Devil’s Bargain

by Rachel Caine (mobi)

  Pansy patted her on the hand and handed her Elle.

  She put it back and picked up Guns & Ammo and, without even thinking, reached for the coffee and sipped it. Pansy grinned in triumph and left, shutting the door after herself.

  Borden was coming, after a four-month absence. That made her feel warm and odd, and impatient with herself for it. She’d cut the cord with him. With Gabriel, Pike & Laskins in general. She and Lucia—she presumed—hadn’t had contact with them since the last red envelope had arrived, via FedEx, and that had consisted of taking the envelope, unopened, sticking it in another FedEx envelope and sending it right back with a sticky note reading Not playing the game.

  Maybe Borden was coming to deliver a last-ditch personal appeal. Maybe GPL—or the Cross Society—was desperate enough to try to whore him out.

  Like we’re that important. She didn’t believe it. She didn’t think Lucia believed it, either.

  Maybe Borden was just…coming to see her. Someplace nice for dinner. She hadn’t even thought about dinner with him, not since Arthur Bryant’s, when everything had gone to hell with one phone call.

  No. No dinner. No conversation. I want nothing to do with James Borden.

  And some part of her brain added, Well, sleeping with the enemy might be kind of fun. Not to mention informative.

  She told it sternly to shut up, sipped coffee and eyed Elle while determinedly reviewing the latest in zip-tie cuffs in Law Enforcement Supply.

  Manny arrived an hour later, on the dot, looking freshly scrubbed and far neater than Jazz could remember—practically presentable, in fact. He’d forgotten to take off the lab coat, but other than that, the button-down shirt and blue jeans were clean, if a little frayed, and the tennis shoes were almost brand-new. He’d gotten a haircut—or, more likely, done it himself—and it made him look ten years younger. He’d even shaved, but as usual, the constant five-o’clock shadow made him look a bit shifty.

  His eyes were nervous, trying to look everywhere, bright with terror, but he was here. Standing beside Pansy’s desk, hands in his lab-coat pockets.

  Shaking but upright.

  Jazz stood in the doorway for a second, taking it in; there was a tight bloom of happiness inside her, seeing him. She loved Manny, she always had. He was a gentle soul, and he’d never deserved anything that he’d endured. It was nice to see him finding his strength again.

  And then she saw him smile, and something clicked into focus with blinding clarity.

  Ahh. He was smiling at Pansy. And she was smiling back, warmly. They’d been spending time on the phone, and Pansy had started taking all the drop-offs to Manny. But this was a big step forward.

  No wonder Manny was out of the house and looking human again. Sometimes, the best therapy was just plain old hormones.

  “Manny,” she said, since clearly Manny was at a loss for words when it came to chatting up women—that part probably had nothing to do with his posttraumatic stress and everything to do with being a lab geek from way, way back. Manny looked relieved and put out at the same time. “Hey, bro, it’s good to see you.”

  He nodded jerkily, shifted his feet and abruptly held out a package. It was wrapped in brown paper, taped securely and tied with string. The tape was evidence tape, and he’d practically hermetically sealed the thing.

  She reached out and took it off his hands.

  “Anything you want to tell me about this?” she asked, and got a violent shake of his head. “Who dropped it off to you?”

  “A friend,” he said. Which could mean anything, or nothing. “You don’t need to know. Just…take a look at it. Tell me what you think.”

  “Anything in particular I should be looking for?”

  “You’ll know,” he said. “If I’m right. Um, I—authenticated—anyway. There’s nothing hinky about them. I checked.”

  He shoved his hands back into the lab coat. The package felt light in her hand. Paper, maybe. Clothing. Nothing very substantial. The packing he’d wrapped it in probably weighed more than the item.

  “Want to stick around, or…?”

  “No,” he said, and whirled around to look at Pansy, who looked back, startled. “No, I—bye.”

  He hurried away, jerky movements, head down. He took the stairs, not the elevator. Pansy and Jazz watched him go.

  “Huh,” Pansy said contemplatively. Which Jazz supposed kind of covered it.

