Morena had been in the bathroom a long time, and just when he was about to get up and go check on her she came out naked holding a home pregnancy test. She cocked an eyebrow and said, 'You're a daddy.'
He believed her. She never hid behind a line or a rap. She was herself and never played any games. So far as he knew, she'd never told a lie to him or even to Tucco. She always threw it out there and if you didn't like it, the trouble was yours.
So if she said the kid was his, it was his.
A sense of elation began to surge through his chest for a moment before quickly dissipating. He had a son and four or five or six adopted kids, and now there was another on the way. He expected her to run over and show him the test, parading the tiny blue line in front of him the way Joan had, clutching the little piss-soaked stick of plastic to her chest. But Morena had already thrown it in the wastebasket next to the bed, and Crease didn't have the heart to check for himself, go digging around in the trash for it.
A residue of her dried sweat powdered her body as she moved to him across Tucco's bed, and as she touched him he turned to her and pressed his lips to the spot under her ear which made her purr and said, 'I'm a cop.'
She took it in stride, the way she took everything. As he lay there she told him, 'This is something we're gonna have to see about.'
He left her then and went to his apartment. He grabbed his badge from where it was hidden behind the microwave beside his father's. Proven fact: burglars, thugs, smash and dashers, they'll tear a place apart, look in the sugar jar, in the coffee grounds, the ice cube tray, the toilet tank, but they always miss the tiny area behind the microwave. Probably worried they're going to somehow zap themselves.
He marched down to the club where Tucco and his left-hand man Cruez were in the back getting lap dances. He walked into the place and thought, I can shoot them both now and no one would care.
His lieutenant wouldn't mind. Even after twenty-six months, with all the evidence Crease had brought in, nobody wanted to make the case. They all wanted more. The mayor's office, the D.A., the narc squad, the vice squad. They wanted the connections, the inventories, the emperors and despots in South America who supplied the suppliers who supplied the bosses who ran the guys who ran guys like Tucco.
Crease would never get enough evidence for them to allow him to make the bust.
The girl dancing on top of Tucco had his belt in both hands, sliding them down. She stopped her grinding and got a spooked look, like she knew Crease was a cop. She wanted out of the room but Crease blocked the way.
The other one hanging on Cruez was too busy to turn around. The room was small, a lot of bad could happen there in very short order. Tucco's mouth was smeared with red lipstick, it made him look like he'd been chewing rabbits raw. He glared at Crease and said, 'You think she's going to give me back my five hundred bucks?'
Crease said, 'Listen, I'm a cop.'
He flashed the badge, realizing later it was his old man's. It must've been an unconscious way to cause another problem. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he must've wanted to really get the ball rolling, give Tucco some clues, get his ass in gear. Tucco had a near-perfect memory. He'd instantly memorized the badge number and later gotten his tech boys to do a search on them, track them down. That's what led him to Hangtree.
If it had been his own badge, nothing would've come up. There were no files anymore. Everything about him was deleted. That must've been why he'd taken his father's instead.
Crease wondered why he did things like that.
Cruez climbed out from beneath the other stripper, who was so stoned that it took her a few seconds to realize he was gone. She was still making vaguely serpentine movements as he went for his gun. Crease took two steps forward and pressed his. 38 under Cruez's blunt chin and said, 'Not yet.'
Tucco was smiling, always so sharp and way ahead of the game. 'Put that thing away. Nothing's gonna happen. Your friends on the force, they know what you've done for me?'
'They know.'
'Your cell gonna be next to mine?'
'Probably not.'
'You don't have your handcuffs out. You're not busting me. So you don't have enough for a case.'
'I've got enough for fifty cases,' Crease told him, 'but they don't care. Nobody does. So no, I'm not busting you. I've got some unfinished business I've got to take care of first. I'll be gone a few days, no more than a week. When I get back, I'll look you up again, and we can settle whatever score we've got.'
'Only score I see is the one you've been working.'
'Maybe so.'
'You're crazy, man,' Tucco said. 'I've never known one like you before.'
'Be glad,' Crease said and walked out.
~* ~
In the back of the Bentley, he held onto Morena another minute. He pressed his forehead to hers and thought of everything he'd never told her. Maybe it would get through anyway. She didn't know he was married, didn't know about Stevie, but there was no time to get into it right now. He kissed her beneath her ear and she hummed at the back of her throat.
He didn't want to push Tucco too much at the moment. Cool as the guy was, and as much as he dug being shoved, Tucco might get a little wild about him and Morena making it in a two hundred thousand dollar car. Worried about the state of his interior if not his woman. She said, 'You know what he was doing the whole ride up here? He was giggling.'
Crease couldn't believe it and looked at her. 'Really?'
She nodded. 'He thought it was funny. He liked the way it all went down. You walking into the club that way, cowboy-style. He's dealt with hardasses and maniacs but never a man with your flair.'
'Did you tell him you're pregnant?'
'Of course. He doesn't care. He was trying to get under my skin by saying he'd raise the baby after you were dead. Start him off dealing when he was seven or eight in the schoolyards. If it was a girl, get her out on the street early, vying for the pedo trade.' Crease saw that Tucco had indeed gotten under her skin. Her eyes were hard as slate. 'Like I wouldn't shoot him in the back of his head before I allowed that. I might just do it anyway.'
Crease didn't have to worry about the baby. She'd do anything she had to in order to keep the kid out of the life. He eased against her once more, and when their mouths met they twisted harder with near-desperation in each other's arms, the kiss rearing into something else. Neither one of them broke off, neither of them breathing. Morena let out a low wildcat cry and Crease urged the thing on, the pain and the need, the wonder of the next minute.
He didn't know when it ended but when he dropped back against the seat she was two feet away, all the way over there.
'Why are you in this place?' she asked.
'I've got some old accounts to square, I think.'
'You think?'
'I'm still trying to work things out.'
'Which things?'
'It has to do with my father.'
'Are you going to kill somebody?'
'Maybe not.'
She shook her head a little sadly, like he was nowhere near in focus and never would be. 'What are you going to do next?' Angling her chin at the window. 'About him.'
'We're gonna run around the block for another couple of days, and then we'll get past the rap and we'll see what happens.'
She grabbed the sides of his face and looked him square in the eyes. 'You can't beat him. You might be crazier than him, but he's faster. You can't win that way.'
He didn't like hearing it out loud, in her voice, the truth that had been circling around in his head for days. Not only that he wasn't fast enough, but that he was nuts. He didn't mind walking the edge but he didn't want her seeing him there.
He was fast, he was so fast his hands moved without him, but Tucco was something else altogether. 'You're
