Kissing Arizona (20 page)

‘I see what you mean. Squeaky clean is quite a stretch for Calvin,' Sarah said. ‘Is he showing as many signs of stress as you are?'

‘Physically he's looking better every day. He loves the regular meals at this safe house and he's even adapted fairly well to seeing the sun before noon – Calvin's not getting any younger, you know. He detoxed cold turkey while he was in the slammer, so his cravings for booze and hemp are minimal right now. But there's no getting around how much it hurts a lifelong scam artist to play it straight with money.'

‘Mood swings?'

‘Exactly – fits of despondency, alternating with that disgusting little gleam he gives off when he thinks he sees a way around me.'

‘Has he made any of his dodges work so far?'

‘Please. I've got an ankle bracelet on him and a second GPS so small it could fit in his soul patch.'

‘Is that where you put it?'

‘No. But if he was cooperative I could have; they make some amazing devices these days. Also, I'm getting terrific cooperation from the TPD, every patrol car in town has his picture and if I had to I could put a chopper up. We've been able to get the restitutions done pretty fast – two more paybacks and he'll be ready. Just in time to monitor the Solteros' next flight to North Carolina.'

‘All your people there OK with this?'

‘Very happy indeed. They don't think they'll make an arrest on this flight, though. They've been doing some wire-taps and they're convinced this shipment will be fairly small like the last one—'

‘Three hundred K is small?'

‘Oh, yeah. Twice as big would still be small in their terms – coke is not for amateurs. My contacts in North Carolina want to wait till they're sure there's at least a million in play. Then they'll jump.'

‘And when they say they've got the goods,' Sarah said, ‘we'll pick up Rafi and Huicho here, right? They're not making any of the flights, are they?'

‘No, no. Solteros have paid help for that.'

‘Good. Because we're hoping to have enough evidence by then to try them for Chuy Maldonado's murder. Or one of the other open cases that have their signatures.'

‘Uh-huh.' Homicide, Phil Cruz had told Sarah, just didn't ring the bell for him any more. He had worked it for a while, while he was still on the Tucson PD, but now that he'd seen the big hauls the Feds got to work with it seemed so futile, all that painstaking compiling of evidence around one corpse. And if everything went right after two or three years you got to take it to a jury, where the decision might come down to whether one of the jurors liked the suspect's eyes. Phil looked out the window and asked idly, ‘The Soltero killings have signatures?'

‘You bet. Evidence of torture – fingernails pulled out, cigarette burns. And the end of the nose cut off. Also, Chuy Maldonado's not the first one of their victims to get dismembered.'

‘Mad dogs, huh? That doesn't seem to fit with how carefully they plan their drug operations.' Phil Cruz had done some training in profiling and he liked to slot people in terms of their predilections.

‘I'm not saying they're crazy. It's a tactic with them. They keep people in line by terrorizing them.'

‘Ah.' He studied her, amused. ‘You really want to put these guys away, don't you?'

‘No,' Sarah said. ‘I really want to kill them. But the law's the law so I'll settle for putting them away.'

‘Be a couple of weeks yet,' Phil said, ‘I'll call you.'

That was fine with Sarah, who had plenty of other work on her desk and less time than usual to work on it. The department had declared half a dozen furlough days this fiscal year, to balance the budget cuts the city said were necessary. Sarah took Tuesday and Wednesday that week, glad of the chance to stay home with Aggie.

The reversal of roles took some getting used to. She was not accustomed to being tactful around her mother, but Aggie was hypersensitive now about needing a caregiver. They took walks, slowly around the block at first and then every day a little farther and a little faster. The doctors told her Aggie's recovery was proceeding normally. Aggie complained about how slow it was.

While they walked, arm in arm and looking anywhere but at each other, they began to talk cautiously about the big change Will was urging them to make.

He'd started on Sarah that first Friday afternoon, when she got out to her mother's house after work. She was standing in the kitchen taking off her gun and badge when Will came in from the yard and stood close to her. He touched her face and asked, ‘How are you?'

