Thicker Than Blood (30 page)

Some house, he thought. The white stucco walls under red Spanish tiles seemed to go on forever. Five bedrooms, three bathrooms, and now he could afford even better.

And his face was hanging on the hallowed wall in the InterUrban entry with the eight white men who had preceded him as general manager.

But your wife won’t speak to you, your kids have forgotten what you look like, your sister thinks you’re an Uncle Tom. And you don’t even like yourself very much.

Andrew wished he hadn’t listened, wished he didn’t know, wished a lot of things. But it was too late. It had been too late ever since he’d let that smart-mouthed female who reminded him of his sister into his office.

He trundled the lawnmower to the garage, thinking that the amiable reign of InterUrban’s first black general manager was likely to be shorter than expected. He was almost looking forward to Monday.

333

The smell of old papers made Rachel sneeze. Despite the long, tiresome drive, she was ecstatic just to be out of the cabin.

The courthouse clerk frowned and tugged at his yellow vest.

Rachel returned his frown, thinking this dried-up little man probably wished his ledgers could be left alone to rot, in perfect numerical order.

Between audible sighs, the clerk handed Hank the records requested and reminded them that the courthouse closed in less than two hours.

Checking land sales quickly became drudgery. Even the light from the huge fixtures that hung from very high, very dirty ceilings subtly discouraged browsers by wandering off before it quite reached the tables.

Absently, Rachel chewed on the eraser of her number two pencil. “Could he have used another name?” she whispered, although there was no one there to disturb but the clerk. The whisper seemed louder than normal speech.

Hank’s eyebrows climbed comically. “They frown on the sale of land by people not named on the deed.”

“Are you sure these are all the companies he owns?” She pointed at the nine names Hank had written down under the heading Calabrese Corporations.

“I’m not sure of anything.”

They returned to studying the records.

“Good God!” Rachel’s voice resounded from the walls. The clerk scowled at her and she ducked her head like a second-grader. “That’s a lot of land,” she whispered, running her finger down the lines. “But Bruno hasn’t been selling. He’s been buying.”

“So where does that leave us?” Rachel asked Hank as they got into the car in the small parking lot behind the courthouse. “Seems like we’re right back to square one. If Bruno’s been buying land, he can’t be poisoning the ponds.”

Hank sat, the car keys dangling from his hand, which was propped on the steering wheel. He didn’t answer.

“They say there’s going to be a huge earthquake this afternoon,” Rachel said loudly. “The earth will open and swallow this car for a late lunch.”

Hank turned a puzzled face to her. “Huh?”

“Were you planning on spending the afternoon in the parking lot of the Merced County Courthouse? I want junk food. Genuine, bonafide junk food.”

333

Andrew turned on the lights and sat down in Jason’s big black leather chair. He had come in early to beat the traffic. On Monday the freeway was always a bear.

He leaned back and stared at the desk. Then, very slowly, he put the heel of one size eleven-and-a-half spit-shined black wing-tip oxford on top of the desk, brought the other up and rested it on the ankle. He was still sitting there when Virginia looked in at eight.

“Call a board meeting,” he said in a soft, even voice.

“But…but…,” Virginia squawked like a hen.

“The general manager has the authority to call a board meeting. Do it.”

333

Someone was shaking Rachel’s shoulder.

“Stop it, Hank. Let me sleep.”

She rolled over, but the shaking got rougher. Someone called her name in a voice that bore the same lilt as her father’s and, wanting to go to him, she blinked open her eyes.

But it wasn’t her father.

Her hands flew to cover her face from a blinding light. Her heart drag-raced from sleep to panic as she realized Hank had gone down to LA to take care of some business.

She jerked forward, half sitting, knees to her chin, making herself as small as possible against the bed’s plain pine headboard, like a torture victim.

“Get up, lady. Get dressed.” The voice came from behind the light that was trained directly on her eyes.

Rachel wrenched at the covers until they came loose from the foot of the bed, and pulled them up around her naked shoulders.

“May I have some privacy?” Her voice was steady. If they intended to kill her immediately, weeping would not deter them. If not, she would need her wits about her.

