The Devil Went Down to Austin

Page 23

Matthew Pena had wasted no time moving in, and he hadn't opted for cardboard. A large red and gold canvas banner, pinned above the elevator, read AccuShield, Austin Division, Top Floor.
"He commissioned that back in March," I told Maia. "What do you bet?"
She nodded. "Probably got Tshirts made, too. Let's go see."
The fourthfloor hallway was Lshaped, with the reception office at the crook. Maia and I walked past the entrance, turned, went to the other end of the hallway. Restrooms, a stairwell, an employee door with a combination lock.
Under normal circumstances, Maia and I would've gone through the front, simply asked the receptionist if we could see Garrett. AccuShield's banner out front had changed that. Without any discussion, Maia and I both understood we did not want to enter these premises on Mr. Pena's terms.
I tried the employee entrance. It was locked.
Maia punched 12345, turned the knob. No luck. We hung out at the stairwell for a minute, hoping somebody would come out the door. Nobody did.
"Plan B?" Maia asked.
I took off my tie, tossed it to her. "Be right back."
I walked down to the receptionist's office.
The receptionist had a novel propped on her desk like a shield between her and any potential interruptions. The cover said THROBBING EDEN in gold letters on a field of roses. Either a romance novel or a frightening new trend in inspirational literature.
There were two empty desks, an interior door with a deadbolt, and a corner table heaped with technical manuals and donut boxes and brochures. Draped over one of the empty desks was an extra red and gold AccuShield banner, just in case morale got so high somebody wanted to run down the hall waving it.
The receptionist's computer screen saver was bouncing around the words Ms. Negley.
I knocked on the open door. "Hey, Ms. Negley?"
She checked me out over the top of her book, smiled. She was brunette, midtwenties, a hundred ten pounds with an extra fifteen in makeup and hair spray. Her fingernails were royal purple. She said, "Hey, yourself."
"I'm supposed to move out the rest of that old Techsan hardware and I can't remember what the hell they told me for the combination. Do you want me to just lug it through the front?"
Her eyes got very wide. "No, no. Mr. Pena would kill me. 55555. How could you forget that?"
I slapped my head. "And here I am trying to remember—jeez. Thanks ..."
"Krystal," she offered.
Aha. The famous Krystal.
I pointed to my chest. "Tres. Guess this means I have to haul that stuff out after all."
"Guess so."
"Friday yet?" I asked.
She laughed.
I went back to the employee entrance, smiled at Maia, and let us in.
The door opened into the network centre—a walkin closet with a blinking hub, splays of cabling, backup units for the software.
The next door opened into the main work area.
It was big enough to play soccer in—cool, dark, nearly empty. Low ceilings, fluorescent lights, chocolate brown dividers breaking the room into cubicles. The fact that Garrett and his partners had
leased such a large space told me a lot about their early optimism, and their acute lack of business acumen.
A young Latina was hunched over a glowing screen, quietly clacking at a keyboard. A few more cubicles down, two Anglo guys in their twenties were leaning over another guy, looking at something on his computer screen. All three of them had dyed purplish black hair, cut like halfeaten artichokes. They wore gold and red AccuShield Tshirts, oversized khakis, love beads. DVD players were clipped to their belts, headphones around their necks.
The only other people in the room were packing up their boxes—Techsan's dazed temporary employees, learning what temporary means.
On the far wall, shadows moved behind frosted glass windows of a conference room.
Maia gestured in that direction. I was about to follow when my brother wheeled himself out from behind a cubicle at the far end of the room, dumped some books into a cardboard box.
"Garrett," I called.
He watched us approach as if each of our steps inflicted a small amount of pain in his right eye. "You trying to make things worse, little bro?"
His cubicle was a corner spot, the window behind him looking out over live oaks and the basketball court and rolling hills. Through the heavily tinted glass, the scene looked like a winter evening. Not an executive office, but a definite step up from Garrett's old box at RNI.
His bookshelf held a potted fern in an advanced stage of mummification, several tomes on C++ Visual Basic and Java, and a careful lineup of Chinese bronze warriors. He'd stuck his carving knife in the side of his cubicle wall, impaling this morning's news— AccuShield to Buy Out Troubled Techsan.
I pointed toward the conference room door. "Pena in there?"
"With the Securities and Exchange guys. Picking over my carcass."
A few cubicles down, the young dudes with the artichoke hairdos were laughing, trying different commands on the keyboard. One of the guys glanced toward Garrett, then back at the monitor.
"Screenheads," Garrett mumbled. "They should just upload themselves and get it over with."
Garrett went back to packing. He was sorting through computer manuals, throwing the keepers in his box. When he found one he didn't need, he took out a permanent Sharpie, wrote PENA SUCKS! on it, threw it back on the desk.
Maia pulled up a chair. "We need to go see Lopez today, Garrett. I know you don't want to, but we've got to make him think we're cooperating."
