Chapter Four
Rick shot her a narrow look. Before he could speak, Lusinda opened her mouth to head off any questions, but a woman down the bar called out for a refill. Rick turned away.
Lusinda breathed a sigh of relief and took a drink of the cold juice. The tart sweetness made her shudder and the coolness loosened some of the tension in her back and neck. She pulled out her pad and leaned against the bar as she ran through her orders for the evening.
Then she felt a hand brushing her hip and heading for her bottom. “Hey,” she warned, pushing away the hand without otherwise acknowledging the jerk. It wasn’t the sweaty Strawberry Margarita who’d been sitting there. That guy must have left while she was parrying with Rick.
The hand was back on her bottom. “How much for a quickie?” he drawled.
Lusinda arched away and twisted her expression into a bored smirk. He had to be on the far side of fifty, and not carrying it well. His face was pasty white and his glasses looked as thick as her wrist. His voice was a bit slurred, but the eyes behind the lenses were pale blue and seemed way too sharp.
Lusinda caught his wrist and moved his hand away politely. She’d learned how not to piss off the paying customers years ago, after she’d run away from home. “Oh, honey, no,” she said, shaking her head good-naturedly. “Nice try, though.”
But there was nothing good-natured about the man. His pasty face turned red and he grabbed her upper arm, squeezing it harder than she’d have expected, given the clammy softness of his flesh. “Don’t get all uppity with me, bitch,” he whispered. “I said how much?”
She felt a frisson of apprehension. He smiled as if he were ordering a drink, but there was a frenetic quality in his voice that reminded her of her stepfather, and it scared her. “No. Please let go. That hurts,” she said as quietly as she could. He tightened his grip and pain shot up her arm.
He pulled her closer to him and she got a fetid whiff of whiskey and stale garlic. She nearly gagged. “I pay extra for the bruises. Now let’s go in the back.”
The back. She could get a look behind those curtains. Her brain raced. She could find out what really went on back there. The smart money at NOPD was betting that Beauregard was up to his neck in bad dope. But her rational mind screamed, Not with this guy!
She flinched as the man’s hand squeezed her sore arm again. He was freakishly strong, but she was extremely well trained. She could break his hold in about three seconds. Her muscles were tensed and she was in a balanced stance. But she didn’t dare. If she used her police training, he or someone else—meaning Easterling or the bodyguards she’d noticed standing in the shadows near the mysterious drapes—might recognize the move and make her as a cop.
Pasty-Face’s hand tightened again. He was about to jerk her up against him.
Quick! Think! Although her primary assignment was to watch Easterling, how could she ignore the opportunity that this pervert had dropped in her lap? Behind those dark curtains lay information that might not only solve the growing number of deaths from the contaminated heroin, but could also uncover the source. Could she do it? Could she handle this disgusting piece of flesh if she went back there with him?
Just as she was trying to make up her mind, Pasty-Face jerked her arm. She leaned into the pressure, trying to keep her shoulder from being dislocated. As she struggled to stay on her feet, a large hand grabbed his pale one and, instantly, her arm was free. She caught the edge of the bar to regain her balance.
“Ah! Get your hand off me, you faggot!” the man squealed.
“The lady doesn’t want to go with you,” Easterling growled, a muscle ticcing in his jaw. Lusinda watched in fascination and growing apprehension as he tightened his grip around the man’s wrist until Pasty-Face whimpered.
Lusinda saw a movement and realized that on the other side of the man stood a large black man dressed in black who she hadn’t noticed before. He was Pasty-Face’s bodyguard.
“Sure—she does,” the man whined. “Tell him, sugar. I’m paying her big money. See?” Sweat rolled from his forehead into his eyes as he fumbled for a roll of bills in his coat pocket with his other hand. “T-take some,” he wheedled. His pallid face went totally white.
Then, too fast to track, the bodyguard’s hand snapped out and hovered just above Easterling’s.
Lusinda was transfixed as the three hands seemed to freeze in time. The fat, white one, Easterling’s large one and the dark hand of the bodyguard, even larger.
