“I have to tell you, Ruby, that this has been one of the most enjoyable weekends of my life,” he said. “You have captured my mind so quickly, and maybe my heart as well.”
“Well, you got to me awful quick too, Rafael,” Ruby admitted. “Don’t meet too many like you down at the airport.”
Rafe stopped her chopping movement with a hand on her forearm. “You were so perfect when it came to entertaining my company, you made me so proud to have you on my arm.”
“Yeah, and proud to let me cook for that crew and wait on them,” Ruby said, but with a smile.
“You know, there is space in this house for another. A woman I can trust to be by my side, to support me. Room in this house. Room in my life.”
Ruby took a deep breath, and broke eye contact for a second. “Look, Rafe, I like you too, a lot. But don’t you think we’re moving a little fast here? Let me think about this some while I’m in my own home, alone, in the quiet, away from those damned seductive eyes.”
“Away?” Rafe’s face fell, like a schoolboy who just found out about this afternoon’s test.
“Well, sugar, I do have a job, remember? And I have to change my clothes and I need some, you know, me time.”
Rafe nodded. “Okay, I get it. But I don’t like it. Stay for dinner?”
“No, really, baby, I don’t mind helping you prepare the meal, but I don’t think I’ll hang around for it,” Ruby said, turning to the sink to wash up. “Besides, I think your visitors may well sleep through the evening meal. One’s already sacked out, which seems odd. I know it’s a long flight, but it’s only one hour earlier in Peru.”
“Colombia.”
“Whatever.”
Ruby dried her hands on a dishtowel, and reached for Rafe to give him a good, solid kiss. She still wasn’t used to tilting her head down for this, but one part of her brain said she could easily get used to it. His arms were strong, and his lips knew just what to do.
When they broke the embrace she scooped up her bag, gave him one more big smile and headed for the door with Rafe close behind her.
“So, can I drive back to the city?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Perhaps that’s not the best plan.” Ruby stopped short, since those words didn’t come from Rafe. She found herself face to face with de La Fuente, whose back rested against the door.
“What the hell?” she said in a low voice.
“Rafael,” de La Fuente said from behind his most charming smile, “Your brother Hector invited us here for a very special reason. We are embarking on a grand journey, he and I, a business of great importance to both of us.”
“Yeah. So?” Rafe looked over his shoulder to find Hector standing with a pleading expression on his face. Rafe stepped forward to stand beside Ruby.
“How well do you know this charming lady?” de La Fuente asked.
“And what is that to you?” Rafe asked. Ruby didn’t like where this was going.
“I would be much more comfortable if she would consent to staying with us until tomorrow, when our business is concluded. As a gesture.”
“I’ll give you a gesture, buddy,” Ruby said, flashing her left middle finger. “Now get out the way. I got a job to get to.”
“She can call in sick,” Hector said. “She’ll still get paid.”
“Rafael, if she is trustworthy, this should not be a big thing to ask,” de La Fuente said.
“I will not hold Ruby prisoner here, not even for one day,” Rafe said, stepping in front of her.
“Please try to understand,” de La Fuente said, not backing off one inch. “If anything were to go wrong, then someone might assume she was the cause. That would put her at risk, and your judgment in question.”
Ruby figured they all knew what he was talking about. If the drug deal went sour, they would know she was the cause. Were any of the men aware that she knew what this was about? She had no way to know. But she did know that if she left now, Rafe would be in danger. And if they took Rafe out and moved on, she’d probably never catch up to them again, and never know just what the mysterious white powder really was.
Without turning, Ruby heard the other visitors stirring. They would be standing, waiting to see if Rafe would fall in line with their leader. Rafe looked ready to fight. If he did, he would lose and either way they’d lose the connection to the supplier at the end of this weird mystery.
All of this went through Ruby’s mind in a second. She nodded and said, “I guess one day won’t kill nobody. Not if that’s what it takes to prove I won’t screw up whatever this big deal is for Rafe.”
“Thank you, my dear,” de La Fuente said. “You are kind to allow us this degree of emotional comfort for one night.”
Rafe wasn’t impressed. “You think she’s some kind of spy?”
“Easy enough to prove otherwise,” de La Fuente said. “I’m sure she won’t mind offering a small token to show her sincerity.”
“Like?” Ruby asked, mentally measuring the distance from her right toe to his crotch.
“Like your cell phone,” de La Fuente said. His right hand snapped forward, like a striking snake, snatching Ruby’s bag away from her. Fast as he was, it might not have worked if she hadn’t noticed the tattoo on his forearm when he stretched forward. What she saw was the tip of a dagger with a snake coiled around it. She recognized the mark, and it chilled her. These were no mere drug smugglers.
de La Fuente had just pulled her phone from the bag when Rafe grabbed his wrist. As he did, the other three men moved forward, suddenly not looking so friendly. She could probably take the group, but she doubted she could also keep Rafe from getting hurt. His macho bull might get him sliced or shot in the battle.
“All right,” she said to stop the action. “I see you guys are really paranoid about being betrayed but okay. The phone’s not that big a deal, except that I do need it back to call in to work.”
