“I don’t know,” she said, helplessly. “This was supposed to be a romantic weekend. But now with, you know . . .”
“About that. Where’s Bronwyn when it goes down?” he asked, nodding toward the blood.
“There. He came in from the bedroom and saw him and just stood against the wall.”
“And he doesn’t do anything else that spooks Oscar? Besides simply come in?”
She sighed.
“What?”
“He just stands there. He wishes he had done something, done anything, other than freeze. Which is why he’s stomping around in the snow.”
Dufresne thought whatever he thought about that, and then looked everything over. He set his cup on the butcher’s block. She poured them both another, and they drank. She worried her forehead with her fingers.
“What?”
“I don’t love him,” she blurted out. “I was this close to thinking, I dunno, that we were going to be together, but I don’t love him. When it was happening, all I needed was for him to protect himself. Just be cool. But he was rooted in place, scared shitless.” She couldn’t tell what Dufresne was thinking. She went on talking. “And now I have to protect his ego. His whole deal, the lumberjack act, the wobbly tables, scrimshaw . . . it’s all a performance.”
Dufresne’s face darkened, and she stopped talking.
You shouldn’t say these things to him.
“Goddamnit, Diane,” he said.
“What?” she asked, alarmed at the sudden frustration on his face. He was looking at his empty glass. He was going to say one thing, set it aside, and said this instead: “Childs should be here. Your partner.”
“I filled my Trauma Plan paperwork years ago,” she said, stepping back from him. “You’re down as my primary because you were my mentor.”
“I’m your supervisor, and—”
“I told you not to come!”
Dufresne hadn’t moved. But his jaw was set, and he was breathing audibly through his nose like he’d exerted himself and didn’t want to show it. And then all at once, she knew what he was thinking.
“Within two minutes of us being alone, you’re telling me you don’t love this guy.”
Now she was sure.
That night.
That fucking night.
One too many drinks, the two of them in the abandoned coat check, her fingers on his lapel. Claudia Dufresne calling for her husband, the two of them stumbling out to her withering gaze. Dufresne spurred by his tremendous Catholic guilt, leaving her instantly and gliding to his wife. Harbaugh standing there in a spotlight of Claudia Dufresne’s gaze. Nothing to say because nothing happened, but something might have, but nothing did. That nothing fucking night.
Dufresne leaned away from the butcher’s block and turned to get a glass of water from the tap. He was looking out the window.
“Why would your informant track you all the way to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan just to blow his brains out?” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and did not turn around.
She was still too stunned to speak.
“How’d he know you were here?”
He turned around.
She managed a shrug.
“Diane.”
“I don’t know,” she muttered. “I don’t know.” This time firmly.
“What did he—”
“He said I ruined his life.”
Dufresne pondered this a moment. He went to the marked spot on the floor. He toed the blood-water outline.
“I looked at the case you were building. You were setting up a sting with him?”
“A Sinaloa peso broker.”
“Stalled out?”
“Just tricky timing. I didn’t want to rush it. He was anxious.”
“Anxious?”
“Yeah.”
“He was trapped. CIs are always trapped,” he said, his eyes gone sad. Like he was the one who was trapped. “I should’ve been more on top of this one.”
He came over and screwed the lid back onto the bottle. He looked old.
“I quit drinking,” he said, smiling, though she could tell he was serious.
“I won’t tell,” she said.
“I know,” he said. He gestured toward the outside, where Bronwyn had gone. “You gonna be all right?”
She nodded. He buttoned up his coat.
“There a motel around here?”
“Rudyard. You probably drove right by it on the way in.”
“Okay.”
“Dufresne.”
“What?”
“I never wanted to make trouble for you. It was a little work crush is all, nothing more. I wish—I wish we could go back to how it was before things got weird. I wish that so much. I wanted this job back when I was a DA, and it was because of you. You made me want to be an agent. You know that. I owe you everything. And that’s all I feel. Gratitude.”
He nodded, acknowledging what she’d said.
