Dallas Noir Page 6

  Diego turned to Carole. “Did you notice what I did with my hankotsu?”

  She shot him a strange look. “Your hand what?”

  “Hankotsu—it’s a type of knife. Japanese. For boning.”

  Carole smiled. “Really?”

  Diego shook his head.

  “Seriously, I have no clue.” Carole shifted the greenish-yellow purse from the floorboard to her lap.

  They passed the hospital where María-Consuelo Smith had died months earlier. Diego remembered the days and nights he spent there with her breathing in air that had been scrubbed of every smell that made life worth living. He missed his mom, and he wanted to cry, but he wouldn’t. He had to stay strong for the children she vowed to help.

  The Dallas skyline loomed large. Diego accelerated north on Central Expressway. A combusted diesel smell filled the space between the sunken freeway’s beige concrete walls. It was always a few degrees warmer down here than at street level, thirty feet above. It reminded Diego of Death Valley.

  As they neared Mockingbird, Diego peered up to see his brother’s handsome face smiling down from a billboard on the access road overhead. Alex looked the part of the Ivy League–educated Texan, a successful man in his midthirties surrounded by a patrician wife and three photogenic kids. But Diego knew it was just a picture. There had never been much love in Alex’s marriage. His politically connected wife had worked for a gun-control lobby after she graduated from Smith, but she swallowed her beliefs to support his career. Diego wondered if his brother had the 9mm Beretta strapped to his ankle under the navy-blue suit he wore in the campaign photo.

  Diego glanced at Carole and said, “Is this all about hurting Alex?”

  She was holding her long brown hair behind her head. “I figured I owed it to the Hispanic community to let you know.” She shrugged. “Getting Alex is a nice fringe benefit, though.”

  Diego looked at her again. “Getting Alex?”

  Carole shook her head. “Getting back at Alex.”

  Diego exited Central and headed west on Mockingbird. He missed the yeasty smell of the old bread plant long since torn down. They passed SMU’s Georgian campus, and Diego breathed in fresh-cut grass. Well-kept homes with meticulously landscaped lawns floated past the convertible. They skirted the Dallas Country Club, drove under its golf cart overpass, and pulled into Highland Park Village.

  The exclusive shops and boutiques filling the Moorish-Spanish buildings were abuzz with activity. Smells of good Tex-Mex filled the air as the convertible crept through the parking lot. Carole pointed out a black Audi SUV with temporary plates. “This is me.”

  Last time Diego had seen her on the street, she’d still been driving the red Mini Cooper that Alex had given her as an engagement gift. The mom-mobile seemed out of place, not to mention expensive. He wondered what Carole did for money. As far as Diego knew, she didn’t work. Her only brother had been murdered in prison. Her parents died long ago in a bad part of Garland. Then again, as Diego had learned in the restaurant business, women like her always found a way.

  “Thanks for telling me about the youth center.”

  She turned to him. “Don’t forget your phone.”

  Diego found a space for the Aston Martin and left it parked, top down, while he went inside. The small bar on the restaurant’s third floor wasn’t open yet, but a busboy let him in. He checked under the tables and in the spaces between the seat and the back cushions on the banquette, but he couldn’t find his phone.

  He returned downstairs to find Carole waiting for him. She held up a smart phone and said, “It was ringing under the passenger seat of your car. I didn’t answer.”

  Something about Carole’s smell had changed. The floral scent was now mixed with something deeper, richer, and reminiscent of leather. Diego wondered if her skin or clothing had absorbed the smell of his Aston Martin’s upholstery, but he couldn’t obsess about that now. He took the phone and tried to walk past her.

  She placed her fingertips on his chest and said, “I don’t care if you were only eighteen, and I don’t care if it ruined things with Alex—the night I deflowered you was one of the best nights of my life.”

  “You say, ‘deflowered.’” Diego backed up a step so that her hand fell away. “I say, ‘destroyed my family.’”

  A text message alert chimed. Diego checked his phone, but the sound had come from the chartreuse purse hanging from Carole’s shoulder. She pulled out her phone, looked at the screen, then hurried away without a goodbye.

