In Big Trouble

Chapter 29

"Pilar Rodriguez was my family's cook," Clay said stupidly. Tess noticed he was still holding his book, a finger at his place, as if he might have time to finish a chapter or two before Steve killed all of them.

"Pilar Rodriguez was my grandmother." Steve used the rifle's long barrel to prod Clay into the corner where Tess crouched, her hand still bearing down hard on Crow's wound. The door was less than fifteen feet away on a diagonal, Tess judged. If she or Clay ran, they might make it before Steve got off a shot. But she couldn't leave Crow, and Clay seemed to be in a trance.

As did Emmie, who couldn't stop staring at her cousin. She chewed a knuckle, eyes wide, her back pressed so hard against the wall that she might have been nailed to it. It had probably been a year since she was this near to him, since he had been close enough for her to touch, to gaze into the shadowed eyes so like hers.

In a room full of people, Tess was clearly on her own.

"You did fool me," she told Steve. "I thought you were an overeager rookie, trying to win points with the boss. But you were miles ahead of Guzman."

He nodded curtly, too distracted by the events swirling around him to pay much heed to her fake praise, much less be taken in by it. Sweat beaded on his brow, and his round face had a flushed, feverish quality. He had looked like that when they were running together. Yet this day was cool, and the little room, away from direct sunlight, was cooler still.

"Pilar Rodriguez," Tess said, musing aloud. "No, I never gave much thought to her. ‘The cook.' That's what Guzman, everyone, always called her. The cook."

"As if she were nothing," Steve said. "As if she weren't a person, too."

He was still looking out the window. He would have a very precise plan, Tess knew. He had probably written it down, gone over every possible scenario, then committed it all to memory. Tess suddenly realized he was the one who had put the gun beneath Crow's bed, left his T-shirt at Espejo Verde, hoping to be rid of him before today. He was that careful. He was so careful that any disruption, any unexpected contingency, would throw him off his stride. How flustered he had been in the park that day, when she had seen through him. Well, almost seen through him. Crow's appearance today would have kicked up the first stone in his path. Now here were Tess and Clay. Everything was falling apart.

"I don't remember her," Clay murmured. "I know her name, of course, but I don't remember her."

"I do," Emmie said. "She smelled like vanilla. She was the one who called me Dutch."

"She wasn't yours to remember," Steve said. "She was your employee. She cooked your meals, she took care of you, so she would have money for her own children and grandchildren. Money, but no time, because she worked six days a week, living in your house. She made the food that made Espejo Verde famous. So then she had two jobs. Before too long, she had a third job as well-babysitting, while Lollie Sterne fucked her best friend's husband in the little bedroom off the kitchen."

Steve leaned out the window, checking on the parade below. Even if anyone noticed him, it wouldn't matter. Why shouldn't a cop in a bullet-proof vest be watching the parade from such a vantage point? Why shouldn't he have a powerful rifle with a scope?

"I know that. We all know that," Tess said, although she wasn't sure what Clay knew, but he didn't seem surprised by anything he had heard so far. "Why so much talk? Go ahead, kill us. If my time is up, I don't want boredom to be the last thing I experience."

"You just wait," Steve muttered, still looking out the window. "You won't be bored much longer."

She looked down at Crow, now barely conscious. She thought she saw him try to jerk his chin toward Emmie, but that must be wishful thinking on her part. Was he trying to tell her something? Maybe she should be focusing on Emmie, instead of trying to fence with Steve. After all, one never knew what she might do.

"Why not jump right now, Emmie?" she asked with elaborate carelessness. "Clay's here. That's what really matters, isn't it? Him watching you die. Everything else-killing Darden and Weeks, killing Gus-is gravy. Go ahead and jump. Because it's not really about avenging the death of your mother, is it? It's about you. It was always all about you."

"Not just me-"

"Clay, too, of course. But not Lollie, or her death. You never really knew your mother. But you knew Clay. You loved him. And he chose his father over you."

Emmie scratched furiously at her legs, but gloved fingers couldn't draw fresh blood through her pink tights. Clay looked at Tess with undisguised revulsion. She didn't care. She watched Steve's eyes dart nervously around the room. His plan was unraveling, slipping through his hands like so much string.

"Shut up," he said. "Just shut up."