Then Easterling let go.
The bodyguard shifted, but Pasty-Face shook his head. He cradled his wrist and shot a murderous look at Lusinda, then at Easterling. Then he got up and walked out.
Before following Pasty-Face, the bodyguard leaned in toward Easterling. “You got no idea what you just did,” he snarled.
Easterling’s dark gaze followed him until he disappeared through the door.
A few of the customers had turned to look when the man squealed but they’d gone back to what they were doing almost immediately. A minor tiff between a bartender and a drunk customer was hardly worth their time or attention.
Lusinda’s pulse was racing and she was shivering with equal parts gratitude and fury. “What the hell do you think you were doing?” she hissed.
“What the hell are you so pissed about? The guy was threatening and assaulting you.”
Lusinda swallowed the fear that stuck in her throat when the man had jerked her toward him. Instead, she straightened and tugged the sleeves of her shirt down to her wrists. “You call that assault?” she muttered.
From the corner of her eye she noticed one of Beau’s inconspicuous security guards moving toward the bar. He was carrying heavy on his left side. Easterling shook his head almost imperceptibly, signaling to the guard that everything was okay but the guard kept coming. Rick met the guard halfway. The two whispered for a few seconds, then Rick nodded and went back behind the bar. He looked grim.
“Well, he was a little late to the party,” she said wryly.
“What?” Rick looked up. “Oh. He was just making sure everything’s okay. The bartenders are supposed to watch out for the servers. You’re a cocktail waitress, not a bargirl.” The inflection he put on the word bargirl sounded accusatory.
She gave him what she hoped was a flirtatious glance. “You’re not just a bartender, are you?”
His gaze snapped to hers and a muscle in his jaw tensed. She realized how her question had sounded. He was afraid she’d made him as a cop.
“I mean, I didn’t recognize you without your horse and your shining armor.”
The jaw muscle ticced. “No shining armor. Just good sense. Speaking of which, what the hell were you thinking? That guy could have really hurt you.” Then he did something that seemed totally out of character. He reached out and touched her arm where the man had grabbed her. She winced and pulled away, not because it hurt, although it did, but because the warmth of his fingers soothed the pain.
“Hurt me? That guy?” She scoffed. But Rick’s lightning-fast reaction to the man grabbing her ran in her head like an instant replay on TV. Before she’d even noticed Rick move, he had grabbed the other man’s wrist. As he squeezed Pasty-Face’s wrist, Rick’s biceps and forearms strained with lean muscle. As angry as she was with him, another part of her, deep and intimate and extremely un-cop-like, quivered with a different reaction.
Oh, don’t go there. But her rational brain was too late. Her imagination was already there. When she’d fallen on Rick on the stairs, his lean hardness had surprised her. Now she knew how fast, how strong, how protective he could be, and damn it, she wanted him. Given the chance, she’d rip that tight black T-shirt off him and wipe the scowl off his face with kisses and caresses. He’d think danger if and when she decided to turn him on.
As the thoughts skittered through her head, heat rose to her face. “He was nothing. I could handle him with one hand tied behind my back.”
To her surprise, Easterling chuckled. “You can barely handle a tray with one hand. Admit it. He scared you,” he countered.
“I’ve dealt with men like him. He was just a bully.”
“Yeah, and he pays extra for the bruises. I heard what he said. Do you know who he is?”
“No, who?” Lusinda said, a little puzzled by the strength of his fury, until she reminded herself that he didn’t know she was a cop. He didn’t know how much self-defense training she’d had. The warmth curled inside her again, just like it had when his fingers gently brushed the bruised skin of her arm. She pushed the feeling aside, reminding herself of why he was here, and why she was.
He shook his head. “You’ve got customers,” he said dismissively.
But Lusinda wasn’t done with him. She glanced toward her tables and saw a woman waving at her. She quickly took care of the order, noticing that the glut of customers at the bar was thinning.
When she had another break, she leaned on the bar and waited for Rick to finish a drink order for Nina. “Seriously,” she said when he was done and Nina was delivering the drinks to her table. “What’s the deal here? Do you get extra pay to bodyguard the waitresses? Because there’s a security guy right over there. He was all set to intervene until you shook your head. Who’s the boss? Him or you?”
