Chapter Fourteen
Lusinda stayed in the shower a long time, hoping that Rick would be gone when she got out. She couldn’t believe she’d made such a rookie mistake. Okay, she was a rookie. But she was also her father’s daughter. She should have been smarter than this. Not only had she left her phone out in plain view for him to see, she had also broken the cardinal rule of—well of pretty much everything she stood for as a police officer. She’d slept with a relative stranger. She’d had a one-night stand. And worst of all, she’d gotten involved with the subject of her undercover assignment.
She stood under the hot water, alternately crying and cursing herself, until the water started to turn cold. She dried off as quickly as possible, rubbing her skin to rid herself of the chill.
How dare he look at her phone! How dare he offer her money! How dare he—what? What the hell else could she blame on him? This was her fault. She threw the towel on the floor and pulled on her clothes. When she jerked on the bathroom door, the towel stopped it from opening.
“Get out of the way!” she yelled at it, but being a towel, it didn’t move, so she kicked it away and took a deep breath, preparing to face Rick again. She stormed out into the short hall that connected the bedroom, bathroom and living room, but the apartment was empty. She checked everywhere. She even opened the front door, but he was nowhere to be seen. Realizing she’d been holding her breath, she let it go in a long sigh.
So now he knew, damn it. He knew. She was so stupid. She sat down on the couch and tried to figure out the best thing to do. But she couldn’t wipe away the look on his face as he stood there, holding her phone. Nothing he could have said could have cut straight through her like the expression on his face. How many emotions could be stuffed into one dark countenance? Anger, hatred, betrayal, hurt. Hurt? Had he been hurt? She could understand anger, even hatred. She could see how he’d think she’d betrayed him. But she couldn’t fit hurt into a neat, easily explained category. The word hurt implied that he had feelings that could be injured, bruised, or irritated. But couldn’t someone’s ego also be hurt, offended, or injured?
That was it. She hadn’t hurt his feelings. She’d bruised his ego. That made more sense, right?
The time on her phone told her she was already five minutes late for her shift. She looked around for anything she might have forgotten, because there was no way in hell she’d ever be in here again.
She had to talk to the landlord and pay him what would probably be a hefty bill for the changed lock and her rent and late fee. So first, she had to find an ATM and charge another cash advance to her credit card. She winced. She was already carrying a balance on it, because of having to pay double rent. Even if O’Reilly reimbursed her for the expense of the apartment, she wouldn’t see it for a couple of months. The wheels of government turned very slowly.
O’Reilly. She’d told him she’d call him back. Taking another deep breath, this time for courage, she dialed his number.
“Where the hell have you been?” O’Reilly asked. “You didn’t check in. I told you, even if it was just a text, I need to hear from you on a regular basis. And what was with you hanging up on me? Are you okay?”
Lusinda supposed that it was nice to have a boss who was genuinely concerned about her welfare. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, checking the time. Nine minutes late. “I’m fine. I told you I was fine. I was just—I was with Rick, so I couldn’t talk.”
“Well that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I wouldn’t have to call and interrupt you if you’d just let me know what you’re doing. I expected to hear from you yesterday.”
“I know, sir. I was busy and—I never found a good time when I could talk in private.” She was lying through her teeth. She hadn’t wanted to talk to him because she didn’t know how to explain that not only had she not gotten any information on whether Rick was working for Beau, she’d also gotten herself tangled up in some kind of weird relationship with him.
“What have you got for me?” O’Reilly asked. “No, wait. Let me get you up to speed first.”
Lusinda was standing outside Rick’s apartment with her hand still on his doorknob. She took one last look into his living room, then slowly closed the door and listened to the latch click. She tried the knob. Locked. A little hitch caught in her throat. So that was that.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “I missed what you just said.”
O’Reilly repeated himself. “I said that we’ve gotten a credible report that Anastase Beauregard and T-Gros Grossman have had at least one meeting. Grossman is an entrepreneur who is trying to move into the French Quarter—”
“I know who he is,” Lusinda interrupted.
“You’ve met him?”
What could she tell O’Reilly that would give him the information he needed without making her look worse for not calling him? Her shoulders contracted in a small shrug. Probably nothing. Anything she said at this point was going to make her look bad. “Yes, sir. I had occasion to run into him.”
“You did? Where? Was Easterling involved?”
She clenched her jaw. “He came into Beauregard’s but he didn’t stay long.”
“This same source told me that one of the bartenders broke T-Gros’s finger.”