  She shook her head, went into her office and closed the door.

  Using a pair of sharp scissors and a pocketknife, it still took her about ten minutes to strip away the tape-reinforced paper to reveal…a tape-reinforced box. She slit the tape, put the box down on the table and reached into her desk drawer for a pair of latex gloves, which she donned before lifting off the top of the cardboard box. It had been designed for letterhead, she saw—plain white, no markings unless they were hidden by the evidence tape. She didn’t know if it was Manny’s box, or the one provided by his “friend”—but then, she realized, Manny would never damage it by slapping tape all over potential evidence.

  Inside lay a sheet of paper and what looked like three eight-by-ten photographs underneath it. She focused first on the paper, which was computer printing on plain copy stock.

  Jazz: Note time and date stamp on photos

  Nothing else, but for Manny, that was the equivalent of a page-long memo. She set the paper aside and looked at what was underneath.

  The first picture underneath was grainy black-and-white, clearly taken in low light. The note was right, there was a time/date stamp on the lower right-hand corner in block white letters. The photo was of an alley, a part of a sign flush against a building that said vet Palace. Since veterinarians rarely had that kind of neon, that had to be the Velvet Palace, a not-so-gentlemanly club over on the raw side of town. There were three men pictured. Two were standing under a floodlight, and the camera caught a good shot of one of their faces. She didn’t recognize him.

  She stared at the picture for a moment, frowning, waiting for a penny to drop, but nothing came to her. She picked up the photo and moved it over atop the letter.

  The second photo showed the second man’s face. He was wearing a cheap rumpled business suit, but again, nobody she recognized. He was handing over a wrapped package to the third man, who was hidden in shadow.

  The last photo was clearly taken as the meeting was breaking up, and one of the men was already hidden by the open back door of the club, the other preparing to enter. But it had the face of the third man, who up to that point had been hidden in shadow.

  She felt a short-circuit shock of recognition and adrenaline like a fist to the temple. She put both hands on the desk and stood up, staring down at the picture, which showed her ex-partner, Ben McCarthy, staring almost full-face at the camera. She even knew the clothes—a long black trench coat, dress shirt, black slacks. No tie. Ben had never worn a tie, except at trials.

  He was sliding the package into the pocket of his trench coat.

  She stared at him for a long few seconds, trying to slow down the beating of her heart, and then focused on the date and time.

  “Son of a bitch,” she whispered, and sank back in her chair.

  That’s what had been nagging at her about the previous photos. Date and time.

  The same date and time that Ben McCarthy had supposedly been on the other side of Kansas City cold-bloodedly putting bullets in the heads of two unarmed men and a woman.

  The pictures clearly showed that he’d been behind the Velvet Palace, taking a payoff.

  “You son of a bitch,” she amended, in a lost whisper, and dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. “You lied. You lied.”

  He hadn’t lied about being innocent—he hadn’t been guilty of the killings—but he hadn’t produced this alibi, either. Probably because it was nearly as bad, and would have unearthed more than just this one incident. Maybe he was protecting himself. Maybe he’d just plain believed that he could beat this thing, and then it had been too late to cha
nge his story.

  Besides, two criminals and a payoff in an alley behind a strip club was probably not the world’s most believable alibi.

  He hadn’t known about the pictures.

  She stared down at them. The date and time. The faces of the men with him.

  She’d been looking for evidence of Ben’s innocence all this time, but she hadn’t expected this. She also had no idea who had given it to Manny, or why. Why now?

  Authenticate, she warned herself. This is crap without provenance. Without testimony from the guy who took them.

  First step would be to find subjects number one and two in the photos.

  She put the photos back in the box and carried them out to Pansy’s desk. Pansy, on the phone, looked up, saw her expression, and apologized to whoever was on the other end of the line before she hung up.

  “Boss,” she said. That was all, but it was enough. Jazz set the box down on the corner of her desk.

  “I need these scanned,” she said. “Evidence rules. I’m going to need some copies to take with me, too.”