“There was nothing for him to do. I took care of the guy.”
“Yeah, by assaulting him.”
“He assaulted you.”
“No. All he did was grab me. If I’d wanted to break his wrist, I’d have done it myself.”
“You couldn’t do that,” Rick scoffed.
“You don’t know me,” Lusinda said coldly. “So is Mister Beauregard that concerned about his wait staff? Because treatment like you just gave that guy has got to hurt business. I’m sure Beau would be thrilled to have fewer paying customers. Know what I mean?”
“You know Beau? How long have you worked here?”
She had to give him credit for that. He was fishing, hoping to get information that might help him find the source of the bad dope. She chuckled wryly. “Yeah, right. I don’t know anything except what was on the news and the gossip I’ve heard around here.” She ducked her head for no more than a couple of seconds, long enough to give Rick the impression she might be lying. It wouldn’t hurt if he suspected that she knew more than she was saying about Beau. It might give him an incentive to hang around with her. “Why? What do you care about Beau?”
Rick leaned over so close his nose was almost touching hers and his breath tickled her lips. “Listen to me, Sin Stone. I’m not sure what kind of game you’re playing here. But if you’re really that naïve, then do your best to stay that way. You can’t have been here more than a week. This is a dangerous place in a dangerous part of town. I’ve seen pretty little girls who mess around in places like this with people like that. They don’t end up so pretty.” His eyes smoldered like dark fire before he backed away.
Lusinda started to pick up her glass of juice, then decided her hand might be shaking a little too much. Having him so close, his gaze literally burning into hers, was a level of intimidation and intimacy that she wasn’t sure she could counter.
“Top off that juice for you?” he asked evenly, only to turn immediately at another call from down the bar. Business was picking up again after the short lull. If Lusinda was going to put her plan into action, she needed to get started now. She almost laughed at herself, calling it a plan.
He glanced back at her and his gaze swept from her head down her shoulders and arms, across her bosom and back up to meet her gaze. Her breath caught in her throat. How could someone who wasn’t interested in her, and whom she was only watching because it was her job, exude such potent sexuality and such a strong sense of safety and protectiveness toward her? And how stupid was she to get caught up in his magnetism?
“You okay?” he asked as he swirled a martini shaker.
“What? Yeah, sure,” she said, shrugging and feigning nonchalance.
Nodding, he efficiently strained the martini and headed down the bar to give it to a gray-haired woman.
Lusinda picked up the tray full of drinks and almost tipped it over before she got it balanced. She walked around, delivering them to her customers, only spilling a few drops as she balanced the tray. As she worked, she thought about Easterling, focusing on him as her assignment, not him as a man. She was here to prove whether the bag of poisoned heroin and the wad of cash with traces of the drug on it, which had been found in his pockets when he was shot five weeks ago, were planted as he’d claimed, or were a payoff from the very people he had now been assigned to expose, the people who had put the contaminated drug on the streets.
He had no idea his undercover assignment was a setup, or that Lusinda was the undercover police officer assigned to him.
A blond George Michael wannabe came in from behind the bar with a case of rum and unloaded it. He wandered over to Easterling. “Rick?” he said, sidling up to him.
“Yeah, Tom?”
“Can I ask you something?”
Rick shrugged. The guy glanced around, then muttered something in a voice too low for Lusinda to hear. She caught the words, know what to do… and if she won’t… It sounded like he was asking for relationship advice.
Rick hesitated for a second, then said something back to him. Something that turned Tom’s face a bright red. Rick straightened, leaving Tom gaping at him. Then Tom burst into laughter. Rick winked at him and headed toward a middle-aged man who held up his empty glass. He took it, saying something to the man, who smiled and nodded.
Easterling obviously deserved his reputation at the Eighth Precinct. He could adapt to any situation. He could fit in anywhere. Although he neither looked nor acted like the other bartenders or customers, somehow he was able to charm them all with little effort.
