A Christmas Kiss

by Caroline Burnes

  Joey broke into the street, dodging a taxi and a blue Volvo as he gained the opposite curb and pushed past several nuns and a gathering of schoolchildren on a walking tour. He had his weapon, but the streets were too crowded. He could never get a shot off at the hit man without risking killing half a dozen other people.

  "Cori!" He was gaining on the man, but not fast enough. The gunman would get to Cori before Joey could stop him.

  Surprisingly, Cori stopped and turned. Instead of running away, she started back toward him, her face etched with anger.

  He waved his hands. "No! No!" he called to her.

  Puzzlement touched her clear green eyes, and he felt as if they had opened a line of pure communication that had nothing to do with voice or gesture. She looked from Joey directly to the jacketed man, and suddenly she read his intent as clearly as if he were holding a sign.

  Still running, only a few yards away, Joey saw her hold her hands up to ward off the blow that her slender fingers could not catch or stop.

  The sound of the gunshot came, as he knew it would. It was too loud, and yet not real. It echoed off the brick buildings and streets. He hurtled to Cori's side, too late, and pulled her down on the pavement and covered her body with his. Too late, too late, too late. His heart pumped the words, and he must have muttered them under his breath.

  Above him a woman screamed again and again, a loud, pitching wail like a siren. Rolling off Cori, Joey surveyed her body, wondering where the bullet had entered and if he might possibly be able to apply pressure long enough for an ambulance.

  The red sweater hid any sign of blood, and he grasped it, pushing it up, only to find pale skin, perfect, unmarred, and full breasts held by a satiny red bra. Beneath his hands, Cori began to struggle.

  "Where are you hit?" he asked, looking into green eyes that were... furious.

  "I'm not," she answered clearly. "Are you okay?"

  Joey was up, his hand going to the gun under his jacket. He looked around, but the killer had disappeared. The woman still screamed, and Joey held a hand to indicate to Cori to stay down while he went to check.

  He saw the jacket, a bright splash of color, in the gutter of the street. A wide circle of red had invaded the multicolored material, and Joey knew the man had been shot squarely in the heart. He was dead, but Joey checked his carotid to confirm there was no pulse. In the dead man's hand was a small, deadly blue steel automatic.

  "Move back," Joey said, flipping his badge. "Move away from the body." He swept the crowd back.

  "Can I help?" A shop owner had come out.

  "Call the police and the emergency medical team."

  The man nodded and ducked back into his bakery. Cori got up and went to Joey's side.

  "He was coming after me," she said.

  Joey ignored her as he tried to make sure no one touched the body. Squatting down, his gaze swept the street, shifting from window to window, from floor to floor. Whoever bad shot the gunman could be sitting just across the street with another round in the chamber.

  "He was going to kill me, wasn't he?" Cori insisted. When Joey didn't answer, she grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. "Wasn't he? Until you shot him."

  Joey's focus had been on the crowd, on the windows and doorways all around them. There were a million places a sniper could hide.

  "How did you know?" she asked, shifting closer to the curb.

  Joey swung around on her. He pushed her against the wall of the bakery. "Stay away from the street." He gritted the words. "I didn't shoot him, Cori. Someone else did. And I don't know who or where they are." The stunned look on her face made him back off. "Go inside the bakery. Wait there, and don't do anything stupid this time. This isn't a game. Someone is trying to hurt you, and now another man is dead."

  Cori pulled open the bakery door and stepped inside. She moved out of the line of the windows, but she stood in the center of the floor and stared out at the man who lay in the gutter, and at the man who knelt over him, waiting for the police.

  Jake Lewis was not disturbed by the dead man. Not in the least. In fact, he was downright jovial.

  "Yeah, it's Benny Hovensky. We've been trying to pin a hit on him for the past three years. He always comes up with an airtight alibi, even though we know he's done five hits in the past eighteen months. Good riddance to bad rubbish is my attitude."