“I—heard that,” she said. “I mean, it wasn’t his finger. It was his wrist, and it wasn’t actually broken. It was sprained.”
“And Easterling? Got anything on him?”
“Not really,” she lied. Please stop asking questions. There were things O’Reilly needed to know—but not yet. Anything she told him now would make Rick look bad. She had to talk with Rick first.
She’d walked to Beauregard’s while she was talking to O’Reilly. Now she was almost at the back door. “What was the deal with Miller?” she asked, figuring that O’Reilly was waiting for her to bring him up.
“Homicide sent him in. I wasn’t made aware of it until it was too late to let you know. Word is Easterling saved Miller’s ass at one of Beau’s famous secret poker games. That’s not Miller’s story, but he reported in with a black eye and a bruised cheek. Whatever happened, Easterling managed to keep his own cover.”
“I saw Miller in the bar but I didn’t know as much as you do. I’m not allowed back there.”
“Don’t worry. You shouldn’t be back there. I need you to find out what you can about T-Gros and if you see him in the bar again, call me immediately. We have word that the DEA may be watching him. They’re getting worried about this bad dope epidemic. Too many people have died. So keep a watch out and be careful. There’s some talk that Easterling might not be working for Beau at all. He could be working for Grossman.”
Had Carlos told O’Reilly that? “Why is everyone so positive that he’s dirty?” Lusinda asked before she could stop herself. She leaned against the wall next to the back door of Beauregard’s, hunching her shoulders and ducking her head. If anyone saw her, she planned to act as though she was on the phone with a jealous boyfriend.
“What?”
“Never mind, sir,” she said quickly. “It’s confusing and frustrating. I haven’t seen him talking to anyone or doing anything suspicious. Fact is, he’s done some nice things.”
“Did you say nice things? Like what?”
“Um, well, Miller, for instance. Saving Miller’s butt. And he gave a kid money for a bus ticket home.”
“What kid?”
The back door opened and Nina came out to smoke a cigarette. Lusinda turned slightly away and lowered her voice.
“Some kid working at Beauregard’s. Couldn’t have been more than sixteen. I’m sure you know about Beau hiring kids.”
“Yeah, we do. Lusinda, watch out. I’ve done my share of undercover work. I get that it’s not easy to nail a dirty cop. You keep wanting them to be good. To be part of the blue wall. But when you work for the BPI, you belong to a different community. You have to be the filter. You have to be impartial, and you have to be absolutely certain. There are a million reasons why a cop can go bad. I’ve seen it all. Money, love—”
“Yes, sir. I know. I’ve got to go. I’m really late for work.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. I know you understand about bad cops. Listen, you take care of yourself. If you get in a situation where your life is in danger, it’s no shame to out yourself to Easterling or any other cop to save your life. Nothing is worth getting yourself killed over. You understand me, Officer Johnston?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.” She hung up and looked up. Nina was grinding out her cigarette.
“Two minutes, Sin City,” she said. “You better be inside and taking your first order in two minutes or you’re fired. You understand me?”
Lusinda didn’t feel like being nice. “You been promoted?” she shot back.
“You’re an okay kid, but don’t push it. Understand?”
Lusinda winced. “I’m sorry, Nina. Bad day today.”
“Yeah? Well, don’t bring that bad day inside.”
“I won’t. Nina? Thanks for the warning.” She smiled.
Nina snorted and threw open the door and went inside. Lusinda hurried in behind her. She took twenty seconds to delete O’Reilly’s text messages as well as the record of their phone call, then threw her phone into her locker and grabbed her dupe pad and practically ran into the restaurant. She couldn’t lose this job.
O’Reilly had brought up her father’s murder. He hadn’t said anything explicit, but he’d made his point. The only way he could have been clearer would have been to say, Don’t fall for Easterling. Your father trusted his partner and it got him killed.
Sadness and love welled up inside her, as always, but tonight, she understood for the first time how her father must have felt. Why he hadn’t gone to his bosses as soon as he’d learned that his partner was taking protection money from local businesses. Her dad had loved his friend and partner, so he’d tried to fix him.
Now she was doing the same thing, wasn’t she? If she fell for Rick, could she ever be sure that she’d done her job? If BPI found him innocent because of her information, would it be because she was blinded by love?
Good Lord, when had she stopped thinking Rick was corrupt? She was supposed to be impartial. She had to find out the truth and fast. The sex thing stopped now!
