ONE LAST CHANCE

by Justine Davis

  "What can I do?" she pleaded.

  His crushing embrace tightened even more. "Hold me," he whispered in that horrible, desperate voice, "just hold me."

  She did, murmuring soft, soothing words that meant nothing except that she loved him, the only thing she could offer him. She stroked his tangled hair, rubbed the tight, knotted muscles of his shoulders, and crooned a litany of peace over and over, lowering her voice to a soft pitch that lulled. She felt him begin to relax, but she never varied her movements or the sound of her voice until at last she heard his breathing deepen and felt his body slacken against hers. And still she held him, cradling the head that rested on her breasts, stroking the tousled, streaky mane of hair, softly whispering her love even as she held in her fear.

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  «^»

  "Come on, partner. You know my mother'll kill me if you don't show up."

  Chance shook his head. "Can't. Like the fine, churchgoing citizen that he is, de Cortez is closing the club. Shea won't be working."

  "So bring her along," Quisto said with a grin. "My mother'd love to get her hands on that girl. She'd have you two engaged by the time the turkey was carved."

  Chance went pale. He thought he'd conquered the sick feeling that had defeated him that night by the pool, thought Shea's tender ministrations had healed him, but it all came rushing back at Quisto's careless words.

  "You know I can't do that."

  "Why? You know I was only kidding. My mother can be the soul of tact when the spirit moves her. And she'd never in a million years hurt you. She says you've already had to carry more than should be asked of any man."

  He could hear the tiny dark-eyed woman's phrasing in her son's voice. Celeste Romero might be small of stature, but she ruled her large family with love and an iron hand, and there wasn't one of them who wouldn't die for her. And there had been times, when she had so warmly welcomed his battered soul into her heart, that Chance hadn't been sure he wouldn't include himself in that category. He sighed inwardly, pulling himself together yet again.

  "I know she wouldn't," he said softly. "But she's not the problem."

  "Then what?"

  "Have you forgotten," he said dryly, "about twenty or so assorted nieces and nephews? Each with the subtlety of a tank and absolutely no capacity for keeping a secret? And every last one of them proud as heck of their 'Uncle Quisto' … the cop?"

  Quisto looked taken aback, then appalled. "God, Chance, I'm sorry. I completely forgot—man, I was out of line." He shook his head. "It's just that you two seem so right together, I forget how it started, forget that she's even part of this," he finished, gesturing at the ubiquitous papers that nearly covered the table.

  "Tell me about it," Chance said grimly.

  Shaken, Quisto stared at him. "I feel like a guy who's just had a glimpse of hell … and you're living in it."

  "It seems to have become my permanent address," Chance said, with a touch of bitterness starker than Quisto had ever heard from him.

  "My mother was right," Quisto muttered, but said no more as the door opened and Lieutenant Morgan came in, followed, depressingly, by Eaton.

  They hadn't been able to keep the one possible break in the surveillance from the federal agent forever, and he'd been furious when he'd discovered how long they had kept it from him. This was Chance's first meeting with him since he'd found out, and the man wasted no time in making it clear who he blamed.

  "For someone who preaches cooperation, you seem to have a funny interpretation of the word, Buckner," he fumed.

  "I don't find anything about this case amusing," Chance returned coldly, "especially you."

  "Can we get on with this, gentlemen?"

  Lieutenant Morgan's tone let them know he was nearly at the end of his patience with personal infighting. In impartial tones he covered the last week's work, the one little piece of possible progress—ignoring Eaton's scowl and his furious, darting looks at Chance—and their options from here on.

  Chance sipped at a cup of coffee as he stared at the mass of paperwork on the table, more to keep from having to look at Eaton than any hope that by some miracle a solution would occur to him. It was becoming harder and harder to find that line between where the job ended and his personal involvement began, and he knew he was in real danger of blowing one or the other, if not both, sky-high.

  Shea had never asked him about the night that had been so horrible and so beautiful at the same time. She had been there for him, giving without taking, holding together with the sheer force of her love the man whose destiny seemed to be to tear her life apart.

