The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(71)

Ralph grinned, looked at me. "I ain't happy yet, vato. You happy?"

Chich made a shaky sound that might've been a laugh. "I'm going to tell some of my friends in the big league, Arguello. I'm going to mention that an ass**le named Arguello's been threatening me, throwing fans at me. What do you think my friends would do, man?"

Ralph jacked the hammer on the .38. "I think they'd have you replaced in twenty-four hours."

Chich's eyes went blank. "I don't know nothing else."

Ana DeLeon asked, "You see Sanchez since he was back in town, Chich?"

He shivered, trying a little too hard to focus on her. "Once. Nothing to do with the chiva. Him and me were cool. Zeta was just looking for his old lady, you know?" Then Chich looked at DeLeon more closely. "W-wait. I recognize you. You're—"

"This is my girlfriend," I told him. "You recognize her, we're going to have us a problem."

Chich kept looking at DeLeon, probably wondering if he had a card he wanted to play. Apparently he decided against it. "I didn't have nothing to do with Mara getting drilled. That's the truth."

"You're making me sad, ese," Ralph told him.

Chich raised his bloodied hands, placating. Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by footsteps, crunching in the dirt outside. An African American kid, maybe fifteen, stopped at the bottom of the running board and looked up into the shack, surprised to find a crowd. The kid's hair was long and nappy, his eyelids tattooed in blue like an Egyptian's, his clothes ripped camouflage and black heavy-metal gear. He had his hands full of car stereo parts.

Ralph said, "Come on up."

The kid got to the doorway, saw there was no room to go farther, then noticed Ralph's gun. The kid looked at Chich.

Chich mumbled, "This ain't a good time, Paul."

Ralph stepped toward the kid, tapped the stereo parts with the .38 barrel. "The man's right, Paul. How much you figure for all this?"

Standing next to Paul, I caught the distinct smell of aerosol fumes on his clothes. Looking into Paul's eyes I could see where those fumes had gone. His pupils had a bleary but steady glow, as if whatever brain cells still worked behind them had fused into one singular, misshapen energy source.

Paul said, "Twenty-five dollars."

Ralph laughed, then said to Chich, "Big spender. No wonder you and Hector such big leaguers."

From his coat pocket, Ralph took a business card and a few folded twenty-dollar bills and offered them to Paul. Paul dropped his stereo parts instantly and took the money.

"Next time come visit my Culebra location, vato," Ralph told him. "We do you right. In the meantime, hold this."

Ralph handed the kid Chich's .38. "Point this at him and count to a hundred, okay? You remember how to count that high? He moves, shoot him, come find me, I give you a bonus."

Paul nodded enthusiastically. Chich tensed.

"Good kid," Ralph commented. "See you around, Chich."

We left. Chich was trying to convince the kid that Ralph didn't really mean for him to shoot, not really. Paul was counting aloud.

We walked out the entrance of the scrap yard.

The walruses were back to playing their dominoes. Except for the crusted blood on the right one's face, the bloodstained bandanna he was sometimes using to dab it with, the men didn't look at all different.

They tried very hard not to look up as we walked out, across the street to Ralph's maroon Cadillac, which had miraculously had its windows washed.

"Life kicks ass," Ralph told us.

THIRTY-SIX

It wasn't until we were several blocks away that Ana DeLeon pounded her palm against the back of Ralph's headrest, jolting the joint out of his hand.

Ralph cursed. "What's the matter with you, chica?"

"You didn't have to do any of that back there, you ass**le."

Ralph couldn't look back at us and stay on the road. He squinted indignantly at the traffic on Zarzamora.

"Do what?"

"Draw blood. Play machismo. If you were trying to impress me, you failed."

Ralph's face darkened to a dangerous red. "You think I did that to impress somebody?"

"Either that or you're too stupid to ask questions another way."

Ralph and Ana started cursing at each other in Spanish — the usual names, the usual insults. I considered opening the car door and rolling onto the pavement. I figured my chances of living might be better.

Instead I yelled, "Knock. It. Off!"

The insults died down. Ana held up her hands, then dropped them, like she was throwing her disgust on the floor.

Ralph retrieved his joint, lit up, blew the smoke thoughtfully at the windshield. "De volada."

"Bullshit," DeLeon spat.

"That's how you got to live, Ana. I'm telling you — from the will. You think about things, plan them out too much, do them for reasons like impressing people — shit, you last maybe three days on the streets. You been out too long. You've forgotten."

"The hell I've been out. I've been right there, you shit-head. I've seen your de volada. I see it about six times a week, every time one of the homeboys gets shot to death."

Ralph waved the comment aside. "They froze up — the ones who stay loose, live."