The widower’s two step

40

The drive back started out well enough. Allison was coming down off her twenty ounces of bad wine and was starting to warm up to the realization that we had fifty thousand dollars stashed under the backseat. By the time we got onto the highway she was recapping the afternoon in glowing terms, throwing out casual insults about her idiot husband and the Avalon County Sheriff's Department. She suggested we drive out to Miranda's gig at the Paintbrush, see if we could find any more deputies to beat up.

"But first better clothes," she insisted. She tugged on my Tshirt sleeve. "I'm not going with this. And you've got to have cowboy boots."

"I've worn cowboy boots exactly once. It was not a success."

"Tell."

"No thanks."

But she kept nagging until, reluctantly, I told her about the photo my mother still shows off whenever I'm foolish enough to bring friends over-me two years old, thighdeep in the Sheriff's black Lucheses, trying not to fall over, my cloth diaper sagging obscenely.

Allison laughed. "You're due for another try."

We didn't tell Rhonda Jean at Sheppler's Western Wear about the diaper photo. We didn't tell her we looked so bad this evening because we'd been breaking into places all around Medina Lake. We just told her we needed a quick change of clothes before the store closed, in fifteen minutes.

Rhonda Jean smiled. A challenge.

Fourteen minutes later she had me outfitted in boot cut Levi's and a cotton pieced red and white shirt and size eleven natural tan Justins. I vetoed the hat and the rattlesnake belt that she promised me she could have engraved with TRES on the back at no extra charge. Allison came out sporting a white fringed shirt and black boots and tightfitting jeans that only a woman with an excellent figure could've gotten away with wearing.

Allison got away with it pretty well.

Rhonda Jean nodded her approval, then sent us on to the cashier. I paid with the last of the fifties Milo had given me at Tycoon Flats.

Allison watched as I emptied my wallet. "You're paying out of pocket? With all we've got stashed in the car?"

The cashier gave us a very funny look. I smiled at Allison and said, "Let's go, darlin'."

Back in the Audi we drove with the windows down. The wind was almost cool now, whipping around the front seats and sending the medicine pouch beads on the rearview mirror into a little jellyfish dance. Allison had taken off the sunglasses and her eyes seemed softer and darker than they had been before.

I was starting to turn some things around in my head, ideas about the addresses we'd found and the money and the trail Les SaintPierre had left.

"You know much about the record industry?" I asked.

Allison held her hands far apart, like she was bragging about a fish. "Two years with Les SaintPierre, cowboy. What you wanna know?"

"CDs."

"What about them?"

"If you were importing them from overseas in large quantities, how would they be packed? Boxes? Crates?"

"Uhunh. Spools."

"Cylinders."

"Yeah. Big ones. The jewel cases and covers are only added in the destination country, with local suppliers. It's cheaper that way. Why?"

"So much for keeping the business modest."

"What?"

I waited a half mile before responding. "We should talk about the money."

"What's to talk about? Les was stupid enough to forget it when he ran, it reverts to me.

You want a finder's fee, sweetie?"

"Les probably embezzled that money from the agency."

Allison stared at me. "So?"

"So it isn't yours. I'll store it for a while, until I know what's what. Then, most likely, it'll go to the debtor's court."

"You're kidding."

I didn't respond. We had come all the way back to Loop 410 to hit Sheppler's and were now heading north again, ostensibly to go to the Paintbrush. I missed the Leon Valley exit and kept driving, circling the city.

"You're going to do Milo Chavez a fiftythousand dollar favour," Allison decided.

"That's not what I said."

"That's what it amounts to-bailing his ass out of debt and leaving me nothing. That's what you're thinking, isn't it? "

"I'm thinking you're overreacting again."

Allison stomped her shiny new boot against the floorboard. She crossed her arms and looked out into the hills. "Shithead."

We passed I10, kept going. I exited on West Avenue and turned left, toward downtown.

"Maybe I should just take you back," I suggested. "Let you collect your car."

"Maybe so."

We drove in silence. West Avenue. Hildebrand. Broadway. Saturday night was unfolding all along the avenues-neon bar signs and lowrider cars and slow cruising pickup trucks. The air was laced with the smell of family barbecues, pork ribs, and roasted peppers.

When we finally got back to Queen Anne Street I cut the engine and the lights. We sat there, staring at Allison's crookedly parked Miata, until Allison began to laugh.

She turned toward me. Her breath smelled faintly of fortified wine. "All right. Don't get the wrong idea, sweetie."

"What wrong idea is that?"