  Diego spoke to the manager for a moment before leaving the restaurant. Carole’s new SUV was gone. He hoped he’d never see her again. He wondered what he’d say to his father, but he couldn’t waste time thinking about it. Now was a time for action. Diego unlocked his phone and saw that he had forty-seven missed calls, twenty-three voice mail messages, and sixty-two texts. He dialed his father’s home number. It went straight to voice mail.

  * * *

  The Aston Martin made quick work of the traffic on Preston Road before it squealed onto megahouse-lined Armstrong Parkway. Diego raced to a halt in the driveway of the enormous Tudor set far back from the road. He killed the engine and opened the console to retrieve his father’s house key, but it was missing. As a joke gift for Christmas years earlier, Reginald Smith had given his son a National Rifle Association medallion key ring. Diego kept his father’s house key on it. The medallion wasn’t worth stealing, and it was too big to lose. First my boning knife, now this. Diego wondered if drinking had begun to affect his memory. It seemed to be another sign that it was time to find a nice girl and start a family.

  He got out of the convertible and approached the front door. It had been months since he set foot inside the house, not since his mom had died. He didn’t want to be there, but what lay at stake was more important than his comfort level. Diego extended his hand to ring the doorbell, but he noticed that the front door stood slightly ajar. He pushed it open and said, “Dad?”

  A loud sound like a rapid busy signal came from somewhere inside. He followed the noise through the big house into the kitchen. The old-fashioned phone on the far wall was off the hook, the receiver dangling by its short spiral cord. Diego took a step toward it before he noticed the gray-haired man in the pin-stripe suit splayed out on his back on the kitchen island. A black-handled knife stuck out of his chest. It took a moment for Diego to realize it was his father.

  Diego rushed to his side. “Daddy?” The coppery scent of blood mixed with the reek of feces and urine. The smell made him gag. His father’s eyes were closed. Diego couldn’t tell if he was breathing. Blood had turned his white dress shirt red. The knife had been plunged up to the hilt. It had surely penetrated his heart. If his father was still alive, pulling out the knife would kill him. Diego felt for a pulse, but there was none.

  Time slowed then seemed to stop when he noticed the Japanese characters covering the knife’s handle. Diego couldn’t read them, but he could have drawn them from memory. His father had been stabbed with his missing hankotsu.

  As it dawned on him that he’d been framed for his father’s murder, sirens pierced the thick walls of the big house. He hurried to one of the front windows to see two police vehicles screeching to a halt on Armstrong.

  Instinct told him to flee. Diego ran through the kitchen, past his father. I’m sorry, Dad. One of his boots caught something and sent it flying under the breakfast nook table. Diego only caught a glimpse, but it was enough to know that it was the NRA keychain his father had given him. There wasn’t time to grab it.

  He dashed out the back door, past the pool, and through the gate. Diego found himself in the long, narrow park that ran between the backs of the houses on Armstrong and those on Bordeaux. It smelled like excrement. People walked their dogs there. Diego dashed down the length of the green space to where it ended at Douglas. A beat-up landscaping company pickup stood parked along the street. He was relieved to find the keys in the ignition. There was no one around. He jumped in, started it up
, and drove away.

  Not knowing where to go, Diego headed back through Highland Park toward Central Expressway. The smell of sweat and stale cigarettes almost overpowered him. He cranked down the driver’s-side window and fresh air flooded the cab.

  My father’s dead. The realization slammed into Diego like an oncoming semi. Even if they’d spoken only occasionally in the months since the funeral, even if they’d agreed on almost nothing, Diego loved his dad. He felt tears welling up inside, but he held them back. He had to figure out what to do. He had to think.

  Diego didn’t know how Carole had done it. He didn’t understand how she’d had time to slip in the back of the house on Armstrong and kill his father before he arrived. It didn’t make any sense. The man hated her. He would never have let her inside. Besides, he was a lot stronger than her. She’d had an accomplice. But who?

