The worst part was between the cars, where the water shot through like a ravine. When I slipped one foot into the full current, it was like being hooked by a moving train. I was ripped off balance, pulled into the stream. My head went under, and the world was reduced to a cold brown roar.
I held the rope. I got my head above water, found the fender of the Town Car, and clawed my way to the passenger’s side.
The Lincoln’s shotgun window was open, making a waterfall into the car.
Dimebox’s hands were tugging frantically at something underwater. He was craning his ugly head to keep it above the water. His face was like a bank robber’s, his features all pantyhose-smeared, only Dimebox didn’t wear pantyhose.
“Can you move?” I yelled.
He pushed at the wheel as if it were pinning his legs.
“Lalu!” he shouted. “Kiko! Push!”
Push?
Then I realized he wasn’t struggling to get free. He was attempting to start the ignition. He expected his cousins to wade out here and give him a jump start.
“You’re underwater, you moron!” I told him. “Give me your hand!”
“Fuck you, Navarre!” he screamed. “Get the fuck away!”
“Me or the river, Dimebox.”
“I ain’t going to jail!”
I didn’t understand his stubbornness. Dimebox was up on some stupid charge like assault. He was constantly going in and out of the slammer, constantly jumping bail, which I guess you can do when your bondsman is your brother-in-law. We’d bounty-hunted him plenty of times. I didn’t see why he was making such a fuss about a couple more weeks in the county lockup.
Another metallic groan. The guardrail bent, and the Lincoln shifted a half inch downstream. My side of the car began to levitate. For a moment, a ton of Detroit steel balanced on the fulcrum, my armpits the only thing keeping it from flipping.
“Now!” I told Dimebox. “Over here now!”
“Mother of Shit!” Dimebox lunged in my direction, wrapped his arms around my neck, damn near pulled me into the car with him.
A few more seconds-an eternity when Dimebox is hugging you-and I hauled him out the window. The Lincoln seemed to settle with both of us pressed against it, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. We inched our way back toward the van, the rain driving needles into my cheeks, Dimebox reeking a lovely combination of wet sewage and Calvin Klein. On shore, Lalu and Kiko yelled wildly, brandishing their hand grenades.
We’d just reached the van when Dimebox’s Town Car rose on its side with a huge groan, flipped the guardrail, and crashed upside down in the creek bed, its body submerged, wheels spinning uselessly in the foam.
The guardrail bent like licorice. Our van would go next.
Erainya yelled at me, “Throw them the rope!”
“What?”
“The cousins!” she yelled. “Throw it to them!”
Only then did I realize that Lalu and Kiko weren’t waiting around to kill us. They wanted to help.
Forty minutes later, after Erainya’s van, Jem’s PlayStation, and a bagful of perfectly good spanakopita had been washed into oblivion down Rosillio Creek, Erainya and Jem and I sat in the Ortiz cousins’ living room, wrapped in triple-X terry cloth bathrobes, eating cold venison tamales and waiting for the police, who were coming to pick up Dimebox.
The guest of honor sat on the sofa, stripped to his jockey shorts and T-shirt, his ankles and wrists tied in plastic cuffs. He kept muttering cuss words, and Jem kept telling him he owed us quarters.
“You okay,” Kiko told me, smashing the top of my head with his paw. “Save Dimebox’s sorry ass. Put him in jail. Kiko not have t’sleep on the couch no more.”
“Won’t do you any good, Erainya,” Dimebox snarled. “Bounty money won’t help you worth shit, will it? We’re both screwed.”
“Shut up, Ortiz.” Her voice was harsher than I’d ever heard it. “Don’t curse in front of my son.”
“Stirman’s coming. He’s got plenty of friends in the county jail. You lock me up, you’re signing my death warrant.”
“I said shut up.”
I looked back and forth between them, wondering what I’d missed, or if my brain was still waterlogged.
Then the name clicked.
“Stirman,” I said. “The escaped con on the news.”
“I ain’t staying in jail,” Dimebox said. “You know what’s good for you, you’ll run, too.”
Erainya wouldn’t meet my eyes.
I remembered her reaction to the radio news, the intense, almost frantic look she’d given me.
“What?” I asked her. “You helped put this Stirman guy away?”
Dimebox laughed nervously. “That ain’t the fucking half of it, Navarre. Not the fucking-”
Lalu whacked his fist against Dimebox’s skull, and Dimebox slumped on the couch.
Lalu grunted apologetically. “Lady wanted no cussing.”
I said, “Erainya…?”
She got up and stormed into the cousins’ bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
I turned to Jem, who was paying a lot of attention to the pattern in the couch fabric. I asked him if he still had his mom’s cell phone.
I checked the readout, but the call history didn’t help my confusion. I could make a dozen guesses who Erainya might call in an emergency, if she were truly faced with an urgent dilemma.
All my guesses were wrong.
The person she’d been so anxious to talk to when she stepped into the storm wasn’t her doctor boyfriend. It wasn’t the police, or any of our regular helpers on the street.
She’d called I-Tech Security, the direct line to the company president.
Her archrival.
A man she’d sworn never to cross paths with again, until one of them was dancing on the other’s grave.
3
Special Agent Samuel Barrera spent breakfast trying to remember the name of the ax murderer.
The guy had tortured and killed six illegal immigrants on a ranch up around Castroville, left their body parts scattered in the woods like deer corn. What the hell was his name?
Sam had a feeling it would be important in the case he was working on. He’d talk to his trainee Pacabel when he got to the office. Pacabel would remember.
The morning was humid after last night’s downpour, just enough drizzle to keep everybody sour-faced, staring at the gray sky, thinking, Enough already.
Not even Alamo Street Market’s coffee and migas were enough to compensate.
Sam pulled on his jacket over his sidearm.
He left a ten on the table, got annoyed when the waiter called, “ Hasta manana, Sam.”
Like Sam knew the guy. Like they were old friends or something. What the hell was wrong with people these days?
Down South Alamo, yellow sawhorses blocked the side streets. Asphalt had come apart in huge chunks and washed away. The sidewalk was buried in a shroud of mud.
Sam picked his way through the debris.
The last few years, people had started calling this area Southtown. Art studios had opened up in the old
