Southtown

Page 16

Pablo had made the cal s, dropped off the payment, just like he’d done the face-to-face work asking after Dimebox Ortiz. Nobody knew Pablo in San Antonio. That’s why Wil kept him alive.
Across the street, the San Antonio River was flooding its banks. Soledad used to walk along the edge of the water there. She used to talk to the man who sold hubcaps from his front porch. She’d make jokes with the boys who fished off the oil drums in the shade of the sycamore trees.
The tail on Erainya was costing them two hundred bucks. The video camera they’d gotten for a hundred bucks at one of the Arguel o pawn shops.
Even with the stash Gerry Far had provided, they were getting low on money and food. Wil hated banks.
He hated anything that left a paper trail. But he should risk a trip to the ATM, dip into the emergency fund his friend had set up for him. He didn’t have time to be knocking around the old neighborhood.
Wil put the car in drive.
He eased across the Grand Avenue Bridge, through a half foot of water. He parked in front of the San Antonio Art Museum.
“Hey, man . . .” Pablo again, nervous.
The museum was a big limestone castle with two turreted towers, a glass skywalk connecting them. It used to be the Lone Star Beer Brewery, and in Wil ’s opinion that had been a better use for the building.
He’d only been here once before, with Soledad, and for her sake, he hated the place.
It had been two weeks after the McCurdy Ranch story broke. Wil had been pissed about the media coverage. It would mean trouble for him, for everybody in his line of work. Then came the cal —the invitation for a meeting he never should’ve attended.
He got out of bed at midnight, as quietly as he could. A ful moon was coming in the window.
Soledad sighed in her sleep. Her silver Saint Anthony medal glinted at her throat.
Four months she’d been sharing his bed. He kept waiting to get tired of her, for the feeling of wanting her to pass. But the feeling didn’t pass. He was no longer worried about her running away. He didn’t have her watched, or lock the doors when he left.
She said she loved San Antonio. This was where she was meant to live. And the way she treated him in bed—maybe it was a lie, but she acted as if she wanted to be with him. If it was a lie, he didn’t want to know.
She had put on some weight since he’d bought her, but he didn’t mind. She had been too thin, anyway.
Now she looked healthy. Her skin and hair had a glow that hadn’t been there before.
She stirred as he was getting dressed, and opened her eyes. “Where are you going?”
“The museum.”
The answer, he realized, was absurd. She laughed, and it was impossible not to laugh with her.
“It’s closed, loco boy!”
“Not for me,” he said. “I’ve got to meet somebody there.”
“I like the museum.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Got to do something while you’re gone al day. Take me with you.”
Her smile made him want to take off his clothes again, join her under the covers. A lot more pleasant than what he had to do.
“I can’t,” he said. “These aren’t good men I have to see.”
Her eyes widened. “Are they worse than you?”
“No.”
“Then I got nothing to worry about, do I?”
He couldn’t tel her no. She dressed quickly. Together they walked down Jones Street in the dark, holding hands under the ful moon.
The museum was al lit up.
They walked straight up to the doors. The security guard wore an I-Tech patch on his uniform.
He didn’t look happy about it, but he let them in. “Fourth-floor skywalk.”
They walked upstairs, Soledad pointing out paintings. She made faces at the abstract stuff. She thought the nude models looked sad.
“You draw better,” she told him. “Why couldn’t your stuff be in here?”
She was one of the few people who’d ever seen his sketches—the drawings he did late at night, when he woke up haunted by some il egal immigrant’s face, one of the hundreds he’d imported that week. He didn’t know why some faces stuck with him and others didn’t. He didn’t know why sketching them made him feel better. But it al owed him to sleep. It got their faces onto the paper and out of his dreams.
Soledad stopped in front of an eighteenth-century seascape. “I wanted to live on the beach, when I was little.”
Another security guard passed by, pointedly ignoring them.
“Why San Antonio then?” Wil asked her. “No beaches here.”
Soledad pinched her medal ion. “My father’s. He gave it to me before I left. San Antonio was his patron saint. Said the city would be lucky for me.”
San Antonio. Saint Anthony. Wil had lived here since he was eight, when his parents moved from West Texas hoping to escape the oil fields, but he’d never thought about what the city’s name meant. “Why lucky?”
Soledad raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know about Saint Anthony?”
Wil shook his head. At the time, he knew almost nothing about religion.
“I’l tel you sometime,” Soledad promised.
On the fourth floor, she squeezed his hand. She let him go forward without her.
Two men were waiting for him on the skywalk.
“Hey, Stirman,” Fred Barrow said. “I see you brought your daughter.”
Wil said nothing. It had been a mistake to bring Soledad. If Barrow said another word about her, Wil would break his neck. He could fix a lot of things with the police. He spread money around in a lot of places.
But he wasn’t sure he could fix murdering Fred Barrow, not with a witness, with armed security guards.
