Under Cover

by Donna Ball

  David was silent, thinking it over. "No," he decided at last, slowly. "I'll handle it." And he got to his feet, smiling with the relief of a decision well-made. "Do you know, sometimes I really love this job."

  *****************

  "Calm down, Teale," Sam said wearily, for what must have been the tenth time. "It wasn't your fault. We were made before we ever walked into that room. Nobody's blaming you."

  It was ten o'clock the next morning, and Teale had been pacing the floor of Captain Hollis's office for the past twenty-five minutes. Captain Hollis leaned back in his chair, absently glancing over the report, and Sam sat on the edge of his desk. Both men waited patiently for Teale to wind herself down.

  She stopped now before the door and turned, hands spread in a helpless, defiant gesture. "What I don't understand is how. How did it get out?" She shook her head adamantly. "No. I must have let something slip. I must have—"

  "For Pete's sake, Teale, it was a setup, I tell you. That David Carey is one smart cookie, and we didn't check our backs, that's all. We walked right into it."

  Teale ran an exasperated hand through her already-tangled bangs. "I should have known," she muttered. "A man like David Carey latching on to me when he had his pick of a dozen other women, pouring on the charm, oozing out the compliments. I should have suspected something right then. Hell, even three hours at the beauty parlor couldn't make me that irresistible!"

  "So he goes for tall skinny redheads; there's no accounting for taste. Will you stop with the sackcloth and ashes already? You did your best. We both did."

  But that was the trouble. Teale hadn't done her best. She'd let David Carey get to her; those smoky eyes, that slow smile, the tingling, insinuating caresses. She'd gotten too caught up in her own role. She'd started believing that she was an attractive, reckless woman out for nothing more than a good time and that David Carey could show it to her. She'd let herself be distracted, she'd lost the cool edge of detachment that was the mark of a professional. She had blown it, and she was furious with herself.

  She walked over to the window and stood there, her hands on her hips, her brow drawn in a sharp frown as she stared sightlessly out. Sam, watching her, only shook his head and gave a sigh of exasperation.

  There was very little resemblance between the woman who had stormed the office this morning and the willowy, sensuous creature Sam had escorted to David Carey's party last night. She was wearing white jeans and a pink Oxford cloth shirt, and the color wasn't particularly flattering. Her pale hair was pulled back at the nape of her neck, and her feathery bangs were disarranged from the many times she had tugged at them during the morning. Her lipstick was gone and she wore no other makeup, which gave her face the pale, fragile look that could instantly arouse the protective instincts in a man. But appearances, as Sam well knew, were deceiving.

  Teale Saunders had the delicate, defenseless look of a lost child. She wasn't pretty in a classical sense, but undeniably memorable. She could lure a man in with those big blue eyes before he knew what was happening and then devour him whole. Unfortunately, few people realized that beneath the innocent, vulnerable exterior lay a woman of steel until it was too late.

  She turned abruptly from the window. "How?" Teale demanded again. "Will someone just please tell me how?"

  "A dozen ways." Hollis spoke for the first time, barely glancing up from the folder. "A department leak, a snitch, word on the street, it doesn't matter. It's done."

  Teale blew a breath through her teeth and began to pace again. Three weeks' work. One of the biggest operations they had had all year, gone. Just like that. She hated the thought of the wasted man-hours, she hated to lose the collar, she hated the prospect of David Carey's continuing his illegal operation untouched. But most of all she hated to fail.

  She caught herself absently chewing her thumbnail and scowled again, folding her hands across her chest. Then the scowl deepened with thoughtfulness, and she turned slowly to Captain Hollis. "Listen," she said hesitantly. "I don't suppose—well, is there any chance we were wrong about him? Could Carey be innocent?"

  The minute the words were out she knew they were foolish, and the patient, understanding look Hollis gave her made her flush. She didn’t know where the thought had come from or what made her speak it out loud. Was she that desperate to soothe her own ego after blowing the assignment? Or was David Carey's innocuous charm still working its effect on her senses... and her sensibility?