  Pansy nodded and reached in her desk drawer for latex gloves. “Did Manny already do the printing?”

  “Believe me, Manny would have done everything it was possible to do to these photos, short of burning them and sorting through the ashes.” She cleared her throat. Something felt tight in there. “Pansy.”

  “Boss?”

  “It’s important.”

  Pansy nodded solemnly. “I can tell that.”

  “Soon as you have them done—”

  “I’ll let you know,” she said. “You want me to talk to Lucia?”

  “No, I’ll do it.” Because Lucia had contacts at the federal databases, who might or might not, depending on the political climate, be willing to run the faces against their records. But for now, Jazz was burning to do it the old-fashioned way: pounding pavement. “Soon as you can, all right?”

  “Doing it right now,” Pansy said, and fired up the scanner. Jazz didn’t wait. She was already on her way back to the office to gear up.

  When the knock came on the door, she figured it was Pansy, returning the pictures, but instead it was James Borden bearing gifts.

  To be exact, a fruit basket in his right hand that would have looked perfectly at home on Carmen Miranda’s head, and in his right hand, a red envelope.

  She blinked at the fruit basket, holstered the gun that she had just loaded and transferred her stare to his face.

  Damn, he’s pretty, some traitor part of her brain told her. She ignored it. She wasn’t interested in pretty. She was interested in those photos telling her that Ben McCarthy had been on the other side of town when people were being murdered with his gun.

  Borden raised the fruit basket and his eyebrows at the same time. “I come bearing…um, looks like bananas, papayas, some pears…”

  “You come bearing trouble,” she said, and crossed to take the basket from his hand. It was heavy. She deposited it on the side table with a frown. “What if I don’t like fruit?”

  “It’s good for you,” he said. “Chocolate seemed a little clichéd. But hey, there’s some pear honey in there, too. And pear butter. Are you going to shoot me?”

  “Thinking about it,” she said shortly. “I’m on my way out.”

  The humor drained out of his face. “Jazz, wait. Look, I’m sorry, but I want—need—to talk to you.”

  “Bad timing,” she said grimly, and adjusted the shoulder rig under her loose jacket. “Some other day, maybe, but this one’s just turned a little more interesting than normal, so if you don’t mind—thanks for the fruit, now get the hell out.”

  “I can’t. I need to—”

  She rounded on him and took a step into his space, spearing him with a glare. “Look, I don’t care what you need, okay? You come here with your—your fruit basket and your stupid red envelope and just expect me to be available? Well, it’s not that easy. I’m an Actor, after all. Free will. Whatever.”

  “You’re not the only one,” he said, and it occurred to her that she’d never heard anybody say, one way or another, what exactly James Borden’s role was in this little opera. Spear-carrier? Chorus? Actor? Lead?

  Assuming she bought any of their bullshit, which she so very definitely didn’t. She’d gone to the cops and put in her statement about Blankenship’s murder. Lucia had put together an absolutely amazing cover story for why she’d been there on that street at that particular moment, and while detectives like Ken Stewart hadn’t cared for it, they hadn’t been able to poke holes in it, either.

  And Wendy Blankenship’s killer was in jail, awaiting trial. That was something.

  Sometimes, at weak moments, she wondered how the red envelope had managed to put her there on that street at the right time, if Laskins hadn’t been on the up-and-up with her. But she didn’t wonder too long or worry too much.

  Too busy. If everything she did mattered, then she was damn well going to make every moment count.

  “Right. I’m going…and, you’re not leaving,” she said, as Borden walked over to her couch and sat down, all arms and legs and angles. “Why aren’t you leaving?”

  “I told you, I’m not going without talking to you.” He’d done something new to his hair, she decided. She wasn’t sure she liked it, but then, she hadn’t liked his last hairstyle, either. At least he looked comfortable today, not tied up in the suit and strangled in a tie. Blue jeans and that long-cut leather jacket she remembered from before. She’d never noticed before, but he had on some academic ring or other, something large, round and gold. Harvard or Princeton or something equally Ivy League, probably. He didn’t seem the type to have taken his J.D. at Podunk University.

