I cocked my head, taking the next logical step in the conversation. “Kill for?”
His head whipped around, and his fierce gaze impaled me. “No! You don’t kill. That’s wrong. That’s why I became a cop—to stop the bad guys, the killers and conmen and just plain assholes.” He rubbed his hands together, hard and fast. “That’s why I became a cop, but …”
I looked at him, saddened by the look of what seemed like pained resignation on his face. After a few moments of silence, I said, “But?”
“But I’m helpless,” he sighed, holding his hands, palm up, before him.
“You?”
He nodded at the water. “I’m helpless to stop crap like this from happening. I’m just cleanup, chica. I pick up the pieces after it all goes to shit. But I don’t stop it. She’s right—why is it so much nobler to pick up the bodies than to stop the bullets?”
“Who’s right? Nestor, I’m not following you.”
He stopped, and we both looked up as a rescue truck, boat in tow, pulled up to the curb. Two well-muscled men jumped out and proceeded to pull out diving equipment from the rear.
I stood. “Nestor, I don’t understand—” But as he stood to join me, he grimaced. Twitching, he put his hand to his back. “Are you okay?” I said.
He groaned and gritted his teeth. “It’s my back, again.” He pulled a small tin out of his pocket and shook two Percocets into his hand. He swallowed them, using only saliva to wash them down. “I’ll be fine.” As he rubbed his eyes, fatigue evident in the spidery-red shooting through the whites, I saw his hands were shaking.
“Are you okay? How many of those are you taking a day?”
One of the rescue workers called his name, and he looked over at the man, frowning. Reaching back to massage his neck, he grimaced again. “Be right back.”
I put my hand on his arm as he started to leave. “May I borrow your phone?”
He tossed it my way and walked off, rigid with tension. Something was mightily wrong with my favorite cop, and it was eating away at his normally unflappable demeanor. Maybe it was just as he said: his helplessness at preventing all these deaths. Or the chronic back pain. Or maybe it was Lilly. Or maybe his family, because I’d sure as hell flicked a sore spot there. But stable, he currently was not.
Deciding to put that aside for the moment, I called Zach, not telling him any details but asking him to pick me up. The distress in his voice pained me. Apparently, he’d been driving around looking for me for hours. I heard the car roar into gear as we hung up.
Wind gusted behind me, and thunder grumbled in the distance, as if impatient at holding back, irritated by the slow, forward plod of rain-pregnant clouds. I counted slowly to myself, a trick I often employ to distract my attention from fear or migraines—or from the admittedly uncharitable desire to pull words out of the mouths of people who speak very, very slowly.
Just then Zach arrived. Speeding up as he saw me, his car then came to a bouncing stop, one tire rolling up and over the edge of the sidewalk. Even before the car finished rocking, he was out the door, running across the lawn. “Sweet Jesus, you’re soaking wet.” He looked over my shoulder. The truck with the boat was backing up to the canal edge. “What happened?”
I told him as calmly as I could, trying to focus on the case, on Jake, on Hunter, on anything but the sight of Lathos’s face as he died. Still, by the end, my throat had gone tight and raw again. Zach’s expression grew more alarmed, his eyes first wide and then narrow.
“That’s it!” He snatched my hand and pulled me toward his car. “We’re getting you gone, and we’re getting you gone, now!”
He turned and ran headlong into Nestor. In one fluid motion, Zach dropped my hand and pulled back a fist. In the same second, Nestor yanked out his gun.
I jumped between them. “Stop! Nestor, Zach, no!”
Nestor pulled up, eyes blazing. “¡Chingao! I could’ve shot you!”
Zach gripped me by the upper arms and moved me behind him. He balled up his fists and squared his stance, clearly ready for a fight. Nestor tensed and raised his gun. I slipped between them a second time, one hand on Zach’s chest and the other atop Nestor’s gun. “That’s enough! Nestor, what’s wrong with you?”
Nestor glared. “I don’t let people raise their fists at me.”
“If you don’t sneak up on people, you don’t get pulled on,” Zach shot back. Whether he was giving in to an overstimulated sense of protectiveness or old-fashioned testosterone poisoning, I didn’t know. But this was not the time for this crap.
Resisting the urge to grab them both by the short hairs, I said as calmly as I could, “Guys, c’mon. Just say hello, okay? For me?”
