LOVER UNDER COVER Page 5

  Morgan was a quiet man in his late forties, a calming influence on the varied personalities in the Marina del Mar detective division. Quisto had always respected the man, but his respect had turned to a genuine liking after Morgan's actions during the lengthy investigation that had thrown Chance and Shea together. And especially after the tragic shooting that had almost torn them apart again.

  "Got a second, Lieutenant?"

  Morgan looked up from what appeared to be another in a seemingly endless stream of departmental updates on ever-changing case law.

  "Anything to get away from this," he said, putting the memo down. "Come on in."

  Quisto entered, but didn't sit in the chair Morgan pointed. "Remember Eddie Salazar?"

  Morgan's forehead creased, then cleared. "The kid who came to you with the info on that shipload coming in for the Pack?"

  Quisto nodded. "He's dead. Murdered. Set up to look like an OD."

  "Damn. He was only about sixteen, wasn't he?"

  "Worse. Fourteen. Look, Lieutenant, I'd like to check into this a bit, if you don't mind."

  "Is Trinity West on it?"

  "They will be. Their Juvie detective got the case as a straight overdose. He just found out it wasn't and called me. He'll be turning it over to their felony unit. But you know how loaded down they are. With Chance gone, I've got some time. I'd like to see what I can find."

  Morgan looked at him silently for a moment. "Feeling responsible?"

  Quisto let out a compressed breath. Morgan knew his men well, and there was little point in trying to deny it. "Yes," he admitted.

  "All right. Just make sure you check in over there. I don't want you stepping on any toes."

  "No problem."

  Those words were, he realized an hour later, far too optimistic.

  "That's all I can tell you," the man across the desk said, leaning back in his rather pretentious leather chair with a condescending smile.

  Quisto stared at the long carved name plaque on the desk. Lieutenant Ken Robards, Commander, Detective Division, it proclaimed grandly in gilt letters. As soon as he identified himself, Quisto had been directed here by an uncomfortable-seeming detective sergeant whose felony unit desk plaque simply read—in plain white letters—Sgt. Cruz Gregerson.

  And he'd run into Gage on the way into the lieutenant's office, and he didn't think he'd imagined the young detective's edginess, either. All of a sudden, the Trinity West detectives were a nervous bunch.

  "Good luck," Gage had said wryly, nodding toward the closed office door. "He's … kind of a pain. He's the last holdover from the old days, and he acts it. A dinosaur. He won't go out of his way to help you."

  And now, as he sat looking across at the older man, with his buzz-cut blond hair and his heavy jowls, Quisto thought perhaps Gage had understated the facts just slightly. The fat stub of a rather nasty-looking cigar sagged in the ashtray on Robards's desk—unusual in itself in these days of no smoking in public buildings—and his teeth had the yellowed look of someone who indulged in that particular vice regularly.

  "That's all you can tell me?" Quisto repeated, not bothering to hide his disbelief. "An informant of mine is murdered, and you just say, 'Stay out of it'?"

  "It's our case, Detective Romero. We'll handle it. And we'll handle it without any help from you fancy types in Marina del Mar."

  "I never implied that you needed any help. I have a personal interest in this case—"

  "So you said. And I said forget it. It's our jurisdiction. Go home, Romero."

  Cruz Gregerson, an apologetic expression on his face, was waiting for him when he walked out of the office.

  "Sorry about this," the young sergeant said. "Look, I don't know what the deal is, but I know it wasn't his—" he motioned with a thumb toward the office Quisto had just left, in a gesture that fell somewhat short of respectful "—decision. Not that he's ever been much on interagency cooperation. He's old-school, from back when it was all more like competition than teamwork. But this … it came down from higher up."

  Quisto studied the other man for a moment, seeing the paradox in his name mirrored in his dark, nearly black hair and bright blue eyes. "The chief?"

  Gregerson shrugged. "I don't know. Possibly. He's not like most brass, he keeps his hand in—on the day-to-day street level, I mean."

  "Unusual," Quisto observed.

