Angel Dance (Danny Logan Mystery #1) (33 page)

The woman I saw standing at the table, waiting for me to finish crossing the street looked the same in some ways, different in others. The hair was different, obviously. She used to have long, wavy, dark hair. Now, it was shoulder length and a honey blonde shade. Better for being incognito, I guess. Both styles looked attractive, although I was more used to the dark-haired Gina, so I probably still preferred her that way. But her eyes were the same—happy, sparkling, dark blue eyes. Her prominent jaw line, her lips wide and full—all the same. Her figure, if anything, was better now than it had been at age twenty-two. She wore tan shorts and a white sleeveless blouse. Her skin was tanned as if she’d just returned from a vacation in the Caribbean. Quite simply, she was stunning. I forgot all about Frankie and his .44.

“Hi, Danny,” she said happily, smiling broadly when I crossed the street. She stood up and held her arms wide. I stepped forward and hugged her. She didn’t just give me one of those little courtesy hugs—the type where both parties lean in and essentially reach around each other and pat each other on the back without actually touching anywhere else. Instead, she gave me a full-body press, just short of jumping up and wrapping her legs around me. Tight hug. Her large breasts pressed against my chest. Her perfume was mesmerizing, the smell of her hair intoxicating. I started to feel dizzy—like I was being sucked into a whirlpool. Another second, and I’d be a goner.

“Gina,” I said, finishing our embrace and pushing back just in time. I smiled. “It’s been a long time—almost five years. You look even more beautiful than I remembered.”

She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. Hold on, dude. Don’t topple.

“You always knew how to flatter me,” she said, smiling.

“It was all true,” I said. “Every word.”

She laughed. She seemed sincerely happy to see me.

She turned to my left and said, “I see you’ve met Uncle Frankie.”

Jolted back to reality, I turned and, for the first time, saw Frankie the Boot. He was a little taller than me, maybe six two. He probably weighed two-forty—he was a big guy. His hair was silver, and his face was lined with wrinkles. I guessed he was probably in his mid-sixties, but he might have been a little older. He wore a short-sleeved print shirt, untucked, over wool slacks. There was no sign of the .44, but it would have been easy enough to conceal under the shirt.

“I have,” I said. “We met across the street.”

“Uncle Frankie,” she asked, looking at him, “were you nice to Mr. Logan?”

He looked at her, then at me, then back at her.

Before he could answer, I said, “He was a perfect gentleman.”

He smiled—not at me—but at her. “See?” he said.

“I’ll just bet,” she said. “Oh well,” she said to me, “at least he didn’t shoot you.”

“There is that,” I agreed.

She smiled and said, “It’s really good to see you again. Let’s sit down and catch up.” She waved for a waitress. “Are you still drinking Diet Cokes?”

I said yes, so she ordered one for me, another glass of tea for herself. Frankie took a seat at the next table—where the lone man was seated. Naturally, I thought. A bodyguard team for Gina.

We sat down. I spoke first. “It’s really good to see you.”

“You too,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”

“Been very long,” I agreed. “I’ve thought about you often.”

“Me, too,” she said. Then she added, “Especially in the last couple of weeks, huh?”

I chuckled. “True. Do you want to tell me what’s going on? Why’d you suddenly up and disappear?”

“I’ll tell you everything,” she said. “In due time.” She saw that I wasn’t happy with this answer, and she said, “Okay, in just a few minutes, actually. But I’d like to just talk to you like old friends for a bit, if that would be alright. I’d like to catch up.” She paused, and then added, “We were close once, if you still remember.”

I nodded, and then I smiled. “I do remember.”

“Good. What’s it been, Danny, five years or so?”

“Five years this December,” I said.

“A lot’s changed in five years,” she said.

“That’s true,” I agreed. “You’d just graduated and started working for your dad.”

“Where I still am today.”

“Chief financial officer and senior vice president,” I said.

“That’s right,” she said. “But it wasn’t nepotism, you know—I earned the title.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“And you,” she said, “you’re out of the army now. You have your own detective agency. You always said that’s what you wanted to do, and now that’s what you’re doing.”

“Just living the dream,” I said.

