Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs (29 page)

In the next instant, the backhoe that had been digging a hole in the street came to a stop, and the workmen around it yanked off their slickers and hats to reveal SWAT jackets and helmets. So did the backhoe driver. The cherry picker crane swung around to allow uniformed men inside the bucket to train their rifle sights on the front door. Patrol cars screeched from both directions to barricade the street, and the
whap-whap-whap
of a helicopter sounded overhead. A slew of men in dark flak jackets and helmets materialized out of nowhere. Every man had initials on his jacket—FBI, DEA, SCSD, SIB, SWAT—and every man carried an assault rifle.

A big voice spoke through a bullhorn. “Come out with your hands up!”

I gripped the steering wheel so hard my shoulders shook. Every man inside that house had a gun. Every man inside that house realized by now that Paco wasn’t a big Colombian drug lord but an undercover cop who had tricked them. They had two choices: to add cop killing to the charges already against them, or to put down their weapons and come out.

Beside me, Jaz was frozen and confused, breathing in short laps like a stressed dog.

The front door opened and men began filing out with
their hands above their heads. I waited, stiff as stone, until Paco appeared in the door. He had put away his gun but still had the cloth holster open to show it was marked
POLICE.
Tensions run high in a situation like that, and I knew he didn’t want any of the law enforcement people to mistake him for somebody else.

Within seconds, every man who’d come out of the house was handcuffed and led to the paneled trucks. The trucks were not plumbers’ trucks or Verizon trucks or FPL trucks after all, but SWAT armored vehicles.

Paco separated himself from the others and slogged through the mist to the Bronco. He had taken off his dark glasses, but he still looked like a gangster. I rolled down my window and he leaned inside and kissed me, his beard prickly against my cheek.

“Go home,” he said.

He gave Jaz a half smile and a thumbs-up, then turned and disappeared into the throng of uniformed lawmen.

I looked at Jaz and saw a new fear on her face. She was afraid of me.

She said, “Is he your
brother
?”

I said, “It’s a long story, but he was just pretending to be a bad guy. He’s really an undercover cop. You’re safe now. Those guys who were after you are all going to jail. You don’t have to hide anymore.”

Her face crumpled and she dissolved into racking sobs. I gathered her into my arms and held her while she cried, patting her on the back like I once patted Christy.

She said, “He wouldn’t . . . he wouldn’t let them . . . hurt me. They wanted to, and he stopped them.”

I squeezed her closer. “They can’t ever hurt you again.”

Jaz cried while the armored trucks drove off with their loads. She cried while men erected warning barriers around the hole they’d dug in the street. She cried while the truck with the cherry picker crane lumbered off. She cried as if she had barrels of tears that needed shedding.

After a final shudder, she went limp and pulled away.

Dully, she said, “Where do I have to go now?”

“My orders were to take you home.”

In a tiny voice, she said, “I don’t have a home.”

I said, “Well, actually, you do. If you want it, that is. Hetty would like you to live with her.”

The light breaking on her face was like a glorious sunrise.

T
he only sound on the way to Hetty’s house was the
swish-swish
of the wipers.

When we got there, Jaz pushed out of the car and ran to the front door, her skinny legs churning. Hetty must have heard the car and looked through her peephole, because I heard her whoop of joy before she opened the door. While I stood behind her grinning, Jaz fell into Hetty’s arms and the two swayed in the doorway for a long moment, squeezing each other as if they’d found a long-lost treasure.

Hetty finally pulled Jaz aside so I could pass through, and we all trooped to the kitchen, where Hetty busied herself making hot chocolate for Jaz. Ben ran to Jaz for a hug, and Winston graced her with a slow
I love you
eye blink.

I doubted Hetty would ever get all the story from Jaz, so I stayed long enough to fill her in on everything that had happened. Still dazed, Jaz didn’t really understand it herself. She was a kid, and all she knew was that bad
people had done bad things and had wanted to do more bad things to her, and now she was safe. It might be a decade or more before she understood the full implication of everything she’d been through.

