“Organic.”
“Yeah. You know. ‘How ’bout them Spurs? Nice weather. Wanna help us find Frankie’s killer?’ ”
“We’re so-o dead.”
THE VAN BUMPED UP THE DRIVEWAY.
I looked at Ralph and tried to gauge how he was doing.
Before we hooked up with his cousin, Ralph had called his sister and asked about the baby. His sister was worried out of her mind, frantic about Ana, furious with Ralph for running, but the baby was fine. She told Ralph all this, then demanded to speak to me.
“Stop him,” she told me. “He’s gonna get himself killed. You gotta stop him, bring him back to his daughter.”
I could hear Lucia Jr. in the background, banging on a pot and saying, Ab, ab, ab. I said, “I’ll do my best.”
“You’ll do it,” the sister insisted. “No accident Ralph came to you. You’re the one he respects the most. He’s told me that a million times. You gotta keep him from going over the edge.”
I didn’t bother protesting that we’d grown pretty far apart. I just promised again to do everything I could.
“You know why he got involved with the Whites, don’t you? You understand why he had to help Frankie?”
Before I could ask what she meant, the police came on the line and tried to negotiate with me. I hung up.
The call energized Ralph. He didn’t seem as depressed. He talked more. But there was also a new restlessness in his manner—a three-espresso buzz. I recognized it, unfortunately. It was the way Ralph acted when he was anticipating a fight.
He looked at me like he was following my thoughts. “My sister wanted you to hold my leash?”
“I guess.”
“She never figured I’d be the one with the wife and kid. She always figured I’d live that shit through you. You know?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
The tamale truck slowed.
I hazarded a look out the front windshield, but Ralph’s cousin immediately hissed, “Get down!”
My brief glimpse was enough to show me why.
Ahead of us, where the driveway divided, an angry-looking blond woman and an Anglo man in a brown leather jacket stood waiting for us with all the seriousness of Nazis at a checkpoint.
“YOU’RE NEW,” THE WOMAN SNAPPED.
“Y-yes, ma’am.” Ralph’s cousin’s voice wobbled.
Withering silence.
I made myself small behind a column of tamale canisters.
“Deliveries don’t come through the front,” the woman said. “Why do you look so nervous?”
Her voice didn’t match the glimpse I’d gotten of her.
She’d looked young, like a pissed-off sorority girl, but she sounded like my third-grade teacher Mrs. Ziegler, with the steel-gray beehive and the paddle hanging from the chalkboard.
“S-sorry, ma’am,” Ralph’s cousin said. “I just don’t want to mess up this job.”
Footsteps crunched in the gravel—the leather jacket goon, making his way around to the back of the van.
I got my spiel ready, should he open the doors. I hoped I’d have time to smile and say “Would you like a free sample?” before he shot us.
Finally, the woman’s voice: “Around to the right. The kitchen entrance is marked. You can read?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ralph’s cousin exhaled. “Thank you.”
We lurched into drive.
I tried not to worry about the woman’s tone—suspicious, almost taunting. Why had she let us go so easily?
Ralph’s cousin rolled up his window.
“Good job, ese,” Ralph told him.
“Shit, man.” His cousin was sweating as much as we were. “Did you see that lady’s eyes? I think she was going to gut me.”
“She couldn’t be older than college age,” I said.
The cousin glanced back at me. “College for what? Ax murderers?”
The back lawn was the size of a football field and just about as busy. Workers were draping garlands on the bandstand gazebo, erecting a large white tent pavilion next to the swimming pool, setting up buffet tables and covering them in plastic to protect against the weather. At the far edge of the property, where the ground sloped down to a stand of live oaks along the banks of Olmos Creek, electricians were stringing the entire forest with Christmas lights.
“Intimate party tonight,” Ralph guessed.
“For a thousand friends,” I agreed.
The cousin parked the van. Seconds later, he opened our doors.
“Clear,” he reported unconvincingly.
Ralph and I climbed out, half baked in grease. Ralph’s jacket steamed in the cold air.
“Two cans of pork.” The cousin shoved canisters at me. “Ralph, you take the two venison. I’m gone. Don’t tell me how your visit turns out.”
“Thanks, ese,” Ralph said.
“Relatives,” the cousin grumbled.
By the time we’d lugged our tamales to the service entrance, the cousin’s van had disappeared around the drive.
Inside, Guy White’s kitchen was a cavern of white marble and chrome, bigger than any apartment I’d ever lived in. The counters overflowed with gourmet food, catering trays, grocery bags, vases of flowers. I was too busy getting the crap burned out of my hands to notice much else about my surroundings until I found a free space to park my tamales.
“Damn.” Ralph rubbed his red hands. “Now what?”
A female voice behind us said, “Now, you explain.”
We turned.
Standing in an interior doorway, the angry young blonde was pointing a nine-millimeter pistol at my head.
