Jaz stepped forward, took the bag from the man, and disappeared from view.
I must have made a movement, because the Colombian swiveled his head toward me. For a long moment we stared at each other, me like a yellow-crested bird, he with his eyes hidden behind those dark glasses.
Thinking that the best defense is a good offense, I stepped forward and let him see all of my reflective yellow glory. I must have been quite a surprise.
I said, “I’ve come for the girl.”
Cursing men leaped to their feet and grabbed for their guns. Dinners spilled, wineglasses fell to the floor, beer cans were kicked over. Behind the man in the doorway, Jaz came to look out at me with pinched terror in her face.
I squared my shoulders and tried to look tough. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, but I thought if I talked fast enough I might be able to convince everybody that it would be a very good idea to let me take Jaz and leave.
I said, “I don’t have anything to do with this meeting, I don’t even know what it’s about. I’ve just come for Jaz. Let her go, and I won’t say anything to anybody.”
There was a long, cold pause, then the man in the doorway crooked a finger at me the same way he’d motioned Paulie to bring him the take-out bag. Jaz began to cry.
Oddly, everything seemed to become more distinct. Colors and scents and sounds were more vivid. I knew they were going to put me in that room with Jaz. I also knew they could not let me live to tell about it. If I ran, I would surely get a bullet in my back, and nobody would hear the shot over the noise in the street. The only good thing about this development was that Jaz would no longer be alone.
With a silent prayer that Michael would not be too devastated by my death, I moved forward. When I was close, the Colombian grabbed Jaz’s wrist, pulled her from the room, and pushed her to me. Expecting him to order us to stand still while they executed us, I took her hand and squeezed it. Whatever happened, we were in this together.
Everything that happened next seemed to happen simultaneously, everything slapped on top of everything else.
First, the Colombian held his hand out straight in front of me in Paco’s signal—his first two fingers making a V like open scissors.
Next, he turned toward the others and spoke in a loud voice. “Everybody freeze! You’re all under arrest.”
By some sleight of hand, a badge had materialized in the hand of the Colombian, except he was really Paco, and he was holding it out so all the men in the room could see it. A gun was in the other, and I knew he had taken it from a soft holster that had been hidden under his jacket. The jacket was now open, and the black holster displayed the word POLICE in big white letters.
In a low voice, he said, “My sister is coming out with the girl. Hold your fire.”
I was so addled at the Colombian drug lord being Paco in disguise that for a second I thought he had cracked up and was talking to himself. Then I realized that in addition to a bulletproof vest under his silk shirt that added bulk to his chest, he was wired. He was speaking to somebody outside the house.
To me, he said, “Go!”
I gripped Jaz’s hand and ran toward the kitchen. With a shrill yelp of fear, she let me pull her through the kitchen to the back door. We burst through the door into the garage and I blindly pawed the wall to hit the button that opened the garage door. When the door began to rise, I pulled Jaz toward it and we ducked under and ran across the boggy yard. At my Bronco, I stuffed her in, pulled myself inside, and gripped the steering wheel with both hands to keep from flying apart.
In the next instant, the backhoe that had been digging a hole in the street came to a stop, and the workmen around it yanked off their slickers and hats to reveal SWAT jackets and helmets. So did the backhoe driver. The cherry picker crane swung around to allow uniformed men inside the bucket to train their rifle sights on the front door. Patrol cars screeched from both directions to barricade the street, and the whap-whap-whap of a helicopter sounded overhead. A slew of men in dark flak jackets and helmets materialized out of nowhere. Every man had initials on his jacket—FBI, DEA, SCSD, SIB, SWAT—and every man carried an assault rifle.
A big voice spoke through a bullhorn. “Come out with your hands up!”
I gripped the steering wheel so hard my shoulders shook. Every man inside that house had a gun. Every man inside that house realized by now that Paco wasn’t a big Colombian drug lord but an undercover cop who had tricked them. They had two choices: to add cop killing to the charges already against them, or to put down their weapons and come out.
Beside me, Jaz was frozen and confused, breathing in short laps like a stressed dog.
The front door opened and men began filing out with their hands above their heads. I waited, stiff as stone, until Paco appeared in the door. He had put away his gun but still had the cloth holster open to show it was marked POLICE. Tensions run high in a situation like that, and I knew he didn’t want any of the law enforcement people to mistake him for somebody else.
Within seconds, every man who’d come out of the house was handcuffed and led to the paneled trucks. The trucks were not plumbers’ trucks or Verizon trucks or FPL trucks after all, but SWAT armored vehicles.
Paco separated himself from the others and slogged through the mist to the Bronco. He had taken off his dark glasses, but he still looked like a gangster. I rolled down my window and he leaned inside and kissed me, his beard prickly against my cheek.
“Go home,” he said.
He gave Jaz a half smile and a thumbs-up, then turned and disappeared into the throng of uniformed lawmen.
I looked at Jaz and saw a new fear on her face. She was afraid of me.
She said, “Is he your brother?”
I said, “It’s a long story, but he was just pretending to be a bad guy. He’s really an undercover cop. You’re safe now. Those guys who were after you are all going to jail. You don’t have to hide anymore.”
Her face crumpled and she dissolved into racking sobs. I gathered her into my arms and held her while she cried, patting her on the back like I once patted Christy.
She said, “He wouldn’t . . . he wouldn’t let them . . . hurt me. They wanted to, and he stopped them.”
I squeezed her closer. “They can’t ever hurt you again.”
Jaz cried while the armored trucks drove off with their loads. She cried while men erected warning barriers around the hole they’d dug in the street. She cried while the truck with the cherry picker crane lumbered off. She cried as if she had barrels of tears that needed shedding.
After a final shudder, she went limp and pulled away.
Dully, she said, “Where do I have to go now?”
“My orders were to take you home.”
In a tiny voice, she said, “I don’t have a home.”
I said, “Well, actually, you do. If you want it, that is. Hetty would like you to live with her.”
The light breaking on her face was like a glorious sunrise.
31
The only sound on the way to Hetty’s house was the swish-swish of the wipers.
When we got there, Jaz pushed out of the car and ran to the front door, her skinny legs churning. Hetty must have heard the car and looked through her peephole, because I heard her whoop of joy before she opened the door. While I stood behind her grinning, Jaz fell into Hetty’s arms and the two swayed in the doorway for a long moment, squeezing each other as if they’d found a long-lost treasure.
Hetty finally pulled Jaz aside so I could pass through, and we all trooped to the kitchen, where Hetty busied herself making hot chocolate for Jaz. Ben ran to Jaz for a hug, and Winston graced her with a slow I love you eye blink.