by Nicole Fox
It was a good start to what was going to be a make-or-break day. Though neither of us said it, we both knew that there were two very different ways in which today could end, and both were equally probable.
We filled up with gas and then headed back the way we had come. Though I tried not to let Corinne notice, I was constantly on the alert for anyone following us. I had a hunch that, if the Mafia had been on our tail, we would have known about it by now, but it was better to be on the safe side.
# # #
Just after lunch, we arrived at the home of Deputy Porter Crucero. Although, anyone who had seen him arrest me the other night wouldn't necessarily have guessed it, Porter and I went way back. In high school, we had been friends, and were damn near inseparable. It was safe to say that, since then, our lives had taken dramatically different courses, but I figured that if I was going to be turning myself into anyone, then choosing someone who might have some residual good feelings toward me was probably best.
From the look on his face when he opened the door, Porter Crucero had not been expecting the town's most wanted man to arrive at his house with his boss's daughter in tow.
"Asa," was all he said.
"Hey, Porter, how's it going?"
"I suspect better for me than it has been for you," Porter said. Then he looked at Corinne and added, "Or, then again, maybe not. Would you like to give me some idea of why you're here?"
"I'm turning myself in."
If his face had looked surprised when I arrived, then that was nothing to how it looked now. He recovered himself and shook his head.
"Well, I didn't have anything else planned for my day off so, what the hell, let's do this."
"Can we talk before you take me down the station?"
Porter shrugged. "That's not normally how we do things, but 'normal' is not a word I would use to describe any part of this."
We sat down at Porter's kitchen table, and he made the three of us coffee. I'd have to say it was the most surreal experience I could have imagined.
"Before we start, Asa," said Porter, setting down the coffee in front of us and seating himself, "I think I need to make some things clear."
"Fire away."
"I hope it won't come to this, but ..." Porter paused, wondering how best to explain himself. "Look, do you remember Artie Reed?"
I nodded. Artie had been another of our little circle of friends. He had gone bad in a big way after school and was currently serving a life sentence in prison, having narrowly escaped the death penalty on a technicality.
"You know what happened to him? Where he is now?"
Again, I nodded, wondering if having Corinne in on this little meeting had been a good idea.
"You know who put him there?"
I nodded again. "Rumor tells me that it was you."
"Rumor is right," Porter said. "I loved him like a brother when we were in school, but I sent him down, and, when I did, I fully expected him to end up on death row. And beyond."
"Well," I acknowledged, not liking the general trend of this conversation. "He did some bad things."
"And you're going to tell me that you're all sweetness and light?"
"No," I said, firmly. "But I think we'd both agree there's a difference between what Artie did and what I do."
Porter held up his hands. "No doubt about it. I wouldn't be asking for death for you. But I saw that book, Asa, before your boys stole it back. I know you're guilty."
"Of selling illegal alcohol."
"The law is the law," said Porter, sternly. "I'm not vindictive. I wouldn't go after you for more than you've done, or try to pin other crimes on you. Your dad taught me that," he added to Corinne. "But you broke the law, and I plan to make you pay to the extent of the law. I just want that understood, before we go any further. And, if you try and make a run to the door now, then I also want it understood that I will try and stop you. We were friends once, and those were good times, but they were a long time ago. I'm not saying you didn't have it tough growing up, but so did I, and I'm here, and you're there. And that's the way it is."
Porter sat back and waited for my response.
I nodded. "Well, I appreciate you being up front with me, Porter."
"Figure I owe you that much," Porter said. "There were times back in the day when you had my back when no one else did."
"We had to stick up for each other back then."
Porter nodded. "But you reach an age when you've got to decide which way you go, and you made your decision, Asa."
I nodded. I felt that making me feel bad about my life choices while arresting me was a little bit much.
"You think you've got enough on me to make it stick?"
Porter laughed. "That's your game, huh? Well, we'll try. We might not have your book anymore, but we've got some other stuff that might surprise you. I wouldn't call it a slam dunk, but I'd put my money on you doing hard time."
The plan, so far, was not going my way, and I could see Corinne getting anxious. Time for me to play my trump card.
"You know Tony Rassi's mob, yeah?"
"I know of them," Porter said carefully. "They keep themselves pretty clean in the open. You never hear a word against them, and there's never a shred of evidence."
"No one wants to testify against them."
Porter nodded ruefully. "Hard to blame folk for that. The Mafia has a bit of a reputation when it comes to snitches."
"What if someone could give you hard evidence?"
He tried hard to hide it, but I saw the spark of interest in Porter's eye. The man who took down Rassi's gang would not be a mere deputy for long.
"What sort of evidence?"
I shook my head. Years of experience had led me to never trust the police.
