by Rachel Caine
He stood up, and looking down at her, there was no sense of protectiveness this time. Just height and distance.
“I just wanted to make sure that my client stayed alive long enough for the ink to dry on the legal agreements. I’ll catch the noon flight back.”
“Hope you have a use for all these frequent-flyer miles.”
“Vacation,” he said shortly. “With my girlfriend.”
He left. Jazz waited long enough to make sure he was gone for good, then buzzed the nurse and told her to get the tubes out, because she was leaving.
Lucia was, predictably, not happy with her, what with the checking out against medical advice, the bleeding into the bandages, and the shortness of breath, but Jazz wasn’t one to worry about things like that. She dry-swallowed some of the painkillers the doctor had pressed on her, fed Mooch the Cat and listened to Lucia’s cool, unemotional account of the day.
“I suppose it won’t do any good to tell you to go to bed, so I won’t bother,” Lucia said, and that was the end of the lecture, to Jazz’s satisfaction. Lucia dug in her purse and came up with a folder crammed with papers. She began laying them methodically on the kitchen table. Bank stuff. Jazz signed until it was done and then sat back, watching Lucia stuff it all into her bag.
This was moving too fast. Jazz felt massively tired. She swigged orange juice and focused on the cat happily chowing down in the corner of the kitchen. “It’s real, isn’t it?”
“Real enough,” Lucia agreed. “By next week, we’re going to have an office, a phone, Internet access…and hopefully, we’ll both still be alive to enjoy it.”
“We’ll also have our first case,” Jazz said. She picked up her orange juice, limped out of the kitchen into the living room and, with her toe, nudged the four file cartons stacked in the corner. “You may want to start reading up.”
Every box was labeled McCarthy, Benjamin, with the case number and box ID. Wasn’t legal for her to have them, either, but since they were all duplicates she didn’t figure anybody but Stewart and his crowd would care much. An ex-boyfriend in Records had done her the favor—and it had been a big one, but then she’d been real grateful—and she’d been poring over them obsessively for months now. The answer was in there. She just knew it was in there.
Lucia, who was carrying some kind of odd-looking sports drink, took a sip and raised her eyebrows. “Who’s paying us to work on your partner’s case?” she asked bluntly. Jazz just looked at her. “Ah. That’s what I thought. I don’t suppose we can count on friendly local cops sending business our way, either, can we?”
Jazz shrugged. “I’ve got a few buddies left.”
It didn’t sound convincing, even to her own ears. She wondered if Borden had gotten on his noon flight. She wondered if he really had a girlfriend, and if he did, if he was really going to fly her off to Jamaica soon and spend a week making love on white beaches with surf foaming over their feet. Probably. She’d been an idiot to think—
The doorbell rang.
Lucia, in the act of flipping open the first McCarthy carton, paused and looked at Jazz, then set down her drink. “No, I’ll get it,” she said when Jazz turned toward the door. “Sit.”
Jazz sank down in the straight-backed desk chair with a tiny sigh of relief, and watched Lucia move toward the door. Not, she noticed, coming at it in a straight line; Lucia hugged the hinge side of the door and slid a gun out of the holster at her back. She held it down at her side, leaned over and covered the peephole with one finger for a few seconds.
Nothing happened. No bullets came flying through the door.
“Who is it?” Lucia asked.
“Borden.” Definitely his voice. Jazz nodded. Lucia holstered the gun and undid the two dead bolts with sharp clicks.
Borden still looked casual and rumpled and tired, but he’d thrown on a leather jacket over the black knit shirt. Not the aggressively biker-wannabe thing he’d worn the first time Jazz had seen him; this one was cut straight, hung down to mid-thigh, and had lapels. Nice. It looked soft enough to cuddle, well-worn and conforming to his angles.
“Hey,” he said, and came in. Lucia shut the door behind him, locks and all. “I went by the hospital.”
“She’s out,” Lucia said simply.
“So I heard. The words against medical advice came up—” He spotted Jazz sitting at the table, and stopped dead in his conversational tracks.
