The waitress brought our food and I paused long enough to let her settle the plates. “That doesn’t feel right. They’re both . . . more direct. And I doubt they know anything about rituals. I just brought it up because we need to cover all angles. How does that go? Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth?”
I saw the tension ease out of him. “You’ve been reading Sherlock Holmes again. After you left, Corine . . . I bought a first edition of The Deep Blue Good-by because I forgot you weren’t coming back. It’s still on the bedside table at home.”
As a mass market paperback, it wouldn’t be valuable. He’d probably found it in a second-hand shop somewhere, but it meant everything that he remembered my passion for Travis McGee, a hero who ranted about the destruction of the Everglades before people practiced environmentalism. I loved John D. MacDonald. All those times I rambled about one of his colorfully titled novels, I thought Chance tuned me out. But he’d listened and remembered. If I was wrong about that—
Through the front windows, I watched the Camry explode in the parking lot.
Odds and Ends
“You know”—Saldana eyed the wreckage in the parking lot of Cotulla Style Pit Bar-B-Q—“if you wanted my attention, you could’ve just called.”
“Funny.”
He sighed. “When the call came in, I just knew you had something to do with it.”
I felt like that was a trifle unjust. I hadn’t blown out the windows at the warehouse or killed poor Maris. Chance is the one who attracts trouble like a lightning rod. My life in Mexico City had been pretty quiet. So by my calculations, I needed to stay away from him. Adventure followed him like a hound dog after a bone, and I’m not shamed to say I’d enjoyed enough excitement.
“So you came out to see me?” I managed a smile for my mentor. Still didn’t know what I was supposed to do with him. “That’s so sweet.”
“Slow day.” Jesse shrugged. “Just the usual gang stuff, so I thought I could spare a few minutes to take a look here.”
There wasn’t too much to see. The formerly piss yellow Camry smoldered in half a dozen pieces, and the cars parked on either side weren’t in great shape either. If we hadn’t stopped for lunch, we’d be dead. Some people might call it coincidence, but we could thank Chance’s luck for that. We definitely had somebody on our tail, though. I suspected they’d planted the bomb when we went into the police station, and that took some stainless steel balls.
Was it possible that our enemies had a guy on the police force? Someone who had a vested interest in making sure nobody ever found out what had become of Min? Well, shit. Jesse had known our every move since I made the mistake of trusting him.
We shouldn’t stay with Chuch and Eva anymore. Maybe the mechanic had good wards, but you couldn’t charm a house against fire, gas leaks, or Molotov cocktails. It was so wrong that our enemies could aim such a wide variety of threats at us, and we didn’t even know whom we were fighting. Or why, for that matter.
I felt numb. Though I’ve been burned out of my home and seen some scary things in my life, I’d never found a demon-chewed corpse before yesterday, nor had a vehicle blow up before my eyes. These people weren’t messing around; they’d kill us if they could.
For the first time I wondered if we should step back and let it go. Maybe uncertainty was better than dying. After all, I’d lived for twenty years without knowing what happened to my dad. My mom and I figured he just left, though Twila tried to sell me a different version of events. Right now I had too many other things to worry about to focus on it, but it weighed on me nonetheless.
Chance finished his interview with Saldana’s partner. We finally met the guy, Nathan Moon, and I’d been wrong about him all the way. Not a big, burly type. He was short, bowlegged, and paunchy with a sunburned, sullen face. I still bet he played bad cop.
Shortly he proved it. “So you don’t have any idea why somebody would launch your ride?”
I didn’t know what Chance had told Officer Moon, but I clammed up, courtesy of cops hassling me over the years. They always thought I was a charlatan, a grifter, or worse. Never mind the fact that Chance and I helped people; we didn’t talk the elderly out of their pensions. If Saldana wasn’t standing here, this would turn ugly. Hell, it might anyway. I didn’t know if I could trust him; in fact, things had gone drastically wrong ever since I took him into my confidence.
I lifted one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug and wished I had a long, tall glass of lemonade. “Maybe they thought it belonged to someone else.”
“Drug dealing’s about the only thing that would get people so riled up around here.” Moon pretended to consider. “Maybe if a deal went bad or some money went missing. You think any of them drug dealers drive a Camry?”
“I don’t know any,” I said sweetly. “So I’m afraid I can’t answer that.”
Jesse elbowed his partner. “Cut the lady some slack. Remember that talk we had about not treating victims like perps?”
I wasn’t sure I liked being classed as a victim, but I didn’t protest. The two cops exchanged a look, and then Moon stalked off to harangue one of the uniforms on scene. I imagined their office would be tense for a day or two. Or maybe Nathan Moon just acted like this all the time.
We stood by in the heat while the bomb squad went over the odds and ends. Finally a guy came over, red-faced and sweating. “Here’s the timer. Looks like the remains of a digital watch. We’ll know more later, but it was definitely a DIY ignition. I reckon they made it out of stuff you can buy at Home Depot.”
