Mission road - By Rick Riordan Page 0,65
is life, vatos,” he said with a grin. “You want to understand somebody, look at what he’s willing to give up.”
Sometimes he would even save his customers’ lives. Front them a little cash, keep the loan sharks away. Even if it was only for a few days, Ralph could do some good while he made a profit. What could be better than that?
I’m pretty sure Frankie heard very little of what Ralph said, but the tone of Ralph’s voice seemed to calm him down. We sat drinking in our rusty Skycar, Ralph and I contemplating the future, Frankie contemplating murder, until the cable lurched and the Skyride started moving again, carrying us down through a hundred feet of darkness toward the end of the ride.
• • •
THE CLOCK ON FRANKIE’S BED STAND blinked midnight.
From the wall behind my head, I heard tapping. I wasn’t sure at first, but then recognized the beat. “La Bamba.”
Ralph.
I got out of bed. The knocking was coming from behind a Guatemalan tapestry. I draped it over the bedpost to get it out of my way, then ran my hand over the wall. Plaster and sheetrock. I tapped until I found a spot without a stud.
I went back to Frankie’s closet and got his baseball bat.
What the hell.
I gave the wall a good battering-ram strike, dented it pretty nicely.
The guard didn’t open the door. Maybe he was used to prisoners throwing tantrums. Maybe he was just scared I’d ask him for water again.
The second hit, the aluminum head of the bat went into the wall and ripped through insulation.
The third whack, I felt something give on the other side.
I put my face down at the hole.
From the other side, Ralph’s voice said, “Al Capone’s vault. May I help you?”
I couldn’t see him very well—just a shadow against more shadows. Still, it was reassuring to hear his voice.
“Maia get away all right?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”
“So what do you think?”
“Besides the fact that we’re totally screwed?”
“We still got tomorrow,” I said. “Let White get some sleep. I bet the old bastard will be chipper at breakfast.”
Silence. The hole smelled of chalk and dust and mildew.
“I’m sorry, vato,” Ralph said. “What I said earlier, about you being afraid of me and Ana . . . that was out of line.”
“Forget it,” I told him. I didn’t add that he’d probably been right. The comments he’d made were still stinging a little too much.
I knelt next to the hole, waiting for Ralph to speak again.
Then I heard voices outside my bedroom door—the guard and someone else.
I slid the baseball bat under the bed and threw the wall hanging back over the hole. I swung around just as Madeleine White came in the room.
She’d been drinking. I could tell that because I’m a trained detective. Plus she had a half-empty bottle of champagne in her hand, her red dress was slipping off one shoulder and her eyes were half closed.
“You fucking idiot,” she told me.
“Sure, come right in.”
Behind her, my personal doorman protested, “Miss White—”
“Get lost, Virgil.”
“But—”
She wheeled at him. “Get—the fuck—lost.”
Virgil did the smart thing. He got lost.
Madeleine slammed the door. She stared in my direction as if I was in several different places at once. “What is your friend’s problem, letting that fucker Roe escape?”
“Three fucks since you walked in,” I said. “Even by my standards, that’s impressive.”
She scowled. “What?”
“If you want to know something about Ralph,” I said, “you’re in the wrong room.”
“Don’t wanna talk to him.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause I got the call for you, didn’t I?”
She set her champagne bottle on the nightstand, fished around in her purse, brought out my cell phone.
I tried to take it.
She pulled it away. “You and Arguello—what are you really after?”
“What was the call, Madeleine?”
“First explain why he let Titus go. Then I’ll decide whether to tell you or my father.”
“Ralph didn’t want to shoot an innocent man.”
“Innocent? Bullshit.”
“You saw Roe. You really think he killed your brother?”
She sat down hard on the bed.
The straps of her evening dress fell around her arms. Her newly curled hair was coming undone.
She reminded me of one of those elaborate trick knots—the kind that look seaworthy but come apart when a single end is pulled.
“I don’t care whether Roe did it or not,” she said. “I just don’t want my father pissed.”
There was fear in her voice—the terror of somebody facing down an old phobia, staring into the dark closet that scared her as a child.
“If you mean he’ll take it out on