Kiss of the Blue Dragon (5 page)

The Long, Hot Night

M
arco called into headquarters on his lapel phone. He got no answers as to why his backup had disappeared, but a squad car arrived quickly and took the R.M.O. assassin downtown. The APB on Lola had turned up nothing. And DNA results indicated the headless body was a Polish cleaning lady who took care of Lola’s apartment in exchange for future predictions. By the looks of the apartment, Lola and her cleaning lady had ripped each other off.

When Marco offered to give me a lift home, I made no attempt to decline. Granted, a niggling voice inside my head warned me that his insidious masculinity and good looks were a lethal combination. Therefore, I definitely should have returned
the way I’d arrived, via public transportation. But I was dog-tired and didn’t want to fight a crowd. Besides, when you almost bite the bullet with someone, you want to talk about it over a couple of beers.

Marco took me back to my place in his old hydrogen-powered SUV. Because my back was sore from our scuffle outside Lola’s apartment, he took Lake Shore Drive. The land lanes on LSD were well paved, unlike the grid of neglected city streets. Just before we arrived in front of my two-flat, Marco received bad news. The backup he’d been counting on had gone missing under suspicious circumstances.

In the brooding silence, as cars whizzed by on the curved ribbons of pavement, I felt his sense of betrayal in my own gut. Not good. I could not afford to empathize with this man. I glanced at his profile—the strong, straight nose, the rugged jaw, the lush yet firm-set lips. My mouth almost watered.

Nope, there would be no beers tonight. We could commiserate about our brush with death another time. Right now I needed distance from him. When he pulled up in front of my two-flat and turned off his engine, I reached for the car door.

“Hey.” He grabbed my left arm. “I owe you a beer, remember? I can run to a store and come back.”

“No.” I was quick to answer and forced a bright smile. “No, it’s okay. I won’t hold you to that. I have to go.”

“But I want to.”

He still held my arm. His strong fingers felt like kindling catching fire on my skin. Amazed, I looked at his hand, then into his eyes, not even pretending
to be tough. “Detective, I know that when you face danger with someone, there is a sense of…closeness. But it’s a false sense of comfort. You don’t like me, remember? Besides, I’m bad luck. Someone wants to kill me and they almost took you down in the attempt. So let’s just call it a night.”

I whisked out of the car and shut the door before he could protest. I waved through the passenger window and almost changed my mind when he simply stared back, disappointment unabashedly simmering beneath his thick, dark lashes.
Turn and walk away, Angel
, I ordered myself.
You know the routine
. Yes, I certainly did. So I did just that.

I took a long, soothing bath and stretched out on my couch. It was too hot in my bedroom to sleep. Like Marco’s radio, my air conditioning was an off-and-on proposition at best. Right now it was off. So I opted for the ceiling fan in the living room.

Though I was exhausted, sleep eluded me. I watched the fan rotate around and around, my head spinning with the crazy turn of events. I kept thinking about that poor woman in Lola’s apartment. And when I finally succeeded in pushing aside those gruesome images, I thought about my visions of Lola in the crystal ball.

Is that really what they were? Please, God, let it be anything but that. Perhaps I just had a wild imagination. That would explain everything. But the lame notion died before I could even begin to convince myself. Marco was right. I’d known exactly what was going to happen tonight.

Had this ability, or curse, always existed? I thought back to the many times I’d escaped danger—always dodging bullets at the last minute, always changing plans when my instincts told me I was in too deep. Was intuition the same as psychic ability? I refused to even think of myself in those terms. I was not a quack or a fraud like Lola. I was just lucky.

Yeah, right
.

I rolled to my other side and tried to think of something else. Someone wanted me dead. But who and why? Who in the R.M.O. syndicate could benefit from my death? Maybe somebody wanted to kidnap Lola without having to worry that a pesky daughter might come in search of her. I could think of no other explanation. But why kidnap Lola in the first place?

And then there was Marco. He really believed he could change the world. It had to be killing him that he was wrong. One of Chicago’s finest, a member of his own force, had betrayed him tonight. It almost made me sorry I was right. Almost.

