The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan (11 page)

George grinned nervously and called Ana DeLeon
"princess" and insisted on ordering for her — the chile
relleno. DeLeon allowed the order to stand, though she didn't look
dazzled by George's manly charge-taking. Jenny had a long
conversation with the waitress about different sauces and finally
decided on the green enchiladas, only with red sauce, and refried
beans rather than borrachos,and no MSG in the rice and a couple of
other changes on the clauses and subparagraphs of the menu that
probably should've been initialed when it was all agreed on. I
ordered the quesadillas, regular, with a kid's order of cheese
enchiladas on the side.

Jenny looked across the table at me, her fingers
lacing a cradle for her chin.

"A kid's order?"

"For Robert Johnson."

Jenny frowned. "Who?"

"A hungry mouth to feed at home."

She thought about whether she wanted to follow up on
that, apparently decided it might spoil the evening. She turned to
DeLeon. "So, girlfriend — tell them what you do."

DeLeon glared at her.

Jenny glanced at me meaningfully, preparing me to be
impressed. "Jenny," DeLeon complained.

George sat forward. "What? What do you do?"

DeLeon shot me a warning look. "I work for the
city. It's nothing."

George waited for more. Jenny nudged DeLeon but she
nudged right back. "It's not that interesting," DeLeon
promised. Then to me, coolly, "What about you, Mr. Navarre? How
do you come to know George?"

"George and I work together."

She frowned, trying to make a connection. "You
mean with the title company?"

She would've run George's name through TCIC, of
course, just to make sure she wasn't going to be socializing with a
felon. That's standard procedure for any cop who dates. But the
system wouldn't necessarily have told her about George's less
reputable line of work.

"George is a private investigator," I told
her, smiling.

"Like Tres," Jenny put in, hoping to
impress.

DeLeon stared at George, who was still grinning
nervously. She looked back at me and mirrored my amused little smile.
"How nice. Must be fun work."

George shrugged. "Better than what I did before.
Police work."

DeLeon raised her eyebrows, nodded cool
encouragement. "Oh?"

Just as George was about to explain himself, the food
arrived. I thought we'd been saved. Jenny found a few small faults
with her specialized order, and then the rest of us had to do the
obligatory "Yum" comments and make remarks about how many
doggie bags we would need.

I put Robert Johnson's to-go order aside and admired
my entree.

Los Barrios is one of the few restaurants that does
quesadillas right — making the cornmeal into thick, triangular
pastries, deep frying them with the cheese and slices of poblano
pepper inside. Crispy and spicy. Heaven, once you put a little garlic
chimichurri sauce on top. I concentrated on the food, on my excellent
margarita, on the blissful momentary silence.

Then, just as Jenny was about to redirect us toward
some innocuous new topic, DeLeon said, "You were saying
something about police work, George?"

She had a good voice for interrogations — detached
yet encouraging, almost big-sisterly.

George dabbed his napkin against his mustache. He'd
taken off his Panama hat and his hair glistened in neatly Bryl-ed
rows. "Used to be in the Special Police. Air force."

"Really," DeLeon said. "I considered
SP."

Berton jerked his head back. "You were in the
air force?"

"One tour, spent mostly at Lackland. Decided
against reenlisting and went to college instead."

"I'll be damned." He looked at me, amazed.

"They have women at Lackland these days," I
confirmed. "I've seen pictures."

He blew air, looked back at DeLeon. "Well,
princess, don't cry for missing SP. Damn near killed me, that job. A
lot of my friends got out and went straight into civilian police
work, you know, because it's all they could do. Not me. Way I see it,
to survive in police work you've got to have some kind of overactive
testosterone problem."

Jenny was silently moving her lips as if she were
trying to jump-start her voice to break in.

"Damn good quesadillas," I said. "Anybody
want some?"

Jenny yelped, "Yeah!" a little louder than
she needed to.

DeLeon told George: "Go on."

George shook his head. "Most of the cops me and
Tres have met on the job — back me up here, Tres—"

I smiled at him, then at DeLeon, who smiled back.

"—most of the cops get high on the authority
thing, the boots and the sunglasses, you know? The detectives are
even worse — complete hot-shit complex. They treat P.I.s like dirt.
Am I right, Tres?"

DeLeon looked at me, rapt with attention. I took a
bite of borracho beans and mumbled, "Yum."

"Really," she said to George. Her beeper
went off. She checked the number and said, "Geez."

"What?" George wanted to know.

DeLeon smiled. "It's my work."

"At this time of night?"

She laughed with all the warmth of" rattling
aluminum foil. "Well, it isn't P.I. work, George, but it does
keep me busy. I've been sort of waiting for word that I could get to
this one particular witness, and they just gave me the 'come on in'
signal. I should really—"

Berton's fork had dropped slowly to his plate.
"Witness?"

Jenny chewed her lip nervously.

DeLeon reached over and patted George's hand. "I
hate to cut out, but I should catch a taxi. You remember how it is,
George, you get an arrest case and the clock starts ticking for the
indictment."

"You're a—"

"Cop, honey. Homicide detective. The hot-shit
variety."

"Oh, hey, I didn't—"

She smiled. "Not a problem, George. I
sympathize. Really, we should do this some other time. It's been
great, and really—" She slid her plate over. "You guys
have some chile relleno. Looks terrific."

She gave Jenny a silent, unequivocal order with her
eyes, a we need to talk command that made Jenny grab her purse before
she even knew she'd done it. "Oh — you shouldn't go alone, I
guess," Jenny gabbled. Then to me, "Maybe I should — I
could just take a rain check or — you know?"

"Sure," I said.

"Okay?"