  Joey was surprised to see Lewis still in uniform and working. Blake had apparently not been able to prove it was him who leaked Cori's identity to the newspaper... or else Blake had never intended to discipline the man.

  "Have forensics been able to determine where the shot came from?" Joey was feeling more and more nervous about the strange death of the man Lewis had firmly tied with the DeCarlo family. Benny Hovensky was one of the "paid retainers" of old Antonio DeCarlo. He'd been on the family payroll as chauffeur, gardener, pilot and general gofer. But his actual job had been to take care of people who messed up the lives of the DeCarlo family. Cori could very easily be seen as one of those people.

  Lewis pointed across the street. "Down that alley. The angle of the bullet is straight in, right in the heart. That was some shot across a crowded street. Surprised he didn't take out a few pedestrians."

  "Any sign of who the sniper might be?" Joey knew it was a hopeless question, but he had to ask.

  Even if Jake Lewis knew the answer, he wouldn't give him squat.

  "Naw, nothing. No physical evidence at all."

  "Since Antonio is dead and Ben's in prison, any idea who this guy might have been working for?"

  Joey pressed the issue.

  Lewis shrugged. "Ben's in prison, but he's still calling plenty of shots, and don't ever doubt it. What with his case coming up for retrial and the woman being a key witness, it wouldn't be a long stretch to see his handwriting on the hit. But the truth is, Benny was acting more like a free agent. Some of the hits we're pretty sure he made, they were freelance. Anyone could have hired him." Lewis straightened his hat and gave Joey a knowing look. "Are you certain he was after the witness?"

  Joey dropped his gaze. "Not certain."

  "But you were chasing him?"

  "I thought I saw a gun. My intention was to tackle him and pat him down." Joey moved out of the way of the ambulance attendants who had come to remove the body.

  "Good intentions." Jake Lewis smiled, and it was not a happy expression. "You know what they say,

  "The road to hell is paved with good intentions.' You and that witness better take care of yourselves. It would be a shame for either of you to become one of the big bad statistics of this old city." He waved the doors of the ambulance shut and moved away.

  Joey waited until the ambulance and patrol cars were gone before he went to retrieve Cori from the bakery. She was sitting quietly, her shoulders rounded and her hands in her lap.

  "Ready?"

  "For what?" she asked. "Bedlam? Bellevue? What's the psychiatric hospital called here in New Orleans?" She stood up, her body tightly compressed. "A man was killed not five feet from me, and you and I believe he was trying to kill me. What am I supposed to do now? You think leaving New Orleans is the answer to all of my problems, but my husband is still out there somewhere, and I can't leave until I find him."

  Joey looked out the plate glass window. Most of the witnesses had given a sketchy statement to the police and were gone—back to their errands and chores. The murder had been a tragic thing, a horrible event to witness, but it did not involve them. They were free of it and back in the swim of their lives. Cori, though, was trapped.

  "Let's take a walk," he said.

  "To where? Where can I go that I won't be a target, or where the people I care about won't die?"

  Cori pushed her hair out of her eyes. "I've been sitting here wondering what is left of my life, and I've come to a terrible conclusion.

  There's not a single thing left of what I used to be. Or who I used to be." She pushed her hair back again. "And I don't know what to do now."

  "Let's go ou
tside." Joey wanted to get her moving. He thought for a second she was going to fight, but instead she pushed open the bakery door and stepped into the late afternoon light. Joey waved a thank-you to the baker and took Cori's elbow. "Across the street," he directed.

  Cori held her arms stiff, but she didn't shake off his hand on her elbow as they crossed the street, darting easily between the cars, and stopped at the alley. "The sniper was here," he said. He looked down the narrow opening and saw only garbage cans. "Let's take a look."

  Cori was surprised that he'd included her, but she stepped behind him as he entered the dark alley.

  "The officers who worked the case said there weren't any footprints. No spent shell casings. No cigarette butts. The weapon was a .38, a common gun that's easy enough to buy. The guy was a good shot, right through the traffic and crowd." Joey spoke as if he were tape-recording his observations and thoughts for some future reference.

