“Don’t you worry, Valentine. Nobody takes care of you but me…”
The couch was vast and luxurious. Her body was light and lean and voluptuous in miniature. She moaned softly beneath him. Her eagerness mixed with seeming timidity as she guided him, as he caressed her and pulled at her clothes. She slowed him, controlled him, channeling his desire and rage and fear into a deliberate tenderness.
“Angel face,” he murmured, his lips brushing a delicate collarbone.
But the sneaky voice in his head wouldn’t shut up. OK, you finally got her, it said. Or she finally got you. Is she running a game? Does she feel bad because she’s about to get you killed? At least you’ll die smiling, right?
Eventually, they made their way from the couch to the bedroom. When he finally fell asleep, a long blissful slide into nothingness, the bay outside the window was filling with blue predawn light.
His dreams were demented holograms. He dreamed about her beneath him on the couch, above him on the bed. He relived the feel of her hips in his hands, her eyes blazing into his. The pleasure flooded him so vividly he thought they had woken up and gone at it again. But then he knew it was a dream: She disappeared. He was on the beach in the rain, holding his gun. Méndez and the Colonel and a bunch of bandits wearing ridiculous sombreros and bandoliers were stalking over The Line at him, hands by their holsters. Pescatore said, “Don’t you mess with me, hijos de la chingada, I got Isabel Puente from the Office of Inspector General watching my back.” Méndez jeered at him, except it was in his own voice, a snotty Mexican imitation of Valentine Pescatore, saying, “Yeah, Isabel took care of you good, you stupid pathetic pussy-whipped gabacho. Now draw…”
He thrashed awake like a man being asphyxiated. Isabel lay propped on her side. Her eyes glowed in the indirect light from the bedroom balcony. She stayed in that position with her cheek resting on her hand, watching clinically as he sat up, entangled in sweaty sheets, and figured out where he was. Only then did she reach out for him. They held each other.
“You’re like a big teddy bear,” she murmured.
He pulled back and touched her face with two knuckles.
“Good morning, chulita,” he said. “You surveilling me again?”
“Chulita?”
“Uh, yeah.” He blinked, feeling a little goofy. “This PA, Galván, he told me that’s what Mexicans call a beautiful woman. Chula. That wrong?”
“No.”
“What time is it?”
“About nine-thirty.”
“So now what?”
Puente got up and wrapped herself in a bathrobe. She walked to the doors of the bedroom balcony, her curves encased in black and white stripes.
“Good question, Valentine,” she said with her back to him.
He slid out of the bed and gathered her in his arms from behind. She leaned back into him. It was overcast, the kind of California-gray morning that had surprised him when he first arrived in what he thought was a land of nonstop sun. The marina was framed in the window like a painting, the sails sectioning the waters. The only movement came from circling gulls and the wind in the palm trees on the far shore. The giant blue arches of an amusement-park roller coaster interrupted the horizon near the ocean.
“Good question, meaning what?” he asked.
“Meaning I liked what we did. But we shouldn’t have done it. Now you’ve got something on me.”
The ice in her voice alarmed him. He tightened his hold on her.
“Oh man, that’s kind of a cold way of looking at the whole thing, huh?” he said into her ear. “Huh, Isabel?”
She tossed swirls of hair out of her eyes. He eased her back onto the foot of the bed. They sat side by side for a moment, not looking at each other.
“Hey.” He wondered why he was whispering. “I been wanting to ask you. How come you only spent a year in The Patrol? Something bad happened?”
Her eyes got luminous. He thought she was going to pull away, but instead she snuggled closer.
“I guess that’s what I like about you,” she sighed. “You’ve got this street act going, but you’re sharper than you let on.”
In a monotone, she told him she had grown bored studying criminal justice and dropped out of college. She joined The Patrol and got assigned to Nogales, a desert sector with a lot of action. One of her supervisors, a slick mustachioed bruiser, took great interest in her progress as a trainee. He asked her out repeatedly. She declined because she had a fiancé in Miami. But one night, after the unit celebrated a marijuana bust at a bar, she accepted the supervisor’s offer of a ride home.
