The Widower's Two-Step (Tres Navarre #2)(79)

Then I drove to Vandiver Street before anyone would be awake at my mother's house, left the Audi out front and the key in the mailbox, and reclaimed the VW.

I headed south toward the State Insurance Building.

If the tower had been downtown it would've been invisible, but where it was—stuck in the middle of the flatlands south of SAC, surrounded by parks and one story office complexes, it looked huge. The parking lot only had a handful of cars, one of them being Samuel Barrera's mustard BMW.

I punched the elevator button for level six and was deposited in front of a frosted glass door that still bore faint discoloured outlines from the stencil letters that used to read: SAMUEL BARRERA, INVESTIGATIONS. Now there was a classy brass plaque above a classy ivory and gold buzzer. The plaque read LTECH.

I didn't opt for the buzzer. I walked into the waiting room and went up to the little sliding window like they have in dentists' offices. The window was open.

The receptionist was so short that she had to crane her neck to see me over the top of the counter. Her hair was mostly calcified hair spray that curled away from her face in capital letter U's.

"Help you?" she inquired.

I smiled. I straightened my tie. "Tres Navarre. I'm here to see Sam."

She frowned. People weren't supposed to come in on Sunday morning asking for Barrera, especially by first name. "Won't you sit down?"

"I will."

The slidingglass panel shut in my face.

I sat on the sofa and read the latest company bulletin from ITech headquarters in New York. There was some propaganda about how well the company was doing snapping up private firms in various states and selling them back to their owners like McDonald's franchises. One ad aimed at outside readers told me exactly what it took to be "ITech material."

I was just assessing my ITech potential when the inner office door opened and Sam Barrera came out. He walked up to me and said, "What the f**k do you want, Navarre?"

I put down the news bulletin.

Barrera was wearing the standard threepiece suit, brown this time. His tie was a shade of yellow that miraculously matched. His gold rings were newly polished and his cologne was strong.

"We need to talk," I said.

"No we don't."

"I went out to Medina Lake, Sam."

The sunglassmetal quality in Barrera's eyes got a little harder. "You will be talked to, Navarre. But it won't be by me. You'd better tell Erainya—"

"There was more than a cabin out there, Sam. You missed something."

Just for a second, Sam Barrera wasn't sure what to say. It had probably been years since anyone dared to suggest he had missed something. It had probably never come from an amateur half his age.

"Parks and Wildlife," I said.

Barrera processed quickly. His face went through a chameleon phase—red to brown to coffee colour. "Saint Pierre had a boat? He registered a freshwater boat?"

"Would you like to know what I found, or would you like to threaten me some more?"

He was quiet long enough for the cement in his expression to resettle. "You want to come in back?"

He turned on his heel without waiting for my answer. I followed.

Sam's office was a shrine to Texas A & M. The carpet was plush maroon and the drapes were the same. On the mahogany bookshelf, pothos plants were carefully interspersed with Aggie diplomas and photos of Sam and his sons in their Corps uniforms.

On Sam's desk were photos of Barrera with his friends—law enforcement types, the mayor, businessmen. In one photo Barrera stood next to my father. The Sheriff's '76

campaign, I think. Dad was smiling. Barrera, of course, was not.

Sam sat down behind his desk. I sat across from him in a large maroon chair that was strategically designed to be too cushy and lowset. I had the feeling of being much shorter than my host, trapped in an interrogation cup.

"Tell me." Sam leaned forward and stared and waited.

"Bootlegs," I said. "Sheckly's been recording his head liner acts, creating master tapes in his studio, then shipping the tapes to Europe for production and distribution.

More recently he's gotten greedier, started to import the CDs back into the U.S. That's why you and your federal friends have been stepping up the heat."

Sam brushed my comments aside. "What was in the boat?"

"First I want confirmation."

Sam curled his fingers. The wrath of God built up behind his eyes—a collected, intense darkness meant to warn me that I was about to be smitten from the earth. He looked around his desk, maybe for something to kill me with, and focused instead on the picture of himself and the Sheriff. Some annoyance crept into his expression.

"I suppose you will continue to screw things up unless I level with you, Navarre. Or unless I get someone to throw you in jail."

"Most likely."

"Goddamn your father."

"Amen."

Sam readjusted his belly above his belt line. He turned his chair sideways and stared out the window.

"The scenario you described is commonplace. Frequently someone at a venue records the shows. Frequently the recordings turn up as bootlegs."

He waited to see if I was satisfied, if I would give in now. I just smiled.

Sam's jaw tightened. "What is uncommon with the Indian Paintbrush situation is the scale. Mr. Sheckly is presently recording something like fifty name artists a year. The master tapes are sent through Germany to CD plants, mostly in Romania and the Czech Republic, then distributed to something like fifteen countries. More recently, as you said, his partners in Europe have been encouraging Mr. Sheckly to target the U.S. market, moving him from boots to pirates."