Jump The Line (Toein' The Line Book 1) Page 9

  “Watch out!”

  I gun it the second grandma darts halfway out of the spot, goldfish swimming from a piranha. When I do, DeeDee rams her feet into the floorboard. “She’s going to report you,”she says.

  I wait for her“You deserve it,”which doesn’t come. “We gotta park somewhere, Detective Laws.”

  Parking’s one reason I hate coming to Verbote Dental. There’s another. NPD’s used Bite Doc on previous cases. He’s a caustic bastard. But today, I’ve sworn to ignore the heartburn he gives me. I’ll catch Megalo Don much sooner with his help than without it. Man’s sheer genius.

  “You don’t want to piss off Captain Meyers by running down old ladies,”DeeDee says. I can almost hear her teeth grinding.

  “Do I look like someone who gives a rat’s ass?”

  Her penciled eyebrows arch: two blonde swans taking flight above boiling blue pools of dismay.

  “Move, dammit!”

  As if grandma’s heard me, the Volvo’s driver shoots into the street, but then she stomps her brakes and lays on her horn, nearly hitting a crazy pedestrian who runs in front of her.

  “Who’s that idiot?”I ask, watching him zigzag and then bolt in front of me. “Fool!”I yell, braking, but not in time to avoid bumping him.

  “Aw, fuck!” As I’m unbuckling my seatbelt to get out and see if he’s dead, he stops, turns, and then runs full bore toward me and DeeDee. “What is that stupid jerk doing?”

  “Better sit this one out,”DeeDee warns. “I think he’s pissed.”

  I’m fighting to unbuckle my seatbelt and get out of the car. Instead of seeing if he’s okay, maybe I’ll trounce his ass. I ignore DeeDee and watch the little bastard staring in at me through my car’s windshield. “Hey, hey, hey, hey-y-y,”I yell, when the weird-looking little fuck starts pounding the Buick’s hood.

  “Watch it!”he screams, his orange and red scarf waving. “Or you’ll be sorry!”

  I almost laugh, but I’m too busy lunging from the car to choke him. Unfortunately, DeeDee’s right. I’ve instigated the situation. Thinking the situation over, I sit back and watch him pound. “Little bastard runs out in front of that woman and then has the nerve to run over here and threaten me,”I grumble, ignoring the fact I bumped into his ass.

  “Mm-hmm,”DeeDee says, still looking like she’s seen a ghost. “Jaywalking’s the worst you’ll bust him for.”

  “Not even that,”I say. “He’s disappeared.”

  I gun the accelerator and shoot into the parking spot grandma’s finally vacated, and then turn to DeeDee. “Now what?”

  She’s chewing and making little orgasmic sounds. Eyes closed, she’s relaxing like there’s no serial killer running around devouring members of her precious sex. She had to stop on the way over at Krispie Crème to buy a bear claw. I would’ve given her LaFiglia’s bag of sugary treats, but like DeeDee I dumped mine in the trash on the way out of Arnee’s, making sure the cameras picked me up disposing LaFiglia’s bribe.

  “What the hell are you doing? We’ve got to interview Verbote.”

  “Finishing my goodies,”she says. “Go ahead. I’ll be a minute.”

  “You can chew and get out of the car at the same time, can’t you?” The bear claw she’s inhaling explains why she left the grapes uneaten at Arnee’s, but how does a woman like her eat like this and still have a figure like that?

  Aidan, get laid, will you? I recall my last rendezvous: disaster. She kept calling and then cried when I finally explained,“Yes, I had a good time. No, I’m not ready for anything permanent.”

  How can anyone fall in love after a couple of hookups? The idea floors me. I glance toward Verbote Dental. Good question. How can I be attracted to someone I’ve barely met?

  To take my mind off Alaina Colby, I thumb my mental booty-call rolodex for tonight’s lucky girl, then get out of the car and walk around to DeeDee’s side of the Buick. “Hurry up.”

  She opens the door and gazes up at me, still chewing.

  I glance at Verbote’s, worrying. I’ve driven an unmarked. Don’t want to alert Alaina I’m here, if she’s already arrived for work. I’ve come to question her, and unlike last night, when she escaped my grasp, this time by God I will.

  Then because DeeDee refuses to budge until she finishes the damn bear claw, I brief her ass right here on Echo Street.

