Rick Riordan - The Devil went down to Austin

"Unless something changes drastically. Manslaughter, maybe."

"He won't go for it."

"Of course not," she said bitterly. "Navarre stubbornness forebears."

A prickly silence formed between us.

"Tell me I'm not crazy," I said. "Pena could be responsible for Jimmy's murder. Or Ruby. Or W.B."

"Garrett's your brother. You don't need permission to take his side."

It wasn't the kind of answer I'd wanted, and I guess it showed.

"You've been acting guilty for days," Maia said. "It's not just finding that casing. What's bothering you?"

Buffett was still playing that song I didn't know. Pot smoke was so thick that every few seconds another wisp of it would cross the moon like a cloud.

"Listening to Ruby," I said, "how she abandoned Garrett after his accident. I guess I hadn't thought about that night in a long time."

Maia studied my face.

In all the years we'd been together, I'd never discussed my family with her much. She hadn't even known Garrett was disabled until she'd met him.

"We found him on the tracks," I told her. "My father, my sister, and I. I knew where Garrett went to hop trains. I waited almost two hours before I said anything to my dad."

"That was twenty years ago," she said. "You were how old, twelve?"

Garrett was up on the hill, having a great old time. A young blond girl, maybe twentythree, had settled into his lap. She coaxed Dickhead the Parrot onto her wrist, then lifted her arm up and down to the beat, forcing Dickhead to hold his wings open for balance like a hang glider.

"Garrett's fine," Maia said gently. "Look at him, for God's sake."

I didn't answer.

I wasn't sure I could explain to Maia that she was giving me too much credit. What bothered me wasn't the idea I might've done more for Garrett, all those years ago.

What bothered me was that I finally understood how Ruby McBride felt. She'd made me remember the revulsion, the horror of Garrett's condition, the desire to run away from him. She'd reminded me of my darkest, most contemptible wish when I was twelve years old-that perhaps it would have been better if I'd just gone to sleep that night, not said anything to my father.

Maia reached out, took my hand.

She was about to say something when her face went blank.

Matthew Pena was walking toward us.

He'd changed out of business clothes, into a sleeveless Gold's Gym Tshirt and workout pants. Unfortunately, he did not appear to have sustained any permanent injuries from Maia Lee tossing him into his bookshelf yesterday. His hair gleamed with gel and his eyes were brighter than I'd seen them before, almost animated. If dead things can be animated.

"A picnic," Pena said. "How cozy."

"Matthew." Maia's tone was steady and cold. "I didn't figure you for a Buffett fan."

He held up the laminated card around his neck. "Gift from a prospective client-backstage pass. How could I say no?"

For Pena, the event could've been ballet or baseball or an art opening. It didn't matter.

The important thing was that he could walk around with that backstage pass on, prove to the diehard fans that he could do better than they could without half trying.

I looked back at Garrett. He saw us, all right. He made a finger gun, fired it at us, then he returned his attention to the young blonde dancing in his lap.

Pena crouched in front of me. "Had a busy day, Navarre? I heard your brother is in a little trouble. If there's anything I can do-"

"Like confess?" I asked.

Pena smiled. "By the way, I thought I'd return this to you."

He took the button recorder I'd left stuck under his desk, tossed it in my lap.

"Expensive piece of equipment," he said. "Shouldn't leave it sitting around. I had my people erase it for you. All it failed to pick up, I'm happy to tell you, is good news. We've isolated the problem in Techsan's software. Stupid mistake on the part of the original programmers, I'm afraid. Easily corrected."

"Surprise, surprise."

"Of course, there's the matter of those confidential documents being posted. I can't promise there won't be a criminal investigation against your brother and Ruby, maybe some more lawsuits, but hey- at least the program will be on track. Your brother's AccuShield stock should go up. By the time he gets out of jail, he'll be able to pay his debts, retire to the lower middle class."

"I think," Maia said, "that you should leave."

The Buffett song ended to deafening applause.

Pena checked his watch. "You're right. I'd better get back to my clients. We've got a night dive scheduled after the concert-going to check out an old observatory mirror and a few concrete sculptures sunk at eighty feet off Starnes Island. Sure you don't want to come along? Either of you?"

Before Maia could strangle him with our quilt, I said, "Treat Ruby well, Matthew. Listen to her."

He looked at me as if I'd just slipped into another language. "Whatever you say, Navarre. Enjoy the evening."

Then he melted back into the crowd, people around him fawning over his backstage pass.

Maia followed him with her eyes. Her face was pale, tightly controlled.

I asked the question I'd been trying to avoid for two days. "Did you tell him about Hawaii?"

Maia's eyes reproached me. "No."

"Then how?"

"How does a shark smell blood, Tres? I don't know."

Hawaii, four years ago, had been Maia's and my last vacation together as a couple.

We'd spent a week on the west side of Oahu- drinking, walking on the beach, making love. And then I'd gotten the bright idea it would be fun to dive the Mahi shipwreck off Waianae.

I remember Maia forcing herself through the scuba class, coming up shaky after every practice dive, even the pool sessions, but successfully conning me into believing she was fine. She made it through the skills tests, even convinced our instructor, who was no slacker for safety, that she could handle open sea. We didn't know the kind of terror she'd been suppressing until she hit de^› watersixtyfive feet under-and panicked.

We fought to get her to breathe and not shoot to the surface. Through the mask, her eyes had been the size of silver dollars. As we made our emergency ascent, she'd purged the contents of her stomach through the air manifold, then clawed my regulator out of my mouth and breathed on it, forcing me to grope for my backup.

For another diver, the failure might not have been so personal, but Maia Lee never retreats, never surrenders. She was raised on stories of her greatgrandfather who survived the Long March, her grandfather who survived reeducation during the Cultural Revolution. For Maia, admitting defeat to a phobia is unthinkable.

We'd flown back to San Francisco twentyfour hours later, Maia curled into her plane seat, intensely quiet, as if she were trying to compress the Mahi dive into her safebox for darkest memories. For months afterward, whenever she looked at me, I saw a tinge of resentment-shame that I'd witnessed her moment of vulnerability.

The fact Matthew Pena had so quickly read that fear, had played up the part of his own life that would maximize her discomfort, filled me with dread. What worried me more was Maia-the fierce pride that had made her push through scuba lessons, deny the warning signs, get sixtyfive feet under before realizing she couldn't handle it. I was worried what would happen if she handled Matthew Pena the same way she handled scuba.

The second song ended. The crowd yelled.

Jimmy Buffett told Austin hello. He wished us all a very merry pina colada, then began something I knew-"Coconut Telegraph."

There'd been a time in Maia's Potrero Hill apartment, cooking green pepper and ham omelettes, coffee percolating, Maia barefoot, in linen white shorts and one of my Tshirts. This song had come on and she'd forced me to dance through the breakfast nook, ended up spraying me with the champagne she was using for mimosas.