The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(72)

"More bullshit."

"You see me breathing here, chica?"

"Yeah. And for how much longer?"

"Sour grapes, Ana. You still mad at me for the wrong reasons."

She started to respond. I took her hand and clamped it, hard.

Ana fumed, called Ralph some more Spanish names under her breath. We drove for a few blocks.

"Were you prepared to kill Chich back there?" she asked, more subdued now. Ralph blew a line of smoke.

"You don't get it. I didn't think that way. It wasn't  like — okay I'll do uno, dos, tres. I feel what I got to do first and I do it. Then I see what happens next."

"You're saying you can't control yourself."

Ralph laughed, glanced back at me. "Vato, I shouldn't have tried, should I? No point explaining."

I didn't answer. Ana's hand in mine was as tense as a coiled snake.

"Where to next?" I asked Ralph, hoping to steer us somewhere else, someplace that might not lead to a gun-fight in the car.

"I got a few more ideas," Ralph said.

"More ideas like Chich?" Ana put as much disdain into the words as they could hold.

"What?" Ralph growled. "You afraid of finding out more about me, chica?"

"Not anymore."

"If I'd told you at the start—" Ralph began.

"You would've saved me a lot of time." Ana sank back in her seat and turned her hand so that it was gripping mine. Her fingernails dug into my knuckles.

Ralph's face stayed a block of sandstone for a good five minutes — which is, I think, the longest I'd ever seen him go without emotion.

Then he spoke in a voice that was cut from the same hard material.

"Twenty-eight and a half days," he told the windshield. "That ain't a lot of time. It ain't even enough."

THIRTY-SEVEN

There's just no stopping the momentum of a perfect day.

None of Ralph's other leads worked out. There was no word on the street about who had shot George and Hector Mara. No white vans. Nobody willing to confess. Nobody demanded that Ana kiss me to prove she was truly my girlfriend.

After riding in complete silence back to the North Star Mall Boots and mumbling good-byes to Ralph, Ana DeLeon and I drove back to my place in her car.

It was dusk, and the facade of 90 Queen Anne was losing definition. You could almost imagine the house in its heyday, back in the 1940s, when the wooden trim had been unbroken, the paint new, the bougainvillea clipped around the eaves. It had probably been one of the finer places in Mancke Park — the home of a banker, perhaps, or a prosperous merchant. The only thing that spoiled the illusion was the backward slant of the building, the way it had succumbed over the decades to gravity and bad foundation work. There were many days, like today, when I could relate.

On the curb was a black Honda Accord I didn't recognize, but I didn't think much of it. The Suitez family across the street was throwing a party, as they often did, and there were plenty of cars I didn't recognize. It wasn't until Ana looked at the Accord, cursed, then looked at my front porch and cursed some more, that I noticed Detective Kelsey.

He was sitting alone on the main porch of 90 Queen Anne, sipping a glass of iced tea that had probably been provided for him by my landlord, Gary. Gary is quite hospitable to people who come by to abuse me.

Kelsey was dressed in khakis and a denim shirt. His ruddy Irish face looked no friendlier than it had the day before.

As we approached the porch steps he said, "You two got some explaining to do."

I looked at Ana. "You want to stomp on him or should I?"

Ana had done away with the red bandanna. Her hair was disheveled. She fixed Kelsey with a look of smoldering hatred. "Go home, Tom."

"What the f**k were you thinking, Ana?"

"Kelsey," I said, "if you really have to, come inside and you can yell at us some more in there. But I need a drink."

"God damn it—" he started, but I was already walking around the side of the house toward my apartment, Ana behind me. After a few steps I heard Kelsey's chair creak.

I was just getting the chilled margarita pitcher from the refrigerator when Kelsey appeared in my doorway. "You're something, Navarre."

I handed a margarita to Ana, who had climbed, a little stiffly, onto the kitchen stool. Robert Johnson was sitting next to her on the counter, his eyes half-closed, mortally unimpressed. I tried to imitate his expression.

"You want a margarita, Detective? I assume you're off-duty."

Kelsey kept his eyes on Ana. "You think Lieutenant Hernandez wants to hear about the company you kept today?"

DeLeon took a sip of margarita, looked up at me with raised eyebrows. "Not bad, Navarre."

"De nada."

Kelsey took a step farther into the room. "You're going to lose your goddamn badge, Ana. What the f**k was that stunt you pulled at the salvage yard?"

"Interesting you heard about that so fast," Ana said. "You and Chicharron got some kind of relationship, Tom?"

"Fuck you. I know Chich from when I was on vice. He's a scumbag, but he knows when to talk."

Ana took another sip of her drink, then scratched the base of Robert Johnson's tail. He lifted his backside farther into the air for her. "What do you think, cat? You think this margarita is good enough to make Kelsey seem like less of an ass**le?"