Ruby reached past Rafe and snatched her phone back. Passing out dirty looks in all directions, she hit a speed dial button and held the phone to her ear. de La Fuente leaned forward to hear both sides of the conversation. No problem. Gorman wouldn’t give her away and she could at least give him some clues as to her location. Then the cavalry would ride to her rescue.
“Gorman.”
de La Fuente wrapped his hand around Ruby’s hand and the phone, pulling it away from her head before she could say a word in response. “Now who was that, chica?” he asked, pushing the button to cut the connection. “I think that airport workers always answer with the name of the airport, not their own name. Am I right? So who did you call instead?”
“Just hit the wrong number,” Ruby said, sneering at de La Fuente.
“Don’t worry about it,” Hector said. “I’ll just tell them you’re not coming when I call in. I won’t be in this shift either.”
“I think I will just keep this little toy,” de La Fuente said, “so you don’t accidentally disturb anyone else.”
Fire flew from Ruby’s eyes as she tried to pull her hand free. “What the hell makes you think I’m going to let you hang on to that? It’s my only contact with Mama.”
“Because I asked so nicely,” de La Fuente said. As his rough grip crushed her hand around the phone Ruby looked around for support. She saw Fear on Hector’s face. Rafe’s expression combined confusion and conflict. To them, this was a matter of cementing a relationship with a big time drug connection. But it was clear that if she balked now, Rafe would back her up. Touching, she thought, but pointless. Keeping her eyes on Rafe’s face, she relaxed her hand and let de La Fuente pull the telephone away.
“Well, honey, it looks like I’ll be joining you for dinner after all.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Hey, Stone, I’m pretty sure this is the right number, right here!” Steele pointed at a line in the ledger, and made a note in his smaller pad.
“You got it, partner,” Stone said, a bit louder than necessary.
There was a party atmosphere arou
nd the Mason dining room table. For much of the afternoon, Stone Mason had sat at one end of the table with photocopied pages from both ledgers. A mug of coffee sat by his right hand, a gin and tonic by his left. His partner Rico Steele was a mirror of his actions at the other end of the table, staring at the same pages, braced by the same mug and glass, except that between his drinks sat an ashtray. Smoke curled up from his cigarette while he scribbled on his pad. On one side of the table, Sherry Mason and Linda Perry sat side by side, reading out number and letter combinations. No coffee cups cluttered their side of the table. Sherry, ever the dutiful hostess, kept their glasses filled from a big pitcher of gin and tonic.
“We have got them cold, partner,” Steele said, almost shouting over the Temptations playing in the background. “Look at this list. Every crooked business Jerome is getting money from, identified clear as hell, the cases they asked him to work, and right here, here and here the sources of his information. You can even tell what things he accused each cop of if you really get into it.”
“Yeah, and he pretty much annotated right on the book here when he knew it was a trumped up charge,” Linda said. “I mean, he knew he was falsifying this evidence and lying to the court. This will get him disbarred for sure.”
“Disbarred?” Sherry chuckled. “He’ll do time for this stuff. And a few of the officers of these crooked businesses will join him, right honey?”
Sherry slapped Stone’s shoulder with the back of her hand to get his attention but he didn’t answer right away. He had suddenly become very quiet.
“What’s up son?” Steele asked. “That gin wearing off? Sherry, fill his glass up again.”
Stone rubbed the back of his neck the way he did when he was about to disappoint someone. “Hey, Rico, take another look at that third list and tell me what you see.”
“Come on, Stone,” Rico said. “We have translated almost every one of these bad guys’ names. Hell, we know most of them.”
“And the cops?” Stone asked.
“Know a lot of them too, and we got names linked to every one of these cases.”
Stone picked up his glass and drained half of it in one long gulp. “And these names over here? Emmerling? Dalton? Madison? King?”
Steele ran his finger along a column slowly, his smile fading as he did.
“Rico?” Linda asked. “What’s wrong? What do you see that I don’t?”
When Steele didn’t answer, Stone did. “These are crooked cops, Linda. Real crooked cops with real evidence against them.”
“So what?” Linda asked. “Don’t you want to bust them too?”
Stone stood up and began to pace the end of the room. “Try to imagine this, Linda. We go into court with a list of cops’ names, right? Now, we know that a few are dirty. And there’s this other long list of cops that a lawyer has compiled evidence against. Evidence that must be pretty credible, or he wouldn’t have tried to use it to attack these cops.”
“Oh, God,” Sherry said, a hand covering her mouth. “It’ll set off a witch hunt through the whole department. It will be a three-ring circus, with the whole city screaming for a total expose. The department will have a full time job proving who’s innocent and who’s not.”
“The force will lose a lot of effectiveness,” Steele put in. “And a lot of good cops will be hurt, just by the suspicion. We’ll accomplish in one shot what Jerome has been trying to do one cop at a time.”
Linda emptied her glass and got to her feet. “Wait a minute here. What are you all saying? After talking me into testifying, putting myself and little Danny on the line, now you want to keep all this quiet? What kind of jokers are you?”
Stone stopped pacing to face Linda. “What kind? We’re cops, that’s what kind.”
“You might have been once, but not anymore.”
