Instead, he did nothing and she took another sip and looked at him from beneath the waves of her luminous black hair.
"You're crazier than he is, Crease," she said. "Two years undercover, playing both sides, working me. I've seen you in action. You're clever, crafty, and you thrill to kill. You've got that same glacier gaze when you want it."
"I didn't work you," Crease told her, though he knew he had, even without fully realizing it. "And I only played both sides because that's the way they wanted it."
"You weren't faking. What you were doing, it was all real."
"Yeah."
"You're as bad a boy as any of them."
"You going to lecture me?" he asked. It was probably what attracted her to him in the first place.
She put the glass down and said, "Did you ever care about me? Or was I just a way to get to him?"
"You never gave me anything I could use in court, Morena. They never wanted to bring him up anyway. He's safer than a priest who spits on the sidewalk. I fell for you the first day I saw you."
"All you had to do was ask him. He would've given me to you."
He hated when she talked like that. Laying it on the line, letting the jealousy twist inside him. Reminding him that she used to be on the street before Tucco made her his lady, and then she was a kept woman anyhow. She liked to torment him a little that way, get him riled, charged up, before they hit the bed.
"I wasn't about to ask anybody for you," he said.
She started to move to him but he couldn't help himself any longer and lunged, carried her to the far side of the Bentley where she smacked up against the bar. Bottles rattled and rang. His mouth found hers, but he couldn't swallow her down fast enough or breathe her in deeply enough, and when he grabbed her she let out a cry of pain and amusement. He backed off, afraid of hurting the kid. His son Stevie was eight years old and already a victim of his growing fever, but somehow Crease felt like this one, born into a world of murder and betrayal, had a better chance. How sick was that?
She was right, they were all right, he really was crazy. He said, "You shouldn't have come."
"Why not? This is where everybody else is. This is where it's all happening. Why should I miss out?" The corners of her mouth were crimped with anger. Her dark eyes blazed, her luxurious nightshade hair wreathed to frame her face. "Why did you do it?" she asked. "Why did you leave like that?"
Perhaps his eyes were full of intense, unclear emotion, the way his father's had been the night he died, because she had to glance away. Crease's thoughts raced but no words formed, nothing came to him. This was his chance to explain, but there was just nothing there.
Finally he said, "I don't know."
"You don't know? That's it? You don't know?"
"Yeah."
And he didn't, but he had to admit he hadn't been asking himself the question. He really didn't care much anymore, which seemed to put things in perspective. The not caring. The understanding that what he was doing made no sense to anyone, not even himself, and yet it was the only thing that could be done.
She must've realized that because she let it slide by. You did weird things. You lived a strange life. She said, "I've missed you."
"You say that like you haven't seen me in ten years. It's been half a week."
"It feels longer."
He nodded. He stared at her and thought of the last time they'd been together, in Tucco's penthouse apartment in Tribeca, looking out over the water. They'd just finished making love and he'd slipped into that zone where he was tired and content and wanted to go out and do something stupid and touristy like taking in a Broadway show. The feeling hit him rarely and always while Morena's scent was still on him.
Morena had been in the bathroom a long time, and just when he was about to get up and go check on her she came out naked holding a home pregnancy test. She cocked an eyebrow and said, "You're a daddy."
He believed her. She never hid behind a line or a rap. She was herself and never played any games. So far as he knew, she'd never told a lie to him or even to Tucco. She always threw it out there and if you didn't like it, the trouble was yours.
So if she said the kid was his, it was his.
A sense of elation began to surge through his chest for a moment before quickly dissipating. He had a son and four or five or six adopted kids, and now there was another on the way. He expected her to run over and show him the test, parading the tiny blue line in front of him the way Joan had, clutching the little piss-soaked stick of plastic to her chest. But Morena had already thrown it in the wastebasket next to the bed, and Crease didn't have the heart to check for himself, go digging around in the trash for it.
A residue of her dried sweat powdered her body as she moved to him across Tucco's bed, and as she touched him he turned to her and pressed his lips to the spot under her ear which made her purr and said, "I'm a cop."
She took it in stride, the way she took everything. As he lay there she told him, "This is something we're gonna have to see about."
He left her then and went to his apartment. He grabbed his badge from where it was hidden behind the microwave beside his father's. Proven fact: burglars, thugs, smash and dashers, they'll tear a place apart, look in the sugar jar, in the coffee grounds, the ice cube tray, the toilet tank, but they always miss the tiny area behind the microwave. Probably worried they're going to somehow zap themselves.
He marched down to the club where Tucco and his left-hand man Cruez were in the back getting lap dances. He walked into the place and thought, I can shoot them both now and no one would care.
His lieutenant wouldn't mind. Even after twenty-six months, with all the evidence Crease had brought in, nobody wanted to make the case. They all wanted more. The mayor's office, the D.A., the narc squad, the vice squad. They wanted the connections, the inventories, the emperors and despots in South America who supplied the suppliers who supplied the bosses who ran the guys who ran guys like Tucco.
Crease would never get enough evidence for them to allow him to make the bust.
The girl dancing on top of Tucco had his belt in both hands, sliding them down. She stopped her grinding and got a spooked look, like she knew Crease was a cop. She wanted out of the room but Crease blocked the way.
The other one hanging on Cruez was too busy to turn around. The room was small, a lot of bad could happen there in very short order. Tucco's mouth was smeared with red lipstick, it made him look like he'd been chewing rabbits raw. He glared at Crease and said, "You think she's going to give me back my five hundred bucks?"
Crease said, "Listen, I'm a cop."
He flashed the badge, realizing later it was his old man's. It must've been an unconscious way to cause another problem. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he must've wanted to really get the ball rolling, give Tucco some clues, get his ass in gear. Tucco had a near-perfect memory. He'd instantly memorized the badge number and later gotten his tech boys to do a search on them, track them down. That's what led him to Hangtree.
If it had been his own badge, nothing would've come up. There were no files anymore. Everything about him was deleted. That must've been why he'd taken his father's instead.
Crease wondered why he did things like that.
Cruez climbed out from beneath the other stripper, who was so stoned that it took her a few seconds to realize he was gone. She was still making vaguely serpentine movements as he went for his gun. Crease took two steps forward and pressed his. 38 under Cruez's blunt chin and said, "Not yet."
Tucco was smiling, always so sharp and way ahead of the game. "Put that thing away. Nothing's gonna happen. Your friends on the force, they know what you've done for me?"