Tough Customer

by Sandra Brown

  He grinned wickedly and covered her swollen breasts with his hands. "Now, about these..."

  Dinner was late being served that evening.

  She listed her house and his condo with Jim Malone Realty, and they sold within days of each other. She had found what she referred to as a "doll house" in an older, established neighborhood. Dodge donated his furniture to Goodwill, since it was nothing to brag about, and they moved Caroline's into their shared residence.

  It took Dodge four evenings to paint the spare bedroom a soft unisex yellow and three evenings to assemble the crib. "I hope the kid likes it, because I'm never doing this again," he informed her.

  "Stop calling my baby the kid."

  He grabbed Caroline's hand and pulled her down beside him onto the nursery room floor amid the tools he'd used during the project. "

  Our baby. And what do you want to call it?"

  "My mother's maiden name was Carter. What do you think? Carter Hanley?"

  "What if it's a girl?"

  "I'm thinking."

  "You're pretty when you're thinking." He kissed the tip of her nose, and they wound up making love on the rug.

  They were complacent about a wedding date. "A piece of paper isn't going to make me any happier than I already am," he told her. "But I want to make this union official."

  She agreed. "Before the baby gets here."

  But a date was never set, and they were content with the way things were, so neither dwelled on that technicality. Days turned into weeks, then months, and still they felt no urgency to have their pairing solemnized.

  She had returned to work as soon as the bruises around her eyes were no longer detectable. To make up for lost time, she'd doubled her efforts to become the top salesperson in the company. Often she worked late into the evenings, showing houses when it was convenient for clients, hosting open houses on weekends.

  Her erratic schedule was okay with Dodge since most nights he had to go to the task force jam sessions after his shift at the tire plant. He was beginning to think the whole thing was a waste of his time and the taxpayers' money. Had a promotion to detective not been the carrot, he'd have asked to be removed from the special unit. He hated having to spend every workday at that damn plant. Mopping floors and replacing burned-out lightbulbs didn't seem like police work.

  But had he quit the task force and gone back to patrolling a beat, he would have felt that he was letting down not only his new family but himself, and especially Jimmy Gonzales. So he stuck with it, even though cultivating Crystal's confidence had lost all its allure. The only woman Dodge desired was Caroline, and his desire for her was so fierce, so all-consuming, it was damn near impossible to work up any enthusiasm for his quasi romance with Crystal.

  But his pursuit must have been convincing, because one day as they ate their lunch together, she became weepy. "I'm worried about Franklin."

  "In what way?"

  "The way he's acting." She pulled her lower lip through her teeth. "I shouldn't talk about it. It's probably nothing."

  Dodge appeared suitably worried about her. "But what if it is something? What if his rehabilitation in prison didn't take?"

  She smiled weakly. "He's promised me that he won't break the law, ever again."

  "Do you believe him? Can he keep a promise to anybody about anything?"

  She crumpled against him, resting her head on his shoulder. He placed his arm around her. "You're so good to me, Marvin."

  He bent his head over hers and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "I just want to take care of you."

  The other members of the task force were excited when he reported this to them. "Albright's planning another robbery, and she knows it," the captain said, rubbing his stubby hands together with exhilaration.

  "That's what I think, too," Dodge said. "I need to get into their house. It's a rental. A duplex. Crystal told me the other side is empty, and Albright is using it for storage, without the landlord's knowledge or permission."

  "What's he storing?"

  "Crystal doesn't know."

  "You believe her?"

  "Yeah, I do. It's a bone of contention between them. I need to find out what he's got in there."

  "Anything you find would be inadmissible in court," the captain reminded him.

  "Yeah, but if I saw something suspicious, we could put him under constant surveillance. And if it was something incriminating, I could use it as leverage to get Crystal to turn state's witness against him."

  "You'd have to tell her you're a cop."

  "Not necessarily. Not at first. I could still be the concerned friend persuading her to do as her conscience dictated."

  "I doubt she would ever agree," one of the other cops remarked. "Not if it meant betraying her boyfriend."

