“Luisa was the present!”
“And we couldn’t waste time and energy on things and people that refused to change, so we dealt with them as they were!”
For the first time ever, Carole Ann and Grayce departed from each other with a splinter of uneasiness wedged between them like a popcorn kernel between teeth, something foreign, an irritant that would fester if left too long. But Carole Ann was in no frame of mind to make amends. Nor was she of the mind-set to go have lunch with Jake. But she’d promised almost two weeks ago that today, she’d have lunch with him and spend some time with him at his office. And instantly she revised her thoughts and feelings, and questioned why there’d been the reluctance. She did want to see Jake and spend time with him and share his excitement at the growth of his company. She was happy for him that Tommy and Anthony would team up to represent him out West. He was her friend. What then was the source of, the reason for that initial and immediate negative reaction? Warren, she imagined, would tell her she was grieving still. And perhaps she was.
She roused herself from the chaise, and scooted to the sliding glass door, wincing at the effort required to move the door on its track; and with the pain came the reminder that she was to begin her work with a physical therapist the following morning. “Best damn physical therapist on the East Coast,” Jake had growled. “She’s the reason I’m able to walk today.” Carole Ann flexed the fingers of her left hand and lifted her left arm, which displayed a reluctance to take orders from her brain. She’d almost died from the bullet that had ripped open her chest, missing by crucial inches her clavicle and a lung.
“That’s twice in one year,” her mother had said more times than she needed to hear, but it wasn’t the near-death experience that troubled her spirit as much as it was the source: Luisa had intended to kill her. Had wanted to kill her. She would be a long time recovering from that knowledge; perhaps she never would.
Jake had said lunch would be a casual affair, served on his rooftop deck, so she donned white drawstring slacks and a white sleeveless blouse—she couldn’t manage a tee shirt these days, a real tragedy since they were a staple of her wardrobe—and with her wide- brimmed straw hat and matching purse, she could have been headed to a garden party. “Maybe I am,” she mused, and snickered at the thought of Jake hosting a garden party. She tried to imagine him in a seersucker suit and spectator pumps and the snicker became a giggle. Jake was and forever would be a homicide detective. And that, she thought with a warm and loving feeling, was a truly wonderful thing.
He greeted her wearing khaki slacks, a pale yellow short-sleeve shirt, and oxford loafers, and Carole Ann thought perhaps she’d been too hasty in consigning him to a lifetime of shiny, ugly police detective suits.
“You look positively gorgeous!” she told him without the slightest hint of mockery. “And this is spectacular,” she said, waving her good arm to encompass the rooftop garden, which could easily have been the setting for a spiffy party.
He growled at her. “What you see before you is my wife’s vision of how an ‘investigative specialist’ should look. That is, if he absolutely refuses to wear a suit and tie. Which I absolutely do unless I absolutely have to.”
She grinned at him. “‘Investigative specialist?’ ”
He muttered something she couldn’t decipher, then shrugged his shoulders and raised his palms to the heavens. “Since I’m not a cop anymore, I don’t know what I am. I’m sure as hell not a private detective or a private investigator! None of that TV shit. Give some thought to it, would you? To what I should call myself? You lawyers are good with words.”
She followed him to a corner of the deck, which resembled a merger between the Caribbean and the South Pacific: A series of thick bamboo poles that almost seemed planted into the wood rails and flooring, supported three floor-to-ceiling rattan blinds that not only blocked the sun’s glare but actually seemed to cool the area. High-backed wicker chairs surrounded an oval glass-topped table, which held bowls of fresh fruit, pitchers of water and lemonade, a basket covered with a brilliantly colored napkin, and two place settings. An antique black and brass ceiling fan, mounted on a thick beam, turned overhead, gently rocking the half dozen ferns and flowering plants that hung suspended from the beamed ceiling. The mix of cultures reminded her of Ray, Jose, and David, and the Dame QueEs Mio Cultural Center. She told Jake as much and he remembered the place from her report to him.
“That place and those guys sound pretty special.”
She nodded. “They are. They also want me to be their lawyer, once the bar lifts my suspension,” she said, quickly dismissing that subject from her mind.