At that point, Saldana got involved in a discussion that went straight over my head. I swiped my palm across my forehead, ready to collapse somewhere shady and cool, but we didn’t have a ride. The rental car agencies would flip over their signs to closed after the busted engine block on the Suburban and now the exploding Camry. Once we established that the police didn’t need anything else from us, Chance shepherded me back inside.
As I nursed a Diet Coke in the blessed restaurant air conditioning, he called Chuch. “Hey, is Eva home? Good. I need a favor, and after this we’ll call it even. I’m talking about wiping your debt.” He paused, listening. “Settle down. I’m not about to ask for a night with your wife. Do I look like Robert Redford?”
I let my gaze wander up and down before answering, “Nope.”
Chance scowled and made shushing motions at me. If he’d asked I would’ve told him he was more Ben Jelen than Robert Redford—better in my book. Even if the actor wasn’t almost a hundred, I never went for blond guys, not since a big jerk named Erik had cheated on me. I did like tawny highlights in Jesse Saldana’s hair, though. I also liked his sense of humor, his smile, and the way his ass filled out a pair of Levi’s.
I didn’t like the fact that I was beginning to suspect he was dirty and that he’d been assigned to make sure we never learned anything useful about Min. He could’ve killed Maris, I realized. My presence in the apartment didn’t constitute an alibi, as I’d been sound asleep in another room. Maybe he hadn’t realized it would come to that.
He’d sure as hell looked rough when I got up. I’d assumed he suffered from sheer sexual frustration, but—
When I came out of the nightmare that line of thought evoked, I realized I’d missed the rest of the conversation, and Chance was regarding me expectantly, phone in hand.
I blinked. “Huh?”
“Chuch is giving us the Mustang. We’ll have to take better care of it.”
“Wow. How much money did you loan him?” A fully restored 1972 cherry red classic amounted to a significant gift.
He just shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. We’re even now.”
“Do we need to find somewhere else to stay?”
“I think it’s a good idea. I feel bad that we—I—dragged them into this. But I didn’t realize things would get this bad. Like Lenny, I thought it was a kidnapping at first. Calling in everything I’m owed, I could raise five hundred grand or so if they asked, but at this point I don’t think they will.”
“They didn’t hurt her. I think she knew them, Chance, or perhaps the people they represented.” Never mind the ritual. I’d contemplated that first reading a bit, and I got a good look at her face before she dropped the pewter Buddha.
His long fingers drew patterns on the scarred tabletop. Despite my best intentions I remembered a game we used to play, where I lay on my stomach and he wrote Korean characters on my spine. His mother had been teaching me the language and I had a knack for such things, but when Chance put his hands on me, I forgot every English word I knew.
“Pretty sure you’re right. If we’re going to find the answers, we have to follow her trail. And that seems to lead to Boys Town.”
Oh, joy. Was there ever such a twisted relationship? I couldn’t imagine another woman agreeing to accompany her ex to hang out with hookers. Sadly I couldn’t argue with his logic, as I’d come to the same conclusion myself. Maybe something we learned in the zona would bring the other loose threads into the weave, show the larger pattern.
Shit, I sounded like Twila.
After dropping some cash for the waitress, we went back outside to wait. Eva would follow Chuch in the Mustang, we’d take over ownership, and then . . . well. I didn’t know.
That was the plan, at least. Chuch turned up by himself about fifteen minutes later. I climbed into the back of his Maverick. Listened to the two of them argue in the front.
“You’re loco if you think I’m gonna cut you loose just ’cause it’s getting hard, primo. You’re my friend. I’m not gonna give you a car and say buena suerte when you got people trying to blow your shit up. I can help—you know that. I got contacts.”
Chuch always said, “If your mechanic doesn’t know everything that goes on, then you need a new mechanic.” But his willingness to stick didn’t mean it was a good idea.
“I know you can.” Chance sounded tired. “But I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you or Eva.”
I never heard this tone from Chuch before. “If they look crossways at Eva, I’ll hunt them down and cut them open. Stake them out in the desert so they die slow.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Chance said, and I wondered what secrets hid in Chuch’s past. What didn’t I know about him? “But that won’t bring her back. I wish you hadn’t left her alone. There was a reason I asked you to have her follow in the Mustang, and not just because I wanted to keep from leading bad things back to your house, if they don’t already know we’re there.”
Silence.
The souped-up Maverick roared as Chuch stepped on the gas.
Second Chances
Once we got there, Chuch ran faster than I would have credited, calling Eva’s name.
We found her in the kitchen, chopping carrots and bopping to her iPod. Chuch swept her in his arms, buried his face in her hair. She patted him with a perplexed look and then extricated herself. The sauce simmering on the stove smelled fantastic.