In Big Trouble Page 16

  "Why do you sound so groggy?" Kitty asked.

  "Napping," Tess muttered, looking at her watch, still trying to anchor herself in time and space. All her instruments agreed: She was in La Casita on Broadway in San Antonio, Texas, a city of a million-plus souls, few of whom seemed to like her very much. Esskay was stretched out on the bed next to her. It was the last Sunday in October, unless it was Monday. And if Kitty were on the line, demanding to know why she sounded groggy, deductive reasoning meant it must be a time when normal people are awake.

  "How'd you find me, anyway?" she asked her aunt. "I didn't even wait for the machine when I called you yesterday."

  "I starred-69 your ass, as the expression goes. Maybe I should be the detective in the family."

  "You want my business, it's yours. What's up? Everyone okay?" The Sternes' tragic history had reminded her how fragile family happiness was, how quickly an unknown and unexpected evil could shatter everything one loved.

  "Tyner called, so did Pat. I'm not sure which one is more furious with you."

  "Pat?" Her mind was still cluttered with the weekend's events.

  "Patrick Monaghan, your father, my brother. Remember him? He seems to hold me personally responsible for you being in Texas. I tried to tell him you sneaked out without letting anyone know where you were going, but he wasn't mollified. And Tyner's over here every hour of the day and night, wanting to know if I've heard from you. I am not your answering service, Tesser. Call these people—and talk to them, not their machines. Write them postcards. All they want to know is that you're okay."

  "Okay," Tess said, but she wasn't agreeing so much as repeating Kitty's last word back to her.

  "You are all right, aren't you?"

  "Sure, yeah. Just tired."

  "Did you find Crow?"

  "Found him—" She stopped to calculate. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Had so little time really passed? "Two days ago."

  "And he's fine?"

  "More or less." Probably less than more, what with a corpse in a pool house, an unexplained shotgun under his bed, a missing femme who might be fatale in every sense of the word, and some bad-ass ex-con on the loose who was likely to be miffed about his dead buddy, assuming he wasn't the one who had killed him. Then there was the part about her hormones kicking in at a most inopportune moment, but that was so much more information than Kitty needed.

  Tess heard a high-pitched babbling on Kitty's end of the connection. "Is Laylah there?"

  "Yes, Jackie dropped her off. She has a date."

  "Jackie has a date?"

  "Dinner with this nice man who was interested in hiring her for a capital campaign for Sinai Hospital. She says it's business, I say you don't wear a backless red dress unless there's some pleasure involved. Wait, Laylah wants to talk to you."

  A brief silence, then Tess heard Laylah's snuffly little breaths as she panted into the phone. Laylah felt that telephone communication was largely telepathic. She just held on tight and thought lovely thoughts, until they flew through the line.

  "Hey, Laylah, it's Tesser."

  No response. Laylah knew the piece of plastic that Kitty held to her face wasn't Tesser.

  "No, really, it's me. Esskay is here, Laylah. What does Esskay say? What does the doggie say?"

  More snuffly breaths. Then, suddenly, clear as a bell: "Hey, hey, Esskay. Go yo' way. Hey, hey, Esskay."

  It was a fragment of the sausage company's hotdog jingle, the one that Cal Ripken had been pretending to sing all summer long on the Orioles' radio broadcasts. Tess laughed so hard she almost fell off the bed. She was still laughing, and Laylah was still repeating the jingle, very pleased with herself, when Kitty took the phone back.

  "She takes after you, Tesser. Your first sentence came from a commercial for pork products, too. ‘More Parks sausages, Mom—please?'"

  "Bullshit," Tess said, but she couldn't stop laughing, and her room at La Casita no longer seemed quite so dark. Somewhere, there was a place she knew, a place where people knew her. She'd get back there eventually. She could be there the day after tomorrow if she really wanted. Get in the car right now and drive without stopping. Steal a cat nap somewhere in Tennessee, and pull up to Kitty's bookstore early Tuesday. Part of her longed to do just that.