  "Chief de los Reyes is an unusual man."

  "So I've heard." Quisto rubbed a hand over his jaw. "If not him, who?"

  "Captain Mallery, maybe. V and I runs out of his office, and they handle the Pack. But the only word I got was to keep you out of it."

  Unusual, Quisto thought, to have a captain in charge of Vice and Intelligence. But he'd already gotten the impression that Trinity West was an unusual place.

  "Who's going to be handling the case here?" he asked.

  "That's the weird part. I don't know. Not yet. Robards says he's considering who to assign the case to—V and I, since the Pack may be involved, or the Felony Unit."

  "While it gets cold?"

  "Colder by the minute." Gregerson shook his head. "Like I said, I don't get it. But I'd highly recommend staying out of Robards's way. He's a vindictive old bastard."

  "Thanks for the warning."

  "Anytime."

  Quisto headed for the door, then turned to go past the desk where he'd sat talking to Gage yesterday. He was there, on the phone, that rebellious shock of pale hair falling over his forehead as he talked. Quisto stopped.

  "…strictly an LOPC booking, Mrs. Wagner. Yes, it does stand for Lack of Parental Control."

  Gage glanced up, saw Quisto standing there and rolled his eyes expressively as he listened. Quisto couldn't help grinning back.

  "No, Mrs. Wagner," Gage said into the phone, "it's not meant to imply that you're not a good parent, it's only because that's the way the section is worded."

  When at last Gage hung up, he was shaking his head. "The kids I can deal with," he said with a wry smile. "It's the parents who make me nuts."

  Quisto smiled sympathetically; the juvenile/sex crimes detail had never been an assignment he'd coveted. "Maybe you need a change."

  Gage's smile faded, and something Quisto could only have described as a shadow flickered in his eyes. "No. I have too much to do here," he said quietly.

  Quisto sensed he was talking about something much more and much deeper than placating parents who were more concerned about what their child's problems said about them than about the child. But as soon as he noticed it, the shadow vanished, and Gage was smiling again.

  "How'd it go with the old … man?"

  Quisto smiled at the hesitation, easily able to fill in the word Gage had changed at the last minute. Apparently there was more than a little tension among the men having to deal with the Trinity West detective commander. Lieutenant Morgan was looking even better than usual.

  "He told me to butt out. Jurisdiction and all that crap. Any idea what's going on?" he asked.

  Gage shook his head. "All I know is I had to turn over my file and all my notes to Robards this morning. He told me whatever I knew was to be considered confidential, especially to you." Gage's mouth quirked wryly. "Of course, I'd already told you all I knew. But I didn't tell him that."

  "Thanks."

  Gage looked at him for a moment. "Why do I get the feeling you're not going to butt out?"

  Quisto grinned, but shook his head. "You're probably better off if I don't answer that."

  "I had that feeling, too."

  A few minutes later, Quisto was back in his car—his own small red coupe, instead of the luxurious black BMW he and Chance used on undercover assignments, courtesy of the federal asset-forfeiture Statutes—and tapping his finger restlessly on the steering wheel as he sat waiting to pull out of the department parking lot into the heavy lunch-hour traffic on Trinity Street West.

  He didn't understand this. He didn't understand it at all. He'd been completely stonewalled. It was natural for a departm
ent to be wary of others meddling in their jurisdiction, but not like this. Besides, they knew he had a personal interest in this, and that should have gotten him a quick go-ahead.

  He opened the center console between the front bucket seats and took out a small cellular phone. He flipped it open, turned it on and dialed quickly. Lieutenant Morgan answered on the second ring, and Quisto quickly told him what had happened. There was a long moment of silence on the line, long enough to make Quisto nervous.

  "Lieutenant?"

  "I'm sorry, Quisto. I have to withdraw my permission for you to get involved in this."

  "What?" Quisto was stunned; Morgan never wavered in backing his men.

  "I have no choice. And I can't explain, either, so don't ask me to. You have no official go-ahead. I'm sorry."

