“Were you always an annoying little girl or did you grow into the role?” he asked.
She grinned and he found it annoyingly endearing. He was going to have to be careful around this one.
“I guess I’ve been like this my whole life,” she told him.
“Huh. Remind me to send your mother a condolence card,” he told her flippantly.
He saw her face cloud over for a moment. “That might prove hard to do,” Toni said as she finished her coffee.
He indicated the cup with his eyes. “Refill?” he asked.
“No, I’m good,” she answered.
Dugan heard the distance in her voice. Ordinarily, that would have been enough to make him back off, but for some reason, it didn’t. Instead, he returned to his previous comment about sending her mother condolences. Her expression had changed at that point, he thought. What had he said wrong?
“Why would that be hard to do?” he asked. “Send your mother a condolence card,” he prompted when she said nothing.
She thought about getting up and walking out. She also thought about telling him it was none of his damn business. Neither option really worked for her. At the very least, neither would get her what she wanted and she wanted that story. A huge drug bust as it was happening.
So she told him the truth.
“She died when I was born. She insisted on being with my father while he went after stories no one else would. She had the bad luck of being one of those women who didn’t look pregnant when she was, so nobody told her she shouldn’t fly late in the pregnancy.” Her voice was almost robotic, as if she was reciting a narrative that belonged to someone else. “She went into labor on the flight home. There were complications. She didn’t make it. At least Dad was with her when she—didn’t make it,” she concluded in a voice that was far too cheerful for the subject she was narrating.
Tossing her head, she asked him, “So, do I really get to work with you, like you said, or are you going to make my life more complicated by making me shadow you for every piece of information I want?”
For just a moment, Dugan understood what she was going through and what she had to be feeling. “My mother died, too.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s not what I asked you,” she informed him almost coldly.
He didn’t know if she was trying to push him away or if he had managed to embarrass her somehow just now by cracking a wall he hadn’t realized she had up around her. For that matter, he reminded himself, he really didn’t know if she was on the level. For all he knew, she could have just made that whole thing up to get on his good side because she knew that his mother had died when he was young and highly impressionable. After all, his life wasn’t exactly a secret.
“No,” he replied, his eyes on hers. “It isn’t.”
“So do I?” she asked him again. “Do I get to work with you for a week while you make up your mind whether or not having me around is beneficial to your trying to break up the Juarez drug cartel?” she asked him again.
“And if I said no, you really would wind up shadowing me?” he asked.
There was no hesitation on her part. “Yes,” she answered.
“Well, then, I’d better save us both some grief and just say yes,” he told her. “Temporarily,” he added before she could say anything to either thank him—or tell him that he had made a wise choice.
Either way, he felt he had no other option. And he had learned a long time ago that it was better to have the source of his problem with him at all times than somewhere behind him.
There was less chance of being shot that way.
Chapter 5
“This is what you have?” Toni asked, looking at the bulletin board.
They had returned to the precinct and were now in the Vice squad room. There were close to a dozen photographs pinned to the bulletin board, arranged in a staggered tier formation, with the current head of the Juarez Cartel in the US located at the top.
All the photographs were of men. In addition, there were a few sheets of white eight-by-ten paper posted amid the photographs. These blank sheets represented the key figures in the organization who had not been identified, men within the cartel in different positions of importance who were able to make things happen, to have shipments sent out or received, but hadn’t been named.
Yet.
Whether this was because they were so important that their names were kept secret, or because the people who had been questioned previously didn’t know their names was unclear to Toni at the moment.
“This represents over eighteen months of work,” Dugan told her. It had taken that much time and effort—and more—to compile these names and faces.
“And these?” Toni asked, tapping one of the empty pages. “How long did it take you to put these up on the board?”
Unfazed, Dugan told her, “Those represent works in progress. The people exist, we just don’t know their names yet. We thought perhaps we were getting close to finding out some of their identities, but our latest CI turned up floating in a lake just around the time you gave birth,” he said grimly. “The one before that disappeared off the face of the earth.” He sighed. “We’ll probably find him in a shallow grave sometime in the future. The life expectancy of a CI who’s associated with this particular cartel isn’t exactly what you might call long.”
“Maybe that other CI you mentioned decided that it was healthier for him not to play both sides against the middle and just disappeared,” Toni guessed.
But Dugan shook his head. “Even when they stop giving us information, it’s only a matter of time before something gives them away to a superior. The cartel has a lot in common with a school of piranha. If they have nothing to feed on, they turn on their own. The trick is not to give them a reason to feed on you,” he said.
Toni shivered and ran her hands up and down her arms. “Makes you wonder why anyone would ever get into that way of life.”
He considered her question. “Other than stupidity, for some it’s the promise of money. A great deal of money,” he underscored. “For others, it’s an easy pipeline—at least at first—to something that they think that they can’t live without.”
