LOVER UNDER COVER Page 6

  Caught, Caitlin blushed.

  "You expected just what I told you, because you're convinced the only thing I'd ever have to do with somebody from Marina Heights would be to arrest them."

  She couldn't deny it, not after what she'd so smugly thought when he dangled that bait in front of her. "I'm sorry," she said simply. "I did assume that."

  As if he were a little taken aback by her easy admission and apology, he blinked. Without comment, he went back to taking boxes of food out of the bag, until there were half a dozen of them sitting on the bar.

  "Is that your brother the doctor?" she asked after a moment, uncomfortable with the silence after being caught in something she rarely did—making assumptions without knowing the facts. That she had accused him of the same thing only made her more embarrassed.

  "No," Quisto said absently as he dug out a couple of paper plates. "The contractor." He set the plates down. "My sister goes there, too, though. She likes their rice."

  "That's the lawyer?"

  "No," he repeated, still absently, as he separated the plate, set them down and turned to opening the boxes. "The account executive. She works for a big ad agency in Marina del Mar and stops at the Jade Dragon on the way home a couple of times a week."

  Caitlin hesitated, then asked. "Er … how many of you are there?"

  "Hmm?" Quisto opened the last box, then turned his attention to her.

  "Brothers and sisters."

  "Oh. Eight, altogether."

  "Eight?" Caitlin's eyes widened; she was an only child herself, and the thought of that many siblings seemed overwhelming.

  "Five brothers, two sisters. All married, with at least two kids apiece."

  "My God. Where are you?"

  "On the food chain, you mean?" He grinned at her again, and its impact was no less than before. "Alas, the very bottom. I'm the baby Romero. You got a spoon?"

  She walked around the bar, pulled open a drawer and handed him a serving spoon.

  "Thanks. Anyway," he went on, "it makes for some turmoil when everybody's all together. My partner nearly bailed and ran the first time he came to visit."

  "Your partner visits your family?"

  "Are you kidding? My mother adopted him the first time she met him." He started to scoop food from the steaming boxes onto the plates: rice, noodles, vegetables, shrimp, chicken and pork. "I think if it had come down to a choice between us, I would have been out the door."

  "You're not serious," Caitlin exclaimed.

  "I'm dead serious. 'Chance needs me now, you don't,' I think is how she put it."

  "Did he?"

  Quisto nodded. "He was … going through a really tough time then."

  "Didn't you need her?"

  He stopped dishing out the food and looked at her. "I always need her. We all do. She's our base, our strength, all the Romeros. She's the reason we're all where we are. But at that time, Chance was barely making it from day to day. He did need her more than I did."

  Caitlin swallowed against a sudden tightness in her throat. This man's simple admission of loving emotion, something she never would have expected, moved her nearly to tears. It was a moment before she could speak.

  "What about … his own parents?"

  Quisto shrugged, handing her a well-filled plate. "They're good, loving people. But except for occasional visits, they're a long way away, and they've had simple, fairly straightforward lives. They don't know about the kind of battle Chance was fighting."

  She wanted to ask, wanted to know more, but some undertone of finality in his voice told her that he wasn't going to be telling her any more about what had to be something very private to his partner. It was hard to imagine the man she'd so briefly met, his blue eyes sparkling with laughter as he teased his partner, his face showing his barely contained eagerness to get home to his wife, as the man Quisto had just described.

  She sat down on a bar stool and pulled a plate close; the aromas were making her stomach growl. "And your mother does know about that kind of battle?"

  He offered her a choice of chopsticks or a plastic fork. She was hungry, so she went for convenience over tradition and took the fork.

  "Yes," Quisto said as he took his own plate and sat down on another stool. "She does. She knows about being frightened, about guilt and death. She barely got out of Cuba alive when Castro took over. A lot of her family didn't."

  Caitlin's eyes widened. "Really?"