  He didn't have to explain, Quisto thought as he said only that he understood and disconnected. Obviously Lieutenant Robards had picked up his phone the moment Quisto walked out of his office. And although Morgan's wording could be interpreted as meaning that what he did on his own was his business, it also told him that Morgan didn't want to know about it. And effectively cut him off from any department support.

  He spotted an opening in the steady stream of traffic and dived into it, just in time to hit the red light at the corner. He sat there for a moment, tapping his finger again. Then he picked up the phone and dialed again, a different number. A familiar female voice answered.

  "Detective Division."

  "Hola, querida," he said. "¿Como estás?"

  "I'm not your darling, and I'm fine in spite of it," came the laughing answer.

  "Ah, Elena, you wound me."

  "You'll recover, Romero. What can I do for you?"

  For once, he wasn't ready with a quick, racy suggestion in answer. You're losing it, Romero, he thought as he asked quickly, "Put me down for a vacation day, will you? Something's come up."

  "Are you all right?"

  The instant concern in the detective secretary's voice made him smile; Elena Colfax might be a martinet of sorts when it came to her job, but she was the first one there if someone was in trouble.

  "I'm fine. There's just something I need to do, and it's personal. Better put me down for tomorrow, too."

  "All right. The lieutenant knows?"

  Quisto hesitated. He knew Morgan would easily guess what he was up to, and he didn't want Elena to get into trouble. So he gave her something she could say that was, in fact, true. "He suggested himself that I take some time while Chance is on vacation. Something about my having two months' worth of time on the books."

  Elena laughed. "All right. I'll put you down."

  He disconnected just as the light changed. He'd made the turn before he realized that, instead of heading back toward Marina del Mar, he'd turned the other way on Trinity Street West, heading to where the street changed to Trinity Street East—and straight toward the Neutral Zone.

  He nearly turned right back around. He even changed lanes, getting ready to do just that. Then he realized what he was doing. And changed right back again. He'd be damned if he'd run like a scalded puppy just because Caitlin Murphy didn't think much of him.

  At least he assumed she didn't. Over and above her anger at him for what had happened to Eddie. She had, after all, called him … a bit dramatic. And he was reasonably sure she hadn't meant it as a compliment. He'd been called many things by many women, some complimentary and some not so, but dramatic wasn't one of them. Not in so many words, anyway.

  Women, Quisto thought. Now that was an area he needed to pay some attention to. For a guy who'd once had the busiest social life in the department, there had been a dearth of feminine presence in his life of late. He couldn't really remember when it had started, but he had a sneaking suspicion it had begun somewhere around the time Chance and Shea blasted his illusions about love to bits.

  Just watching the hell they'd gone through for each other had rattled him; their happiness since they'd been married had made him wonder if he should do some reassessing. He'd managed to shrug off the relatively happy marriages of his siblings by falling back on the quite truthful fact that none of them were married to cops, who had one of the highest divorce rates of any profession. And if his aversion to involvement went any deeper that that, he'd managed to ignore it.

  But Chance had been the worst kind of cop for any woman to get involved with—deeply wounded, hanging on day by day, full of guilt and despair—and Shea had fallen in love with him anyway. And her love had been Chance's salvation; the walled-off, taciturn man Quisto had met four years ago bore little resemblance to the Chance Buckner of today, secure in his wife's love and a doting father to Quisto's godson.

  And that kind of change was as frightening as it was amazing. As much as he had come to like Shea, the amount of power she had over Chance made Quisto wary. He didn't like the idea of anyone having that much power over him, although it certainly didn't seem to bother Chance any. And if he was honest, Quisto had to admit it went both ways; nothing in life mattered more to Shea than Chance, and now their son. And he wasn't sure he liked the idea of having that much power over someone else's happiness any better.

  But on days when he was feeling particularly sappy, which seemed to be coming more often of late, he began to question his own certainty that such a life was not for him. He'd told Chance once that he left the fireworks and trumpets to the serious guys, that he believed in pure recreation. He'd never figured back then that someday the game might get boring.