“Get some rest,” he said and left her alone.
She waited and waited for Bronwyn to come back, finally going out after him in the dark. He’d trudged out into the meadow under the naked moon. She walked along his tracks deep in the snow. She didn’t break through like he did; she was slight from all her coursing these woods, she was a slight thing right now, light in her footing, a ghost.
She felt herself slip free of Bronwyn and a little bad for it, for sidling up so close. Did she lead him on, did she play with his heart, did she play with Oscar, did she play with Dufresne, was she Dufresne’s middle wife, his work wife, did she play too hard, try too hard, did she make all the boys cry?
Did she know her own heart? Did they? Was her heart just a hard ball of stone?
She stopped. She turned back toward the cabin. The cold was fine, she would not die out here. She didn’t even shiver. But there was no reason to stay, not a minute more. Should I go, all I want is to go.
She looked up and caught a ribbon of the northern lights, a greenish pennant softly shimmering.
A green light, she thought. Go.
Chapter Three
The Races
Harbaugh pulled into the Santa Anita racetrack lot and parked remarkably close to the front, only remembering as she walked through the nearly empty gate that it was a Tuesday. The last time she’d been to the famous track, for the Breeders’ Cup, the place had been stocked with California’s horse-racing elite. It had taken her twenty-five minutes to get in, shoulder to shoulder with the well-heeled and well-hatted throng. No such trouble today, though. She stepped up to the only ticket window open for business, paid the extra $10 for club level access, and passed right through the turnstile.
She wiped her palms on her pants, more like she was getting set to breach a front door and clear rooms than meet her partner to observe a target. Her pits too, Jesus Christ. Her first day back on the job, and she felt like a panicked seventh grader, confined within her own hideous skin.
She headed for the women’s restroom, which was totally empty, wiped herself off, breathed, looked at herself in the mirror. Told herself it would be okay, to just get back to work. To just not touch anyone with her sweaty palms.
She bought a schedule and made her way to the observation gallery to watch the weekday bettors survey the first-race horses and jockeys. A group of about thirty men. Guys dressed like programmers bearing headphones and backpacks mingled with professional poker players, grinders who counted excursions to the track as exercise. A few mid-functioning alcoholics in football jerseys and sweatpants sipping Bloody Marys like cartoon mosquitoes.
There was only one other woman anywhere about the grounds. She sat on a bench waiting on someone with her eyes closed and head thrown back to absorb the sun through the Pasadena haze. The woman seemed to feel herself being observed and opened her eyes, alighting on Harbaugh immediately. She squinted and then lifted her chin as if they shared a secret intelligence about this place and the men who congregated here. Which they did. Harbaugh had been going to the races since s
he was knee-high to her daddy—
Her phone buzzed. Bronwyn. Not Childs or Dufresne or anybody else from work, no, not people she actually wanted to hear from, just Bronwyn again. She let it ring. She’d been back in LA for two days—or, if you were measuring time in Bronwyns, nine calls and a dozen texts. She’d left him a note at the cabin, curt and clear: This is tough, I need some space, I’ll check in later. xoxo. It felt bad, but only just, and less so every time a message from him lit up her phone.
After Michigan, Dufresne had told her to take some PT. In a massive display of self-control, she’d texted him exactly twice about coming back on time. He demurred on the second try. She stopped bothering him. Couldn’t have him measuring time in Dianes. Shit was weird, though. She’d expected to be called in to talk to him and his boss, Cromer, the Los Angeles office assistant special agent in charge. But nada.