  Together they crept down the alley. They were almost halfway down when they came to a wooden gate. Joey gave it a rattle and the sound of a big chain and padlock on the other side told him he would need equipment and a court order to open it.

  He went past, then returned to the gate.

  "What is it?" Cori asked.

  "Just curious." Joey signaled her forward. "If I lift you up, can you grab the top and look over?"

  "What am I looking for?" Cori looked up at the top of the ten-foot privacy fence.

  "Whatever is there."

  "Sure." She moved up to the wooden fence.

  Joey made a cup of his hands. "Step here, and I'll boost you. Grab the top, and I'll push you up the rest of the way."

  "Okay." She braced against the fence and stepped into his laced fingers. With a mighty thrust from Joey, she rose in the air until her fingers found the top of the fence. Using her arms to hang on, she felt Joey shift so that he could press her bottom with both hands and lift her over his shoulders.

  She found herself looking down into a garden on the other side. "It's someone's private patio."

  "What building does it belong to?" Joey asked.

  Cori looked to see if there was a clearly marked entrance. "I think it's the green building, about three over."

  “Anything unusual?''

  "Whoever owns it has a green thumb or owns a florist shop. The place is beautiful. Fountain, ferns, palmettos, thousands of flowers, and the thing is big. Really big. There are walkways, like a formal garden. It's truly beautiful."

  "Coming down." Joey lowered her.

  Though the alley was dark, she caught the look in his eye. "What is it?" she asked.

  "I think we should find out who owns that garden."

  "Why?"

  "Because I think our shooter may have come from there."

  "But it's walled. That doesn't make sense."

  "Unless he knew what was going to happen and was waiting here. What if, somehow, he understood that someone was going to try to kill you?"

  Cori felt dread tickle down her neck. "How could he know that?"

  "Jake Lewis indicated that Benny whatever-his-name-was was a hired gun. A hit man. The sniper would know if he was the one who hired him." Joey took Cori's hand. "Let's get out of here." He led the way out and into the busy street. The thing that troubled him, and that he hadn't said, was how would the sniper have known Cori would walk the way she'd chosen?

  CORI sipped the hot tea, watching as Joey used the chopsticks to eat the spicy snow peas. They were across the river, far away from the Quarter and any part of the city that Cori knew.

  "I went to see Danny Dupray this morning." She hadn't intended on telling Joey, but now it seemed like the right thing.

  He put his chopsticks down on the edge of his plate. "You might have mentioned this earlier." He swallowed and waited. The events of the afternoon were too fresh in his mind. Now, along with the entire DeCarlo clan and their various factions, he could add Danny Dupray to the list of possible suspects.

  There was every chance that Kit had been taken not by DeCarlo, but by Dupray. Kit could easily have found out something major about Danny and his illegal operations. Cori had no idea that she'd just stuck her foot into a nest of vipers. Like snakes, sometimes these men didn't need a good reason to strike.

  "I had to do it, Joey. I knew you wouldn't let me. Danny knew Kit." She rolled her eyes. "Far better than I ever thought, as it turns out."

  "What do you mean?" Joey picked up the small, bowl-shaped cup beside his plate and drank the light, hot tea.

  "It's the candy." She expected to see impatience in his eyes, but he showed nothing. "I thought that was special between Kit and me." She thought she'd be more emotional, but since the shooting, her emotions had been totally calm. "It appears maybe it wasn't the secret I thought it was."

  Interest tugged at Joey. "What do you mean?"

  "Remember I said we communicated with the chocolates?" She saw him nod. "That's why I thought Kit was leaving the candy for me. It was our old secret talk. Danny had a dancer wearing a costume made of chocolate kisses. He said Kit gave him the idea." Cori looked down into her teacup. "I guess Kit could have told some other people if he told Danny." It hurt to admit that what she'd taken as something very special between her and Kit had not been all that special to him.

