On Thin Ice

by Susan Andersen

  As far as he could see that left him with only one alternative. Now he had no choice but to take the scam public. Unless word that he was interested in heroin got spread around a little, this case was never going to move. Instead it would stagnate, for he was getting absolutely nowhere with it as it presently stood. But taking it public could be risky.

  Damn risky.

  The Follies was a microcosm of society as a whole. Damn near every personality type could be found represented within the framework that comprised the company. Mick was adept at ferreting out those who used—he had a real nose for it—but there was a fine line to be walked here.

  For one thing, while being manager had gained him entree into Follies and had given him access to personnel files; it was also the factor most liable to hinder any dealings with the hard-core drug users. He possessed the authority to fire them, which was not a situation likely to make them anxious to admit to their habits, let alone share with him the name of their supplier. Add to that the small-town aspect inherent in having close contact day and night with a select group of people and he was treading a very thin line. It would take only one wrong step for the entire cast to learn of his interest.

  He wanted certain people to believe he was a part of the drug culture. He did not, however, want everyone to think so.

  What he debated, as he allowed the chatter of the women to drift in one ear and out the other on their drive to Fremont the next morning, was whether or not he wanted Sasha to think so.

  As the women took pictures of the troll, a monolithic presence that crouched beneath the bridge, hair obscuring half his face, one protruding eye glaring out at the world, the crumpled body of a Volkswagen Beetle clutched in one long-fingered hand, he had to wonder just how inclined she would be to believe it if he did choose to go in that direction.

  At least he had vented his spleen on Vietnam last night and not narcotics, so perhaps he could convince her that Pete’s addiction had induced in him a burning desire to control the trade.

  “Oh, God, aren’t they wonderful?” Sasha interrupted his thoughts a short while later. “Mick, go pose with them.”

  He looked at the statues that comprised Waiting for the Interurban. Life-sized commuters, they huddled together under a bus shelter in the middle of Fremont Avenue. The waitress at the café where they’d had breakfast this morning had informed them chattily that the residents of Fremont loved to dress them up and would use any reason to do so. The statues were great, but still . . . “You’re kidding?” he said in horror. “You want me to stand out there and pose with them?” The narrow sidewalks supported a pretty healthy foot trade and there was no way in hell . . .

  “Yes, come on. Don’t be a poop.”

  “Yeah, come on, Vinicor,” Connie added dryly, and then Sara and Brenda added their persuasion.

  “Tell you what,” he said a little desperately. He was not going out there in the middle of the street to simper with a bunch of statues, and that was that. “Why don’t you, uh, ladies go pose with them and I’ll take photos for you on each of your cameras?”

  That was greeted with enthusiasm and they loaded his hands with Minoltas and Nikons. While they posed with unabashed exhibitionism, Mick’s attention returned to his problem.

  Hadn’t he just been bemoaning the way he’d mishandled the situation last night? Actually, what better way was there to get her to confide in him than by letting her hear of his interest in her favorite drug from another, presumably disinterested, party? Hey, who knew, maybe Morrison would even be the one to give her the news, and wouldn’t that be poetic justice.

  For the first time all morning Mick perked up. This could work.

  He shoved aside the thought that it would mean an end to his relationship with Sasha and concentrated on the women’s antics as they mugged with the statues, grinning as he clicked off several frames for each of them on their cameras. If his smile was perhaps a little forced, well . . .

  All things came to an end and few knew that better than he. Sure, there was something about her that grabbed at a vital part of him when they were together, but that was only sex. And, hell, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t known already that that wouldn’t last forever. There were plenty of other women in the world.

  The important thing here was that maybe this damn case would finally start to go somewhere.

  His plan succeeded more spectacularly and with much greater speed than he could have dreamed. The result, unfortunately, was not at all what he expected. It turned his whole life upside down instead and left him scrambling to save the relationship he’d been perfectly willing to toss aside just a few short hours ago.

