Блейз Клемент - Raining Cat Sitters And Dogs

In a low voice, he said, “My sister is coming out with the girl. Hold your fire.”

I was so addled at the Colombian drug lord being Paco in disguise that for a second I thought he had cracked up and was talking to himself. Then I realized that in addition to a bulletproof vest under his silk shirt that added bulk to his chest, he was wired. He was speaking to somebody outside the house.

To me, he said, “ Go! ”

I gripped Jaz’s hand and ran toward the kitchen. With a shrill yelp of fear, she let me pull her through the kitchen to the back door. We burst through the door into the garage and I blindly pawed the wall to hit the button that opened the garage door. When the door began to rise, I pulled Jaz toward it and we ducked under and ran across the boggy yard. At my Bronco, I stuffed her in, pulled myself inside, and gripped the steering wheel with both hands to keep from flying apart.

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.

31

The 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.