  "—misjudged Detective Buckner."

  Chance's head snapped up at Eaton's smooth words that held just the slightest undertone of sarcasm.

  "Ah," he went on, the sarcasm less veiled now, "I see I have your attention at last. I was merely admitting that I seem to have underestimated your devotion to duty, Detective."

  "Meaning?" Chance's voice held a warning he realized Eaton was either too stupid to hear or chose to ignore.

  "Meaning I find it … admirable that you're so willing to, shall we say, sacrifice your body for the cause?"

  Chance bolted upright in the chair.

  "Although I'm certain it was quite pleasurable, Ms. Austin being the kind of woman that she is, and no doubt quite … experienced in that area—"

  "You son of a bitch," Chance snarled, on his feet with a swiftness that left even Quisto a half step behind. Eaton dodged behind the table with an alacrity that was surprising for his bulk. "You're dead meat, Eaton!"

  Chance's fingers curled around the cup of coffee as if he were about to throw it. Eaton eyed it warily but with a smirking expression that turned Chance's stomach.

  "Go ahead, Buckner. Throwing food seems to be your style."

  "That's enough!" Morgan snapped. "Both of you."

  Chance stared at the brown suit, something in his mind trying urgently to break through the anger. He was only vaguely aware of Quisto holding him back, of his partner carefully removing the cup of hot coffee from his hand.

  "My apologies, Lieutenant," Eaton said in ill-concealed satisfaction, "but I'm afraid hotshot local cops tend to irritate me."

  Hotshot. It hit Chance with stunning force.

  "You," he breathed, his voice dripping venom. "It was you, you bastard! Hotshot," Chance spat out. "He said it, too. He picked it up from you, didn't he?"

  Chance broke loose from Quisto's grasp and scrambled across the table to grab a handful of suit and shirt. Eaton squealed like a scalded cat.

  "It was you!" Chance was shouting now, and all of Quisto's wiry strength wasn't enough to hold him back. "Damn it, it was you! You put that tail on me!"

  "You're crazy!" Eaton squeaked, but it decidedly lacked conviction. Lieutenant Morgan, who had come to add his efforts to Quisto's, stopped dead.

  "I painted your tail with chocolate," Chance said, his grip threatening to cut off what little air the fat man was getting. "And nobody knew it but my partner, and him. But you knew. Because he's one of yours, isn't he? That's why he didn't fit, because he didn't work for de Cortez!"

  "I—"

  He was choked off. Despite Eaton's weight, Chance was nearly lifting him off the ground in his fury.

  "Chance." Jim Morgan touched his arm.

  "Oh, no, he's mine. I'm going to harpoon him and skin him, and save some innocent whale somewhere."

  "No. He's mine. And when I get through with him, he'll ask for the harpoon. Back off, Chance."

  It was clearly an order, and only Chance's tremendous respect for the man who was his boss enabled him to get a grip on his temper. Grudgingly, and none too quickly, he lowered the gasping agent to the floor.

  "Eaton, my office," Morgan said, pointedly dispensing with any title or effort at politeness. "Your superiors are going to be very interested in this, I think."

  Eaton paused only to cast one last glance back at Chance. It was so full of rage and hatred it
was almost unbalanced. When he'd gone, Quisto let out a low whistle.

  "Man, don't ever turn your back on that guy."

  "Yeah. If I hadn't, he never would have gotten away with it for so long."

  "I've seen guys you've put away for life that didn't look that mad."

  "Should have done what you do to any mad dog. Solve a lot of problems for everybody." He walked wearily back around the table and sank into a chair. "I don't get it. Why the hell tail me?"

  Quisto shrugged. "He's got a hang-up, man. We knew that the first day."

  "I knew he didn't like me—"

  "It's not that, partner. He doesn't like what you stand for."

  Chance's brow furrowed. "We're both cops, different kinds, but—"

  "You," Quisto said firmly, "are everything he never was. Tall, blond and blue eyed, good-looking, smart, a lady-killer—or at least you could be, if you gave it a tenth of a try. You've got everything he probably never had, and always wanted."

