Right as Rain

'What's so funny?'

'I already had this conversation once today.'

Quinn adjusted himself. He felt his erection returning, and he moved his hips against hers. He gave her a couple of short strokes to let her know he was still alive.

'You tryin' to stay in or get out?'

'Just testing the water,' said Quinn.

'The water's warm.'

'Deep, too.'

'Cut it out.' Juana smiled. 'Some guys I know, they'd be tripping over themselves right about now, trying to get out the front door.'

'I'd be trippin' over somethin', I tried to leave right now.'

'Stop bragging.'

'Anyway, I want to stay right here.'

'You tellin' me you're not the type to hit it and split?'

'I've done it; I'm not gonna lie about that. But I don't want to do that with you.'

They were still on the couch. Quinn pulled an afghan up over them. The fire had weakened, and a chill had come in to the room. He looked at his white skin atop her brown.

'Think we can make this work?' asked Quinn.

'Do you want it to?'

'Yes.'

Strange was under the covers, lying beside Janine, when Greco walked into the room. He dropped the chuck bone at the foot of the bed, then moved it between his paws as he got himself down on the carpet.

'He's tellin' me it's time to go home.'

'I wish you didn't have to,' said Janine. 'It's nice and warm under this blanket.'

'It wouldn't be proper to have Lionel come home and know that I was here.'

'He already knows, Derek.'

'It wouldn't be right, just the same.'

Janine got up on one elbow and ran her fingers through the short hairs on Strange's chest.

'That lawyer I do business with from time to time,' said Strange. 'That Fifth Streeter with the cheap suit?'

'Markowitz?' said Janine.

'Him. He owes us money, doesn't he?'

'He's got an unpaid balance, I recall.'

'Give him a call tomorrow, see if he can't get us the transcripts of the review board hearings on the Quinn case.'

'You want to wipe out his debt?'

'See how much it is and settle it the way you see fit.'

'What's your feeling on this Quinn?'

Strange had been thinking of Terry Quinn all night. Quinn was violent, fearless, sensitive, and disturbed… all of those things at once. A cocktail of troubles, a guy who could come in handy in situations like they'd had today, but not the kind of guy who needed to be wearing a uniform, representing the law.

'I don't know enough about him yet,' said Strange. 'Next thing I'm going to do, I'm going to read those transcripts. Then I'm gonna go out and try and talk to the other players.'

'You think Quinn was wrong?'

'I think he's a white man who saw a black man holding a gun on another white man in the street. He reacted the way he's been programmed to react in this society, going back to birth.'

'You saying he's that way?'

'He's like most white people. Don't you know, most of 'em will tell you they don't have a racist bone in their bodies.'

'They're pure of mind and heart.'

'Quinn doesn't think he's that way,' said Strange. 'But he is.'

12

Nestor Rodriguez looked in the rearview mirror and spotted the green Ford, ten car lengths back. He punched a number into the cell phone cradled beside him, then snatched the phone up as it began to ring on the other end.

'Lizardo.'

'Brother.'

'We're almost there. I just now called Boone and told him to pick us up.'

'We have to do this every time for the midget?'

'The jerkoff doesn't want us to know where he and his father live. He insists.'

'Why can't we just make the trade in the parking lot?'

'Because the little one likes to scale out the manteca and test it at his house, in front of us. He's afraid of being ripped off.'

'Shit,' said Lizardo. It sounded like 'chit.'

The Rodriguez brothers did not have to worry about their conversation going out over the radio waves. Nestor had paid a young software engineer in Florida to alter his and his brother's electronic serial numbers and mobile identification numbers. Also, a Secure Cellular device called a Jammer Scrambler, attached to both of their phones, altered their voices.

Nestor was traveling north on 270 in a blue Ford Contour SVT. Lizardo Rodriguez followed in a green version of the same car. There were five kilograms of Colombian brown heroin in the trunk of Nestor's Ford and five in the trunk of Lizardo's.

The Contours looked liked family sedans, but at 200 horses were hardly that. The cars did 0 to 60 in 6.9 and could top out at over 140 miles per hour. The Fords' bland body styling was perfect for their runs, but the Rodriguez brothers preferred more flash driving on the streets of Orlando, their adopted city. Nestor in particular, who was the unmarried one of the two, was in love with pretty cars. He owned a new Mustang Cobra, also an SVT. His did 60 in 5.5. He was proud that he had not touched it cosmetically, as many Spanish were prone to do, but had left it stock. Well, not all the way stock. He had put two decals, silhouettes of naked girls with white-girl hair on the back of the car, with 'Ladies Invited' spelled out between the girls in neon letters. But that was the only extra thing he had done to the car.

'Who were you talking to a few minutes ago?' said Nestor.

'My woman,' said Lizardo. 'Her father doesn't want to change his crops. I tried to explain to him, the cartel will provide the fertilizer and the seeds, and a guarantee that what he reaps we will sell. The poppy will give him two crops a year, twice what he'll get from his single crop of coffee beans. And we'll pay his field-workers four times what they earn to harvest the crop.'

'What is the problem?'

'He is a peasant,' said Lizardo. 'That is the problem. He sees the American helicopters, the black Bells with the door gunners, and he is afraid. He sees me, his own son-in-law, and he is afraid. He sees his own shadow, brother, and he is afraid.'

'Farmers,' said Nestor with contempt.

'Yes. I'm only trying to help him, to get my woman off my back. So that maybe then she can get on her back, for a change.'

Nestor understood why Lizardo's woman did not care to sleep with him. Lizardo was often drunk, and when he was drunk he was not a gentleman in bed. When he was so drunk that he couldn't be a man, he hit her with his fists. Nestor believed that it was sometimes necessary to strike a woman, they expected it, even, but women lost their spirit if you struck them all the time.

'Bring him to stay with you in Florida,' said Nestor. 'You can afford it.'

'He doesn't want to come. And I don't want the filthy bastard in my house. He showers, but still he smells like the country.'

'Maybe your woman's brother can help, talk to your father-in-law for you.'

'The priest? Ah! He has trouble helping himself.'

'Is he struggling with his vow of celibacy?'

'He was never celibate. They have a saying in the old village: All the children call the priest father, except for his own children, who call him uncle!'

Nestor and Lizardo shared hearty laughter. Then Nestor hit his turn signal and got into the right lane, making sure his brother followed.

Nestor checked his face in the rearview. His black hair was combed back and set in place with gel, and he wore a neat Vandyke beard. He had shaved the hair that had been between his eyebrows his entire life, so that now he had two separate eyebrows. He wore two gold earrings, one small hoop in each ear. His clothing was neat but not flashy. Nestor studied the pictures in the Esquire and GQ magazines so that he could see the latest styles and the proper way to dress. Then he bought clothing that looked like it did in those pictures but without the fancy labels for which you paid extra. He shopped at the Men's Wearhouse and Today's Man.

A mile down the interstate stood a strip shopping center bordering a field where houses were being constructed. The parking lot was half filled. Nestor found a row of cars with two empty spaces. He pulled into a space and watched his brother pull into the other, situated at the very end of the row. Nestor reached beneath the seat and picked up his gun, a Sig Sauer.9 that held an eight-shot magazine. He slid the Sig into a leather holster inside his jacket.