  Dodge looked at him with disparagement. "If it was easy,

  you'd be doing it."

  The captain sided with Dodge. "Can you get in and out of their place without Albright knowing?"

  "I'll do my best. But if I go missing, look there first."

  "This is serious, Dodge. Cover your ass. Don't get yourself killed over this. It would make us look bad," the captain said with cruel candor.

  "Let me work on Crystal, see what I can do."

  Dodge seized upon the additional risk. By taking on the responsibility of going into Franklin Albright's lair, he was raising the stakes for himself. But the reward would be greater, too. If he came through, and delivered Franklin Albright, he'd get that detective's badge he so wanted.

  Several nights later, he returned home particularly tired after a long, grinding day. Caroline met him at the door and hugged him close. He leaned in to kiss her, but she pushed him away and sniffed his shirtfront. "Is that Tabu?"

  "What?"

  "The fragrance."

  And he thought,

  Oh, shit. He unbuttoned the top two buttons of his tire plant shirt, then pulled it over his head. He held it to his nose and took a deep breath. "Sorry. I didn't realize it was so strong."

  He went to the closet that housed the washer and dryer and tossed the offending shirt into the hamper. When he came back around, Caroline was staring at him, her head angled, waiting for an explanation.

  "A woman at the ... at work. At Marvin's workplace. She hugged him today."

  "She hugged you?"

  "She hugged Marvin. It had nothing to do with me." He went to the refrigerator and got a beer. He opened it and took a long swallow. Caroline was still looking at him, obviously waiting for further explanation. "I can't discuss it, Caroline."

  "What does she look like?"

  "I can't discuss it."

  "Why were the two of you hugging at work?"

  He gave her a look that warned her to stop with the questions. But either she didn't recognize the look or she defied it. "This is one of those situations that Jimmy referred to, isn't it?"

  "That Jimmy referred to? Jimmy Gonzales?"

  "The night he came to dinner."

  Shortly after Dodge had brought her from the hospital to his place, but before they'd become a couple, she had urged him to invite his partner to dinner. "Officer Gonzales has been very kind to me on several occasions. I'd like to repay him by cooking him a meal."

  So, on his next night off, Jimmy had come to dinner. He arrived before Dodge got home. When he got there, Jimmy and Caroline had been companionably chatting.

  Now, he asked her warily, "What did Jimmy tell you?"

  "He must have assumed that we were already sleeping together, because he told me that you'd been smitten with me from the get-go."

  "Which came as no surprise to you."

  "But then he said, 'I guess he'll be relinquishing his title of department Romeo.' When I asked him what he meant, he rapidly backpedaled. But the gist of it was that you have a reputation for easily getting information out of women." Caroline forced him to look her in the eye. "Is that true? Were you,

  are you, the police department's Romeo?"

  "Guy
s talk, Caroline. Mostly it's bullshit."

  "Mostly?"

  She continued to look at him levelly, and he knew she would persist until he gave her something.

  "Okay, I'll tell you this much. The girl at work was upset over something her boyfriend did. I'm her pal. I extended her a listening ear, a kind word, a shoulder to cry on. She expressed her gratitude by hugging me. That's all it amounted to, and that's all I can tell you."

  She appeared to be mollified, but even if she wasn't, that was all he was going to tell her. He wasn't about to give her a physical description of Crystal and start her thinking that he was interested in the girl for any reason except as a means of trapping Albright. He wouldn't tell Caroline about the threat Albright posed, either. He'd minimized the danger of the undercover work in order to prevent her from worrying every time he left the house.

  He excused himself and went to take a shower. Although the heady scent of Tabu no longer lingered, Caroline was abnormally quiet over supper, and later, when they went to bed, they lay with their backs to each other.

  After an hour of tense wakefulness, Dodge knew she was still awake, too. He turned onto his side, so that he was addressing her back. "Everything I do, I'm doing for us."

  She said nothing.