  Used to concocting elaborate lies when dealing with this element, Mick outfoxed himself in this instance. Had he simply asked outright, the hard drug users could have saved him a lot of time and trouble, for as he’d surmised earlier, the Follies was a lot like a small town in the respect that everyone basically knew who would and wouldn’t do what. It was common knowledge that Sasha Miller disdained anything or anyone connected with drugs. She’d established that beyond a shadow of a doubt upon first joining the troupe, when people who knew of her connection to Lon but didn’t know her had approached with requests for drugs. Consequently, she would be the last one with whom anything pertaining to that particular subject would be discussed.

  It was purely by chance that Sasha even happened to overhear the conversation that changed everything.

  Dave DiGornio’s family home was an immense sprawling structure in an elegant neighborhood on Lake Washington, and the DiGornios were hospitable hosts. Their party hit on all cylinders following dinner.

  It was cold and dark outside and rain came down in sheets, but all the doors had been cracked to alleviate the stuffiness generated by so many bodies. The crowd was loud and transient, shifting from room to room and spilling over onto the patio to stand beneath the eaves for a smoke, a breath of fresh air, or simply to admire the lighted swimming pool, whose surface was dimpled by the pounding rain. This was hardly the group to be put off by a little chill.

  Standing in the kitchen near the back door, Sasha sipped a glass of wine as she looked at the mob that stood between her and the arched doorway to the dining room. Seattle was a coffee lover’s mecca, and the crowd gathered around the gleaming chrome expresso machine appeared to be serious coffee lovers indeed. Sasha grinned into her wineglass. This probably wasn’t the place to lecture on the perils of caffeine.

  Not that she was of a mind to lecture anybody. But the sheer number of people pretty much eliminated any hope of getting through to the dining room where she’d last seen Mick. She slipped out of the house through the door at her back.

  Once away from the lighted back porch it was dark as pitch for a short stretch, not even the weakest of moonlight penetrating the heavy storm clouds. Luckily, the brick path that curved around the house stayed close to the walls and was partially protected by the sheltering eaves. Sasha managed to keep reasonably dry as she moved quickly but cautiously toward the lighted patio that fronted the house and overlooked the lake.

  The low voice that came out of the shadows stopped her in her tracks and made her slap a startled hand to her heart to contain its sudden racing pulse. Eyes trained on the group of people standing within the glow of lights reflecting off the pool, she hadn’t even noticed the two men sitting in the open doorway of the cabana.

  She recognized them as John Beggart and Marty Roth. Neither were men with whom she had much contact and she would have moved right along if the mention of Mick’s name hadn’t caught her attention.

  “Vinicor?” Roth was saying. “You’re full of shit, brother. No way I believe that.”

  “Hey, I didn’t believe it either, man; not at first. But he shows up at the 211, and I’m tellin’ ya, he’s like some surprised to see me there shootin’ some pool.” Beggart paused and Sasha heard him sniff a substance up his nose. Her stomach started to churn with an unspecified dread that turned all too specific with Begg
art’s next words. “He shoots a few games with me and after I get back from a little trip to the john he says he heard tell someone in the troupe was dealin’ H, and he asks me, do I know where he can score some?”

  “Bullshit. Vinicor? ”

  “Yeah, man, I’m tellin’ ya!”

  “The dude’s too healthy and besides, he’s screwin’ Miller. She’d never . . .”

  Oh God. Sasha didn’t wait around to hear the rest. Hot rage burning in her veins and cold sickness like a chunk of dry ice eating away at her stomach, she raced blindly past the group of skaters and techs on the patio, not hearing—let alone responding to—the greetings, one of which was Mick’s. Oh God. That sonofabitch, was all she could think. The words chanted in time with the heavy pulse beating in her temples.

  Mick caught up with her in the upstairs bedroom, where she was pawing frantically through the pile of coats heaped on the bed. “Hey,” he said just as she unearthed her letterman’s jacket from the middle of the stack. The face she turned his way was wiped free of expression and dead white. Filled with immediate concern, he reached out a hand. “What’s going on, Sasha? Are you all right?”