‘I'm good.' She kissed him quickly. ‘We need to talk, don't we?'

‘Yes.' As soon as she said it, things they had put off saying all week took on urgent life and clamored for attention.

‘Maybe tomorrow,' Will said, ‘we could get away for a while. You think?'

Sarah nodded, holding onto his arm. Then Denny came into the kitchen saying, ‘How soon is dinner?'

‘Half an hour,' Will said, ‘if you'll set the table.'

‘Sure,' Denny said, opening drawers. She'd visited her grandmother often, she knew where everything was in the kitchen.

Aggie's longtime boyfriend, Sam, kept offering to help, so now Will enlisted him, too. He came over Saturday after lunch, hugged Aggie hard and said, ‘How's chances for a visit with my buddy? I can stay all afternoon,' he told Sarah and Will, ‘in case you two need to run into town for anything.' He had even brought along a deck of cards, so he could teach Denny some cool variations on Five Card Stud while Aggie took a nap. Sarah could see they were all being manipulated but wanted time alone with Will so urgently she didn't ask any questions.

And Will didn't give her time to ask any for the first half hour in her house, either. The pleasure of finally making love was so intense it swept everything else away.

Afterwards, as they lay sated with arms and legs wound tight around each other, Sarah listened in mute astonishment as Will Dietz, usually the quiet man who kept most of his thoughts to himself, spoke persuasively about what he thought they ought to do.

‘Your life is getting to be too damn much for one person. What if Aggie gets sick again? And Denny's growing up fast – she can't stay in one end of your bedroom forever.'

‘I've been trying to save a little something for a deposit on a bigger place . . .'

‘But something always comes up. I know. And I want to be some use financially but as long as I keep my own place I don't have much left to contribute. I could help you so much more if we were living together.'

‘Well, I've been wanting to talk to you . . .' She pulled back to look at him, amazed. After months of stoic silence he seemed ready to talk about anything.

‘But there's never any time to talk,' Will said. ‘I know that too. And even when there is it seems like nobody knows what to say. Look at Aggie, now. She's all lathered up because she's never had to ask for help in her life, but she's beginning to suspect that she's going to need some now and it scares the hell out of her. She's so afraid of becoming a drag on you, she thinks you've got too much to do as it is.'

‘How do you know – have you been talking to Mom about this?' She was pulling back more, getting ready to be offended about having her turf invaded.

But he didn't give her any time for anger either. Pressing her head firmly against his chest he said very softly into the side of her ear, ‘And then there's me, that you took in and loved when I was more dead than alive. After you gave me a place to go where I could feel like a man again, instead of a ghost, do you think I'm ever going to let that go without a fight?' She lay as if mesmerized as he stroked her back and kissed her cheek. ‘All four of us, for different reasons, we need to help each other right now. But for three such feisty women, I gotta say with all due respect, none of you's very good at saying what you need.' Then he said it for her. ‘We all need to move in together, into a bigger house.'

No clap of thunder sounded and the sky didn't fall. In fact their bodies seemed to find small accommodations that allowed them to move closer, and for a while they lay silently entwined, breathing in unison. Finally Sarah raised the practical question, ‘How, though? I don't have much equity in this duplex.'

‘I don't have any in my casita. But at least the lease is easy to get out of.' He chuckled, shaking them both all over.

‘Mom's house is paid for, but even if it was big enough, Marana's too far for us.'

‘I know. But houses out there are moving pretty well now, and Aggie says . . .'

Holding each other so close they could barely breathe, talking softly, using every bit of audacity they possessed, and tactfully skirting around the fact that Dietz had very little besides himself and his paycheck, they figured out how to make it work.

Cruz didn't wait two weeks to call. A few days after his big lament about Calvin, he was back on the phone. Sarah was surprised but not alarmed.

‘Hey, Phil,' she said, ‘what's shakin'?'