Porter pulled a face. "I've never been one for deals with criminals. That's another thing I learned from your dad, Corinne. Letting one off to put another inside just seems like a wash to me."
"I sell hooch," I said, a little injudiciously perhaps. "You want me to list what Rassi's into? You want me to list the deaths that I can tell you he's responsible for, that you can't ever pin to him? Who do you want walking the streets?"
"Ideally, neither of you," Porter said honestly. "The thing is, Rassi is a vague promise. You have no idea the number of times we thought we had something on him, only for him to wriggle out. Taking him down is not guaranteed. You, on the other hand, are sitting here right now, in my kitchen, telling me that you sell illegal hooch."
I sat up straighter in my chair. "Have you been recording this?"
Porter shrugged. "Just a little precautionary thing, when you have a known criminal in the house."
"That's inadmissible!" Corinne cried angrily.
"True," Porter said. "But it's a hell of a start. You see how easy it is to put you away, Asa? Rassi ... I want him, but I don't think you can give him to me. And, like I said, doing deals with criminals just doesn't sit well."
I took this in. It had been a good idea, and I didn't think we'd have gotten a different response if we'd tried another deputy. Now there was only one thing left to do.
"Corinne, can you give us a minute?" I asked.
Corinne frowned deeply, but got up and headed into the next room, not saying anything, but glaring at Porter on her way out.
I turned back to my old school friend. "I need you to get Corinne home safely and keep an eye on her." I outlined my Mafia concerns, and Porter listened.
"Damn it, Asa, why'd you have to drag her into this? The trouble Brian has with that kid anyway."
"She's a good girl," I said firmly. "I just want to make sure she's going to be all right when I'm gone."
Porter nodded. "Of course. I'll see she's taken good care of."
"Thanks."
Porter drained the last dregs of his coffee. "You want to say goodbye to her before we head down the station?"
# # #
I had no idea how I was going to say goodbye to Corinne. She was going to blame herself, of course.
This had been her idea, and now she was going to beat herself up for how it had turned out. That was the last thing I wanted, but if I didn't say goodbye, then I knew both of us would regret it. How quickly that kid had wormed her way into my life and turned it upside down. I wouldn't be going to jail now if it hadn't been for her, and, yet, I found I could not regret one moment of the time we had shared. What a girl.
"Corinne?"
Corinne looked up hopefully as I walked in. "Did you ...?
"I have to go now."
"Go?" It was heart-breaking to watch her face fall.
"Porter's going to take me in."
"No!" she practically screamed.
I went to her, and she fell into my arms, hugging me tightly, as if she could not bear to let me go.
"It's all my fault," she murmured tearfully into my chest. "If I had just left you alone. If I hadn't had to hook up with the most dangerous guy in the room, if I hadn't wanted to mess with my dad, if I hadn't ..."
"Then I wouldn't have known you," I said, drawing her back to look into her tear-stained eyes. "And for the pleasure of knowing you, I'd do back-to-back life sentences, and more. I wouldn't have missed it for the world."
"But if it wasn't for me ..."
"I'd have wound up here one way or the other," I said. "At least this way I got to ..." I struggled to put what she had given me into words. But it was something that couldn't be expressed in mere words. "Look, I should never have come to see you one more time, and I should never have taken you to the waterfall. I should never have let you stay in the car at the warehouse, and I should never have carried you off from the motel yesterday. Don't blame yourself. I've done the wrong damn thing every step of the way. I've been telling myself I'm doing it to protect you, but that's just an excuse. I couldn't let you go. And, even now, even with all that's going to happen, even having said it was all wrong and all a mistake, I don't regret one second of it, and I'd do it all again in a heartbeat."
Corinne stared. Even if I had stopped short of using the 'L' word, I think she couldn't quite believe that I was finally saying all the things that she had so desperately wanted to hear me say.
"I have to go now."
She opened her mouth to speak, but I held up my hand. "Will you do one thing for me?"
"Anything," she breathed.
"Be a good girl."
# # #
Back in the kitchen, Porter sat at the table, waiting for me. "You really do care about her, don't you?"
"Were you listening in?" I asked, irritated by the intrusion.
"She's a pretty girl," Porter said. "Stunning, really. I have to admit that, at first, I thought you were with her for ... well, you know. And who could blame you? And then perhaps you stuck with her to get some revenge on Brian. That's what I thought. But that's not it, is it?"
"No," I said, honestly.
Porter drummed his fingers on the table a while. "So, how would this informant thing work then? There's usually some paperwork to fill out, but it's at the station, and I'm guessing that, for now at least, you'd rather keep the sheriff out of this. So, you might have to just take my word for it." He looked up at me. "So, what about it? Do you trust me, Asa?"
