Mission Road (5 page)

“Obvious, isn’t it? Convince your boyfriend to bring in Arguello.”

“Assuming I know how to reach him.”

“Navarre called you. He got you here.”

“He called from a pay phone.”

“And you made arrangements to talk again. Let’s not play games. We’ve known about the DNA for two days. Lieutenant Hernandez ordered us not to act on it until Ana had time to do the right thing, turn over her case notes to me so I could make an arrest on her husband. Obviously, Ana didn’t cooperate. She must’ve told Arguello, and Arguello shot her. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t be doing him or Navarre any more favors, but Hernandez has told me to offer you a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

Before he could respond, a detective with a bleeding cut over his eye came to the door. “Yo, Kelsey, a little help, man.”

Kelsey scowled. “What, still the elf?”

The other detective turned pink around the ears. He was mid-twenties—young for homicide detail. He was the one Maia had noticed with the loose holster. It was still loose. “Hey, man. We figured we had him secure.”

Kelsey sneered. “A roomful of cops, and you can’t lock down a damn elf?”

“He’s on speed or something. We mentioned sending him back to Missouri and he went ape-shit on us. I know you were in SWAT and all . . .”

The young detective’s eyes were pleading. His voice verged on panic, which played Kelsey just the right way.

Kelsey smiled like a sadist anticipating a bar fight. “Miss Lee, if you’ll excuse me.”

The moment he was out of the room, Maia moved around DeLeon’s desk and read the note on her corkboard.

White——Timing is wrong.

Santos—ME——retired

2107 Dunbar

864-9719

Maia simply could have memorized the information—she was good at that—but some instinct made her peel the note off the board, along with the photo of Lucia DeLeon and Etch Hernandez.

This is crazy,
she decided.

But she slipped the photo and the note into her coat pocket. She moved another picture to cover the blank space—the photo of Ralph and Ana and their baby at the zoo.

Another wave of nausea swept over her, leaving her shivering and weak-kneed against the sergeant’s desk.

Last night, she had come so close to telling Tres what was wrong with her. Now he was on the run, protecting a murderer.

Damn him.

She should’ve left Tres where she found him, tending bar in Berkeley. The most impetuous thing she’d ever done: slipping a business card across the bar to a guy she barely knew, just because he had beautiful green eyes and a smile that doubled her heart rate.

You might make a good investigator,
she’d told him.
Give me a call.

Fifteen years later, her judgment was still rotten. She’d quit her job in San Francisco, moved to Austin to be closer to him, left everything behind. She would do anything to help him. But when it came to making responsible choices, he was hopeless.

Ralph Arguello embodied everything Maia resented about Tres’ hometown—dangerous, suffocating roots that had been pulling Tres away from Maia as long as they’d known each other. She’d almost lost him once before, when he’d first moved back to Texas. Now, when she needed his full attention more than ever . . .

If she’d told him the truth last night, what would he have done?

An explosion of voices from the cubicle area brought her back to the present.

“Hell—he’s got my—”

“Damn it!”

Sounds of scuffling, something heavy thrown against a cubicle wall. Then a bruised and bloody elf, now armed with the young detective’s Glock, burst into the office, Kelsey and two other detectives close behind.

Maia’s reflexes were slow. Before she knew what was happening, the elf was behind her, his arm clamped around her waist, the gun at her throat.

“Back off!” the elf screamed at the cops. “Back the hell
off
!”

The elf’s breath was sour and warm against her cheek. The muzzle of the Glock dug under her jaw. But at that moment, Maia was more scared of Kelsey. He had his pistol trained on the suspect, just an inch to the right of Maia’s ear. She saw no thought of negotiation in his eyes. No concern for her safety. He was hesitating only because he wanted a nice clean shot.

Maia grabbed the elf’s arm around her waist. She dug her thumb into the acupressure point at his wrist.

He screamed, his muscles loosening from the shock to his nervous system.

She drove her elbow into his ribs. He buckled forward and she rammed his head into the desk. He crumpled to the floor, the gun clattering onto the carpet.

The cops went slack-jawed.

“Gentlemen,” she said shakily. “If you’ll excuse me . . .”

They parted for her like a bead curtain.

