Pipeline

by Brenda Adcock

  "Tired?" Cate asked.

  "I hate goddamn telephones. You can't look the speaker in the eyes and tell whether they're lying to you or not."

  "They don't bother me. Let me call for a while. What am I looking for?"

  "I don't have the slightest idea. I found these numbers in the kid's...I mean Kyle's desk at the paper and borrowed them. I was hoping one of them would be a person rather than a business or that there would just be something unusual about one of them."

  "You mean something like Mafia Southwest, Inc.?" she said with a grin.

  "At least that would be useful. Would you mind if I grabbed a quick shower? Pauli and I went to a couple of places today that reeked of garbage."

  "Be my guest," she said as she picked up the receiver and looked at the numbers.

  I was back in less than ten minutes. Cate was sitting on the edge of the bed and had a motel notepad and pen on the nightstand next to the phone. I had slipped into old jeans and a T-shirt and was barefoot. The carpet wasn't plush but felt good under my feet. Cate was wearing a pair of reading glasses that sat halfway down her nose. She glanced at me over the top of them as I came back into the room and tossed my dirty clothes into a corner. Steam from the bathroom followed me as I grabbed a hairbrush from the dresser and made a couple of quick swipes through my short graying brown hair before sitting down in a chair across from her. About half the sandwich was still on the plate and I took a bite and waited.

  "Anything?" I asked with my mouth half full as she finally hung up the phone.

  "Spoke to Sarita's mother in Dallas. This is the number in case you need it," she said, handing me a slip of paper. "So far the others are an assortment of businesses." She picked up another scrap of paper and looked at it. She dialed and then pulled her glasses off and let them dangle in her hand as the phone rang. From her reaction I assumed the phone was answered by a machine. She listened and then hung up. "That might be something, Jo. It was the San Antonio office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service."

  "Could have been for background information on anything though."

  "Were you planning to call all of these numbers tonight?" she asked, looking at the list. "I always thought your work was exciting, but this is more boring than what I do."

  "Give your ear a rest. What time is the girlfriend supposed to be at the hospital in the morning?"

  "Around nine. I'll call you here."

  "Pauli's going to go with me, but I promise we won't disturb anything."

  "Kyle has a computer. Whatever you're looking for might be on a CD."

  "Oh, great," I muttered.

  "You know how to use a computer, don't you?"

  "Never felt the need to learn, but Pauli might."

  Cate looked at her wristwatch. "I better go. I have a few calls to make myself. Unfortunately work didn't stop just because I was gone."

  "Can't your law partner handle them?"

  "Probably, but you know what they say about doing things yourself so you know they're done correctly." She got up and crossed to the door.

  "Give Susan my regards," I said.

  "Not likely," she said over her shoulder as she left my room.

  I shook my head and smiled to myself. I had missed the little barbs we used to throw at each other. We had easily slipped back into them as if we had never been apart.

  Chapter Six

  PAULI SHOWED UP earlier than I expected the next morning. I had a T-shirt halfway over my head when I opened the door. Pauli smiled, revealing tobacco-stained teeth, and held up two large cups of 7-11 coffee. A chewed-up stub of a cigar was clinched between his teeth, and I wondered if he slept with the damn thing in his mouth. He kicked the door closed with his foot as he entered the room.

  "If I'd known you was sleepin' in, I would've called first," he said, handing me a Styrofoam cup.

  "What time is it?"

  "About seven. What time you supposed to perform your amateur sleuthin'?"

  "The girlfriend isn't gonna be at the hospital until around nine. My ex will call when she arrives."

  "That the spitfire I met yesterday?" he asked as he sipped from his cup.

  "The way she tells it, you did everything but use a rubber hose on the kid."

  "Tough little bastard. Wouldn't tell me shit even when I told him I knew the gist of his story. Gave me that First Amendment bullshit about confidentiality of sources and spit out a bunch of court cases I never heard of."

  "His mother's a lawyer."