  * * *

  “After she bolted last night, I took info from Alaina’s dancer registration card at Omar’s. I ran your BCI background check against several other databases this morning, and I cross-checked her records with her brother’s and mother’s. Looks like the Colbys are a one-family crime spree in Goshen.”

  “Do you mean that little burg a few miles northeast of‘Nati?”DeeDee asks, licking her fingers in a way I wish she wouldn’t.

  “Yep. Mom Colby’s on probation for dealing,”I add. “She also did a stretch in Marysville for check fraud years back. The son’s on parole. Drugs,”I add. “Meth.”

  “Impressive family,”DeeDee says,“especially the mother.”

  “Yep,”I agree, and then share another fact with DeeDee. “Berta Colby was investigated—but never charged—with blowing off hubby’s head.”

  “Weapon of choice?”

  “Shotgun. Side-by-side. She unloaded both barrels. Claimed self defense,”I say, happy DeeDee isn’t put off by the gruesome details. Shotgun blasts leave the vics completely disfigured, eyes blown out, cheeks missing, facial bones caved into their skulls. Maybe she’ll work out after all. Wait and see, I think. Wait and see.

  “Alaina Colby’s clean, though?”

  “Yes,”I say. “Clean and pristine.”

  “Hmmm, how’d she do that growing up with Ma Barker and the meth-head brother?”

  “Dunno,”I answer, hiding the fact I could sully Alaina’s pristine clean record. Last night, it’d been too dark in that alley to see much, but I got a glimpse of her buddy stuffing her head-first into the Coca-Cola truck. Wes and I could’ve chased them down the alley, but we got the call about the body and turned back to Omar’s. I have a serial killer on the loose and a boss harboring a royal stiffie for my badge. If Alaina gets tossed into lockup for grand-theft auto and lawyers up, I’ll never get the info I need from her. I’ve been through hell trying to catch her, so I’m not doing NPD Property Crimes any favors by reporting the stolen Coke truck.

  This info, I also keep from DeeDee, something I’d never do with Wes.

  “Let’s go,”I say, watching her cock a lipstick tube midair.

  “Coming.”

  I stare, pissed but unable to look away. Our gazes catch.

  Why fight this?

  With the sun playing on her bubble-gum pink lips and arousing that familiar ache in my groin, I watch DeeDee rub her lips together in a back-and-forth sideways motion, smoothing on the lipstick. I imagine that motion on parts of my body—

  Stop, Aidan. She and her mother would make the juggernaut from Hell. Don’t go there.

  “Let’s get moving,”I grumble, ignoring the danger signals and watching rookie investigator Laws come out of the car long legs first. Joining me on the sidewalk, she dons Ray-Bans against the April sun, protecting her milky skin, creamy as a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

  “You go in through the reception area,”I say, forcing myself to sound official. “Give me five minutes with Bite Doc, then walk Miss Colby back. After I’m finished with him, we’ll question her.”

  I motion DeeDee to enter Verbote’s through the reception area to block Alaina from bolting yet again. It’ll also be good for her to have a female officer escort her to the back. The news I have to deliver is bad, terrible. Maybe she’ll find another female’s presence comforting.

  “What?” I catch DeeDee’s gaze. I’ve just assigned her grunt work, yet she’s smiling. “What’re you so damn happy about?”

  “I’ll bring her back to you shortly,”she says, beaming,“just as you say—boss.”

  I discard my vow to treat her like a man and urge her
ahead with a hand to the small of her back, the muscles ripped as a female panther’s beneath my hand. As we near the crumbling steps leading up to Verbote Dental, I watch her climb.

  Shapely butt. Not bad.

  But I like the lithe hips and muscular thighs of runners and dancers.

  Nevertheless—

  “Aidan.” She turns, smiles. “I can interview Alaina Colby if you’d like.”

  That’s when my common sense shoves aside any urge to throw DeeDee down and fuck her. She wants the Megalo collar. Fortunately, I see her ambition. Like a ragged piece of chum luring me, it bloodies the choppy blue Atlantic of her glare, visible through her Ray-Bans’ dark lens.

  “Why would I want you to do that?” I turn her around and point her back up the steps. “Go. We’re late.”

  But she’s read me. She knows I want her. Way to go, fool, I tell myself. Wanting two women who’ll never call each other“friend”is a dangerous game. Wanting two like DeeDee Laws and Alaina Colby is suicide.

  You’re in over your head now, A.G.

  As usual I haven’t even tried.

