Death, Taxes, and Hot Pink Leg Warmers (23 page)

The door to the deli opened and in walked the Lobo with her boyfriend, a sweet, gentle man also in his sixties, with Lu’s same penchant for 1960s fashion. He wore plastic horn-rims with a striped shirt, poly-blend pants with a wide waistband that stopped just short of his armpits, and shiny tan bucks. Carl’s hair, while not quite as sparse as Merle’s, was insufficient to cover his scalp, but the man did his best to hide that fact, carefully laying the long strands across his head in a basket-weave pattern. Carl’s odd hair and outdated appearance were easy to overlook, however, given that he was a genuinely nice guy who made the Lobo happy, which, in turn, meant she’d eased up on her staff.

After the two had placed their orders and received their food, we called out to them and waved them over to join us. Eddie and I pulled the adjacent table over to make room for them.

Lu plopped down next to me, only a small salad and an unsweetened tea on her tray.

“That’s it?” I asked. “You’re going to starve.”

“Tell me about it.” She frowned at her food.

Carl turned to me. “I don’t know why she’s dieting. She’s beautiful just the way she is.”

Lu’s cheeks turned pink and she looked up at him through her false eyelashes.

Eddie and I exchanged glances. We weren’t used to this soft Lu. We were used to her barking orders and making demands and loading us up with too much work.

Lu sipped her tea. “I’m surprised to see you all here. I figured you’d be tied up with the trial.”

Ross picked up his pastrami sandwich. “One of the witnesses collapsed on the stand.”

“The ‘sicker’ they are,” Lu said, making air quotes with her fingers, “the guiltier they are.”

It was true. Defendants who knew they faced several years in the pen often fabricated ailments in a desperate attempt to buy themselves a few more days of freedom or to win pity points from the judge or jury. Trials had been delayed by vague and specious nervous disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers. A defendant in a recent tax-evasion trial had asked for a continuance due to a disorder called priapism. The attorneys had discussed the matter at the bench, so I was unable to find out exactly what the medical condition was until I’d Googled it on my phone in the courthouse corridor. According to the Internet, priapism caused abnormally long-lasting and painful erections. I’d suspected the defendant had merely shoved a bratwurst in his jockeys to gain a few more days of freedom, but the judge took one glance at his pants and gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Lu nudged me with her elbow. “If you’re already done at the courthouse for the day, we can head to the Y early, get an extra hour or two in.”

An extra hour or two? Was this woman trying to kill me? I chose not to object, however. Lu had a case that had yet to be assigned against the owner of a private wastewater-treatment business. None of us agents had any desire to visit the sewage facility, even with benefit of nose plugs. If I turned the Lobo down, I had no doubt I’d find the file on my desk in the morning.

I forced a smile at her. “Great.”

*   *   *

An hour later, I found myself in a kickboxing class at the Y, working side by side with Lu, identical pairs of hot pink leg warmers on our legs.

“Hi-yah!” she hollered as she delivered a side kick followed by an uppercut to the air in front of her. “Hi-yah!”

“That’s the spirit!” called the instructor, a young black man in a tight sleeveless shirt that showed off every muscle in his chest and abs. The guy had an impressively well-defined six-pack. Not that I was looking …

We launched into a series of front kicks, each followed by a slight lunge. After performing twelve repetitions on our right legs, we did the same with our left. My thighs and calves burned like they’d been bitten by a swarm of fire ants.

“Take that!” the Lobo cried when we switched to punches. “Hi-yah!”

Not only was Lu remarkably strong, but she also had incredible stamina. She made it through the entire class without once stopping to catch her breath. I’d been tempted to bow out, but if a woman twice my age bested me I knew I’d lose even more faith in my abilities. Grimacing against the pain, I powered through.

As we walked back to the ladies’ locker room, I remarked how well Lu was doing with her workouts.

“I’ve already lost six pounds,” she said. “I’m aiming to be down fifteen by Christmas.”

“You’ll have to buy a whole new wardrobe,” I noted.

She stopped in her tracks, her expression troubled. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Uncle Sam paid Lu well for serving as director of criminal investigations. Surely she could afford to spend a few bucks on some new outfits. I said as much.