  Diego needed help. There was only one person he could turn to.

  Keeping the pickup just below the speed limit, Diego drove east on Mockingbird. He crossed Central and pulled into a grocery store parking lot near the DART light rail station. Hoping that would throw the cops off his trail long enough to buy him some time, he got out of the cab and started walking away.

  A gruff voice behind him said, “Excuse me, son?”

  Diego wondered how the police could have found him so quickly. He considered running, but that would just get him killed. Diego looked back to see an older Caucasian gentleman holding a canvas shopping bag in each hand. “Sir?”

  The man said, “I had to fire my yard crew. They just weren’t no good.” He paused a beat. “I hear you people are real hard workers. Could I have you come out and give me an estimate?”

  It took Diego a moment to realize why the man was asking what he was asking. He hadn’t seen the well-dressed son of a privileged upbringing with a two-hundred-dollar haircut and thousand-dollar boots. All he saw was a Mexican gardener dressed in denim stepping out of a lawn-service pickup. Diego didn’t know if “you people” had referred to the landscaping company or to the Latino population in general, but he smiled. Affecting an accent, he said, “If you call the number on the truck and tell them Luis sent you, we’ll send someone right out.”

  Diego rode the light rail underground. People cast him strange glances, and he realized he was crying. He dried his eyes and tried to ignore the cheap aftershave and body odor and cigarette smoke–saturated clothing filling the car. He changed trains downtown, breathing in huge gulps of fresh air before continuing on to Fair Park.

  When Diego stepped off onto the platform, he glanced over at the beautiful old station house that had been his home for three years. A large moving van stood parked alongside. There were no police vehicles there, at least not yet. He thought about going inside and grabbing his passport and the cash he kept in the floor safe and running to Mexico, but he knew that would be a mistake. He needed to clear his name.

  Carole was a common enemy. Alex would help. He had to.

  * * *

  Security was tight at the State Fair of Texas. Diego felt sure his brother couldn’t have made it inside with the 9mm Beretta strapped to his ankle, because even the coins in Diego’s pocket set off the metal detector. He bought a ticket and blended into the noisy, smelly, swirling crowd.

  When Diego was a boy, he and Alex lived for those three weeks of Fletcher’s Corny Dogs and rides and cotton candy and Frisbee dog shows and funnel cake and Big Tex. The brothers would have gone to the fair every day if their parents had let them. That was back in the days when the Smith boys were still buddies, when Alex was Diego’s guardian angel, before Alex went to Harvard and Diego’s afternoons were filled with survival defense training classes. It occurred to Diego for the first time that the memory of those happy times at the fair might have been the reason he’d bought and renovated the old fire station across the street.

  Fair Park covered more than two hundred acres. Diego could have wandered the place for hours without finding his brother. He dodged the trajectories of the disabled in mobility scooters and young couples pushing baby strollers. He passed a uniformed policeman, but the officer paid him no apparent attention. Diego knew it might be only minutes before his face was beamed to the screens of all the law enforcement phones.

  In the distance, against a sky that had darkened to the color of lead, Diego saw the Texas Star spinning slowly. The Ferris wheel was the tallest in North America, and it was the focal point of the fair. Alex would be there. Diego could feel it in his bones.

  He strode down the midway as quickly as he could without looking like a man running from the law. Carnival barkers and stuffed animals and blue awnings and games of chance and rubber duckies and more stuffed animals blurred past. Smells of cotton candy and fried food filled the air. The occasional whiff of vomit pricked his nostrils.

  Diego approached the Texas Star, its multicolored gondolas swaying overhead in the warm, humid breeze. He found Alex smiling and pressing the flesh and looking every bit a winner. A large all-access state fair pass hung from the lanyard around his tall blond brother’s neck. Alex’s forehead and the blue button-down shirt he wore were dotted with perspiration. Diego had only seen his brother break a sweat when he played sports. The pressure to win the election must have been intense.