I rolled onto my back and sweat pooled between my breasts. Tonight, just before I got out of his car, he wasn’t looking at me like a professional. For a moment, under his dark gaze, I felt like a real woman in the presence of a real man. And for a brief moment, it had been exciting. Just before excitement had turned to panic.
Circle the wagons, Angel. Don’t let him in
.

I sat up, tired of pretending things were normal. Tired of pretending I was satisfied with this cleverly
crafted life of mine. I rose up on my knees, leaned against the back of the couch and craned my head out the window for a breath of fresh air.

I saw a couple walking by after a night at Rick’s Café Americain. Perfect timing. They giggled and smooched, obviously in love. Then my gaze wandered until I found something that floored me—Marco’s SUV.
He was still here?

It looked like he was sleeping in his car. He was leaning his head against the headrest and his forearm hung out the window.

I listened to distant traffic noise, and the sound of someone’s music blaring from an apartment a block away, and wondered why. Why the hell had he stayed?

As if he heard my silent question, Marco raised his head and caught me staring. He got out of his car, and crossed the deserted street, heading toward my door. I walked down the stairs ready to tell him I could take care of myself. I reached the ground level entrance and paused when my hand grasped the doorknob. I pushed back the short sprigs of hair that clung to my moist forehead, then smoothed over my loose, long cotton pajama pants and spaghetti-string top. How silly to worry about how I looked.

I opened the door and found Marco standing in midnight’s shadow. He exuded masculinity like an aura, and I wondered how taught his muscles were beneath his crisp and fashionable linen shirt. I could reach out and find out myself, if I had the guts.

He thrust his hands into his pants’ pockets and squinted at me through a sliver of moonlight. “You change your mind about that beer?”

“No, I need you to get the hell—”

He closed the distance and the words died in my throat as one of his strong, tanned hands moved around my narrow waist, massaging the tight muscles in my back. He pressed me against him.

“Marco,” I whispered, stunned by his gentleness, “you’re very good at this.”

“Shut up, Baker, and try to relax for two seconds.” He pulled me closer against him in a bear hug. For one pure second I felt at peace.

And just like that, the moment passed. We slowly parted. At least he had the decency to look as disturbed as I felt. It was time for that beer.

We sat out on my second-floor garden balcony, silent for a long time. The embrace notwithstanding, I felt amazingly comfortable in his presence and began to relax. For some reason I couldn’t explain, I trusted Marco. Besides, we’d almost died together.

Part of the multilayered wooden deck nestled like a big tree house in the giant elm shooting up past my roof. Now and then the leaves around us rustled in a desultory breeze. Marco rested against the railing and drank from the bottle of beer gripped in his big fist. I sat in a wicker chair, occasionally pressing my cold, brown-glass bottle to my temples, occasionally sipping. When you’re really wiped out, nothing beats a beer in an old-style glass bottle.

“So…” he said.

Instead of looking at him, I gazed at the stars glimmering in the blue-black sky. He would want to know about my apparent foresight at Lola’s apart
ment, and I dreaded the topic. But he surprised me by grilling me on a subject I hadn’t thought about all day.

“So tell me about that night,” Marco said. “The night Officer Danny Black died.”

I took a swig of beer. It was cold and delicious. I licked my lips. “Can’t you just read the file, Marco? I’ve been through this a million times.”

“I have read the file…a million times. I want to hear about that night from you. You were the only witness.”

I leaned back in my chair, balancing my feet next to him on the rail. “It was a lot like tonight. Muggy as hell. I’d been hired to drag Darelle Jones’s sorry butt in for a little retribution. Actually, what my clients wanted was to save his soul.”

Marco let out a huff of surprise. “His soul?”

I shrugged and grinned. “Darelle had gotten involved in the African Methodist Episcopal church down on Balboa. Darelle was a flimflam man. He’d promised to raise enough money to build a dining hall next to the sanctuary. But he’d used the money to pay for a drug delivery. The witnesses hadn’t shown up in court and the case was dismissed. So Reverend Samuel Williams and the sweet little old matriarchs who ran the church decided they wanted to save Darelle’s soul, even if they couldn’t get their money back.”

“Intriguing case,” Marco said.

