Joan Hess - Maggody In Manhattan

"Cambria and Rick weren't aware that Jerome brought down three suitcases from his room, two with personal effects and one with an impressive quantity of cash. I felt it expedient to relocate the third one before they arrived on the scene to move the body and remaining suitcases to the alley. We did not feel Cambria would donate the money to a worthwhile charity. Besides, we're always mindful of overhead."

"So let me get this straight. Sonny's playing the psycho, and you seem to have decided on the role of white knight. You shot Jerome to save Catherine, and Lisbon to save Brenda. I sure hope you don't decide Ruby Bee's about to drive me crazy."

"I never shoot women," he said with a small frown. "None of us do. We do occasionally find ourselves frustrated in our inability to indict people who've murdered our agents."

"What am I supposed to do with this, Durmond? Try to convince Henbit that you and Sonny are responsible for the two homicides? That you're framing Cambria and Rick? That a government agency pays its utility bills with drug money?"

"I don't know what to tell you, Arly. You've got an old-fashioned sense of morality, which is not a criticism, but we're engaged in an outright war. It would be lovely if everyone played by the rules and the system worked. However, the courts are more determined to protect the rights of drug barons than those of the kids in the schoolyards. Most of us have been forced to succumb to the philosophy that the end justifies the means."

"And all's fair in love and war?" I murmured.

"I didn't want you to get involved and I sure as hell didn't want to get involved with you. If you forget this conversation, twenty four hours from now you can be home in that little town of yours. I'll stay around here to tidy up the loose ends, and then I have no idea where I'll be sent on my next assignment-which could well be my last. " He lifted his hand as if to touch me, then thought better of it and shrugged. "Sometimes I need to reassure myself that I'm not still in the boat in the middle of the lake, surrounded by nothing but flat brown water."

I returned to the window. Lights were on in the apartments across the street, very few with curtains or shades drawn. In one apartment, children sat staring at a television set; in another, a woman slumped on the sofa with a beer in her hand. On the floor above, an elderly man and woman were engaged in a hostile exchange. It was, I thought sadly, the ultimate gesture of defiance required for survival in a city: No matter what we do and where we choose to do it, you can't see me and I can't see you.

I looked at Durmond with the blind stare of an urbanite. "But you took the gun from Rick's room the first night you were in the hotel, didn't you? The scene in the kitchen wasn't all that spontaneous, not if you'd gone to the trouble to steal the gun to frame Rick. You had to shoot someone."

"So many crooks, so little time."

"I feel ridiculous," Mrs. Jim Bob said from the farthest corner of the cave.

Brother Verber thought she looked mighty fine, but he knew she didn't want to hear it and would fail to appreciate how he was merely admiring God's handiwork, dressed as it was in a scarlet nightie and cute lil' panties. The outline of the peekaboo bra was visible under the flimsy fabric, and one black strap had strayed along her shoulder.

He made all these observations from a crate on which he was perched. He'd selected an apricot nightgown, but the panties had torn when he tried to wiggle into them, so he was feeling a chill in his privates. "Don't be embarrassed, Sister Barbara," he said sonorously. "The Good Lord doesn't mind us doing this so we won't freeze to death. This rain'll have to let up before too long, and we'll just change back into our regular clothes and look for the car."

"Keep your head turned, Brother Verber. I don't care how many times you keep trying to act like we're dressed for prayer meeting, we aren't. I cannot believe what's happened, and all because of you."

"Of me?"

She wasn't about to explain, so she sniffed irritably and tugged at the lacy hem that kept easing over her knees.

"I hope I haven't done anything to cause you all this grief and uncomfortableness, Sister Barbara. You know how much I respect you from that halo I can see all the way down to your trim ankles."

"Don't talk about my ankles!"

"It was just a figure of speech. Being a preacher, I get in the habit of using them to emphasize my message. At least take heart in knowing that no one will ever know about this. No one in the entire world. If we have to say anything, we'll just explain we got caught in the rain and waited in a cave. We don't have to say one word about changing into dry clothes. Let us offer praise to the Almighty for allowing us to keep this secret-"

"I won't be more'n a minute, Marjorie," said a voice from the darkness outside the cave. "Change the radio station if ye be a mind to."

"Who's that?" Mrs. Jim Bob hissed, clutching the collar of her scarlet nightie.

Brother Verber's privates turned icy. "I reckon we're hearing things on account of being cold and hungry. Why, there's no way anybody would be wandering around this godforsaken place in weather like this."

He was going to add more, or at least repeat his words with increased assurance, when a flashlight beam hit him square in the face. The beam moved down slowly, illuminating the lace of the nightgown and his quivery knees, then darted across the cave to linger on Mrs. Jim Bob's stricken expression.

"Well, what does we got here?" The figure silhouetted in the mouth of the cave cackled and spat. "Marjorie, git over here and have yerself a look at the preacher man and his floozy. You ain't gonna believe your eyes!"

Marjorie was most amazed.

"Fishing?" Larry Joe Lambertino said, studying the note with a bewildered frown. "Joyce hates fishing. This doesn't make a lick of sense. Are you sure she didn't say anything before she left?"

Saralee had her head in the refrigerator, rooting for food, so her voice was a little muffled. "Not a word, Uncle Larry Joe. All she did was make us go out to the treehouse in the backyard and have a tea party. Now my stomach aches awful, Uncle Larry Joe. I think I'm gonna throw up."

She was right.

"You know," Simmons (senior) said, balancing his drink on his belly while he paddled the raft toward the edge of the pool, "this place has class. Costs a goddamn fortune, but at least you get your value for your money."

Fleecum sat in a deck chair, a cap on his head and a damp towel draped around his neck. The lights around the pool glittered gently, as did the moonlight on the beach and the stars reflected in the water. "Value's a big seller these days. We stress value in all the major projects, even when the product's like that crap you make. Consumers like to be told they're getting good value, just like you said a minute ago." He gestured at a waiter. "Want to see about an early tee time tomorrow?"

"Whatever," Simmons said, handing his empty glass to the waiter and paddling back out to the middle of the water, where he could admire the moon hiding behind the palm fronds.

"I knew you were stupid the minute I laid eyes on you," Dahlia said from under the stool where she'd been tied so tightly her fingers were numb.

Her remark was aimed at Clark Rhodes, who was tied to the next stool and dressed only in his underwear. His sock had slipped down around his ankle like snakeskin, but he'd tried once to catch it with his teeth and bitten himself. "He had a gun, and I didn't have a whole heck of a lot of options. How was I supposed to know he was going to pull this kind of stunt? I'm a statistician. I do numbers in a nice, clean office in Quantico, and then I drive home to my suburban home and have a martini on the deck and read the newspaper with my wife. Did I mention that she's pregnant?"