“Is it what you expected?” she asked.

“It’s bigger,” I said. “Bigger as in broader, more comprehensive. Better in some areas than I’d expected, worse in others. Probably just more real world.”

“And you have employees. I hear you have a good-looking girl working for you.”

“Sounds like Toni impressed Robbie,” I said.

“Apparently,” Gina agreed.

“She’s a looker,” I said. “She’s been known to impress the guys.”

“Are you with her? Are you with anyone?”

“I’m not,” I said. “I’m single. You?”

“Single, independent, unattached,” she answered.

“Independent,” I laughed. “From what I remember, I think you’d probably be independent, whether or not you were attached.”

She laughed. “Maybe,” she admitted. Then she smiled and said, “Maybe I was just never attached to the right person.”

“Take a hell of a guy to make you want to give that up,” I said.

“True,” she agreed. “I don’t mind being in charge.”

I laughed. “Spoken like a master of understatement.”

She laughed again. “You were always witty,” she said.

“It’s not being witty. It’s being truthful. No offense, but you were always a bit of a control freak.”

She shrugged, neither agreeing with nor denying the statement. I think we both knew it was spot-on.

“Anyway,” she said, apparently changing subjects, “I’ve wondered how things worked out for you after our time together.”

“Me, too,” I said.

She smiled. “I thought about how you were probably the most hardworking, dedicated guy I’d ever seen. You were a genuine war hero, for starters. You had a plan, a goal, and you were going after it. I never doubted you’d have your own agency, just like you planned.” She laughed. “I really never thought my own parents would hire you to track me down. But I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when you zeroed in on me so fast.”

“I like to think we’re pretty good at what we do.”

“It would appear as though you are,” she said.

She studied my face intently. “The years have been kind to you, Danny. You look more handsome than ever. I always knew you were a sleeper.”

“Thanks, I think. What’s a sleeper?”

“Yeah, a sleeper,” she said. “You cruise around in high school, not involved, not into anyone that I could tell. Totally good looking but totally shy. You were a sleeper. A late bloomer. You didn’t even know how good you were or how good you were going to become. But I knew.”

“Stop, I’m blushing,” I joked.

“See—that little comeback is something you’d have never said in high school. I guess it took the army to give you the confidence to really see your own strength. I think the army brought out the man in you.” She smiled. “And, from where I sit, it looks like they did a damn good job.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

“I certainly hope so,” she said coyly. “We’ll see.”

I felt like I was playing tennis. She’d fire a witty line to me. I’d return a witty line to her. Fun—at least for a while.

“I was always confident,” I said. “You were the only one that gave me butterflies.”

She smiled. “But you’re over that now.”

I looked into her eyes. “Not a hundred percent.”

There was silence for a second, like the tennis ball had been hit into a high lob and everyone was watching, waiting for it to come down. She broke the silence. “I missed you, Danny.”

She may have been manipulating me, I’ll never know. But I do know that right then, right there, I was hers.

“Me, too.”

“Let’s go on back,” she said, setting her drink on the table and pushing out her chair. “We’ve got a little office in the back where we can talk privately. I have a lot of things I want to share with you.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

We stood, and Frankie started to get up as well. “Frankie,” she said, “I’m alright. Stay out here.”