Zach’s jaw ratcheted tight, but he unclenched his fist. “Howdy.”
Nestor’s lips twisted in a snarl. “Howdy? What cow town are you from, Jethro?”
Zach’s eyes flashed; he stepped up. “You got a problem with the way I talk, city boy?”
Nestor matched his movement. “Nothing I can’t handle with ease.”
“Maybe I ought to show you—”
“You threaten an officer of the law again, and your ass will be behind bars so fast—”
I slammed a fist into both of their chests. “I said, enough! For God’s sake! We’ve got snipers and bombers and crazy killers trying to drown me, and the two of you decide to play cave man?” They both spared me a sidelong glance but neither relaxed much. I groaned. “Can we just focus on what’s happening here? Nestor, what did the cops want?”
After the space of a few heartbeats, Nestor turned to me, slowly dropping his gun into the holster on his side. Zach stepped back and wrapped his arm protectively around my waist.
“One of the guys, working in that warehouse down the street, says he saw three people in the area about the same time the car must have hit the water: an old black guy who walks the neighborhood all the time; an SUV with a man in it, no good description; and a woman in a beat-up Chevy with shoulder-length red hair. Are you sure you didn’t see who hit you in the building? Could you at least tell if the person was male, female, black, white, Latino?”
I looked down, trying to cast my thoughts back to that split second. But there was nothing. Shaking my head, I looked up again. “I’m sorry.”
Zach tightened his arm around my waist. “That’s enough. Let’s go.”
Nestor put his hand out. “This is not a game. Someone’s trying to kill her.”
A car pulled onto the street. Déjà vu quickened my pulse, and I groaned. “Hunter! What does it take to shake that man? I’ve got to get out of here. Nestor, you know the pull he has with Voltaire! Even if you take me in, he’ll have me in some dungeon of his in a heartbeat.”
“I can take care of you. I’ll take you somewhere—”
“Back the hell off,” Zach growled. “You ain’t taking her nowhere.”
“Cut it out, you two!” I glanced over my shoulder. Hunter couldn’t see me yet, but he’d find me soon. “Nestor, please, I’ve already made arrangements to fly home to New … uh, Haven. To my mom; my family, they’ll protect me. It’s what families do.” He brought his head up sharply and swallowed hard, nodding. I went on. “I just have time to catch the plane if I leave now.” My own fib startled me, and I grimaced to myself, guiltily. I knew I shouldn’t be asking this. I was the only witness to what had just happened, and Nestor could get in trouble for letting me go before I gave an official statement. I grimaced to myself guiltily, knowing I was taking advantage of his befuddled state. But, honestly, Nestor was really freaking me out, and right now I didn’t want to be alone with him, either.
Zach smiled perversely, clearly happy to help me lie. “We got her a ticket this morning.”
A door slammed, and I ducked behind Zach. I looked back at Nestor. “Please? If you really want me to be safe … And it’s what cops do, keep people safe.”
He worked his jaw, staring at Hunter, who approached a group of police officers by the tow truck. Body language te
legraphed a tense conversation. Finally, Nestor heaved a sigh and then nodded tersely. I stretched up on my toes and kissed him on his cheek, ignoring Zach’s bristling. Then I grasped Zach’s hand and pulled him in a full run to his truck.
It took four-plus hours to get from Chicago to New Orleans, including a thirty-minute delay on the tarmac as a summer storm raged by. Fortunately for me, Zach had thrown my duffle bag in his truck, including not only Jake’s lockbox but a change of clothes from my apartment, which he picked up between getting me coffee and finding me gone. His offer to take care of George while I was gone both saved time and put my mind at ease. And I’d had just enough time before taking off to buy a small container of baby powder and some powdered chocolate at a food stand. I’d taken both into the handicapped stall in the bathroom, along with several handfuls of soaped-up paper towels and a few dry ones.
Peeling off my clothes, I washed myself. I felt incredibly vulnerable at being naked in an airport bathroom stall, not to mention freezing my ta-ta’s off. I doused myself thoroughly in baby powder, until the woman in the next stall and I both sneezed. Taking the paper cup I’d gotten from the food stand, I filled it with baby powder and a touch of cocoa and dumped it on my head, working it into the roots. The powder soaked up the oil from my scalp, and the dark cocoa over my dark hair saved me from looking like a refugee from a sixteenth-century wig shop. Okay, not perfect, but at least I didn’t smell like rancid canal water anymore.
