In the Line of Fire

by Beverly Bird

  He really didn’t belong here anymore, Danny thought, but the guy at the concierge desk remembered him and stepped quickly around the marbled counter to greet him.

  “Mr. Gates. Good to see you again.”

  “Wish I could say the same.” But Danny shook the man’s hand as he wondered how much money Molly had raised for his basketball program. He thought about setting her loose in here instead of on the phones. In a sleek, barely there dress.

  “Mr. Mercado arrived just a few minutes ago,” the concierge said. “I believe he headed for the café.”

  “Had some trouble here lately, did you?”

  The man’s face went to stone. “Yes, sir.”

  “So who did it? Who blew up the Men’s Grill?”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t know the answer to that, sir. No one does.”

  “Someone does—whoever lit the fuse.”

  The man didn’t reply. Danny left him to take a quick tour through the clubhouse.

  The elegant Empire Room wasn’t yet open for business—it served only dinner—so that was safe enough. Danny stepped out onto the patio and walked around to the gardens tucked behind the restaurant. They were deserted. He retraced his steps and followed the trellised walkway to the lawn and the paths behind the Yellow Rose Café. If the family had planted anyone here who planned to take him out, this was probably where they would be waiting.

  A young woman and a little girl sat on one of the benches. Had it not been for the presence of the child, Danny might have suspected her. But Carmine valued little ones. Unless he had changed radically in six years, Danny didn’t think he would involve one in this.

  He walked all the way around to the stable area and came back past the tennis courts, his back itching right between his shoulder blades. Half of him fully expected a bullet to find him there. But the grounds seemed clean. He returned inside and stuck his nose into the old Men’s Grill area. It was boarded up with plywood. A large single padlock was on the makeshift door there. Danny reached for it and rattled it to make sure it was for real, that there was no one waiting for him behind that door.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  The curt voice took him by surprise, and Danny had to fight the urge to react. He looked over his shoulder to find a fireplug of a guy in an ill-fitting suit tagged with a county club employee ID that said Y. Ingram. Danny’s nerves twitched, anyway. Was this it? Here? Now?

  “Nope,” he answered, his voice calm.

  The man’s face grew florid when he realized that Danny wasn’t going to say anything more. “Can I ask what you’re doing back here? This area is currently off-limits to guests.”

  “Well, I can see that.”

  Suddenly two security officers appeared behind the squat man. One of them rested his hand lightly on his weapon. Danny felt his heart start hammering. “Hey, easy does it. I’m hardly a threat to national security.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that. ID, please.” The first guy held out his hand.

  ID? Danny reached for his wallet.

  The bullish guy inspected his driver’s licence and handed it back. “You shouldn’t be back here, Mr. Gates. I’ll have one of my men show you to whatever area you were looking for.”

  “I know where I’m going.” Danny stepped past them. No one tried to block his way but he felt their gazes on his back as he returned to the lobby. A little touchy, he thought.

  The Yellow Rose Café was nestled prettily beside the patio. Ricky was waiting for him at a table in a far corner where he could keep his back to the wall and his eyes on the door. Danny would have chosen the same table himself. Old habits—like showing up early to case the joint—just died hard.

  He headed straight for his friend, feeling too many eyes upon him. He recognized Judge Bridges at a center table; his rheumy blue eyes followed Danny’s every move. One of the Carson twins—either Cara or Fiona—was lunching with her father. She looked up when Danny passed and lifted an eyebrow. Something in her speculative gaze told him she was Fiona, the generous contributor of her father’s five hundred dollars.

  Then Danny almost missed a step, nearly blew his cool. Two tables away from Ricky, he saw Tyler Murdoch and Spence Harrison, the district attorney who had helped to put him away with no questions asked. Harrison was too much the politician to show any expression when he recognized Danny, but then his gaze flicked to Ricky and his jaw hardened. So, Danny thought, there was still some bad blood there. Hatred was another habit that died hard.

  He pulled out a chair and sat at the yellow-ginghamed table that Ricky had chosen. “So sunny. So bright. Your taste has changed, pal.”

