think by cops,' he finished.
'Cops?!' she said, and involuntarily her hand went up to her mouth.
'This is Sergeant Hamilton. She's my ' He looked over at Alexa. What exactly was she? His department prosecutor? His only believer? His nemesis? What the hell else was she?
'I'm Shane's partner,' she said, answering his question and filling the void.
Sandy spun abruptly and headed back into her apartment. Alexa and Shane followed. She walked slowly ahead of them, fluid as a dancer, her hips swaying seductively. Shane would have preferred a more leaden gait. Even in the face of this news, she radiated sexual grace. When she turned and faced them, he saw distress bordering on hysteria in her eyes. Instantly his heart went out to her, and guilt overwhelmed him.
'Why? Where did it happen?' she asked.
'An apartment on Third Street, a safe house I was renting. I guess they followed the sitter over from my place in Venice. I can't think of any other way they could have found him,' Shane said.
'We aren't exactly sure who,' Alexa said. 'But it appears to be high-ranking police officers who are calling the shots.'
'You should go to the chief. Go to Burl. Tell him what you suspect.'
When Alexa hesitated and looked at Shane, Sandy sank down on the sofa. 'You're telling me you think Burl's '
'We don't know exactly who is involved,' Shane said. 'But it goes way up. Maybe all the way to the mayor. It involves Logan Hunter, Tony Spivack, and the Long Beach Naval Yard.'
'The 'why' is easier to understand. They took Chooch to keep us from continuing an investigation into it,' Alexa said.
Sandy looked down at the white plush pile to hide her devastation.
'Sandy… I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I didn't see it coming. If I could change this, I '
She waved this away with her slender hand, sat absolutely still for a moment, then looked up. Her expression had hardened, the vulnerability had vanished. 'How can I help? There must be something we can do.' He watched in fascination as she tucked the loose strands of panic away, grabbed hold of her plummeting emotions, pulled hard, and darted up quickly, climbing hard, like a kite in a strong wind.
'Do you know any of these girls?' Alexa asked as she reached into her purse and handed over two packets of pictures from the party at the naval yard. Sandy spread them out on the white marble coffee table. She picked up a small antique magnifying glass with a carved ivory handle and examined each picture.
'I know one or two of these girls,' she said, looking at them slowly, studying the shots, separating out the pictures of the two girls she knew. 'Scarlet Mackenzie is the red-haired one. This one here this blonde changed her name from Gina Augustina to, what the hell was it… Avon Star. Used to have black hair. I think some of these others used to work with Madam Alex until Heidi took over the L. A. market. They all work the executive trade.'
'What about the men? We know a lot of them are cops,' Alexa said.
Sandy looked through the pictures again but shook her head. 'To be honest with you, I'm not working much with LAPD anymore.' She shoved the pictures of the two girls she knew toward Alexa, never once looking over at Shane. 'I only know these two.'
'These girls might know what's going on,' Alexa said. 'We need to find somebody who can help us, somebody who can tell us who took Chooch.'
Sandy studied Alexa for a moment, then looked back at Shane. 'I'm going to have to shut down this thing I'm doing for DEA. I'll tell 'em I need two days, that my brother got sick in Connecticut.' She got up, moved to the phone, then punched in fourteen or more digits, which Shane knew was probably a number for a satellite beeper that the feds all used now.
After she finished, Sandy hung up and returned to the table. She sat down and looked at them, biting her lower lip. 'Maybe I could convince Scarlet to duke me in with this crowd.'
Duke me in, Shane thought. Sandy was even beginning to talk like a cop. It was definitely time for her to get out of the business.
'I could call Scarlet, say I just got out of a bad marriage and want to get back on the stroll. Nobody knows what I've been doing all these years. I haven't seen these two girls in ages.'
Shane had to get out of there. He was starting to feel trapped. He got up abruptly. 'Here's my beeper number,' he said, giving Sandy one of his cards. 'It's on all the time.'
Alexa took out a pencil, wrote hers down, and handed it to Sandy.
'Okay,' Sandy said. 'I'll check back with you tomorrow. I should be able to get in touch with her by then. I'll set something up. If she knows anything that will help us get Chooch back, I'll find it.'
'Good,' Shane said.
They all walked to the front door. Sandy seemed cool and in control again. After she opened the door, she looked hard at him, and Shane knew he had to say something.
'I was trying to do you a favor when I took Chooch,' he said. 'It didn't work out, and I'm sorry.'
What she said next was very strange. 'You weren't doing me a favor, Shane, I was doing one for you.'
He saw the dark, strange look again, and then her amber eyes opened for a moment and he was seeing her uncovered core… a self-loathing and sadness deeper than he could have ever imagined. Then the look was gone, replaced in a heartbeat by shrewd cunning and the cold gleam of sexuality. She closed the door, and he found himself looking at brown mahogany, the exact color of her eyes and almost as hard.
Chapter 40
It was noon, and they were back in Shane's borrowed Crown Vic. Alexa had turned on the police radio, and they were listening to staccato radio calls detailing the menu of violence and death, all of it described numerically in a flat monotone: 'One X-ray twelve. A 415 at 2795 Slauson. Handle Code Two.' Human carnage was a day-and-night routine.
'I don't know what the next move is,' Alexa admitted.
Shane looked over at her. He knew what he was going to do, but it was a felony and he didn't think he should confide in her, for fear she'd hook him up on the spot.
But she was good, and she read the look in his eyes. 'Let's hear what you're planning,' she said suspiciously.
'You don't want any part of it. I'll drop you home.'
'Lemme guess. You wanna go pick up Drucker or Kono or one of Ray's other hamsters… then go give them some S and J.'
S and J stood for 'sentence and judgment.' Cops used to call it 'holding court in the street.' Either way, in this case it would be kidnapping and assault, both Class A felonies.
'Right idea, wrong guys,' he said. 'Kono and Drucker are small players; they may not even know what's really going on. I think they're just getting envelopes.'
'It doesn't matter, 'cause we aren't going to kidnap and threaten anyone. That's a bonehead play.' She stared hard at him in the dim light. He didn't look back. 'Who, then?' she finally asked, her curiosity boiling over.
'You're gonna hate it.' And then for some unknown reason, he told her.
After he had finished explaining his idea, she sat silently in the car for almost five minutes. The police radio underscored their separate thoughts, broadcasting misery while each of them pondered the personal cost if his dangerous plan went wrong.
Shane knew he had nothing more to lose. Any way he looked at it, odds were, he was headed to prison, where as a cop in the joint, he would last about as long as ice cream on a summer day.
Alexa, on the other hand, was only on the edge of this. She hadn't been put in play yet. Nobody except Sandy knew she'd been helping him. She could still go home and sit it out, saving her career and maybe her life.
He finally looked at her and saw those chips of blue staring out the front window, her brow furrowed in