Exhausted, I slept most of the way. Or as best I could, considering I sat by a heavy-set man who kept sniffing me. I couldn’t tell if his interest was epicurean or sexual. Or both.
Plus, the kid behind me kept trying to eat my hair.
Once we landed, I took a cab to Gorman’s, an upscale department store in an impeccable highrise. Unfortunately, the answer to my inquiry was, “Yes, Ms. Smith is here today, but, no, she is not in at the moment.” At four p.m. Ms. Smith would be in. Who shall they say called? I left my name and promised to come back. I had fifty minutes to kill, so I went for a walk.
The highrise containing Gorman’s sat on the border of modern New Orleans and the French Quarter. On one side, glass, steel, and concrete; on the other, cobblestones, shingled roofs, and wrought-iron balconies. Anxious to see the latter, I jogged across the street. Like many Yankees, I was both awed by and envious of the Old South and, for me, New Orleans had always been an idea as much as a place. I’d pictured slim tendrils of fragrant vines snaking over baroque ironwork balconies. Delicate southern belles, bedecked in yellow flounce and broad-brimmed hats, sipping iced tea on a sweltering summer day, beads of condensation gathered into rivulets, tracing lazy, winding trails down the sides of the tall glasses. The barest hint of times past filled the air, full-bodied, with a touch of sadness but still strong and vigorous, like a fine French brandy. At least that’s what I’d always imagined.
Boy, had I been wrong.
Humidity swaddled me like a wet blanket. The scent of decaying fish, so strong I could taste it, wafted up from the water on a hot breeze. I walked on, wiping at lipline sweat, while the brown water made nasty, little lapping sounds against the dock. To add to my grief, after the hours of inactivity, even hoisting my duffle bag on my good shoulder made me grimace in pain.
I struggled on, passing emaciated houses with narrow windows and thin doors. Their second-floor porches, rimmed with iron banisters, clung parasitically to unsteady buildings, warped with age. Tropical greenery lined the balconies, overgrowing in pots of all sizes; tiny jungles gone mad. What, at first glance, appeared to be ice cream parlors turned out to be shops selling giant plastic cups of a high-octane drink called a Hurricane. Along the narrow streets, large-breasted women, braless, in tight, strategically tattered t-shirts, cooed at customers outside of “gentlemen’s clubs”: women selling women. Nope, not the New Orleans of my fantasies.
I found myself in front of a three-spire white church. Each spire held a cross, high above a verdant lawn. In front was a park, skirted by a wrought-iron fence, a somber barrier that would have differentiated where men of stature could walk from where those without it should stay.
As I sat wearily on a bench, my pocket buzzed. Startled, I pulled out the phone. “Hello?”
There was a pause and then: “Who the hell is this?”
I ground my jaw, annoyed at the unwarranted aggression. “Who the hell wants to know?”
“Madison? What are you doing with Nestor’s phone? Is he with you?”
“Oh, it’s you, Lilly,” I said, relieved to hear a familiar voice. “Nestor’s not here. I borrowed his phone and forgot to give it back. Any word about Jake? How’s he doing?”
“He’s the same. Are you sure Nestor’s not with you?”
“What kind of question is that? I’m not even in Chicago anymore.”
“So I heard. Hunter told Voltaire you skipped, and they’re both pissed! You’re in big trouble.”
Oh, crap. Hunter knows I’m gone? “You don’t have to sound so happy about it.”
“Well, I don’t like being disrespected. You ran out on me.”
I groaned. “Come on, Lilly. Don’t take it like that. I wasn’t running away from you. I was running away from Hunter. I’m not your enemy here.”
“Yeah, right!” Her voice was more helpless than angry. I’d really hurt her feelings.
Guilt washed over me. I softened my own voice. “Look, Lilly. I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t mean to disrespect you. And, honestly, I’m not after Nestor.” Mostly honestly, anyway.
A long silence filled the phone line. I could almost hear her thinking. “Just stay away from him,” she said finally. “You don’t know him as well as you think you do.”
“I’m beginning to realize that. He’s so fisty lately.”