  Ricky’s dark eyes grinned. He sat back negligently in his chair, seeming relaxed, but his gaze kept slowly sweeping the room. “They stuck a temporary grill out there behind the rubble of the old one,” he said, “but it still smells like smoke over there. Kind of tough on the appetite.”

  Judging by the crowd in the Café, a lot of people agreed with him. “When are they going to rebuild?”

  Ricky shrugged because it didn’t matter and they both knew it. “I heard they contracted Joe Turner to redesign it before this year’s Debutante Ball, but so far the cops haven’t released the area back to the club. Why? Are you going to grab some sweet young thing and dance all night at the ball now that you’ve cleaned up your act and gone straight?”

  “Could be.” Danny wouldn’t justify the question with more of an answer than that.

  Ricky eyed his Armani suit. “Looks like you tucked some funds aside before they nailed you.”

  “Among other things.” There, Danny thought, it was out, on the table, the real reason for their reunion.

  Something in Ricky’s eyes flared, then he waved down their waitress and ordered a beer. He looked questioningly at Danny when he remained silent. “You’re not going to have one?”

  “With the D.A. sitting right over there? It’s against the terms of my probation. Thanks for that. I’ll have an iced tea,” he told the woman.

  Ricky ignored the barb and ordered the roast beef. Danny decided on the sole. He was planning on sticking Ricky with the check. The waitress retreated.

  “There’s no beer in the afterlife, either, not that I’ve heard,” Ricky said finally.

  Danny nodded, conceding the point. “True enough.”

  “Carmine never thought you were going to squeal. If he had, I wouldn’t have been able to keep you alive. It was more than that, and you know it.”

  It had been a matter of betrayal, Danny thought. Carmine had loved him like a son. When he’d broken rank—effectively passing judgment on the old man’s sins—Carmine had been hurt enough to fight back. And he had done it with a vengeance.

  “So how heartbroken is your uncle these days?” he asked. It was time to find out what he was up against.

  “Nothing’s changed,” Ricky answered.

  Danny felt something in the area of his heart try to cramp. It was time for some hardball. “Okay then, here’s how we’re going to handle this.”

  Ricky’s beer came. He took a long swallow. “Meeting today gave you some time to cover yourself, didn’t it?”

  “It did.” And they’d both known it would, during that phone call on Monday.

  “So what did you do?” Ricky asked.

  “I put everything in writing the way I should have done the first time.”

  Ricky nodded. “Good move.”

  Danny knew then that they were still friends. They would always be brothers. They just wouldn’t see each other again after today. He met Ricky’s gaze. “There are three copies—one’s with a lawyer, one is in a safe deposit box and the third is buried in someone’s backyard. None of these three places is located in Texas. I’ve included enough details to put Carmine away.” It had taken him all week to do it.

  Ricky shook his head. “Carmine’s not going anywhere at this point. His heart’s really bad these days.” Danny saw a flicker of pain in his friend’s eyes. “House arrest maybe, but no jail
term. He’s too sick. That alone would keep him on this side of bars no matter what he’s done.”

  “Texas isn’t known for its compassion.” But if Ricky needed to believe it, he’d let it lie.

  “Regardless. He’s dying, Danny. No matter how you look at it, you’re probably only going to need that paperwork for another year, maybe less.”

  Danny wished he could find it in his heart to feel sorry for the old man. But he knew the evil Carmine was capable of. “Well, until that point, those copies of my paperwork are ready to be opened should I suffer an untimely demise. If I don’t call each of those locations on a scheduled weekly basis, everything will hit the fan. And just in case your uncle decides to gamble that they won’t put him away with his heart condition, what I’ve written should pretty much dismantle the entire Texas faction of the mob as well.”

  Ricky thought about it. “I’ll pass it on.”