“Counselor,” she said. “Nice of you to drop by. What, no flowers?”
“No, I brought a card,” he said. He reached into his jacket and came out with a red envelope, exactly the size and shape of a holiday card. Maybe not Valentine’s Day after all. Maybe something left over from Christmas instead.
He handed it to Lucia.
“What’s this?” she asked. She knew, though. She’d gotten a red envelope before.
“Your first case,” he said. “Nothing too demanding, considering Jazz has a thirty-two-caliber disability. But something to start you off. Listen, I’d stay to chat, but my flight’s leaving soon. Try not to get yourselves killed before we can get your paperwork finished, okay?”
He moved to the door, threw back the dead bolts, and didn’t look at Jazz directly at all.
“Borden,” Jazz said. He froze but didn’t turn to look at her. “Sorry. Listen, you’re being careful, right?”
“Always,” he said neutrally. “You should try it sometime. Might cut down on the scarring.”
He opened the door and left. Lucia relocked the bolts before saying, eyebrows raised, “Forgive me for noticing, but we’ve barely started and you’re already having a problem with our benefactors.”
“No,” Jazz sighed. “I’m having a problem with lawyers. Specifically, that one.”
Lucia sounded amused. “Are you really? Because that’s not how it looks from over here.”
“Shut up, will you? And open that thing, if you’re going to do it.”
Lucia took an elegant-looking pocketknife out and zipped it through paper with a hiss to open the envelope. She shook out two things: a Polaroid photograph and a folded sheet of paper. She looked at the picture for a few seconds, then passed it over to Jazz.
It was a photo of a young woman, maybe twenty-five. Blond, tall, walking with a load of books in her arms. Mod-looking glasses and a blunt haircut. Rounded shoulders. That, and the fluffy pink cardigan, screamed librarian. The camera had caught her frowning, looking three-quarters toward the lens, as if a sound had startled her. It had been taken on the street, in full sunlight. Going to work, maybe? The outfit didn’t look like casual wear, although it wasn’t a business suit, either.
No ring on her finger. Not a lot of jewelry, period, although there was a diamond glint in her ear.
Lucia was studying the piece of paper.
“What?” Jazz asked.
“We’re supposed to go to this address, sit in a car and watch her load up her van,” Lucia said. “Take some pictures. That’s it.”
“That’s it?” Jazz examined the picture again. “Does she look like a criminal to you?”
“How do criminals look? I’ve busted seventy-year-old grandmothers running counterfeit operations out of their garages,” Lucia said. “Sure, she looks like a grade-school teacher. Doesn’t mean anything. Maybe she’s hiding an Uzi under the cardigan.”
Which was an odd enough image to make Jazz laugh. She reached for the paper. Lucia passed it over. She hadn’t misstated; that was all it said. It gave an address, a time, no names or other information. Just directions on what to do and how long to do it.
Watch her load the van. Document with still and video photography. Forward all records and reports to James D. Borden at Gabriel, Pike & Laskins.
Okay. No problem. At least it would be easy work. The notation at the bottom—in Borden’s handwriting, Jazz felt sure—said that the fee would be two thousand dollars, but that both of them were required to be there, since Jazz was, quote, “impaired.” Get your leather-jacket ass back here, I’ll show y
ou impaired, she thought, smoldering, and handed it back. Lucia folded it and stuck it back in the envelope, along with the photograph, which they’d both handled carefully, without getting their prints on it. Jazz felt warm and fuzzy over the fact that they hadn’t even had to talk about it.
“Manny?” Lucia asked.
“Just the photo,” Jazz said. “Have him run the prints and do an image recognition search through his databases. See what turns up.”
It was a little amazing, really, that they were thinking along the same lines. Lucia seemed to think so, too. They exchanged a slow smile, broken by Jazz clapping a hand to her forehead and then wincing at the hot pull along her side at the movement.
“Shit, I forgot,” she said. “Manny was being watched, too. I have to get his new address from a dead drop.”
“Well, you’re not driving,” Lucia said, and picked up the keys as Jazz reached for them.
