Pe?a blinked. Then he asked quietly, “How is she?”
“She’s the wife of a man who doesn’t like it much when a man he doesn’t know asks how she is.”
“That’s an interesting response, Tyrell,” Pe?a noted.
Walker did not reply even though he wanted to tell him not to call him Tyrell. His mother called him Tyrell. When his father was pissed, which was often, he called him Tyrell. Therefore no one called him Tyrell.
But he didn’t tell him this.
Pe?a carried on. “She’s a friend.”
“Now that’s interesting considering she hasn’t mentioned you.”
Another score. That one hurt. He thought he factored larger in her life.
“Things she’s tryin’ to forget, I reckon,” Pe?a guessed inaccurately.
And Walker didn’t hesitate to inform him of this fact. “You’d reckon wrong. Lexie doesn’t need to forget. She’s smart enough to learn the lessons life’s got for her, eyes open, no bullshit.”
“That may be so but that doesn’t mean there aren’t things she wants to leave in the past,” Pe?a returned.
“You got one right,” Walker told him, his point hard to miss and he was done so he decided to move them in that direction. “You come all this way for this shit?”
“She’s worth the drive and the vacation time.”
It was a true answer but it was one he didn’t want to hear.
Therefore Walker moved. Pushing away from the Snake, he shifted to open the door, again making a point that was hard to miss.
Pe?a didn’t miss it but Pe?a also wasn’t done.
“Win those wheels at a game?” he asked and Walker slid his eyes to him as he opened the door and started to move around it in order to the fold into the car. Pe?a knew he didn’t have a lot of time and kept going. “Know you got the talent not to fuck around. Been years but circles in Dallas still talk about you. Wouldn’t sit a game without at least a twenty-five K buy-in.”
Walker kept moving.
Pe?a kept talking. “Makes a man wonder why, you drive a Snake, you sit only high stakes games, yet over a three day weekend you’d haul your ass in a fuckin’ car across three states to sit a game with four men who, all together, couldn’t offer up five K much less twenty-five each.”
Walker stopped, straightened and turned inside the door.
And he did this because Pe?a had just shown how deep he’d dug.
Walker gave him his attention but nothing more.
“If just for the fuck of it, why didn’t you fly?” Pe?a asked. “You had the cake. Here to LA and back again, sit a table and kill a man… that’s a lot to fit in in three days.”
Walker didn’t respond.
Pe?a wasn’t looking for a response. Pe?a was happy to deliver a monologue.
“Though you take a flight, they got records. You sit your ass in a car, no one knows.” He paused; Walker gave him nothing so he kept going. “Couldn’t see why it was for the fuck of it either. You don’t care the company you keep at a game, that’s true enough, but they at least have to bring something to the table.”
Walker kept silent.
Pe?a pressed on. “You sit with men who got tens of thousands of cash and collateral on the line, you walk away a winner, a big winner, every time. Then you sit with men who got shit, who are not known to sit a game of cards, total amateurs, you lose huge? How’s that happen?”
Walker didn’t move or say a word.
Pe?a kept going. “Lose so huge, it pisses you off. You, a seasoned player, a seasoned player who had to walk away down from some tables somewhere along the line. You knew the score. Never an incident but you lose to some scumbag drug dealer in LA, you get so pissed, you track his ass down, shoot him four times and a part-construction worker, part-mechanic smart enough to get himself a Snake is dumb enough to leave his prints at the scene. How’s that happen?”
Walker turned fully to him and crossed his arms on his chest.
Pe?a held his gaze.
Then he took a step forward and said quietly, “Got a source says some preliminary witness statements were buried. You know that?”
He didn’t. He had no idea. That would have been big, huge, years ago.
Now it didn’t matter.
Therefore, he still didn’t speak.
“Conflicting accounts on a variety of things. Your description, the amount you lost at the game, time line. Seems the witnesses hadn’t been thoroughly briefed,” Pe?a dropped that bomb, gave a bit of it away, paused for a reaction then when he didn’t get one, he pressed on. “Got their stories straight in the end, though.”
Fuck him. Fuck him. Under six weeks and Pe?a got further than Tate. A lot further.
Walker made no reply.
Pe?a didn’t need it. “Two of those men who sat that table with you were CIs to a Detective Chet Palmer, LAPD.”
Walker said nothing.
Pe?a continued. “And Detective Chet Palmer works in a different precinct but still, he’s godfather to Gene Fuller’s daughter.” He held Walker’s eyes and kept talking quietly. “You gettin’ the connection I’m givin’ to you?”