  “Does that give you enough to work with?” Danny asked bluntly. Carmine could be just hotheaded enough to have him gunned down, anyway, if Ricky couldn’t convince his uncle otherwise. The best hope Danny had was the fact that Ricky and his uncle were tight. Carmine had always been more of a father to Ricky than Johnny Mercado, his own father, had been. Johnny had spent Ricky’s entire youth trying lever him free of the mob. He’d sent him to military school in Virginia to break the ties. Carmine, on the other hand, had welcomed him back with open arms, treating him with respect, grooming him to take over as his successor someday. Danny wondered if that would finally happen now when Carmine died. In a part of his heart, he just couldn’t see it. Ricky was cunning, smart, had his own little power base…but he wasn’t cruel. There was heart inside him, and compassion.

  Danny glanced briefly at Tyler Murdoch and Spence Harrison again and knew that neither of those men would share his opinion. The mob had set up both of them—as well as Luke Callaghan and Flynt Carson—to do time some fifteen years ago for the death of Ricky’s sister. Haley had died in a boating accident when they’d lured her out on Lake Maria with them during a drunken party. The men had been negligent, sure, but not murderous.

  It had happened just about the time Danny had first been sucked into the family. He knew the truth, had overheard Carmine speak of it as he had heard so many other things over the years. Carmine had trusted him implicitly—Danny had saved his life so many times that after a while the old man wouldn’t even step out of his bedroom without Danny by his side. Danny knew that while Haley had certainly died that night, her body had never been found. The decomposed woman who had washed up on the shores of Lake Maria two weeks later had not been her. He’d been there when Carmine had arranged that ruse. It had been a body imported from Mexico to pass for Haley, to cement the case against Callaghan and Carson, Murdoch and Harrison.

  An innocent young woman had died so that Carmine could set his nephew’s friends up for murder charges. That had brought the first twinge of hatred to Danny’s gut for the old man.

  Ricky had known the truth, as well, Danny thought now. They’d talked about it. But although Flynt and Luke, Spence, Tyler and Ricky had all attended the military academy together, though they had been thicker than thieves in those days, Ricky hadn’t interceded with his family to spare his friends that trial. He, too, blamed them for what had happened to Haley. Ricky had been as angry as anyone else in the family when the four men were acquitted in spite of Carmine’s methods.

  It was old history, Danny thought, bringing his gaze back from Harrison and Murdoch, and yet it was still crucial to what was going on now. “You never forgave them.” He inclined his head in the men’s direction. “Why me?”

  Ricky was staring at Murdoch and Harrison, as well. He answered without taking his gaze from them. “You never took from me anything I loved.”

  “Except maybe Judy Maldonado.”

  Ricky threw back his head and laughed, his mood already lightened. “Yeah, well, I was through with her anyway. What were you, then? Seventeen? And she threw me over—a college man—for you.”

  “She said I was better looking.”

  “Yeah, well, let me see what I can do about keeping that pretty face of yours intact.” He sat back to allow the waitress to put his plate in front of him and dug into his roast beef. “Six years ago I reminded Uncle Carmine that he owed you his life several times over. It worked then. It’ll probably work now.”

  “Probably isn’t good enough.” Danny forced himself to take a bite of his sole.

  “I know that. So here’s how this will work from our end.” Ricky chewed, swallowed. “They’ve kept an eye on you all week.”

  They would be Carmine’s henchmen. Danny was not the least bit surprised.

  “They’ve withheld any action to give me time to talk to you, to find out how you want to handle this, but they’re not happy about it. They want to avenge my uncle in the worst way which of course strokes Carmine’s ego real nicely. So far they’ve amused themselves by ascertaining that you’ve been spending some time with a certain cop.”

  Danny felt his stomach spasm so hard and suddenly he couldn’t swallow the bite of fish he’d just taken. “Leave Molly French out of this.”

  “I can’t do that, bro. I’m sorry.”

  Danny knew then that whatever Ricky was about to say, whatever ultimatum he put on the table, it would be purely of Carmine’s inspiration. Already it had the cruel, ruthless tone of the old man written all over it. “Go on.”

