“Not for me,” he said. “I’ve got to meet somebody there.”
“I like the museum.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Got to do something while you’re gone all day. Take me with you.”
Her smile made him want to take off his clothes again, join her under the covers. A lot more pleasant than what he had to do.
“I can’t,” he said. “These aren’t good men I have to see.”
Her eyes widened. “Are they worse than you?”
“No.”
“Then I got nothing to worry about, do I?”
He couldn’t tell her no. She dressed quickly. Together they walked down Jones Street in the dark, holding hands under the full moon.
The museum was all lit up.
They walked straight up to the doors. The security guard wore an I-Tech patch on his uniform.
He didn’t look happy about it, but he let them in. “Fourth-floor skywalk.”
They walked upstairs, Soledad pointing out paintings. She made faces at the abstract stuff. She thought the nude models looked sad.
“You draw better,” she told him. “Why couldn’t your stuff be in here?”
She was one of the few people who’d ever seen his sketches-the drawings he did late at night, when he woke up haunted by some illegal immigrant’s face, one of the hundreds he’d imported that week. He didn’t know why some faces stuck with him and others didn’t. He didn’t know why sketching them made him feel better. But it allowed him to sleep. It got their faces onto the paper and out of his dreams.
Soledad stopped in front of an eighteenth-century seascape. “I wanted to live on the beach, when I was little.”
Another security guard passed by, pointedly ignoring them.
“Why San Antonio then?” Will asked her. “No beaches here.”
Soledad pinched her medallion. “My father’s. He gave it to me before I left. San Antonio was his patron saint. Said the city would be lucky for me.”
San Antonio. Saint Anthony. Will had lived here since he was eight, when his parents moved from West Texas hoping to escape the oil fields, but he’d never thought about what the city’s name meant. “Why lucky?”
Soledad raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know about Saint Anthony?”
Will shook his head. At the time, he knew almost nothing about religion.
“I’ll tell you sometime,” Soledad promised.
On the fourth floor, she squeezed his hand. She let him go forward without her.
Two men were waiting for him on the skywalk.
“Hey, Stirman,” Fred Barrow said. “I see you brought your daughter.”
Will said nothing. It had been a mistake to bring Soledad. If Barrow said another word about her, Will would break his neck. He could fix a lot of things with the police. He spread money around in a lot of places. But he wasn’t sure he could fix murdering Fred Barrow, not with a witness, with armed security guards.
Barrow took the unlit cigar from his mouth. He had a nose that had been broken at least twice, a knife scar on his jaw. He wore a suit that fit his broad shoulders poorly. His eyes were not very different from the eyes of Will’s clients-the ones who appraised women for purchase.
“We want a confession,” Barrow told him.
Will looked at the other man, Sam Barrera. It was common knowledge the two PIs hated each other, which was why Will had agreed to this meeting. Despite the risks, despite Will’s dislike for them both, he was curious. He wanted to hear what they were calling an “urgent business proposition.” What could possibly bring these two men together?
“You give us a statement,” Sam Barrera said, “we can talk to the D.A. this morning. He’s willing to go with human trafficking only, drop the accessory-to-murder charges. You’ve just got to admit to supplying the women. You’ll be out in five to ten.”
Will shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
The two private eyes exchanged looks.
Immediately Will remembered why he hated them. They thought they were so goddamn superior. Will had crossed paths with both of them before, on separate missing persons cases. Families in Mexico had hired them to find kin who had crossed illegally and disappeared. Unlike most gumshoes, Barrow and Barrera wouldn’t take Will’s money. They wouldn’t go away. They just kept digging as if Will was beneath them, as if it would be insulting to cooperate with him. So Will had taught them a lesson. He had made sure the people they were looking for disappeared permanently, all traces of their existence wiped out. He’d made sure the PIs knew it, too. Their investigations went nowhere. They couldn’t touch Will.
“You went too far this time, Stirman,” Fred Barrow said. “Six women were murdered.”
Will made the connection. “You’re talking about the McCurdy Ranch. Those women weren’t mine.”
Fred Barrow laughed. “Every slave laborer in South Texas has your handprints all over them.”
His eyes drifted over to Soledad.
“You look at her again,” Will said, “I’ll kill you.”
“That wouldn’t be wise,” Sam Barrera said.
A security guard drifted into view at the far end of the skywalk.
Will had been stupid to come here. Barrera controlled the guards. They could set Will up, find some pretext to kill him.
“I’m not confessing,” he said. “I didn’t do anything.”
“We’ll get you anyway,” Sam Barrera warned. “This is huge, Stirman. People want blood on the McCurdy case. We’re going to give it to them.”
“Not my blood.”
Barrera said, “We’ve got witnesses who can tie you to McCurdy.”
Will knew he was bluffing. He had to be. There’d been nothing for anybody to witness.
“Thanks for the private tour, Barrera,” he said. Then to Fred Barrow: “Stay the fuck away from me. You understand?”
Barrow bit off the tip of his cigar, spat it at Will’s feet. “Stick around and enjoy the artwork, Stirman. We’ll meet again soon. And, um, give your Mexican daughter a kiss for me, okay?”
The two men walked back across the skywalk.
Will found Soledad running her fingers over the head of a Greek statue-a half-naked woman lying forlornly on a sofa. The card said, Ariadne waits for Dionysus. do not touch.
“Don’t let them anger you,” Soledad told him. “They aren’t worth it.”
“You heard?”
She turned, wrapped her arms around his waist, kissed his chin.
She made him feel worse than Barrow and Barrera ever could.
He was a smuggler. A murderer. He had disposed of human bodies like they were animal carcasses. He had put Soledad up for sale, and a thousand women like her.
“You can leave, if you want,” he told her.
She looked up at him, mystified. “I told you, loco boy. San Antonio is my lucky town.”
“Wherever you want to go,” he said. “The seashore. Wherever. I’ll give you money. You’re free to leave me.”
She grabbed his wrist, moved his hand to her belly, warm and slightly swollen under the cotton dress. She said, “That wouldn’t be a good idea, mi amor.”
Somewhere in the middle of a long kiss, he finally understood what she was saying, and the knowledge terrified him.
It was months before Barrow and Barrera found him again. Long enough for Will to lower his guard, and believe that they had forgotten about him. Long enough for him to come to terms with his fear, and believe that Soledad might be his salvation.