She reached over and pushed a couple of buttons on my new Western shirt. "That I didn't appreciate the day with you. I got a little upset, that's all. I don't want you thinking-"

"The money is staying in storage, Allison."

She blinked slowly, processing what I said, then decided to laugh again. "You think that's all I'm interested in?"

"I don't know."

"Fuck you, then." She said it almost playfully. She leaned toward me slowly, tugging my shirt, inviting me to meet her halfway.

Something twisted in my throat. I managed to move her hand away and say, "Not a good idea."

She pulled back, raised her eyebrows. "All right."

When she got out of the car she slammed the door, then turned and smiled in the window at me. "You and Milo have fun dividing up Les' estate, Tres. Thanks for the good time."

I watched her get in her car, start the engine and pull off the curb with a grind and a thump, and drive away. I reminded myself that was really what I wanted.

I sat in the dark Audi, leaned my head against the back of the seat, and exhaled. Feel lucky, I thought. You just spent seven hours with that woman and neither of you shed any blood. But when I closed my eyes they burned. I tried to replay our afternoon ten different ways, going through all the placating things or the really nasty things I could've said. It made me feel even more dissatisfied and infuriated than I had been before.

I should've gone out to the Indian Paintbrush. I had plenty of new questions for Mr.

Sheckly, some reports to give Milo, a lady to see who would be singing "Billy's Senorita" right about now, looking out at the audience with some very fine brown eyes.

Instead I got out of the car, my legs shaky from the long car ride, and wobbled toward my inlaw apartment with the feeling that somewhere under the waterline, somewhere toward the prow, I had just been torpedoed.

I tried to treat Sunday morning like the start of any other day. I did my tai chi, had breakfast with Robert Johnson, made a fiftythousanddollar deposit under my landlord's antique rosebush.

Then I drove to Vandiver Street before anyone would be awake at my mother's house, left the Audi out front and the key in the mailbox, and reclaimed the VW.

I headed south toward the State Insurance Building.

If the tower had been downtown it would've been invisible, but where it was-stuck in the middle of the flatlands south of SAC, surrounded by parks and one story office complexes, it looked huge. The parking lot only had a handful of cars, one of them being Samuel Barrera's mustard BMW.

I punched the elevator button for level six and was deposited in front of a frosted glass door that still bore faint discoloured outlines from the stencil letters that used to read: SAMUEL BARRERA, INVESTIGATIONS. Now there was a classy brass plaque above a classy ivory and gold buzzer. The plaque read LTECH.

I didn't opt for the buzzer. I walked into the waiting room and went up to the little sliding window like they have in dentists' offices. The window was open.

The receptionist was so short that she had to crane her neck to see me over the top of the counter. Her hair was mostly calcified hair spray that curled away from her face in capital letter U's.

"Help you?" she inquired.

I smiled. I straightened my tie. "Tres Navarre. I'm here to see Sam."

She frowned. People weren't supposed to come in on Sunday morning asking for Barrera, especially by first name. "Won't you sit down?"

"I will."

The slidingglass panel shut in my face.

I sat on the sofa and read the latest company bulletin from ITech headquarters in New York. There was some propaganda about how well the company was doing snapping up private firms in various states and selling them back to their owners like McDonald's franchises. One ad aimed at outside readers told me exactly what it took to be "ITech material."

I was just assessing my ITech potential when the inner office door opened and Sam Barrera came out. He walked up to me and said, "What the fuck do you want, Navarre?"

I put down the news bulletin.

Barrera was wearing the standard threepiece suit, brown this time. His tie was a shade of yellow that miraculously matched. His gold rings were newly polished and his cologne was strong.

"We need to talk," I said.

"No we don't."

"I went out to Medina Lake, Sam."

The sunglassmetal quality in Barrera's eyes got a little harder. "You will be talked to, Navarre. But it won't be by me. You'd better tell Erainya-"

"There was more than a cabin out there, Sam. You missed something."

Just for a second, Sam Barrera wasn't sure what to say. It had probably been years since anyone dared to suggest he had missed something. It had probably never come from an amateur half his age.

"Parks and Wildlife," I said.

Barrera processed quickly. His face went through a chameleon phase-red to brown to coffee colour. "Saint Pierre had a boat? He registered a freshwater boat?"

"Would you like to know what I found, or would you like to threaten me some more?"

He was quiet long enough for the cement in his expression to resettle. "You want to come in back?"

He turned on his heel without waiting for my answer. I followed.

Sam's office was a shrine to Texas A amp; M. The carpet was plush maroon and the drapes were the same. On the mahogany bookshelf, pothos plants were carefully interspersed with Aggie diplomas and photos of Sam and his sons in their Corps uniforms.