She could see supposed informants clamming up, refusing to talk to the police. She tried to understand how any of the Vice detectives ever managed to get anyone to volunteer any actual information.
“Given that, how would you hope to be able to cultivate a CI?” she asked.
That was simple enough from where he was standing. “Some people are smart enough to realize that they’re standing in quicksand and they feel that making a deal with us—i.e., trading us information for a reduced sentence, or at times no sentence at all, is their only hope of keeping out of jail.”
Toni eyed him rather skeptically. “And you let them believe that?”
Dugan frowned slightly. He didn’t see a problem with the method and rather resented her insinuation that he was lying.
“We let them believe that because it’s true. We’re their last hope,” he told her. “At least we won’t put a bullet in their heads,” he added.
“Not directly, anyway,” she countered.
His eyes narrowed as he regarded her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Didn’t you say that your last CI won’t be making any more reports about possible shipments because he wound up going for a swim he hadn’t counted on—with a bullet in his brain?”
Dugan became a little wary. “I didn’t tell you that,” he said.
“Sorry,” she apologized offhandedly. “Must have been in the report I read.”
“That happened on the day you gave birth,” he said. “That was the phone call I got so I couldn’t go to the hospital with you,” he told Toni, looking at her. “How did you...?”
Toni shrugged, passing it off. “Like I said, I must have read it,” she admitted. “I’ve been
boning up on the cartel,” she reminded him. “I didn’t want to come to the party empty-handed.”
“So far, you’re only offering me leftovers,” he told her, far from pleased at the way this investigation—and her part in it—was going. He still didn’t see an advantage to having her working with him. As a matter of fact, he could see it going the other way very quickly. To his way of thinking, journalists were not known for their caution.
She nodded, taking in what he had just said. “Then I guess I should tell my people to get busy and bring me something you can use.”
That caught him off guard. “What people?” he asked.
“People-people,” she answered.
He gave her a skeptical look. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
But this time, she wasn’t about to try to win him over. She became serious. “Sorry, Cavanaugh. You know I can’t give up my sources or else they won’t give it up to me. All I can do is pass whatever I get on to you when I get it,” she told him.
This made him think that the woman had seen one procedural too many. She obviously thought this was a game. He had no patience with games.
“Look, any tip we get, we’re going to have to vet,” he told her.
Rather than back off, the way he thought she would, or just give up altogether, Toni said, “Then I guess it’s going to be a long time between tips, at least on my end.” She pressed her lips together for a moment, choosing her words carefully. “Look, how about if I promise that whatever I do pass on to you is legitimate? I’m not about to do it for brownie points, Cavanaugh. If what I give you turns out to be bogus, I know that you’d dump me.”
Dugan never hesitated. “In a heartbeat.”
That only proved what she was saying. “I know that, you know that, so there won’t be any phony leads just for the sake of leads.”
Dugan felt his patience beginning to slowly evaporate. He sighed. “So, after all that, do you have anything?”
He still half expected her to lie. Instead, she spread her hands wide. “No, not right now. But you’ll be the first to know when I do.”
He looked at her for a long moment, and then something occurred to him. “These leads that you get...” he began.
“Yes?”
He watched her expression the entire time as he asked, “Do they have anything to do with that gun you had on the passenger seat that night?”
The wide smile she’d had up until that moment faded. A serious expression came into her eyes. The whole tone of the discussion changed.
“They might have,” she told him guardedly.
“Anything you want to talk about?” he asked her, waiting for her to give him something to work with.
Instead, she said, “No.”
He tried another line of questioning. “Are you still carrying that gun?”
Dugan saw her raising her chin defiantly. He had his answer before she said another word. “I have a permit.”
“So I take it that’s a yes?” Whether or not she said anything, he knew that it was.
There was silence between them for a moment. And then Toni changed the subject. “Why don’t you tell me what you plan to do next with this investigation?”
He had questions he wanted to ask her. Questions that had to do with why she was doing something so ultimately dangerous when there were so many other things she could be writing about. Questions about why someone as savvy as she seemed to be would have gotten herself into a situation where she had wound up trusting the wrong man, as she obviously must have done, given the fact that he’d found her in an alley, about to give birth, instead of somewhere with her husband or boyfriend being taken care of.
Questions filled Dugan’s head that had absolutely nothing to do with why she was standing here beside him right now.
But she was standing here with him right now and he had to deal with that first and everything else, no matter how curious it made him, second.
He forced himself to focus on the case he’d been working on for over eighteen months. “We round up the people caught in the most recent drug busts and talk to them to see if they’d heard anything about the next shipment.”
“Just like that?” Toni asked him incredulously. Was he that naive?