  But she wasn't finished here yet. Finding Crow had proved to be only the beginning. Now she had to save him, too. From what, she wasn't quite sure. His own good intentions, some twisted sense of honor, a trouble much bigger than anyone had anticipated? She rummaged through her bag and her pockets until she found the card Rick Trejo had given her. No answer at his home. On a hunch, she called the office number. He picked up on the first ring.

  "Working on a Sunday night?"

  "I'm the hardest working man in show business." And happy to be so, judging by his cheerful, upbeat voice. "What can I do for you, sweetheart?"

  Stop with the stupid endearments for one thing. But it was hard, for some reason, to take offense. The sensible-seeming Kristina put up with Rick Trejo and she was, well, a sweetheart.

  "They're not finished with him, are they?"

  "Your friend Crow? Not by a long shot. Screwing up the search was a temporary setback. Guzman is a good detective. When he's pissed, he's a great one."

  "Crow couldn't kill anyone."

  "You don't have to convince me, baby. But he knows something. Got any idea what it is?"

  "Not a clue."

  "Well, don't hold out on me. That's rule number one. My hunch is that Emmie Sterne is neck-deep in some shit, and he's trying to protect her. Our best-case scenario is that she's the one who stashed the gun under his bed, then called the cops and fingered him."

  "Why would she do that?"

  "Because if she killed that guy, she needs a fall guy. And because she is crazy. Big-time, fucked-up, welcome-to-the-snakepit crazy. Of course, a lot of the old-money Anglos in this town are, but I guess she comes by her nut-house shtick legitimately."

  Tess thought of the photos she had seen, and the sad legacy of the Sterne family, where everyone ended up orphaned. Although Gus Sterne had a little boy, according to the book. Clay, a year younger than Emmie. He had beaten the family curse, made it to adulthood with his parents alive.

  "I don't think Crow would stand by if he thought Emmie was a cold-blooded killer. Only she knows what she's up to."

  "Or where she is," Rick pointed out.

  "Hire me," Tess said. "I'll find her. I'll go back to her godmother, for one thing, and find out why she was so determined to mislead me—sending me to the wrong place to find the band, glossing over the family history."

  "You're not licensed to work in this state."

  "There's got to be a way around that."

  "Yeah. You could work for free. After all, my client is officially indigent."

  "His parents have money."

  "He says if I call his parents, he'll find someone else to be his lawyer. And, baby, I want this case. Trust me, they can come into court with a video of Mr. Ransome offing Tom Darden, and I can get a jury to let him walk."

  "I thought the goal was to keep Crow from being charged at all."

  "The goal is to win. I'll take it in the early innings or in the bottom of the ninth, with bases loaded, two men out. If you think finding Emmie Sterne is going to help, you go for it. But bear in mind, it could hurt, too. We could end up with two coconspirators pointing fingers at each other, with the race on to see who can cut the fastest deal with the DA. Ever think about that?"

  "It doesn't make any sense," Tess insisted. "There's no reason for Emmie Sterne to kill Darden. Guzman told me he thought he could link Darden and Weeks to the murders, but he never told the families that he was working that angle."

  "I know, I know," Trejo said. "I talked to him, too. I can't decide if this helps us or hurts us. Then again, anything we don't know can hurt us. I tried to impress that fact upon Crow when I caught up with him later today. He swore he was telling me everything he knew."

  "And?"


  "He lies pretty well, but not well enough. Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever going to have a client that starts off telling me the truth. Probably not. Even the criminal attorneys who represent the white boys in white collars probably have to listen to a lot of lies in the beginning."

  "Probably."

  There was a moment of silence on the line, as Tess and Rick were lost in their own abstract musings—he on his class of clientele, no doubt, she on Crow's loyalty. One of his greatest strengths, but strengths could become weaknesses. Why was he so insistent on protecting Emmie? Why was he upset when he couldn't find her in the Alamo?

  Time was a factor, and not because some record producer was coming to town. All I needed was a week. What could happen in seven days? God could create the world and take a day off. An ordinary mortal could work forty hours, get shit-faced and still have a day left to recover. Personally, she had gone through a complete set of days-of-the-week underwear and done a wash. Anything could happen. Everything could happen.

