Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan by Rick Riordan Page B

almost
managed to hide his belly and a gold chain around his neck so thick
you could lock up a bicycle with it.
    He held out a meaty hand. I shook it.
    Then he sat back, still grinning. His black eyes swam
around beneath several inches of prescription glass. Maybe he was
looking at me, maybe at the stack of business papers in front of him.
I couldn’t tell.
    When he spoke it was in Spanish.
    "You remember jersey and those other pendejos came after me for slashing their tires?"
    I was thinking about Lillian, about her empty bedroom
lit up the color of blood. I wanted to scream at Ralph to get to the
point, but that wasn’t the way he worked. He talked in circles and
you just had to hang on for the ride.
    I sat down.
    "Yeah," I said. "They came at us
outside Mr. M’s, didn’t they, right after school."
    "Us?"
    He laughed—a small, sharp sound like a cat’s
sneeze.
    "You could’ve walked," he said. “Never
figured out why this scrawny white boy was stupid enough to back up
my Mexican ass against four redneck linebackers."
    "I knew someday you’d be rich and famous,"
suggested.
    "Damn right. "
    “ And there were only three of them."
    Ralph shrugged. “That’s what I said. Ain’t that
what I said?"
    He shouted at the waitress for two more Big Reds.
Then he leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, his smile
gone. I caught the distinct, heavy smell of bay rum on his clothes.
    "So last night," he said, "I’m
talking to this girl who owes me some . . . back rent, you know?"
    I nodded. Ralph paused while a waitress clunked two
sweating soda bottles in front of us.
    “ And this girl says she’s low on cash but she’s
come across some credit cards maybe I can use. I tell her maybe so.
Then I see the name on the cards and it rings a bell. I think about
you."
    Ralph spread his hands in a “what could I do?"
gesture.
    "She’s a good lady, this friend of mine, but
you know, sometimes she needs encouragement to stay honest. So we
talk for a while about how she really found this stuff, but it seemed
to me like she was telling the truth—out on Zarzamora like I said."
    Ralph put the wallet on the table. It was a
Guatemalan billfold, now stained and muddy, embroidered with blue and
green trouble dolls. It was Lillian’s. Ralph took out several
credit cards, then her license. Lillian’s face stared up at me from
the yellow Formica—a bad picture, washed out and unfocused, but it
still captured her lopsided smile, her amused multicolored eyes.
    "Was there any money?" I asked.
    Ralph shrugged. "Cash evaporates fast with this
lady friend of mine; you know how that is. But yeah, I think there
probably was."
    “ Then the wallet wasn’t stolen. She dropped it,
or somebody dropped it."
    “ Vato , billfolds full of
credit cards and money don’t sit very long in the middle of the
road. Especially my side of town. Couldn’t’ve been dropped too
long before my friend picked it up—a little before midnight on
Sunday, say."
    “ Could you find out anything else?"
    Ralph showed his teeth. "Maybe I could ask
around. Sunday night not too many white girls are strolling around
the West Side, vato .
If it was really her that dropped it, could be somebody saw her."
    The cold from the Big Red bottle was going into my
fingers now, spreading up my arm toward my chest. I was trying to
imagine Lillian on Zarzamora late at night, or other ways her wallet
could have traveled there without her. I thought about the sudden
trip to Laredo that Beau had told me about, the unused car in the
driveway, the half-wrecked house.
    "I can’t pay you anything, Ralphas," I
said.
    He grinned, tapping Lillian’s Visa card against the
Formica. "Maybe I’ll just put it on the lady’s tab if you
find her, eh? Now tell me what’s going on."
    “ I wish I knew."
    But he waited, and twenty minutes and two Big Reds
later I had told him everything that had happened my first week in
town.
    Talking to Ralph was like talking to a priest. He
knew how to listen.