In Big Trouble

was as if she knew how vulnerable it made Tess feel to be in a place where she didn't know everything and everyone.

'A bow-legged woman,' Emmie said. 'That's not bad, actually. Hildebrand is waist-high, you're right, and your motel is just above the knee. She must be a very fat woman, don't you think, with big thighs spread far apart? Yet her ankles are very dainty. Her best feature.' Emmie laughed happily. 'Yes, you might even say it ain't over until the fat lady crosses her ankles.'

Tess said nothing, she was too busy looking out at the window, grimly memorizing landmarks. They had passed one college on the right, now another was on the left, where they were turning by the Southwestern Bell Building and heading down the fat lady's left leg, Broadway. And here was La Casita. Home sweet home.

'Thanks for the milkshake,' she told Emmie.

'Milkshake?' she asked, as if she had forgotten their trip to the pharmacy. 'Oh, de nada.'

Tess checked in with Mrs. Nguyen before going to her room. 'I still don't know when I'm leaving.' Actually, she still didn't know why she was staying.

'No problem,' her landlady said, eyes fixed on a Mexican soap opera as she ate a slice of pizza. 'Your friend find you?'

'Her? She's not really a friend.'

'Not your girlfriend. Boyfriend.'

'I don't have a boyfriend,' she said stupidly.

'Not boyfriend boyfriend. Boy. Friend. He came by, he had a picture of you, with your black dog. That's how I know he knows you. I told him you gone off, he asked me if he could see the dog. So I let him in the room. But don't worry, I watch him. I watch him carefully. Very nice boy, very handsome, he patted the dog on the head. Younger than you, yes?'

'Ye-e-e-sss.' The milkshake seemed to lurch in her stomach, as if it was going for one more spin in the Hamilton mixer. 'And you watched him the whole time?'

'Whole time,' Mrs. Nguyen said, nodding vigorously. Then her head stopped in mid-bob. 'Except-'

'Except when, Mrs. Nguyen?'

'When the pizza man came, I had to go get my purse. No more than two minutes. Maybe three. Very nice boy. He said goodbye, I locked your room. The dog looked happy to see him.'

'The world's greatest watchdog bounded up when Tess opened the door to her room. Whatever Esskay knew, she wasn't telling. But she had something on her breath, some liver-ish treat that Tess hadn't given her. Heck, Charles Manson could drop by if he brought a treat. Esskay had her priorities. And she would have remembered Crow. Her long-term memory was much better than her short-term one. She still remembered the exact spot where she had once seen a cat sunning itself on a windowsill.

The room looked normal, and Tess had so few possessions that it didn't take much time to inventory everything there. Her bag of laundry was on the bed, her copy of Don Quixote on the nightstand. Her knapsack was there, too, seemingly untouched. She took out the false bottom, made sure her gun and cell phone were nestled there. This past summer, in a particularly hellish forty-eight hours, her gun had been stolen and her phone had been flung across five lanes of traffic on Interstate 95. A tailor had designed a black flap that attached with Velcro strips, but it would only fool someone who glanced inside the knapsack without picking it up. The weight would have given away its secret contents.

No, if Mrs. Nguyen hadn't mentioned her gentleman caller, she would never have known someone had been here. But someone had, and it felt as creepy as a real break-in, or a burglary. Creepier, because she knew who the perpetrator was, yet couldn't begin to guess at his motives.

Chapter 11

Hector's was not the type of place listed in the yellow pages, or in San Antonio's Chamber of Commerce magazine. But Mrs. Nguyen, embarrassed by her uncharacteristic lack of vigilance on Tess's behalf, called a cousin whose daughter had a friend who knew a guy who sometimes hung out with bikers. A family scandal, as it turned out, and Mrs. Nguyen was on the telephone for quite some time, clucking over the shame of it all, even as she passed keys to the La Casita regulars and kept one eye on her Mexican soap operas.

Finally, she rang off. 'It's ice house, out in the country,' she told Tess from her side of the bulletproof glass. 'Way out Pleasanton Road.'

'Ice house?' It was the second time today Tess had heard this strange term. The HEB clerk had claimed you could buy a phone card at one.

'Like package store, but with places to sit, maybe a pool table. But it's not a nice place, not for nice young lady.'

'No problem. I'll just take my gun.'

'Good idea,' Mrs. Nguyen said, nodding vigorously, although she certainly never needed a gun. Her office was an impenetrable fortress-Mrs. Nguyen not only had the protection of the glass, but she slipped into a back room to make change or run credit card receipts, locking the door behind her.

'I was joking, Mrs. Nguyen.'

'But you got gun, why not take it? Is legal here, to have guns. Except maybe not for you. And maybe not in bars. They usually have signs, saying no guns. But you take yours, and keep in car. Better safe than sorry.'

At home, Tess had found it irritating when the people in her life-Kitty, Tyner, her parents-pulled this protective stuff. Here, she felt lonely without their scolding. She agreed to be careful.

A few miles south of Loop 410, San Antonio seemed to disappear, and darkness swallowed Tess's Toyota. And while the sky was crowded with stars, they provided no light. It was hard to believe there was anyone or anything outside the path of her headlights, much less some biker bar that turned its stage over to an avant-garde polka-bluegrass band at closing time. Then Hector's suddenly surfaced like a mirage from the shadowy, flat countryside.

It wasn't much to look at: a low cinderblock building dwarfed by an enormous patio outlined in Christmas lights. No sign, but it must be the place, judging by the mix of vehicles in the lot-a few motorcycles, mostly Harley-Davidsons; some banged-up, castoff family cars, the kind driven by college students; and a smattering of expensive foreign cars, which probably cost more than Tess made in a year. Someone was slumming, she thought. What was the point of having money if you couldn't lord over people who didn't?

She checked her watch. It was a few minutes shy of 2, and customers were lined up along one end of the patio, at a long waist-high refrigeration case on wheels. A portable bar.

'Still serving?' she asked when her turn finally came. The bartender was an older man with thick, long sideburns that had probably cycled in and out of fashion several times over the years he had worn them.

'Sure,' he said, unscrewing the cap on a generic cola and pushing it toward her, then pocketing the five dollars she handed him.

'No change?'

'Monopolies are a bitch, ain't they?'

'Don't gouge, Sam,' a woman's clear voice cut in. 'Either give her some change, or give her a beer.'

'She with you, Kris?' The bartender sounded contrite. 'Sorry, I didn't know. I thought she was one of those new kids who keeps showing up, ever since the band got written up in the Eagle.' He exchanged the cola for something called a Shiner Bock. 'Any friend of yours and Rick's is a friend of mine.'

He moved to the end of the bar, to wait on another customer. Tess noticed he was pulling the beers from plastic coolers, not the metal ones built beneath the portable bar, and taking only cash, no credit cards.

'Loophole in the liquor law,' explained her defender. 'After two Hector's is a private social club, for members only. If Sam doesn't know you, he won't sell to you.'

'So am I member now?'

'Yeah, that's why you didn't get any change from your five dollars. Beer is two dollars a bottle, and you can