that or you're too stupid to ask questions another way."
Ralph and Ana started cursing at each other in Spanish - the usual names, the usual insults. I considered opening the car door and rolling onto the pavement. I figured my chances of living might be better.
Instead I yelled, "Knock. It. Off!"
The insults died down. Ana held up her hands, then dropped them, like she was throwing her disgust on the floor.
Ralph retrieved his joint, lit up, blew the smoke thoughtfully at the windshield. "De volada."
"Bullshit," DeLeon spat.
"That's how you got to live, Ana. I'm telling you - from the will. You think about things, plan them out too much, do them for reasons like impressing people - shit, you last maybe three days on the streets. You been out too long. You've forgotten."
"The hell I've been out. I've been right there, you shit-head. I've seen your de volada. I see it about six times a week, every time one of the homeboys gets shot to death."
Ralph waved the comment aside. "They froze up - the ones who stay loose, live."
"More bullshit."
"You see me breathing here, chica?"
"Yeah. And for how much longer?"
"Sour grapes, Ana. You still mad at me for the wrong reasons."
She started to respond. I took her hand and clamped it, hard.
Ana fumed, called Ralph some more Spanish names under her breath. We drove for a few blocks.
"Were you prepared to kill Chich back there?" she asked, more subdued now. Ralph blew a line of smoke.
"You don't get it. I didn't think that way. It wasn't like - okay I'll do uno, dos, tres. I feel what I got to do first and I do it. Then I see what happens next."
"You're saying you can't control yourself."
Ralph laughed, glanced back at me. "Vato, I shouldn't have tried, should I? No point explaining."
I didn't answer. Ana's hand in mine was as tense as a coiled snake.
"Where to next?" I asked Ralph, hoping to steer us somewhere else, someplace that might not lead to a gun-fight in the car.
"I got a few more ideas," Ralph said.
"More ideas like Chich?" Ana put as much disdain into the words as they could hold.
"What?" Ralph growled. "You afraid of finding out more about me, chica?"
"Not anymore."
"If I'd told you at the start - " Ralph began.
"You would've saved me a lot of time." Ana sank back in her seat and turned her hand so that it was gripping mine. Her fingernails dug into my knuckles.
Ralph's face stayed a block of sandstone for a good five minutes - which is, I think, the longest I'd ever seen him go without emotion.
Then he spoke in a voice that was cut from the same hard material.
"Twenty-eight and a half days," he told the windshield. "That ain't a lot of time. It ain't even enough."
Chapter 37-38
Chapter 37
There's just no stopping the momentum of a perfect day.
None of Ralph's other leads worked out. There was no word on the street about who had shot George and Hector Mara. No white vans. Nobody willing to confess. Nobody demanded that Ana kiss me to prove she was truly my girlfriend.
After riding in complete silence back to the North Star Mall Boots and mumbling good-byes to Ralph, Ana DeLeon and I drove back to my place in her car.
It was dusk, and the facade of 90 Queen Anne was losing definition. You could almost imagine the house in its heyday, back in the 1940s, when the wooden trim had been unbroken, the paint new, the bougainvillea clipped around the eaves. It had probably been one of the finer places in Mancke Park - the home of a banker, perhaps, or a prosperous merchant. The only thing that spoiled the illusion was the backward slant of the building, the way it had succumbed over the decades to gravity and bad foundation work. There were many days, like today, when I could relate.
On the curb was a black Honda Accord I didn't recognize, but I didn't think much of it. The Suitez family across the street was throwing a party, as they often did, and there were plenty of cars I didn't recognize. It wasn't until Ana looked at the Accord, cursed, then looked at my front porch and cursed some more, that I noticed Detective Kelsey.
He was sitting alone on the main porch of 90 Queen Anne, sipping a glass of iced tea that had probably been provided