Saint (29 page)

“What the fuck is taking y’all so long?”
Gabe growled over his shoulder, unable to tear his eyes away from the vision
onstage.

Francis reached for the bottle to freshen
his glass. “Hey guess what this guy’s name is, Gabe. It’s Toady. You ever heard
such a stupid name?”

“Unless he’s gonna pee on you and give you
warts, rip his balls off and throw him in the dumpster. Christ, it’s not like
anybody’s gonna give a shit about some sleezeball bartender in a strip joint.”
Gabe turned to glare at the uncooperative bartender. “Now you’ve made me miss
the end of the show. Joan, drop him and pick another. Somebody in this joint is
bound to know something”

* * * * *

Mary Browning had several reasons for
becoming a stripper.

At age fifteen she was kicked out of the
family’s dingy rat-infested apartment by her stepfather because she wouldn’t
put out. Her mother, only fifteen herself when Mary was born, looked at it as
one less mouth to feed and one less female distracting her randy husband’s
attention away from her.

Mary lived on the streets and in halfway
houses for a year, doing any odd job she could find to survive. The last thing
she wanted to do was end up like her mother. It was that or start hooking on
the corner in order to eat.

She never finished high school but did go
to the library every chance she got. The librarian, suspicious at first that
she meant to steal books, never left her completely unattended. But gradually,
the old woman realized all Mary really wanted was to learn. So, together they
worked toward getting her a high school diploma.

At twenty she managed to land a secretarial
position. The pay wasn’t great but it was an honest job. Then she met and
married Roger, a successful architect. They bought a house and Roger received a
promotion, so they bought a bigger house. Things seemed to be going along
nicely and before long they were doing well enough for Mary to quit her job.
Roger wanted her to stay at home and be a housewife. Thinking she was the
luckiest woman in the world, she did just that.

For her twenty-fifth birthday he took her
on a shopping spree along Rodeo Drive.

For her thirtieth birthday he surprised her
with a Porsche. Mary thought the car was a little extravagant, but Roger
insisted they could afford it.

For her thirty-fifth birthday he surprised
her by disappearing off the face of the earth, leaving her in debt up to her
neck. He took nothing but his clothes.

That’s when she learned never to depend on
anyone but herself, ever. People like her weren’t meant to live the easy life.
Roger had had everything transferred to her name little by little—the house,
the cars, the credit cards. She didn’t know how he had managed it, but
suspected his sleazy lawyer buddies, whom she’d never really liked, had helped
him.

Unfortunately, Mary wasn’t qualified to get
a job making good enough money to pay off such huge debts. After watching her
mother and stepfather lose just about everything they ever acquired to
repossession or the local pawnshop, Mary couldn’t bring herself to file
bankruptcy, nor did she have the money to hire an attorney. By selling
everything
she
owned, she
was able to cut the debt in half. But it wasn’t enough. No bank or mortgage
company in their right mind would give her a loan, so it was either go back to
living on the streets as a failure, or get a job that paid damn good money.

Sitting alone in a bar one night Mary
poured out her story to a sympathetic bartender named Mick. Mick told her how
much money strippers—good strippers, the kind who brought in regular
clientele—could make. And if she wanted to hook on the side…

Mary didn’t want to be a hooker, but she
did want to be able to hold her head high again. She had worked too hard and
too long to pull herself out of the gutter and neither Roger nor anyone else
was going make a fool of her and just walk away. She was going to pay off those
debts if she had to dance twenty-four hours a day.

A box of hair color, workouts every night,
a few sequins sewn onto altered leotards or lingerie and Lolita was born.
Unlike conservative Mary Browning, Lolita had fiery red hair, alabaster skin
and long, long legs that made a man dream of having them wrapped around him.
Lucky for her she’d never had kids so stretch marks weren’t really a problem.
Her breasts were still nicely firm and her hips maturely rounded. Hell, for
thirty-seven, Lolita was a fine-looking woman.

She was also basically good-hearted. So
when Maria Carvania asked for help, Lolita was there for her. It was the least
she could do after Maria helped her find her ex-husband, Roger, when it was
discovered he had set up a new architecture firm in Sacramento using a fake
name. Roger was not a good candidate for businessman of the year.

“How’s your picture coming, sweetie?”
Lolita asked, pausing as she readied for her performance to look over the
little girl’s shoulder.

“Good,” Bethy smiled. “I’m drawing my
mommy. Will Mommy come back soon to get me?”

“Sure she will, honey.” Lolita stooped to
hug her reassuringly. “As soon as she’s finished with her assignment. Your
mommy has a very important job and remember how she has to travel sometimes to
get her story?”

“Yes. Can we have tea before you have to go
dance?”

“Certainly.” She smiled lovingly. “You know
I adore tea parties. But you have to keep your part of the bargain and go to
sleep right after, okay?”

Bethy’s dark curls bobbed in agreement.
Then she looked up over Lolita’s shoulder and smiled, pointing a pudgy finger
toward the door. “Can they come to our tea party too?”

Lolita spun around, ready to tear into
whoever had the nerve to invade her private dressing room.

“I think Angelface pulled one over on us.
What do you think, Gabe?”

“Goddammit!”

“I don’t like kids.”

“A moot point now, Joan, don’t you think?”

* * * * *

Mississippi

“Let’s go.”

Maria stayed in her chair by the bedroom
window, where she’d seated herself after dinner, arms propped along the sill of
the open window as she contemplated the latest turn of events. “Go where?”

“To bed.”

She looked at her bed then back at Harris. “Did
I miss something?”

“Yes but you can catch up. Francis says you’re
a quick study.”

