Southtown

Page 6

“Just a friend,” Luke said. “Wanted to be sure you were warned.”
“Shit.”
“Where you going?” the trucker cal ed.
But Gerry was already fishing out his car keys, running toward his TransAm.
He’d always known a life sentence wouldn’t stop Wil Stirman. Not after what Gerry had done to him. But damn it—yesterday afternoon? Why hadn’t somebody told him sooner?
Gerry drove toward downtown.
He regretted what he’d done to Stirman. He regretted it every day, but there was no going back now. He had to go through with his emergency plan.
He ditched the TransAm near the Rivercenter Marriott and caught a taxi to the East Side. St. Paul Square. From there, it was a short walk to one of his properties—a place Stirman didn’t know about.
Nobody knew about it except a few of Gerry’s best guys, like Luke. Gerry could lay low there for a few days, make arrangements, then get out of town for good, or at least until Stirman was recaptured.
The property was an abandoned ice warehouse, a four-story red-brick building that didn’t have anything to recommend it—no electricity, no water. Just a whole lot of privacy, a good vantage point from the fourth floor to watch for visitors, and the stash Gerry had squirreled away—a few days’ worth of food, clothing, extra cash, a couple of guns. Not much. Gerry should’ve been more serious. But it was enough to get him started, to make a plan.
He was starting to relax as he climbed the stairs. He needed a vacation anyway. Maybe Cozumel.
At the top of the stairs, two men were waiting for him in the shadows.
A familiar voice said, “Gerry Far. Been praying for you every day, son.”
The I-Tech corporate offices looked out over the wreckage of north San Antonio—streets pulsing with police lights, swol en creeks turning neighborhoods into lakes. The gray ribbon of Highway 281 disappeared into water at the Olmos Basin. On the horizon, clouds and hil s boiled together in a thick, fuzzy soup.
Sam Barrera said nothing to his secretary, Alicia, about why he was late. He hoped Joe Pacabel wouldn’t cal to check up on him.
He stared out at the drowned city, the streets he’d known al his life.
He wanted to weep from shame.
The first time he’d passed on his medication. One sorry-ass morning he’d tried to go without the little beige pil s and the goddamn diarrhea they caused. And what had happened? A nightmare.
So you got confused, he consoled himself. It could happen to anybody. You were thinking about . . .
What?
Something had thrown him. Something on the television.
Sam made fists, wishing he could squeeze the confusion out of his mind.
Today was Monday. His doctor had only given him until Friday to make a decision.
It’s got to be next week, Sam. I have to insist. Think about it. Talk to your family.
But Sam had no family. No wife, no kids. His other relatives he’d had a fal ing-out with years ago, over something Sam couldn’t even remember now. He’d taken down al their pictures, stuffed them away in the back of his closet.
He had only his work—his talent for weaving facts into patterns, making the perfect investigation. And now, at the unreasonable age of fifty-eight, that talent was betraying him.
Twenty years since he quit the Bureau . . . Hel , of course it had been.
He’d gone into the PI business, built I-Tech from scratch, made himself a reputation.
He reviewed those facts in his head, tried to hold on to them, but it was like those tests at the neurologist’s office—name the presidents in reverse chronological order, count backward by sevens from one hundred.
The last month, work had gotten progressively harder. Case files were now almost impossible for him to understand.
Mornings were better. He tried to finish work early, get home before afternoon when his mind got cloudy.
But he relied on Alicia more and more. She knew something was wrong. She’d stopped teasing him about getting absentminded in his old age. Now, she just watched him uneasily.
Five days to decide.
He stared at his desk—a disgraceful clutter of unread reports, notes to himself stuck everywhere. The work surface had once been pristinely organized. Now it was deteriorating into chaos.
Across the room, a bank of televisions played security footage from I-Tech’s major accounts, along with news from the three local stations.
The news was al disaster coverage—befuddled weathermen predicting the second hundred-year flood in four years.
Sam doubted that’s what had unnerved him.
Why should he be surprised if the town hit a century mark every four years? He’d lost twenty years in a single morning. Time was col apsing around him. Chronology meant nothing anymore.
He got out his Post-it notes and a pen, checked his private line for messages.
There was only one—last night, 10:48 P.M. Erainya Manos.
The name snagged on his memory as he wrote it down.
The case he was working on . . . but Joe Pacabel said there was no case.
Erainya Manos said they needed to talk. Absolutely urgent. Sam would know what it was about.
But he didn’t know what the woman wanted.
He stared at her phone number until something on the television caught his attention—a reporter breaking in, a convenience store shooting in New Braunfels. Three masked gunmen had fatal y shot a clerk, made away with several thousand dol ars. Police were investigating for a possible link to yesterday’s jailbreak— the Floresvil e Five. Wil “the Ghost” Stirman, four other wanted men.
A mug shot of Wil Stirman fil ed the screen, and the world shifted under Sam’s feet.