I nodded. "Oh, yes. I trust you Porter. You've had my back before, remember?"
Porter nodded. "Let's take that bastard Rassi down."
Chapter Seventeen
Corinne
I don't like the term 'emotional rollercoaster.’ I think it gets over-used and so loses any meaning it might once have had. People have a bit of a bad day at work and, suddenly, it's an emotional rollercoaster; someone spills their coffee, but finds a penny while mopping it up, and it's an emotional rollercoaster. Give me a break. But I think when you've gone from being hunted by the Mafia, to hoping that you've found a way to be with the love of your life, to learning that that love may be on his way to prison, to that previous hope being rekindled, all within the space of a day, then I think it's fair to break out the phrase 'emotional rollercoaster.’ Certainly, by the end of it, I felt as if I'd been on some sort of nausea-inducing fairground ride, but at least it had all worked out.
Porter Crucero very kindly invited us to stay the night.
"I've got a spare room, and we can order in take-out."
Asa and I gratefully accepted. It was nice to be reminded that there were people who were on our side, and I actually took some comfort from the fact that he hadn't initially been on our side, until he learned how much we cared for each other. If that was enough to change Porter's mind, might it be enough to change my father's as well? The problem was that I had spent years giving my father a bad opinion of me, making him think that I hung around (and, in fact, screwed around) with bad guys, as a matter of course. So why would he now believe that Asa was any different? Of course, if I had just let him know the real me, then none of this would have been an issue. He probably would have respected my choice because he knew I was trustworthy and made good decisions. But there was no sense in wishing that things were different. I had to deal with the situation as it was and the mess that I had made of it.
"Have you called your dad?" Porter asked, as we ate our evening meal together.
"No," I admitted. "I wouldn't know what to tell him, and I don't want to get into an argument. I did text him to let him know I'm all right."
"But, of course, anyone could be sending a text from your phone," Porter said, a little cagily. He didn't want to get into an argument either, but my dad was his mentor.
"If I call, then he'll want to know where I am," I pointed out. "Do you want me to tell him?"
"I guess not," Porter sighed. He had agreed to help us, and I was sure he would stick to it, but he was still a little conflicted, feeling as if he was going behind the back of the man he looked up to so much. He knew that Dad would be out of his mind with worry about me, and it was, theoretically, in Porter's power to alleviate that concern. But to do so would be to betray Asa and me. It was a tough spot for him, and I didn't want to underestimate what Porter was doing for us.
"You could give him a quick call," suggested Asa, joining Team Dugas. "Just so he could hear your voice. Like Porter said, anyone could be sending a text. He probably thinks it's from me. It would set his mind at rest, and he might hate me slightly less. Not much, but slightly."
"How about everybody stops telling me how to deal with my own father?" I suggested in a pointed tone, and the two men got back to eating.
It wasn't that I didn't recognize the good sense in what they were saying, particularly Asa's point about making my dad feel slightly less burning hatred towards the man I hoped to spend the rest of my life with. But neither of them had had to grow up with Brian Dugas. Neither of them grew up with the judgment and constant disapproval. They didn't know what it was like to have been in the wrong every day of their adult life. Nothing I did ever pleased my dad, and there was nothing I could say in a short phone call that was going to please him now. I had run off with his arch nemesis. It was an ultimate betrayal. I didn't want to hear the disappointment and the hurt in his voice. Maybe I was being selfish, but it was my decision.
"We go to the station tomorrow morning," said Porter, changing the subject. "I don't see any other way forward. We need to get the proper paperwork done to ensure you have proper informant status, otherwise some people may still object. I don't think this is going to be an easy sell, so you need to think about what information you can give me. I need something that's going to nail these guys, with no way out. Anything less than that, and I'm going to struggle to get this done."
Asa nodded. He said nothing, and I didn't either, but we both knew that tomorrow could well be another rollercoaster of a day.
# # #
The spare room was up under the eaves of Porter Crucero's little house. It was not used often and had become a store room for stuff that was in the way elsewhere, the kind of stuff that everyone keeps from their childhood, but will probably never look at again. Still, I found myself rather happy t
here. It was nice to be in a proper room, rather than a motel. It felt homey. And, while I was trying to keep my eagerness for domestic bliss as subtle as possible around Asa, I couldn't help wondering what it might be like when, and if, Asa and I made a home of our own. And yet, it seemed Asa's own thoughts might not be a million miles away from mine.
"This is cozy," he mused, looking around. "I never really had a home you could call a home. When I was a kid, home was never a home. Then, in War Cry, we moved around so much that home was wherever you wound up, or wherever your friends were. Come to think of it, the longest I've spent consistently in one bed might be when I did six months in jail. I think that's the only time I've ever had a chance to personalize a place and make it mine."