"That's me." Garrett tossed another manual into the box. "Mr. Cooperation."
"We have some leads." I appreciated Maia's we, appreciated that she was trying to put a positive spin on some pretty sketchy information.
She told him about our conversation with Faye Ingram, about the man from the past, Ewin Lowry, who had once threatened Clara. Maia mentioned that someone, possibly Pena himself, had dug into Jimmy's past, unsettled him by suggesting he had a missing sibling. She told him about the catfish on my doorstep.
"Mind games," she said. "But if nothing else, Lopez will be obliged to investigate—spend his time focusing on alternatives other than you."
Garrett didn't look reassured.
Across the room, more soft laughter from the artichoke heads. They were making comments about the Techsan program—wondering what moron had designed it.
I didn't want to, but I filled in the rest of the story for Garrett. I brought him up to speed on what Dwight had told Maia—how the software problems would be fixed quickly, how the late great Techsan might turn overnight into a billiondollar proposition.
Garrett picked one of his Chinese warriors, tossed it to me. "I told you it was a good program. You got what you wanted, little bro. Don't be so down."
His listlessness scared me more than any amount of anger. I almost wanted to hand him a Lorcin, tell him to start shooting. Almost.
"Ruby McBride," I said. "You've known her a lot longer than you let on. You two used to
. . . date?"
"Ancient history," Garrett told me. "I never would've agreed to work with her otherwise."
"That serious, huh?"
A young woman in sweats came toward us, a box of plants and keyboards in her arms.
One of the temps, probably, hoping to say goodbye. When she saw Garrett's expression, she hesitated, then did a quick retreat. Maybe she decided a final farewell wasn't so important after all.
"Lopez will use Ruby," Maia told Garrett. "If he can establish a motive for you killing Jimmy—jealousy, resentment, a jilted lover's revenge—he'll make the DA's day."
I'd had trouble looking at Garrett the last few days, with the weight he'd lost, the unhealthy colour of his skin, the distant possibility that he recently killed someone . . .
Now he seemed even less like himself. With his black shirt, his beard trimmed, his dour expression, he reminded me of a renegade Greek Orthodox priest.
"When I was in physical therapy the first time," he said, "I had a nurse named Scholler.
Hardass German woman. Used to scream at me."
Garrett didn't often talk about his accident, or the days immediately following. Now he spoke like he was building a bridge of ice, freezing section by section, seeing if it would hold his weight.
"Scholler made me do situps," he said, "which was really hard for me. I mean it's still hard, because I've got no leverage. She would hold my hips and holler at me to work.
I hated her. I could barely get out of bed. Once I was on the floor—anything would stop me. An electrical cord lying across the carpet was like the fucking Great Wall of China.
And here was this German bitch, making me get over it, prodding me to get to the mat so she could force me to do my fifty situps."
"But looking back," Maia guessed, "you appreciate her."
"Hell no. I still hate her guts. The thing is—the struggle never changed from that first couple of weeks in PT. Getting out of bed never got any easier. There are days when that electrical cord seems like the biggest damn thing in the world, and the only thing keeping me going is that voice screaming in the back of my head."
He stared at the Chinese warrior in my hands, grabbed it back.
"You want to know how serious Ruby and I were? What you live for after PT—you try to find reasons to get up in the morning that are better than Nurse Scholler. There was a time—early on— when I thought Ruby would be my reason. I found pretty quick it wasn't going to be that way. Ruby couldn't even look at me after I lost my legs."
"And you blamed Jimmy."
Garrett didn't answer. He turned the bronze warrior around, examining its tarnished spots. "The last few years, little bro, my reason for getting up has been this place.
Ruby and Jimmy—they ruined that for me, too. Lopez wants to use that as a reason why I'd be resentful, there's nothing I can do about it. He's right."
I looked at the wooded hills outside, the expensive viewfor lease, feeling Garrett's sense of defeat fully for the first time.
Here we were in his office, in the company he'd laboured years to build, and we were the intruders. The only difference was, I could leave anytime and it would mean nothing. When Garrett left, it meant the end of everything—his life's work, his dreams, his two oldest friendships.
I didn't want to feel responsible for that defeat, and I resented Garrett because I did anyway. He was the one who'd quit his secure day job. He was the one who'd mortgaged our family land. Why was I feeling guilty?
The frosted door of the conference room opened.
Matthew Pena stepped out, followed by two briefcase warriors in dark blue suits.
Pena zeroed in on us immediately, but was too busy shaking hands with the blue suits, telling them goodbye. As soon as the visitors were safely out the door to the reception area, Pena made a beeline toward us, walking leisurely, his expression no more con
frontational than a tank about to roll over a bicycle.
"You don't work here," he told Maia and me. "You will leave."
His face was an even creepier albino hue in the fluorescent lights. The bruise on his jaw where Clyde had punched him looked like a smoke ring.
"They're helping me," Garrett growled. "Lay off."