Even Lusinda, who knew he was a police officer undercover and believed him to be dirty, was affected by him. His gruff demeanor was a potent aphrodisiac and she was certain he knew it. He was good. He’d almost hooked her, and she was no fluttery teen to be swept off her feet. That made her all the more suspicious that he was probably guilty as sin. Her lip curled up at her unintended pun.
She heard Nina yelling at her and she realized that a large party had come in and were looking for a table on her side. From the looks of them, this wasn’t their first stop. Good, she thought. Maybe they’d be good tippers.
She reached into her pocket for her dupe pad and a breath-catching pain reminded her of her bruised arm. As much as she hated to admit it, Rick was right. She shouldn’t have encouraged Pasty-Face. There was something very creepy about the man, and he’d been much stronger than Lusinda had judged him to be. Without thinking, she rubbed her arm. Through the material of her shirt, she could feel the sore places where the man’s fingers had squeezed.
I pay extra for bruises. A very real terror slithered like a snake up her spine. She was going to have to be more careful. She pulled her shirtsleeves down as far as she could over her wrist bones. At least bruises didn’t leave scars.
When she brought the drink order back to the bar from the table, Rick was wiping the bar with a wet rag, his hard biceps flexing as he moved his arm in lazy circles. The number of people hovering around the bar had gone down again.
“Well, Rick. Looks like you scared off quite a few customers,” she said as she keyed in the drink orders.
“I did what I had to,” Rick replied.
“Did you? Did you really have to?”
“I told you—”
She held up a hand. “I know. The guy was dangerous. Pretty girls don’t look so pretty.” She met his gaze. “Do I look like some naïve kid who can’t take care of myself?”
“Yeah,” he said with a tilt of his head.
“Look, Rick. I’m doing my best to get a full-time job here. Right now, I’m praying for a spectacular night in tips, because I don’t have enough money to pay my rent. I’m not working here for exercise, or for my master’s thesis or to experience waitressing for a movie role. I actually need this job. I mean, did you see that guy’s wad of Benjamins?” She hoped she was using the current slang. She was using the term she’d heard Vic use. “He was loaded. You may have cost me some big money.”
“You know you’re not allowed back there. You’ll lose your job, or worse. That’s the first thing they told you, right?” He nodded toward the curtains then assessed her. “Get the idea out of your head right now. That’s a world you don’t need to be in.”
Lusinda knew that. Darla had been very clear, and O’Reilly had warned her. She couldn’t even imagine what her old partner Vic Fouchere would say. But Rick’s tone made her feel as if he thought she was too dumb to realize how much trouble she’d have gotten herself into.
“He talked big, but did you look at him? He was probably all talk.” She resisted the urge to rub her arm where Pasty-Face’s surprisingly strong fingers had squeezed. “I could have made a killing tonight.”
“Right. ’Cause he pays extra for the bruises,” Rick said flatly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of crumpled bills. “Here, if you need money, take this and forget about the back rooms. I’d rather not find you beaten up in the alley, or worse.”
He dropped the cash onto the counter in front of her.
“What are you doing?” she gasped. “Put that away!” Too late she realized that Sin Stone, desperate young cocktail waitress, barely holding body and soul together in the mean streets of the French Quarter, would have grabbed the cash and acted as though she’d just hit a royal flush. Before she could reach for it, Rick gathered it up and put it back in his pocket.
“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” he said. “Why don’t you go home to Daddy? Do you need me to buy you a bus ticket?”
She didn’t hear anything after the word Daddy. Tears burned into the back of her throat. She wanted to scream at Rick, Don’t even say that to me. Don’t dirty my daddy’s memory with your words. But she couldn’t. She had to keep in character, had to hold on to the attitude she’d adopted. She did her best to wipe his words from her brain. “Come on, Rick. My name is Sin, but it’s not short for Cinderella. So climb down off your white horse. I’m doing just fine. I might have exaggerated about the money. I can probably scrape together enough to give the landlord the rent.”
“I hope it’s not due today, because you’ll be out of luck. He doesn’t answer the door after nine o’clock.”