  "An uncle of hers had seen the handwriting on the wall. He got out back in fifty-three, three years before Castro started his "Twenty-sixth of July" movement. After Batista fell, he spent the next ten years smuggling out the family that had survived. He hired some Americans with the proper political sympathies, willing to run the risk. My father, my mother and my oldest brother, Hernan, came out in the bilges of a fishing boat he'd bought. She was already pregnant with my sister then. They all nearly died from the heat, but they had to stay there for over ten hours. The boat was searched twice by Castro's patrols."

  "My God," Caitlin breathed. "But they didn't find them?"

  Quisto took a bite of the sweet-and-sour pork, shaking his head as he chewed. "No," he said after he swallowed. "My uncle had rigged up slings below decks that the people he was smuggling would lie in. When you opened the hatch to the bilge, and looked with a flashlight, you wouldn't see them unless you got down on your hands and knees and practically climbed into the bilge yourself. And he made sure that area was always nice and dirty, so they weren't very eager to do it."

  "My God," Caitlin said again. "It sounds like something out of a movie."

  "I assure you, it was very, very real to my mother. And my brother." He smiled at her then, as if to purposely lighten the mood. "That's the doctor. He was inspired by the man who took care of them after they arrived in Florida. My sister was born two days after they landed."

  "What about your father?"

  The lighter mood vanished. "I never knew my father," he said, his voice tight. "Eat. Before it gets cold."

  Sensing that she had inadvertently hit on a very sore subject, Caitlin suppressed her inborn aversion to being given orders, and ate. The food was up to the Jade Dragon's usual standards, and she made quick work of the full plate Quisto had given her, casting an occasional glance at him, wondering if he was still upset over what had seemed to her a natural question.

  After they finished, he held out a hand with the two sealed-in-plastic fortune cookies lying on his palm, and she judged by his grin that he'd gotten over it.

  "Take your pick," he said.

  "Doesn't matter, as long as they taste the same." His grin widened. "I take it you don't believe in the future-forecasting abilities of the fortune cookie?"

  She reached out and took one of the bent-crescent cookies. "I think we make our own futures, to the extent that life allows us to."

  "Wise," Quisto said. "So don't read, just eat." Caitlin sighed. "Do you really know anyone who can toss away a fortune without reading it?"

  He laughed as he tore open the wrapper of the cookie she'd left him. "I thought perhaps I'd met the first one."

  "'Fraid not." She tore open her own wrapper as he cracked open his cookie.

  "Hmmm…" he said as he retrieved the narrow strip of paper and read it. "Inscrutable, rather ominous and, as usual, able to be interpreted in a number of ways."

  Caitlin chuckled. "What does it say?"

  "'The mistakes of the past may overwhelm the joy of the future.'"

  "Whew," she said. "Heavy stuff. And kind of grim. I think I'd prefer it the other way around."

  "The mistakes of the future may overwhelm the joy of the past?" Quisto asked solemnly.

  "No," Caitlin exclaimed. "I meant the joy of the future may overwhelm the mistakes of the past."

  "Ah. And therein lies the difference between us, Caitlin Murphy. The pessimist and the optimist."

  She saw the corners of his mouth twitch and knew she'd been had. "You did that on purpose," she said accusingly.

&nb
sp; "I merely dangled the bait, querida. You're the one who bit."

  Her sense of humor won out. "And hard," she agreed, laughing.

  "So, what does yours say?"

  She broke the cookie open and plucked out the strip of paper. "Well, here's some wisdom for you. 'Things are not always as they seem.' No kidding."

  "Hey, they stole that," Quisto said, his voice raised in obviously mock outrage.

  "Stole what? From who?"

  "From Sergeant Decker. He teaches at the L.A. academy. That's his first rule of investigation."

  She laughed. "Oh, and he made it up, is that it?"

  "He said he did," Quisto said plaintively.

  For a moment, Caitlin wondered if he was taking a swipe at her belief in Eddie. But there was nothing but teasing amusement in his eyes, and she decided he wasn't, and laughed again.

  "Unfortunately," Quisto said, his expression suddenly serious, "that's a rule I seem to have forgotten. And I owe you an apology because of it."