  Nor had he ever figured he'd be spending time lost in introspective contemplation, a habit he'd never had before and didn't care for now. If he was going to contemplate anything, it should be Eddie Salazar's death. And what he was going to do about it. Because no matter what the brass at Trinity West said, he was involved in this.

  He was a lot more concerned about what Lieutenant Morgan had said. He both liked and respected the man. But he also knew that, regardless of what orders Morgan had been given, he would understand why Quisto couldn't follow them. He had to do this. He had to find out who had murdered a fourteen-year-old boy to make a point.

  And there was one very obvious place for him to start. And he wasn't going to avoid it, just to stay out of Caitlin Murphy's way.

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  « ^ »

  "You've got to stop leaving that back door open."

  Caitlin stifled a yelp as she whirled around. "My God, you startled me!"

  "Exactly. And I wasn't even trying. Anybody off the street could wander in here."

  For a moment, she just stared at Quisto Romero, thinking it quite unfair that any one man had those looks and that much flair and charm. He was lounging negligently against the doorjamb, dressed today in a pair of dark blue pants and a pale blue knit shirt that set off his dark coloring and golden-brown skin and made her reconsider her earlier assessment of him. He might be a couple of inches shorter than his over-six-foot partner, and more wiry than bulky, but he was no slouch in the muscularity department.

  Eddie had said he was un gran galante, a real ladies' man, and she believed it. She was accustomed to Hispanic good looks; many of her kids here and at school were gorgeous, with lovely skin and huge brown eyes that could melt the hardest of hearts. But this man was … amazing. He looked as if he'd stepped out of some bas-relief on an ancient temple. With those intense dark eyes, softened by long, thick lashes, and that thick, raven-black hair, combed back from his forehead in a neatly feathered cut, she'd be willing to bet there was a string of broken hearts in his wake that would stretch from here back to his police station in Marina del Mar.

  "You really should keep that door shut," he said, shoving off with his shoulder and walking toward her. "And locked when you're here alone."

  "I don't have air-conditioning in here," she explained. "With that door closed, it gets far too warm."

  "Better warm than dead."

  She grimaced. "I'm perfectly safe here."

  "Then why did you
jump a foot just now?"

  "I told you. You startled me."

  "And it could just have easily been somebody with less generous intentions."

  There was no use arguing with him, Caitlin thought. He was a cop, and cops looked for trouble around every corner. And they seemed convinced that every kid in a neighborhood like this was trouble looking for a place to happen. At least, everyone she'd ever talked to seemed convinced.

  "Generous intentions?" she asked instead.

  Quisto grinned. White, even teeth flashed, and, amazingly, a dimple creased his left cheek. Lord, she thought, she'd underestimated. That string of broken hearts would march all the way to the sea.

  "Lunch," he said, lifting a large bag she hadn't even noticed he was holding. "Hope you like Chinese."

  "I love Chinese," she said, surprised that he'd bothered, and puzzled as to why he had. Perhaps a peace offering. Their parting yesterday hadn't been of the friendliest sort. If it was, she was willing to accept; peace was, after all, what the Neutral Zone was all about. "Thank you."

  "My pleasure." He shrugged. "I was in the neighborhood."

  She watched as he set out several of the familiar square white boxes, sets of chopsticks and backup plastic forks, the requisite bag of almond cookies, and the fortune cookies that had become traditional, despite their non-Chinese origin. Caitlin saw that the name on the bag was that of her own favorite source for Chinese food, a small family-run place farther out on the east side.

  "The Jade Dragon is a long way from Marina del Mar," she said.

  "But the best takeout for miles around."

  "Yes, it is. Not many people outside Marina Heights know that."

  He paused in setting down a small stack of napkins and looked at her. "I heard about the place from a guy from Marina Heights I arrested once."

  "Oh." She should have known, Caitlin thought.

  Quisto gave her a wry look. "Actually, my brother told me about it. He eats there all the time. But that's not what you wanted to hear, was it?"