On Sam's desk were photos of Barrera with his friends-law enforcement types, the mayor, businessmen. In one photo Barrera stood next to my father. The Sheriff's '76 campaign, I think. Dad was smiling. Barrera, of course, was not.

Sam sat down behind his desk. I sat across from him in a large maroon chair that was strategically designed to be too cushy and lowset. I had the feeling of being much shorter than my host, trapped in an interrogation cup.

"Tell me." Sam leaned forward and stared and waited.

"Bootlegs," I said. "Sheckly's been recording his head liner acts, creating master tapes in his studio, then shipping the tapes to Europe for production and distribution.

More recently he's gotten greedier, started to import the CDs back into the U.S. That's why you and your federal friends have been stepping up the heat."

Sam brushed my comments aside. "What was in the boat?"

"First I want confirmation."

Sam curled his fingers. The wrath of God built up behind his eyes-a collected, intense darkness meant to warn me that I was about to be smitten from the earth. He looked around his desk, maybe for something to kill me with, and focused instead on the picture of himself and the Sheriff. Some annoyance crept into his expression.

"I suppose you will continue to screw things up unless I level with you, Navarre. Or unless I get someone to throw you in jail."

"Most likely."

"Goddamn your father."

"Amen."

Sam readjusted his belly above his belt line. He turned his chair sideways and stared out the window.

"The scenario you described is commonplace. Frequently someone at a venue records the shows. Frequently the recordings turn up as bootlegs."

He waited to see if I was satisfied, if I would give in now. I just smiled.

Sam's jaw tightened. "What is uncommon with the Indian Paintbrush situation is the scale. Mr. Sheckly is presently recording something like fifty name artists a year. The master tapes are sent through Germany to CD plants, mostly in Romania and the Czech Republic, then distributed to something like fifteen countries. More recently, as you said, his partners in Europe have been encouraging Mr. Sheckly to target the U.S. market, moving him from boots to pirates."

"What's the difference?"

" Boots are auxiliary recordings, Navarre-studio practice sessions, live recordings, cuts you couldn't get in the store normally. Sheckly's radio shows, for instance. Pirates are different-they're exact copies of legitimate releases. Boots can make money, but pirate copies undercut the regular market, take the place of legitimate work. They have massive potential. You make them well, you can even pass them off to major suppliers-department stores, mall chains, you name it."

"And Sheckly's are good?"

Barrera opened his desk drawer and got out a CD. He took the disc from the case and pointed with his pinkie at the silver numbers etched around the hole. "This is one of Sheckly's pirate copies. The lot numbers on the SIDs are almost correct. Even if the Customs officials knew what they were looking for, which they rarely do, they might pass this. The covers, once they're added, are fourcolor printing, quality paper stock.

Even on the boots Sheck's taken precautions. The liner notes are stamped

'manufactured in the E.U.' This is meant to make one think it's a legit import, explain the difference in packaging."

"How profitable?"

Barrera tapped a finger on the desk. "Let me put it this way. It's rare that you have one syndicate controlling the manufacture and distribution of so many recordings in so many countries. The only similar case I know of, the IFPI confiscated the receipts of an Italian operation. For one quarter, one artist's work, the pirates pulled in five million dollars. It'd be less for country music, but still- Multiply the number of artists, four quarters a year, you get the idea."

"Business worth killing for," I said. "What's the IFPI?"

"International Federation of Phonographic Industries. European version of the RIAA in the States."

"Your client."

Barrera hesitated. "I never said that. You understand?"

"Perfectly. Tell me about Sheckly's German friends."

"Luxembourg."

"Pardon?"

"The syndicate is based in Luxembourg. Just so happens Sheckly made his connections in Bonn, does most of his business in Germany."

I shook my head. "Help me out, Barrera. Luxembourg is the little country?"

"The little country known for laundering mob money, yes. The little country known for maintaining loopholes in the E.U.'s copyright laws. The pirates love Luxembourg."

I sat for a while and tried to process it. I was determined not to feel out of my league, not to show Barrera I was going to run from the room screaming if he gave me one more acronym.

"Sheckly got himself into a dangerous association," I said.

Barrera came the closest I'd ever seen to a laugh. It was a small noise in the back of his nose, easily mistaken for a sniff. Nothing else in his face moved.

"Don't start shedding tears, Navarre. Mr. Sheckly's pulling down a few million extra a year."

" But Blanceagle's murder, and Julie Kearnes'-"

"Sheckly may not have ordered them but I doubt he had much of a conscience attack.