“They won’t let you open up the mailbox. I’m the only one with access, and even then, they card me for it.”
“I won’t go in. Taxi service only.”
Not much choice, really. Jazz nodded and levered herself out of her chair with only a small wince. She limped to her gun safe and got out her backup piece—a snubnosed.38—and attached the clip-on holster to her belt. The cops had confiscated her main gun, of course, along with Lucia’s. She hadn’t asked where Lucia’s backup piece had come from. Probably wouldn’t be wise to ask too many questions.
The cloak-and-dagger show proceeded slowly; Jazz retrieved the new phone number from the dead drop and spent thirty minutes convincing Manny to let her leave the photo in the same spot. He wanted to switch locations, too, all the way across town. She was more than a little out of the mood to coddle his paranoia. She was the one who’d been shot, after all.
Which did nothing to calm him down, of course. But she got him to agree to send a courier for the photo. He could dead-drop it all over town if he wanted. She had a job to do.
That was a nice change, she decided. And if she hadn’t been, well, shot, she’d have probably proposed a drink in celebration.
Just as well, all things considered, that the bars weren’t open, and painkillers didn’t go down well with alcohol.
And that having Lucia along lessened the desire to screw up her life any further.
An hour later, they were parked on a suburban street, eating food from a paper bag marked with a logo, and sipping diet drinks. Jazz hurt all over but didn’t complain about it. Lucia kept the radio on, tuned to a classic rock station, and they sat in comfortable silence watching the nondescript tract home with its pale brick and black shutters and closed garage door.
“What if she loads it in the garage?” Jazz asked. Lucia shrugged. “Do we still get paid?”
“I think we’d better take pictures anyway,” Lucia said, and proceeded to click the shutter. The camera was sleek, digital, and right out of the box. The battery was charging off a car adapter. Lucia checked the time code on the photo and said, “We’re right on time, according to the letter.”
Jazz nodded and took a bite of her hamburger. “Hey, if I fall asleep from the adrenaline, scream if there’s anything interesting.”
The day was still bright, although sunset would be coming on within the next hour; Jazz chewed mostly tasteless food and wondered if the silver plane threading the clear blue sky was carrying Borden back to New York. Lucia snapped pictures at some military interval known only to her own internal stopwatch. Cars drove by, some slow, some faster. None of them seemed interested in the house they were focusing on.
“We look suspicious,” Jazz said.
“Stakeouts do,” Lucia agreed. “And I’d suggest we get out and jog around, but neither of us is dressed for it and I don’t think that was what the doctor had in mind for you when he said light exercise. If you think sitting in a car looks suspicious, keeling over and bleeding profusely attracts even more attention.”
Jazz grunted around a mouthful of French fries. “Probably,” she agreed.
“I know it’s not necessary to say this, but if something goes wrong, you’re going to let me handle it, right? You’re not going to decide to kickbox a dozen ninjas and die on me?”
“Ninjas? Let me see the file.”
“Funny.” The light tone left Lucia’s voice. “I mean it. Don’t do anything to jeopardize yourself. You shouldn’t even be here, much less be exerting yourself.”
“Listen, at this rate, I’m more likely to die of cholesterol overload than a bullet.”
“Let’s keep it that way…heads up.”
A black van—cargo, not mini—turned the corner behind them and proceeded slowly up the block. Jazz felt a sudden flicker of something. Instinct, maybe. She dropped the rest of the fries into the bag, tossed it into the backseat, and made sure she could get to her gun.
Lucia snapped some pictures and watched the van glide up the street. Most of the houses were vacant of cars or people—it was a working-class neighborhood, largely deserted during the day—but there were kids out playing three yards down.
No sign of life from the house they’d been assigned to watch.
The van slowed, turned and bumped up into the driveway.
“I think we’re officially on duty,” Lucia said unnecessarily. “Think she’s going to load it up?”
The front door of the house swung open, and Pink Cardigan came out. It probably wasn’t fair to call her that, as the pink cardigan wasn’t in evidence today—there was a brown pullover sweater and khaki slacks, instead. Lucia snapped off a photo as the woman walked toward the driver’s side of the van. From their perspective, the driver was hidden.