“To say the least. I probably should have turned the contract down, but I let my curiosity and the last remains of my cockeyed optimism cloud my judgment.”

He tipped up his bottle and finished off the suds. I had two more bottles in a cooler and tossed one to him.

“Thanks,” he said.

“I did a little investigating and found out that Darelle was hip-deep in methop.”

Methop had been big for years. It was a time-released combination of methamphetamines and opium. Users went sky-high then landed on clouds. The drug never induced crash landings. With a regular supply, the euphoric roller coaster never ended. At least not until you gave up the ghost. It was the perfect drug. Too perfect.

Even though the recent U.S. government had decided it was okay if opium really
was
the opiate of the masses, Chicago cops had been ordered to crack down on methop. It was eating into the profits of the big drug companies who had legal substances that created the same effect. The street drug dealers charged less, which siphoned off the profits from the pharmaceutical companies, who didn’t like giving up so much as a dime.

“I followed Darelle one night, hoping to corner him alone in the Loop. I didn’t know he was about to make a big trade. I was just about to step out and confront him, but something held me back.”

“What was it?” Marco asked.

I briefly shut my eyes. “A feeling maybe. I suppose that’s too nah-nah-noo-noo for you. What’s your working theory?”

“Any thinking man could only assume you had set Danny up. That’s twice that I’m aware of that
you’ve survived an R.M.O.-related bloodbath. Nobody can be as lucky as you are, Baker. How is it you always walk away when the dust settles?”

I smiled grimly. I had no answer for him. He wanted to blame me for Officer Black’s death, that much was clear.

“What happened just before you decided to hang back—that night and tonight?”

I wiped a rivulet of perspiration that trickled down my neck. “This is going nowhere, Marco.”

“Tell me,” he demanded.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. The night Black died I—I remember being sick to my stomach, even before the arguments began. Maybe I saw something in my mind—blood maybe—but I don’t remember. Tonight I actually heard the sizzling of those acid eaters before it happened. I wasn’t quite sure what I was hearing, but I knew it was trouble.”

Marco crossed his arms and planted his chin in an upturned palm, staring hard. “Could you have saved Danny?”

Guilt washed over me and I looked down at the dead leaves on the deck. I had wondered that same thing, until I was finally able to put it behind me.

“Marco, I was around the corner. Darelle huddled with these guys, then Black burst out from nowhere and told everyone to drop their guns. He took a big chance coming out like that, all alone. He looked like such a rookie.”

“He was a rookie,” Marco said, his deep voice gravelly.

“Darelle pulled out an annihilator. It happened so fast. I was horrified. I didn’t think Darelle was capable of that kind of violence. I learned that night that anyone is capable of anything under the right circumstances.” I wiped a hand over my face. “Needless to say, the A.M.E. church gave up on plans to save his soul.”

“You left the scene.”

“I didn’t leave right away. I went after Darelle but he got away too fast. I quickly returned to help the victims, but they all were dead. When I heard a siren’s wail, I knew help was on the way. I left then, but turned up to make a report at headquarters the next day.”

“Why risk being blamed?”

“I knew my information was critical to the investigation. Like I’ve told you, I follow the law.”

He nodded and for once he seemed to believe me. He gave me a melancholy smile. “You saved my life tonight. Why couldn’t you…?”

His voice faded and he shook his head.

“You wanted to know why I didn’t save Black’s life, too.”

When he gave me a half-accusing glare, I swallowed hard. “I didn’t plan any of this, Marco. We got lucky tonight.”

“Did we?”

“Yes! I’m not a superhero. I couldn’t have saved Dan Black’s life if I’d tried.” When he said nothing, I pressed on. “Why is his death so important to you?”

“Because his life meant even more to me.” He
looked away, then looked back at me without emotion. “He was my brother.”

“What?”

“From my mother’s second marriage. I talked him into joining the force. Told him together we’d clean up this city. Guess I was wrong. Dead wrong.”

I realized I was holding my breath. When I grew light-headed, I let it out. For one fleeting moment I’d felt comfort in a living, breathing man’s arms. Unfortunately, it had been in the arms of a man who thought he had reason to hate me.