Halfway through the homicide division, Kelsey caught up with her.
“Counselor.”

His face was a beautiful shade of pomegranate. “What was—how did you . . .”

She took a shaky breath. “We have no further business, Detective. If I communicate with my client, I will advise him of our conversation.”

Kelsey looked at her as if reappraising her value. He rubbed the old scars on his fingers. “I didn’t tell you the deal, Miss Lee. Forty-eight hours.”

“Until?”

“Until the DNA test results from the Franklin White case are made public. Until we release the fact that Ana got shot because she was about to name her husband as prime suspect.”

“You wouldn’t.”

His expression stayed deadly serious. “This time Monday morning, Counselor. Navarre has that long to bring me Ralph Arguello. After that, believe me, I won’t have to worry about bringing Arguello to justice, or anybody who’s helping him. Guy White will take care of our problem for us.”

RALPH AND I SPENT A COLD SLEEPLESS NIGHT WITH SOME
transients under a bridge on West Main.

The homeless guys decorated a Christmas tree with beer cans. They roasted pecans over a trash can fire, tried to remember the words to “We Three Kings” and kept asking Ralph if he had the DTs because of the way he was shaking.

I tried talking to him about Ana and the Frankie White case. I told him Ana would be okay. We had other options besides running from the police.

I might as well have been talking to the transients’ shopping cart.

Ralph stared into the flames, every once in a while muttering the Rosary in Spanish, as if trying to draw ghosts out of the heat.

•                           •                           •

THE FIRST TIME I’D MET RALPH
was also my first real experience with Frankie White. We were all juniors at Alamo Heights High School. Ralph got jumped by three Anglo linebackers outside a convenience store because he’d flirted with one of their girlfriends. I was on the football team, too, but I never liked unfair fights. I jumped in on Ralph’s side. He and I kicked some ass. One of the linebackers happened to be an overgrown blond preppie named Frankie White.

In typical Ralph fashion, he became friends with both Frankie and me after the fight. I was never sure what Ralph saw in Frankie, but I understood Frankie’s fascination with Ralph. Ralph was completely unintimidated by Frankie’s mobster family ties. No one in San Antonio had ever had the guts to punch Frankie in the face.

Several months later, Ralph invited Frankie and me to dinner at his house for the first time.

The Arguello family lived in a crumbling white adobe cottage on the wrong side of McCullough, ten feet from the train tracks. The skeet club’s shooting range was behind the back fence.

The tiny rooms were packed with a horde of smaller Arguello siblings, cousins and nephews whose names I could never keep straight. The extended family, Ralph informed me, lived with Mama Arguello full-time. Most had dead or missing or apathetic parents.

Frankie White gave me an amused look, like,
Can you believe this shit?

Sleeping bags filled the living room. Three dogs lounged on the sofa. The walls were cluttered with family photos and crucifixes and portraits of saints. No air-conditioning. A hundred degrees inside, with a limp breeze pushing the pale yellow curtains. Ralph’s mother stood at the stove, making tortillas by hand and cooking them on a hot plate. She kissed me, though she didn’t know me. She smelled of gladiolas and cornmeal.

If it had been me, at age seventeen, I would’ve been embarrassed by the house, my mother, the way the kids clamored over Ralph and demanded piggyback rides and quarters and arm-wrestling rematches. Especially with Frankie White there, who lived in a mansion and drove his own Mercedes. But Ralph didn’t care. He grinned at the kids, laughed, joked around. He seemed as confident as he had when Frankie and the other linebackers tried to assault him. Nothing fazed him.

At least, not until we went into the backyard to set the picnic table and found his latest stepfather (the sixth) trying to kiss Ralph’s fourteen-year-old cousin. Apparently, it had happened before, because Ralph’s voice turned to ice. “I warned you,
pendejo.
”

Twelve minutes later, Ralph dumped the battered stepfather half-conscious into the curbside trash can, tossed his suitcase next to him and called a taxi.

Frankie beamed like a kid at his first R-rated movie. “That was hella cool, Arguello.”

Ralph said nothing.

Back inside, his mother screamed, cried, made excuses for the bum she’d married, but Ralph just held her while she pummeled his chest. “He’s no good for you, Mama. I’ll look after you.”