  Alex was glad-handing an elderly woman when he spotted Diego. His expression changed to something less than happy. The older of the brothers approached the younger and, words angry, said, “What are you doing here?” He seemed to regain his composure, and his tone lightened. “I thought you were going to steer clear of the fair today, baby brother.”

  “Something happened.” Diego could feel tears welling up inside once again. He choked them back and said, “I need to talk to you. Alone.”

  A man Diego figured to be his brother’s campaign manager approached and gave Diego a harsh look. Alex waved him away before turning to say, “I’m kind of busy here. Can it wait?”

  “No, it can’t—Dad’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “He’s been murdered. Somebody framed me. I think it was Carole.”

  Alex didn’t react. He led Diego up the wheelchair ramp to the Ferris wheel’s loading platform and flashed the state fair credentials around his neck. Alex exchanged a few quiet words with one of the attendants. The man ushered the brothers into an empty gondola, shut the doors, and locked them inside. They sat facing each other. The bars and mesh surrounding them allowed a view while keeping desperate people from jumping to their deaths.

  The big wheel began to spin. Moments later, Diego and his brother were hovering above the midway in the warm breeze. The Dallas skyline sprouted up in the near distance like an isolated forest in the middle of a prairie. Diego felt trapped, caged like an animal, but at least he had fresh air.

  Alex said, “Start at the beginning. Tell me everything.”

  Diego recounted what had happened that day. He took a breath and concluded, “Carole didn’t have time to do it. I think she was working with someone.”

  A gust of wind ruffled Alex’s blond hair. “None of this makes any sense.”

  “I know—I’m screwed.” Diego looked down at the floor of the gondola. He noticed a bulge above the cuff of his brother’s left pant leg, and he wondered how Alex had gotten into the fairgrounds with the handgun strapped to his ankle. The all-access pass around his neck must have allowed him to bypass security. Diego then noticed a spot of something red just below the knee of his brother’s pants. Alex had never liked ketchup on his corny dog—he’d always covered it with mustard.

  The Texas Star spun again. It came to a stop with the brothers’ gondola at the top, two hundred feet above the ground. The air was suddenly still. Diego caught a whiff of his brother’s rich, leathery cologne—Hermès Bel Ami. Their mother had given each of her boys a bottle for Christmas long ago, before anyone knew how sensitive Diego’s senses of taste and smell were.

  Diego said, “I wish Mom was here. She’d know what to do.”

  “I
miss her too.” Alex grimaced. “But it’s up to us to figure a way to get you out of this mess.”

  Diego nodded and took another breath. In the still air, intermingled with the leathery scent of his brother’s cologne, he caught a whiff of something delicate, floral, and distinctive. It took him a moment to place the aroma. A wave of recognition shot through his body. He remembered how Carole’s scent had changed at Highland Park Village while he’d been inside looking for his phone. Diego again noticed the red spot on the left leg of Alex’s khakis. It felt like the bottom of the gondola had dropped out.

  The events of that afternoon played like a slideshow in Diego’s mind. Carole had met Alex while Diego was upstairs in the Monkey Bar. She had given Alex Diego’s knife and the key to the house on Armstrong. They embraced. Her 24, Faubourg mixed with his Bel Ami. She “found” Diego’s phone and brought it inside and delayed him for another few precious moments so Alex would have time to go to the house on Armstrong and . . .

  Alex had murdered their father.

  The tall blond man stroked his strong chin and gazed out to the horizon as if he were trying to figure a way to help his brother. But it was just an act. And Alex was carrying a handgun.

  Diego thought, Stay calm. His brother couldn’t read his mind. If he could just play it cool for another minute or two, he would get out of this okay. All he had to do was make it safely down to the ground. He’d slip away from Alex, run to Wadley, Adams & Snow, and tell them everything.

  Diego was anxious for the Ferris wheel to turn, for it to take him back to earth, but it didn’t move. He scooted to the edge of the gondola and peered down. People were pointing at the base of the Texas Star. Something was wrong. He thought about Alex’s words with the attendant below. If his guess was correct, his older brother had asked the attendant to keep them up top and call the police.