  Sam said flatly, "No way. You know that as well as I do. The man's got a record a mile long—"

  "Our sources are impeccable," Hollis interrupted in that quiet, understated way of his. "And the very fact that he made you so quickly proves he's got connections of his own. And I can almost guarantee you they're not on this side of the law."

  Teale knew that and was irritated that the Captain had had to point out to her so obvious a fact. What was she trying to prove, anyway?

  Still, she felt compelled to correct Sam. "He doesn't exactly have a record a mile long. He's never been convicted of anything—"

  "Because he never gets caught," pointed out Sam mildly. "The mark of a true professional.”

  “The man is running an illegal gambling house out of 628 Highland Lane," the captain stated flatly. "That much we know. What we need now—"

  The door opened on the subdued clatter from the outer office, and the staff sergeant poked his head into the office. "Excuse me, Detective Saunders. There's a call on three I thought you might want to take.'' And at Teale's look of impatience he added, "It's David Carey." He closed the door.

  Teale's eyes went from Sam to Captain Hollis, and she couldn't have said which was more acute at that moment—her astonishment or her curiosity. But when Captain Hollis silently pushed the telephone toward her and she picked up the receiver she knew exactly what she was feeling: excitement.

  She said briskly into the mouthpiece, "Detective Saunders."

  David Carey's smiling voice greeted her. "Good morning, Detective. I trust I'm not calling at a bad time."

  Instantly, Teale had a vision of him clad only in a pair of swimming briefs or tight white shorts; his bronzed body stretched out on a deck chaise and glistening in the sun, a Bloody Mary dangling from his hand... no, she recalled, he didn't drink; make that a glass of orange juice. The surf dancing in the background, the beach beyond him dotted with gulls and early tourists, and David Carey, with dark glasses obscuring his eyes, looking sleek and sexy, smiling into the phone.

  Her heart was beating fast, and there was a faint tinge of warmth all over her skin. She kept her voice perfectly expressionless as she replied, "What can I do for you, Mr. Carey?”

  “I’m calling to apologize. I have a feeling I embarrassed you last night."

  Embarrassed! Her eyes went wide with instant outrage, and only Sam's quick, curious look reminded her that she was conducting a business call, not a lover's quarrel. She swallowed her indignation and managed to return coolly, "That's quite all right, Mr. Carey. You were just doing your job."

  He chuckled softly. "Oh-oh, you're still mad. You shouldn't take your work so seriously, Detective; I don't."

  Teale's hand tightened on the phone. She was seething. "Unless there's a purpose to this call, I'm really quite busy—"

  "Far be it from me to keep you off the trail of a desperate criminal. I was merely wondering if I might be allowed to make it up to you over dinner tonight."

  Shock wiped out all other emotions. She turned to Captain Hollis, and she repeated blankly, "Dinner? Tonight?"

  "Feel free to check with your supervisor," David invited easily. "I'll wait."

  To Teale's consternation, Hollis gave a curt, decisive nod just then. Still, it took her a moment to regain her voice.

  "As a matter of fact," she said into the receiver, "we do have some things to talk about. Dinner will be fine."

  "Good. Do you know the Spindrift? About eight o'clock?"

  Teale scribbled the name of the restaurant and the time on
a notepad from the captain's desk. "That will be fine."

  "Great. I'll see you then.

  But she couldn't let it go at that. "Mr. Carey." She stared fixedly at the point of her pencil, poised above the pad. "Does this mean you've decided to cooperate with the police?"

  His soft laughter caused her lips to tighten and her eyes to narrow. "Not a chance, Detective," he assured her. "Not a chance."

  Teale replaced the receiver with quiet, deliberate control. She turned to Captain Hollis.

  Two beats passed before Sam spoke up. "Since I don't really think you've taken to matchmaking for your detectives, Captain, my guess is the Carey case isn't closed."

  Hollis said quietly, "Good guess." He opened the file again and gestured Teale to be seated. This time she did so without question.