  "Decent-lookin' woman."

  I grunted and wandered into the bathroom to wash my face. Over coffee I recounted the phone calls from the day before, including the one to the INS.

  "Reckon he's workin' on somethin' that might interest the Feds?" Pauli asked.

  "Could've been for background information. For all I know those numbers are a year or more old."

  "By the way, I ran the girlfriend's name through the police computer. She's clean, but a couple of her family members could use a sponge bath."

  "How's that?"

  "Mostly petty juvenile stuff, but she's got a brother who did a stint for some gang-related deal."

  "In San Antonio?"

  "Dallas. Probably just wanted to join up and got recruited in high school. He's out now and a straight shooter as far as I can tell."

  "Maybe Kyle was using him as a source on gang activities."

  Pauli shrugged and chewed on his cigar.

  "You ever light that thing?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "Smokin's bad for you."

  We killed nearly two hours before the phone finally rang. I grabbed it before the first ring died away.

  "She's here, Jo," Cate answered.

  "Okay. Have a safe trip home," I said looking at Pauli.

  He signaled to me with his hand. "Tell her to call the kid's place when they leave the hospital, so we can clear out. Let it ring two times and then hang up so we'll know it's her."

  I relayed the message, and Cate agreed to call from her cell phone.

  Within ten minutes we were at the building in Olmos Park where Kyle and Sarita shared an apartment. The area looked deserted as Pauli drove around the block. There was a back alley and a fire escape from each floor. In case we didn't make it out in time, Pauli wanted an alternative route out of the building. We parked across the street from the apartment building and walked in like a couple of regular tenants, taking the elevator to the fourth floor. I pushed my duplicate key into the lock, and we entered the living room.

  The apartment was light and clean. Apparently Sarita Ramirez was a decent housekeeper. The living room was decorated in early discount store, but tastefully done. There were a few pictures hanging on the walls, mostly cheap prints probably bought along the River Walk from street artists, and cinder blocks and boards for bookshelves. While I looked around, Pauli had already explored the remainder of the apartment. It had two bedrooms with one converted into an office that wasn't as neat as the rest of the apartment.

  Reporters took notes on whatever they could grab, and their general filing system was wherever they set it down later. I had hated it when Cate cleaned up my work area, driving myself crazy looking for addresses and phone numbers that Cate would neatly file under miscellaneous. More often than not, unless I knew where it was lying on my desk, I didn't know whose address or number it was. Pauli sat down at the desk with the computer in front of him.

  "You check the drawers, and I'll see what's up with the computer," he said.

  I pulled the drawers from the desk one at a time and went through them. In the bottom drawer were more notebooks. I fanned through them checking the dates, looking for anything Kyle had scribbled down in the last three or four months. Pauli turned on the computer and stuck a CD in the drive. Most of them contained parts of stories, but none were related to illegals. I found a couple of recent notebooks and wasn't happy to see that Kyle had developed his own version of shorthand. Mostly numbers and initials. But there were a couple of plain English nota
tions that caught my interest.

  "You bring the camera?" I asked Pauli as he scrolled through files on the CDs. Without stopping what he was doing, he reached into his jacket pocket and tossed me a little camera that looked like a prize from a Cracker Jack box.

  Loading it with film, I snapped several pages, hoping the piece of junk in my hand worked.

  "Ah-ha!" I heard Pauli say.

  "Find something?"

  "Found a CD that's protected. Kid's got about twenty of 'em here, and this is the only one that's protected."

  "Can you copy it?"

  "What good would that do? I don't know his password. If we had more time I know a guy who could probably get past it."

  "Well, we don't have more time, and if it's got what we need on it, he'll probably check it pretty quick so we can't take it."

  "Hell, could just be pornographic fantasies that he doesn't want his girlfriend to see." Pauli shrugged.

  We continued looking for over an hour before the phone rang. When it rang a second time and stopped, we quickly finished what we were doing and left the apartment.