When she argued money, Ralph produced six hundred-dollar bills for the week’s expenses, more cash than I’d ever seen. He told the younger kids to go back outside and set the table. He grounded his fourteen-year-old cousin to the bedroom.

By the time dinner was ready, the family’s happy chaos seemed to be restored. We ate homemade
carne guisada
tacos and drank Big Red while fireflies blinked across the lawn. Gunshots crackled in the summer air. Every so often a train rumbled by and made the ground shake.

Frankie White enjoyed himself immensely. He kept glancing at the bedroom window, where the fourteen-year-old cousin was watching him.

Ralph’s mother was the only one who didn’t cheer up. She stared at the citronella candle on the table as if she wished the flame would freeze, just once, into a shape she could hold.

That night under the Main Street Bridge, years later, staring at the trash can fire, Ralph reminded me of his mother for the first time.

•                           •                           •

IN THE MORNING, WE CHANGED INTO
clothes from a Goodwill donation box.

We’d already ditched Ralph’s car in an H.E.B. grocery store parking lot, so we hot-wired the Chevy Impala of a former client I didn’t like very much. Then we headed downtown with my .22 pistol, six dollars and thirty-two cents between us, and very little hope of living through the weekend.

I’d managed to grab my cell phone before leaving the house, but we decided to use a pay phone on the corner of South Saint Mary’s instead. I doubted SAPD could triangulate a mobile call. According to Ana they couldn’t even figure out their own e-mail system. But there was no point taking chances.

I called Maia’s number. She was already in town. If possible, she sounded even angrier than she had the night before, when I called to let her know I was a fugitive from justice.

As she told me about her conversation with Detective Kelsey and the note she’d found on Ana’s bulletin board, a pickup full of immigrant laborers cruised past on Houston Street. The driver slowed to see if we wanted work. Ralph shook his head. The truck drove on.

“Tres?” Maia prompted.

“I heard you.”

“You’re protecting a murderer. Turn him in.”

I pinched the collar of my Goodwill ski jacket, tried to pretend the smell of mildew wasn’t coming from me. “The lead on the ME . . .
‘timing.’
What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” she said wearily. “It doesn’t matter. DNA is one of the few things you can’t argue with. That’s all they’ll need to convict.”

Something in her voice worried me. Aside from the anxiety and the anger, she sounded . . . sick. The way she sounded whenever she was forced to face her phobia about boats and deep water.

“Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m not,” she said. “You’re running from the law.”

“Look, Maia . . . Ana didn’t believe the DNA results. You could retrace her steps, find out where she was going with the investigation.”

“Where she was . . . Tres, I just told you—”

“Ralph would never shoot his wife. Which means somebody else did.”

“He’s standing right there, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“You want me to call the police for you?”

“No.”

“Tres—”

“I’ll call you tonight. Take care of yourself. I love you.”

I hung up and tried not to look at Ralph.

“She wants you to sell me out,” he said. “I don’t blame her.”

“They have DNA on you for Frankie’s murder.”

“I know.”

“What do you mean,
you know
?”

“Ana told me. She’s my wife,
vato.
”

“She was about to name you prime suspect.”

“
Chíngate.
Ana didn’t believe I killed Frankie. I gave her a DNA sample myself ’cause I knew it wouldn’t match up. Somebody in the department framed me.”

“Conspiracy theory. Great defense.”

Rage sparked in his eyes. “Ana trusted me,
vato.
You got to do the same.”

A few blocks over, a cop siren sounded. Probably it had nothing to do with us, but it got my blood pumping.

“Come on,” I said.

Ralph didn’t move. “You think I’m crazy enough to kill Guy White’s son?”

“Maia talked to Kelsey. He said Frankie gave you the money for the pawnshops. You never told me that.”

“Mr. White
knew
we were doing business. It was his idea. We had a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

Ralph shifted his weight to his back foot, like he was getting ready for a punch. “All I’m saying—if Mr. White thought I’d killed his son, I wouldn’t still be breathing.”

The siren got louder, maybe a block away now.

Ralph wasn’t telling me something, but I didn’t have time to figure out what.

