T. Parker - Cold Pursuit

"No," said McMichael. "He says he didn't and I believe him."

"Yeah. Everything's true. Another glass of port?"

"Enough for me."

McMichael paid, then headed up Harbor toward the Santa Fe station and easy taxis. The wind came off the water with a smell that he had always loved. He ducked into one of the harbor cafes and called Sally Rainwater.

"I just wanted to say hello."

"Come over."

She let him inside, took his face in both hands and kissed him. He could smell perfume and see the top of her ear and the darker roots of her hair and the black shoulder of a satin robe, blurred, and beyond them the dinette and the Chinese vase and an open textbook. Her bedroom was cool. She turned off the little Tiffany lamp and in the near dark he watched her arms spread and her robe fall and her body curl then lengthen into the bed. He undressed without a wasted motion, wondering what she would think of him in the light, and how he'd do. Didn't feel his knuckles and elbows. He thought of Johnny and Stephanie, hoped they'd understand. The sheets smelled of laundry soap. Her arms were strong around his neck as she levered him up top, her feet startlingly cold against his. He kissed her mouth and her neck and the bullet hole. She shivered. He entered her and pushed himself up to see her face. All he could really make out was the glimmer in her dark eyes, and the plane of her jawline where it caught the faint light from the living room. She set up a rhythm and he followed, concentrating first on Sally Rainwater's mysterious wet universe, then on the Puretic Power Block, then the Super Bowl coming up, then he squeezed the end of his tongue between his teeth. Sally got a foil square into his palm. A while later, drenched in the unpleasant but affirming smell of latex, he quaked home a chaos of hope and thanks and pure animal pleasure. He barked once. Sally was shaking when he was done so he held still but firmly in place, propping up on his elbows so she could breathe and shake all she wanted. After that, wrapped close together, he listened as her breathing slowed. Nearly the same rate as his own. He thought that he could do this, be right here, a million times, and it would always be a journey into a world that wasn't there until they made it.

Half an hour later McMichael's phone rang. We're up next, he thought. He unclipped the cell from his pants, covered himself with them and sat down naked on the bed. How many times had he done pretty much exactly this?

It was the lieutenant, to say that Team Two had just taken a Clairemont strip-club shooting, so McMichael's people were next on the rotation.

"Someone shot the bouncer dead in the parking lot," the lieutenant said.

"Didn't the same thing happen two years ago?"

"Same club, different bouncer. Just a heads-up, Tom. I'll make the calls- probably catch Hector in bed with his latest meaningful relationship."

"Yeah," said McMichael. "Thank you, sir."

He hung up and told Sally.

"Same as being a doctor," she said. "At least you never have a chance to get bored."

"True, though some things are hard to interrupt."

"We already got away with one."

"Press our luck?"

She rolled over and sat up and ran her tongue down his spine. Reached both arms around him and brushed away his pants.

McMichael listened to the waves breaking and the wind rattling through the louvered windows of Sally's little house. He ran a finger through the hair above her temple.

"Who did it?" she asked.

"I don't know yet."

"Do you know why?"

"I think it had to do with money, but not the kind of money you find in someone's wallet or safe."

"Did they poison Zeke?"

"I don't know that, either."

McMichael told her about Pete's disagreement with the Tuna Foundation board over their five acres of waterfront. And about the struggle between the Port Commission and the Airport Authority, and the tremendous amounts of money and influence that Pete Braga had been dealing with for four decades.

"According to Pete, he only had one friend left on that Port Commission," she said. "The young one, the real estate developer- Malcolm Case. He came to the house maybe four times. Good-looking, great clothes. He flirted with me when his wife was out of earshot, propositioned me once when a bunch of us went for a sail around the bay. The last time I saw him was New Year's Eve, at the party."

McMichael's brain skipped like a flat rock on water, from the trophy room to the sconce to the security video. "Have you met the casino manager?"

"That's Alex Dejano, a Rio Verde Indian. He beat a man to death in a bar and has no sense of humor. Now he's a Christian. I remember him at the party- late, after midnight- giving Zeke shrimp and mushrooms off his plate."

McMichael made mental notes to watch the surveillance video again, and to talk to both Case and Dejano. Maybe Case, an alleged friend, could name Pete's alleged enemies.

"I have to ask you, Sally."

"What your partner asked me that night?"

"I want to know."

"It wasn't your business then, but I guess it is now. No. We didn't sleep together."

"How was Pete with that?"

"Unhappy at first, then okay with it. The subject came up just once. He had a girlfriend anyway- a professional girlfriend."

"She'd come to his place?"

"Yes. They'd go upstairs for a few hours, then she'd leave and he'd sleep."

"Describe her."

"She used the name Angel. Probably twenty-one or -two, Latina. Attractive in a whore's way- heavy makeup, naughty smile, hard eyes. I could throw her farther than I would trust her. I think she was smacked up most of the time. Pretty sad, it comes to that for a twenty-one-year-old."

"Victor ever come by his father's house when Angel was there?"

"Months ago. He thought Angel actually was an angel."

Victor gets a crush on Dad's girl, thought McMichael. Motive to moon after her? Motive to murder Dad?

"When was the last time you saw Angel?"

Sally was quiet for a while. "The Friday before New Year's Day. Red leather miniskirt and a faux fur coat. Let me get my calendar."

She slipped from under the covers and wrapped the Chinese robe around herself. He watched her vanish down the short hallway, then come back a minute later with a brown leather planner in one hand. Her hair was a mess and her lipstick and makeup had rubbed off and McMichael thought she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen and he couldn't believe the good fortune that had come of bad fortune, the luck that had brought him here.

"December twenty-seven," she said.

He looked down at Sally Rainwater's calendar and her small, neat printing. Then he told her about Victor Braga and the three solicitations and Jimmy Thigpen's story about trying to help him out.

"Jimmy Thigpen had been there with her before," said Sally. "He said his name was Rex, but I recognized him from the papers when he got busted."

Pete and Jimmy socializing, thought McMichael, if that's what you'd call lining up a girl. "What if Angel wasn't available?"

"A girl who called herself Penny came a couple of times. Wore a copper-colored wig- Penny, get it?"

McMichael remembered Penny from Metro/Vice the same way he remembered Angel- young and hard and somehow cheated, and working themselves into early graves.

"How many times did you see Jimmy at Pete's?" he asked.

"Three or four. The last time was the night before he got busted- back in early December. Pete and the cop had a loud argument in the trophy room. Lots of yelling. I'm sorry- I couldn't make out anything they said. It was a closed-door session. I was trying to read a molecular biology text."

Moonlighting for Pete, thought McMichael. New cars, cheap leather, runs across the border and back.