“We should have parked up there for a decent shot of the driver,” Jazz noted, nodding about twenty feet ahead. Lucia didn’t respond. She was focused on the van, the woman. Snapping multiple photos of the license plate. Jazz left her to it and checked the side mirrors again. The kids were still galumping around in the yard a few doors down, spraying each other with water hoses. Nothing seemed to have changed.
Pink Cardigan went back into the house, and after a few minutes, the garage door rattled up.
“Uh-oh,” Jazz said. “That’s it. They’re going to pull it inside.”
But there wasn’t any room. The garage was packed full of boxes, and a small silver Nissan was squeezed into the remaining space.
Lucia took a picture.
Pink Cardigan grabbed a box—it appeared to be fairly heavy—and went around to the back of the black van. She opened the rear doors and slid the box inside.
Click.
Box number two. Same drill.
“Why isn’t the driver helping?” Jazz wondered. “They’d be done in half the time. He’s a little obvious sitting there idling the engine.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want to be seen,” Lucia said. Which was logical, and Jazz wished she hadn’t opened her mouth. She sucked on diet cola and glanced at the side mirrors again. Nothing sinister going on anywhere that she could see.
Pink Cardigan went back for the third box. Click. “Watch out for lens flash,” Jazz said.
Lucia threw her an irritated look. “I’m not a novice,” she said. “Relax.”
That really wasn’t possible, because this was feeling really wrong. Not that there was anything obviously strange going on…another bright shiny day in suburbia…but Jazz felt tension creeping up her spine and into her shoulders.
Pink Cardigan was getting red in the face, hauling boxes. She was working on the fifth one now, looking harassed. If what she was doing was illegal, she was pretty unconcerned about it. Of course, that was the secret to getting away with it, not being furtive. Still, this was a little too blatant, wasn’t it? Out in the open, at her own house, personally loading up the shiny black obvious van?
Didn’t make sense.
Click. Lucia ran off another photo. Jazz was willing to bet they all looked pretty much the same.
“What are we looking at?” Jazz asked.
; “Good question,” Lucia answered. “I have no idea. She’s a neat person, conservative dresser—I’d put the outfit she’s got on at high-end department store—and there aren’t any markings on the boxes. Plain brown cardboard and tape. Everything sealed up, like for shipping. I don’t know.”
“Drugs?”
“Not like any drug shipment I’ve ever seen. Way too obvious. And look at the number of boxes stacked in there. She’d be a Colombian drug lord, with that inventory. And the lack of security…”
Jazz’s cell phone rang, caller unknown. When she answered, it was Manny.
“Jazz,” he blurted before she could say a word. “That picture? Her name’s Sally Collins. She’s a single mother, one daughter, Julia, fourteen. No criminal record, not even a speeding ticket in the last ten years. Normal debts. She co-owns a ceramics shop.”
“Thanks, Manny….” He’d already hung up.
She relayed the information to Lucia.
“Ceramics,” Lucia said. “Could be what’s in the boxes.”
“Ceramics with drugs?”
“It’s a stretch,” Lucia admitted.
“Yeah.” Jazz chewed her lip. “So what do we do?”
“Take pictures,” Lucia answered. “Until it’s done.”
Pragmatic, but not satisfying. Jazz sipped cola and scanned the mirrors again. Still, all quiet on the neighborhood front. It was positively Mayberry out there.
Pink Cardigan carried a total of ten boxes out. When she had the tenth one stacked in the van to her satisfaction, she closed the rear doors and walked around to the driver’s side again. A short conversation ensued.
“Parabolic mike,” Lucia said softly.
“On the shopping list,” Jazz agreed. “We definitely need more toys.”
The black van reversed out onto the street. Lucia leaned over, angling for a driver’s side shot, but the windows were tinted and rolled up tight.
It pulled away and made a left turn out of sight.
Jazz turned back to the house. Pink Cardigan was standing there, arms folded, staring down at her shoes. Frowning.
Lucia took another picture.
