Mission Road

Page 8

“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.
I sighed. “Let’s go, Ralphas.”
“Where to?”
“Back to the phone. I’ve got an idea that’ll probably get us killed.”
LARRY DRAPIEWSKI WAS WAITING FOR US at Mi Tierra—an outside table, just like I’d told him.
The shops on the plaza were just opening up, sunlight melting the frost off the windows. Sleepy mariachis tuned guitars by the fountain. Except for pigeons and one tourist family braving the cold, we had the restaurant patio to ourselves.
Larry pointed to the extra breakfast plates he’d ordered.
He kicked out a chair for me. “Wasn’t enough you shot a doctor this week, huh? You’re riding a shit avalanche, son.”
“Good to see you, too, Larry.”
Since retiring from the Sheriff’s Department, Larry had gone completely gray. He’d gotten a hearing aid, grown a scraggly beard and cultivated a potbelly. He looked like Santa Claus after boot camp.
Ralph sat across from him and spread a napkin in his lap. He started heaping huevos rancheros into a tortilla.
Larry glanced at him with distaste. “Tres, if your father could see you now—”
“Can you help us or not?” I asked. I’d already told him everything over the phone. Some of it he’d already heard from cop friends. None of it seemed to surprise him.
Larry ran his finger around the edge of his Bloody Mary glass. “Your friend here is a killer.”
“You can talk to me, Drapiewski.” Ralph took a bite of eggs. “I speak inglés.”
Larry’s eyes turned steely. I remembered something my dad had said once about Larry Drapiewski being better than a cattle prod when it came to scaring the shit out of suspects.
“Arguello,” he said, “if it wasn’t Tres asking me this, if I didn’t owe his father my life a dozen times over—”
“My wife. Can you get me in to see her or not?”
Larry stared across the plaza, toward the parking garage where we’d come in. “Not possible.”
“Your guys work hospital security when an officer is shot,” I said.
“We rotate with SAPD. Professional courtesy. The answer is still no.”
“Is Ana stabilized?” I asked.
“She’s still alive. That’s all I know.”
“Then she needs protection,” Ralph said.
Larry glared at him. “Why do you think the cops are on round-the-clock guard duty, Arguello?”
“And if the guy who shot her is a cop?”
Larry blinked. “You’re some piece of work. Why don’t you be a man and turn yourself in? You have a daughter to think about.”
Ralph started to get up.
I grabbed his arm, pushed him back into his seat. “Larry, promise me you’ll keep Ana safe. Promise me the deputies looking after her are good men.”
“I’m retired, Tres.”
“Every man in the department owes you something.”
He sipped his Bloody Mary, checked his watch. His eyes drifted again toward the parking lot. “I’ll do what I can. In exchange, Arguello surrenders.”
“We’re talking about Frankie White’s murder,” I said. “You know what’ll happen to Ralph once word gets out.”
“He made that bed.”
“He didn’t,” I said. “You must’ve heard something about the case back then—some rumor. Something.”
“This is crazy, Tres. Don’t get sucked into it.”
“White’s enemies, maybe?”
“Just talk.” He checked his watch again. “Zapata—you probably already know that. Or the Zacagni family out of Houston. There was something about a hit man, Titus Roe, maybe hired by the family of one of Frankie’s victims.”
“What do you mean—Frankie’s victims?”
Larry glanced uneasily at Ralph, then back at me. “Hell, Tres . . . You don’t know? Forget it. Nobody on the right side of the law is going to help you with this. You’ve got to surrender.”
Something about the way he said it—the way he kept glancing at the parking lot.
I pushed my chair out. “It’s time we left,” I told Ralph.
“Eat first,” Larry said. “I paid for that and you haven’t touched it.”
“Since when have you worn a hearing aid, Larry?”