  Her arm snapped back in an abrupt movement that pulled it out of his reach. “Don’t,” she said with great precision. “You. Touch me.”

  “What the—” He reached for her again but then at the look that flashed across her face, hastily retracted his hands, spreading them wide of his body in entreaty. “Talk to me,” he demanded in his most authoritative tone.

  She promptly complied. “I want you out of my life.”

  Mick’s heart slammed up against the wall of his chest and acid poured into his gut like water over a spill gate. But he’d learned long ago to function through stress and so managed to respond calmly enough. “You want me out of your life,” he reiterated with quiet equanimity. “Might I ask why?”

  It wasn’t the best time for quiet equanimity.

  “My God, you’re a cool one, aren’t you,” she demanded furiously. “You truly are one frosty son of a bitch.” Hugging her coat to her middle she considered him with hostile eyes. “Tell me, Mick, just what did you hope to gain from all of this, anyway? Did you think if you slept with me, if you gave the little country girl a sexual thrill, that I’d be able to provide you with drugs? With—what did you call it now—scag?” She shook her head wildly and her laughter was too loud and bitter. “Honey, you aren’t the first man to assume that because Lon ’n me are friends, I must have access to the stuff, too. You’re just the first who thought he had to screw me for it.”

  Her gray eyes locked with his as she futilely attempted to wrestle her way into her jacket. She was too upset to notice that one sleeve was turned inside out. “I want you to stay the hell away from me,” she said with fierce conviction. “If you don’t,” she promised grimly, “I will turn you in to the authorities so fast it’ll make your head swirl—and you can take that to the bank, Vinicor. Lonnie’s involvement with your filthy drug almost brought me down once; I will be damned if I’ll allow you a shot at bringing me down, too.”

  From the very beginning Mick had recognized that Sasha didn’t fit his usual drug dealer’s profile; yet still he had ignored all indications to the contrary. Now knowledge of her innocence burst through him like a huge multicolored pyrotechnic and he was suffused with a joy so pure he nearly sang with it. The next instant he was swamped with terror. His only concrete thought was, if you don’t want to lose her, bud, you’d better damn well start talking.

  All his life, lies had come as easily to him as breathing and faced at this moment with explaining himself, he didn’t even consider telling the truth. Well, he considered it. But then he rejected the idea. Not that he was going to lie to her, exactly; he just wasn’t going to tell her the entire story. Total candor in this particular instance could well slit his throat.

  He could tell her he was DEA, of course, but leave out the part about her being his primary target. Except . . .

  If she told just one person, the odds were high that one person would find it too juicy not to tell someone else. And once word spread the case was burned.

  Shit.

  “Exactly what is it I’m supposed to have done?” he questioned cautiously.

  “Damn you, Mick, don’t you play the innocent with me! ” She quit wrestling with the sleeve of her coat and glared up at him. “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about.”

  “Yeah, I think I do. But I’d like to hear it all laid out, if you don’t mind, so we know exactly what we’re dealing with. I don’t want any misunderstandings.”

  “Okay, understand this. John Beggart says you asked him where you could score some heroin.”

  Mick’s face was noncommittal. “He told you that personally.” The flatness of his tone indicated this was not a question.

  Sasha gave him a look that was filled with loathing. “Don’t be a fool—everybody knows how I feel about drugs. I overheard him talking to Marty Roth.”

  Oh perfect, he thought with self-disgust. Everyone knows . . . except you, Vinicor. Fool is the word for it, all right.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said. “It’s part of my job description . . .”

  “Oh please!”

  “Listen; just hear me out. It’s come to management’s attention that heroin is being trafficked through the Follies. The reason they hired me in the first place is because they know how I feel about drugs—the subject of my brother came up at my interview and we discussed some of the training I’d taken in college for dealing with this sort of thing. Anyhow, in today’s economy business degrees are a dime a dozen and getting this job was pretty much contingent upon working with them to see if I could find out who’s responsible.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Sasha said flatly.

  Yeah, it sounded weak to him, too. “Call Dello and ask him,” he retorted without hesitation and made a mental note to call the Follies’ CEO first.

