and deserted. Drive up, do her, drive away. But so much open ground made him nervous. She'd see him coming. He hated giving his victims time to think.
If he had a rifle . . . but he hated rifles, too. Rifles were for cowards who sat in deer blinds with six-packs of beer and pretended to be real hunters. A handgun was the only respectable tool for killing a human being.
He raised his good hand, tried to hold it steady. Damn arthritis. God had thrown him some cruel punches in his life, but the arthritis was the ultimate - payback for a guy who'd made his living with a steady hand, pulling the trigger on other people's enemies. Now he could barely aim. He had to keep his hands in an ice cream freezer all day to deaden the pain. He figured it was safer not to mention that small problem to Hernandez.
Damn Hernandez. Fucking cop had had Titus' balls in a vise grip for years.
The irony was, eighteen years ago Titus really had been approached about killing Frankie White. The parents of Julia Garcia, one of Frankie's first victims, had come to see him, desperate for justice. They'd even offered him a grocery bag full of twenty-dollar bills. Titus had looked into their hollow eyes and felt truly sorry. He knew the hope of vengeance was the only thing keeping them alive. If the target had been anyone other than Guy White's son, Titus would've taken the job immediately. As it was, he asked for a few days to think about it.
Before he could give the Garcias an answer, someone else had taken care of Frankie White.
Titus took one last look at Maia Lee, standing in the middle of the dark road.
He put the Volvo into drive, swung a U-turn and headed back toward Presa. Lee would have to come back that way. The other direction, Mission, led nowhere but a dead-end cluster of trailer parks.
Titus pulled in behind the Loco Mart. He pointed the nose of his Volvo toward the street and waited.
Three minutes later, Lee's black BMW drove by.
Titus followed, back toward King William.
Lee crossed the Arsenal Street Bridge and stopped on Titus' favorite block - a row of bungalows hugging the limestone cliffs above the San Antonio River.
Upstream were Victorian mansions, warehouse art galleries, architectural offices. The river was smooth and placid, neatly walled by concrete.
But below the bridge, the water broke into a noisy stream. It spilled over the rocks and rushed, foaming, beneath the tiny run-down houses, as if the water were angry for being constrained so long, made to dress up for tourists.
Titus parked on the bank opposite the houses, in the Pioneer Flour Mill visitors' lot, where the curve of the river gave him a good view of the street. He got out his binoculars.
Lee was climbing the steps of a denim blue cottage with peeling white trim. Whirlybird propellers decorated the dirt yard. Beer cans pocked with BB holes lined the porch railing.
She tried a key in the lock.
Titus liked her hair from behind, the way her ponytail snaked between her shoulder blades. He wondered how the T-shirt seller girl would look in an expensive wool dress like that. He decided she didn't have the right figure for it.
Lee's key didn't seem to be working.
Titus wondered what she was up to.
Then he remembered it didn't matter. He was supposed to be doing a job, and this was his chance. He would drive by with his window rolled down, his Colt ready. He'd call her name, wait for her to turn -
But before he could start his car, Lee stepped away from the door. She shook her head, muttering something as if cursing herself for being stupid. Then she marched down the steps and around the side of the house.
Titus refocused his binoculars. The gravel drive led back to a tiny garage.
"Not in there," Titus murmured to her. "Come on back, honey."
Lee's key slid into the lock on the garage door. She rolled it open and stepped inside.
Crap.
Now Titus would have to get out of his car and walk up the drive.
At least he could shoot her out of sight from the street.
He wrapped the bloody rags a little tighter around his left hand. It hurt like hell, but it wasn't his shooting hand. Even with the arthritis, he could grip the .45 just fine with his right.
He pulled his Volvo out of the Pioneer Mill parking lot and headed across