At first there was no answer, then, “Three minutes,” came out of the darkness behind the flashlight. A different voice, also male.

“We will wait outside the door.” The first voice again. “And someone is outside the window. Please, you will not do anything stupid.” The door closed, blotting out the light, pitching the room into a void of blackness.

How had they found her? No one knew where she was except Hank and Goldie.

Rachel staggered to the closet and fumbled at the clothes. Afraid that if she turned on the light they might burst into the room again, she dressed like the blind, by touch and memory. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by the time she opened the door.

Again the hammer of the oversize flashlight beam struck her.

“I can’t see when you do that,” she said calmly.

“This is the complete point.”

They didn’t search her, blindfold her or even tie her hands. They just put her in the back seat, then climbed in on either side of her.

Both men were Mexican, young, but already running to fat, potbellies straining at their belts. Rachel had never seen any of them before. They muttered and grunted, but didn’t say much. The driver, much smaller, had a look of meanness about the eyes that only short men can achieve. He had wielded the light, so she hadn’t seen his face and couldn’t see much of him above the car seat. All three wore dark jackets.

Forty minutes later, the driver pulled into a dimly lit office parking lot in a town Rachel didn’t recognize. A small yellow light shone above the steel-door entrance.

The two who had hemmed her in the back seat now pushed her toward a door to the building. “El Jefe is waiting. He does not like waiting.”

The door opened silently as she approached, and an arm reached out to usher her inside.

A light shone behind the desk across the room, casting the man who sat there as a mountainous shadow, dwarfing everything around him, his demeanor that of a wrestler.

“Come, sit.” He pointed at a chair. His voice was kind enough, but something in the tone warned that if its owner decided, Rachel could be diced like a cucumber and tossed in a salad.

Figuring at least one of the men who had abducted her was outside the door with a gun, she did as she was told.

El Jefe leaned his elbows on the desk. Only his hands were clearly visible, and she was surprised to see they were neatly groomed, the nails even polished.

The room was chilly, the air like lead. Rachel’s neck was aching, her head pounding. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry. If she tried to speak, she was sure her voice would quaver.

The silence stretched like an overtaxed rubber band. When she thought she could trust her voice to be steady, she stared at him as squarely as one can stare at a hulking shadow. “So you’re the boss.”

He laughed, as though she had passed a test.

She said nothing, eyes trying to find the man behind the shadow, trying to measure his meaning.

The voice came again: “You have a little Spanish. Very good. Marty did not let you grow up without it.”

Chapter Fifty-one

Rachel’s chin jerked up, her eyes intense. “You know my father?”

“Si, child. Of course.” Footsteps were crossing some adjoining room and El Jefe lifted his hand carelessly. “About time you got here, Marty. Your lovely daughter seems a little suspicious of me.”

Rachel leaped from her chair and Marty’s arms closed around her. “Oh, Pop!” The words came out in a half-sob. “I thought, when they said you were gone from the hospital.… God, I’m glad to see you.”

Marty brought out a handkerchief, dabbed at his eyes, then handed it to her. “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see my girl again.” He pulled a chair next to hers and sat down, not letting go of her hand.

“No one knew where you were,” Marty said. “Some crazy old woman is at your garage. She wouldn’t believe I was your father, wouldn’t let me into your apartment, said she didn’t know where you were. What happened?”

Wondering if they were both now caught in the same trap, Rachel glanced toward El Jefe, then back to Marty. “You first. What happened in the hospital?”

“I had to get out of there or they would find me.”

“Who would find you?”

“Rachel, believe me, that was no accident. Someone on the Long Beach Freeway was trying to kill me. He kept ramming my car, ramming and ramming.” Marty’s voice grew thin and he paused. “I didn’t remember at first, but then it came back.”

“You don’t know who it was?”

He brought his palms up in a shrug. “Not a clue. I don’t even owe anyone. Not much anyway. Of course, you meet a few bums at the tables, but I didn’t think I had an enemy in the world.”

“You probably don’t, Pop. You were driving my car.”

Marty’s troubled eyes held hers. “You think someone was trying to kill you? But why? What have you got yourself mixed up in?”