When they arrived at her apartment complex, a dingy place on the edge of the desert, the supervisor killed the engine, turned and, using some lame pretext, asked her to hand over her gun so he could take a look at it. Then he locked the gun in the glove compartment and attacked her in the front seat.
“It was close to midnight.” Puente’s fingers were laced in Pescatore’s. She sounded as if she were describing a crime scene. “We were right in front of my building. We’re in uniform. He’s tearing my shirt. He’s like a dog. I’m terrified. I’m thinking if I could get back my gun. But what would I do, shoot my supervisor? Finally this viejito who lived downstairs walks by, thank God. He comes over to the car. And you know what he says? I’m being assaulted, I’m crying, hysterical. You know what this old desert rat says? ‘You kids keep it down out here. Take it in the house.’ I wanted to shoot him.”
“Damn. What happened?”
“The supe told me to be a smart girl and keep quiet. He left. Took my gun with him. You can imagine what he said around the station. The other PAs were all laughing and whispering.”
“Lowlife scumbag. What did you do?”
Isabel Puente pulled her robe around her. She showed her teeth.
“I bought a mini–tape recorder. I got him into a conversation about the incident, like I was flirting. I recorded his incriminating statements. He had this topless dancer he was sleeping with who was an illegal alien, so I found her. I recorded that interview too. Then I wrote up a complaint and went to the Justice Department. I played the tapes for them. I said I was filing charges and I was going to make a commotion if they didn’t do something. Then I went to his house and personally gave his wife copies of the tapes and the complaint. By the time I was done with him, that rapist hijo de puta wished he was never born. He was a fool to mess with me. Nobody messes with me.”
“Damn,” Pescatore said again, wishing he could think of a more sensitive comment.
Tears slid down her face. “Even though I was on probationary status, the bosses cut a deal to keep me quiet. I transferred to the Inspector General. I finished school at night and made supervisor in a couple of years. Happy ending, right?”
“What about the fiancé in Miami?”
“Not so happy.”
It occurred to him that for several minutes he had not thought once about the shoot-out or his other troubles. He wrapped her in an awkward hug.
“I’m sorry, Isabel,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“I guess you don’t hate the whole entire Patrol though, ’cause otherwise I wouldn’t be here, right?” he said, planting a kiss on her forehead.
“Right.” She kissed him back with her eyes closed.
She made breakfast. They ate on the living room balcony. She made the jokes about his appetite that had become like a domestic ritual. Backlit by the sun breaking through the gray, she talked about music, movies, her apartment.
He nodded and laughed. He watched the way her hands fluttered up into the recesses of her hair, teasing and fussing with it. He couldn’t get enough of her. But it was all forced and unreal. This was somebody else’s life: juice, melon and chocolate chip muffins on a Monday morning with a view of boats on the water. As if it weren’t a relationship built on suspicion and manipulation. As if they didn’t have guns, badges and a border full of corpses and enemies waiting for them. Nonethele
ss, he did not want the illusion to end. He hoped she felt the same way.
She broke the mood almost without transition. Finishing off her coffee, she told him her task force and Méndez’s squad were going to make their move: simultaneous indictments of major players on both sides of the border. She fended off his questions, saying the less he knew, the better.
“OK, Isabel, but what kinda time frame are we talking about?” he asked, nodding as she raised the coffeepot. “Days, weeks?”
“There’s still work to do, coordination with Méndez and his people. A week at least.”
“Garrison goes down?”
“Oh yes.”
“And what happens to me?” He gulped coffee, concentrating. He refrained from asking two other questions that came to mind: What happens to our relationship? And what happens when somebody tries to kill me?
“That’s complicated. But you’re going to be fine. One thing you need to realize, Valentine. There’s people who want you to testify.”
“I figured. But what I want to know is how do we play it?”
“We’re talking about that.”