  "Carey is just the tip of the iceberg," Hollis said, after a moment. He glanced down at the file and then at his two detectives again, expressionlessly. "We let him slip through our fingers and we lose a lot more than one small-time racketeering operation; we lose the whole ball game. It's Carey's boss we're after. Gregory Diangelo. Drugs, prostitution, you name it, he's got it."

  "And you expect Carey to lead me to Diangelo," Teale said slowly.

  Hollis looked at her seriously. "At the moment, it's the only lead we've got."

  Teale crossed her legs, lacing,her fingers around one knee. Her expression was thoughtful. "Carey's pretty slick."

  "And pretty damn confident," interjected Sam dourly. "Asking a police detective out to dinner. The man’s either a fool or one of the smartest operators I've ever ran across."

  Teak glanced at him. "He's not a fool."

  Hollis said, "As far as we know, Carey's not dangerous. I wouldn't send you into this if I didn't think you could take care of yourself."

  Teale nodded, but she was remembering smoky gray eyes and a slow smile. A small, involuntary shiver crept up her spine. She thought Captain Hollis should revise his definition of "dangerous."

  She stood slowly, "So basically, my job is just to keep an eye on him and find out what I can."

  Hollis nodded. "Think you can handle it?"

  Teale smiled and hoped the gesture imparted more confidence than she felt. "Are you kidding? Spying is one of my best things."

  Hollis picked up a pencil and began to make notes on the file, a sign that they were dismissed. Teale was at the door before he glanced up again. "Wear a wire," he said, and went back to his work.

  The squad room was active and noisy with ringing telephones, clacking typewriters and uniformed officers moving back and forth. Teale found the purposeful routine a reassuring counterpoint to the daring, almost breathless course her thoughts were taking. David Carey. A second chance. David Carey, inviting her to dinner. What was he up to? And could she really handle it as well as she had led Captain Hollis to believe?

  Sam followed her to her desk. "I don't guess I have to tell you I don't like this."

  She sat down and began to sort through the papers on her desk. "Simple assignment, Sam."

  “That guy is up to something, and you know it. You just don't call up and make a date with the cop who tried to bust you."

  " 'Tried' being the operative word," she answered dryly.

  "Oh, for God's sake, here we go with the supercop bit again." Impatience tinged Sam's expression. "When are you going to learn that the fate of the free world doesn't rest solely in your hands? Everyone's allowed an off day once in a while, Saunders. What are you trying to prove, anyway?''

  His words caught her off guard and stung more than they should have, more than Sam would have any way of guessing. What was she trying to prove? A lot, she thought bleakly, and then determinedly jerked her mind away from that course.

  "I'm trying to prove," she returned lightly, "that David Carey is a small-time operative for a big-time crook named Gregory Diangelo and that both of them belong behind bars. Now, if you'll excuse me—" she tapped her copy of the Carey file with her fingernail "—I've got some studying to do."

  "You just watch yourself tonight," Sam grumbled, as he pushed away from her desk. "And remember, I'll be listening to every sleazy word that high-priced Romeo whispers into your shell-like ear."

  That made Teale laugh, but it was an uneasy laughter that faded the moment Sam was out of sight. Sam wasn't the only one who was worried. But what Sam was worried about and what Teale was worried about were two entirely different things.

  **************

  Teale had come to Bretton Beach, South Carolina, three years ago fleeing scandal and shame and the dark turmoil of her own doubts. She had been looking for a quiet place to rest and lick her wounds. Bretton Beach was a medium-sized coastal resort town whose crime problems catered to the tourist trade—prostitution, minor drug peddling, the occasional gambling ring or property scam. Teale, with her excellent record from the Cleveland Police Department, had been more than welcome on the Bretton Beach force. No one had ever heard of her father here. No one knew why she had really left Cleveland. And no one, not even Sam, knew what she was running from.

  She lost herself in her work because losing herself, right then, was exactly what she wanted to do. And because her work—the day-to-day battle of right against wrong, the good guys against the bad—was the only thing that made sense in a world that was constantly twisting and turning on itself. She was dedicated, she was ambitious, and she was driven. Her work was the only thing that mattered in her life. The only thing she could trust.