“But I like the clothes I have,” she said. “You can’t find great clothes like that anymore.”

Because they were four and a half decades out of date!

“Maybe you can get them taken in,” I suggested.

Her face brightened. “Good idea.”

I checked my phone for messages when we returned to the locker room. There was a voice mail from Ross. “Carter will be back in court tomorrow. It was only angina.”

Poor guy. I bet he’d been hoping for a full-fledged heart attack, a quadruple bypass, maybe a clogged artery requiring angioplasty. At the very least a colon polyp. All he’d had was stress-induced chest pain. Sheesh.

I pulled my sweaty shirt over my head, trying hard to ignore the aches in my overworked biceps and deltoids. Standing in my sports bra, I checked myself out in the mirror. I might be physically exhausted, but I had to admit these intense, prolonged workouts with Lu were paying off. I’d always been in fairly good shape, but my muscles had much more definition now. Given that Nick and I had an all-night boinkfest planned for Thanksgiving weekend, I was glad I’d be looking my best. Maybe I’d take some tips from the dancers at Guys & Dolls and slick myself up with baby oil and glitter, perform a personal striptease for him.

*   *   *

After the workout, I was well on my way to becoming a hard body. I was also on my way to police headquarters in the Mini Cooper. Lieutenant Menger had called another quick powwow to discuss the progress in the case.

I found the rest of the team already in the conference room. With the evening shift scheduled to start soon, none of us had time to spare.

“I tested the drugs I bought from Theo,” Christina said. “They were confirmed as crystal meth.”

“Great,” I said. A confirmed buy in the club. That had to get things moving along.

“It may not be enough,” Christina said.

“What do you mean?” Nick asked.

“Theo’s in trouble, of course,” she said. “But the sale isn’t necessarily tied to Geils.”

“The sale happened in his club,” I said. “What more do you need?” I knew how to prove a tax-evasion case, but when it came to drugs and prostitution cases, I was out of my element. The only thing I knew was that I wanted out of that godforsaken place. I was sick of seeing the baser side of humanity, sick of Don Geils thumping me on the forehead, sick of working an extra job that prevented me and Nick from spending time alone together.

Christina folded her arms on the table. “Geils could easily claim he had no knowledge of the sales taking place in the club. We need something to prove Geils is the ringleader.”

“Isn’t that what the DEA stakeout is for?” Nick asked.

“The stakeout’s not going so well.” Christina ran a finger under her rhinestone choker as if to loosen it. The nervous gesture told me the case was getting to her, too. “All the agents have seen so far are men hauling boxes of liquor and vegetables into the club and out of the warehouses for the produce and liquor companies. That’s not enough to nail Geils.”

Menger bounced a frustrated fist on the table. “Dallas PD isn’t having much luck, either. I’ve sent five different men to the club with huge wads of cash. They’ve thrown money around like confetti, approached the bouncers at the doors, propositioned some of the girls. None of the cops have managed to get into the VIP room.” He offered a mirthless chuckle. “They’ve offered to keep at it as long as it takes, though.”

“Such exemplary dedication to duty.” I rolled my eyes.

“Nick and I have been propositioned by a few of the dancers,” Menger added.

“Those girls could be charged with solicitation, right?” Christina asked.

“Not exactly,” Aaron said. “They offered us sex for free.”

I cut slitted eyes to Nick. He’d failed to mention the free sex he’d been offered. I supposed I couldn’t blame him, though. Why tell me when he had no intention of taking the women up on their offer and it would only serve to make me angry?

“What evidence do we need, then?” I asked. Whatever it was, I wanted to get it quick and get the hell out of that club.

“A witness that can link both the drugs and prostitution to Geils,” Aaron said. “We need to talk to Maddie.”

Maddie. The young mother who’d passed out onstage and ended up in the hospital with an overdose, the young mother who was in rehab, whose daughter was living in a crowded foster home. The young mother who wouldn’t even open up to Bernice, a woman she’d long regarded as a friend.

“If she won’t talk to Bernice about Geils,” I said, “what makes you think she’ll talk to us?”

“She may not,” Aaron acknowledged. “But it’s worth a try. She’s the only one who can testify that Geils gave her drugs and put her up to performing sex acts for money.”