  * * *

  The man calling himself Rakesh Gupta turns in the front seat. “We’re done here.”

  Tater’s body lists sideways, dead weight sunk in the limo’s posh back seat. “Fuck you,”he spits, but what comes out is unintelligible. He’s missing teeth, his lips are swollen and blue and bleeding. Blood floods his mouth, choking back his expletives with garbled sounds.

  “You Americans,”Rakesh says, calm, as immutable as Buddha. “Potty mouths, one and all, aren’t you?”

  He nods to one of the two men in the back seat, holding Tater’s arms like he’s a banged up garbage can they’re fighting over. Rakesh says nothing. It had taken both of his men—gorillas themselves—to stuff Tater inside the limo after they’d left the police station with him in tow.

  Once he’d figured out Rakesh was no lawyer, and damn well not his lawyer, Tater started fighting hard. He’d just had no idea he was going to lose. He was a Westerner. Like John Wayne, he was wired to win, to never say die. Rakesh knew nothing of John Wayne, and cared less. Tater went slamming head-first into the limo.

  The man on Tater’s right blossoms inside the limo like lava inside an erupting volcano. He’s big—bigger—than his captive. His bulk blocks any hope of escape. The other giant on Tater’s left holds the gun, a fat little shit with the biggest hole at the end of its barrel Tater’s ever seen. He’s never owned a gun. Never needed to. He’s always used size to bully people into doing what he wants. Staring at the snub-nosed gun, he recognizes, however, that any attempt to shove this gorilla out the door will be met with a tragic death. His own.

  “Towel-headed bastard,”Tater spits, resorting to the expletives that so far have had little effect on his captors. He’d called them all towel heads—and other racist epithets—earlier. It had almost pissed off the gorilla, earning Tater a broken rib or two. Aware he’s once again the target of Tater’s racial slurs, he fists Tater in the kidney.

  “Owwww.” A wheeze escapes Tater’s lips, barely moving now, except to mumble.

  “Tell us who killed her. We will make this less painful,”Rakesh says, bored, sounding like he’s filing his fingernails. “Tell us what Detective Hawks said, any names he mentioned.”

  “Mmm,”Tater mumbles. Hasn’t he already told them all he knows? By now it’s clear he’s not coming out of this alive, but dying quickly isn’t a satisfying option, either. Head sunk on his barrel chest, lumberjack shirt caked in blood, he gives it one more try. “I . . . d-d-don’t know. Maybe he mentioned Ang . . . Angie Miller.”

  In the car’s fetid silence, the stench of violence and blood overpowering despite his exotic odor of spice and jasmine, Rakesh sits up, alert. “That’s it?”he asks. “Angie Miller? He didn’t mention any other names? An Indian girl’s name?”

  Tensing and waiting for another sucker punch to his kidney, Tater lifts his head. Huh? The only Indian girls he’s seen are on TV, and they’re being chased—or courted and chased alternately—by cowboys. He picks his brain, trying to recall any name that big bastard cop from NPD might’ve dropped. Anything, did he say anything at all that will deliver him from any more sucker punches, maybe save his remaining fingers?

  The gorilla on his right, blocking escape, flicks open the butterfly knife. Tater already knows the man’s no stranger to the knife’s use, but the elegant whip of his wrist speaks worlds. “I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t fucking know!”he sobs.

  Nothing comes to mind. The detective didn’t mention no damn Indian girl. Detective Hawks hadn’t said a word during their sweat-down. Tater has nothing to give these fucking towel heads. Is it possible that he, indomitable badass with a world-class rep among his good buddy trucker friends, is really praying for death? Is he really hoping this will end quickly, as Rakesh promised?

  Tater’s dim eyes open, briefly registering his protest—and shock.

  The butterfly knife swishes silently in the giant’s hands, slithering toward one of Tater’s few remaining fingers, a thumb.

  “Did the detective mention anyone called Guyatri?”Rakesh asks, wearied by the fat American’s weakness, his easy subjugation to pain. Rakesh’s friends are conditioned to die noble deaths, yet he’s done business long enough to know: in the end, any man being tortured cries and begs for death. “A name,”Rakesh says, pitiless, nodding toward the gorilla with the butterfly knife. “Any name. An Indiangirl’s name.”