  Sitting in Pauli's car, we watched Sarita pull a silver Nissan Sentra into a parking space in front of the apartment building half an hour later and open the trunk to remove a small bag. She was well dressed in a calf-length denim skirt, boots, and an embroidered blouse. A silver concho belt encircled her slim waist, and long black hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. She reminded me of Selma Hayak and it didn't take much deductive reasoning to see why Kyle had been attracted her. As Kyle slowly pulled himself out of the passenger seat, Sarita went to his side of the car, and I got my first glimpse of his face as he turned. He had grown into an extraordinarily handsome young man. His Hispanic heritage was obvious with thick black hair framing his olive complexion.

  The last time I had seen him he had been wearing jeans and boots and was sitting on a horse at the ranch. He couldn't have been more than ten or eleven then, oblivious to the problems swirling around him, problems he might never understand.

  It had been my last trip to the ranch with Cate and Kyle. I knew we didn't have a perfect relationship but hadn't realized how much trouble we were in. Who the hell was I kidding? I knew we were in serious trouble and had chosen to overlook it, hoping, like Herbert Hoover at the beginning of the Great Depression, that everything would work itself out on its own. And like Hoover, I had been wrong.

  We hadn't been to the ranch in over a year and decided to drop in the day before I left on my next assignment. Cate and I had already had an argument before we arrived but tried to fake our way through the visit. I didn't know how much my mother had noticed, but my father had been annoyingly perceptive. An hour or so before we returned to Austin, he asked me to help him with something in the barn. Although we both knew he had never needed my help for anything, I went along anyway. He smacked me across the face as soon as we reached the barn.

  "What the hell was that for?" I asked, feeling to see if my mouth was bleeding.

  "I was hoping that would knock some sense into that thick head of yours. I've never butted into your personal life, Jo. You've always done everything your own way no matter what the consequences might be. But I'm telling you straight up that if you don't get your shit together you're going to lose Cate and Kyle."

  "We'll work it out."

  "How're you planning to do that when you're always halfway around the goddamn world? Mental telepathy? This is gonna be your third overseas assignment just this year!"

  "After this assignment I'm taking some time off. Then I'll be home for more than a few days."

  "You ain't got a home. You rent an apartment, for Christ's sake."

  "Cate's looking for a house. Next time I'm home..."

  But there never was a next time.

  Chapter Seven

  MY COURTSHIP OF Cate Hammond had begun not long after she had magically gotten me out of jail. Although she had initially rejected the idea, the more she resisted the more I wanted to be with her. It had been a long time since I'd had to work that hard to be with a woman, but my whole life had been built around accepting challenges and taking risks.

  My persistence finally paid off, and Cate agreed to have dinner with me. After dinner, we went to a women's bar to see what the local scene had to offer and decided to stick around a while for a drink. I had missed dancing, but it wasn't the dancing I was interested in. It was the chance to find out what she would feel like in my arms. She was a perfect fit. Sooner than I would have liked, she told me she had to be in court early the next morning, and I drove her home.

  "Thanks, Jo," she said as we reached her door. "It was an interesting evening, and I haven't been out in a while."

  "I can't believe you aren't asked out all the time," I said.

  "I didn't say I wasn't asked out. I said I hadn't been out."

  "I guess you must have a pretty heavy schedule at the defender's office."

  "Usually."

  What had been comfortable quickly became uncomfortable. I was thirty-two, but she made me feel eighteen and awkward again. I had been with my share of women overseas, but looking back on those encounters, I realized that those women all understood what was expected at the end of an evening and were prepared for it without lengthy or meaningful conversation. This was a different situation, and I wasn't sure how to handle it.

  "I'd like to see you again, Cate."

  "I don't know, Jo. I've got a pretty full week ahead."

  "You can't work every night."

  "If I want to be prepared for court I have to. Everything can't be done at the office."

  "What about the weekend? Don't you take a break then?"

  "Sometimes on Sunday."