"Yeah, sure."

'I'll—"

Jenny wavered, looking at me apologetically, then saw
something she hadn't expected, the beginnings of a smile I'd been
trying to suppress.

Her face got a little colder. "Well — maybe
another time."

George and I stood and mumbled sureties that we'd all
be sitting around the table again real soon, and then the women left
to catch their taxi. Rod "the Rod" Rodriguez oozed into the
mambo version of "The Long and Winding Road."

George deflated into his seat. I sat next to him and
started laughing.

"What the hell are you so cheerful about?"
George snarled. "You knew who she was, didn't you?"

"The food is really good," I told him.
"Isn't it?"

"Uh-huh."

"Yeah?"

"Yes, already!"

I grinned, then waved down the waitress and told her
to bring two more margaritas for the bachelor master detectives.
 

TWELVE

After dropping off George that night, I should've
gone straight home to bed. Of course I didn't.

The abbreviated dinner date had left me wired. My
mind was still spinning from getting nearly blown up and shot at and
gainfully employed all in one day. Most of all, I'd allowed myself to
slip into case mode. Too many years of missing-persons traces,
peripheral work on homicides — training myself to work in
forty-eight-hour sprints before the statistical window of success
slammed shut in my face.

I decided to swing by Erainya's, see if she was
awake. Just for a minute, I told myself. Just to get back in her good
graces and promise to be a good little teacher from now on.

That plan changed as soon as I pulled in front of
Erainya's house. Her door opened instantly. Erainya stomped down her
front steps with Jem in tow and an armful of gear. She was wearing
her commando clothes — black drawstring pants, long-sleeved
T-shirt, black sneakers. With her black hair, in the dark, she looked
like a pale, floating, pissed-off face. Jem was wearing scarlet
Rugrats pajamas and new white Reeboks only slightly brighter than his
smile.

Erainya let Jem into the backseat of the VW, then
lowered herself and her stuff into the passenger's side and slammed
the door. "Shoot me if I ever let you out of my sight again."

"Look, about Ozzie Gerson—"

"You ain't been home making lesson plans,
honey."

"The call just happened to come in while we were
talking and—"

"Wherever you go tonight, you're taking me."

"I'm going home."

"I brought my 9mm. Stop now and I might not use
it."

I shut up. Jem squeezed me around the neck from
behind and told me he was glad we were going to have fun together
tonight. I mumbled my halfhearted agreement, then started the engine.

We did a U on Garraty and headed south through
Terrell Hills.

Erainya said, "Full story."

The full story took us all the way to Broadway.
Erainya loved it. She asked me where I wanted to go now and when I
told her, she loved that even more. She muttered Greek words of
disgust all the way to the Hildebrand intersection. Jem asked where
we were going.

I glanced at Erainya for guidance.

Having the mother he did, Jem had been on excursions
that most kids would've found boring or nightmarish or both. His nap
and sleep cycles were completely unpredictable, much like his
mother's verdicts on what was safe and appropriate for him. At the
moment he seemed happy, ready for anything. The place I wanted to go,
however, might not be so kid-friendly.

"He's fine," Erainya promised. "I got
to baby-sit you and him at the same time, I can do that. Uncle Tres
is taking us somewhere, honey."

"I am?"

"Tell the boy."

I tried for a smile as I looked back at Jem. "You
want to see where they make amusement-park rides, Bubba?"

Jem hit the roof shouting hurray.

We continued south on Broadway toward downtown. Jem
talked about the latest Sega games. We passed underneath I-35 and
into an area of repair shops and used-car dealerships.

A couple of hookers stood on the corner of North
Alamo outside a vacuum cleaner repair shop. The hookers had seen
better days. Something about their garish makeup, the black stockings
and yellow dresses, the drug-enhanced fiery smiles — that display
in front of the grimy windows filled with aging Hoovers and
Electroluxes — there was probably a joke in there somewhere, but
tonight it seemed a little too pathetic to make.

I took a right on Jones.

The buildings were dilapidated warehouses, long and
low, nothing on the horizon but palm trees and the blinking spikes of
radio towers.

We followed the old Southern Pacific tracks past the
Brewery Art Museum, then over the river and right on Camden. The
address we wanted filled the 300 block. A dimly lit sign out front
said RIDEWORKS, INC., with the R and the W drawn like roller-coaster
loops. Underneath, smaller letters proclaimed: KING OF THE SOUTH
TEXAS CARNIVAL BUSINESS.

At the near end of the lot was a long portable
building, facing in toward a cement yard fenced off by ten-foot-high
chain link. Beyond that was a corrugated-metal warehouse the size of
a small airplane hangar. Lining the side of the street, four insanely
tall palm trees cut black silhouettes against the sky at
gravity-defying curves, like Dr. Seuss trees.

I pulled across the street from the yard gates. A
single light glowed behind the white-paned side window of the
RideWorks office. One floodlight on a telephone pole threw a yellow
oval of illumination on the closed hangar doors of the warehouse.
Other than that the place was dark. Several cars lined the side of
the street next to the warehouse — a Pontiac, an old Chevrolet, a
Ford double-wide pickup.

Jem stuck his head over the front seats.

"They make rides?" he asked me excitedly.

"Yep."

"Can we go in?"

"Not right now," Erainya said. She was
watching the buildings, getting impatient. "Honey, if you were
thinking we could just..."

She stopped. We both focused on the same thing —
the tiny flame of a lighter flaring up in the cab of the pickup truck
across the street. The flame briefly illuminated a cigar, shadowy red
jowls, the brim of a cowboy hat. Then it flicked out, replaced by the
fainter glow of the cigar tip.