Rebel Island (10 page)

“Señor?”

Jose was back, smiling blandly, holding the registration cards I’d asked him for. “You are fine, señor?”

“Yeah,” I managed. “Great.”

I took the cards and began flipping through them.

The first was in my handwriting:
Mr. & Mrs. Navarre.
I stared at it, marveling at the weirdness of there being a Mrs. Navarre.

I flipped through the other cards, went back to one of them, checked it against the phone records.

“Here,” I said.

“Señor?”

“Three calls to this number from the hotel. All in the last two weeks.”

“Is that bad, sir?”

“I don’t know.” I held up the registration card with a name, a Kingsville address and a phone number, all written in neat block letters. “But I think I should ask Benjamin Lindy.”

18

Garrett found Alex in the parlor, staring at the marlin above
the fireplace.

“Yo, Huff.”

Alex’s shirt had a tear in the back, like it had snagged on a nail. Plaster and dust speckled his curly hair. “You sure you don’t want to buy this place?” he muttered. “Price is getting cheaper by the minute.”

His tone reminded Garrett of another friend—a fellow programmer who’d climbed out onto the tenth-story ledge of his Bee Cave Road office in Austin after the high-tech bubble burst. The guy’s voice had sounded just like that—fragile as glass—right before he jumped.

“You’re gonna get through this, man,” Garrett promised.

Alex turned. He was holding his old whittling knife—the knife his dad had given him for his thirteenth birthday. The blade was folded against the handle, but it still made Garrett uneasy.

“I was wrong to bring you all down here,” Alex said.

“You said you needed help. I’m telling you, man. Tres can help.”

“It’s too late. I’ve screwed up too much.”

Garrett remembered the body in the basement. A shiver ran up his back. Even so many years after he’d lost his legs, there were times he missed being able to run away. Down in the basement had been one of those moments. The way Tres had calmly shone a light over the dead man’s face, gone through his pockets and completely ignored the dried blood and the gunshot wound in the chest—how did little Tres, the annoying kid who used to complain to Mom whenever Garrett so much as touched him, grow up being able to examine dead bodies?

“Alex, if there’s something you ain’t told me—”

“Shit, Garrett. You couldn’t even start to guess.”

“That stuff about Calavera. If you had anything to do with that—I mean, you would tell me, right?”

Alex’s expression was hard to read—fear, maybe even shame. “You remember Mr. Eli’s funeral?”

Garrett nodded. It wasn’t one of the days he liked to remember. He’d come down to Corpus for the memorial, mostly to console Alex. There hadn’t been many people there, which had surprised Garrett. After all the people old Mr. Eli had helped, all the good things people said about him, Garrett figured there would be a mob scene. But it was just Garrett, Alex and a couple of ladies from the local Presbyterian church who seemed to have nothing better to do.

Afterward, Alex and he had gotten blind drunk at the Water Street Oyster Bar.

“You promised you’d be there at my funeral,” Alex reminded him.

“I was drunk, man. And you’re really starting to freak me out.”

Alex put the knife back in his pocket. “I’m going to get a drink.”

“Don’t think you need one, man.”

“This coming from you? Sorry, Garrett. I need a drink.”

“Alex,” Garrett called after him. “You didn’t kill anybody. You couldn’t do that, right?”

Alex’s eyes were as dead as the fish on the walls. “I’m sorry I got you here, Garrett. It’s gonna be just like Mr. Eli’s funeral. Nobody’s even gonna remember I did anything right.”

After he was gone, Garrett picked up a pillow and threw it at the wall. That didn’t make him feel better.

He thought about how long Alex and he had been friends. Seemed like forever. They’d gone to concerts together, howled at the moon from the roof of this old hotel. When Garrett had lost his legs, Alex was the first one to come find him in the hospital—one of the few friends that stuck with him and never made him feel like a freak. Garrett didn’t like what he was seeing tonight. He wanted Alex back the way he used to be—a pain in the ass sometimes, but fun. Admirable, even. Alex was the guy who always knew the right thing to do. Hearing him talking now about screwing up—no. That was Garrett’s job. Alex was supposed to be the smart one.

Suddenly Garrett wondered where Lane had gone.

They’d been apart like five minutes, and already he missed her. Alex, in the old days, would’ve had something to say about that. He would’ve warned Garrett against falling too hard. Garrett probably needed somebody to remind him of that. He had trouble thinking straight when it came to Lane.

“Hell with it,” he muttered. Maybe he didn’t know Alex as well as he thought. And if you couldn’t know somebody after thirty damn years, who’s to say you couldn’t get to know somebody just as well in one day?

He wheeled himself out of the parlor and went to find Lane.

19

I finally located Mr. Lindy in a room I never knew existed—
a small library on the third floor. Judging from the limestone fireplace, the place was directly above the parlor. The shelves were lined with tattered hardcover bestsellers from twenty or thirty years ago. Ludlum. Trevanian. Guy books.