“Well, I might be leaving out a couple of steps,” Dugan granted. “Like maybe their little brother or sister was picked up on drug charges, too. And maybe we could make that go away. Or make their second possession with intent to sell be knocked down to a misdemeanor if they have anything to trade.”
All right, now he was talking, Toni thought. It was beginning to make sense to her. “Do you have anything like that?”
“I’d have to check my roster,” he told her, unwilling to say yes or no. He continued looking at her for a moment, then he shook his head. “Do you realize that you’re about to salivate?”
Rather than be embarrassed or say that he was imagining things, she boldly told him, “Just looking forward to seeing you in action, Cavanaugh.”
His smile was slow, making her heart flutter once it was out in full force. “Well, if that’s the case,” he told her, “maybe we can see what we can do about that after my shift’s over.”
Just for the slightest second, there was a zap of electricity that traveled between them. She could hardly move. But then she rallied, backing away—gracefully, she hoped.
“Sorry, I have a baby to see to once I’m through here.”
He was wondering when she would get around to mentioning the baby. He’d started to think that maybe she’d given the baby to someone to watch over while she was on this assignment. She certainly didn’t act like any new mother he’d ever come across.
“Maybe I could drop by to see her,” he said, inviting himself over without a hint of embarrassment. “She’s got to be what, two months old now?”
Toni had to admit that he’d surprised her. Most men didn’t keep track of anything but their favorite team’s standing in whatever league they were in. When it came to anything else—babies, occasions, the women they’d gone out with—their minds were, for the most part, blank slates.
This made him different, she thought.
“Two months,” Toni repeated with a nod, then almost as an afterthought, added, “Maybe someday,” regarding his request to see the baby.
“Sure,” he answered. “Just name the day, I’ll be there.”
Okay, she had to ask. “You’re serious,” Toni said, more in wonder than to confirm what he’d just said.
“Sure,” he answered. He didn’t understand her question. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
She thought of her daughter’s father. The moment he had found out that she was pregnant—and that she wasn’t about to terminate the pregnancy—he had dropped out of the picture completely. He’d made it clear that he preferred not to know anything about the details, including if she’d had a girl or boy or a cockatiel. As far as he was concerned, they’d never even been together. She hadn’t heard from him in almost a year.
“Most men aren’t interested in babies,” she finally said.
To her surprise, Dugan laughed, then really laughed. Not at her, but at her statement.
“What’s so funny?”
He’d almost had tears in his eyes. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he said, “I was just thinking that I was going to have to introduce you to the men in my family.”
Right, like that’s going to happen, she thought. The only time men talked was when they talked about women.
“Let’s start out with something simple,” she told Dugan, changing the subject for the second time in less than half an hour. “Like one of those drug arrests you mentioned.”
There was more to her than just being an annoying investigative journalist, he thought. There were layers to this woman. Layers he was going to enjoy peeling back when the time cam
e.
But for now, she was right. His case had been stalled for over a week and it was time to shake a few trees and see what fell out.
“Okay,” he told her, writing down a couple of things in a very battered notebook he took out of his pocket, “Let’s get to it.”
* * *
“I need a hit, man,” the jittery woman told Dugan.
Scrawny and unkempt, she looked older than her years. She had long since stopped caring if her hair was combed and her makeup was on correctly or even at all. A one-time picture of perfection, now Linda Tanner only cared about finding her next score and the sooner she found it, the better.
Her window of comfort had come and gone and she was desperate now. A ring of perspiration circled her hairline and she was rocking in her seat as she talked to him, as if the perpetual motion would somehow help soothe her.
It didn’t.
“You wouldn’t have anything on you, would you?” she asked. She knew he didn’t, but she was hoping against hope anyway. Hazel eyes darted toward the woman sitting beside the cop. “How about you? You have anything? I just need a taste, just a little taste, that’s all. I’m going crazy here,” she told Dugan, her attention shifting back to him since he was the one she knew. Her fingertips turned almost pale as she dug them into his arm. “C’mon. Please,” she begged, looking from one to the other. “Just a little taste to see me through.”
Toni had seen junkies before, some up close and personal, like this one. But there was something about this woman that seemed to hit closer to home than the others.
Toni shifted uncomfortably, looking at Dugan. They were sitting opposite the woman in a communal room at the city jail.
Toni turned her head so that only he could hear her. “Can’t you do something for her?” she asked.
“Are you suggesting that I get her drugs?” Dugan asked, wondering just what it was that she wanted him to actually do.
“I’m suggesting that you do something to help her get past this point. Something to tide her over,” Toni said. Otherwise, all they’d hear was her lamenting her situation.
“Is that what you want, Linda?” Dugan asked, looking at the wild-eyed young woman. “You want something to tide you over?”
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