Christina shrugged. “The worst she can do is say no, right?”

I supposed they were right. Then again, maybe the worst Maddie could do was tell Geils he was the subject of an undercover investigation. I voiced my concerns.

“I doubt she’d contact him,” Christina said. “From what Bernice has told us, Maddie wants nothing more to do with Geils.”

Who could blame her? The guy had turned her life into a hot mess.

“Women tend to open up more for other women.” Aaron wagged a finger between me and Christina. “This is on you two.”

Christina held up a hand between us. I grabbed it to form a joint fist of solidarity.

“Talk to Bernice,” Aaron told me. “See if you can arrange something.”

“I’ll do my best.”

chapter twenty-seven

Buy Me a Drink, Sailor?

I drove through a Chinese takeout on my way to Guys & Dolls, scarfing down a couple of egg rolls in the car. A drop of orange sauce fell to my pants but I didn’t bother wiping it off. Cyclops could take care of that during my frisk.

Using my teeth, I tore the clear plastic wrap off my fortune cookie. I cracked the cookie open, removed the fortune, and shoved half of the dry cookie into my mouth. With my hands in the one and eleven o’clock positions rather than the recommended ten and two, I pulled the small strip of paper taut to read my fortune.

Don’t let the turkeys get you down.

Hmm. An appropriate sentiment given that Thanksgiving was approaching. But it was impossible for turkey not to get someone down. Really, who didn’t succumb to all that tryptophan and take a long nap on the couch after the holiday feast?

The egg rolls and fortune cookie were working their way through my digestive tract and I was singing along with Martina McBride’s “How I Feel” when I arrived at the club. I walked into the place to find Bernice once again on her swing, ringing her bells for her boys.
Ting-ting! Ting-ting!
As I’d come to learn, the swing routine was her daily grand finale, her final act for her fans, who liked to be first at the buffet at four-thirty and back at home before prime-time television began at seven.

I knew Bernice would bring her tips to the cash office in a half hour or so. I’d take advantage of the opportunity to speak with her about Madelyn. I’d have to be careful. Though I believed Merle to be innocent, I couldn’t risk him overhearing our plans and learning that I wasn’t actually Sara Galloway, bookkeeper extraordinaire, but rather an undercover federal agent. Of course, it was possible Bernice had already spilled the beans to Merle, told him who I was. Still, I had a feeling she’d kept things under wraps. She seemed to want Geils brought to justice as much as the rest of us, maybe even more so. For us the case was a job. For her it was personal. Besides, Merle had done nothing to indicate he was on to me.

I left my purse in my locker and walked to the executive office door.

Cyclops gave me a quick frisk. While he’d learned to be careful with his hands, he wasn’t above verbally abusing me. As he patted my jacket pockets from behind he leaned in to whisper in my ear. “I just came in my pants.”

I rammed my elbow backward once again, but he leaped aside, laughing, thwarting my attempt to land a blow to his gut. God, I hated the guy. When Geils went down, I hoped this jerk went with him.

I punched my code to get into the cash office and greeted Merle. He’d given me both a cursory apology and an expression of gratitude yesterday, both of which I’d accepted with a nod, putting the issue of his on-the-job bender to rest.

I set to work, counting tips. A steady stream of people came to the door to drop off their take. I only hoped I’d be able to get a moment alone with Bernice to talk to her about Maddie.

My hopes were answered when she came into the cash office for her usual foot rub. As I opened the door to let her in, I whispered, “I need to talk to you in private.”

She eyed Merle behind me. “I’ll get him out of here,” she whispered back.

As I counted Bernice’s tips, she and Merle went through their usual routine. The two reminisced about the good old days, Merle rubbed Bernice’s feet, and she sighed in contentment.

When Merle finished, Bernice tilted her head. “Buy a lady a drink, sailor?”

“Anything for you, doll,” Merle said. “What’s your pleasure?”

“I’ll have a piña colada.”

A good choice. It wasn’t a drink that could be made quickly. The bartender would not only have to measure out the multiple ingredients, but he’d also have to mix the drink up in a blender and add a garnish.

“Can I get one for you, too, Sara?” Merle asked. Such a gentleman, that guy.

“I’d love one, Merle. Thanks.”