Mission road - By Rick Riordan Page 0,16
six dollars and thirty-two cents between us, and very little hope of living through the weekend.
I’d managed to grab my cell phone before leaving the house, but we decided to use a pay phone on the corner of South Saint Mary’s instead. I doubted SAPD could triangulate a mobile call. According to Ana they couldn’t even figure out their own e-mail system. But there was no point taking chances.
I called Maia’s number. She was already in town. If possible, she sounded even angrier than she had the night before, when I called to let her know I was a fugitive from justice.
As she told me about her conversation with Detective Kelsey and the note she’d found on Ana’s bulletin board, a pickup full of immigrant laborers cruised past on Houston Street. The driver slowed to see if we wanted work. Ralph shook his head. The truck drove on.
“Tres?” Maia prompted.
“I heard you.”
“You’re protecting a murderer. Turn him in.”
I pinched the collar of my Goodwill ski jacket, tried to pretend the smell of mildew wasn’t coming from me. “The lead on the ME . . . ‘timing.’ What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” she said wearily. “It doesn’t matter. DNA is one of the few things you can’t argue with. That’s all they’ll need to convict.”
Something in her voice worried me. Aside from the anxiety and the anger, she sounded . . . sick. The way she sounded whenever she was forced to face her phobia about boats and deep water.
“Are you okay?”
“Of course I’m not,” she said. “You’re running from the law.”
“Look, Maia . . . Ana didn’t believe the DNA results. You could retrace her steps, find out where she was going with the investigation.”
“Where she was . . . Tres, I just told you—”
“Ralph would never shoot his wife. Which means somebody else did.”
“He’s standing right there, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“You want me to call the police for you?”
“No.”
“Tres—”
“I’ll call you tonight. Take care of yourself. I love you.”
I hung up and tried not to look at Ralph.
“She wants you to sell me out,” he said. “I don’t blame her.”
“They have DNA on you for Frankie’s murder.”
“I know.”
“What do you mean, you know?”
“Ana told me. She’s my wife, vato.”
“She was about to name you prime suspect.”
“Chíngate. Ana didn’t believe I killed Frankie. I gave her a DNA sample myself ’cause I knew it wouldn’t match up. Somebody in the department framed me.”
“Conspiracy theory. Great defense.”
Rage sparked in his eyes. “Ana trusted me, vato. You got to do the same.”
A few blocks over, a cop siren sounded. Probably it had nothing to do with us, but it got my blood pumping.
“Come on,” I said.
Ralph didn’t move. “You think I’m crazy enough to kill Guy White’s son?”
“Maia talked to Kelsey. He said Frankie gave you the money for the pawnshops. You never told me that.”
“Mr. White knew we were doing business. It was his idea. We had a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
Ralph shifted his weight to his back foot, like he was getting ready for a punch. “All I’m saying—if Mr. White thought I’d killed his son, I wouldn’t still be breathing.”
The siren got louder, maybe a block away now.
Ralph wasn’t telling me something, but I didn’t have time to figure out what.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him across the street. “Forty-eight hours, Ralph. Then Kelsey makes the DNA test public. After that, I wouldn’t count on Mr. White’s good graces.”
We took the steps down to the Riverwalk, ducked under the Commerce Street Bridge. A siren echoed off the sides of the buildings. Tires slashed across the asphalt above.
As the noise faded, Ralph sat on the edge of the cistern that fed into the river.
I’d always found it odd that these little fountains had been installed under the bridges—in the darkest grimy places where tourists were least likely to stop.
“The whole SAPD hates my guts,” Ralph said. “You know that, vato. Ever since I married Ana, any one of them would love to frame me.”
I wanted to tell Ralph he was wrong. No cop would do that.
The trouble was I knew how the cops felt about him. I’d seen it in their eyes last night.
Ralph cupped his hand under the stone lion’s mouth. “Let’s say a cop killed Frankie.”
“Ralph—”
“Just listen, vato. Last night, Ana knew. She knew who did it, but she didn’t want to tell me. She’d already warned me about the DNA match. She was risking her job just doing that. Why would she not tell me who the