  He placed his hand on her shoulder. "I'm trying to make detective, Caroline. If I do a good job on this special assignment, I'll have a much better shot at getting the promotion. It would mean a pay increase. I wouldn't be patrolling a beat. And, besides all that, it's what I've wanted since I signed on with the department. Before that. Since I was a kid."

  She turned to him then and laid her hand on his cheek. "I know you want that, Dodge. And I understand why you can't talk about the case. I do."

  "But?"

  "But I wouldn't be a woman if I didn't question your coming home smelling of drugstore cologne."

  He could think of a thousand ways in which she was all woman, but he knew better than to begin listing them. She wasn't in the mood to be charmed. "Everything I do now is for us. You, me, the baby."

  "Hugging the Tabu woman?"

  "Part of the job. I swear."

  She thought it over for several moments, then said, "You're her pal? That's all?"

  "That's it."

  "She has a boyfriend?"

  "Yes. And so do you." His hand moved to her breast and caressed it lovingly.

  "I feel fat and ugly. Don't laugh!"

  He pecked her lips with his. "You're pregnant, not fat. And you couldn't be ugly, no matter what."

  "You still love me?"

  "You have to ask?"

  The discussion ended there, and for seventy-two hours nothing more was said about Crystal.

  Then he came home one night looking like an extra from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

  Twelve hours earlier that day, during their morning coffee break, he'd caught Crystal chatting with one of the other women who worked in payroll. "He's an asshole," Dodge overheard her say.

  "Not me, I hope."

  She smiled up at him. "Hey, Marvin. No, you're not the asshole."

  "Let me guess. The chief among them. None other than Franklin Albright. What's he done now?"

  "The kitchen sink has been clogged up for a week, and he's promised to fix it. But every night he's had another excuse, and tonight he's going over to a buddy's house to play poker."

  And Dodge thought,

  Bingo!

  He offered to repair her sink, and she accepted his offer. It was almost too easy.

  "Franklin said he'd be leaving around eight-thirty or nine." She warned him not to arrive before then. "He wouldn't like you and me being there alone."

  "I'll make sure his pickup is gone before I come to the door."

  On his lunch hour he called his captain, who agreed to the plan Dodge outlined but warned him again to be careful. "Learn what you can, but don't get killed doing it."

  "You don't have to tell me twice."

  The captain offered to place undercover officers in the vicinity in case there was trouble. "Not necessary," Dodge said. "I'll be okay." Besides, if this turned out well, he didn't want to share the credit. He wanted it to be a one-man show.

  His show. "But one thing you can do, sir."

  "Shoot."

  "Square it with my boss here at the plant that I need to leave early today. There's stuff I gotta do."

  The captain made the call. Dodge clocked out early, leaving him time to run some necessary errands. His first stop was at the 7-Eleven store where Doris worked. He walked in just as she was beginning her shift.

  Her face lit up with her smile. "Dodge! Come to take me dancing?"

  "Came to do some business."

  Her tone changed dramatically. "Let's go out back."

  She asked a stock boy to cover the register and led Dodge through the storeroom and out the rear door. In the alley, amid the trash receptacles, they lit up cigarettes. She exhaled. "I heard about Jimmy Gonzales. I'm sorry."

  "It sucked."

  "I liked him."

  "So did I. He was a great partner. The best."

  "But he never caught on, did he?" she asked, looking at him askance. "He never knew that you and I had our side thing going, did he?"

  "No, he never did. He wouldn't have approved. He was a straight-up cop, as honest as they come." Several times, Dodge and Doris had swapped favors, and the services they exchanged weren't always within the law. They certainly weren't ethical.

  They smoked in silence for a while, then she asked what he needed.

  He told her.

  "By when?"

  He told her.

  "Tonight! Jesus, you don't ask for much, do you?"

  "Can you get it?"

  "It'll cost you more than a night of dancing." She bobbed her eyebrows suggestively.

  "Sorry, but no can do."

  "You've gone queer?"

  He smiled. "Just the opposite. I've got a lady in my life."

  "For real?"

  "The real thing."

  "Well, hell. What else have you got to barter?"

