Triple Crossing (18 page)

Her face tightened. “So the ideal thing would be if he was a real cop, and honest. Which means he’d have to be dead, right?”

“That’d be perfect.”

“Well you might not have to wait too long. Every time I say goodbye to him, I think it might be the last time.”

“Oh man. Cry me a river. I’m the one you better say good-bye to, I’m the one who got shot at. Thanks to you.”

“Thanks to me?” She grabbed his arm when he tried to turn away. “Thanks to me? Nobody watches out for you except me.”

She was in his face, disorienting him. His mind was whirling, soaring. He imagined hitting her. He imagined kissing her. He
snarled: “You’re about to get me killed, you’re all worried about Méndez. What is he, your boyfriend?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.” Small steel fingers dug painfully into his forearm. “Watch your mouth.”

“Talks that shit to me. Then he turns around all smooth with you. Fuckin’ snake.”

“You sound like you’re fifteen years old.” She was up on her knees now, taut and quivering and furious. “Are you jealous of
him?”

“Damn right I’m jealous.”

A pause. A hint of a grin.

“Oh,” she whispered. “Well, we got that cleared up.”

Taking advantage of her grip on his arm, he pulled her toward him. She let herself be pulled. He wrapped his other arm around
her lower back and nuzzled into her hair, her throat, her face. After a moment, her arms encircled his neck. She pressed herself
against him, her breasts full and round against him. His mouth found hers. They slid together down onto the couch.

He didn’t know if it was weeks of imagining it or the real thing, but she tasted like cinnamon. Her breath was warm in his
ear. Her whisper was close to a sob.

“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. Nonetheless,
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?”