“Well?” Jake asked after a beat.
“Well what?”
“Are you gonna represent them?” he asked in the tone of voice he usually reserved for the intellectually challenged.
She shrugged. “You think you don’t know what to call yourself? What do you call a lawyer who no longer practices law? Especially one whose license to practice in her home state is on hold pending her ‘demonstrated ability to conduct herself in a manner befitting an officer of the court.’” She couldn’t prevent the bitterness that tinged the words. The DA quickly had dropped the charges against her and those against Grayce, Roberta, and Angie. But the bar association had persevered, as Addie had predicted at their initial meeting.
“Well, I just happen to have a few thoughts on that matter,’’ Jake said, much too casually, and Carole Ann’s eyes narrowed as she sat in the chair he’d waved her to. He opened the top of one of two coolers and retrieved a large, brightly colored bowl. “Cold cucumber soup,” he said, depositing it on the table with a flourish. And, opening the second cooler and withdrawing an identical bowl, he turned toward her and bowed. “Chinese chicken salad.” Like a magician, he whisked the napkin off the basket. “Grace’s homemade rolls.” He sat opposite her, tucked one of the napkins into his shirt front, and lifted the plate from the soup. “Let’s eat,” he said.
They feasted. The food was wonderful and plentiful and, as Jake observed, Carole Ann’s appetite had returned in full force. Which, he commented, was a good thing since she was looking a bit “scrawny.” She gave him the evil eye and he laughed at her. They talked easily about a wide range of issues: How much he’d enjoyed meeting her mother, finally, and the rest of the Wrecking Crew; how sorry he was about Luisa; how excited he was that Tommy and Anthony were building his West Coast operation; how proud he was of her successful rescue of Tommy. “He’d have bled to death if it hadn’t been for you, C.A. Or that woman would have plugged him again to finish him off. You did good. A real stand-up effort.”
They rehashed as much of the truth as they’d been able to figure out about what had happened at Jacaranda Estates and why, and though Jake was gratified to learn that the LAPD had not simply ignored the plight of the people there, he was alternately dismayed and disgusted by the extent of the tragedy.
“That’s too many people dead,” he growled. “They should’ve scrapped the entire operation rather than let that many people die.”
Carole Ann marveled at their role reversal even as she spoke. “They had so much time and effort invested, Jake. And they didn’t know whether or not there was another spy in the ranks.”
“Didn’t matter! Citizens were at risk. Legal, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens!”
Carole Ann tried again. “Anthony said they also didn’t want to jeopardize the fragile INS-LAPD relationship, and so nobody wanted to be the first to pull the plug.”
Jake grinned his crooked grin, the one that made him look sinister, and shook his head. “TV cops. Damn OK Corral mentality. Nobody wanted to be the first to blink.”
She studied him and wished that every cop everywhere could be like him. His toughness wasn’t macho posturing and his loyalty to his profession wasn’t blind. Jake couldn’t abide lawbreakers of any stripe, and he railed against the acceptance of mitigating circumstances as a criminal defense. He also
couldn’t accept mitigating circumstances as a reason for police action—or inaction.
“I guess we should be grateful for the stupidity and greed of youth,” Carole Ann said. “Because were it not for Little Hector and Pablo, Pedro and Hector still would be in business, smuggling in decent, hardworking adults instead of anybody willing and able to pay the price.”
“What absolutely amazes me,” Jake said, “is how long that Gutierrez clown was able to bring those people in and hide them right there on the property!”
That truth opened a wound for Carole Ann and she told him how betrayed she’d felt by Grayce and Angie and Roberta and Luisa; how empty and isolated she’d felt with each new revelation; how, because Warren harassed and bullied her, she’d agreed to talk to a therapist about grieving; how she’d accepted that D.C. was home; how uncertain she was about what she’d do with the rest of her life.
“You could become my partner,” Jake said quietly and with a reverence that almost frightened her.
“I...don’t...how? How could I be your partner, Jake? I don’t know anything about police work.”
