24

Mooney insisted on taking a cab home. Of course, I was expecting to drive him, either back to the station to fetch his car, or home, or wherever he wanted to go; otherwise I wouldn’t have let him escort me through the smelly alleyway and walk me all the way to my car, only to backtrack and flag a cab on Mass, Ave. Mooney has a streak of gallantry that irritates me. It’s not that I despise protective gestures; it’s just that they infringe on my freedom. Maybe what I’m insisting on here is the right to get mugged at night in a bad neighborhood, but what the hell, it’s my call.

I took Mass. Ave. to Harvard Square, executing the required bypass of its main intersection and U-turning my way back onto Brattle Street. I could have taken Huron Avenue, but Brattle’s an attractive street to cruise. You get to pass by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s house.

Lights blazed in my living-room window. I slipped the car into its spot in back of the house and hurried up the front walk, hoping to greet Paolina in the foyer.

I got the key in the lock and the door open before I heard the unexpected voice. It slowed my approach.

“Hello,” said Harry Clinton.

“Hi,” said Roz with an attempt to stifle a giggle.

They were seated too close together on the living-room couch. Roz laughed awkwardly. Clinton stood and continued, “I hope you don’t mind me waiting for you inside. Roz said you wouldn’t.”

He must have been there a while. Two empty glasses on the end table told the tale. Knowing Roz, I wondered if the encounter had progressed to intimacy. Most likely not; she had her clothes on, or at least she was wearing a subtle fuchsia T-shirt. Stretched tight across her chest, black letters said: AUNTIE EM, HATE YOU! HATE KANSAS! TAKING THE DOG. DOROTHY.

She got up and made a retreat toward the stairs, stammering meaningless, polite things like “Nice to have met you” and stuff. The T-shirt seemed to be all she had on, if you didn’t count shoes. It was long enough for decency but not something I’d have recommended for answering the door to strangers. Her footsteps clattered up a flight. I listened to them fade.

“You keep weird office hours,” I said briskly. “What can I do for you?”

“The bruising’s not bad, and it doesn’t look swollen.”

My hand went automatically to my nose, touched my cheek.

“See a doctor?” he went on.

“No, Mom,” I said.

“Okay, forget it. I hope you don’t mind the late visit.”

“Long as it’s brief,” I said.

“Blunt, aren’t you?”

“Direct,” I said. “I prefer direct.”

He took two steps forward. He was tall, maybe three inches taller than me. He wore a white-and-blue plaid shirt tucked into jeans, both cut with a Western flair unobtainable in Harvard Square. “Well, then, directly,” he said, “I came to tell you to lay off Hunneman’s.”

I swallowed air. “That’s pretty blunt.”

“It’s an official Department request. If you don’t back off, at least for a couple days, you’re going to screw up a major undercover operation that’s taken a hell of a lot of time and effort to set up. It’s almost ripe, and the last thing we need is amateurs spooking the place.”

I licked my lips and tasted Szechuan peppers, along with the residue of that hated word amateur. “Why the hell don’t the cops know about this?” I asked. I never thought for a minute that Mooney might have kept it from me, which was dumb. If he had orders to shut up, he’d shut up.

“Key people know. No need to spread the word. We want to make sure the sleazeballs aren’t warned—or alarmed by strange visitors.”

Nobody had tailed me to Hunneman’s. That meant an inside man, an undercover agent. Man or woman. I quickly reviewed the faces I’d seen at the factory.

“Who’s this?” Clinton’s drawl startled me. He’d moved across to the mantel, where he stood holding up a silver-framed photo of Paolina.

“My sister,” I said.

“You don’t look alike,” he commented.

“She’s my Little Sister from the Big Sisters organization.”

“Nice,” he said, setting the frame back carefully. “Pretty kid. She live close by?”

“Close,” I said. “If she’s home.”

“Late to be out for a little girl.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. And I found myself telling Clinton about Paolina, how we’d met, how she’d changed, how worried I was about her. Chalk it up to anxiety, I guess. Told a perfect stranger something I hadn’t told Mooney.

“She’ll be fine,” he said.

His easy assurance was sandpaper on my nerves. “You don’t have to worry about her,” I snapped. “She’s legal.” I was tired as hell. Hints of my headache were coming back.

Clinton paced. “You don’t like me, do you?”

“I don’t like your job.”

“You one of those people who think all cops are pigs? You think my job’s easy? Or unnecessary? You think we should just pack up and go home and let anybody in the front door? Criminals and smugglers and people with contagious diseases?”

I flopped onto the couch. “My grandmother came over from Poland without a dime. I guess I’m for ‘give me your tired, your poor.’ That old stuff.”

“Which worked fine when we had the whole goddamn frontier out there. When we had plenty of room for plenty of people. They were giving away land back then, for chrissake. Homesteading. You want a family of five homesteading on your property?”

“I’m tired,” I said.

He went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “And the hell of it is I almost agree with you. I work with a bunch of jerks. They’ve heard every hard-luck story so many times they don’t hear anything anymore. They just file forms.”

“Your buddy Jamieson’s supposed to be a great one for that,” I said. “He in on the Hunneman action?”

“Jamieson and I work together, but he’s no buddy of mine. I’m not sure what he knows.”

