“You study with Lansdale?” I asked.

“Did,” Madeleine corrected. “He kicked me out of the dojo. Said I was over-the-top.”

I tried to imagine what Joe Lansdale would consider over-the-top. Chain saws and atom bombs, maybe.

It seemed strange to me that a girl like Madeleine White would’ve taken up martial arts so intensely. Then I remembered something Ralph had told me. Mr. White had come to him for help when Frankie’s problems got so bad they affected the family. I wondered what exactly that meant.

At the Taco Shack counter, the redheaded thug was getting his order.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s interrupt this poor man’s lunch.”

“Hold up,” Ralph said. “He’s moving.”

Sure enough, Mr. Thug had cradled his taco bag like an offensive lineman and was jogging across Roosevelt Avenue.

He didn’t seem to have seen us, but he was moving at a good clip. He cut through the parking lot of San José and headed for the mission gates.

“Pull the car around,” Madeleine ordered the driver.

“Why is he going to San José?” I wondered.

“Damn,” Ralph said.

“What?”

“Zapata’s mother.”

“What are you talking about?”

The limo did a tight one-eighty.

I held the door handle to avoid slamming into Madeleine.

“Zapata’s mom is a parishioner,” Ralph said. “Ana told me once. I forgot. Zapata’s family’s been at the mission for, like, centuries.”

Madeleine snorted. “You think Zapata is in there with his mother? What, praying?”

I tried to imagine Johnny Zapata as a good Catholic boy. Or even a good boy. Or even having a mother. I failed.

“I don’t want this to go down in a church,” Ralph muttered.

The limo stopped in front of the visitors’ center.

Madeleine slipped a new clip into her nine. “Alex was right, Arguello. You are getting soft.”

She kicked open the car door, looked at me expectantly. “Are we kicking someone’s ass or not?”

AS A PI, I’VE LEARNED YOU get better help from people if you make an effort to like them. It’s not about making them like you. You have to develop a genuine affection for disagreeable people. With the hard-luck cases I meet, often the best way to like them is to find something about them with which you can empathize.

With Madeleine White, that wasn’t easy.

The ass-kicking woman who led us into the mission was as hard to love as the bratty little girl I’d known at Alamo Heights.

The only memory that made me feel any sympathy for her was so unpleasant I’d buried it for years.

My senior year at Heights, I attended my last Howdy Night celebration to kick off the new school term. It was a sultry September evening. Millions of grackles were screeching in the trees. The air was thick with mosquitoes and barbecue smoke and teenage hormones.

The football field had been converted into a carnival ground. Parents and younger siblings milled around everywhere. Teachers worked the standard game booths: the dunking chair, the sponge toss, the cakewalk.

I was supposed to be meeting my girlfriend Lillian, but she was running late, so I fell in with Ralph and Frankie White, who were trying the football toss and drinking Big Red sodas secretly laced with tequila.

Over by the fifty-yard line, Frankie’s dad was talking to one of the city councilmen. Guy White wore jeans and loafers and an Izod button-down, like he was one of the common yuppies. His silver hair contrasted starkly with his deep summer tan. His smile radiated good humor. The field was crowded, but he had an open radius ten feet wide around him. Only little children who didn’t know any better wandered close to him.

Frankie was getting angry because he couldn’t get the football through the tire. He always griped that he should’ve made quarterback, but he couldn’t throw to save his life. He kept giving carnival tickets to our bored English teacher, Mrs. Weems, and kept bouncing footballs off the rim of the tire, or throwing into the midst of screaming drill team girls by mistake.

Ralph was cracking up, which didn’t help Frankie’s mood.

After a few tosses his little sister, Madeleine, ran up to him. As usual, her clothes were decorated with Magic Marker designs—spirals, mazes, scary faces. She had a fistful of candy canes and her face was painted blue and gold. There was cascarón glitter and confetti in her hair.

“Share your tickets, Frankie,” she demanded.

“Get lost, Brat,” he growled.

Madeleine held her ground. “Dad said they were for both of us. He told you to share.”

Frankie jumped toward her and faked throwing the football at her. She squealed and ducked her head.

Mrs. Weems, normally an innocuous soul, said, “Now, Franklin—”

“I told you to get lost,” Frankie yelled at his sister.

“You can’t touch me anymore!” Madeleine’s chin was trembling. “Dad said—”

She never got to finish her sentence.

Frankie grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and marched her away.

“You want to play more games, Brat?” Frankie’s face was bright red. “You want the apple dunk? Huh?”

She tried to fight him off, but he dragged her over to the tin washtub. Then he pushed her head underwater.

“Frankie,” Ralph said. “Stop.”

Frankie brought Madeleine up again, screaming and sputtering.

Mrs. Weems shouted, “Stop it!”

“You didn’t get an apple, Brat?” Frankie said. “Gee, I’m sorry.”

He shoved Madeleine under again. That’s when Ralph and Mrs. Weems and I all got into the act.

