Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)

“What?” Mama Zapata shrilled. “Did this little punk insult me?”

“Ignore him, Ma.” There was nothing human about Zapata’s voice. It was free of emotion, calm and ruthless, the way sharks would talk if they could. “This is Tres Navarre, the PI. He thinks he’s funny.”

“Eh, Johnny,” Ralph said. “We’re overdue for a chat. You sure you want your mother here for that?”

Zapata’s eyes drifted from me to Madeleine to Ralph. He was trying to read the score. He didn’t seem able to do it.

“Ignacio,” he said, “this is the second time you failed me.”

The henchman’s face turned the same color as his peroxide crew cut. “Me?”

“You didn’t do the job last night,” Zapata said. “The wrong man died. Now you’ve led these people here.”

“Wasn’t my fault!”

“Take Ma outside,” Zapata told him calmly. “When you come back, you choose what to lose.”

Ignacio’s face beaded with sweat. “Johnny, man, please . . .”

“You want me to let Miss White shoot you? That’d be quicker. Now take Ma and go.”

Ignacio swallowed. He tried to take the old woman’s arm, but she pulled away.

“I ain’t going,” she grumbled. “Who’s gonna watch the store?”

“I’ll watch the store, Ma.”

“They gonna steal St. Peter.”

“No, Ma. They ain’t gonna steal St. Peter. Go on.”

Before Ignacio could leave, Madeleine dug her free hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a Smith & Wesson. She said, “I’ll hold this for you.”

Reluctantly, the nervous thug escorted Mama Zapata out of the shop, the old woman still eyeing me like she expected me to filch her plaster apostles.

ZAPATA PEELED THE FOIL OFF A beef taco. “Well?”

The situation didn’t need any more guns, but before I could try the diplomatic approach, Ralph pointed his .38 at Zapata’s head.

“You set me up,” Ralph told him.

“So?”

“Frankie White’s sister is standing here. She wants to know whether you’ve really got a lead on Frankie’s murder or if you were bullshitting. How about I count to five?”

Zapata smiled. “That would’ve been a scary threat, Ralph, back in the old days.” He took a bite of flour tortilla, glanced at Madeleine. “You understand who you’re working with, right? Ralph Arguello? He’s old news. Gone soft.”

“Five,” Ralph said.

“Hey, Shoes,” Madeleine said, “if I were you, I’d talk.”

Zapata wiped his mouth. “You sure you want me to, miss? I hear a lot of things about your family. I got too much respect for Mr. White to go spreading rumors.”

“Four,” Ralph said.

“Respect,” Madeleine said tightly. “You’ve tried to kill my father a dozen times. You’ve murdered his men.”

“Just business.” Zapata took another bite of his taco. “But here’s the thing, Miss White. I was bullshitting Arguello. I don’t know nothing about your brother’s death. If I did, I’d tell you. Bad misunderstanding between your father and me, years ago. Cost me plenty. I don’t want all that stirred up again.”

“Three.”

Zapata kept his eyes on Madeleine. “Arguello called me. I knew he had to be desperate to do that. I’ve been wanting to take over his properties for years. So I told him what he wanted to hear. I set Arguello up so I could kill him.”

He spread his hands, as if his intentions were completely reasonable.

“Two.”

“Go on, Arguello.” Zapata tapped his chest. “You’re a fucking disgrace.”

“One.”

“You know why you can’t? You married a goddamn cop. You got the perfect network set up for fronting drugs, guns, money laundering, you name it. And what do you do with it? Nada. You try to go straight. I offer you a fair price over and over and you don’t take it. You’re standing in the way of profit, Arguello. You need to be removed.”

I put my hand on Ralph’s wrist just as he shot. A plaster Jesus exploded on the shelf behind Zapata.

Zapata shook his head. “Pathetic.”

I kept my grip on Ralph’s wrist. His arm was like a steel cable.

“Zapata,” I said, “you said yourself you want Ralph’s pawnshops. Ralph started those businesses with Frankie White. Maybe Frankie was standing in your way, too.”

He studied me, probably deciding whether or not it would be advantageous to insult me. “I’m not that stupid, PI.”

“Not stupid enough to do it yourself,” I agreed. “You could’ve hired Titus Roe.”

His face reddened. “Titus Roe? Who the fuck would hire him? Who’d pay anybody to whack a loser like Frankie? I mean, Jesus, unless you were a woman—”

Zapata stopped.

“You were saying?” Madeleine’s eyes had a dangerous gleam.

Zapata moistened his lips. “All I meant, Miss White: I had nada to gain. Think about it. Your brother getting killed was damn bad for my business.”

Outside, Zapata’s mother was arguing with Ignacio. She said she was sure she’d heard a shot, which meant her son had finished killing whoever he needed to kill. It was closing time and she had to get back to her shop.