  “Okay, it’s possible that I’m using words that are too short for a smart guy like you to understand, but—”

  “We have something we need you to do.”

  “We? I just see one of you standing—”

  “The Cross Society.”

  “Stop interrupting me!”

  “Stop acting like an asshole.”

  “Hey!”

  He uncoiled from the couch. It was probably unconscious, the way he tried to use his superior height and reach to intimidate her, but she didn’t like it. She stepped right into his space, staring into those dark eyes.

  “Call me an asshole again,” she invited softly. “Go on.”

  “I said you were acting like one, not—”

  “I know what you said.”

  Silence. She watched him breathe. Some part of her was acutely aware of him, of the warmth radiating off him, of the smell of his cologne and the matte-velvet slide of his skin. The quick throb of the pulse in his neck.

  “I have work to do,” she said, and reached around him for her jacket.

  He grabbed her wrist.

  She pivoted, came in behind him and used her leverage to bend his arm up behind his back. Slammed him against the wall with such force that the pictures rattled. That was all right, they were Lucia’s choice anyway. Not like Jazz Callender had a lot of Kodak moments in her life.

  She felt his shoulder muscles jumping, trying to resist, but she had the pressure point and he was off balance, and she grabbed the back of his neck and held him still.

  “Seriously,” she said, “don’t think that just because you’re a big guy you can take me. Maybe you can, if you get lucky and I get stupid, but any normal day, Counselor, I’m going to whip your ass, all right? So don’t get tough with me. And don’t even try to tell me what to do.”

  He moved his head fractionally, trying to get a look at her. She pressed harder. Her fingers curled into the soft hair at the nape of his neck, and God, it felt good.

  “You can beat the crap out of me, and it doesn’t change anything,” he said. His voice was stressed but even. “And if you break it, you buy it. Assault on a lawyer—that’s pretty dumb.”

  “Not like I’ve got a ton of assets you could want,” she replied, and pressed a little harder before letting go and
stepping back. Borden caught himself with both hands against the wall, pushed off and spun to face her.

  “Foreplay with you must be murder,” he said. “Fine. Do what you want, Jazz, but just read it. Please. Personal favor to me.”

  “You should have given it to Lucia. She might not have shoved you into a wall.”

  She got an adrenaline-pumped smile in response to that. He was breathing fast, watching her, and she wondered—not for the first time—if buttoned-up, nicely dressed Counselor Borden might not have some kink under there.

  “No,” he agreed, “she’d have thanked me and taken it and shown me the door, but that wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere. Lucia’s bulletproof glass. You’re—”

  “I’m what?”

  “You listen. I might have to let you thump me a few times, but you listen while you’re doing it.” He took in another deep breath, let it out with deliberate slowness, and said, “I wouldn’t come here if it wasn’t important, you know that. There’s a life at stake.”

  “From what your buddies tried to tell me, there are always lives at stake. Hell, there are lives at stake when I pick up milk at the store. Isn’t that what it means to be a Lead?” She couldn’t say the word without the coating of sarcasm, it just wasn’t possible.

  Borden shrugged. “Yeah, that’s true. But this isn’t about you. Not this time. This guy’s got a wife and kids, and I’d rather not see this—happen.”

  “So this is you. Begging me for a favor.”

  She saw a tensed jaw muscle flutter. “Not exactly.”

  “Well, this is me, walking away.”

  “Fine. I’m still not begging. I’m asking, Jazz.”

  She stared at him for a long few seconds, and then reached out and grabbed the envelope from his hand. She weighed it for a second, then yanked it open with unnecessary force. Wasn’t like it was resisting arrest, after all.

  Inside were the details on the daily routine of a middle-aged man named Lowell Santoro, film producer. Pictures of a tired-looking guy with male-pattern baldness chatting on a cell phone. The letter—on official Gabriel, Pike & Laskins stationery, signed by Milo himself—contained instructions to shadow Santoro for three days, starting tomorrow. Audio and video surveillance.