  Caitlin gaped at him. An apology? "What?"

  "About Eddie."

  "I… What do you mean?"

  His dark brows lowered. "Didn't Gage call you?"

  "Well, yes, he left a message on the machine to call him, but I haven't done it yet." Her mouth twisted downward at one corner. "I didn't want to talk about Eddie anymore. It seems pointless, when nobody—"

  "You were right, Caitlin."

  "…believes me. I—" She stopped, blinking, as what he'd said registered. "What?"

  "You were right. Eddie was murdered."

  She stared, not certain she'd really heard him say it. "I'm sorry," he added. "I assumed you had talked to Gage by now and knew."

  "I… No."

  "It wasn't narcotics in the syringe. At least, not that kind. It was a local anesthetic. For what it's worth, it wouldn't have been … painful."

  She felt an odd lassitude, when she should, she supposed, be feeling triumph that she'd been right all along.

  "Are you all right?" he asked.

  "I … should feel vindicated, I guess. But I don't. Eddie's still dead. Nothing can change that."

  "No," Quisto said, very quietly, "but it can change whether or not whoever did it gets away with it."

  "But we know who did it," she said.

  Quisto shook his head. "We're guessing."

  "But it's the Pack. Isn't it?"

  "They're the most likely," he agreed.

  "They're who Eddie informed on. It has to be them."

  Quisto's mouth twisted wryly. "That's not enough to succeed in court. We have no proof."

  "But if they found out Eddie talked to you and your partner…"

  "We don't even know that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We don't know if they even know exactly who Eddie talked to. There were a lot of cops, local and federal, involved in that raid. Any one of them could have been Eddie's contact, for all the Pack knows. Unless…"

  "Unless what?" she asked when he stopped.

  "Unless Eddie gave me up."

  "No. No, he would never have done that. You were a hero to him. He would have died before—"

  She broke off suddenly when she realized that Eddie might have done exactly that. Quisto reached out and laid a hand over hers. His skin was warm, his touch gentle, and she took an unexpected comfort in the contact.

  "I know. But there are ways to get information—" He broke off, and abruptly changed direction. "But I don't think he did. The Pack doesn't waste any time, and if they'd learned two days ago I was Eddie's contact, they would have tried for me by now."

  "You think they really would? Kill a cop?"

  He let out a humorless chuckle. "They killed your chief," he pointed out.

  She'd heard that rumor, but the papers had always added a disclaimer saying the Pack was only suspected in the shooting.

  "They said in the news that that was … retaliation."

  "For our bust," Quisto said, nodding. "Our chief was out of town, so they took out yours. So we heard on the street. And Big Charlie was bragging it up that way."

  She knew that was the street nickname of the man who had been the Pack's leader at the time, the man who had been arrested along with several of his followers. "He's still in jail, isn't he?"

  Quisto nodded. "And will be for the foreseeable future. But that hasn't slowed them down any. It was always the Pack's policy that the right-hand man stay behind, just in case. So Alarico was right there, ready to step into Charlie's shoes when he didn't come home."

  She'd heard that name, as well, from the kids. "'Rules all,'" she murmured.

  "Yes. Appropriate name, isn't it?"

  "I hear he brags about it. That that's what his name means, and no one had better forget it."

  "Sounds like our boy. He's even more dangerous than Charlie was, because he doesn't have Charlie's restraint."

  She looked at him, startled by the word. "Restraint?"

  "Yes, believe it or not. Charlie picked his targets carefully. And if the risk outweighed the gain, he was like any good military commander—he dropped back and waited until the balance shifted."

  "But … Alarico's not like that?"

  "Not from everything I've heard. He's impulsive, and that's always dangerous. He doesn't think things through. Although," Quisto added, looking thoughtful, "he hasn't cut loose like we expected him to. We expected things to change right away after he took over, expected the Pack to get more reckless, to act without Charlie's caution. But something's holding Alarico back. We thought for a while Charlie was running them from prison, but there's no evidence of that."

