Laura Lippman - In Big Trouble

The room looked normal, and Tess had so few possessions that it didn't take much time to inventory everything there. Her bag of laundry was on the bed, her copy of Don Quixote on the nightstand. Her knapsack was there, too, seemingly untouched. She took out the false bottom, made sure her gun and cell phone were nestled there. This past summer, in a particularly hellish forty-eight hours, her gun had been stolen and her phone had been flung across five lanes of traffic on Interstate 95. A tailor had designed a black flap that attached with Velcro strips, but it would only fool someone who glanced inside the knapsack without picking it up. The weight would have given away its secret contents.

No, if Mrs. Nguyen hadn't mentioned her gentleman caller, she would never have known someone had been here. But someone had, and it felt as creepy as a real break-in, or a burglary. Creepier, because she knew who the perpetrator was, yet couldn't begin to guess at his motives.

Hector's was not the type of place listed in the yellow pages, or in San Antonio's Chamber of Commerce magazine. But Mrs. Nguyen, embarrassed by her uncharacteristic lack of vigilance on Tess's behalf, called a cousin whose daughter had a friend who knew a guy who sometimes hung out with bikers. A family scandal, as it turned out, and Mrs. Nguyen was on the telephone for quite some time, clucking over the shame of it all, even as she passed keys to the La Casita regulars and kept one eye on her Mexican soap operas.

Finally, she rang off. "It's ice house, out in the country," she told Tess from her side of the bulletproof glass. "Way out Pleasanton Road."

"Ice house?" It was the second time today Tess had heard this strange term. The HEB clerk had claimed you could buy a phone card at one.

"Like package store, but with places to sit, maybe a pool table. But it's not a nice place, not for nice young lady."

"No problem. I'll just take my gun."

"Good idea," Mrs. Nguyen said, nodding vigorously, although she certainly never needed a gun. Her office was an impenetrable fortress-Mrs. Nguyen not only had the protection of the glass, but she slipped into a back room to make change or run credit card receipts, locking the door behind her.

"I was joking , Mrs. Nguyen."

"But you got gun, why not take it? Is legal here, to have guns. Except maybe not for you. And maybe not in bars. They usually have signs, saying no guns. But you take yours, and keep in car. Better safe than sorry."

At home, Tess had found it irritating when the people in her life-Kitty, Tyner, her parents-pulled this protective stuff. Here, she felt lonely without their scolding. She agreed to be careful.

A few miles south of Loop 410, San Antonio seemed to disappear, and darkness swallowed Tess's Toyota. And while the sky was crowded with stars, they provided no light. It was hard to believe there was anyone or anything outside the path of her headlights, much less some biker bar that turned its stage over to an avant-garde polka-bluegrass band at closing time. Then Hector's suddenly surfaced like a mirage from the shadowy, flat countryside.

It wasn't much to look at: a low cinderblock building dwarfed by an enormous patio outlined in Christmas lights. No sign, but it must be the place, judging by the mix of vehicles in the lot-a few motorcycles, mostly Harley-Davidsons; some banged-up, castoff family cars, the kind driven by college students; and a smattering of expensive foreign cars, which probably cost more than Tess made in a year. Someone was slumming , she thought. What was the point of having money if you couldn't lord over people who didn't?

She checked her watch. It was a few minutes shy of 2, and customers were lined up along one end of the patio, at a long waist-high refrigeration case on wheels. A portable bar.

"Still serving?" she asked when her turn finally came. The bartender was an older man with thick, long sideburns that had probably cycled in and out of fashion several times over the years he had worn them.

"Sure," he said, unscrewing the cap on a generic cola and pushing it toward her, then pocketing the five dollars she handed him.

"No change?"

"Monopolies are a bitch, ain't they?"

"Don't gouge, Sam," a woman's clear voice cut in. "Either give her some change, or give her a beer."

"She with you, Kris?" The bartender sounded contrite. "Sorry, I didn't know. I thought she was one of those new kids who keeps showing up, ever since the band got written up in the Eagle ." He exchanged the cola for something called a Shiner Bock. "Any friend of yours and Rick's is a friend of mine."

He moved to the end of the bar, to wait on another customer. Tess noticed he was pulling the beers from plastic coolers, not the metal ones built beneath the portable bar, and taking only cash, no credit cards.

"Loophole in the liquor law," explained her defender. "After two Hector's is a private social club, for members only. If Sam doesn't know you, he won't sell to you."

"So am I member now?"

"Yeah, that's why you didn't get any change from your five dollars. Beer is two dollars a bottle, and you can get set-ups-cokes, ginger ales, tonic-for a dollar. There's also food, although this isn't much of an eating crowd. Just bags of chips and pork rinds, and fresh tamales when Sam's wife gets inspired."

Her newfound friend was a blond, perhaps twenty-five, in an embroidered white blouse and dangling silver earrings. The costume was clearly meant to be Mexican, but on this milk-fed, apple-cheeked girl, the effect was more St. Pauli girl on her night off.

"Well, thanks," said Tess, who was unused to the kindness of strangers. "You made this out-of-towner feel pretty welcome. I'm Tess Monaghan."

"Kristina Johanssen," the girl said, thrusting out her hand. "Hector's can be pretty overwhelming on first visit. But you're in for a treat. How did you hear about Las Almas Perdidas?"

It took Tess a beat to recall this was yet another name for Crow's band. "Actually, I go pretty far back with them. The guy-Ed-used to be in a band up in Baltimore, Poe White Trash."

"You know Ed Ransome?" Kris asked breathlessly. "Really know him?"

"We worked together in my aunt's bookstore-"

"Too cool. Enrique-" Kris grabbed Tess's hand in hers, which was warm and sweaty as a little girl's, and all but dragged her to a nearby table, where a tall, bored-looking man sat. He was as dark as she was fair, and wore clothes that looked more suitable for a country club dance-white shirt, blazer, khakis. "Enrique, this woman knows Ed Ransome."

"Try not to get so carried away, sweetheart." Enrique's drawl was a surprise, the first genuinely Texan accent Tess had heard. It didn't seem to belong with the flan-colored skin and the Aztec warrior profile. "It's not like he's Willie Nelson or Merle Haggard. Hell, he's not even Freddie Fender."

"Oh, Enrique." While Kristina's vowel sounds were Midwestern flat, she trilled the R in her beloved's name with admirable skill. "You and that country music. Just my luck to finally find a Mexican boyfriend, only to discover he has the soul of LBJ."

"I think of myself more in the Kennedy mode, darlin'," he said, stretching out his long legs. His studied preppiness ended at his feet, where he wore well-shined black cowboy boots instead of tassel loafers. "Handsome, charismatic, great political future, women falling over me."

Kristina snorted. "You're more likely to defend a Kennedy than be one."

"I can only hope one of them runs afoul of the law in Bexar County," he replied placidly. "The case probably won't be as challenging as some of the capital murder cases I've tried, but then the check won't bounce, either."

Kris turned back to Tess. "This is my boyfriend, Enrique Trejo. I'd like to say he's usually not this obnoxious, but the fact is, he's a much bigger cabron most of the time. That means asshole."