"You do understand, Emmie, he's going to kill Clay," Tess continued in the most conversational tone she could muster. "He has to. In fact, I think he always intended to kill Clay. Oh, sure, he told he would kill Gus, then let you jump in the confusion. With your body broken, and such an easy solution at hand-Gus Sterne's homicidal cousin finally does him in after years of trying-they won't look too closely at the physical evidence. I bet Steve even had you write a letter, confessing to everything, telling Guzman how you figured out that Gus Sterne was the man who hired Darden and Weeks to kill Frank Conyers."

"There is a letter," Emmie muttered, almost to herself. "But to Clay-I wrote you a letter, Clay. So you'd know, so you'd understand. I'd do anything for you, anything."

"Clay's not going to be reading any letters," Tess said.

"Stop talking," Steve ordered, waving the rifle at both of them. "I can't hear myself think, with all this chatter."

Tess looked at Steve. "How many fingers did you have to cut from Weeks' hand before he confessed, before he gave you the name that Emmie already knew? All ten or was that simply for show? Did you have to stuff Crow's T-shirt in his mouth to keep his screams from being heard, or did you and Emmie bring that back later, when your first attempt to frame Crow failed? Not that I blame you for your methods. After you killed Tom Darden, Weeks was your only chance to find out for sure if Gus Sterne had arranged the murders."

"I'll kill him," Steve said, pointing his rifle at Crow. "I'll put his brains in your lap if you don't stop talking."

"No, no, no, no, no," Emmie sang to herself, covering her ears. "No, no, no, no, no."

Tess took a deep breath, exhaling the way one does on a difficult weight exercise. "Go ahead," she said. "Show Emmie who you really are. Kill Crow. Kill me. My only regret is I'm not going to live long enough to watch you try to convince Emmie that Clay has to die, too, and by her hand. But he always was the target, wasn't he? That's why you dragged him in here when you saw him waiting outside. You don't want to kill Gus Sterne. You want him to live, the way you've lived. You want him to grieve."

"Steve?" Emmie asked.

"Don't listen to her. She's trying to turn you against me. I'm the only one who ever understood you, Emmie. The only person who doesn't think it's crazy to die for love."

"You're killing for it, not dying," Tess said. "There's a difference. If you want to die for love, I won't stop you."

But Steve was calming down now, taking time to analyze his options.

"Bring me the knife, Emmie. And her knapsack. She has a gun in there."

Another small mystery solved. "You were the man Mrs. Nguyen let into my room that day," Tess said. "Emmie gave you the photograph from Crow's things."

"One of the first rules of war is reconnaissance," he said, stumbling a little over the last word. "The knapsack, Emmie. Take it off her back and bring it over here. No-don't lift your arms. Let Emmie slide it off, one strap at a time. Keep your hands where I can see them."

Trancelike, Emmie did as she was told, dragging the knapsack behind her on the floor, holding the knife awkwardly in her right hand. But instead of returning to Steve's side, she suddenly threw herself, weeping, into Clay's arms. "It's all your fault. None of this would have happened if you hadn't stopped loving me. Why can't you just love me again?"

He put one arm around her and rocked her. "I do love you, Emmie. I'll probably never love anyone else the way I loved you."

Her sobs were wild, convulsive spasms, shaking her whole body. "He's my father, isn't he? He loved Lollie, and she ran away from him when she got pregnant, then made up the story about Horace Morgan. That's why he won't let us be together."

Clay stroked her hair. "I wish it were that simple. No, your father really was some stupid El Paso boy who killed himself for love of your mother. But you're right-when they were our age, Gus loved Lollie, and she loved him. Then she stopped, but he couldn't help believing she would start again, even as they married other people, and went on with their lives. He always thought she would come back to him. Then one day, Lollie told him she had fallen in love with Frank Conyers, and he was going to leave Marianna for her. They were going to move up to Austin, open their own restaurant there. Gus thought if something happened to Frank…" Clay looked at Steve over Emmie's head. "He never meant for Lollie to die, much less Pilar. They weren't suppose to be there."

"But she did die, didn't she," Steve said. "That's all that matters."

"He made me choose, Emmie," Clay said, cupping her face with his right hand, his left still clasping his book. "When he found out we were seeing each other again, he told me everything he had done, and he made me choose. You or him. If I kept seeing you, he was going to turn himself in, confess to everything he had done. I couldn't let him do that. It's a death penalty crime."

