"All right," Roseanne agreed reluctantly. She stood up and headed for the swinging doors that led back to the kitchen. Ali glanced around. By then the customers at the other nearby tables had all left. Carrie had made sure that theirs was the only occupied table in that section of the restaurant.
A waitressa different one this timecame over and took Dave's order.
"All right," Ali said once the waitress left. "Here's my plan. I'll call you and say that I met Roseanne here because she wanted me to buy some of her jewelry but that she slipped away while I was in the restroom. With any kind of luck whoever's listening in on my phone will believe she's gotten away from them, too. Then, later on, we'll be able to smuggle her out of here and get her to Victor."
Ali was talking to Dave but he didn't appear to be paying attention. He seemed to be focused on some distant part of the restaurant.
"Hello!" Ali said. "Are you even listening to me?"
Turning to follow his gaze, Ali saw two men standing talking to Carrie, who was listening carefully and nodding. Eventually they began making their way across the dining room. One was a tall, rangy black man Ali had never seen before. The other she recognized at onceDetective Montgomery Taylor with the Riverside Sheriff's Department Homicide Division, one of the two detectives who had interviewed Ali in the aftermath of Paul's death.
"Oh, no," Ali whispered under her breath. "What's he doing here? Don't tell me they're coming after me again."
The men walked directly to Ali and Dave's table. Without waiting for an invitation, they seated themselves. The man Ali didn't know nodded cordially in Dave's direction. The two of them shook hands.
"Good to see you, bro," the man said. "Where is Roseanne Maxwell?"
"In the kitchen," Dave responded. "Hiding out as a dishwasher. Are the takedown teams all in place?"
The stranger nodded. "Pretty much," he said. "We're just waiting for the restaurant to clear out some and for a couple more of my men to arrive on the scene."
"Roseanne's in the kitchen?" Detective Taylor asked. "I'll go make sure we don't lose her." With that, he got up and headed for the kitchen.
Feeling lost, Ali watched the detective's retreating figure. "What takedown teams?" she asked. "Who are these guys? What are they doing here? What's going on?"
"Sorry," Dave said. "I didn't have a chance to tell you, Ali. This is my friend Ezekiel Washington. We call him Easy. He's with the DEA. I believe you already know Detective Taylor." Dave waved in the direction of the swinging kitchen door where Taylor had disappeared.
"Glad to meet you," Easy said with an engaging grin calculated to match his name. "I remember seeing you on the news when you used to be on TV here. I guess you could say I was a fan."
"Thank you," Ali said stiffly. "I'm delighted to know that, I'm sure. But you still haven't told me what's going on here."
"We're in the process of rolling up a major drug operation," he answered. "We've been working on this case for months. We weren't quite ready to make our move, but with your husband dead and with the possibility of your stirring up the pot on your Web site, we're having to go ahead and stage our raids now after all. If we wait any longer, there's a good chance you may write something in your blog that will give away what we're doing. At this point in the investigation, we can't afford to have a loose cannon on deck."
"So now I'm a loose cannon?" an irate Ali demanded of Dave Holman. Then she turned back to Easy Washington.
"Sorry," Easy said. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. What happened to your husband is terribly unfortunate. It was never our intention that he would be at risk, and believe me, we're doing everything we can to bring his killers to justice."
"Not your intention amp;?" Ali began.
"Mr. Grayson had been working with us for some time, and that's what it takes to bring down a whole organization like thistime. If you move too fast, you just get pieces of the puzzlesmall fry mostlyrather than the people in charge. And that's what we're trying to do herebring down Lucia Joaquin's entire group, from top to bottom. Mr. Grayson came to us several months ago when he first started having concerns about what was going on with the Sumo Sudoku group. He agreed to do what he could to help, and he understood that it wouldn't happen overnight."
Ali could barely believe her ears. "Paul was working with you? Is that why he was killed?"
"Not exactly," Easy replied. "We've known for some time that our communications system had been compromised, so we were careful that our contacts with your husband were done in an untraceable fashion."
"You're telling me someone's been tapping your phones as well?" Ali asked.
Easy nodded.
"But you're the DEA."
"Exactly," Easy said. "And that's a big part of the problem here. We believe that someone from the Joaquin organization penetrated LEMO and installed a Trojan horse."
"LEMO?" Ali asked. "What's that? It sounds like a cartoon for kids."
"LEMO, not Elmo," Easy explained. "The Law Enforcement Monitoring Organization. Think of it as the wiretapping central office for all the law enforcement agencies in the western United States, and it happens to be located right here in L.A. If, as we suspect, someone was able to install a keystroke-logger inside the system, they automatically have access to all our passwords and communications. They know exactly who we've been listening in on and what we plan to do. They've been making a shambles of our operations for months. Evidently they've also been doing some unauthorized listening on their own."
"Including my phones?" Ali asked.
Easy nodded. "And the phones of anyone else whose activities interested them, including Roseanne Maxwell. And that's where we got in trouble. Your husband was already working for us when Roseanne called and asked him to come to us with what was going on."
"You're saying Paul was killed because it seemed like he was going to go to the authorities with what he knew, not because he was already doing so."
Easy Washington nodded again. "At first I was afraid someone on our sidesomeone who knew about his involvement with ushad betrayed him, that we had a mole in our midst. That's why it was so helpful to us initially that everyone thought you were responsible for Mr. Grayson's death. That took a lot of the pressure off us and gave us a chance to investigate the situation. Now, though, we're pretty sure that Roseanne's phone call is what set your husband's murder plot in motion."
Ali was struggling to comprehend what was being said. Was it possible Paul really had been actively at work behind the scenes to help out in a DEA investigation? Over time his actions toward her had led Ali to think of the man as an entirely contemptible human being. Easy Washington seemed to consider him to be some kind of hero. For Ali, that didn't quite compute. And what about April? Had she been with Paul in all this or against him?
"You're saying Paul was helping you."
"He was a huge help," Easy said. "I can't tell you how sorry I am that we weren't able to move fast enough to prevent this senseless tragedy."
Ali stood up.
"Where are you going?" Dave asked.
"Back to the hotel," Ali said. "This is a bit more than I can handle."
"You can't go back to the hotel," Dave said.
"Why not?"
"Because you're checked out," he answered. "With everything that's going on, Easy and I thought it would be best if you were moved to a different location. Your mom packed up your stuff. I've got it all in my car. Your mother and Chris have moved out, too. Chris is staying with friends. I got your mother a room at the Motel 6 just up the corridor from mine. Edie said you probably wouldn't like it, but there's a room there for you as well."
Ali was suddenly more than moderately annoyed. "You moved my stuff?" she demanded.
"Just for the time being," Easy said reassuringly. "Until we can stage our raids and have all the suspects in custody."