The Widower's Two-Step (Tres Navarre #2)(48)

"Sam Barrera speak to you again?"

"I don't know nothing about Sam Barrera's cases and I don't know nothing about what you're doing on your time off, you understand that?"

"Sure."

Erainya glared at the dishrags. "I'm not going to let that ouskemo tell me what to do, neither. Maybe he's got some friends in a lot of places. He doesn't own me."

I nodded. We were quiet, listening to Jem throw toys and other large heavy objects around his bedroom, apparently looking for just the right fashion statement footwear.

"Be good to know some background on a guy named Tilden Sheckly," I said. "About some shipments he's been processing through his dance hall, especially any connections he might have in Europe. Like for instance if your friend in Customs knew anything—what's her name?"

"Corrie. I didn't hear any of that."

I agreed that she hadn't.

Jem came back wearing purple Reeboks. He showed me how the heellights flickered when he bounced up and down. He'd also put a Casper the Ghost mask on his head with shafts of his thick black hair sticking out of the eyeholes. I told him he looked great.

Erainya started loading up her purse while Jem told me about what his Halloween costume was going to be. The costume apparently had nothing to do with the Casper mask. He told me how many hours and minutes were left until six o'clock Sunday, when he was going trickortreating. Then he told me about the movie he was taking me to—something with marsupials that transformed into cosmic warriors.

Erainya packed her cassette recorder, her Mace canister, her obligatory box of green Chiclets, and five Kleenex folded into triangles. She deliberated over her key chain, rubbing her thumb on the little gold key that opens her gun cabinet.

Then she looked up and realized I was watching her.

Her eyes turned hard as obsidian. She stowed the keys in her purse and zipped it.

"Is two hours going to be enough time?" I asked.

I tried to keep my voice casual, disinterested. Erainya responded the same way.

"Sure, honey. Fine."

Jem gave up explaining the virtues of outer space marsupials to me. He climbed back onto a stool at the kitchen counter and started colouring a picture of Godzilla.

"The Longoria case?" I asked.

Erainya hesitated long enough to confirm it. "It's nothing, honey. Don't worry about it.

I'll just be able to run some checks faster while Jem's out with you."

Jem coloured a red halo around Godzilla's head, focusing his energy into the tip of his marker with a level of concentration no adult could match.

"Erainya—"

She cut me off with a look. When she spoke she addressed the top of Jem's head.

"Don't you waste time worrying about the wrong person, honey. I can tell you all about it next week when you're back at work."

I didn't answer.

Erainya muttered something in Greek that sounded like a proverb. She sighed and put her purse on her forearm.

"I'll meet you back here by nine. And no damn candy at the theatre, huh?"

Jem complained a little about that, telling her we always got Dots and Red Vines, but he knew better than to push it. He just shut his mouth and let his mother rewrite the rules as ridiculously unfair as she wanted. That's a lesson everybody learns eventually with Erainya.

23

After the movies I dropped Jem off at Erainya's house and flipped a coin, Compton or Blanceagle. I was half hoping the coin would land on its edge and I could go home.

Instead it came up Blanceagle. I headed out for the address I'd seen on Alex's driver's license, 1600 Mecca.

Mecca Street, like its namesake, is a place most people only get to once in their lifetime, only with the help of Allah, and only after many tribulations. Once you do find the road, it twists illogically through the Hollywood Park subdivision, disappearing and then reappearing, following what was once a creek bed through the rolling hills just inside Loop 1604.

I took 281 North and gave myself up to the hajj as soon as I exited, praying that someday I'd find Alex Blanceagle's house.

Hollywood Park was showing its age since I'd been there last, almost ten years before.

The pseudoranch houses that lined the streets were now more weathered, the lawns that had been grafted with fruit trees and turf grass now regressed in spots to the original scrub brush, mesquites, and cactus.

On most blocks the pristine look of affluent Gringo land had given way to more downtoearth realities— plastic daisy pinwheels in the yards, porches overflowing with tricycles, windsocks, political signboards, pumpkins, and paper skeletons.

Blanceagle's house was in one of the nicer areas, with halfacre lots and expensive castiron mailboxes and the occasional white splitrail fence. The house itself was a twostory affair, half limestone, half cedar siding, set far back from the road. I parked a block down on Mecca, then walked up the gravel driveway toward the front porch, my backpack in hand.

No exterior lights. Dim illumination from behind an upstairs curtain, more from around the side of the house—kitchen window, maybe. I was almost to the porch before I realized that the front door wasn't really painted black. It was just completely open.

I stood to one side on the porch and let my eyes adjust. Then I moved inside and stood against the wall.

A man's living room, lit only by the glow from the hallway on the right and from the staircase on the left. There were two large easy chairs and a mismatching love seat, all ugly and functional. A bigscreen TV and cabinet of stereo equipment. A bookshelf that was mostly filled with CDs stacked sideways. A bar in the corner. A slidingglass door that led out to a back porch. There was also a strange combination of smells that I didn't like at all—very old cigarette smoke, mildew, dead rat.