  Chance was staring at his partner, stunned by the certainty in his tone. "You sound … awfully sure of that."

  Quisto shrugged. "I spent a long time as a kid wanting to be like the fair-haired boys of this country. Like you, and all the others like you, who seemed to have it so easy. The ones who didn't know what it meant to have people look past you instead of at you." He shrugged.

  "Then one day I woke up and looked at myself long and hard. And at my family. And I came to terms with what I was, and what I wasn't." He glanced at the door Eaton had gone through. "I'd say he never did."

  Chance shook his bead, a little dazed. "I … never knew. Did I make you feel that way?"

  "No. You've been through enough hell of your own, buddy. Your dues were different, but you paid them just like I did. You're still paying. It makes a difference."

  Chance let out a long breath. "I'm sorry, partner. Sometimes it's a rotten world."

  Quisto shrugged again. "Yeah." Then he grinned irrepressibly. "Besides, you taught me that you pretty Anglo types have your problems, too. Women always after your body instead of your mind, drooling over your blue eyes instead of listening to what you say, making lascivious comments about your rear end–"

  He ducked as Chance, laughing, tossed a pencil at him.

  "Easy, partner, it's not me you want to harpoon."

  "Yeah," Chance said, his anger gone now thanks to Quisto's diversion. He reached to straighten the papers he'd knocked sideways in his grab for his mock harpoon. "He'd have to smarten up some to be in a whale's class, wouldn't he?"

  "He'd have to smarten up a lot."

  Chance laughed again, but it had lost some of its energy as he stared at the papers. "I think I'm the one who needs to smarten up. How can we have all this data, every damn move that's been made since de Cortez came to town, and still not have a clue as to when he's going to move?"

  Quisto sighed. "We're doing what we can. We've got a watch on the airport, and at the hotels, just in case that little slip was for real and something's coming down the pipe. There's nobody in town now that would handle the kind of action de Cortez is used to, so it's a good bet he'll have people coming in from the outside."

  "Did you call the Harbor Patrol?"

  Quisto nodded. "Soon as I heard that little piece of tape. No new boats of any size in or out. And they'd notice. There's not much traffic during the week this time of year."

  "Winter in paradise," Chance muttered, staring at the log that made his eyes tired just thinking about trying to read it again.

  "Let's hope it doesn't snow," Quisto said dryly.

  "Remind me to thank everybody in Florida for driving these clowns out of there to California."

  He reached down to pick up the pencil he'd tossed, letting out a disgusted sigh as he viewed the now voluminous stack of papers. Pretty soon he was going to need a damned briefcase to carry the stuff around. He grimaced. Maybe he could borrow one of the bookends to carry it for him.

  The image formed in his mind again, as it had off and on since that day, of a tuxedo-clad bookend clutching that case like a child protecting a precious toy, or a miser protecting his hoard of gold. He'd looked like—

  Gold.

  A sudden image of that sign inside the door of the club flashed through his mind.

  "Damn!"

  Papers scattered as he grabbed at them, tugging out this one, discarding that. Quisto turned, staring.

  "Where are the damned bank records we subpoenaed?" Chance grabbed at another stack, then yanked at the tattered surveillance log. He shoved the rest aside, lined up the three items he'd isolated. Quisto waited, watching warily, knowing better than to interrupt. He watched as Chance's eyes flicked from one page to another, the pencil he'd picked up making quick, impatient check marks on item after item, then scribbling out a list. Minutes passed. He grabbed for the phone and punched in a number.

  "Jeff? Chance. This list of stockholders for the Del Mar Club. You put it together?" A pause. "I need the dates of incorporation on all of them, and I need it yesterday. Thanks."

  He went back to the papers, Quisto watching in growing bewilderment as Chance muttered, "I should have paid more attention to that bulletin from the Treasury Department."

  "What—"

  Chance help up a hand and Quisto fell silent. At last Chance threw down the pencil and looked up.

  "It's right there. It has been, only I've been too damned stupid to see it!"