  He’d sat his ass in a Coke truck since he was eighteen. His wasn’t what you’d call a life of learning, so Tater felt it, the irony of being asked to name an Indian girl, but he couldn’t name it. His ignorance—the fact he’d never get the chance to look up the term in his little pocket dictionary—frustrated him, made him angry beyond reason. Who were these men in their fancy suits and limo to treat him this way? One-on-one he’d chew off these bastards’ balls and eat them. But they weren’t playing fair. “For fuck’s sake,”he says,“I don’t know no Goddamn—any Indian girls.

  “Wait!” He gives it one more try as the gorilla grabs a thumb. “He mentioned Alaina Colby.” It doesn’t sound Indian, but Tater tosses it out, anyway, hoping against hope—

  “He said . . . Alaina Colby. . . .”

  His thumb plops quietly onto the posh leather seat, the sound lost in Tater’s screams.

  Chapter 13

  Praying my boss won’t notice I’m late, I slip down the hallway of Verbote Dental.

  “Alaina, is that you?”Brick yells from his lab.

  Oh, crap. “No, it’s Aurelia,”I yell back. Maybe Brick’ll believe my lie and think I’m the newbie dental assistant.

  Aurelia Moreno shoots me a murderous glare from her dark eyes when I slide by her, giving her an embarrassed grin. “Guess you heard that?”

  She’s clutching her notebook and wearing clean scrubs splotched with teddy bears, in contrast to my co-ed grunge. I’m rumpled, wearing my usual uniform: jeans, hoodie, ballet clothes layered beneath, the ones I don’t need now that I have to skip dance class right after work and go look for my deadbeat brother. My favorite worn Nikes encase my feet.

  Her frown, and the string of epithets in Spanish, say it all. She hates me, and I cannot figure out why.

  “If you weren’t such an acid tongue, I’d like you,”I tell Aurelia. Her dark-lashed eyes shrink to little black-slitted almonds. Times like this I wish I spoke Spanish, although I get Aurelia’s general drift when she spits at my Nikes and calls me,“puta.” Bitch.

  “You’re late,”she says, switching from Spanish to English.

  “News flash, Aurelia,”I say, irritated,“I like you because of your acid tongue, but you still don’t get to be my time keeper.”

  “I haf been asked by Doctor Verbote to keep attendance records,”she says, despite the fact our boss insists we call him Brick.

  “Whatever,”I say. “You’re in charge. That’s what Brick tells me, anyway.”

  “Brick”is apt
ly named. Once he’s made up his mind, nothing changes it. That’s a minus in my case. He’s decided he’ll teach me the tenets of his Mormon faith. I know he’s already converted Aurelia, who goes to church with him and, who in English at least, pretends to worship this“Heavenly Father”Brick prays to. He’s workin’ to get me to join his LDS“cult,”as Ang calls it, and Aurelia is his little proselytizer. But like—I need a father? Never got the chance to know my own, so why bother now?

  Aurelia and I lock gazes, and then because I’m already late I say,“So what now?”

  “I haf written your arrival time down for Doctor Verbote.”

  I groan. Aurelia’s and Brick’s noose is tightening. I can feel it. I wonder if Brick is aware Aurelia’s conversion to his Mormon faith might be motivated by something darker, like the need to use him to get money? I can’t think of any other reason for her devotion.

  Seeing a flicker of discomfort in her eyes before she turns away, I feel sorry for her. I want her to open up and spill the beans. “Aurelia, what’s wrong? If you’d talk, you’d have more friends, you know. I mean, I’ll help you.”

  “Nothing is wrong,”she says, tossing another glance over her shoulder. “I was going to tell you something important, but not now—”

  “Whatever,”I say. Let her play her stupid game.

  “No, not—whatever.” She turns and nails me with an angry glare. “You need to show up on time. Act more grateful. Many girls in Tijuana would love to haf your job.”

  “Okay, so I’m privileged,”I say, shaking with sarcasm Aurelia can’t possibly fathom. Gimp with two jobs. Drug lord for a mother. Meth head brother. That’s my life.

  Yeah, sure, Aurelia, I’ve got it made. Livin’ the dream. I’m privileged.

  I want to tell her these things, but don’t. Despite being pissed at her, I know she’s right: I need to get to work on time.

  “First rule,”Brick had lectured when he’d hired me,“arrive on time.”

  Seven months ago, I’d have agreed to anything. I’d have killed for this job. But I’m struggling. I’m supposed to hold down two jobs, go to school fulltime, track my criminal-minded brother, and somehow—always, always, always—show up for work on time?