As she was checking in at the computer, Rick walked in carrying a case of top-shelf bourbon. He had on the short-sleeved Beauregard’s T-shirt and his biceps and forearms were flexed and hard from hauling boxes. As he set the box on the counter, he noticed her and shot her a withering glance. Then he took a box opener out of his pocket and sliced open the top of the box with quick, measured strokes. His jaw was clenched.
Lusinda almost laughed out loud at herself. Apparently, she had nothing to worry about. Any relationship with the subject of her investigation was obviously no longer an issue. He knew who she was now, and he hated her.
*
A day later as Rick left his apartment to go to work, he glanced up at the third-floor landing, wondering if Sin had gotten her apartment back. She could go back to her personal apartment, but that wasn’t advisable for people working undercover.
He felt the dark haze of anger rushing up from his chest to his neck and on toward his face. The rage was building inside him. He had to stop this. All anger did was distract him from his job. He had to go into work and tend bar as if there was nothing wrong.
He hadn’t seen Sin since she’d clocked out of work at three a.m. the day before. He’d had to close up last night, so he hadn’t gotten to the hotel until almost four this morning. He’d half-expected Sin to be there again. But she wasn’t. It was stupid of him to think she’d ask him for anything now. And even more stupid to be disappointed that she wasn’t there. Which he wasn’t. He was furious—with her, with Larsen, with the BPI, and most of all with himself. He couldn’t believe she’d conned him so thoroughly. How in hell had he not known she was a cop?
Damn it. He needed to call Larsen. He should have talked to him yesterday. The only excuse he had for delaying was pathetic. He wanted to talk to Sin before he said anything to his boss. He knew how wrong that was.
But he’d been too angry to listen to her earlier. He did want to give Sin a chance to explain. He wanted to give himself a chance to calm down and think rationally about what she’d done. Maybe it was because he was worried about her. Ever since he’d found out she was a cop, the one thing that had filtered through his rage was that she needed his protection more than ever. Even if she was spying on him to see if he was involved with the Bad Dope Murders, he still felt responsible for her safety.
At least there was one problem he didn’t have, yet. It was obvious Sin hadn’t reported to the BPI that she’d had sex with the subject of her investigation.
As he clocked in and ran his mental inventory of drinks, mixers and supplies needed for his shift, he saw Nina signing in on the computer. “Hey, Nina,” he said, keeping his voice even. “Who’s working today?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Rick,” she said with a wink. “It’s just me and Connie. Sin doesn’t come in until—” She dug a sheet of paper out of her pocket and waved it toward him. “Schedule. Okay, here she is. Sin should be in at three and work until midnight. I’m working until midnight but Connie gets off at three o’clock, when your girl comes in.”
“Thanks, Nina,” he said, smiling at her. “You’ll do just fine.”
Nina giggled as she headed toward the tables, looking for drink and snack orders.
Rick smothered a curse as he began his shift by mixing Pimm’s Cups for a young couple dressed in what could only be described as prom wear. Then he continued unloading and shelving bottles, a job that didn’t require thought, which was good, because no matter what he tried to think about, his thoughts kept turning back to Sin.
What she’d done was inexcusable. She’d spied on him. She’d betrayed him. The only question he had for her was why. Not why she was investigating him. He knew the answer to that. It was her job. She was a cop and cops did their jobs. His question was why had she slept with him? Was she hoping he’d tell her his secrets?
“Richard? Hi.”
He started at the sound of the familiar voice. It was Montoya, sliding onto a barstool in front of him. He wore a sad smile as he laid down two twenties. “Join me in a toast to Johnny?”
Rick’s jaw clenched. “No thanks.”
“Come on, Richard, don’t you remember? Today’s his bir—” Carlos bit back a sob, then spread his hands, palms down, and sighed. “His birthday. I promised myself I wouldn’t do this.”
Rick wanted to yell or punch something, or both. He should never have been even halfway nice to the man. He should have closed the door in Carlos’s face when he showed up and he should have never taken Johnny’s jacket or asked him questions about his brother. Now Carlos considered the two of them connected by Johnny.
“I tell you what I will do,” Rick said, glancing around to be sure no one was in earshot. “I’ll let you give me that information you were so hot to share with me the other day.”
Montoya gave him a disgusted look and leaned forward. “Here? Not on your life. You had your chance.” Then louder he said, “Give me two shots of Courvoisier, one for you and one for me. It was Johnny’s favorite.”
Irritated, Rick acquiesced. He pulled down the bottle and poured two snifters. “There you go,” he said grudgingly. “I’m not supposed to drink on the job.”
“But it’s a special occasion,” Carlos said, picking up one of the snifters and swirling the golden liquid.
