by Teri White
“Sorry?”
“That you don’t approve of me.”
“It’s not a matter of approval. Maybe I even admire you, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re a very frightening man.”
“You’re frightened?” His voice rang with disbelief.
Devlin opened his eyes and turned to meet his gaze. “Not of you personally, of course. But of what surrounds you. The danger. It seems like the air stinks of it.”
“That’s the way I live.”
“My God, how do you stand it? You should be a raving maniac.”
Lars just said, “Do you want out? If you do, just say so.”
There was a long silence.
Then Devlin shook his head. “No. No, I don’t want out.” He spoke firmly, but wearily.
Lars grinned his relief. “You ready for that coffee now?”
21
They were sitting in a tacky diner on Ninth Street. Spaceman was actually eating, having ordered the lunch special, which turned out to be a greasy hamburger. What made it special, apparently, was the bag of undoubtedly soggy potato chips served on the side.
Blue, who believed in being grateful for even the smallest of favors, was very glad to be sitting across the room from where his partner was eating. And eating, unbelievably, with apparent relish. As for Blue himself, he wasn’t even sure that he wanted to drink the cup of coffee he’d ordered simply to avoid being conspicuous.
They were sitting apart not to spare Blue’s sensibilities, but because Spaceman was here to meet one of his snitches. Snitches were a breed inclined, perhaps justifiably, toward a certain amount of paranoia. While a stoolie would talk openly with his own particular cop, there was some reluctance to feel outnumbered. So Blue was sitting at the counter, pretending like he’d just decided to drop into the Black Hole of Calcutta for a cup of the great java, and at the same time trying to keep his french cuffs out of any of the unidentifiable puddles that dotted the countertop.
Spaceman straightened a little as the diner door opened again. The new customer was a very tall, almost painfully thin black man. He wore a shiny green suit, a Robin Hood hat with a small red feather, and yellow plastic sunglasses. He walked directly to Spaceman’s booth and sat down. The two men talked briefly, while Blue tried to watch and not look as if he was watching.
He was startled when Spaceman suddenly raised a hand to wave him over, but after a moment, he slid from the stool and went. He left the coffee behind.
“My old buddy Roy here thought that you might as well join us,” Spaceman said dryly.
“He made me for a cop?”
Roy’s laugh had a rusty, unused sound to it. “Hell, boy,” he said. “The way you dressed, I knew you had to be a fag, a pimp, or some kind of crazy Hollywood-type cop. Ain’t no pansy in his right mind gonna come in here. And you much too vanilla to be a pimp in this neighborhood. So by process of elimination, I figure out that you must be a noble defender of the public safety.”
Blue frowned, glancing down at his new Giorgio Armani sportscoat and striped shirt. “What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?”
“Nothing,” Spaceman muttered. “You look beautiful. Sit the hell down and let Roy tell us what he knows.”
Blue slid in next to Spaceman and kept his mouth shut. Never having spent much time on the streets before his fairly recent shift into homicide, he didn’t have any snitches to call his own yet. Well, there were a couple of members of the city administration he knew from his days in public relations. They sometimes called to shoot the bull about what was going on in City Hall, but that probably didn’t count.
Roy helped himself to a chip. It was soggy. “I don’t have much,” he said. “Mostly just a lot of hopeful talk on the streets.”
“Hopeful talk about what?”
“’Bout mebbe it’s gonna be a white Christmas. Or a white New Year, at least. Big blizzard supposed to hit the city. Good days be coming, is what they say.”
“Who is they?”
Roy smiled, showing two gold teeth, one on either side of his mouth, like bookends. “All those poor, simpleminded folk who still believes in Santy Claus and the good fairy.”
“What else?”
Roy took his time before answering, pulling out a long black cigar and going through the ritual of lighting it. “The way I hear it, there’s a new supplier coming to town. From the east.”
“New York?” Spaceman said.
“Not that east, fool. I mean the Orient.”