The convict’s face was gaunt and hard, like weathered marble. He had dark, preternatural y calm eyes, and a faint triangle of buzzed black hair. If Sam didn’t know better, he would’ve pegged the man as a white supremacist, or an abortion clinic bomber. His expression suggested the same quiet confidence, the same capacity for fanatic violence.
Sam knew this man. This was who he’d seen on television earlier. This was the news that had shaken him.
He reached into his pants pocket, pul ed out a crumpled yel ow Post-it note he’d forgotten.
In his own shaky cursive, the note read: Stirman is free. He’ll be coming. I can’t go to the police.
Sam stared at it, then looked at the newer message from Erainya Manos.
He picked up the receiver, began to dial Erainya Manos’ number, then hung up again.
He had a bad feeling about this woman.
He had to think clearly.
Sam felt bitterness rising in his throat. It wasn’t fair for life to throw him one more problem. Not now, when he was struggling just to get by.
But it wasn’t Sam’s nature to surrender. He never played defense. The only way to survive was to plow forward, like he’d always done, right the fuck over anything and anyone who stood in his way.
He would let Erainya Manos do the talking. She would fil in the gaps. He had become an expert at covering his lapses that way, letting others talk into his silence.
He couldn’t remember why, but Wil Stirman was lethal. If Sam didn’t handle this just right, if he didn’t stay in control, he would be destroyed.
He picked up a pen and wrote himself a new note: I’m calling Erainya Manos. Be careful. I’m pretty sure she’s my enemy.
Chapter 4
Tres Navarre’s dating advice: If you’re going to meet your girlfriend for dinner, you might as wel do it in the middle of a flood, when there are dangerous convicts on the loose.
While you’re at it—go to a restaurant where the ma?tre d’ wants to kil you. It makes your romantic outing so much more special.
The forty-five-minute drive to San Marcos took me three hours, thanks to a flooded stretch on I-35 and a police roadblock north of New Braunfels. By the time I got to Pig Fal s Café, the rain clouds had broken for the first time in twenty-four hours, and an insultingly beautiful sunset was bleeding to purple.
I spotted Maia Lee at a balcony table overlooking the waterfal . Robert Johnson in his carrying case was tucked discreetly under her chair. Since Maia moved to Texas, we’d had to work out a joint custody arrangement. It was now my week to play servant to the Cat Almighty.
Maia was tapping her fingers on a menu, nursing what probably wasn’t her first margarita.
I was working up my nerve to walk over, formulating my most sincere apology, when the ma?tre d’ put his hand on my arm. “May I help— Whoa, shit.”
He was in his mid-twenties, stocky and bald, with freckles the color of nacho-flavored Doritos.
I spun the mental Rolodex, came up with a name. “Quentin Yates.”
“If I had a fucking gun . . .”
“Tough break,” I agreed. “How’s life on the lam?”
He started to make a fist.
“Careful,” I said. “Bet your employer doesn’t know your history.”
His orange brow furrowed . . . kil Navarre or stay out of jail. A decision that has troubled greater criminal minds.
“You gonna snitch me out?” he demanded.
“Of course I’m going to snitch you out. But I want to eat first. Gives you a good head start, doesn’t it? See you, Quent.”
I strol ed out to the balcony and sat across from Maia Lee.
She pretended to study her menu. “Trouble at the low-water crossings?”
“Don’t say those words.”
Under her seat, Robert Johnson said, “Row.”
Maia arched an eyebrow, glanced over my shoulder. “What’s your history with Freckles?”
Very little escapes Maia’s notice. I had no doubt that if the need arose three weeks from now, she would be able to tel me what I was wearing tonight, how much the meal cost, and what most of the people around us had been talking about.
“That’s Quentin Yates,” I told her. “He isn’t running away in terror yet?”
“No. He just . . .” She muttered what must’ve been the Chinese word for ouch. “He just seated an old lady, gave her the Heimlich maneuver. Now he’s glowering at you.”
“Quent was a buddy of mine for two weeks, a few years ago, while I was working undercover at his boss’s restaurant.”
Maia’s beautiful face turned grim at the word undercover. “Embezzlement?”
“Credit cards. Quentin was the bartender.”
“Capturing account information,” she guessed.
“Wel , hey—you got these perfectly good numbers, why not charge a home entertainment system or two?
After I turned him in, he skipped bail, beat up his ex-boss with an aluminum bat, threatened to come after me. Then he disappeared. Apparently Pig Fal s doesn’t do background checks.”
“You want to cal the police?”
“Dinner first. I’d recommend we pay in cash.”
“Sensible.”
Maia, I soon discovered, had already arranged things. At a nod from her, the waitress cranked into high gear, bringing plates of crabmeat flautas, bowls of tortil a soup, Gulf Coast shrimp with fresh avocado slices. Having spent the whole day staring at a computer monitor and sorting through paperwork, I should’ve been more interested in the food, except that Maia herself was pretty damn distracting.