She knew that. In fact she was counting on it, because as pitiful as it was, this was her big plan to infiltrate Rick Easterling’s apartment. “He’ll open the door for money.”
“Yeah, no. That guy wouldn’t open the door for an abandoned baby. And that means…” He shrugged as his gaze slid down her body and back up.
Her breath caught. Had her plan worked? Was he about to offer to lend her his couch for the night? She’d started this day with only one goal: get close to Richard Easterling. That was why she’d lied about the rent. But now, faced with the actuality of success, she wasn’t sure what his intentions were. Or how she would handle him if he made a move on her. She raised her brows. “Means what?”
“You’re liable to end up sleeping under the stairs until he opens up at nine tomorrow morning. Hope you’ve got a jacket with you. Could get cool.” He set the last of her drink order on her tray.
For some reason, his words cut deep. She felt heat rising up her neck to her ears and cheeks, and a lump grew in her throat. She took another drink of orange juice, hoping its coolness would spread as quickly as her embarrassment had. The cool, tangy liquid was hard to swallow around the lump.
He was watching her, and those two little lines between his brows were deepening.
“No problem,” she said, holding her hands up, palms out. “Don’t worry about me. I can handle myself.”
“As well as you handle those trays?”
“Hey. I’m a good waitress. I’m just a little out of practice,” she said and glanced at the clock. “My shift is over. Once I deliver this drink order, I’m headed for a place where Prince Charming doesn’t work.” She finished up her orders and closed out her time in the computer, then stood with her back to the bar, counting her cash tips.
“Hey, Sin,” Rick said. He had a smile on his face, as if something about her had amused him.
“What?” she said irritably.
“Don’t forget your groceries—from the grocery store.” He held up the bag.
She grabbed it and tossed her head. “Thanks,” she snapped.
On her way through the door to the lockers, the heel of her shoe clipped the metal threshold and she almost tripped. She felt heat rising again and wondered if it were embarrassment at tripping or merely remnants of the sting from what he’d said.
“Maybe it’s those shoes,” he called after her.
As she finished unloading her apron pockets into the locker and grabbed her keys to lock it, she saw Bobby, the young stock boy, heading toward the back door to the bar. “Goodnight, Miss Stone,” he said.
“Goodnight, Bobby.” She bit her tongue to keep from saying anything to him. Darla was right. Neither Bobby nor anyone else who worked at Beauregard’s was her problem, but he reminded her of her younger brother, who might be just about his age, around sixteen or so. She passed a hand over her forehead. Not your problem.
As she stepped outside into the cool spring night air, she decided that her first day on this case was a good one, even if all she’d managed to do was plant herself so deep into Rick Easterling’s brain that he couldn’t possibly forget her. Okay, so she hadn’t figured out how to get into his apartment. She still had time to work out an addendum to her plan.
It occurred to her that Rick could be every bit as dangerous as her stepfather was. She was sure of it. Fear, intimidation, and sometimes even violence had been her stepfather’s ways of handling everything. Today she’d witnessed Rick nearly break a man’s wrist with almost no effort, stare down an impressively large bodyguard and shut up his buddy Montoya with a look.
So why, when all the evidence she’d read about him screamed bad cop, was she so fascinated by him? She should be delighted at the opportunity to expose him. Instead, she was intrigued by how quickly he came to her defense.
And if she lived to be a hundred, she’d never forget the look in his eyes when his fingers touched her bruised arm. It had appeared regretful, even sad. The man was definitely confusing, and his presence, not to mention his touch, tied her up in knots.
*
Rick was still thinking about Sin when Bobby came up to him. “Rick,” he said nervously.
It was an effort for Rick to tear his thoughts away from Sin Stone. “Yeah?”
Bobby’s gaze darted around the room, making sure no one was near enough to hear. “I’m supposed to be learning how to mix drinks.”
“That’s illegal. What are you—sixteen?”
Bobby drew himself up to his full height and tried to look tough. “I’m seventeen.”
Maybe in six months. “Still too young.”