When I left them, Hetty was already talking about the colors they might use for decorating Jaz’s new room. A woman with less imagination might have been talking about transferring Jaz’s school records from L.A. to Sarasota. Hetty knows how to set priorities.

I drove home on autopilot, too happy to do much more than steer the car. At home, I went straight to Michael’s kitchen. He was at the stove enveloped in a cloud of steam, and he turned to me with a smile a mile wide.

He said, “Paco called. He’s on his way home. I’m making bouillabaisse.”

The butcher-block island was set for two, with wineglasses and cloth napkins. I didn’t need to be told that, on this evening, three really would be a crowd.

Michael nodded toward the counter where an insulated hamper sat. “I packed the meatloaf and stuff for you. I put heated bricks in there, so it’ll stay hot until you’re ready for it.”

I said, “Thanks. I love you.”

“Love you too, kid.”

The hamper was surprisingly heavy, but then Michael always gives a lot. I slopped out into the rain to cross the deck and go up my stairs. I left the hamper on my one-person breakfast bar and squished down the hall to my bathroom where I stood a long time under a hot shower. I was extremely alone.

When I was warm and scrubbed clean as new, I pulled
on a thick terry robe and went to the kitchen where the insulated hamper sat all by itself on the bar. I opened the lid and inhaled heavenly smells. I took inventory: a metal pan with Michael’s meatloaf, a container of tomato gravy to pour over the meatloaf, a covered Pyrex dish filled with mashed potatoes, and another with skinny green beans and slivered almonds. There was even a square pan with warm blackberry cobbler. The cobbler called for vanilla ice cream which, wonder of wonders, I just happened to have in my refrigerator’s little freezing compartment.

I closed the hamper’s lid. I thought about Michael and Paco downstairs together. I thought about the ways people demonstrate love. I thought about how love lives in small acts as much as heroic ones—a smile, a word of support, a special dish, nice napkins for a dinner for two. I thought about how those small acts are reflections of courage and loyalty and commitment. Most of all, I thought about how love is unavailable to cowards.

I left the hamper on the bar and went to the living room and fished my cellphone from the bag I’d thrown on the sofa. I dialed Guidry’s number.

He answered, which is a good thing because if he hadn’t, I might have lost my nerve and not even left a message.

I said, “I have meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Would you like to have dinner with me?”

My heart beat once, twice, three times.

Guidry said, “I like meatloaf.”

“Okay, then.”

“Ten minutes?”

“Ten minutes is fine.”

I clicked the phone shut and galloped to the hall closet. Breathing hard, I pawed through it until I found a five-pronged brass candelabra and five candles. The candles didn’t match, and the candelabra needed polishing, but they would have to do. Charging to the living room, I set the candelabra on my coffee table, jammed the mismatched candles into it, and lit them. With the lamps turned off and only the kitchen light on, the candles looked just fine. Romantic, even. I found cloth napkins too, which were only slightly rumpled from lying in a drawer so long. I neatly refolded them and laid them next to silverware on the coffee table.

Last, I put on a CD of Regina Carter playing Paganini’s violin, surely the most beautiful music ever made. Then, barefoot and breathless in my terry cloth robe, I opened my french doors to Guidry.

A
fter we’d all had time to recover from the gigantic sting Paco and his cohorts had pulled off, Michael made a feast—leg of lamb butterflied and slowly roasted in his outdoor cooker, Bosc pears poached in peppermint schnapps, tabouli, leek and gorgonzola casserole, kibbe, prawn kebabs, burgers for the kids—and we invited half the people we knew. We gathered on the deck at sunset.