“It’s gonna look strange when I don’t get arrested.”
“Last night changed some things. I don’t have all the answers yet.”
“I’m not real comfortable with a buncha prosecutors and supervisors sitting around talking about what’s going to happen to me,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “I’m counting on you to make sure they don’t treat me like a Kleenex.”
Her musical laugh made him feel better. She said: “I got your back, Valentine.”
She got up, kissed him on the forehead and went inside to get dressed.
He buttoned his uniform shirt, grimacing at the dried bloodstain. He sat in the sun, dozing. A speedboat purred in the distance.
Puente returned wearing the high-powered outfit she reserved for meetings at the U.S. Attorney’s office or testifying in court: a suit with a tailored jacket and a short snug skirt. With the outfit and the makeup and the perfume, it was as if she had put on armor and war paint. He told her she looked like a million bucks; he was pleased when the ready-for-business facade dissolved into a self-conscious smile.
They held hands in the elevator. He drifted back into the daydream that they were a couple with a normal life on their way to where normal people went. She drove him back to Mission Beach, cruising once around the block as a precaution, and parked down the street from his Impala. He saw himself in her sunglasses, hesitant and happy. She patted the steering wheel. She was in a hurry.
“Isabel,” he said.
“Now is not the time to say anything,” she said.
He wanted to tell her he would hold on to the night no matter what happened. He wanted to tell her he trusted her, which was almost true.
“Now is not the time,” she repeated.
“Alright then,” he said. He heard an echo of that mocking Méndez-Pescatore voice from his dream tell him to shut up and get out of the car.
He turned away, but she caught his arm. She kissed him hard on the mouth before she let him go.
The ride into Pacific Beach reminded him of the light-headed solitude of the commute after an overnight shift. Heading home as everybody else headed out into their day. Hungering to hit the pillow and shut out a world going in the opposite direction. But no overnight shift had left this sweet residual warmth in his belly. He decided he could get used to having an Isabel Puente hangover.
He was grinning like a crazy man by the time he bounded up the outdoor staircase to his apartment. He locked the door carefully behind him.
And he almost had a heart attack when he saw Garrison sitting on the couch.
“There’s my buddy.” Garrison’s voice was toneless. “Welcome home, honey.”
“Jesus fucking Christ! You scared the shit outta me!”
With effort, Pescatore pried his hand away from his gun. Garrison slouched in the gloom, his head back and his knees apart. He wore a checkered shirt under a jeans jacket. His hands were clasped behind his neck. He might have been preparing for a nap. Except that his gray eyes were straining in their sockets.
“Where ya been, buddy?”
Pescatore noticed a suitcase near the couch. “How’d you get in, man?”
“Special Forces teaches you all kinds of interesting stuff.”
“That’s a good way to get smoked, sneaking around in people’s houses.”
“Where ya been, buddy?”
Walking off the fright, Pescatore hit a light switch. He poured himself a glass of water at the kitchenette sink.
“Went and saw this chick.”
“That’s an interesting way to celebrate your first kill. I thought you’d wait around the station for me.”
“Man, I was too freaked out. I had to get outta there.”
“Which chick?”
“This Angelina lives in Chula Vista.”
“The one you met at my party? Anita, with the legs? What’re you talking about, she moved back to Jalisco, buddy.”
“No, the waitress. From Little Italy.”
“I thought she was history.”
Pescatore had dated Angelina for a few months. He had lost contact with her after she quit her job. He could not remember what he had told Garrison.
“No, man, you know, she called me finally and we hooked up again,” he stammered. He tried to revive his rage from the beach after the shoot-out. “Plus I didn’t particularly feel like talking to you, tell you the truth.”
“Sit down, Valentine, you’re all squirrelly,” Garrison ordered. “You still pissed at me, buddy?”
“Yup.” Pescatore found a folding chair, opened it and straddled it backwards.