Barrow took the unlit cigar from his mouth. He had a nose that had been broken at least twice, a knife scar on his jaw. He wore a suit that fit his broad shoulders poorly. His eyes were not very different from the eyes of Wil ’s clients—the ones who appraised women for purchase.
“We want a confession,” Barrow told him.
Wil looked at the other man, Sam Barrera. It was common knowledge the two PIs hated each other, which was why Wil had agreed to this meeting. Despite the risks, despite Wil ’s dislike for them both, he was curious. He wanted to hear what they were cal ing an “urgent business proposition.” What could possibly bring these two men together?
“You give us a statement,” Sam Barrera said, “we can talk to the D.A. this morning. He’s wil ing to go with human trafficking only, drop the accessory-to-murder charges. You’ve just got to admit to supplying the women. You’l be out in five to ten.”
Wil shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
The two private eyes exchanged looks.
Immediately Wil remembered why he hated them. They thought they were so goddamn superior. Wil had crossed paths with both of them before, on separate missing persons cases. Families in Mexico had hired them to find kin who had crossed il egal y and disappeared. Unlike most gumshoes, Barrow and Barrera wouldn’t take Wil ’s money. They wouldn’t go away. They just kept digging as if Wil was beneath them, as if it would be insulting to cooperate with him. So Wil had taught them a lesson. He had made sure the people they were looking for disappeared permanently, al traces of their existence wiped out. He’d made sure the PIs knew it, too. Their investigations went nowhere. They couldn’t touch Wil .
“You went too far this time, Stirman,” Fred Barrow said. “Six women were murdered.”
Wil made the connection. “You’re talking about the McCurdy Ranch. Those women weren’t mine.”
Fred Barrow laughed. “Every slave laborer in South Texas has your handprints al over them.”
His eyes drifted over to Soledad.
“You look at her again,” Wil said, “I’l kil you.”
“That wouldn’t be wise,” Sam Barrera said.
A security guard drifted into view at the far end of the skywalk.
Wil had been stupid to come here. Barrera control ed the guards. They could set Wil up, find some pretext to kil him.
“I’m not confessing,” he said. “I didn’t do anything.”
“We’l get you anyway,” Sam Barrera warned. “This is huge, Stirman. People want blood on the McCurdy case. We’re going to give it to them.”
“Not my blood.”
Barrera said, “We’ve got witnesses who can tie you to McCurdy.”
Wil knew he was bluffing. He had to be. There’d been nothing for anybody to witness.
“Thanks for the private tour, Barrera,” he said. Then to Fred Barrow: “Stay the fuck away from me. You understand?”
Barrow bit off the tip of his cigar, spat it at Wil ’s feet. “Stick around and enjoy the artwork, Stirman. We’l meet again soon. And, um, give your Mexican daughter a kiss for me, okay?”
The two men walked back across the skywalk.
Wil found Soledad running her fingers over the head of a Greek statue—a half-naked woman lying forlornly on a sofa. The card said, Ariadne waits for Dionysus. do not touch.
“Don’t let them anger you,” Soledad told him. “They aren’t worth it.”
“You heard?”
She turned, wrapped her arms around his waist, kissed his chin.
She made him feel worse than Barrow and Barrera ever could.
He was a smuggler. A murderer. He had disposed of human bodies like they were animal carcasses. He had put Soledad up for sale, and a thousand women like her.
“You can leave, if you want,” he told her.
She looked up at him, mystified. “I told you, loco boy. San Antonio is my lucky town.”
“Wherever you want to go,” he said. “The seashore. Wherever. I’l give you money. You’re free to leave me.”
She grabbed his wrist, moved his hand to her bel y, warm and slightly swol en under the cotton dress. She said, “That wouldn’t be a good idea, mi amor.”
Somewhere in the middle of a long kiss, he final y understood what she was saying, and the knowledge terrified him.
It was months before Barrow and Barrera found him again. Long enough for Wil to lower his guard, and believe that they had forgotten about him. Long enough for him to come to terms with his fear, and believe that Soledad might be his salvation.
Eight years later, the museum hadn’t changed. The towers were stil there, the skywalk and the glass entrance.
An idea started to form in Wil ’s mind. An idea that had some justice to it.
He got out of the car, ignoring Pablo’s protests.
He walked to the entrance. It was the middle of the day, but the sign said CLOSED.
Inside, he saw shattered windows in the back of the entrance hal , tables covered in plastic. He tried the doors. They were locked.
Wil knocked on the glass, knowing he was taking an absurd chance. But no one expected him here. No one would think to look for Wil Stirman at an art museum.
Final y a guard came up and frowned at him.
The patch on the guard’s uniform said I-Tech. Sam Barrera’s company stil held the security contract.
Good.
The guard unlocked the door, cracked it open. He kept one hand on his holster. “We’re closed, sir.”