  "How did Dupray make this point?" Joey put down his cup and listened intently. In an effort to protect Cori, he'd called Captain Blake and checked on all reports filed on the shooting. There was no clue as to who the sniper was who had killed Benny Hovensky. Not a single clue. That fact troubled Joey, who knew that only the most professional killers could leave a scene without a single shred of evidence.

  "Danny had the girl come out and dance. To 'Silver Bells.' I don't think that song will ever have the same imagery." She sipped the tea. "I know you're angry with me, but I wanted to tell you the truth."

  "Since you lived to vocalize it." Joey was beyond being frustrated. He had actually accepted the fact that Cori was going to do exactly the opposite of what she should.

  Cori was attempting to follow Joey's train of thought. "So... you think the man I saw was someone hired to pretend to be Kit."

  Joey nodded. "That's what I think."

  "This is aimed at frightening me out of testifying."

  "That's the way I see it," Joey said.

  "And you think whoever is trying to frighten me hired that Benny person to kill me, and then killed him___"

  "Right in front of you."

  "To frighten me even more. But why not just kill me?"

  "The fat lady hasn't sung yet, Cori. One witness is dead. Murdered. There's nothing to stop them from killing you, except it would be better if you refused to testify. That way DeCarlo's defense attorney could imply that maybe you weren't so certain, maybe you were having second thoughts. And a second murder would have all the high-powered politicos throwing money all over the place to 'resolve the threat of danger to our citizens who dare to tell the truth.' It would be better if you simply didn't testify, but don't think they won't kill you if that's what it comes down to."

  "That's pretty cynical-sounding."

  "I'm a cynical kind of guy." After the talk he'd had with his boss, following his visit to Blake's office, he had to be cynical and tough as old boot leather. Bascombe had threatened to "skin him alive" if anything happened to Cori. He'd also given him a deadline of six hours to get her out of the State of Louisiana. Joey considered that by crossing the river for lunch, he was headed toward Texas, even if his pace was a lot slower than he'd hoped. If Cori found out he was gradually easing her west, she'd no doubt put on the brakes, or worse, bolt and run.

  "I don't think you're cynical at all." Cori made the pronouncement as she put down her cup. "If you were really cynical, you would have turned in the paperwork on me and let me out of the program. You would have decided that I was going to do what I was going to do, and that you could have no effect on the outcome."

  "And that's pretty much the way things have turned out." Joey
couldn't help the self-deprecating smile he gave her. It wasn't a funny situation, but he'd never been so hornswoggled by a witness as he had been by this average-sized female.

  "But you didn't drop me. You didn't give up. You didn't resign yourself to the inevitable. Therefore

  —" she reached across the table and picked up a fortune cookie from the tray "--you don't qualify as cynical."

  Joey cracked his own cookie open and pulled out the white slip of paper. When he read it he smiled, his dark eyes burning with merriment. " 'You are in control,'" he read, laughing. "Is that one ever off!"

  Cori unfurled her paper. " 'Do not sit quietly when the music plays.'" She looked at Joey, remembering for one brief instant his offer to teach her to dance, and the conflicting emotions that it generated in her.

  "Now, that sounds like fate stepping in." Joey suddenly knew his next step. He knew exactly what he had to do, and how he was going to accomplish it. He picked up the check and reached for his billfold. "Are you ready?"

  The look in his dark eyes warned Cori, but they also excited her. "Depends on where we're headed."

  "New Iberia." He spoke the words casually, then let his generous mouth twist into a smile that could not quite hide his own excitement. "We're going to visit the family."

  "I don't believe I can find Kit Wells in New Iberia."

  "That may not be true." He waited for her to gather her purse. "Kit found you in Houston and again at Jolene's. Someone has been following you all over the city. There's a place near New Iberia. A place where we might be able to set a trap."

  "Why not do it here, in New Orleans?" Cori had the distinct impression that Joey would do anything to get her out of the city, even pretend that he was setting up a trap.

  He paid the check, pocketed his change and ushered her out into the evening. "I'll be honest with you, Cori. Our office is understaffed. We can only do a certain amount of protection, and you've made it very hard."