  "What's your little brother's status?"

  "Still languishing in jail awaiting trial while the greenhorn ADA, his half-assed court-appointed attorney, and the judge dick around with bigger cases."

  "He's charged with B and E, right? Who were the arresting officers?"

  She told him, and he said they were buddies of his, and maybe if she could get him what he requested in a timely fashion, he could talk his buddies into a memory loss convenient to her little brother when his case eventually came to trial. "For a coupla fifths of Scotch, your brother would probably get off with time served."

  "Which the little jerk deserves just for being stupid."

  "Before you agree, I gotta tell you, Doris, if he ever gets busted again, he's on his own. You do this for me, I do that for you, we'll be square."

  "Deal."

  By dusk, she had what he'd asked for. It was secondhand and looked the worse for wear. "Will it work?"

  "You want a guarantee, you go to Radio Shack."

  Before he left, he asked, "How's the A-rab treating you these days?"

  "Still suspects me of stealing from him."

  Dodge laughed. "I can't imagine why."

  He called Caroline from a pay phone and told her not to wait dinner on him. She asked if he would be working, and he said yes. She asked if he would be in danger, and he told her no. She didn't ask if he would be with the woman who wore Tabu, and he wasn't sure what he would have told her if she had, but it probably would have been an extremely loose variation of the truth.

  At nine o'clock, he drove past the duplex shared by Crystal and Franklin Albright. There was no sign of his redneck pickup, but Dodge thought it prudent to kill a little more time and make sure the criminal wasn't at home. At nine-fifteen, he parked at the curb and started up the walk, carrying with him a bag of plumbing implements he'd bought at the hardware store that afternoon.

  The front door w
as open. He peered through the screen door into a living room that had been furnished and decorated by someone who had done the best she could with the little she had. His heart went out to Crystal. The kid deserved credit for trying.

  He knocked. "Anybody home?"

  She appeared in an open doorway across the room. She was wearing a pair of short denim cutoffs and a red shirt tied under her braless breasts. Her hair was loosely piled on top of her head. She was barefoot. She looked like the porn-flick farm girl who incited a hillbilly gang bang.

  Her bare feet making soft pats on the hardwood floor, she came quickly to the door and unlatched it. "Thanks for this." She was a bit breathless as she motioned him in. "The darned thing is still stopped up. It's disgusting."

  He held up his sack of plumbing supplies. "I'm no Roto-Rooter, but I'm still your man."

  "Come on back."

  As he followed her into the kitchen, he casually said, "I wouldn't have known which side of the duplex you live in if the front door hadn't been open." He motioned with his head. "Next door. Is that where Franklin keeps his stash?"

  "His stash?"

  "He won't let you go in there." Looking as sappy as he possibly could, he shrugged. "I immediately thought drugs."

  "He's never used drugs around me." She chewed her lower lip nervously, then pointed to the sink. "You see the problem."

  He whistled. The sink was full of viscous, opaque water that was, indeed, disgusting. She moved to the refrigerator and took out two beers, uncapping one for each of them. They toasted to unclogged drains, then he went to work with a plunger.

  She hopped up onto the countertop so she could face him while he worked. Her bare heels rhythmically tapped the cabinet door. She rolled the rim of the beer bottle across her lower lip.

  She was laughing at something Dodge had said when her breath caught and she strangled out the name "Franklin!"

  CHAPTER 25

  THE SON OF A BITCH HAD BEEN AS SILENT AS A PANTHER. Dodge hadn't realized Albright had returned until he was there. But in fairness to himself, the oscillating movement of Crystal's unfettered breasts beneath the bright red shirt had been a distraction.

  Albright snarled as he grabbed her messy topknot and yanked her off the counter. He pulled the bottle of beer from her hand and hurled it into the wall. Broken glass and beer showered them. Still holding Crystal by her hair, Albright shook her like a terrier with a rat and called her a cunt, then sent her reeling into the table, on which lay a wrench, purchased just that afternoon. Albright snatched it up and applied it to Dodge's head.