The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(98)

I paid off the taxi driver and walked through the courtyard of the nearest building. On the sidewalk, a couple of Anglo boys in striped shirts and corduroy shorts and paper Burger King hats were fighting over a Mr. Potato Head. There were fiesta leftovers scattered across the ground — colored eggshells and confetti from busted cascarones. A Night in Old San Antonio T-shirt was hanging over somebody's wall AC unit.

Ralph answered the buzzer at number five. He looked relaxed, his braid over his shoulder, his green Guayabera pulled sideways so his buttons made a diagonal line, his slacks wrinkled, his boots nearby on the carpet, and his feet in black socks. His glasses were in his shirt pocket, so his eyes again had that large, dark look that made me think of a night animal — a raccoon or a possum, something cute and silent and vicious.

"Come on in, vato."

The place had obviously come furnished. Brown shag carpet, white plastic furniture in seventies outer-space mod, an old Sony TV, a walnut veneer bookshelf that was mostly empty. The kitchen smelled like beer and fresh tamales and copal incense — three of Ralph's essentials.

I followed Ralph into the living room. The sliding-glass door was open and the small back porch was ringed in stone, furnished with an enormous jade plant and a hibachi grill, on which two pieces of flank steak were grilling. Ana DeLeon sat on the stone wall, drinking a glass of red wine and watching me approach. She looked beautiful. Her short black hair was cowlicked on one side. She wore black leggings and one of her white silk blouses, untucked, the top two buttons undone to reveal the inward curves of her br**sts. She was barefoot.

She said, "Tres."

I nodded.

Ralph said, "I'll get you the Barracuda keys."

He left for the kitchen.

"You didn't return my calls," I told Ana.

The steaks hissed. Music started up from Ralph's boom box inside — the bright guitar and basso of a ranchera,

"I don't owe you, Tres."

"That's right," I agreed. "No special privileges."

"It wasn't smart — you and me."

I let the idea hang between us until Ana's anger started to crumble. "No," she decided. "That's the easy way out. The truth is I feel bad. But what happened out in Sabinal—"

"You won't have to live with it, Ana."

Ana stared into her wineglass. "I suppose my judgment is no better. I don't think I can explain to you why I'm here, Tres. Or explain it to myself." She met my eyes. We had a silent conversation that lasted about five seconds and told me all I needed to know. There was no anxiety, no concern for career, no real desire for an explanation. Instead I recognized that kind of fractured heat — that reckless energy I had glimpsed in a few women before, and on a few very lucky occasions, seen directed toward me. But not this time.

"I'm sorry," Ana said.

The fact that she meant it, that she wasn't just being polite, hung awkwardly between us.

"SAPD won't hear anything from me."

She pursed her lips, nodded. Then the smell of bay rum intensified behind me. Ralph handed me a Shiner Bock and a set of car keys.

"Back lot, vato. I got a couple of Chich's boys to touch up the paint and wax it for you."

Ralph went to the hibachi grill and squeezed a lime over the flank steak with a wide arcing gesture like a priest using a censer.

He winked at Ana. "Quiet neighbors here, chica. I could like it."

She smiled. "You'd have to get better furniture."

"Don't need much," Ralph said. Then, out of nowhere, he quoted a stanza of Spanish love poetry — a few lines about a woman who fills a man's every empty room.

I looked at him. "I didn't know you read Neruda."

Ana fixed her eyes on the hibachi flames.

Ralph chuckled. "Can't survive on American Gladiator alone, vato."

We sat lined on the wall, Ana, Ralph, and I, drinking and listening to the ranchero music and the sizzle of flank steak.

"I got another one in the refrigerator," Ralph told me. "You want to stay, vato — it isn't every day the King cooks."

"Thanks. I should go."

"I'll walk you out." Ralph stood and fished for something in his pocket, then stopped, grinned at himself. "Ana's going to keep me from smoking, vato. How long you think that'll last, eh?"

"I'm not a betting man."

"But hey — you understand, vato, she ain't really here, right? She's never here."

"Of course," I agreed. "I understand that. See you, Detective."

Ana nodded silently, locking eyes with me with an intense message I couldn't read. Maybe I didn't really try.

Ralph walked me to the door. He patted me on the shoulder, smiled reassuringly.

"You still worrying. Don't, vato. It's all cool. Chich Gutierrez got so much heat on him now, he ain't going to have time or energy to f**k with you and me no more."

"Tell me something. How long you been impressing women with Pablo Neruda?"

Ralph looked surprised. "Ain't the poetry, baby. It's the whole package, you know? Why — you got a woman in mind?"

He grinned at me, and then, when I didn't answer, waved and let the door close — shutting off the music, the dinner smells, the sight of Ana DeLeon so completely I had the feeling I was the one who'd never really been there.