  And it was for that reason that any small failure— real or imagined—bothered her so. What was she trying to prove? That she was good at her job, that was all. Or at least that's what she told herself.

  She frowned and tried to concentrate on the file before her. She knew it all by heart. David Carey, alias David Carrington and Dave Hall. Age thirty-five, Harvard Business School graduate; his name at one time or another had been listed on the boards of directors of several businesses that were known fronts for laundering money. He had been orphaned at age twelve and taken in by a minor figure in the West Coast syndicate, Raphael Clealand, which had apparently paved the way for his future career. Clealand had been brought up on tax-evasion charges ten years ago but had died of natural causes before he was brought to trial. For the next five years Carey had kept a low profile, and little was known of him until he appeared in Florida connected with a numbers operation. He had slipped through the net on that one, and since then the story had been much the same—a string of bad connections and no convictions.

  Teale found herself absently tapping her pencil on the edge of her desk, gazing at the file without seeing it. She was wondering why a man like that, with a superior education, all the worldly advantages, with such an abundance of charm and the obvious intelligence to elude the law for all these years—why a man like that would prefer a life of crime to the legitimate success that could have been his for the asking. Some inborn character defect, a traumatic childhood, an unresolved psychological problem?

  She frowned irritably at herself. It was almost as though she were trying to find excuses for him, and there were none. What difference did it make why he had turned out the way he had? The reasons were immaterial; the fact was that David Carey was what he was, and it was her job to stop him. If she were looking for explanations for his behavior, a more pressing question was, why had he called her? Why would a man make a dinner date with a woman he knew was trying to arrest him? Was David Carey that reckless— or that cunning?

  There was, of course, no point in worrying about it now. She would find out soon enough. Reluctantly she closed the Carey file and turned to more mundane paperwork. But she was aware of an irresistible excitement as she thought about the evening ahead, which was more than the ordinary nervous anticipation associated with her job, and she couldn't help reflecting on what a pity it was that a man as good-looking as David Carey should happen to be on the wrong side of the law.

  **************

  Unlike David Carey, Teale could
not afford a house on the beach. Her apartment was on the outskirts of town, not more than six miles from the police department, but a twenty minute drive in the heavy, tourist-clogged traffic. She passed the sprawling resort hotel and its adjacent cottages, moved through the boardwalk area with its souvenir shacks and fast-food stands, and wound her way through throngs of sunburned families crossing the streets at will, laden with cotton candy, floppy straw hats, coolers and beach chairs.

  Generally she enjoyed the sights and sounds of summer—corn dogs and suntan oil, carousel music and hard rock—and was amused by the little scenarios that were played out before her—the impatient mother dragging her children home from the beach, the teenage boys hanging out the car window while the bikini-clad object of their attention pretended utter indifference—but today she found herself experiencing an unusual amount of impatience, leaning on the horn at stoplights and wishing she had the time to ticket jaywalkers.

  Her car’s air conditioner had not worked all season, and the air in town was hot and sticky, thick with exhaust fumes. By the time she got home it was almost six-thirty. She was hot, sweaty and in a bad temper, and this was not a very auspicious beginning to the evening. What she really wanted to do was to sprawl out on the sofa and spend the evening sipping iced tea and watching television in quiet solitude. Had this been an ordinary date, she would have cancelled right then. But she was on duty.

  She spent ten minutes standing under a tepid shower, letting the spray of the water drum away the grime and fatigue of a static day. Physically, she felt better, but nothing could soothe the nervous tension that was collecting in the pit of her stomach like a net full of heavy-winged butterflies.

  What was she doing, anyway? What was Hollis thinking, making her agree to this? David Carey was not the kind of man to accidentally give them anything they could use; he was not about to take a member of the Bretton Beach Police Department into his confidence; he certainly was not going to slip up and lead them to Diangelo. No, David Carey was the type of man who would set up something like this just so he could laugh at the gullibility of the police force—or worse yet, use them for his own means. Hollis's entire plan, what little of it there was, was absurd. And Teale was doing nothing except walking into more humiliation.