She’d killed a few days jogging in her Fairfax neighborhood, taking stupid hikes up Runyon with the actors and models and WAGs and their little dogs, every text from Bronwyn curbing her own urge to pester Dufresne. At a rock outcropping under an umbrella she sat listening to an old hippie play surprisingly competent Hendrix on a Fender through a Pignose amp and was overcome by the thought that this was, in fact, where she was right now. Alone. The women she knew here—a real estate agent with two kids, a costume designer, an orthodontist—were all friends of friends from Sacramento, law school, and fucking Facebook. Los Angeles friendship was catching up at lunch every three to nine months, apologizing to each other for having to cancel so many times. Los Angeles friendship was a requisite holiday party. Los Angeles friendship was a boring-ass Saturday at the LACMA looking at Mapplethorpe’s butthole. Truth was, she’d only moved here to do cases, and even the small investment in nominal friendships felt like a horrible chore. And to be stuck in this jittery holding pattern had been a perfect torture.
Her phone trembled again in her pocket. Childs, thank god.
You here or what?
She smiled. She started to type, thought better about what would sound just right. What wouldn’t sound like someone counting time in Bronwyns. She looked around.
Scoping the ponies right now, partner, she wrote.
Addict.
Where are you.
Parked. Walking in.
Hit the ATM.
I’m working.
Obvi. Me too. But I’ll make you rich bitch.
Harbaugh began flipping through the racing schedule, looking for the right race to make the best bets, the trifecta—boxed, always box it. Riding on her dad’s shoulders out of the beer garden, weaving through the crowd at the county fair, she’d learned to bet. Only play the trifecta, boxed, he’d said. Two favorites, you choose the long shot. She always took a filly, picked names that sounded heedless and fraught: Juanita’s Gambit. Baby’s Long Dive. Becca’s Chance. Madame Kinetic.
She set the program aside as the bettors observed a large chestnut colt that was primed to race, anybody could see that, eyes rolling around like small pool balls as he urged against the trainers manhandling him by the halter.
A shadow fell across her lap.
“Sit,” she said, waving a hand. “Sit.”
An old joke. Childs had read in Military Times that sitting eight hours a day would reduce his lifespan, so fuck sitting. He’d always squat or pace in place. Or kneel like a quarterback drawing up a play, which was what he did now. She glanced at him in his wrap-around sunglasses, a toothpick in his teeth.
“Those shades are a real douchey.”
“These shades are dope.”
“God, is that an ivory toothpick?”
“My dental hygienist said the wood ones are fucking up my gums and enamel.”
“The ivory won’t?”
“I dunno. It’s a work in progress.”
“You’re the only person in the world who’d call a toothpick a work in progress.”
“The toothpick is an oral fixation. The work in progress is this,” he said, running his hands down the length of himself. “My temple.”
He was as fit as an orchestra of fiddles.
“You’re gonna live forever, Russ.”
“Not without the work, baby,” he said. He looked over his shades at her. Her shirt.
“It’s a vintage tee,” she said.
“People take care of vintage things. That’s disintegrating.”
“The sight of bra strap really throws you, doesn’t it?”
“You got two speeds, girl. Legal eagle and meth dealer.”
A yelling commotion in the stalls saved her from having to conjure a retort. Handlers were struggling with the chestnut Thoroughbred, keeping him from rearing up, turning him in the narrow stall. With an explosive bang the horse kicked the wood enclosure.
She looked it up in the guide. “Islands in the Stream,” she said.
The handlers began their staggered departure, with racehorses, owners, and jockeys hastening subtly toward the racetrack. A few bettors jogged ahead, stirred to hedge or capitalize by this latest aggression on the part of Islands in the Stream.
“You spooked him,” Childs said, reaching down to pull her up.
“You’re the one looks like a cop.” She snatched his toothpick from his mouth as she came to her feet. “I hate this thing.”
She inspected the toothpick, the delicately filigreed handle end, the entire thing like a miniature cane for a miniature dandy. She looked at Childs.
“Don’t do it,” he said, half grinning because he knew it was too late.
She flicked the toothpick into the air, where it vanished into the white sunshine, and started for the track.
They took seats in the Turf Terrace section, the place already set with linen and a pitcher of water. The shade was cool, but the heat was beginning to build on the track. Childs put his sunglasses in the front pocket of his dress shirt. Something he’d wear out dancing, she thought. Something he’d ironed this morning.