“Which might explain Hua,” Spaceman said to Blue. He had finally finished the hamburger and so naturally he reached for a cigarette. Blue tried to lean as far away as he could from the impenetrable cloud of smoke rising from the booth. “But this talk about a new supplier,” Spaceman said. “Won’t that upset some people?”
“Not the folks what plays with their noses, it won’t.”
“Not them. I mean Papa D. This territory has been his for a long time. The last fool who tried to open up as an independent upset Papa a lot.” He glanced at Blue, smiling faintly. “We found that turkey in the old zoo. And in Inglewood. And even a little bit in Malibu, I think, although that piece was hard to identify. No prints on that particular part of a person’s anatomy.” He snickered at the memory.
Roy nodded. “What you say is true. But in this case, I have heard that Papa D. is making some kind of deal. Maybe the old man is feeling his age and looking to retire.”
“Maybe.”
Roy unwound his length and stood. “That’s all I got, Spaceman, and the horses are at the gate.”
“Okay, thanks.” Spaceman took a folded bill from his shirt pocket and slid it across the table.
Roy reached for it.
But Spaceman kept two fingers on the money. “By the way, from now on, you can consider a call from Detective Maguire here the same as a call from me.”
Roy’s gaze flickered over Blue for a moment, then he nodded. “Your man is my man.” The money was released and Roy was gone.
Blue waved the lingering cigar smoke out of his face. “Doesn’t he take a chance meeting you in public like this?”
“Roy? Nah, he’s a bookie. As far as anybody else knows, he’s my bookie.”
“Is he?”
Spaceman only grinned.
They paid the tab and left the diner. Blue stopped beside the car. “About my clothes,” he said.
“Forget it. You can’t help yourself.”
“The thing is, I’m having dinner with Sharon after we get off.” He felt like a damned school kid, admitting to having a date with the head cheerleader or something.
Spaceman held up a V-for-victory sign.
Blue wanted to tell him that he and Sharon were a long way from victory, but instead he just shrugged and got into the car.
22
Toby was swimming half-heartedly, his thoughts a long way from the pleasant surroundings of the Century West Club. Despite his complete lack of attention or interest, he did the usual number of laps back and forth across the pool. By this time, it was pure instinct. The old self-preservation thing. A man past thirty didn’t keep the body of a twenty-five-year-old by shirking the essentials.
He finally finished and pulled himself up out of the water. Lars Morgan handed him a towel. Not showing his surprise, Toby sat on the cool tile and began to dry himself. “How the hell did you get in here?” he asked.
“It wasn’t easy. You picked a pretty ritzy place to sweat in.”
He knew the club was expensive. It was the favorite of the young professionals who inhabited the heights of Century City, and more than an occasional celebrity. Toby shrugged. “Yeah, well, I could go to the Y. The sweat would be the same, I guess, but my psyche would suffer. This place is an indulgence. Someplace I can go to get away from it all.” He glanced at Lars. “Usually, at least,” he said ruefully. “What do you want anyway?”
“I have a visit to make and I just wanted some company.”
“Is this going to be anything like t
he visit you and Conway made to Phillipe Tran?”
Lars was playing with his car keys. “You saw Dev?”
Toby shook his head. “We talked, is all.” He stood to finish drying his legs. “Hell, we’re both in this thing. I just thought that we should touch base with each other.” He could read in the superficially placid grey eyes exactly what was bugging Lars. “Don’t worry, Wolf, we weren’t plotting behind your back.”
Lars was obviously irritated that his thoughts had been so transparent and the face closed up even more. “I know that, damnit.” He picked up the discarded wet towel and threw it at Toby. “Go get dressed.”
“Who are we going to see?” Toby pressed.
“Just Tran again. We might have to be a little more, ah, persuasive this time is all.”
“And you figure that I can persuade better than Devlin?”
Lars grinned, his good humor restored. “Hell, lover boy, just flex your pecs at the little creep and he’ll fall down in fear.”
Toby flicked the towel at him, then headed for the locker room to change.