  "So where do we start?" she asked Rick.

  "Darden's buddy, Laylan Weeks, is out there, somewhere. I've got an old client in town who might have some ideas about where to find him. I say we go looking for him. You can look for our crazy little lead singer on your own time. Man, I wouldn't mind being her lawyer. The baby found at the scene of the city's most famous unsolved homicide, now a murderess in her own right. That would pack them in."

  "You're really doing a lot to change all those ugly lawyer stereotypes."

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah." She could tell Rick was distracted—clacking away on a computer, eating a sandwich, slurping down something that had to be loaded with caffeine. She wouldn't be surprised to find out he was on a treadmill and watching television, too. "Man, listen to me, I sound like a friggin' Beatles song. You know, I don't even like their music that much. Give me Waylon Jennings any day. The way I see it, God proved his existence by keeping him off that plane, the one that went down with Buddy Holly and Richie Valens."

  "You're saying God could save only one musician, and he chose Waylon Jennings over Buddy Holly?"

  "No, I'm saying God knew Richie Valens had to die. If only he had gotten to him before ‘La Bamba.' You know how many times I've heard that goddamn song?

  The movie came out just as all my sisters were hitting their teen years. I've got five sisters. Every goddamn quincenera they played it! I'm not a sailor. I am the captain. Could you explain those frigging lyrics, please? Give me ‘Pancho and Lefty' any day."

  "The Willie Nelson song?"

  "He sang it, with Merle Haggard. Townes van Zandt wrote it. And he died a few years back, died way too young. So I take it back. God doesn't know shit about music."

  Tess had to laugh. Rick's ferocity about the smallest topics seemed to her an excellent harbinger for someone who might end up protecting Crow's life, given Texas's mania for the death penalty. "Are you always so adamant about everything?"

  "Always. If you can't know your own mind, what can you know?"

  Tess had no answer. But a corollary occurred to her: If you could know your own heart, would you then know everything?

  Chapter 15

  Tess was jumping rope in her room on the next morning when the pounding started. She assumed it was the hooker next door, who couldn't sleep through her hopping. Even with the carpet muffling her slow double-bounce jumps—she was much too tired to jump proper pepper-style, like a boxer—La Casita did seem to shake a little each time she landed. Too bad. After all, Tess had slept through her noises last night, which were much louder and less rhythmic than rope-skipping. But as she continued jumping, she realized the pounding was coming through the door, not the wall. She had a guest.

  "Some guard dog," said Rick Trejo, using his soft leather briefcase to shield his double-breasted suit—Armani, or a darn good copy—from Esskay's affections. "You ready for our meeting?"

  "Where's Crow?"

  "He's a loose cannon, and I don't need the hassle of shuttling artillery around San Antonio. Besides, it's my understanding you're not his favorite person right now."

  There was a question in Rick Trejo's eyes, one she didn't want to answer. "I wasn't expecting you for another hour."

  "I moved things up. I was going to eat breakfast first, but it's better to talk to this guy on an empty stomach."

  "Give me five minutes to get ready."

  In six minutes, she was out of the shower, in fresh clothes, and plaiting her wet hair. Rick Trejo, who seemed to have a talent for making himself at home in the world, had removed his jacket and was stretched out on the bed with Esskay. They were watching the local news segment that came at the end of each thirty-minute chunk of the national news.

  "Fatuous," he declared. "If it bleeds it leads, indeed. The dip in the homicide rate has sure been hard on local news here. We're seeing a lot more car crashes and freak accident footage. Is your news this bad?"

  "As a point of local pride, I would have to pit Baltimore's television news against any major market for sheer awfulness."

  Rick tried to change the channel, only to find that the television set had no other channels.

  "Nice place," he said. "I can see you're accustomed to traveling in style. Oh well, Channel 5 is good enough. The important thing is, Guzman played fair. He didn't leak the fact that Crow had been questioned to the Eagle or the television stations."