Ralph pulled Madeleine away from Frankie while Mrs. Weems and I tried to restrain him, but Frankie had the weight advantage. He elbowed me in the gut, then pushed poor Mrs. Weems a little too hard. She stumbled backward.

“Stay off me!” he yelled.

“Franklin White!” Mrs. Weems got to her feet, furious, and slapped him hard across the face.

Frankie looked stunned. Then his face blanched. I was pretty sure he was about to kill our English teacher when a deep voice said, “Franklin.”

Guy White stood behind us.

Frankie’s shoulders hunched. He blinked hard, like a dog who expects a beating.

Madeleine was kneeling in the grass, crying and coughing up water, her face paint smeared. She got to her feet, but she didn’t run to Daddy. Instead, she yanked her wrist free of Ralph’s hand and took off into the crowd. Her father paid no attention.

His eyes bored into his son.

“Come with me,” Mr. White told Frankie.

“I’m with my friends,” Frankie mumbled. “I don’t want to.”

I couldn’t tell which was stronger in Frankie’s voice—hate or fear.

“Now,” Mr. White said calmly.

“Hey, Frankie,” Ralph said. “It’s cool. We’ll catch you later.”

Mr. White glanced at Ralph, appraising him. Maybe he recognized that Ralph was letting Frankie save face. Maybe, in a cold way, he even appreciated that.

Frankie’s fists clenched. He planted his feet, trying to ignore his father’s order. But it was like watching a time-lapse movie—a granite hillside being slowly and mercilessly eroded by the sun and the wind. Finally Mr. White pointed toward the parking lot, and Frankie followed his father off the playing field. We didn’t see them or Madeleine again that night. Soon, I was much more interested in my girlfriend and Ralph’s tequila, and I stopped thinking about the incident with the Whites.

But looking back on it, I felt sorry for Madeleine.

I tried to imagine what it would be like living with two men like her father and brother, being kid sister to Frankie White, who could bring out the violent side in anyone, even a gentle middle-aged English teacher.

RALPH, MADELEINE AND I FOLLOWED THE redheaded thug into the grounds of Mission San José.

It was a cold Saturday evening, too late and overcast for much of a crowd. The convento was empty except for an elderly couple studying a tourist brochure. Ancient huisache trees lay flat against the ground and the foundations of ruined buildings made weird geometry in the grass. Along the fort walls, oak doors were fastened shut, as if the Indians who’d lived there two hundred years before were still inside, cooking dinner or stumbling through vespers prayers in their strange new Spanish language.

Mr. Thug toted his taco bag toward the tiendita—a tiny souvenir shop in one of the Indian apartments. The sign out front promised religious memorabilia and ice-cold bottled water. He went inside.

Ralph stopped. He stared at the shop door, his hand in the pocket of his new leather jacket where a borrowed .38 waited.

Guy White’s manservant had taken one look at Ralph, then given him a tough-guy outfit—black jeans, leather jacket, boots. Me, I got a silk suit. Bloody typical.

“Zapata’s mom,” Ralph said. “I remember now. She runs the souvenir shop.”

“Are we going in?” Madeleine asked.

“Chiquita, you ever meet Zapata?”

Madeleine’s scowl reminded me of the angry little girl at Howdy Night—a ten-year-old foolishly determined to hold her ground.

“Call me chiquita again,” she said, “and I’ll cut out your tongue.”

Ralph pulled out his .38, opened the door for Madeleine. “Ladies first.”

Inside, the souvenir shop was crammed with postcard carousels, shelves bristling with plaster saint figurines, holographic Jesus portraits that smiled and suffered and ascended in 3-D.

Johnny Zapata stood at the jewelry counter with Mr. Thug, both of them getting yelled at by a gray-haired Latina cashier so hideously ugly she could only have been Zapata’s mother.

She was waving a taco under Mr. Thug’s nose and yelling, “Tripas, Ignacio! I wanted tripas!”

Mr. Thug/Ignacio raised his hands. “Mrs. Z—”

“Ma,” Johnny Zapata cut in, “they don’t sell tripas no more!”

“Bah!”

“I told you, Ma. It’s illegal now.”

The old woman made a barking sound. “Since when do you care about illegal? Huh?”

Had I been thinking more clearly, I would’ve backed out, let the three of them fight, and questioned the survivors later.

Unfortunately, they noticed us.

Zapata stood up straight when he recognized Ralph.

Ignacio started to reach for his coat pocket, but Madeleine stuck her gun in the side of his nose.

Ignacio raised his hands.

“Who are these people?” Mama Zapata yelled at her son. “More of your enemies?”

Zapata studied us.

He was just as huge as I remembered. His fashion sense hadn’t improved. He sported a black and gray polyester shirt, white pants and white leather cleats. With his Mongolian features and his small evil eyes, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Genghis Khan out for a night of bowling.

“Old acquaintances,” Zapata told his mother softly. He glanced at Madeleine. “You’re Guy White’s daughter. What you doing with these babosas?”

“We thought she’d get along with your mom,” I offered.