The only customers in the vegetable store when they entered were a couple of old Viet women, dressed entirely in black and chattering softly in their own language. Ignoring them, Lars took one of the empty carts and pushed it as he led the way up the main aisle.
Toby followed. He was now wearing what might be called Beverly Hills macho—there were women, including his scheduled client for this afternoon, who got off on the battered leather bomber jacket and the button-fly 501 Levis. Toby was mildly bemused by what was going on here. Real life had disappeared, replaced, it seemed, by bad melodrama. Once upon a time, he’d had a client, a plump redhead, whose husband owned a disco and was supposedly part of the Vegas mob. That brief relationship was Toby’s closest brush with the so-called underworld.
Discounting, of course, his days in the street gangs of Chicago. Now, however, he was caught up in something more dangerous, although it was still far from clear to him exactly what that something was.
Phillipe Tran was standing at the far end of the aisle. He held a yellow garden hose in one hand, idly directing a fine spray over a bin of dark green, waxy cucumbers. He did not seem to notice their approach.
At a nod from Lars, Toby held back slightly, arms akimbo. He tried to look silently menacing and felt like a damned fool. Then he thought back twenty-five years or so, remembering a scared Okie farm kid, suddenly orphaned and dumped on the streets of the Windy City. Get tough or die, his uncle said. And so he got tough.
It had been a long time since those days, but the memory was still sharp. He felt as if one layer of his soul was being slowly stripped away—the part of him that was a soft and pretty toy for all the rich bitches in the city—and underneath there was still a punk with the motorcycle boots and switchblade. Or maybe it was a more recent incarnation being revealed—the bloody and bloodied soldier with his precious M-16.
It occurred to Toby that he didn’t know who the hell he really was.
Lars had parked the cart so that it blocked any possible escape, then stepped forward to put a hand on Tran’s shoulder. Startled, the man jumped spastically. The hose jerked and water sprayed sideways, almost soaking Lars, who managed to step away quickly enough to avoid getting wet.
Toby was glad that the water had missed, because there was something about the look on Lars’ face that worried him a little. Something that seemed to say Phillipe Tran was walking on a dangerous edge.
“Hello, there, Phillipe.” The pleasant, buddy-buddy tone was belied by the stony eyes. “Don’t get so nervous. It’s just me. And you probably remember good old Tobias here.”
Tran glanced beyond Lars, to where Toby stood, but neither man spoke.
“We’re here to talk some more about the diamonds,” Lars said, still sounding friendly.
“Those damned diamonds again. I told you before that I don’t know anything about them.” Tran bent over and reached behind the bin to turn off the water.
As he straightened, Lars moved. The side of his hand jabbed sharply into Tran’s gut. Tran grunted and clutched at his stomach. “Boy, I am getting sick and tired of screwing around with you. No more fun and games.” The voice was cold and hollow-sounding now; the heat of anger would have been far less frightening.
Toby glanced around, but suddenly the old ladies were gone and he was alone with Tran and Lars. That wasn’t an especially comforting thought; it reminded him too much of the old days.
Somebody had to break through the nearly visible tension that was surrounding the three of them or what happened might be very bad. Shit, Toby thought, it was up to him. Again. Sometimes no one, not even Conway, could pull Lars Morgan’s chain and keep him under control like he could. God only knew why. Toby just knew that there were a number of people from the old days who were alive only because of him. Not to mention a whole damned village that came very close to being torched.
“Tran, let’s get to it. The unhappy truth is that you’re dealing here with a couple of very hard cases. It seems to me like there’s two possible ways you can play this hand you seem to have been dealt. There’s the easy way and the rough way. I know what my choice would be, but then I don’t like pain much.”
Lars shot him a mildly irritated look, which he ignored.
Tran picked up an orange and tossed it from hand to hand several times. “The diamonds belonged to my father,” he said finally. “What’s in this for me if I cooperate?”
“Ten thousand,” Lars said.
“Fifty.”
Lars just laughed.