  "Make that two of us," Quisto said cautiously. "What have we been too stupid to see?"

  "Look," he said, gesturing at the papers.

  "I am. What am I looking for?"

  Chance ticked off the items he'd scrawled on his list. "The first two weeks the club was open. Deposits to the club account of anywhere from a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand a night. High, but not impossible for a successful operation that caters to high rollers. Two-hundred-person capacity, three shows, and they run 'em in and out pretty quick. And the most expensive food and drinks in town."

  "Ain't that the truth."

  Chance jabbed at an entry on the photocopy. "But then it goes up, to over five hundred thou every night. Place took off, right?"

  "Right." He stopped at Chance's expression. "But not right, right?"

  "Quisto, you or I have been in that place every damned day since it opened. What's it been like?"

  "Packed. She brings 'em in, you know that."

  "Yes. Some regulars who stay all night, more who come and go. But it's been a full house every night since the opening, right?"

  Quisto sighed. "Couldn't squeeze in a sardine."

  "Exactly."

  "Huh?"

  "And that sardine you couldn't squeeze in didn't spend any money."

  At last it hit. "So there's no way the profits could have jumped like that," Quisto said slowly.

  "No. And maybe he was even padding them at the start with his own money, to make the bigger figures later look less suspicious."

  Chance jabbed the pencil at a two-word note circled several times in heavy, angry marks. Quisto leaned over to read it.

  "'Cash Only'?"

  "That's one thing I do remember from that Treasury bulletin. Retail businesses that regularly collect large amounts of cash can get exemptions from the $10,000 rule."

  Quisto's brow furrowed. "You mean the IRS law?"

  Chance nodded. "Currency Transaction Reports on any deposits more than $10,000." He grimaced. "Want to bet the Del Mar Club has one of those exemptions?"

  Quisto's eyes widened in sudden understanding. He whistled, long and low.

  "Yeah," Chance muttered. "And I'll bet if we subpoenaed a full transaction file, we'd find a lot of fat, unreported wire transfers to banks in Hong Kong, or some little island with those nice private banks with no disclosure rules."

  "What's the percentage for the middleman these days?" Quisto wondered aloud. "Seven percent? Ten maybe, if the money's really hot?"

  "Yeah, quite a profit for running a laundry," Chance agreed sourly. "
Look at it. Say the real take from the club is maybe a hundred. Hell, even two. That still leaves three hundred a night, open every day except Monday, that's—" he scribbled some figures down "—over eight million a month."

  "And ten percent of that is nothing to sneeze at."

  Chance slammed down the pencil, furious at himself for not seeing it sooner. And hurting inside. He'd hoped against hope, even knowing he was being a fool, that for her sake de Cortez was clean. When the phone rang, he jumped at it.

  "Buckner." He grabbed the pencil and scribbled down a row of dates. "That's the clincher. Thanks, pal."

  He sat back and looked up at Quisto. After a moment, he handed him the piece of paper. Quisto read it and whistled. Chance nodded slowly.

  "None of those companies existed three months before de Cortez set up shop here. And I'll bet if you dug a little deeper, you'd find every last one of them is a dummy corporation, owned by another corporation owned by another."

  "And when you get to the bottom," Quisto said, "I'll bet you find some very interesting names, getting nice clean checks from their profitable investment."

  "And no doubt all using that same little banking paradise—"

  They both looked up as Lieutenant Morgan came back in.

  "I just got off the phone. What's with you two? You look like you found the answer and it bit you."

  "Exactly," Chance said.

  Morgan sat on the edge of the table. "Well?"

  "He's not running dope," Quisto said.

  Morgan's eyebrows rose. Chance let out a weary sigh.

  "He's running money," he said.

  * * *

  It had taken the greatest effort of his life to keep the knowledge that things were beginning to topple locked inside. But he did it, not wanting anything to disturb the fragile balance of his relationship with Shea. She had responded so sweetly to his torment, giving him a quiet support that tore at him like that merciless trap; he was never quite free of the agonizing knowledge that she was keeping him going so he could bring down the brother she loved.