The Widower's Two-Step (Tres Navarre #2)(58)

corner pretty fierce—even after she got with Mr. SaintPierre. I used to drive her to the Paintbrush every night—nice and friendly. We'd talk about the business. She and me had an understanding. I's gonna look after her? she's gonna be my ticket somewhere else besides here." He waved a hand around at the apartment. "Look to you like I'm getting anywhere?"

"You figure she owes you," I said.

"Damn right."

"You figure the whole world owes you. You got an ego so big you collect your own bootlegs, Cam. Probably autograph them for yourself too. I think your perception of what Miranda promised might be a wee bit twisted."

He took a step forward. "You asking for something, son, you're going to get it."

"Knock it off, Cam. I want to get Miranda extricated from Sheckly, so her deal with Century Records can go through. You could give me the leverage I need to do that."

Cam laughed harshly. "Heard that before."

"You mean from Les?"

Cam shook his head in disgust, walked stiffly into the kitchen, pulled another beer from the refrigerator. "Ask little Miss Daniels. Ask if I didn't tell her, first time she came crying to me about Sheck's contract on her. I figured a Century Records deal, hell, she was going to take me along for sure. We'd be set. I told her somebody wanted to get a little pull with Sheck, all they had to do was look into those shows he's been taping for radio.

Maybe get close to Julie Kearnes, ask Julie to pull some files here and there from the Paintbrush computers, ask her about those trips to Europe with Alex B."

I stood very still. The only sound was the hum of Cam Compton's refrigerator and the traffic on PerrinBeitel. "You told Miranda all this."

"That's what I'm saying."

"And if somebody was to dig where you said to dig—?"

Cam gave me his closelipped smile. "Not like every sound man who's ever worked the Paintbrush doesn't know. Not like the headliner artists don't know, son. It's rankled them for years. Just nobody can prove it. I tell you, what do I get?"

"I'll introduce you to Sam Barrera, make sure he cuts you a fair deal."

"Price would be higher than that, son."

"Somebody's already kicked in your ribs, Cam. You think you can afford to wait around for a better offer?"

Cam's smile dissolved. "Get the f**k out, then."

"You should talk to me, Cam."

He went across the room, retrieved his .22 from the guitar amp. He held it lazily in my direction, never mind the chambers were empty.

There wasn't much more I could say.

I opened the door. The heat immediately sucked into the room around me, along with the traffic sounds and the smell of exhaust.

As I left, Cam Compton was standing in front of his music collection, his .22 wedged in his armpit. Cam was examining one by one the stray CDs I'd taken out, using his grubby Tshirt to wipe the front of each jewel case before he put it back in its proper place.

28

That night it took more than a little self convincing to get myself out of the house, away from the possibilities of a simple chalupa dinner and my medieval drama book and maybe even some sleep, to drive out instead to the address Miranda Daniels had given me—her family ranch house near Bulverde.

It had been less than a year since an inheritance case had taken me out that direction, but I was amazed by the urbanization, how much farther I had to go to start smelling the cedars and the fertilizer.

San Antonio grows in concentric layers like a tree. It's one of the few ways the town is orderly.

My grandfather rarely went farther from downtown than Brackenridge Park, unless he was looking for deer to shoot. My mother used to think Scrivener's fabric store on Loop 410 was the edge of town. In my high school years the outermost boundary of the known world was Loop 1604, and even inside the loop it was still mostly tracts of live oak and cactus and broken limestone.

Now I could drive past 1604 and halfway to the village of Bulverde before I was ever out of earshot of a convenience store.

The sky behind me was city grayorange and ahead of me rural black. Just above the hills, the full moon made a hazy white circle behind the clouds.

I exited on Ranch Road 22, a narrow twolaner with no lighting, no posted speed limits, plenty of curves, and nothing on the shoulders but gravel and barbed wire. A killway, my dad would've called it.

In my goreloving adolescent days I used to pester the Sheriff to tell me about all the traffic accidents he'd handled on little ranch roads like RR22. He usually said no, but one night he'd gotten drunk enough and fed up enough to tell me in graphic detail about a particularly nasty headon collision. He told me murder scenes were nothing compared to car accidents, and then he went on to prove it. I never asked to hear any more of his work stories.

I swerved once to avoid a dead deer. Fence posts and mile markers floated into my headlights and out again. Occasionally I passed a billboard advertising a new housing development that was about to be built—CALLE VERDE, FINE LIVING FROM THE 120's. I bet the folks who'd moved out here for a retirement in the country were pleased about that.

The 7Elevens and H.E.B.s would be coming in next.

The turn for Serra Road was unmarked, despite what Miranda had told me, and it wasn't much wider than a private driveway. Fortunately I could see the Daniels' party all the way from RR22. A quarter mile or so across a dark pasture, lights were blazing in the trees and a fire was burning. There was the distant hum of music.