  Reaching out and placing my hand on her arm, I said, "Then let me have Sunday."

  Cate looked at my hand on her arm and smiled. I stepped closer to her and looked into those deep blue eyes as I leaned down and kissed her. As I kissed her more deeply a second time, her lips parted, and she made no effort to resist my advances. When our lips finally parted, she smiled at me. I wanted her and she knew it.

  "Cate..."

  "Sunday," she said.

  When Sunday finally arrived, an eternity later, Cate fixed breakfast in the morning, and we made love the rest of the day. From Sunday until the day I boarded my plane a week later, we were together. In the evenings, we prepared dinner together, and I helped her prepare cases. She practiced opening and closing statements on me. I loved talking to her and simple things pleased her. We talked about world events, cussed and discussed politics, and she was, frankly, the first woman I had been with in a long time who knew more than single-syllable words.

  The day I left, she drove me to the airport and waited with me at the gate. The waiting area of one airport looks pretty much the same in every airport, but I had never noticed how crowded they were before. The excruciatingly uncomfortable plastic seats were bolted to the floor and had obviously been designed by sadistic dwarves. There were so many people sitting and milling around that it was difficult to carry on a conversation. Little kids played tag to kill time and, left unattended by their parents, jumped over our legs.

  "I wish I didn't have to go," I said.

  "We knew you'd be leaving, Jo. It's what you do." She smiled.

  "It doesn't seem fair to you, asking you to wait."

  "I've got plenty to keep me busy here. Thanks for helping me with my cases."

  "I had an ulterior motive." I grinned. "The faster you got finished with what you were doing, the faster I could get you into bed."

  When my flight number was called, I stood up and took Cate's hand.

  "I'll be back in a month or two. I'll call to let you know."

  Cate smiled and hugged me. "I'll save Sunday for you."

  That was how we spent our time for almost a year —me going away and returning after long absences, and Cate always giving me Sunday no matter what day of the week it really was.

  I hadn't been happy abo
ut my next assignment when I returned to Austin that Christmas. It had been nearly three months since I had been home, and as the plane descended, I looked down and saw trees everywhere around the city. It was unusually warm for mid-December, according to the pilot, and he hoped everyone had enjoyed the flight.

  I waited in my seat until nearly everyone else had deplaned to avoid injuring anyone with my duffel bag and camera case. Nodding to the stewardess, I started down the walkway and into the terminal. Cate was nowhere in sight, and I hoped she had gotten my telegram. Halfway down the concourse leading to the street, I finally saw her coming toward me and jogged the best I could with my bags, dropping everything to sweep her into my arms.

  "I'm sorry I'm late," Cate said breathlessly. "Court adjourned late and traffic is terrible."

  "It doesn't matter. You look great," I said, unable to restrain a smile.

  Cate picked up my camera case and took my arm. Piling everything into the back seat of her car, we headed away from the airport.

  "How long will you be home?" Cate asked as she checked for oncoming traffic at the airport exit.

  "Through New Year's. Got any holiday plans?"

  "A few." Cate smiled.

  When we reached Cate's apartment, I dropped my bags on the bedroom floor, took Cate in my arms, and fell onto the bed. I wanted and needed to catch up on three months' worth of kisses and lovemaking in the eighteen days we had. We stopped to come up for air a few minutes later, but I couldn't let her go.

  "Jo, we need to talk," Cate said as I nibbled at her neck.

  "Sounds serious."

  "Not really. It's just something I've been thinking about for a long time, and I'd already set the gears in motion before I met you ."

  "Oh, this really sounds mysterious." I smiled.

  "About a year ago, I began the paperwork to adopt a child. Yesterday, the agency I'm using called and said they have a two-year-old boy available and are having a difficult time placing him because of some health problems. They want to know if I would be interested."

  "What kinds of health problems?"

  "His mother is an alcoholic and didn't spend much time taking care of him. He's malnourished and underweight and," she paused.