Lindy sat in a leather recliner facing the door—a good defensive position. He still wore his dark suit, though he’d loosened his tie. His demeanor was so formal that even this small concession to comfort seemed like a shocking breach of decorum. He was flipping through a copy of
Field & Stream,
but I got the feeling he wasn’t paying it much attention. His cologne filled the air with a faint amber scent.

“Mr. Navarre,” he said.

“Mr. Lindy. We need to talk.”

“Then you might as well sit down.”

I sat across from him on the arm of the sofa. It was the only way I could have a height advantage.

Lindy set aside his magazine. That’s when I noticed his .45 in his lap.

“If the gun bothers you,” he said, “I can put it away.”

He sounded courteous, but I wondered if there was a veiled warning in the offer. As if:
The gun is the least of your problems.

“What’s your interest in Calavera?” I asked.

“Aside from the fact that he may be a direct threat to our lives?”

“Aside from that.”

Lindy glanced at the ceiling. Even here, in the middle of the house, I could hear the storm blowing strong. Footsteps creaked above us. I wondered if Alex was up in the attic again, blocking off some section of the roof that had been torn away.

“I’m curious,” Lindy said. “What makes you believe I have a personal interest in this killer?”

“There it is again.”

“What?”

“The way you said
personal.
I didn’t say your interest was personal. Earlier, you said you’d retired before Calavera started murdering innocent people.
Innocent people.
Most of Calavera’s hits were Mafia men. Only his last hit, his big mistake, killed innocent people. You’ve got some personal stake in the Peter Brazos case, the murder of Brazos’s wife and daughters. You slipped that envelope under my door.”

Lindy studied me, his eyes as bright as broken glass. “If you were right, would it matter?”

“What do you mean?”

“We have a murderer in this hotel. If he’s allowed to leave the island, he will disappear. Now that you know who he is, you must agree he has to be caught. Given our circumstances, you may be the only one who can do that. Does it matter who gave you the information?”

His tone was calm and reasonable, but he said the word
murderer
with an intimate loathing, the way a preacher might say
Satan.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “Why did someone at the hotel call you three times over the last week?”

“I came to fish.” Lindy pointed to the
Field & Stream.

“For Calavera?”

“I’m an old man, Mr. Navarre. I’m in no shape to track down a murderer.”

Which, I noticed, was not exactly a denial. “Did you know Marshal Longoria?”

“Not well.”

“Which means you did.”

Lindy’s gaze wobbled, as if he were looking back through decades. “I once asked his advice on a personal matter. He counseled me as best he could. That was many years ago. I wouldn’t say we were friends.”

“What was the personal matter?”

“I don’t see that it is relevant.”

“Your family?”

The muscles in his jaw tightened. “My wife.”

I waited, but Lindy was not about to draw water from that well.

“You knew Longoria would be here this weekend,” I said. “He had reason to think Calavera would be on the island.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Chris Stowall’s business card and a candy skull were in Longoria’s suitcase. There was a note written on the back:
June 5.
”

“That seems slim evidence.”

“I also found an email stuck in Chris Stowall’s diary. Part of a correspondence between Calavera and a U.S. Marshal named Berry, Longoria’s boss.”

I couldn’t tell if that surprised Lindy or not, but he seemed to be composing his thoughts before he spoke again. “What was the nature of this correspondence?”

“I think Calavera was negotiating surrender. He wanted to offer testimony against his employers, probably in exchange for a new identity and federal protection.”

“And why would he make such a deal?”

“The Brazos hit at New Year’s might’ve shaken him up, made him remorseful.”

Lindy shook his head. “Mr. Navarre, an assassin like Calavera has no remorse. More likely his cartel employers were unhappy with his failure to kill Peter. Calavera was bargaining information to save his own worthless—”

“Peter,” I noticed. “First name.”

Lindy stared at me. Slowly he nodded with grudging appreciation. “You missed your calling, sir. You should have been a trial lawyer.”

“I married one,” I said. “That’s good enough.”

“If you think Calavera could be shaken up, if you think he had any conscience at all, you clearly haven’t read enough.” He picked up a yellowing newspaper from the table and handed it to me. It was a copy of the
Kingsville Record,
Lindy’s hometown newspaper, dated almost three years ago.

Before I could ask Lindy what this happened to be doing here, there was a tentative knock on the door: the maid, Imelda, stepped into the library, looking frazzled. “Excuse me, Señor Navarre. It’s your wife. I think you should come.”

Maia was lying on her side, a pillow between her legs, two
under her head, one hugged against her chest. She looked uncomfortable and a little pale.

“Too much excitement,” she said. “That’s all.”

“She is having mild contractions,” Imelda said. “Pre-labor.”