“I think that’s to drink ’em. All I need to do is learn how to make ’em,” he said. “Earl said I should get you to teach me.”
Rick grimaced to himself. It was actually illegal for Bobby to be working here, but he didn’t want to make waves. Earl already didn’t like him. “Okay, then, but holler if you see a cop.”
“A cop?” Bobby said, his voice high and tight.
“Settle down, kid. I was kidding.”
Bobby’s face turned a bright pink.
Rick glanced at a woman who had been sitting by herself at the far end of the bar and ordering one Long Island Iced Tea after another. When he met her gaze, she nodded toward her glass.
“See the woman over there?” He nodded toward her, using the gesture to show Bobby who he was talking about and to let her know he’d seen her. “Can you tell what she’s drinking from here?”
Bobby looked, squinted, then shook his head as his shoulders sank. “No.”
“That’s something we both need to work on,” Rick said. “I wouldn’t know either if I hadn’t mixed it. Apparently when you get good enough, you can tell the drink just by the glass, the color and the garnishes.”
“Garnishes?”
“Yeah. The cherry or the olive or the celery stick.”
“Oh, right.”
Rick grabbed a double highball glass. “She’s drinking Long Island Iced Tea.” He quickly mixed the drink, explaining to Bobby about the ingredients and the proportions.
“What about the tea?”
Rick smiled. “It’s called Long Island Iced Tea because it looks like iced tea in the glass. It’s the right color, but with vodka, rum, tequila, gin and Grand Marnier in it, it’s a long way from tea. Now, she’s had three already, so this is going to be her last one.”
“I should tell her that?”
Rick shook his head. “Oh no,” he drawled. “Do not tell her anything. Keep the customer happy, right up to the second you eighty-six ’em.”
Bobby just looked at him.
“Eighty-six means cut ’em off. Don’t let them have another drink. The bartender can decide if a customer has had too many drinks. Most of the time it’s not a big problem. Occasionally, there’s a big man or a bully who takes exception. And that’s one reason the security guards are standing around. Beau likes to get rid of the troublemakers smoothly without making a scene.”
“Why’s it called eighty-six?” Bobby asked.
“There are a lot of theories about where the term came from, but it’s probably from article 86 of the New York liquor code.” At Bobby’s increasingly dismayed look, he continued. “Don’t worry about any of that. Just take her the drink with a smile.”
Bobby took the drink to the woman, spilling only about two tablespoonsful of it. To his credit, he thought about setting down a napkin first, then setting the drink on top of it.
“Good job,” Rick said when Bobby came back to stand beside him. “Tell me something, kid. What are you doing here?”
Bobby frowned and his neck turned red. “I work here.”
“Yeah, I get that. But why? Where are your folks?”
A stubborn scowl darkened Bobby’s face. He probably had to answer that question a lot. “What the hell, Rick? I thought you were cool.”
Rick chuckled. “I’m not that cool. You’re underage. You’re working here as if it’s a summer job, but it’s not, is it? I’m guessing your parents wouldn’t choose Beauregard’s for your summer work experience.”
Bobby didn’t say anything. He stared at the liquor bottles, as if he were trying to memorize their labels.
“Well? Are your folks in the picture?”
“No.”
“Where are they?”
The kid didn’t answer for a long time, but it was obvious that he was accustomed to doing what adults told him to do. After a minute or so, in which Rick didn’t move or say anything else, Bobby finally spoke. “Biloxi.”
“Biloxi, Mississippi,” Rick echoed. “That’s not that far away. You could have gotten a job in Biloxi, maybe at a casino.”
Bobby shook his head. “You can’t work in the casino until you’re twenty-one.”
“Yep, because you’re too young to drink,” he said pointedly.
Nina came up to the bar with a drink order, so Rick let the conversation drop for the moment. But he planned to get back to it. He was no expert on runaways, but he had a feeling that Bobby’s situation wasn’t desperate. Bobby didn’t have the haunted, dull look of kids who were on the streets because they had no other choice. He’d find out more, and then he’d see what he could do about getting Bobby back to his parents.