  "How could he? Crow wasn't charged. I used to work for a newspaper. We never would have identified someone unless he had been charged or named in a warrant."

  "You don't know the San Antonio Eagle, querida. They have ways with punctuation. When in doubt, just put a question mark at the end of the headline. ‘Is there a killer cop in San Antonio?' ‘Is the mayor's marriage falling apart?' Sometimes, they get so carried away, they ask questions where simple statements of fact will do. ‘Is Governor George W. Bush elected easily to a second term?'"

  "Was there?"

  "What, a George W. Bush? Believe me, he's all too real."

  "No, a killer cop."

  "In fact, there was, a long time ago. He's dead now, killed by his partner, who was then acquitted. And the mayor's marriage was falling apart, but he put it back together again, just like Humpty Dumpty. So maybe the reason the Eagle doesn't get sued is because it asks the right questions." He glanced at his watch. Not a Rolex, but it might as well have been. Its gold casing was no wider than a dime. Funny, how small had become a status symbol in some things. Tess bet Rick Trejo had a cell phone the size of a credit card. "Let's go. Although I don't know why I'm in such a hurry. It's not like he's going anywhere. But the earlier in the day we talk to him, the less stoned he'll be."

  "Sounds like a classy guy, this ex-client of yours."

  "Sweetheart, you don't know the half of it."

  As Rick Trejo's car headed west along Commerce Street, Tess was quickly disabused of any notion that she had begun to get her bearings in San Antonio. The trip had been familiar for a few blocks—she recognized downtown, caught a glimpse of the police station where she had spent Sunday morning—but then they passed under a freeway, and it was as if they had entered a different city. A different country, really, with signs in Spanish and rundown bungalows painted in once-bright Southwestern colors, now faded from the harsh sun.

  "Welcome to the barrio," Rick said. His Spanish always sounded faintly ironic, as if he were mocking himself. Or mocking others' ideas about him.

  "It's not so bad," said an ever-competitive Tess. "Baltimore's slums are much worse."

  Trejo smiled. "Actually, some parts of the west side are very nice. I grew up on this side of town, my parents still live here, in as nice a neighborhood as you could ask for. But I'll let you walk through the Alazan-Apache Courts at midnight, see how ‘not bad' you think it is."

  He headed south, then west, south again—she could tell only because his dash had a built-in compass, as well as an inside-outside themometer—and finally stopped the car in a small business district. There was a group of men hang
ing on the corner, and a little chorus of hisses went up when Tess got out of the car. She hissed back at them, which was met with a great whoop of delight.

  "Ignore them," Rick said, rounding the corner. "They're harmless. Just day workers waiting for someone to come by with a job for them."

  "But it's so rude," Tess said.

  "Yeah, well, after we talk to this guy, you'll be begging for that kind of rudeness."

  They walked up a shady street, to a house where a shirtless man sat on the steps of the front porch, drinking a beer. The house and garden were well-tended but shabby, usually the signs of an older woman living alone. Yet here was this seemingly able-bodied man who could have made the small repairs it needed.

  "A little early for a beer, Al," Rick said.

  "And good morning to you, abogado. You come all the way over here just to see what I'm having for breakfast?"

  He was small, with narrow shoulders and a thin, sly face. Tess watched his dark eyes shift, saw his gaze follow a group of children walking down the street. He held his tongue between his teeth, in the unselfconscious style of a little boy concentrating on a task.

  "Stop it, Al," Rick said.

  "It's legal to look, isn't it? I know, I know—the priest says it's a sin to even think it, but the judge's law is different from the church's law. The judge lets you think all sorts of things, as long as you don't do them. The priest lets you do things, as long as you confess to them. Is this your girlfriend? She's a little big for my taste. I like them flatter-chested. But you know that."

  "This is Tess Monaghan, who's working on a case with me. Tess, this is Alberto Rojas, a former client."

  "Nice to meet you."

  To Tess's relief, Rojas didn't offer his hand. Although he looked clean enough, he had a too-sweet smell, as if he had to douse himself in cologne and deodorant soap to mask a terminally sour body odor.