Rick looked around. It wasn’t particularly busy yet. “I’ll drink your damned toast, Carlos. But I’ve got questions and I want answers.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the ever-present bodyguards watching him. He needed to calm down or he’d be the one answering the questions.
Montoya ran his finger around the brim of the shot glass, then dipped it into the amber liquid and brought it to his mouth to taste. “It’s smooth.”
Pulling his bar cloth off his shoulder, Rick began polishing the shiny wood. He did his best to look as though he was talking about the weather. “I want to know what happened to Johnny. How he died. How in hell did he even get near any heroin, much less the bad dope?”
“And you think I know the answer to that? If I did, don’t you think I’d have told the police?”
Rick shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know you. I didn’t know Johnny. For all I know, he could have been doing H.”
“Johnny?” Carlos laughed, a deep, genuine laugh. “No. You didn’t know your brother. And that was your loss.”
Rick’s heart ached. “I screwed up,” he said. “I know now that he had to leave, for himself and for me. I get that he thought my life would be better if he were gone. And now I’ve got the rest of my life to regret not knowing him.”
“You work with Detective Devereux Gautier, right?”
“Dev? Sure. He’s in the Eighth, just like me.”
“So you know he has a shelter for kids.”
“Yes. I’ve done a little off-duty investigating for him at times. Once when a killer was targeting his Thibaud Johnson scholarship recipients. What about him?”
“Johnny worked with him. They had plans to build a second shelter, near the Warehouse District. Johnny was going to run it. I didn’t want him to be involved.”
Rick stepped away to fill an order for one of the waitresses, then fixed a drink for a guy who sat down at the bar. He half-hoped that Montoya would leave, but the other half of him was relieved that he’d stayed. Rick hadn’t intended this to be a conversation about his half-brother, but he was willing to listen if Montoya wanted to talk.
“Why didn’t you want him to run the shelter?” Rick asked curiously when he came back to stand in front of Montoya’s barstool.
“Why not indeed,” he said. He looked up at Rick with a small shake of his head. “It’s the same as with a lot of lovers. I guess I didn’t want anything to change. I knew how he was. He’d get all caught up in helping the kids. Not that he didn’t have enough love to go around. He did, but I was selfish. We argued a lot. It was my fault. In fact, on the night Johnny died, we’d had a big fight. He finally told me that with or without me, he was going to open the new shelter with Gautier. He stormed out of the house.”
“How did you find out?”
Carlos nodded slightly. He understood Rick’s unspoken question. “No. The department didn’t know that Johnny and I were together back then. As a CI, I was briefed on his death,” he said, “just as I was on the other deaths from contaminated heroin. In fact, that’s when the media named the deaths the Bad Dope Murders—when the ME ruled that Johnny’s death was a homicide.”
“So how did you hear that he’d been killed?”
Carlos swirled the snifter, then watched the liquid slide down the glass. “I—followed him.”
Rick stared. “You followed him? You know where he went? Who he talked to? Did you see anything?”
A couple sat down at the bar near them. Rick acknowledged them with a nod.
“Listen, Richard. I can’t talk any more here. There are eyes and ears on me everywhere I go. Can we talk tonight? At your place? I’ll bring a bottle of Johnny’s favorite—” he nodded toward the snifters “—and continue this conversation. There are things we both want to know. You need to know about his death. I’m dying to know more about his childhood and his life before we met. Would you—would you be willing to do that?”
Rick looked away, rubbing his face. He saw Earl walk by and glance curiously in their direction. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. That’ll be fine. You might be right about talking here. You know my apartment. It’ll have to be after I get off at midnight.”
“I don’t usually walk around that late. There are gangs that like nothing better than to beat up somebody like me, you know.”
“Fine. Here’s my key. Go on in. Make yourself comfortable. And, Carlos, if you see Sin Stone, don’t let her in, okay?”
“If that’s the way you want it,” Carlos said, pocketing the key and lifting his shot glass. “Salud, Richard,” he said, then threw back the shot. “Whew. Go ahead.” He nodded at the other glass.
Rick shook his head. “There are eyes and ears on me too. Take it yourself.”
Carlos threw back the second shot and stretched his lips wide across his teeth. “Smooth,” he croaked.
“One more question, Carlos.”
“I told you, I can’t talk any more here.”
“Why was he killed?” Rick watched Carlos, waiting to see if he would answer.
“He tried to stop Beau.”
“Stop Beau?” Rick whispered. “From what?”
“I’ll see you tonight.”