T. Parker - Cold Pursuit

A different kind of storm.

"McMichael and Paz, Ms. Rainwater. May we come in?"

It was ten-fifteen and the sky was almost black now. A river of water poured from the eaves of the cottage, forcing McMichael and Paz to pick a side or get drenched.

They had moved up close to the barely opened door.

"Go away."

"We'll just be back in an hour with a search warrant."

"Based on what?"

"Missing paintings."

She pulled the door open and stepped back. She was wearing loose quilted Chinese pajamas, black with birds-of-paradise on it. And black Chinese slippers with plastic soles. Her face was pale and puffy and McMichael's eye went straight to the tattoo low and right on her neck. A copy of the one on the other side. He saw that it was neither a flame nor a tulip, but a bird taking flight. The center of its breast almost hid the bullet scar.

She caught him looking, walked away with a shake of her head, and returned a minute later with a faded denim jacket buttoned up high.

McMichael looked at a director's chair that said "Sally R." on it but he didn't sit. Instead he set his tape recorder on the canvas seat and clicked it on.

"Okay?" he asked.

"I don't care," she said.

Hector took one end of the couch. "Got any coffee?"

She stood between them, looking first at Hector then McMichael. Her face looked softer than the night before.

"I'll make another pot."

She walked past Paz and into the kitchen. Hector watched her, then looked at McMichael deadpan.

But McMichael's attention was already on the painting, a schooner tacking into a hard starboard wind. Browns and blacks and chill grays- a seascape in earth tones. The skipper was tiny against the ocean, and far too confident for McMichael. Like he could sail through this or any huge sea, no problem. This attitude reminded McMichael of his father's stories from his days with the tuna fleet, of the arrogance that always seemed to pave the way for tragedy. The schooner captain had it. According to McMichael's father, Gabriel, Pete Braga had it, too. Which was why he'd allegedly cheated Gabriel's father- young Franklin McMichael- out of the first quarter share he ever earned as a purse-seining thirty-three-year-old fisherman aboard Braga 's Cabrillo Star .

"Cool picture," said Hector, glancing up and behind. "How many missing from Braga 's?"

"Five, according to Patricia and the spaces on the walls."

A brain thorn started to form as McMichael's gaze wandered the kitchen, as the tall pretty woman made the coffee, as the rain slowed on the roof. A blue-and-gold vase sat on the kitchenette table to Sally Rainwater's right. It was half hidden by a thick phone book and filled with bright orange paper poppies.

"There's another painting in the study," she said without turning. "To your right off the hall. The hallway bulb burned out so don't bother turning it on. I've got three more in my room, which you are not invited to enter. I'll bring them out if you'd like."

"Thank you," said McMichael. "Be right back, Heck."

The study had an old couch stacked with books, a cheap folding party table with a computer on it, two walls of brick-and-board bookshelves, and one nice glass-fronted lawyer's bookcase by the window. The window faced south, toward the Tijuana Slough and the river mouth and the border. McMichael had surfed the TJ Slough as a youngster because tough guys surfed the slough. It was shark infested and polluted by the Tijuana River and filled with fickle currents that might nudge you with the body of a desperate young man who had dreamed of a job in the Estados Unidos. When you surfed it you were right there on the watery border between a powerful nation and a hungry one. You could sit there on your board, look one way and see neat little Imperial Beach apartments, or look the other and see the decrepit Tijuana shacks and shanties clinging to the hills. After a rain like this, there would be fewer of them. He saw nothing through the window now but a square of gray shot with silver rain.

The painting hung low on the computer table wall, so you could easily look up and see it. It was a small canvas, no more than twelve by twelve inches. A forlorn boat struggled in a violent orange sea while an ice-white moon- or maybe sun- shone down with brilliant disregard. The boat was twisted and stripped down to almost nothing. No sail. No mast. No men. Even with the bright white sun or moon in it, this was the darkest and saddest- and also the most powerful- painting that McMichael had ever seen. It wasn't even signed. Talk about arrogance. It looked like one of Pete's.

He wondered if Rainwater would let him photograph the paintings so he could show them to Patricia. If she'd stolen them, she sure wouldn't, but if she'd stolen them why hang them on her walls and invite the cops in for a look?

And why hang the autographed baseball mitts on the wall opposite, for all the world to see? He touched the leather below Ruth's faded signature.

Sally Rainwater was starting to intrigue him.

He stepped back and scanned the titles on the simple bookshelves: mostly textbooks in the natural sciences- biology, chemistry, anatomy. Several on geography. And a few novels.

The lawyer's bookcase contained only four volumes all on the middle shelf, all held in place by heavy-looking copper bookends shaped like a whale's flukes.

He read the titles: Heart of Darkness , Typhoon , The Secret Sharer and The Complete Works , all by Joseph Conrad. All in clear plastic slipcases. And all, if signed by their author, likely boosted from Pete Braga. The windowed doors of the case were locked.

Rainwater was handing Hector a cup of coffee when he walked back in.

"Where did you get the paintings?" McMichael asked.

"Pete gave them to me."

"And the vase on the kitchen table?"

"He gave me that, too. It's Chinese, from the eighteenth century."

Hector deadpanned McMichael again, the coffee cup frozen halfway to his mouth.

"What else did he give you, Ms. Rainwater?"

"Some autographed books and baseball gloves. A mounted calico bass. A necklace of big perfect pearls he bought in Japan for his wife a long time ago. And a pair of pearl-and-sapphire earrings that were hers, too."

She looked down at Hector, then back to McMichael. "That's all."

"What about the Beetle?" asked Hector.

"He gave me the down payment- ten thousand."

"Gave or loaned?"

"Gave."

"Why?" asked McMichael.

Rainwater walked into the kitchen and came back with cups of coffee for McMichael and herself.

"We were good friends."

Her steady dark eyes went from McMichael to Hector and back again, and it struck McMichael that he was no longer running this show.

"You'd only known him seven months," said Hector. "And he gives you diamonds and pearls and half a car and a bunch of pictures and a baseball mitt signed by Babe Ruth?"

"Yes," she said.

"Explain why again," said McMichael.

"He wanted to give me some of his things."

"You having sex with him?" asked Hector.

"That's none of your business."

"They'll ask you in court."

"It's still none of your business."

Hector smiled and McMichael saw the gleam in his partner's eyes.

"I'd arrest her," said Hector. "Possession of stolen property. Murder in the act of committing a robbery, which can get you executed. Throw in prostitution and elder abuse so she'll have to plead down from a mountaintop."

Her dark eyes dismissed Hector and looked to McMichael. "I have proof," she said. "Wait here."

She went past him, down the short dark hallway and into her bedroom. The door shut. McMichael popped the snap on his shoulder holster. Hector slipped his nine from the leather and stretched his gun hand out along the couch back, dipping the weapon behind a cushion.