‘That miserable little
fuck
tried to run.' Cruz was almost too angry to talk. ‘I was absolutely straight with him, Sarah, I told him about all the odds that were stacked against him. But he tried it anyway, he couldn't resist.
Damn
him.'

‘How could he run? I thought you said—'

‘He found an old safe-cracking buddy to get him out of the ankle bracelet. Then he hitched a ride with the safe-cracker's buddy, who was hauling scrap iron to Phoenix in an old pickup. That part, I have to tell you, was so dumb it was ingenious – the impromptu maneuver nobody could possibly foresee. He was hidden in plain sight, rolling along the road like a hundred other losers going to work.'

‘So how'd you find him?'

‘I never really lost him, I was just one step behind for part of the day because I was in a meeting with the sound turned off and didn't notice my monitor blinking. When I did I just followed the GPS I'd installed in his belt buckle. He was so pleased to have a belt again after two months in that orange jumpsuit, I knew he'd never take it off.'

‘Where've you got him now?'

‘Right back in the county lock-up where I found him, and I told him he can rot in there for all I care. Cokely's treating him like a pariah too. I gave Cokely strict orders, don't even talk to him.'

‘Oh, that was smart – Cokely so loves strict orders.' She could feel the request coming and knew it was folly to try to dodge it. But why make it easy for him? She said, ‘Well, hey, it could have worked, huh? Let me know if you get another idea.' She hung up quickly and smiled at her desk clock for twelve seconds. She let the phone ring three times before she picked it up and said, ‘Burke.'

‘All right, Sarah,' Cruz said, ‘what do you want?'

‘Did I say I wanted anything? You're the one doing all the calling. What do
you
want?'

‘He's got something else to trade. I could tell all along by the way he was behaving – he was never very scared of screwing up because he's got more to trade than he's used.'

‘Wow, that's pretty subtle. I'm not sure I can follow such a rarefied train of thought.'

‘Make fun of me if you want to, but I wouldn't say it if I wasn't sure it was true. That's why, after he ran, I told him I never want to see him again. I give him two days before he starts to get anxious.'

‘How will you know, if nobody's talking to him?'

‘He'll call you. I'd bet on it. You want to bet me? Twenty bucks, how about it?'

‘I don't have any money to squander on gambling,' Sarah said primly.

‘Bullshit! You won't bet because you know I'm right. He'll make a big noise about having the right to another phone call and when they get sick of listening to him and give in, he'll call you.'

‘And say what?'

‘That he's just remembered he knows something else.'

‘If you say so. But if he doesn't call me there's really nothing I can do, is there? You're not expecting me to try entrapment, I hope.' She knew she was having too much fun and should shut up while she was ahead. But it was already too late, Phil Cruz had picked up the Kool-Aid and was gulping it down.

‘Well, if he doesn't call you, maybe you could just walk by his cell, say you're on the way to another prisoner and be ever so surprised to see him back in there. Huh? Ask him what happened, show a little sympathy?' Sarah let the silence build. Cruz had a little rattle in his breathing these days, she thought. He might be getting a touch of asthma; this valley was hell on any tendency toward allergies. He coughed and asked her, ‘What do you think?'

‘I think it sounds like a high school play. I think you're overwrought and you need to get out of that building. You should come up and have a coffee with me at, oh, maybe El Minuto, how does that sound?'

He hesitated just long enough to let her know he was thinking about whether he wanted to sweeten the deal. ‘Half an hour?'

‘Done.'

She got up and stood in Delaney's doorway, knocked on the frame so he'd look up from the paper he was quoting into the phone. He held up one finger, said ‘Yeah,' and ‘Mmm,' and ‘Yes, four o'clock.'

When he put the phone down she said, ‘Phil Cruz called.' She brought him up to date quickly with the latest wrinkle in what he always called ‘Sarah's box o' bones caper'. When she finished her story she asked him, ‘Granted that we would never stoop to consider the value of any possible forfeiture when we decide which investigations take priority . . .'