I tried to keep my panic from showing. “Are you sure, Imelda?”

“I’ve had children, señor,” she said, like it was a subject she preferred not to talk about. “The señora needs to rest and be very still.”

“Or?”

“She might deliver.”

Be calm,
I told myself.
Keep it upbeat.

“You can’t deliver on Rebel Island,” I told Maia. “I want our child to have U.S. citizenship.”

Imelda looked confused. “But, señor, this is—”

“He’s teasing, Imelda,” Maia said. “Tres, the baby is fine. I’ll be fine.”

“We’re all fine,” I agreed. “Sure.”

Maia sighed. “Imelda, could you find some more pillows for my husband? I think he’s going into labor.”

Imelda looked more confused. “But—”

“She’s teasing,” I said.

“
Ay,
too much teasing,” Imelda scolded. “You should rest, señora. Perhaps some red-raspberry-leaf tea?”

“That sounds wonderful. Can you do that?”

“We have some in the kitchen, señora. And a portable heater for the water.” She fussed with Maia’s pillows a little more, then trudged off to get the tea.

“Don’t go anywhere,” I told Maia.

I followed Imelda and stopped her in the hallway.

“Hey,” I said, keeping my voice down, “if it came down to…you know—”

“Delivering the child, señor?”

“Yeah. Could you help?”

She tugged nervously on her wedding ring, which I didn’t figure was a good sign. “I would try, señor. But this is the señora’s first child. She is older. There could be complications.”

“How many children do you have?”

“I…two.”

“Grown?”

“…No.”

“Oh.”

Imelda twisted the cords of her apron. She had brown hair streaked with gold and white, like marbled fudge. If her husband’s face was fashioned for smiling, Imelda’s was made for stoic suffering. She had the pinched expression and weathered skin of someone who might have spent her life toiling in the fields, squinting against a hot sun.

“I will help if I can,” she told me. “I have done it before back in…back in Mexico. I think I could. I remember.”

“Thank you.”

“I will get the tea.” And she shuffled off like the hot fields were waiting, just at the bottom of the stairs.

I sat on the bed and massaged Maia’s feet. Her ankles
looked swollen. I tried to remember what that meant. A normal thing? A danger sign? Maia and I had agreed on one thing about the childbirth process: the standard “how-to” advice and facts about what happened when stayed with us about as well as Japanese VCR instructions.

Early on, Maia had decided to listen to her body and just go with that. What the doctors had to say was too scary, anyway. She’d refused amniocentesis. Too risky. There was nothing it would tell her that she really wanted to hear.

The baby was at high risk for muscular dystrophy. We both knew that. Maia carried the genes. Fifty-fifty chance our child would have it. The possibility of MD was like the loaded gun Maia kept in her underwear drawer, or the blackmail file she kept on her enemies. We both knew it was there. We knew it might come into play someday. But there was no use talking or worrying about it, so we didn’t.

At least that was the theory.

“Take my mind off the cramps,” Maia said. “Tell me what’s happening.”

A murderer running loose in the hotel was the last thing I wanted to talk to Maia about, but I could tell she needed distraction. Her conversational tone was forced. I’d never seen her look quite so worried, or rather try so hard not to look worried.

I kept massaging her feet as I told her about my trip to the boathouse, the bag of money, then finding Chris’s diary and the email to the U.S. Marshals Service. I told her about my conversations with Jose and Benjamin Lindy.

Maia focused on my words the way she did in Lamaze class, as if this were another breathing exercise. “You really think Chris is the killer?”

“I don’t know what to think. You met Chris. Does he strike you as a bomber?”

“
Bombed,
perhaps. Not a bomber.”

“Exactly.”

Maia pressed her toes against my hand. “But it certainly looks like Chris was talking with the marshals. And the money makes it look like he was planning an escape if things went wrong.”

“If Chris brought Longoria here, why would he kill him?”

“Perhaps Longoria reneged on the deal.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” I said. “I know this other marshal, Berry. If I were him, trying to negotiate a delicate surrender, Longoria is the last person I would send. Longoria would never let this guy Calavera skate. He’d kill him first. Berry certainly wouldn’t send him alone.”

“And yet Longoria came here. Alone.”

I nodded. It made about as much sense to me as childbirth manuals. Or maybe I was just too tired to think. As I sat on a comfortable bed with Maia, my body was reminding me just how long it had been since I slept. I had no idea what time it was. Close to midnight, probably.

“What’s in the newspaper?” Maia asked.

I looked at the copy of the
Kingsville Record
that I’d set at the foot of the bed. I’d completely forgotten about it.

“Old news from Mr. Lindy,” I said. “We don’t want to know.”

“Sure we do,” she said. “Go on.”

And so reluctantly I picked up the paper. The story Mr. Lindy had wanted me to read was easy enough to find. It had been front-page news in Kingsville, three years ago.