  But Ricky wasn’t ready to issue the ultimatum. “You know, for your sake, I hope she has some strength of character. What would she think if she knew you had information she could use to bring down the Mercado empire and you won’t give it to her? Word has it she wants her gold detective’s shield so badly she practically shivers with the need. She nosed her way onto the bombing task force with the shield as her ultimate goal.” He laughed shortly. “She thinks my family is behind the bombing. You could probably tell her the truth, if you wanted me to tell it to you.”

  Rage, Danny thought, was more lethal when it was cold. That was what filled his blood now—jagged chips of ice. Then his heart stalled briefly before it slammed his chest hard.

  He thought of the way she’d looked at him that morning before he’d finally walked away, of that candid, perfect face of hers that simply couldn’t hide a secret. I don’t trust you, he’d said. You’re a cop. Hurt had drenched her eyes, but before that there’d been need there, to come to terms with what he had done, to be able to encapsulize it in some kind of justification so she could live with it. She wanted desperately to believe that he wasn’t the kind of man Carmine Mercado—or even Ricky—was.

  And he wasn’t, he realized. Because he’d walked away.

  A strange softness filled him. She’d asked him about his association for her own personal reasons, not because he could tell her something that would give her that shield. In fact, she’d never once skated near the line of asking him if the Mercados could have planted the country club bomb…and she’d had ample opportunity. She’d known what he was, where he had been, pretty much from the start.

  With that stiff, moral cop-backbone of hers, that could only be out of respect for their friendship, or whatever the hell it was.

  “Oh, yeah, man, she’s got you.”

  Danny focused on Ricky again. The man was grinning. “What?”

  “You’re falling in love with her. Carmine hit the nail right on the head. It was the only reason he agreed to use her in this.”

  Danny’s heart slammed again. “Like hell I am. We’re barely civil enemies.”

  “Is that why she was at the gym until two o’clock this morning?”

  Of course they’d know about that, too. The mob had eyes everywhere. Danny didn’t like it but it was something he was going to have to live with for the rest of his life. Or for the rest of Carmine’s, whichever came first. “We were playing basketball.”

  “Yeah? That’s not what we called it when you snapped Judy Maldonado out from under my nose.”

/>   “Judy thought I was a hunk. Molly thinks I’m a career criminal.” It sobered him. “Which I don’t intend to be, so give me the rest of Carmine’s ultimatum.”

  “Ah, that.” Ricky pushed his plate away. “I’ve been instructed to tell you that if you talk—or, as it turns out, if those envelopes get opened before you’re six feet under—you won’t be hit first.”

  Danny’s blood slowed in his veins, going icy again.

  “They’ll take either Molly French or Mona in your place, bro.”

  His mother. Dear God, Danny thought. But he understood their angle.

  “You could run back and forth between those women like a wild man—could have the entire P.D. and the Sheriff’s Department doing it, too, but sooner or later we’d get to one of them.”

  “Carmine came up with this.”

  “No. I did.”

  Danny’s eyes narrowed dangerously. A new knife of fury found his heart. “You’re getting cold, Ricky. You’re getting just like him.”

  Ricky actually grinned. “You’re missing something here.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “I know you. I know it’ll never be an issue. Carmine thinks that you’d turn on anybody because you did it to him. That if you wanted to, you’d knife Mona and maybe even Molly, too. He does worry about that. But I’m pretty sure your secrets will go to the grave with you. If you were going to sing, you would have done it by now, while you were in jail. I don’t personally think that any leverage is necessary at all. So I just gave them a suggestion they could live with.”

  Danny knew he was wrong. If there had been a way to bury Carmine and the others without dying, he would have taken it. If there was a way he could do it without risking Molly or his mother, he still would. But neither of those things had ever been possibilities.

  Danny felt his air leave him and sadness pour in, in its place. “Hell of a way to end this.” Twenty years of friendship, he thought.

  “It’s the only way. I’ll tell them you agree to their terms.”

  “Do that.” Danny reached for his billfold. He decided he was going to pay for lunch after all. Once again he owed Ricky his life.