She’d spent most of the day avoiding being
in the same room with Seth and worrying over Lolita and Bethy, wondering if
Francis and crew had caught up with the stripper yet. “I’m not going to try to sneak
out, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“You don’t have any idea what I’m thinking
and I’m not up for listening to you pace the floor all night, trying to think
of a way to repair the phone line. We’ll sleep in the same room and since mine
is better situated, strategically speaking, the subject’s not up for debate.”

“I don’t want to sleep with you.”

“I don’t care. Move.”

Arguing with him would be a waste of time,
she knew. But she was damned if she’d sleep in the same bed with him again. He
might be made of stone but she wasn’t. Sleeping next to him last night had been
torture. She’d awakened several times to find herself cuddled against him,
touching him in some way, like he was some sort of security blanket. He
obviously wasn’t interested or he would’ve done more than lay there, breathing
in and out steadily, hardly even moving a muscle.

Snatching a pillow and blanket from her bed,
she marched to the other bedroom and made a pallet at the foot of his bed. And
he let her, the bastard.

“You know, for someone who supposedly cares
about the poor devils like Jimmy—the ones who risk their lives playing roulette
with drugs—you don’t seem to care much whether you live or die. Just because we’re
here in Mississippi doesn’t mean you’re out of danger.”

She shucked her camos and climbed beneath
the blanket of her pallet. “Jimmy didn’t do drugs.”

“That’s what you’d like to think, isn’t it?”
He lay on the bed and folded his hands behind his head. “That your little
brother, a kid who grew up in L.A.’s backyard, was so naїve and stupid he
didn’t know what was in the packages he delivered. He did. The sacrifices you’re
making to martyr him aren’t going to change that. Odds are, he didn’t say no
when he got the opportunity to try the candy he was delivering.”

“He wasn’t that kind of kid.”

“Really? Did he take all the money he made
and save it? Build himself a nest egg for retirement? Or maybe he was
supporting a family. You, your mother. Maybe your father’s pension wasn’t enough.
You suspected Juarez from the start, yet you expect me to believe Jimmy didn’t
know who paid his salary? C’mon, baby, give me a break.”

For a moment she was so incensed she could
hardly speak. He was deliberately trying to get her back up and she didn’t know
why. She sat up and eyed him woodenly. “Are you looking for a reason to change
your mind about using the roster?”

“No. I just want you to stop making excuses
for what you’re doing and call it what it is—revenge. Isn’t that why you’re
preparing to ruin anyone and everyone who has a connection to Juarez, because
taking down Juarez alone isn’t enough to satisfy the bloodlust?”

“No!”

“Yes. You could’ve given that list to the
FBI, CIA or DEA, to name just a few agencies, and they would have taken over
and investigated him without involving you. Instead, you offered to testify in
court. Set it up so that even if you didn’t make it to trial, the world would
know what Juarez really is. On top of that you made a deal with your magazine
for an exclusive, just so you could claim the front cover for Jimmy and the
Carvania family honor. Well guess what, honey? Everyone’s going to shake their
heads when they read it, just like you want them to, then forget all about
little Jimmy the day after it runs. And you’ll still be on the lam—for the rest
of your life. Get the point?”

“I’m sitting here worrying about Lolita and
what your goons are going to put her through in order to get that key, and you
have the nerve to insinuate I’m putting myself through hell for nothing more
than a few days of journalistic glory? Revenge was your motive, it isn’t mine.
Jimmy was an innocent bystander, just like your wife. Juarez sucked him in,
used him, then flung him aside like garbage. I don’t call making Juarez answer
to the law for his crimes revenge. I call it justice!”

She hated that he was able to put her on
the defensive so easily. She didn’t know what Carolyn’s connection to Juarez
was, exactly, but Jimmy’s had cost him his life. Perhaps Harris hadn’t had the
same opportunities she did to bring Juarez’s father to justice, but that was no
reason for him to malign her attempt.

“Why did Juarez go after Carolyn?”

For a moment she didn’t think he would
answer. When he did his tone was hard. “To get to me. I made a mistake,” he
said candidly. “I was stuck in South America, trying to flush Manuel Juarez out
into the open. I hadn’t seen or talked to Carolyn in months, so I sent her a
postcard, thinking it would be safe as long as I didn’t sign it or put a return
address. We were staying at some piece of shit motel at the time and I didn’t
have any way of knowing Juarez owned the owner. I gave him the card to post.”

He paused for a minute, then continued. “Things
got too hot and we were called back. When I got home she was gone. No note
saying where she went. Nothing. We didn’t live on base at the time, Carolyn
hated the cheap housing, but we still received our mail there. The next week I
received a…message…that Juarez had her. So I wiped him off the map.”

“What kind of message? Like a ransom note?”

“You can’t ransom a dead woman.” He laid
back and threw an arm over his eyes.

Oh God, oh God. What if Juarez found Lolita
and Bethy before Francis and the others? What would she do then? Would Juarez
want to trade Bethy for the information or would he just kill her outright?
Panic seized her. Not the constant fear and uncertainty that had been part of
her every waking moment for the last seven months, but a gut-deep, paralyzing
hysteria. Terrifying pictures flashed through her mind. Bethy and Lolita lying
in a pool of blood. Juarez having Bethy and no way to contact her for the trade.
Bethy calling for her, frightened, confused, possibly even tortured.

She leapt from the tangle of blankets, her
mind spinning in so many directions she couldn’t form a whole thought, much
less a sentence. “I have to call…you have to let me call…Juarez could find her
first. He might be there now. I need to warn her…tell her Francis is coming…”

She rushed to the door, fumbled with the
knob, but Harris was right behind her, hauling her off her feet. She went wild,
kicking and screaming and cursing him for the bastard he was to cut the phone
line.

“Calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down. You have to
take me to a pay phone! I have to call her, she’s in danger! They might already
be too late! Oh God, what if he has her?”

“The boys are there, they’ll find her,” he
insisted.