He came over and joined me on the couch, sitting a bit farther away than he had from Roz. Our thighs didn’t touch. I found myself wondering what it would feel like if they did.

He said softly, “We got somebody tipping off illegal establishments before we can get it together for a raid. Somebody on the inside.”

“You think Jamieson’s the one?” Maybe that’s why he was bird-dogging Mooney so closely, I thought. So he could warn somebody if the cops got hot.

“I didn’t say that,” Clinton insisted. “Jamieson’s got a lot of years in the service and a lot of friends.”

“Hard to believe the friends part.”

“Yeah,” he agreed with a grin, “I guess it is. Charming bastard, isn’t he?” He stretched and stared around the room. “I like your place.”

“I’m tired,” I repeated. He’d given me a lot to mull over. I hoped I’d be able to sleep.

“Me too,” he said, but he didn’t take the hint and stand up to leave.

I hoped Roz hadn’t invited him to spend the night with her. I was conscious again of his blue-jeaned thigh, a lot closer to mine than it had to be.

He said, “It’s the little factories that employ the women these days. The men mostly work at the racetracks, the stables. The pay’s miserable and the bosses treat them like shit.” He sighed deeply. “Somebody’s got to stop it, you know. It’s all very well to stand back and not get your hands dirty, but it doesn’t do any good in the long run.”

“I guess,” I said reluctantly. I was only half hearing him, I was so damn sleepy.

And there he was, stretched out on my couch, relaxed, with his slow Southern drawl and easy grin, looking immovable and placid, like he’d just started the night. If he hadn’t been so good-looking, I’d have kicked him out.

He picked up his glass off the table. “Can I bother you for a refill?”

“Of?”

“Roz and I split a Rolling Rock.”

“One drink,” I said. “Then I’m asleep.”

“Okay, I appreciate it. Gets damn lonely out there. I guess I haven’t made a lot of friends since I moved up here. Not like Jamieson.”

“Feeling like an outsider?”

“Don’t tell me I ain’t, Yankee. The way I talk, the folks I work with think I oughta register with Immigration. They also think I’m practically retarded because my words don’t come a thousand a minute.”

I got the beer from the kitchen. As I walked toward the door I heard a scuffling noise on the stairway, probably T. C., who hadn’t come out to greet me with his customary yowl. Maybe he was scared of Clinton. Jealous, more likely.

“Where you from?” I asked Clinton when I handed him his glass. He brushed my hand with his when he took it.

“Why, Texas, ma’am. Where else?”

“¿Habla español?”

“Like a native, ma’am.”

“Why aren’t you working out of Brownsville?”

“I got tired of chasing folks across the border. I got some family up here—”

“So much for the lonely-guy routine.”

“Family ain’t everything,” he said. “I find these Yankee gals hard to get to know.”

“Call ’em gals and you sure will,” I said. “I could see how much trouble you were having with Roz. Real standoffish.”

“She some kind of painter? She invited me up to see her acrylics.”

“Not to be missed,” I said dryly.

“Artists are strange,” he said. “I’ve always been partial to volleyball players myself.”

“You play?”

“Hoop’s my game. Used to be, anyway. College stuff. I’m too old for college hoop—and college dating.”

It reminded me of a blues lament: Too old for the orphanage, too young for the old-folks home. I grinned.

“You trying to say something?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “I am. See how fast you Yankees are? You married or anything?”

I hesitated for just a second too long. “I’m seeing somebody,” I said.

“Permanent and exclusive, like?”

“He’s out of town for a while.”

“Far out of town?”

“Far,” I agreed.

“Good,” he said, “then maybe you’d have dinner with me Friday? I could make it Saturday too. In case you have to wash your hair Friday.”

I smiled. “And what if I have to do my nails Saturday?”

“I don’t know what you’d do to them, short and unpainted like they are.”

“Saturday,” I said, uttering a silent apology to Sam. He wasn’t even sure when he’d be back. What the hell did he expect?

“I’ll look forward to it.”

“Me too.”

“And remember the other stuff I said, not just my handsome face, okay?”

“When’s the raid?” I asked.

“Soon. Unless something screws it up. Don’t let it be you, okay?”

I nodded absently, yawned, and told him it was time to leave. I was half reluctant to see him go. As I let him out the door, he reached a hand over, tilted up my chin, kissed me gently on my bruised cheek. It was surprisingly sweet. I turned and let him have my mouth, and we kissed for a while on the front porch like awkward teenagers on a first date.

He said, “I left one of my cards on the hall table. In case you threw the other one away.”

I wondered if he’d kissed Roz.

I went inside and closed the door, leaning against the smooth wood. Then I bolted the door to keep me from rushing back out and inviting Clinton upstairs. His kisses, his hands, the strange musky smell of him left me breathing hard, made me realize how long Sam had been gone.

I dialed Marta’s number. Paolina hadn’t returned, and Marta was torn between worry and anger. I played her the tape. It didn’t soothe her. She accused me of stealing her daughter, faking the tape, keeping Paolina hidden in my house. I warned her not to go to the factory. I’m not sure she heard me.

By the time I got her off the line, she’d awakened all my anxieties about Paolina. I’d been hoping to go to sleep with nothing but the memory of Harry Clinton’s kisses on my lips. I was too tired even for that. As soon as I climbed in bed, the cool sheets surrounded me and dragged me down to sleep.