I grabbed his arm and pulled him across the street. “Forty-eight hours, Ralph. Then Kelsey makes the DNA test public. After that, I wouldn’t count on Mr. White’s good graces.”

We took the steps down to the Riverwalk, ducked under the Commerce Street Bridge. A siren echoed off the sides of the buildings. Tires slashed across the asphalt above.

As the noise faded, Ralph sat on the edge of the cistern that fed into the river.

I’d always found it odd that these little fountains had been installed under the bridges—in the darkest grimy places where tourists were least likely to stop.

“The whole SAPD hates my guts,” Ralph said. “You know that,
vato.
Ever since I married Ana, any one of them would love to frame me.”

I wanted to tell Ralph he was wrong. No cop would do that.

The trouble was I knew how the cops felt about him. I’d seen it in their eyes last night.

Ralph cupped his hand under the stone lion’s mouth. “Let’s say a cop killed Frankie.”

“Ralph—”

“Just
listen, vato.
Last night, Ana knew. She
knew
who did it, but she didn’t want to tell me. She’d already warned me about the DNA match. She was risking her job just doing that. Why would she not tell me who the killer was?”

“She was afraid of what you’d do.”

“Maybe,” Ralph conceded. “But I think she was having trouble turning in a fellow officer. That wouldn’t be easy for her. She’d need a lot of time to think about it. She’d try confronting the guy first, giving him a chance to come clean. I know she would.”

“Ralph, that’s so damn hypothetical—”

“She’d been working on the case for weeks. If she was getting close to discovering this guy, he could’ve found out. He could’ve gotten into the evidence room and tampered with the DNA. All he’d have to do is get some of my blood, and I’ve been served warrants for DNA for other shit before. They probably got a sample of mine still sitting down there.”

“They’re supposed to destroy stuff like that.”

Ralph laughed. “Yeah, right. Next you’re gonna tell me the evidence is too secure to get access. That’s a joke. Some of the stories Ana tells me—they had a vial of poison go missing a week ago. From an old murder case. This shit is absolutely undetectable. Really bad news. And it just disappeared. They hushed it up, but if
that
stuff can walk out the door, what’s a little DNA sample?”

His eyes glowed with desperation, the kind of look a psychotic gives you when he’s explaining the logic that holds together his dreamworld.

“You’ve been thinking about this,” I told him. “You have somebody in mind, don’t you?”

“Kelsey,” he said instantly. “He hates me. He hates Ana.”

I shook my head. As much as I detested Kelsey, it was hard to imagine him as a murderer.

“He started on the force the same year Frankie White died,” Ralph said. “I checked on it. First patrol duty, Kelsey had a run-in with Frankie.”

“Be hard to find a cop that
hasn’t
had a run-in with the Whites.”

“Yeah, but you know Kelsey. He holds a grudge. Those scars on his hands,
vato.
You ever wonder where they came from?”

“Ralph . . . we’ve got to leave the case to Maia. She’ll figure out the truth. There’s not much we can do from here.”

“I want to see Ana.”

“You know that’s impossible.”

“
Vato,
I don’t care about me. This was about saving my own ass, then the hell with it. But I gotta make sure Ana is safe. She’s all I care about. Her and the baby.”

The brittleness in his voice worried me.

I wanted to believe I’d done the right thing, helping him run. I was playing for time, trying to calm him down until I could convince him to accept some kind of surrender deal.

But if Ralph went to jail, if Guy White found out he was a suspect in Frankie’s death, I knew damn well there would be no time to prove him innocent. Ralph would never go to trial. He’d be dead before Christmas—shanked, or hanged in a cell, or shot while escaping. Some tidily orchestrated accident.

Maia might be able to find a solution in two days, but she didn’t know the city or the local police like I did. And if I showed my face, I’d be arrested.

I needed a cop I could trust—somebody inside the system who could find out what the hell was going on and wouldn’t arrest me on sight. Despite the fact that my dad had been Bexar County Sheriff back in the eighties, my list of friends in active law enforcement was regrettably short.

An answer came to me, but I didn’t like it.

I stared at the river. Maybe if I jumped in, I could wake myself up. I’d find myself back in Southtown, Sam reading the Saturday morning paper while Mrs. Loomis cooked bacon in the kitchen.