Steele’s boots hit the floor with a loud thump. “Always, girl. You don’t get it.”
Sherry held a palm toward Steele, hushing him, as she turned to Linda and said, “It’s like a fraternity. Once you swear that oath, you never really leave. People like Rickard and my Sam, they stay cops forever. It’s in their blood. And they don’t want to do anything that will hurt another officer.”
“So now what?” Steele filled his lungs with smoke and pushed it out in a downward rush to bounce off the table and away.
“I’ve got an idea,” Stone said, heading for the living room. “But before we do anything else, I need to call Paul Gorman and let him know what we’ve found.”
Chastity Chiba loved the sound of crickets. She associated them with home, with love, and with peace. As a child in Japan she imagined that the little insects were singing to each other. She remembered lying under the stars, sipping hot green tea and feeling the dew on the grass. The scent of wet grass turned out to be universal around the globe.
In those childhood days she would stare at the moon for hours and wonder if, somewhere, her father was looking up at the same bright orb in the sky. But on this evening, she sipped tea through a straw and her focus was not the moon but two people at the other end of her binoculars. She wore a ghilli suit, a ragged camouflage outfit that made her just about invisible at the edge of the Brooks’ small backyard. She had been stretched out on her stomach behind a thin row of hedges since a few minutes before sundown. She wasn’t there just to keep track of the family members. This was her opportunity to see Alex and his daughter together. She had to be sure.
In the twilight, Alex had pushed Amy on their swing as the sun was going down. Amy’s mother chose to stay inside the whole time. This fact was not lost on Chastity. As time passed, Chastity began so see the relationship that no one else seemed aware of. She saw Alex and Amy talk and play. She saw the way Alex hugged Amy when no one else was around. She saw Amy’s reaction to her father’s playful teasing and tickling. And alone in the damp grass, Chastity began to cry.
She had been prepared for the worst. Would Alex really show the kind of behavior that betrays child molesters when no one is watching? Instead of fear, Amy’s relationship with her father filled Chastity with envy. Alex was the father Chastity always imagined. He was the man her own father would have been, if only MI-5, or whoever, had not called him home and away from his loving wife months before Chastity was born.
The real tragedy was not what Francine was planning for her husband, but what she had already done to her daughter. The lies she had forced Amy to memorize must have been eating at the poor girl’s heart like a tapeworm. Did she understand that it was a ploy to destroy her father? Or had she been fed a long string of lies justifying the lies somehow. Chastity had no way to know.
Moving her binoculars away from her face to wipe her eyes, Chastity realized that she didn’t care why. She now knew for certain who the villain was. She knew the stakes, and she knew the villain’s project. And she knew that the solution would not be found in legal maneuvering.
Highlighted by a beam of moonlight, Rafael Sandoval rubbed his hands together to warm them before beginning to spread lavender-scented oil across Ruby Sanchez’ back.
“How does that feel?” Rafe asked. Her response was a sound much like a kitten’s purr. She had to admit it, the man had the touch. Of course, almost anything would feel good while she was lying naked between satin sheets beside a handsome man in a room lighted only by the moon through the windows.
This was doubly true since the visitors had stayed up drinking and watching sports until almost three o’clock. Ruby had followed Rafe’s lead, pretending to join in with the fun and basically returning to the part she had played since de La Fuente and his friends arrived. She knew she was being watched closely that evening. The one time she managed to steal a moment alone, she picked up a telephone only to find it disabled.
When bedtime arrived, Ruby looked at the visitors and at Hector, and decided that she didn’t want to be alone in the guest room. That fact, combined with her genuine affection for and attraction to Rafael, had convinced her to pull him close and whisper in his ear.
>
“Do you suppose I could spend the night in your room tonight?”
Within minutes she was lying on his bed with the top sheet pulled down to her waist so that Rafe could deliver a promised massage. She could hear his hands sliding smoothly over her skin, coaxing the tension out of the muscles beneath. It was heaven, but Ruby knew she needed to pull her mind away from romance.
“Rafe, honey, we need to talk,” she murmured. “I’m not sure how to say this but…oh, baby, where did you learn to do that?”
Rafe had straddled her and was kneading her trapezius muscles with his thumbs. “I used to do this for my mother and sister. Not quite this way, of course, they stayed dressed. Guess I couldn’t have handled it at your house, eh? Too many female backs. How did your mama ever keep you all straight anyway? I only had one brother but my mother used to cross up our names.”
“Well, Mama wasn’t very creative,” Ruby said. “She started naming her kids after flowers. So the first girls were Daisy, Iris, Jasmine, Lilly and Rose.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“Nope,” Ruby said into her pillow. “When number six came along she had apparently run out of flowers, so she switched to months of the year. That’s when April, May and June turned up.”
“Now I know you’re making this up,” Rafe said, sliding off her to lie on his side. “So how come you’re not July or something?” Propped on one elbow he continued to slowly rub her back with his free hand.
“Clearly Mama knew she had used up the calendar, so she switched again, to jewelry this time. Not that I’m complaining. I’m a lot luckier than my baby sister, cause in the twenty-first century, being a black woman named Sapphire must be a bitch.”
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