Tran glanced again at Toby, as if hoping to find an ally there, but Toby only shrugged. After one more moment, Tran gave in. “I’ve heard some gossip,” he said. “Old names from home.”
“What old names?”
He was still trying to play it cagey, not commit himself too far until he could see just what the score was. “Maybe Ky?” he suggested.
Lars spit across the aisle. “To hell with Ky,” he said harshly. “I know he’s not in this and you know it, too.”
Tran bit his lip as he realized that a bluff wasn’t going to work. “Okay, look, I want to go along with you. After all, you were my father’s partners, right? But I need to talk to some people first. I mean, you cannot expect me to, ah, burn all my bridges, can you?”
Lars was quiet, except for a soft whistle as he thought it over. “Twenty-four hours,” he said at last. “I’m running out of time fast here, which means that you’re running out even faster. Tell me what I want to know then or it won’t be nice what happens to General Tran’s little boy. You capice?”
In the melting pot that was Los Angeles, Tran understood and he nodded to indicate that he capiced all too clearly.
Back on the sidewalk in front of the store, Lars stopped to light a cigarette. “You did good in there, Tobias,” he said, apparently forgetting his earlier irritation. “Just enough menace coming across.”
“Takes no brains to have balls,” Toby muttered. The words were something he’d seen scribbled on the wall in the men’s room of one of the city’s fanciest clubs. He glanced at his watch. “You know, boss, we don’t have this frigging fortune yet, and I’m supposed to be working in twenty minutes.”
Lars grinned, but rather surprisingly passed up the opportunity to make a crack about Toby’s line of work as they got into the car.
23
Sharon Engels, of the medical examiner’s office, had a serious expression on her face. Her brow wrinkled slightly as she tried the wine. Then she nodded. “You have an unerring palate, sir,” she said lightly.
Everything the two of them had said so far during the evening had been said lightly. If things got any jollier, Blue was afraid he might throw up.
He’d been hoping that a romantic dinner would take the edge off their anger. Then he discarded that word. No, it wasn’t anger that he felt. It was more like a bad case of hurt feelings, and he sort of thought that Sharon was experiencing the same thing. T
he whole thing was utterly stupid, like a couple of children squabbling in the sandbox, and it had kept them apart for nearly two weeks.
But how could he miss with dinner at a place with a name like Romeo and Juliet?
Still, he had to admit, things had not been an unqualified success since their rendezvous in the parking lot. They seemed to be dancing around one another, like boxers afraid of a body blow.
Sharon was apparently totally involved in reading the menu. “I’ve missed you, Blue,” she said suddenly, not looking up.
“Me, too. I mean, I’ve missed you.” Smooth, Maguire, nice to see that all those Saturday mornings spent in Miss Puddingham’s charm school hadn’t been wasted.
“We’ve been a couple of real dopes to blow all this time pouting.”
“It’s not too late.” He hoped.
She shrugged. “I leave in two days.”
“That soon?” Blue took a drink of the perfect, one hundred and fifty dollar-a-bottle-wine, but now the taste seemed just a little off. “You haven’t thought about not going?”
“Thought about it?” She toyed with a strand of untamed hair. “Yes, Blue, I did think about it.”
“And?” He tried to make the one word sound casual.
Across the room, someone laughed loudly.
Sharon shook her head. “And I’d be a complete idiot to pass up this opportunity.”
“I know that.”
“Well, then?”
At times like this, Blue regretted his decision to give up smoking. The rituals involved in the consumption of tobacco could be used very nicely to fill awkward moments. As it was, all he could do was swallow some more wine and, like her, pretend to study the menu. Finally he gave up. “Look, Shar, I know how important this is to you. I’m glad the chance came. And if this were a perfect world—or if I were the perfect new era man—that would be an end to it. But the world isn’t perfect and I’m not even close. So while part of me, the modern, feminist-male part, says good for you and go for it, there’s another part that feels … rejected. Hurt, I guess, because you’d rather go off to do your own thing instead of staying here with me. There.”