Guidry brought a case of assorted French wines. Tom Hale brought his new girlfriend, who passed my standards when she took off her sandals and ran with Billy Elliot along the shoreline. Jaz and Ben ran awhile too, but they were both so fascinated with the surf frothing on the shore that they sat down to watch it as if it were TV. Cora brought a fresh loaf of chocolate bread. Paco’s SIB buddies and Michael’s fellow firefighters brought their wives and kids. Max brought Jamaican ginger beer, and Reba Chandler brought a trove of Belgian chocolate. Ethan Crane came with a date, another attorney, and I was only
a smidgen jealous. My old friend Pete Madeira brought his saxophone and played for us. Tanisha brought a basket of pies and in no time was exchanging recipes with Michael, while Judy couldn’t resist going around to see if everybody had been served.

All the talk was how federal, state, and local agencies had cooperated in the raid on that house full of mob bosses. After months of planning and maneuvering, thousands of man-hours, lots of hard work, some lucky breaks, and Paco’s undercover pose, they had gathered enough hard evidence of interstate racketeering to end the careers of several mob bosses and the underlings who served them. They were all being held without bail. If Victor Salazar hadn’t been killed, he would have been with them.

Charges against gang members who had come to kill Jaz to keep her from testifying against them for a crime in California had expanded to counts in Florida of witness intimidation, murder, robbery, drug trafficking, wrongful imprisonment, and kidnapping. Paulie had agreed to testify against the others in exchange for leniency, but they would all spend the best years of their lives in prison. With the new charges, Jaz’s testimony was no longer needed. She was free to become fully herself, with all the possibilities she’d had when she came with God’s fingerprints still on her.

A sadder and wiser Harry Henry was in seclusion with Hef on his house boat. Harry had been charged with illegally disposing of a body—not anything he’d go to jail for—and Maureen was charged with filing a false police report. She wouldn’t go to jail for that either. She might
have to reimburse the sheriff’s department for the cost of investigating Victor’s reported kidnapping, but that was roughly what she spent every week on her hair and nails. Federal agents were looking into whether her house or cars or boats had been used to promote interstate drug trafficking. If they had, she might lose some of them. But neither she nor Harry had killed anybody or kidnapped anybody, and Maureen had hired an expensive lawyer, so she probably wouldn’t lose much. Except for Harry. Maureen had no idea how big a loss
that
was.

We ate in the afterglow of sunset, some of us at the long table my grandfather had built and some draped over chairs or chaises. The children trooped down to the water’s edge and ate with the surf tickling their toes. Cora sat in an Adirondack chair with Ella sprawled across her lap. Guidry sat at the table beside me, so close I could feel his warmth against my hip.

Hetty and Jaz stayed long enough to eat, but left early because Hetty didn’t want Jaz stressed by talk of her rescue. Hetty was now Jaz’s official guardian, and Jaz wore the stunned look of a lottery winner not yet able to believe her good fortune. She didn’t recognize a clean-shaven, short-haired Paco in faded jeans, and I don’t think she yet realized what had actually happened in that house. But Hetty knew, and while Jaz carried a stack of plastic containers filled with left overs to the car, Hetty went to Paco and gave him a tight hug.

“Thank you for protecting my girl,” she said.

The white smile he flashed was embarrassed. “It was my pleasure. Truly.”

After Hetty and Jaz left, the limo driver who’d brought
Cora from Bayfront Village looked at me with eyes round and admiring, as if he were in the presence of a rock star.

He said, “I saw you on the news, that helicopter shot of you and that girl running from the house, all those policemen swarming from behind cars and houses with those big guns.”

Softly lit by a citronella candle, Cora said, “Dixie’s like Wonder Woman.”

One of the children ran to show her mother a cowrie shell, and people gathered around to look at it. Guidry’s arm slid around me and pulled me close. I saw Michael’s watchful eyes on us, hope and caution hanging in the balance.

With his lips moving against my ear, Guidry murmured, “Hey, Wonder Woman.”

My head turned, and the sounds of the party drifted away.

I started to say, “Hey, yourself,” but my lips got covered by his.

Have I mentioned that Guidry is a great kisser?

Oh, yes, he is.