  “Don’t think that I won’t, Mick.”

  “I’m counting on it, honey. He’ll confirm that I’m here to help stop drugs, not to traffick in them. Listen, Saush, would I have told you about Pete last night if I thought you had anything to do with drugs? It would’ve been incredibly stupid, don’t y’think?” And so he had thought just this morning. Right now it seemed like the smartest move he had made since beginning this case.

  He stepped forward to remove her jacket from her hands. “And I’ll tell you something else, darlin’,” he added, glad to be able to divulge something that was one hundred percent honest. “If there was a sexual thrill to be had here, it was all mine. I never once made love to you for any other reason than—”

  The bedroom door slammed opened and Amy Nitkey, one of the lighting techs, burst into the room. She stumbled to a stop just over the threshold when she saw Mick and Sasha standing there. Discomforted by the palpable tension surrounding them, she stammered, “Oh, hey, sorry. I didn’t know anyone was in here.”

  “Yeah, do you mind?” Mick inquired politely. “We’d like just a few more minutes’ privacy.”

  “Sure. Just let me grab my coat, okay? I gotta run out to the car for a pack of smokes and it’s coming down cats and dogs out there.”

  Mick looked at the stack of coats nearly three feet deep, saw by Sasha’s face that she was maybe seconds away from getting ready to cut and run, and tossed her letterman’s jacket to Amy. “Here, use this. There’s an umbrella over there by the door, too.”

  Amy took one look at the expression in his eyes and shrugged. “Yeah, sure. I’ll get this back to you in just a few minutes, Sasha.” Then she was gone.

  Mick immediately turned back to Sasha, not waiting for her to lambast him for that, too. “You gotta believe me, Sasha. I do not take drugs. Call Dello. Talk to my mother. Come with me to a doctor and I’ll piss in a bottle or get a blood test. Jesus, I can probably get you a dozen affadavits by tomorrow afternoon.”

  Then, stepping close, he squatted slightly to bring th
eir faces on a more equitable level and reached out to brush her hair off her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “I’ll understand if you need more proof than my word before you can trust me on that,” he said. “But if you take nothing else on faith, believe this. The only reason I’ve ever made love to you is because I can’t be near you without wanting it so bad it nearly rips me apart. I swear that to you on my mother’s life.”

  And Sasha believed him because she had to. No one else had ever made her feel the way Mick Vinicor did. She was a highly disciplined woman who before this man entered her life had never known it was possible to be reduced to a being who was all nerve endings and instincts. It would simply destroy something inside of her to believe it had all been a sham, a deliberate attack on her senses.

  She nodded.

  “I don’t suppose you want to stay with me tonight, though, huh?”

  She was opening her mouth to tell him he supposed correctly when they became aware of a horrendous commotion breaking out downstairs.

  ELEVEN

  Only a short while ago, Connie had been searching for Sasha. Not for any particular reason, she simply hadn’t seen her in a while and wondered where she’d gotten herself off to. Consequently, when Connie entered a new room at the party she’d ask around to see if anyone had seen her.

  “Find Vinicor,” Lon Morrison advised somewhat sourly from a stool at the bar in the family rec room where he was watching a game of pool in progress. “She seems to be firmly attached to his hip these days.”

  Connie cocked an eyebrow. “Sour grapes, Mr. Morrison?”

  “Not at all, Miss Nakamura. Just a statement of fact.”

  For the first time, Connie looked at Morrison through eyes not biased by previous knowledge. She knew her opinion of him had a tendency to be less than rose colored—it was sort of a knee-jerk protectiveness of Sasha. Connie felt that for a supposedly very good friend, Lon had treated her friend shabbily.

  It seemed sort of dog-in-the-mangerish, however, to hold it against him when Sasha didn’t. And Saush had gone out of her way to relate Lon’s fierce defense of her back in their high school days. Returning his steady gaze, Connie came to the conclusion that perhaps it wasn’t up to her to sit in judgment of him.