  Something struck her suddenly, and she leaned back on her stool as she studied him. "Isn't this … confidential information? Why are you telling me all this?"

  He smiled and gave her a look she was sure would have melted the iceberg that sank the Titanic, and no amount of telling herself she wasn't susceptible to such practiced charm could make her completely immune.

  "By way of apology?" he suggested. "I wasn't very gracious about rejecting your theory about Eddie."

  "No," she said, her voice a little sharp, as she fought the unexpected effects of that smiling look. "You weren't. You were determined to think Eddie had come to an end you saw as inevitable."

  "Caitlin—"

  "He was just a boy. He was as innocent as anybody who lives here could be. He—"

  "Was no angel," Quisto said.

  "I never said he was. But he wasn't a bad kid. None of them are, not really."

  Quisto groaned audibly. "Caitlin, open your eyes. These aren't innocent kids."

  She slid to her feet. "Because they've never had the chance to be."

  "That's probably true. But it doesn't change the facts. I'll bet half the kids who hang out in here have records as long as your arm."

  She put her hands on her hips and glared at him. "Of course you'd bet on it, because that's what you think about all of them."

  He stood up, eyeing her warily, as if wondering whether she was going to haul off and clobber him again. The memory of that still made her cringe inwardly in shame.

  "And I'm rarely disappointed," he said pointedly. "Somebody once said, if you look for the bad in people, you'll surely find it," Caitlin snapped.

  Exasperation rang in his voice. "And somebody else once said there's a sucker born every minute."

  Caitlin flushed.

  Quisto let out a breath, like a man trying to rein in his temper. "Look, I didn't mean to be—"

  "Never mind," Caitlin said, cutting him off. "I'm sure you were just expressing an honest opinion. And you're not the first one to say it, either."

  "It's just that if you think even Eddie was an utter innocent, you're kidding yourself."

  "While you just assume the worst. Especially about street kids. Why is that, Detective?"

  "I don't meet many who aren't, as you put it, trouble looking for a place to happen."

  "So if you meet one you don't know at all, you assume h
e's one of those?"

  "I have to."

  Caitlin's gaze narrowed. "What?"

  "When I meet these kids, they've already done something suspicious, or I wouldn't be talking to them in the first place."

  "What happened to 'innocent until proven guilty'?"

  "That's for the court system." Quisto looked at her for a moment before he added quietly, "If you're wrong, in most cases the only thing hurt is your feelings. If I'm wrong, people can get killed."

  She had no answer for that. Nothing but a heartfelt emotion that she wasn't certain she was feeling for herself, the kids she cared so much about … or Quisto Romero.

  "It's a rotten way to have to live," she whispered.

  "Yes," he said, in a voice that made it seem as if he knew all the ways she'd meant it, "it can be."

  They stood there for a long moment, just looking at each other. It seemed there was nothing more to say.

  "I have to open up," she said at last, turning to gather up the leftovers from their meal.

  "You want me to leave?"

  She glanced back over her shoulder at him. "That's up to you. But if you stay, you're not a cop. Not here."

  "Fair enough. Unless somebody on our ten-most-wanted list wanders in, I'm just here for a root beer float."

  He flashed a smile at her, and she couldn't help smiling back. When he wasn't being a stubborn, bull-headed on-the-job cop, Quisto really could be charming, she thought. If only she could be certain he was off the job when he said he was.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  The afternoon was an education in itself, Quisto thought. Not so much about the decaying neighborhood, or even the dynamics of the groups of kids that came and went. Most of them were the young teenagers and preteens he'd been told she catered to, and he was grateful for that; there was a far greater chance he might have had contact with some of the older ones from the surrounding streets.

  No, most of all it was an education in the amazing personality of Caitlin Murphy. She seemed to have an uncanny knack, a knowledge of how to approach each new arrival, changing her demeanor, even her body language, as she greeted each individual or group. Some of the younger ones got hugs, some of the older ones a rapid, slangy greeting that made them laugh, some just a nod and a quiet hello.