“You know more about police work than a lot of cops I know,” he said in his normal tone. “But that’s beside the point. That’s what I was saying earlier. What I do isn’t really ‘police work.’ A lot of it is legal stuff. Sure, we investigate companies and individuals, and we provide security and surveillance for companies and individuals. But we’re doing some stuff now for embassies and foreign governments. I’m in over my head, C.A. In real deep water. Not only do I need your knowledge, your brain, I need your approach. You’re a class act, C.A. I’m a street cop.”
“Nothing wrong with that!” She bristled in her defense of him, and surprised herself with her vehemence.
He got somber again. “Sometimes there is,” he said quietly. “I don’t fit in at diplomatic functions. Even in one of those two thousand dollar Italian suits I’d look like a cop. You, on the other hand, can put on two thousand dollars worth of clothes and look like a million bucks. You got brains, C.A., and class, and you’re tougher than anybody I know, and you’re loyal. I’d go to hell with or for you. And I need you. I honest to God need you, C.A.”
He sat back and folded his arms across his chest and looked at her, nothing readable in his eyes. He sat so still and so quietly that Carole Ann wanted to ask him to move, to speak, to do something. But she knew that she could do nothing but respond to his request: Yes or no. Nothing else would be acceptable. Anything else would be insulting.
She took a deep breath, held it, and expelled it. She nodded her head. “All right, Jake. But I will tell you that I’m terrified by the prospect. The only thing that scares me more is not working at all.”
The grin began and spread, lit his face like fireworks in the night sky. He reached beneath his seat and withdrew a legal-sized envelope that she hadn’t noticed before. He took from it a sheet of paper, which he extended across the table to her. Even before she took it, she recognized it as business stationery. Her eyes widened as she read the raised gold lettering on the cream-colored paper: GIBSON, GRAHAM INTERNATIONAL. Before she could speak, he presented another document and she read the words, “Partnership Agreement.” She placed both documents on the table and looked at him.
“Pretty damn sure of yourself, aren’t you?” She wasn’t really angry, but she could not accurately or adequately define her emotions.
He shook his head, the smile only half faded. “Not sure at all. Just hopeful as hell.”
She picked up the papers again, appreciating the simple beauty of the design: GIBSON, graham international. Nothing more. And, to the left, in the same gold lettering, her name: Carole Ann Gibson, Esquire, and a telephone number.
“Impressive,” she said. “Why’d you put my name first?”
“Well,” he drawled, “for one thing, it’s alphabetically correct. I comes before R. And it rolls off the tongue better: Gibson, Graham sounds nicer than Graham, Gibson. And ...” he said, drawing out the word and alerting her to the punch line, “if you take a closer look at the partnership agreement, you’ll see that you’re putting up the most money.” And he laughed out loud. A gleeful, joyful, belly-shaking, little-kid kind of laugh.
It was infectious. She laughed with him. Full and hearty. “Well, shit, Jake,” she said when she could talk. “I guess you’re right. I guess I am some kind of shit magnet.” And when his face showed that he’d finally realized what she’d said, she laughed so hard she cried, impervious to the pain shooting through her chest and arm.
He opened his mouth to say something but no words came, so he sputtered a bit, then gave it up. And he, too, laughed until he cried, his tears, like hers, cleansing waters.
###
For a preview of PARADISE INTERRUPTED...keep reading. Enjoy!
An excerpt from
PARADISE INTERRUPRED, A CAROLE ANN GIBSON MYSTERY
“You just remember, C.A.,” he said, “that an island is nothing but a little country town surrounded by water. Everybody knows everybody else’s business. Everybody on that floating mole hill knows who you are and why you’re there. Don’t forget that there was a revolution down there just a year ago, and not every Henri LeRoi supporter tucked tail and ran to France.” Jake called the exiled dictator Henry Lee-Roy and even as she giggled at his non-French, she acknowledged the necessity of the warning behind the words. And of that implied by his next words: A GGI technology specialist would arrive that evening, he reminded her, bringing with him a computer, fax machine, copier and shredder, and the security devices to protect them from invasion.