SHE ESCORTED US INTO THE MAIN foyer, to the base of the presidential staircase, where her leather-jacketed friend was waiting.
The guy wore khakis and a button-down with the brown leather jacket. With stiff blond hair, athletic build, he might’ve been straight off any college football team, but I had the creepiest feeling I’d met him before. Then it struck me: He looked like Frankie White. If Frankie had been resurrected a little slimmer, a little more handsome, still alive and in his twenties.
He even had the same cruel grin.
He did a thorough job frisking us. If I’d been wearing a wire, he would’ve found it. If I’d had a nail file concealed in any crevice of my body, he would’ve found it.
He took my .22 and cell phone, Ralph’s wallet. He turned out the pockets of our Goodwill jackets.
He raised an eyebrow when he read Ralph’s ID. “Ralph Arguello. I heard about you.”
“All true,” Ralph said.
The guy snorted. “I heard you’d gone soft and Johnny Zapata was taking over your business.”
He shoved Ralph against the wall and frisked him a second time.
“No wallet on the other one,” he told the blonde, digging his gun into my ribs. “Think he’s a cop?”
The woman appraised me coldly.
She had a tan much too good for the middle of winter, mussed-up shoulder-length hair the color of wet sand, a spray of freckles over her nose, black cargo pants and a black turtleneck sweater. She might’ve been any college kid just back from a week in Cozumel, except for her eyes.
She was too young to have eyes like that—startlingly blue and hard as glacier core.
“You’re not a cop if you’re with Arguello,” she decided. “Who are you?”
“Tres Navarre.”
Her eyes narrowed.
An uncomfortable sense of recognition prickled behind my ears. “Do I know you?”
She studied me about the length of time it would take to empty a clip into my chest. Then she glanced at her large friend. “Alex, put them in the wine cellar. I’ve got to think about this.”
Alex scowled. “I don’t take orders from you, Mad—”
“Just do it for once!”
“If Mr. White says to, sure.”
She glared at him.
I hated to interrupt their lovefest, but I said, “Alex is right. We need to talk to Mr. White.”
“No, you don’t,” the woman snapped. “Mr. White isn’t taking visitors.”
“He will for this,” Ralph said. “It’s about Frankie.”
Alex and the woman both froze. Eighteen years since the murder, the name Franklin White was still good for a hell of a shock wave.
The young woman was the first to react. She walked over to Ralph and punched him in the gut.
It was a professional punch—her whole body weight behind it, straight from the waist. Ralph doubled over with a grunt.
“You do not mention that name.” Her voice was steel. “Nobody is going to do that to the old man again.”
“Do what again?” I asked.
She whirled toward me, but Ralph said, “Listen, chica.”
He was clutching his stomach, trying to ignore Alex’s gun at his head. “My wife is a homicide cop. She was about to nail Frankie’s killer when she got shot. I’m going to find the bastard who shot her. Mr. White’s gonna help, because the shooter’s the same person who killed his son.”
“Mr. White doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“That’s not your decision to make,” I said. “Is it?”
Her kick was even faster than her punch.
I thought I was ready for it. I was no stranger to martial arts.
She launched a side-strike and I caught her ankle. I pulled her off balance, but instead of landing on her butt like a good opponent she pivoted in midair, connected her other foot with my face and turned her fall into a roll.
At least, that’s what Ralph told me later.
At the time, I was too busy staggering, admiring the floating yellow spots and tasting blood in my mouth.
The young woman got to her feet. She picked her gun up off the carpet.
“Forget the wine cellar,” she growled. “These two get dealt with right here.”
“Frankie’s killer’s gonna get away for good,” Ralph told her. “That what Mr. White wants?”
The woman raised her nine-millimeter. It was a newer model Beretta, a 9000S with a compact barrel and a discreet black finish. I imagined it would make an elegant hole in my chest.
A man’s voice said, “Madeleine.”
The young woman’s face filled with bitterness, as if she’d just been caught sneaking out after curfew.
At the top of the stairwell, leaning heavily on a cane, looking infinitely older and frailer than when I’d seen him last, stood a white-haired man. He wore a burgundy Turkish bathrobe. His face was the color of milk.
“What is this,” Guy White murmured, “about my son?”
WE WERE THROWN DOWN ON THE carpet of Mr. White’s study. Persian weave. Silk. I’d had my face slammed against worse.
“Enough, Madeleine,” Mr. White said.
The demon girl’s foot eased off my back. She yanked me to kneeling position, dragged me backward and shoved me into a plush armchair. Next to me, Ralph got a similar treatment from Alex the goon.
Guy White stood in front of us, staring out his library windows.
His back lawn spread to the horizon. The workers were everywhere, setting up the tent and the banquet tables and the Christmas decorations on the denuded grass.