more fun while they both ramped themselves up, got the adrenaline going. You couldn't take things too seriously in the life, not even while somebody was getting waxed in front of you. While machine guns stitched the walls around you and you hid behind an end table no thicker than cardboard. You always had to take it easy, find the humor in the moment, even if there was none.
'You need much longer to do what you came here to do?' Tucco asked.
'I don't know.'
That was an affront. It was squirrelly, not giving an answer. It made Tucco purse his lips and go, 'Humph.'
Crease lit one of the menthols and took a drag. Jesus, it was like smoking cough drops. 'Another couple of days, nothing you can't deal with. Watch the leaves for a while longer. Maybe you can figure out a way to break new territory up here, get some guys in the truck stop to work for you. Get some kickback with smuggling over the border.'
'Canada, yeah. Big thing now is wetbacks coming up from south of the border, and Asians coming in from north of the border. Getting guys with 18-wheelers, hauling freight… plenty of room for fifty, sixty chinks trying to start a new life.'
'See, you can be benevolent. Asians will be naming their kids after you. Tucco Lee.'
Tucco's brow started to knot at the thought of it, until he realized Crease was just fucking with him. 'So, this thing you have to do here. It has to do with your father? And how you came down to New York, and why you're a narc?'
'In a way, yeah.'
'Good, get it squared, then we'll square up, see where we stand.'
Crease said, 'I'm going to get in the back of the Bentley and talk with her. Give us some privacy.'
Tucco was too slick to show he was pissed about it. It went back to how he liked to be pushed right to the edge.
But Cruez swung out in front of Crease and tried to block him, which was the totally wrong move to make. He'd juked the show. Tucco was playing it so cool, and now he had to extend that cool to Cruez too. You could see it got under Tucco's skin a little, having to go the extra yard and put his arm on the monolith and ease him back. It put too much attention on the scene and too much focus on the fact that Crease was getting what he wanted.
Tucco said, 'Sure, you get yourself a drink too, all right? Got everything you could want back there.' Knowing Crease didn't drink but making the offer anyway. 'Your old man, he liked whiskey, right?'
'The cheaper the better.' Grinning, Crease let the cigarette dangle. When you had a pose you liked to hit you had to stick with it. 'This will only take a minute.'
'Take your time in my car, with my woman, man. What's mine is yours.'
There was a time when it was true. Tucco wouldn't deny Crease anything. It was part of the action, dangling everything you owned in front of your crew's faces. See which one of them would leap for the bait, which ones wouldn't.
The ones that wouldn't were more greedy. They were only biding their time until they could get it all. The ones who acted like they didn't want anything, those you got rid of first.
Chapter Eight
Crease got in the back of the Bentley and rolled the window up. He turned and Morena was sitting there with the glass in her hand, tinkling ice cubes. First thing he wanted to tell her was that she shouldn't be drinking now that she was pregnant. It sounded ludicrous even to himself.
She said, 'I don't know what to call you.'
She'd known him by the other name. He'd had that name for the last two and a half years, up until only a few days ago, but he couldn't remember what it was now.
He said, 'My name is Crease.'
He wondered what would happen next. If she'd throw the drink in his face, slap him, or sidle into his arms. And how he'd react. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do. Kiss her, clasp her hand, press a palm to her belly, start going kitchy-kitchy coo, kitchy coo.
Instead, he did nothing and she took another sip and looked at him from beneath the waves of her luminous black hair.
'You're crazier than he is, Crease,' she said. 'Two years undercover, playing both sides, working me. I've seen you in action. You're clever, crafty, and you thrill to kill. You've got that same glacier gaze when you want it.'
'I didn't work you,' Crease told her, though he knew he had, even without fully realizing it. 'And I only played both sides because that's the way they wanted it.'
'You weren't faking. What you were doing, it was all real.'
'Yeah.'
'You're as bad a boy as any of them.'
'You going to lecture me?' he asked. It was probably what attracted her to him in the first place.
She put the glass down and said, 'Did you ever care about me? Or was I just a way to get to him?'
'You never gave me anything I could use in court, Morena. They never wanted to bring him up anyway. He's safer than a priest who spits on the sidewalk. I fell for you the first day I saw you.'
'All you had to do was ask him. He would've given me to you.'
He hated when she talked like that. Laying it on the line, letting the jealousy twist inside him. Reminding him that she used to be on the street before Tucco made her his lady, and then she was a kept woman anyhow. She liked to torment him a little that way, get him riled, charged up, before they hit the bed.
'I wasn't about to ask anybody for you,' he said.
She started to move to him but he couldn't help himself any longer and lunged, carried her to the far side of the Bentley where she smacked up against the bar. Bottles rattled and rang. His mouth found hers, but he couldn't swallow her down fast enough or breathe her in deeply enough, and when he grabbed her she let out a cry of pain and amusement. He backed off, afraid of hurting the kid. His son Stevie was eight years old and already a victim of his growing fever, but somehow Crease felt like this one, born into a world of murder and betrayal, had a better chance. How sick was that?
She was right, they were all right, he really was crazy. He said, 'You shouldn't have come.'
'Why not? This is where everybody else is. This is where it's all happening. Why should I miss out?' The corners of her mouth were crimped with anger. Her dark eyes blazed, her luxurious nightshade hair wreathed to frame her face. 'Why did you do it?' she asked. 'Why did you leave like that?'
Perhaps his eyes were full of intense, unclear emotion, the way his father's had been the night he died, because she had to glance away. Crease's thoughts raced but no words formed, nothing came to him. This was his chance to explain, but there was just nothing there.
Finally he said, 'I don't know.'
'You don't know? That's it? You don't know?'
'Yeah.'
And he didn't, but he had to admit he hadn't been asking himself the question. He really didn't care much anymore, which seemed to put things in perspective. The not caring. The understanding that what he was doing made no sense to anyone, not even himself, and yet it was the only thing that could be done.
She must've realized that because she let it slide by. You did weird things. You lived a strange life. She said, 'I've missed you.'
'You say that like you haven't seen me in ten years. It's been half a week.'
'It feels longer.'
He nodded. He stared at her and thought of the last time they'd been together, in Tucco's penthouse apartment in Tribeca, looking out over the water. They'd just finished making love and he'd slipped into that zone where he was tired and content and wanted to go out and do something stupid and touristy like taking in a Broadway show. The feeling hit him rarely and always while Morena's scent was still on him.
