Southtown Read Online Free PDF Page B

Navarre. Not the fucking—”
    Lalu whacked his fist against Dimebox’s skull, and Dimebox slumped on the couch.
    Lalu grunted apologetically. “Lady wanted no cussing.”
    I said, “Erainya . . . ?”
    She got up and stormed into the cousins’ bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
    I turned to Jem, who was paying a lot of attention to the pattern in the couch fabric. I asked him if he still had his mom’s cell phone.
    I checked the readout, but the call history didn’t help my confusion. I could make a dozen guesses who Erainya might call in an emergency, if she were truly faced with an urgent dilemma.
    All my guesses were wrong.
    The person she’d been so anxious to talk to when she stepped into the storm wasn’t her doctor boyfriend. It wasn’t the police, or any of our regular helpers on the street.
    She’d called I-Tech Security, the direct line to the company president.
    Her archrival.
    A man she’d sworn never to cross paths with again, until one of them was dancing on the other’s grave.

3
    Special Agent Samuel Barrera spent breakfast trying to remember the name of the ax murderer.
    The guy had tortured and killed six illegal immigrants on a ranch up around Castroville, left their body parts scattered in the woods like deer corn. What the hell was his name?
    Sam had a feeling it would be important in the case he was working on. He’d talk to his trainee Pacabel when he got to the office. Pacabel would remember.
    The morning was humid after last night’s downpour, just enough drizzle to keep everybody sour-faced, staring at the gray sky, thinking,
Enough already.
    Not even Alamo Street Market’s coffee and
migas
were enough to compensate.
    Sam pulled on his jacket over his sidearm.
    He left a ten on the table, got annoyed when the waiter called, “
Hasta mañana,
Sam.”
    Like Sam knew the guy. Like they were old friends or something. What the hell was wrong with people these days?
    Down South Alamo, yellow sawhorses blocked the side streets. Asphalt had come apart in huge chunks and washed away. The sidewalk was buried in a shroud of mud.
    Sam picked his way through the debris.
    The last few years, people had started calling this area Southtown. Art studios had opened up in the old
barrio
houses, funky little restaurants and curio shops in the crumbling mercantile buildings. The changes didn’t bother Sam. He liked seeing life come back to his old neighborhood. But it did make him miss the past.
    His family home at the corner of Cedar was falling apart. He’d owned it since his parents died, back in the seventies. He hadn’t lived there for years, but he always parked in front of it. Force of habit. The FOR SALE was up. The real estate agent called him every day with glad tidings. They had their choice of offers. For this old dump. Sam never suspected he’d grown up in a Victorian fixer-up dream. To him, it had just been
la casa
. Back then, nobody lived here but the Mexicans, because this was where they could afford to live.
    He opened the door of his mustard-yellow BMW.
    The car was getting old. Like him. But Sam kept putting off a trade-in, irritated by the thought of unfamiliar controls, a different paint job. Too much to keep track of, when you got a new car.
    He drove north to the field office on East Houston, still thinking about that rancher whose name he couldn’t remember. He’d kept the six illegal immigrants as slaves, killed them slowly, one at a time. It had something to do with Sam’s present case.
    When he got to the FBI suite on the second floor, he walked into the reception area and found some rookie fresh out of Quantico blocking his way to the inner offices. “Sir, can I help you?”
    Sam scowled. There was a time when he would’ve chewed out this asshole for standing in his way, but Sam didn’t feel up to it today. He felt a little off. Preoccupied. “I
work
here, son.”
    Something disconnected in the kid’s eyes. It wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting. “You