few ripped open and bleeding. Ralph walked over to Ana, smiled at her, then bent down and picked up the .38 he'd knocked off Chich's desk. He pointed it at its owner. "Get up."

"I'm bleeding!"

"That was just an icebreaker, man. Get us through the posturing shit. Now sit in your chair."

Chich stood. He wiped his clothes, wiped his mouth. He didn't seem to notice he was smearing blood. Finally he got back into his chair.

Ana said, "Ralph—"

Ralph raised his hand, gesturing for patience. "So, ese, you want to tell us what you been up to?"

Chich crossed his forearms, pressed them against his stomach to stop the bleeding. The gesture didn't hide the fact that he was shaking. "I'll f**king kill you, man."

Ralph checked the revolver's chamber, spun in a round, aimed the gun at Chich's head.

"Me and some of my men," Chicharron started, "we were following Hector around. We were there last night. We didn't kill nobody."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm telling you. Hector and me done business together for years. I had some questions over the last month or so, but I wasn't looking to kill him."

Ralph kept the gun leveled. "What kind of business?"

Chich's look of hatred dissolved momentarily in pain. He chewed his lip, pressed his bloody forearms against the cloth of his shirt. "Jesus, man, put the damn gun down. Four or five years, Hector's been a steady customer — a key or two a month. Mostly black tar."

A kilo of black-tar heroin, depending on how it was cut, how far north it went, could bring anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000.

"Hector moved the stuff through RideWorks?" I asked.

Chich glared at me, then squeezed his eyes shut, rocked a little bit. "You're that ass**le from the Poco Mas."

"Answer his question," Ralph said.

"I don't know how Hector moved the smack," Chich said. "I got my suspicions about RideWorks, but Hector's a friend. He pays on time, wants his privacy, I respect his business."

"Which is why you were following him in your white van, why you're here the day after he died, going through his desk."

"Hector'd been doing some strange shit. I was getting a little curious. Last month, he doubled his order — got two extra keys of heroin, wanted it on credit. Man's money's never been a problem before, so I said sure. He's an old friend. But that was four weeks ago and I ain't seen no money yet. Then I see him at the Poco Mas Wednesday night with this ass**le—" He nodded courteously to me. "And I'm starting to get a little nervous. Last night, I shadow Hector and watch him make this meet out on Palo Blanco. While me and my boys are waiting, thinking about what to do, boom — gunshots inside. By the time we get inside and check it out, there's two bodies. Mara's dead. Your buddy Berton's bleeding like a pig. Looks like they got in a little discussion that went bad, I figure maybe it's over my stuff. But there's no heroin, no money around that we can see. Then you drive up, and we decide it's best to hit the road. So you tell me. You answer my question — where's my f**king stash?"