She hung up the phone feeling much calmer and more focused, though she retained a residual sense of unease from Jake’s warning. Certainly her presence on the island, and the reason for it, would be known, though by whom she couldn’t begin to imagine. Nor could she imagine that her presence would be considered threatening. Unless somebody didn’t want the Isle de Paix government secure and stable; didn’t want its president secure and safe. Denis St. Almain flashed into her mind. Was he here now? Could he have been here Saturday night? And if he did show up, how could she find him? The island wasn’t so large that he could disappear completely, but it was unfamiliar territory and, with the exception of the north coast, she had no idea where to look for him.
“Hellfire and damnation.” She stood up and stretched. Maybe instead of working she’d drive around, scouting out a good jogging route. “Bullshit, C.A.,” herself muttered, and she resumed her seat at the desk, picked up her briefcase and dumped out its contents, and got to work, poring over schematics and dry technical assessments and reports, after a brief time not minding that it was technical and dry. It was information, it was knowledge, and she thrived on learning. So she wasn’t surprised to realize that the hunger pangs that interrupted her concentration were due to the fact that it was after one o’clock and that she’d consumed nothing but coffee and a croissant more than five hours earlier.
The refrigerator, freezer, pantry and cabinets of the ultra-modern kitchen were stocked to over-flowing, but Carole Ann by now was too hungry to take the time to cook. Besides, there were, she knew from previous visits, excellent restaurants on the island, three of them within walking distance. But even as she was remembering the places near the harbor where she and Jake had dined, she was deciding to drive along the coast road instead. She’d be sure to find a stretch of beach suitable for jogging, and good food at one of the smaller places that catered to the beach trade and to the locals. After all, she reasoned, she was a local and therefore in need of a hang-out, a place in which to be recognized and accepted as a regular. A place in which to find, if not friends, at least people who would be comfortable talking to her and sharing island lore with her, if not island secrets.
“Dream on,” she chided herself, knowing the chances of that occurring were remote. She was no more likely to fall privy to secrets here than in any town, large or small, as long as she was an outsider. But there was an u
pside to outsider status: Locals always were curious about newcomers, and often would accidentally reveal information. So, for those curiosity seekers who didn’t know who she was and what she was doing on the island, she’d happily share tidbits of information about herself in exchange for tidbits of island information. Like, did any of them know Denis St. Almain? Did any of them know any drug traffickers? Was Isle de Paix a hotbed of illegal drug activity? Or of any kind of illegal activity?
She rounded a bend in the road and found the Caribbean stretched out before her, a gently rippling pale green silk scarf spread out endlessly against a backdrop of cloudless blue sky. She slowed and eased the car on to the verge and stopped. Certainly a view of the ocean was not a novel occurrence; she was a native of Los Angeles and had spent the formative years of her life observing the behavior of the Pacific Ocean. But this was different. As magnificent and as stirring and as awesome as her hometown ocean was, she’d never been tempted to confuse it with paradise. Here, the temptation was strong. This vista was as beautiful as anything she’d ever seen. Then she recalled the word of the GGI report prepared for her on drug trafficking in the islands: The Caribbean sea lanes are the primary paths for the transport of illegal drugs into the United States. And she recalled here conversation with Le Splendide captain Lionel Métier.
“Shit,” she muttered to the view, and swung the Jeep back out onto the road, alternating her gaze: Right, toward the beach, for a good place for running and left, toward the road-side businesses, for a good place to eat. Her mind was busy formulating a cover story to use when introducing herself around town. She need not have expended the energy. She slowed at the sight of the first buildings that signaled her arrival in Ville de Mer: A dive shop and boat rental place that was little more than a shack with side boards that let up and down; a bar of quite modest proportions bearing the impressive name, Eiffel Sud; and a string of tiny shops, obviously new and painted pastel colors in an impressive imitation of the Government Square establishments. Then two car horns sounded simultaneously and Carole Ann started, thinking perhaps that she was driving too slowly and holding up the flow of traffic. Then came the hands raised in greeting and the blast of several other car horns— greetings, too, and all directed at her.
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