Southtown

Page 27

Maia sat with us. We munched on bread and cheese. I opened the wine. Jem let his bowl of ice cream dots melt.
“This isn’t like you, Tres,” Maia said. “A picnic? Almost romantic.”
“Yuck,” Jem muttered.
“Real y,” Maia agreed.
I thought that might coax a smile from him, but his expression stayed serious, his attention funneled toward the Game Boy like he wanted to pour himself into the tiny screen.
“Wel . . .” Maia said. “I guess I’l put these ice cream pel et things in the freezer, Jem, if you don’t want them right now.”
“I don’t.”
Maia arched her eyebrow at me, giving me a silent command. She took the melting snack-of-the-future into the kitchen.
Jem kept playing his game.
I waited for the best moment to say something. The best moment proved elusive.
“Jem,” I said at last. “You remember the man we saw at the soccer field?”
He pushed a few more buttons.
“That man’s angry at your mother,” I said. “She didn’t do anything wrong, but he thinks she stole some of his money. Your mother is worried. When people are mad, they can do stupid things. Sometimes they might hurt people without thinking. She didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“I know,” Jem said. “She told me.”
“Your mother is with that man right now.”
Black bangs fel in his eyes. “She’s at his house?”
“I’m not sure, champ. He’s keeping her somewhere, like a hostage. He wants me to bring him money, to make up for what he lost. Once I do that, he’l let your mom go.”
“We don’t have any money.”
“I’m working on that.” My throat felt dry. “I’m going to see the man tonight. I’l make sure your mother is okay. I’l convince him she didn’t do anything bad. I just wanted you to know—your mother loves you. That’s why you’re staying with Maia. More than anything, your mother wants to know you’re safe.”
Jem pul ed his legs in tighter. He cradled the Game Boy.
“Light’s red,” he murmured. “I wish I had more batteries.”
I tried to finish my wine, but it tasted like vinegar. “I’l clean up this stuff,” I said. “Be right back, champ.”
I found Maia at her kitchen window, staring out at the wooded canyon of Barton Creek. On her breakfast table was a spread of paperwork—her court cases, I assumed. Then I looked closer and saw they were news printouts about Wil Stirman and the Floresvil e Five.
She turned toward me, held out her arms.
The wine tasted a whole lot better on her lips.
I said, “Missed you.”
“Stay the night.”
“I can’t.”
I told her why.
Maia’s face got that battle-hardened look that always made me glad I was not the object of her anger.
“Stirman asked for Jem?”
“Yeah.”
My tone of voice must’ve unsettled her. She said, “You’re not seriously considering—”
“No. Jem’s safer here.” I tried to sound definite about it, but something nagged at the back of my mind, something that had been there since lunchtime, when I’d visited with Ralph Arguel o and his baby daughter.
“I don’t think Stirman would real y try coming to Austin. If he did, he sure as hel wouldn’t bargain for you.”
Maia stared out the window. “Jem keeps talking about soccer. He wants life to be normal by the weekend. I can’t blame him.”
She didn’t mention our last night together in San Marcos, or my promise to give her an answer about moving to Austin by this weekend.
I wondered how it had been for Maia, putting Jem to bed last night, taking care of a child. I found it hard to imagine her tel ing bedtime stories.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Just nerves.” She waved toward the news clippings on the table. “This morning, I almost shot my neighbor when he came to borrow coffee. This is the first time I’ve opened my blinds since yesterday. I keep thinking, if Stirman had any skil with a sniper rifle . . .”
She gazed at the ridge across the val ey.
The view was strikingly similar to the one from her old Potrero Hil apartment. The land fel away into a basin of green, hil s on the opposite rim dotted with newly built mansions and condominiums. At night, the aquifer recharge zone below would be completely dark, but rimmed with lights, the Heart of Texas Highway strung red and gold across the void. A San Franciscan could easily imagine she was looking across an expanse of water at the Bay Bridge and the East Bay beyond.
The interior of Maia’s new apartment was also a duplicate of the old—high ceilings, white wal s, pristine tile work, milk carpet, a slight scent of jasmine in the air.
She’d re-created her living environment in Texas with such eerie precision it belied the risk she’d taken coming here—the career and reputation she’d left behind, the savings she’d burned, the chance she was taking on a guy who’d let her down before.
If asked, she would say the move was a life decision. The time had been right for her to reinvent herself.
She hadn’t moved just to be closer to me.
She would also swear her new home looked nothing like her old.
Maia shed her white jacket, folded it over the kitchen stool.
The gun in her holster looked enormous compared to the size of her hands, but I knew it fit her grip perfectly. The .357 was her preferred weapon. Anything small er, and she felt poorly anchored.
“You can’t negotiate with Wil Stirman,” she told me. “You know that.”
I picked up one of the articles she had printed from the Express-News archives.