She tipped her head toward El Jefe, who had leaned back in his chair and was gazing at the ceiling, now in full light. She was surprised to see he wore a three-piece pinstripe suit, a white shirt, and a beard as neatly trimmed as his fingernails. He was older than she’d thought and looked nothing like a wrestler.

Marty read her look. “I guess you could say El Jefe is an old friend.”

The big man barked a laugh. “We are both old, and we are friends. I will tell her myself.” He turned to Rachel. “Your father is a good man. My son Emilio got it into his head a few years ago that he was such a hotshot poker player he should not waste himself on college. But he was not quite so great a player as he thought. Emilio lost a large sum to your papa, here.”

A smile played about Marty’s mouth. “Only royal flush I ever held. Spades.”

“A very large sum,” El Jefe went on. “His entire tuition to Stanford.”

“The boy was shattered,” Marty said. “He could hardly stand up from his chair.”

“He knew he could not both pay your father what he owed and go to college as I expected. To make it short, your papa did something no one I ever heard of would do. He did not know Emilio was mostly afraid I would find out. Your papa believed Emilio had lost his entire future.”

“Can’t say I blame Emilio for being afraid of you,” Marty chuckled.

“Your papa was maybe a bigger fool than Emilio. He gave the money back.” El Jefe shook his large head like a Saint Bernard. “My son was a fool, but he was not as dishonorable as this sounds.”

“Emilio told me he owed me his life,” Marty said. “And that if ever, ever I needed a favor I should look him up.”

“More than six years ago and I never knew of it. Of course Marty here did not know what sorts of favors Emilio could produce.” The big man nodded with unconcealed pride.

Marty scratched his nose with his thumb. “I heard things here and there over the years.”

“My son is no longer afraid of me. And me, these days I am maybe a little afraid of him. He’s going to be a damn fine lawyer. But he knows there are things I can do that he can’t.” Somewhere in the building, a door slammed.

“How did you find me?” Rachel directed her question at Marty, but El Jefe answered.

“Your friend with the Mustang, Mr. Sullivan, lost us the first time, but he is—pardon my saying this—a beginner.”

One of the owners of the potbellies that had escorted Rachel slouched across the room to the desk and said something in a low voice. Little of what the big man replied was audible beyond the way he chopped off each word, spitting them out like cherry pits.

When the messenger had slouched his way back to the corridor, El Jefe turned to Rachel. “No one followed you here. We had someone behind. You are safe for now.” Then to Marty, “I will leave you. Your daughter, I think, does not like to talk in front of me and she is right. Trust no one.

“When you are ready to return, Jose and Felipe will see to it,” he said to Rachel, then got up and lumbered across the room. At the door, he turned and pointed a thick finger at her. “Good luck.”

She looked at her father and whispered, “Who is he?”

“Never mind him, he means us no harm. I called in his son’s debt. He honored it. Now what the hell is going on?”

Rachel rubbed her temple with a forefinger. “I wish I knew.”

“Just begin at the beginning.”

“I’ll try,” she said, and for more than an hour they mulled over the details, with Jose and Felipe strolling through the corridor from time to time, casting glances through the open door that spoke much of impatience but little of curiosity. At this stage in their careers they listened to no words but El Jefe’s.

Rachel’s exhausted brain spun like a wheel in sand, almost, but never quite, grasping an elusive something that would convert what she was saying to sense.

“Maybe El Jefe could help,” Marty said, when she had finished. “I’ll ask him.”

“No way, Pop.” Her lips were dry. She ran her tongue over them.

“But he could protect you.”

“It’s pretty obvious he’ll never be nominated for Citizen of the Year,” Rachel said. “A couple of friends are helping me—you met them at the Pig’s Whistle, remember?—I think I’m better off with them.”

“They seemed like nice enough people, but not exactly the sort who can give you any real protection. Whoever is threatening you wouldn’t mess with El Jefe,” Marty pointed out.

“For all we know, he could be part of it,” she said firmly.

333

The tires of the old blue Ford seemed to crunch over the gravel forever before they got to the end of the driveway. Whistling an off-key tune, Goldie turned off the motor and stowed the key in her purse, thinking Rachel was going to find this very interesting.