“You’re right,” Harbaugh said, impressed by her plush seat and the silverware and plates. “I am underdressed.”
“Up top’s even more chichi.” Childs gestured to where several idle cocktail waitresses chatted on the patio outside the Chandelier Room. She could just make out an ice sculpture past the waitresses. Cooks wheeled out steam tables.
“All that stuff for Lima?” she asked. Group 11, their team in the LA office, had been coordinating with San Antonio, tracking the distributor for the Cartel del Golfo on what appeared to be a little money-washing tour of his southwestern properties. So far, the Texan had shown a not-so-novel interest in California wine collections, real estate, and Thoroughbreds.
Childs shrugged.
“These fucking guys. He might not even show. And all that is gratis.”
“You know the only thing you ever bitch about is what these guys get ‘gratis’?”
A good portion of Childs’s psychic fuel was resentment. He hated guys like Lima for what they did, what they were, but what really pissed him off was the free shit they got from civilians.
“Doesn’t it drive you nuts?”
“I don’t give a shit how narcos split the check. Or don’t split the check. I just like the chase.”
“You’re like a dog that way.”
“Dogs are too happy to get bogged down in the injustice of it all.”
“It’s fucked.”
“Woof.”
“Seriously,” he said, pouring them glasses of water and gazing up at the patio.
“Look, I don’t hear you complaining about senators or actresses or brokers getting free shit.”
“I don’t have to watch them eat free lobster all day,” he said, taking a swig from his water.
“But you don’t get to arrest them, either.”
Harbaugh took in the vast grandstand. Much of the action was still inside, people getting their first beer, studying the program over a coffee, already yearning at the bank of televisions broadcasting races in New Jersey and Florida. A weekday languo
r here, the crowd thin, the odds less volatile. An almost scholarly vibe, with so many pure horse people, cowgirls, and vaqueros. And the shady operators in white sport coats or tennis sweaters who knew how to fine-tune Thoroughbreds like Formula One engines with injections right up to the edge of the rules. Racing always brought out the simplest things: cheating, trophies, cheating trophy wives. People with cash to burn. Or in Lima’s case, clean.
“So the track is brokering Lima’s horse deal?” she asked.
“I’m not even sure he’s here to get one. He’s been buying horses and houses in San Antonio, Dallas, Tulsa, Taos. And that’s just the past month. Dude’s got so much capital, he just throws it at whoever the hell will take it on. I think Santa Anita knows he’s on a spending spree. But more important, they know he can bring other whales to the pool.”
“Explains the ice mermaid.”
“More than mermaids. Lookit this now.”
The patio started to fill with colorful had-to-be prostitutes, glittering eyes and big laughs. Judging one another in long sidelongs, clustering like tangled Christmas lights.
She sank back in her seat and sipped her water. Took in the track, the warming breeze. It was good to be back at work.
The waiter returned.
“I’ll just have coffee,” Childs said, before he could go through the specials. Harbaugh looked at him over her menu. Another thing she teased him about: he didn’t drink. Not that she wanted a drink now either. But Childs was so tight he wouldn’t even order dry toast here.
“You’re not having anything?” she asked.
“I’m having a four-dollar coffee,” he said.
Harbaugh rolled her eyes for the waiter. “I’ll have a coffee too,” she said. “But leave a menu.”
Childs sipped his water.
“Not gonna bet either, are you?” she asked.
“I cannot participate in unjust shit like this,” he said. “This whole circus is rigged to screw these addicts.”
He nodded toward the stands filling below them, the shambling track junkies, a thin weekday parade of souls atingle. The screenwriter in a Hunter Thompson Hawaiian shirt, the Armenian playboys, the old Chinese lady digging in her fanny pack. She liked Childs personally—he was loyal, on time, and less of a patriotic swinging dick than the other ex-military. Guys like that meathead Urlacher. But Childs had been an MP. He was deeply, essentially protocoled.
Make Them Cry Page 3