Frankie the Boot looked at her, and then he looked at me, and then he looked back and nodded one time.

~~~~

The inside of the bakery was busy, even at three thirty on a Sunday afternoon. I followed Gina as we passed through the seating area and then through a door marked Employees Only. If the workers noticed us, they pretended not to.

She opened a door marked
Office
, turned on the light, and went inside. I followed. Once I was in, I took off my baseball cap and slid my backpack off while Gina closed the door behind us. I put my pack on a chair and turned back around.

Gina threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. This time, it wasn’t on the cheek. It was a full-throttle lip-lock that went on and on and on. My head was spinning. I saw stars. I was just about to reach down and sweep all the shit off the top of the desk so I could throw her down and make a woman out of her when she broke it off—just in time.

She stepped back and said, nearly breathless, “Goddamn. I’ve wanted to do that since Robbie told me you were involved in the case. That surely brings back memories of our time together, doesn’t it?”

I nodded. I don’t think I was able to speak just yet.

“You’re a terrific kisser,” she said.

“You too,” I answered, nodding. “Want to do it again?”

So we did. A little less passion this time, a little more tenderness. A little less loss of control.

We broke it off, but I continued to hold her, my face tilted down to her, our lips inches apart.

“That was awesome,” she said.

I nodded. Then I kissed her on the forehead. I held her for a full two minutes, memories flooding back, lost in the moment. Gradually, I started to remember that I wasn’t here on vacation—I was actually working. I leaned back and looked into her eyes. “Why am I here, Gina? Why’ve I been summoned? You could have had this from me anytime in the last five years. Just for the asking. I’m helpless around you. Why now?”

She stared deep into my eyes. “I guess I should fill you in, shouldn’t I?”

I nodded.

“Okay.” she said. “Let’s sit down. This will probably take a while.”

We broke our embrace, and she walked to the chair at the desk in the tiny office. I sat on the other side.

“From the beginning,” I said.

“You sound like a detective.”

I smiled but didn’t say anything.

“Oooh, okay,” she said, mock seriously, “from the beginning.”

She gathered her thoughts, and then said, “First, let me say that I’m going to tell you some stuff you might not like to hear. You and I—we have a little history, but we don’t know each other all that well. Despite that, I need to bring you into my confidence.”

“Okay,” I said. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“We’ll see,” she said. “What’s your feeling about marijuana?”

“Marijuana?” I asked. “I don’t inhale.” What a joker I am.

“No kidding,” she said, seriously.

“No kidding? I guess I don’t have any feelings about marijuana,” I said. “I don’t think about it. I don’t smoke pot. I don’t care if anyone else does. I’m not a cop.”

“Did you know that law enforcement spends over sixteen billion per year to stamp out the marijuana business in America, and in the process arrests eight hundred thousand Americans every year for simple marijuana possession?”

I thought about it for a second, and then said, “Big numbers. I suppose that bothers me on a couple of levels. I don’t see huge differences between pot use and alcohol use. Both get you stoned. As a cop in the army, we busted people for both. I saw a lot more functional problems with booze, though. Alcohol problems seem to have a much higher tendency to spill out onto the street. The idea that nearly a million people a year are put into jail for simple possession of pot is insane.”

“Good, I think so, too. It bothers me,” Gina said. “Next, did you know that in our state, marijuana growth is the number two cash crop, just behind apples?”

“I heard that somewhere.”

“And did you know that the vast majority of that crop is controlled by the Mexican drug cartels?”

“I heard that, too.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Which, that it’s number two behind apples, or that the Mexicans are making all the money from it? I’m starting to see a pattern to your questions. I think it might bother me for a different reason than it bothers you.”

“Explain,” she said.

“It bothers me because it’s against the law—it’s an illegal crop.”

“Legally, that’s true. Morally, what’s the difference between that and a vineyard? Both grow drugs that get you high. You already said that the concept of marijuana use didn’t bother you. If the use doesn’t bother you, why do you object to the cultivation?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I just haven’t thought it through and worked it out in my mind.”

“Well, I have. And I’ve come to the conclusion that pretty soon, the federal government is going to wake up and say, ‘Hey, we can kill not two, not three, but five birds with one stone. If we make pot legal and tax it, we can stop spending sixteen billion a year to prevent it, we can stop arresting a million people a year trying to prevent it, we can start earning a truckload of tax revenue, we can shut down the Mexican cartels on our side of the fence, and we can start a whole new legal agricultural business right here in America.’”

I thought about it for a moment. “Interesting theory. But people have been trying to legalize pot for forty years or more. No luck so far.”

“The country’s never been broke like we are now,” Gina said. “Look around. Every statistic I gave you is true. I know the clowns in Washington, D.C., are brain-dead, but I don’t think that they’re that brain-dead. Eventually, they’ll choose to take this issue on as opposed to cutting money and services from their constituents. They’ll do this because the path is a lot easier and besides—they don’t have a choice. They need the money. What this means to me is that the window of opportunity to make some real money on a venture that’s technically illegal, yet morally correct, is open. But only for so long.”