"They know."
"Your cell gonna be next to mine?"
"Probably not."
"You don't have your handcuffs out. You're not busting me. So you don't have enough for a case."
"I've got enough for fifty cases," Crease told him, "but they don't care. Nobody does. So no, I'm not busting you. I've got some unfinished business I've got to take care of first. I'll be gone a few days, no more than a week. When I get back, I'll look you up again, and we can settle whatever score we've got."
"Only score I see is the one you've been working."
"Maybe so."
"You're crazy, man," Tucco said. "I've never known one like you before."
"Be glad," Crease said and walked out.
~* ~
In the back of the Bentley, he held onto Morena another minute. He pressed his forehead to hers and thought of everything he'd never told her. Maybe it would get through anyway. She didn't know he was married, didn't know about Stevie, but there was no time to get into it right now. He kissed her beneath her ear and she hummed at the back of her throat.
He didn't want to push Tucco too much at the moment. Cool as the guy was, and as much as he dug being shoved, Tucco might get a little wild about him and Morena making it in a two hundred thousand dollar car. Worried about the state of his interior if not his woman. She said, "You know what he was doing the whole ride up here? He was giggling."
Crease couldn't believe it and looked at her. "Really?"
She nodded. "He thought it was funny. He liked the way it all went down. You walking into the club that way, cowboy-style. He's dealt with hardasses and maniacs but never a man with your flair."
"Did you tell him you're pregnant?"
"Of course. He doesn't care. He was trying to get under my skin by saying he'd raise the baby after you were dead. Start him off dealing when he was seven or eight in the schoolyards. If it was a girl, get her out on the street early, vying for the pedo trade." Crease saw that Tucco had indeed gotten under her skin. Her eyes were hard as slate. "Like I wouldn't shoot him in the back of his head before I allowed that. I might just do it anyway."
Crease didn't have to worry about the baby. She'd do anything she had to in order to keep the kid out of the life. He eased against her once more, and when their mouths met they twisted harder with near-desperation in each other's arms, the kiss rearing into something else. Neither one of them broke off, neither of them breathing. Morena let out a low wildcat cry and Crease urged the thing on, the pain and the need, the wonder of the next minute.
He didn't know when it ended but when he dropped back against the seat she was two feet away, all the way over there.
"Why are you in this place?" she asked.
"I've got some old accounts to square, I think."
"You think?"
"I'm still trying to work things out."
"Which things?"
"It has to do with my father."
"Are you going to kill somebody?"
"Maybe not."
She shook her head a little sadly, like he was nowhere near in focus and never would be. "What are you going to do next?" Angling her chin at the window. "About him."
"We're gonna run around the block for another couple of days, and then we'll get past the rap and we'll see what happens."
She grabbed the sides of his face and looked him square in the eyes. "You can't beat him. You might be crazier than him, but he's faster. You can't win that way."
He didn't like hearing it out loud, in her voice, the truth that had been circling around in his head for days. Not only that he wasn't fast enough, but that he was nuts. He didn't mind walking the edge but he didn't want her seeing him there.
He was fast, he was so fast his hands moved without him, but Tucco was something else altogether. "You're probably right, but that doesn't change anything."
"What if I said I loved you and wanted you to be with me? That I had enough money to get away, start over?"
"I'd probably say I loved you and wanted to be with you too," he told her. He wasn't sure if either one of them really loved or could ever love the other one the way they should, but you did the best you could. "It'd give me more reason to fight, but it wouldn't affect the outcome much. That's what I'd probably say."
She released his face and poured herself another drink. "Go then, finish what you've got to finish. His patience is going to wear out soon, you don't have more than two more days."
"That's all I need," he said.
He'd have done all he could do by then, and would either have an answer or would give up. He expected to give up.
"Good," she said, "because I don't have much patience either. Oh, and don't be surprised if he kills somebody in this town first, just to ramp himself up. It might be somebody you know."
She opened the door and made him climb out over her.
Cruez was waiting in the street. Tucco was staring up the road. He glanced at Crease and said, "These llamas, they on farms?"
"Yeah."
"What if I told you all is forgiven? Really. You being a cop, it doesn't matter to me. I've got plenty on the payroll, and none of them helped me like you have. Never had better times with anybody else. There's no outlaw as good as a dirty cop. You're my right hand."
"What about me?" Cruez asked.
"You. How many times do I have to tell you? You, you're my left hand."
"Oh."
Crease knew there would be a lot of talk, but he hadn't expected it to be like this. Tucco was serious. It could all go back to the way it was. He could still work for the cops and still do what he did in the underground. Maybe quit the cops and just let himself go.
But Morena. And the baby.
Strange he should give up his wife and son to the life, but now, Tucco's mistress pregnant with his child-a kid he might never even hold-should somehow drive him from it.
What the hell did it mean?
"So?" Tucco said. "Open your mouth, tell me what you're thinking. Come on, you know what I say is true. I don't lie. You ready to pick up where we left off? Maybe start bringing in some chinks from Canada? Got that nice shipment of H coming up next week. Need you with me on that."
Tucco lied all the time, to everyone about everything. It was sort of funny to realize he thought he was honest, maybe even noble in his own way with the people who mattered to him. He had the straight face and dead gaze for everybody, and the lies poured out of him so easily that he often mistook them for sincerity.
"No," Crease told him.
"No? You sure about that, man?" He showed his teeth for an instant and then the smile, or the grimace, was gone. "You know what you're doing?"
"Yeah."
"I don't think you do. You're not yourself, and anybody who knows you, really knows you like I do, can see it. I think this place has got you all confused, it's screwing with your head. Coming back here, it was bad idea. All these trees, they'd drive anybody crazy. You're concrete and steel and asphalt. This clean air is killing you."
Maybe it was true. "Could be. How about you? How are you feeling?"
"It's making me sick too. So let's get the hell out of here and go home."
"In two days we'll see what we see," Crease said. "Until then, you go visit with the llamas, all right? Don't snuff any old ladies."
Chapter Nine
He tried Burke's hardware store first, but Sam Burke had already gone home for the day. A teenager putting away six-foot lengths of copper tubing told him the store would be closing up in ten minutes, it was already after six. Crease had let the time get away from him. Morena's scent was still on him and it was making him a little heady.
Crease asked the teen if Burke still lived out on Deerwood Road, and the kid told him he wasn't allowed to give out that kind of information. Crease got back in the 'Stang and got turned around twice before he remembered which direction Deerwood Road was in. Not everything from the past was that close to the surface.