“Well you’re gonna forgive me in a hurry.” Garrison leaned forward. A silver pistol in a shoulder holster appeared beneath his jacket. There was a tense lethargy to his speech and movements, like he was agitated and willing himself to go slow. “Time to get the heck outta Dodge. We’re about to get arrested.”
“Arrested?”
“Affirmative.”
“When?”
“They’re organizing the arrest teams today. They’ll serve the warrants tomorrow. Come for you at dawn and haul your sorry butt out of bed.”
“Tomorrow? What the fuck?” He no longer had to fake consternation. “Where’d you hear this?”
“My guy at the Federal Building.”
“He sure?”
“Sure.”
Isabel had told him it would be at least a week before anything happened. It was hard to believe she could be wrong. Unless she had lied. Unless the night had been a scam. He relived the hungry good-bye kiss in the car. Cold-blooded bitch, he thought.
Garrison was saying something about a bag and Tijuana. “Grab your Dopp kit and pack some clothes, buddy.”
Pescatore hunkered behind the back of the folding chair.
“Arleigh,” he said, the first name sounding peculiar in his ears. “There’s no way I’m running to Tijuana, man. I’ll take my chances here. What are they gonna charge us with?”
“Federal charges. Maybe homicide too.”
“Homicide?”
“Three guys got killed last night. They could say it was in the course of a criminal act. Like if a guy robs a bank and his partner gets killed by the guard.”
“Give me a break.”
“Listen, that’s how they squash you when your time comes.”
“I shot a Mexican cop last night. They’d eat me alive down there.”
“Don’t play stupid. My guys in TJ are gonna look out for us. If they tell the judiciales to carry our luggage, they’ll carry our fucking luggage. And you know it.”
“I don’t know. If I run, I’ll run to Chicago, Canada or somewhere.”
Garrison stood and stretched. The jacket came open so the shoulder holster was plainly visible.
“I’m not asking your opinion, Valentine,” he growled. “Police up your situation and get with the program. Enough jiving.”
Pescatore’s hands sweated as he changed in his bedroom, strapping on his shoulder holster over civilian clothes. He was barely aware of the items he stuffed into a duffel bag. Garrison stood in the bedroom doorway chattering lazily about how this was going to be easier for Pescatore than for him. How Garrison had a five-hundred-thousand-dollar house in Bonita to worry about. How it was a good thing he had money stashed, he had experience shipping out on short notice.
Garrison was keeping an eye on him, hurrying him along. His vigilance opened up an alternate scenario: What if Isabel had told the truth? What if Garrison were lying? Perhaps he knew Pescatore was an informant. Perhaps it was a ruse to lure him down south and whack him.
Hauling the duffel bag into the living room, Pescatore reached for the phone.
“Who ya calling?”
“Angelina, man. I promised to take her to the movies tonight.”
He intended to call Isabel Puente and fake a conversation with Angelina in order to sound the alarm. Garrison smothered his hand on top of the phone.
“Negative. Let’s go.”
Pescatore felt a flash of anger: This is my house you’re pushing me around in, you gray-eyed storm-trooping ape.
That’s OK, he thought, I still got my cell phone. But then his rage flared again, blending with despair. The cell phone battery was dead. He hadn’t charged it because he had spent the night at Isabel’s apartment. Now the phone sat in its sheath on his belt, useless. The price of pleasure: He had let down his guard.
They hauled their bags down the stairs. He followed Garrison around the corner to his Cherokee.
“You drive, Valentine.”
Pescatore reached to catch the tossed keys. “How come?”
“I got some phone calls to make, buddy.”
Yeah right, Pescatore thought, starting the Cherokee with a roar. He wants me under control. He wants my hands occupied. The gloomiest scenario occurred to him: What if his fears about both Puente and Garrison betraying him were correct? In that case, it was just a question of whether he got whacked or locked up. Right now, getting whacked looked like the favorite.
“I’m thirsty, man, lemme get a Big Gulp,” he suggested at the stoplight before the freeway ramp, eyeing a 7-Eleven.
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