It's true, Navarre, bootlegging is usually whitecollar stuff, not very violent. But we're talking a large syndicate, into gunrunning and credit cards numbers and several other things."

"And Jean?"

"Jean Kraus. He's beaten murder raps in three countries. One victim was a young French boy, about thirteen, son of Jean's girlfriend. He decided to lift some of Jean's petty cash. They found the kid in an alley in Rouen, thrown out a fifthstory hotel window."

"Jesus."

Barrera nodded. "Kraus is smart. Probably too smart to get caught. He's over here encouraging Sheck's CD distribution network in the U.S. It's only a matter of time before Jean and his bosses start using Sheckly's trucking lines for their other interests-guns, especially. That's finally what got the D.A. and the Bureau and ATF interested. It takes a lot of firestoking to get them excited about stolen music."

"Your big league friends."

"We've got a case for mail fraud in four states, interstate commerce violations-orders placed and filled with some of Sheckly's distributors. Even that has taken years to assemble, to get a judge interested enough to grant access to Sheckly's bank statements and phone records. Throw in the fact that Avalon County law enforcement is in Sheckly's pocket-it's been tough going. Ninety percent of a case like this has to be informants inside."

"Les SaintPierre. He made himself your solution."

"What?"

"Something his wife said. He was your in."

"To Julie Kearnes, yes. And Alex Blanceagle. And all three of them disappeared as soon as they started talking. We may lose the interest of the State Attorney's Office if we don't get more soon, something solid. Now it's your turn. What was in the boat?"

I took out the addresses I'd found in the ice chest- locations with dates next to them.

I handed them to Barrera.

Barrera frowned at the paper. When he was done reading he looked out the window again and his shoulders drooped. "All right."

"They're distribution points, aren't they? Dates when shipments of CDs will arrive."

Barrera nodded without much enthusiasm.

"You've got locations," I prompted. "You know what Sheckly is doing. You can stage a raid."

Barrera said, "We have nothing, Navarre. We have no grounds for requesting a search warrant-no evidence linking anyone to anything, just some random addresses and dates. Maybe eventually, that information will lead us somewhere. Not immediately. I was hoping for more."

"You've been building the case for what-six years?" I asked.

Barrera nodded.

"Chances are Sheckly knows," I said, "or he's going to know soon that this information is compromised. You don't move on it now, they'll move the goods, change their routes. You'll lose them."

"I'll go another six years rather than get the case thrown out of court because we acted stupid. Thanks for the information."

We sat quietly, listening to the A amp; M Fighting Aggie clock tick on Barrera's back wall.

"One more thing," I said. "I think Les fled to the Danielses. Or at least he considered it."

I told Barrera about the phone call from the lake cabin.

"He would be stupid to go there," Sam said.

"Maybe. But if I got the idea Les might've enlisted their help, Sheckly's friends could get the same idea. I don't like that possibility."

"I'll have someone go out and talk to the family."

"I'm not sure that will help the Danielses much."

"There's nothing else I can do, Navarre. Even under the best of circumstances, it will be several more months before we can coordinate any kind of action against Mr.

Sheckly."

"And if more people die between now and then?"

Barrera tapped on the desk again. "The chances of the Daniels family getting targeted are very slim. Sheckly has bigger problems, bigger people to worry about."

"Bigger people," I repeated. "Like thirteenyearold boys who steal Jean Kraus' petty cash."

Barrera exhaled. His chair creaked as he stood up. "I'm going to say what I said before, Navarre. You're into something over your head and you need to get out. You don't have to take my word for it. I've levelled with you. Is this something an unlicensed kid with a couple of years on the street can handle?"

I looked again at the photo of Barrera and my father. My father, as in all his photos, seemed to grin out at me as if there was a huge private joke he wasn't sharing, almost certainly something that was humorous at my expense.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay you're off the case?"

"Okay you've given me a lot to think about."

Barrera shook his head. "That's not good enough."

"You want me to lie to you, Sam? You want to go ahead and arrest me? Avalon County would approve of that approach."

Barrera sniffed, moved over to his window, and looked out over the city of San Antonio. It was deadly still on a Sunday morning-a rumpled gray and green blanket dotted with white boxes, laced with highways, the rolling ranch land beyond a dark bluegreen out to the horizon.

"You're too much like your father," Barrera said.

I was about to respond, but something in the way Barrera was standing warned me not to. He was contemplating the correct thing to do. He would have to turn around soon and deal with me, decide which agency he needed to turn me over to for dissection. He would have to do that as long as I was a problem, sitting in his office, telling him what was unacceptable to hear.

I removed the problem. I stood up and left him standing by the window. I closed the office door very quietly on my way out.