I felt like I was standing in a meth lab, between vats of chemicals that could blow the neighborhood to rubble. I wanted to get out before that old lady came back in.

“Come on,” I told Ralph. “Shoes doesn’t know anything.”

“Listen to the man,” Zapata said. “And, Miss White—” He flicked his finger between Madeleine and Ralph. “Is your family leaning on this loser now? I mean, I knew Mr. White was sick and all, but—”

“Mr. White is not sick,” Madeleine said. “He leans on no one.”

“So if I was to see Arguello out on the street, without you—”

“I have no interest in whom you kill or who kills you,” Madeleine said. “Just remember your place, Zapata—down there by the floorboards with the other insects.”

Zapata’s eyes glinted, like light off the edge of a scalpel. I doubted a woman had ever talked to him like that before.

He turned to Ralph, crumpled up his taco wrapper. “See you around, Arguello. Having your wife shot—that kind of thing should make a man reexamine his priorities. You still got a baby daughter to think about, don’t you?”

I was glad I had Madeleine with me. It took both of us to get Ralph out the door without firing his gun again.

IN THE COURTYARD, MAMA ZAPATA WAS still arguing with Ignacio, whose face was pale and clammy. He looked at us like we’d come to deliver his last meal.

“Done,” I told him. “Sorry.”

I tried to steer clear of Mama Zapata, but the old woman stepped in front of Madeleine. “I know you. I remember your father.”

“Excuse us,” Madeleine said.

The old woman grabbed Madeleine’s arm. “My son won’t tell you, but I don’t give a damn. Your brother got what he deserved. Punishment for your father’s sins. Entiendes?”

“Get off me,” Madeleine said.

The old woman spat in the dust at Madeleine’s feet, then allowed a very ill-looking Ignacio to escort her back into her souvenir shop.

THE LIMO DROVE NORTH.

The chauffeur asked us where to. Nobody answered.

Along Roosevelt Avenue, run-down businesses were decorated with frayed Christmas garlands, weather-bleached Santas, grimy lights that had started to glow in the evening. This being South Texas, the Christmas lights stayed up year-round, but even a broken holiday is right once a year.

In the front seat, Ralph cradled his borrowed .38 in his lap. At Ralph’s insistence, the chauffeur had anonymously called Ana’s hospital and tried to get an update on her condition. They wouldn’t tell him anything. Now Ralph was muttering something under his breath. The chauffeur was leaning as far away from him as possible.

I felt like I should say something to Ralph, but I was angry with him. My initial shock was wearing off, and I was starting to realize that he’d almost killed Zapata in front of my eyes. If I hadn’t grabbed his arm, he wouldn’t have missed.

A few uncomfortable facts were also starting to swirl together in my head: Frankie’s reputation with women, Ralph’s experience with his stepfathers, what Ralph’s sister had said on the phone: You know why he had to help Frankie, don’t you?

Ralph has always had a soft spot for abused women. Over the years, he’d gotten several prostitutes away from their pimps. He’d killed at least one wife-beater that I knew of. In fact, the more I thought about Ralph’s violent reputation, the more I realized that when he picked the fight, he almost always lashed out at men who abused women. And he did so with no concern for his own safety.

I thought about Ralph’s tone the night Frankie had roughed up little Madeleine. He’d had no tolerance for it—so why had he tried to save Frankie when his dad came down on him?

Ralph might have wanted to change Frankie, turn him into something better. But I wondered what Ralph would’ve done if he realized Frankie was beyond redemption, if he started seeing how many women Frankie had hurt. Ralph would not have been intimidated by Frankie’s mob father. For the first time, I wonder if the DNA test on the blood under Frankie’s fingernails really had been faked.

Next to me, Madeleine cracked her knuckles.

I figured we’d better find her somebody to beat up soon or she’d start cannibalizing people in the limo.

“What did Mrs. Zapata mean?” I asked her. “What’d your father do?”

Madeleine picked a speck of dust off her slacks. “He’s a mobster. Not much he hasn’t done.”

“I mean to women.”

“You must not have been listening. She didn’t say anything like that.”

At the corner of Santa Rosa, a police car cut across our path on full code three, siren wailing, lights running. I resisted the urge to slink down in my seat.

“I remember you from Heights,” I told Madeleine. “You used to draw on your clothes.”

Her ears turned pink. “I’m an artist.”

“An artist?”

“I got a BFA. That’s what I did in college. You got a problem with that?”

I envisioned Madeleine doing tornado kicks in a painting studio, ripping canvases, karate-chopping brushes.

“I remember you, too,” she said after another block. “You didn’t like Frankie.”

“How old were you when he died?” I asked. “Thirteen?”

She nodded.

“You remember the night of the murder?”

“I heard about it later . . . in a phone call. I wasn’t around.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know. Everybody knows.”

I didn’t, but from her tone of voice, I got the feeling it would be dangerous to ask.