Human Trafficker Brought Down by Local Investigators 4/29/95.
Last night, working in conjunction with San Antonio police on the recent slayings at a Castroville ranch, two prominent local private investigators took part in a dramatic firefight leading to the arrest of Will Stirman, the alleged mastermind of a human trafficking operation which may have supplied the Castroville murderer with his victims.
None of the information was new to me. Late April, just as Ana DeLeon had said. Barrera and Barrow were portrayed as heroes. The statement from the SAPD’s media relations officer was careful y restrained.
While we never condone private citizens taking the law into their own hands . . .
No reference to missing money or a dead child. Soledad’s death wasn’t mentioned until the last paragraph—a completely subordinate fact, like a broken window.
“Tres.” Maia sounded more insistent now. “If Stirman lost his family . . . he’l never let Erainya go. You’l have to find him before he cal s the meeting. You’l have to kil him.”
It was jarring, hearing her say that, but I wasn’t surprised. Maia was the ultimate pragmatist when it came to sociopaths. She knew them. At her old San Francisco firm of Terrence & Goldman, she had been responsible for defending some of the richest sociopaths in the country. Under the right circumstances, Maia would have no problem putting a bul et through Wil Stirman’s forehead. She would not lose a moment’s sleep.
“I’l find him,” I promised.
But I was stil looking at the article. Late April 1995.
Nobody wants to live in hell, vato. Nobody.
I imagined Fred Barrow—a big, brutish man with blood on his hands, his breath stinking of guilt and hate and violence, and a suitcase ful of cash in the trunk of his car. I thought about what he might do with seven mil ion dol ars. I thought about Erainya’s note from H., the package from Fred.
“You wasted time, coming up here,” Maia said, sadly. “Three hours you should’ve spent looking for Stirman.”
Domino moments are rare. One seemingly incongruous piece of information slips into place, and suddenly you’ve got a chain reaction of unanswered questions that al go down, one after the other.
Investigators live for domino moments. On the other hand, the pattern you discover can sometimes scare the hel out of you.
“It wasn’t a waste of time,” I said. “I have to—”
I stopped.
Jem was standing in the kitchen doorway, holding his Game Boy.
“The batteries are dead,” he announced.
Maia held out her arms. “Come here, sweetheart.”
Jem came over and let her hug him, but his eyes were on me.
The kitchen floor was turning to liquid under my feet.
I said, “How long were you listening, champ?”
“Awhile,” he admitted. “I want to go with you.”
Maia tried to stroke the bangs out of his eyes to no avail. “You can’t, sweetheart.”
He pul ed away from her. “That man wants me to come. I want to help my mother.”
Maia looked to me for support.
I remembered Wil Stirman’s voice on the telephone, his tone that I hadn’t quite been able to decipher: We’ll all be better behaved with the kid around.
“I’l tel the man to let her go,” Jem continued. “He won’t hurt me. I’l talk to him first. Then if you have to, you can shoot him. That wil be fairer.”
His chin jutted out stubbornly, like his mother’s. He sounded like he was describing a game plan rather than asking permission.
Not for the first time, I marveled at how much he’d changed since his preschool days.
He’s still only eight, I reminded myself.
So what had I been doing at eight years old? I’d already found the keys to my dad’s gun safe. I’d shot and gutted my first deer at the ranch. I’d spent hours hanging around the guards’ desk at the Bexar County Jail, where my dad had his office. I already knew the difference between a con and a civilian. I’d had plenty of conversations with guys like Wil Stirman, and I’d known instinctively—or at least I thought I knew—which ones would hurt a kid, and which ones wouldn’t. If somebody had told me, at eight years old, that Wil Stirman had taken my mom and I couldn’t try to help her . . .
I could see Maia’s disbelief growing as she realized what I was thinking.
“Tres . . .” she warned.
“Go pack your bag, champ,” I said. “No mess on Maia’s floor.”
“Tres!” Maia said again.
“Okay,” Jem said. “The uniform, too?”
I looked at him.
“It was in the bottom of the bag,” he said. “You brought the goalie vest. That means everything wil be better by Saturday. I’l get to play.”
Maia glared at me as if I’d just sold the kid some real estate at the North Pole.
“I hope so,” I told him. “We’l hope, okay? Now go get packed.”
He hustled off, showing more energy than he had in days.
“How can you?” Maia asked.
When Maia got angry, she got cold. At the moment, her eyes could’ve frozen mercury.
“I need to use your phone,” I said. “Local cal .”
“If you think, for one minute, I’m going to let you—”
“Thanks.” I picked up her phone, dialed a friend of mine at the Texas Department of Human Resources. It took al of four minutes to ask an easy question, and get an easy answer. The organization I was inquiring about didn’t exist. Nor, according to the state’s records, had it existed eight years ago. I hung up, no doubt now, but feeling worse than ever.