"He was jealous," Emmie wailed. "He didn't want us to be happy because he could never be happy."

"No, he believed we would end up as he and Lollie had, with one of us killing the other. He said it was our legacy, and we could never outrun it. You loved the way he loved, and he knew how that story ended. He saw himself in you. He wasn't far from wrong, was he?"

Tess remembered the look on Gus Sterne's face, the way he stared at Emmie as if he had seen a ghost.

"We could be together," Emmie insisted to Clay. "It's not too late."

An accomplice in two murders, and she still thought her future was as wide open as the window through which she had planned to jump up until five minutes ago.

"Don't let him go through with this, Emmie," Clay pleaded. "I'll make Dad tell the truth, face the consequences for what he's done."

"He won't," Steve scoffed. "He told you the truth to bind him to you, to make you do what he wanted. He'll never admit his crimes to anyone who counts."

"He will do the right thing," Clay said. He was trying hard not to cry, but a few tears slipped down his cheeks. "I'll make him. But don't kill my father. He's all I have."

A huge cheer went up from the street below, and Steve glanced out the window. In the split-second his head was turned, Tess saw Emmie slide the knife along Clay's spine, into the waistband of his khakis.

"Here comes Gus. You're up, Emmie," Steve said. "You can jump, or I'll kill you-but not before I kill your cousin. I've got no problem with letting Al Guzman wrangle over a mysterious quadruple murder for the next twenty years."

"Please," Clay said. Emmie broke their embrace and backed away from him. "We'll go to the police. My dad will confess. At the very least, he'll have to tell the grand jury."

"What grand jury?" Steve asked.

"The one that's convened whenever a cop is killed."

Clay hurled his book at Steve's face, and the young cop reflexively put up a hand to deflect it. "What the-" Steve didn't drop the rifle, but with one hand swatting at a book, there was no way he could get a shot off. He was thrown off-balance for no more than a second or two, but that proved to be all the time Clay needed. With a speed that surprised everyone, perhaps himself most of all, Clay pulled the knife from his waistband and ran forward, jamming it through the bullet-proof vest and into Steve's chest with one sure thrust.

Steve Villanueve died surprised.

Surprised that all his reconnaissance had not paid off. Surprised that bullet-proof vests only stop bullets. Surprised that all his careful planning had come to naught. He slumped to the floor, only a few seconds of life left in him, and nothing left to say.

"Clay, get the cell phone from my knapsack and dial 911," Tess called to him, for he was staring stupidly at the dead man at his feet, and she still had her hand pressed to Crow's midsection. "I just hope they know how to get an ambulance to us with most of Broadway blocked off."

Clay took the knapsack from Emmie, dug out the cell phone, and punched in the number. As he turned his back on the window, covering one ear so he could hear over the parade noise, Emmie began moving like a sleepwalker, her blue eyes empty. She stepped around Steve's body as if it weren't there, then clambered to the ledge behind him.

Later, Tess would wonder if she did the right thing. Wasn't Emmie Sterne entitled to her death wish? She was broken, and all the king's horses and men and money couldn't put Emmie together again. Did Emmie even have a life left to save, given that her fate was now a narrow destiny limited to a prison or a psychiatric hospital? But these questions came later, when there was time to think. In the moment, without the luxury of contemplation, she hurled herself across the room and caught Emmie by the knees just before she launched herself into the sky.

If Emmie had weighed a little more, she might have dragged Tess out the window with her. As it was, she kicked and twisted and screamed, begging to die, clawing at Tess's face. Clay dropped the phone, ran forward, and grabbed Tess, and the three fell backward together in a pile, even as a silver Lincoln glided into the intersection below.

They could hear the crowd cheering the benefactor who had brought them this beautiful day, this wonderful parade, all this good food and good music. Of course Gus Sterne waved back, they knew that without looking down. What they couldn't know was if he ever noticed those few spectators who had screamed and pointed upward as Emmie and Tess dangled above him. On Channel 5's early broadcast that night, Mrs. Nguyen would later tell Tess, it was reported that two drunken women had been seen cavorting in a dangerous fashion on a window ledge in the old Sun building. No one was believed to be hurt. It had to be true. Chris Marrou said.