“He’s what?” she said, rightfully perplexed.
“You know, fisty,” I said, pantomiming throwing a fist with my free hand, a gesture she, of course, could not see. “Lately he’s been given to bouts of fisticuffs: fisty.”
“Is that a real word?”
“Oh, sure, let’s say it is. My point is that he’s so on edge. What’s going on with him?”
“Family issues. Nothing you need to be concerned with. Where are you?”
“Well, uh,” I paused, stalling. It’s not that I didn’t trust Lilly, per se. But Nestor had raised just enough doubts in my mind that I was worried she’d relay my location to Voltaire. And I had no doubt that the man’s reach could easily extend to the very bench on which I sat.
On the other hand, Nestor had been acting so oddly lately. Come to think of it, the only negative things I’d ever heard about Lilly had come from him. So why believe him over her? Then I remembered something. Lilly had told me at the scene of the fire that there were “things I didn’t know, that can get people killed.” She said that she “knew how to end this” while being very careful not to let Nestor see us. Did she know that he was involved with all the killing? Was she merely being loyal, too loyal, to her partner, trying to handle things on her own without exposing him while simultaneously trying to protect me by spiriting me away?
Sure, Nestor was behaving abnormally, and, okay, it was a little hard to believe that a mere “family issue” would ruffle Officer Smooth’s feathers so fully. But I’d seen the fervor in his eyes when he mentioned family. Exterior calm aside, Nestor was clearly a man of strong convictions. If something was going wrong with his relatives, then I could believe he’d go a little nuts. Indeed—even with all the problems between my mother and me at the moment—I’d probably do the same. Rats. My gut instinct told me to trust him. But was it gut instinct? Or did I simply want to trust him because I wanted a square-jawed hero cop in my life? Whoa. Where did that come from? No more late-night “women’s channel” romances for you, Madison, my girl.
I said, “I, uh, I have an appointment now. I’ll call you back—”
“Wait! No!” The desperation in her voice was almost palpable. “I, I’ve been working on this Hunter angl
e you suggested. I have something.”
My pulse picked up its pace. “I didn’t suggest—oh, never mind. What did you find?”
“I don’t want to say over the phone. But it’s big. Tell me where you are, and I’ll fax it.”
“I’m not near a fax machine.” Even if I were, the New Orleans area code would give away my location. I felt bad holding out on her, but I just couldn’t risk her telling Voltaire where I was. “I need you to trust me, Lilly. I know how badly you want to get this right. And I’m trying to help. Look, email it to me. I’ll hit a cyber café and pull it off.”
“We need to move on this.” I heard doubt and anxiety in her voice.
“Then tell me what you have now.”
Her voice dropped. “I can’t. I’m in the precinct waiting for Nestor to finish some paperwork. He’ll be back any second. People keep walking by. I don’t want to be overheard.”
“Then email it to me. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. I promise.”
“I’d feel better if I knew where you were.”
“It’s better for you if you don’t. Trust me.” I gave her my email address and hung up.
Trust me? Hah! And whom do I trust? I chewed at my lower lip. I couldn’t help but be disturbed by the strength of Lilly’s conviction. Could Hunter really be guilty? He doesn’t like me, so why stalk me? On the other hand, I had only Nestor’s word for that. Yet, Lilly suspects Hunter, too. Was he the one who ran out the back door of the apartment building, or was he the one who hit me? On the other, other hand, both he and Nestor also had enough time to put me in the car and double back. Lilly, in contrast, had been working. Unless, of course, Nestor had lied about that. So who knocked me out? I groaned out loud and rubbed my hands across my eyes. Who to trust? Lilly? Hunter? Nestor? All of them? None of them? My stomach twisted.
And what about Tina? Lathos had called out for her. What if he was telling me it was she who put us in the car? Maybe she and Lathos had set Jake up but then they had a falling-out. Or maybe she was working with someone else. Maybe she’d joined forces with Jake’s attacker from the hospital. Maybe the two of them are in cahoots and they’d put Lathos and me in the car. Wait! I sat forward, brain tingling as I remembered what Nestor said hours earlier. The witness who saw a woman by the canal said she had shoulder-length red hair. Tina was a redhead! I gasped. Another connection! But, damn it, what’s it all mean?
The Last Best Lie Page 13