Undercover In High Heels

One guess who cracked first.

“Okay, so here’s the thing: I had this thong, and it was totally cute, and it was going to waste just sitting at home watching TV, and I wouldn’t have minded so much, but you were canceling our ‘or something, ’ and, unlike Dana, I haven’t gotten any ‘or something’ in over a week-that’s long enough to get a chip at SA, you know! And then ‘something’ came up and you didn’t want me meeting your friends, even though I’m so not smothery, and then you were at a hookup club. I mean, you could have told me she was carrying a gun and I so wouldn’t have come. Or at least I would have waited outside. So, I’m sorry you got shot at.”

Ramirez just shook his head at me, and I wasn’t sure if he thought I was pathetic or was just trying to keep from laughing at me.

“Maddie, you seriously thought I was here on a date?”

“Um, well, yeah. I mean, with that message you left and the hookup bar, what was I supposed to think?”

Ramirez rolled his eyes at me. “Isabel was an informant, Maddie. She’s the girlfriend of a major drug distributor and she was meeting me to give me details about the next shipment coming into his organization. Information that we could have used to get these guys off the streets for good.”

I felt myself growing smaller and smaller the more he talked. “Oops.”

“Oops?” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Oops! Seven people injured, thousand of dollars in property damage, one stolen vehicle, and three weeks’ worth of investigative work down the toilet and all you can say is ‘oops’?”

If I grew any smaller I’d be looking up at the bottom of my broken heel. “Oops, sorry?”

He narrowed his eyes and made a growling sound deep in his throat.

Suddenly I kind of wished Isabel had taken me with her.

“It would be one thing, ” he said through clenched teeth, “if this were an isolated incident. But this isn’t the first time you’ve butted into a police investigation. What, exactly, do you suggest I tell my superiors?”

I bit my lip again, eating off any remnants of lip gloss. He was right. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time I’d stuck my nose into his police business. That was actually the way we’d met. He’d been investigating my last boyfriend, a prominent L.A. attorney, for fraud and, subsequently, murder. I’d sort of inadvertently gotten in the middle of that investigation when I’d popped the real murderer’s breast implant and stabbed her in the jugular with a stiletto heel. After that there’d been the incident last fall involving my father, a bunch of drag queens, and the mob, which had ended with me getting kidnapped and Dana blowing a hole through some guy’s chest. So, I could see why this was something of a sore spot with him. Not to mention his superiors.

“Look, Jack, I’m really, really sorry.”

He took a deep breath and did some more head shaking. He opened his mouth to say more, but was cut off by the uniformed officer with the cute butt.

“Hey, Ramirez?”

“What?” Ramirez called over his shoulder.

“It’s the captain.” Buns of Steel held up a cell phone. “He wants to speak to you.”

Ramirez shut his eyes in a two-second meditation. “Shit.” He turned and grabbed the cell phone, then paused, jabbing a finger my way. “You-go home. We’ll talk later.”

I nodded meekly. Later was good. Later was after he’d had time to calm down and hopefully gotten that whole bulging-vein thing under control.

After Buns of Steel took my statement (where I relayed the events of the evening as best I could without making it sound like his coworker was dating a loony) and the paramedics checked me out (scrapes and unattractive bruises, but not much more), Dana bundled me into her Saturn and drove me home. She offered to stay the night with me, but from the way she was frothing at the mouth over every guy we passed (including the greasy-haired attendant at the Chevron station), I figured she needed an SA meeting more than I needed a sleepover.

Instead, I climbed the steps to my cozy second-story studio alone. Cozy, of course, being real estate slang for dinky. My foldout futon, a drawing table, and three dozen pairs of shoes had the place fuller than Paris Hilton’s BlackBerry. Still, it was near the ocean, relatively quiet, and most important, fell within my cozy budget.

As a young girl I had dreamed of being a runway model in Paris. But since, as I may have mentioned, I top out at just below Tom Cruise height, genetics worked against that career plan. Instead, I went to the Academy of Art College and got a degree in fashion design-namely, designing shoes. Unfortunately, the job sounds way more glamorous than its paycheck. As an unknown designer, I’d been able to get steady work so far only at Tot Trots children’s shoe designs. And, thanks to my recent brushes with the law, even those jobs were becoming fewer and farther between. Sure, I was still working on the Pretty Pretty Princess patent leathers for Easter, but they’d given both the Superman flip-flops and the summer line of Disney water shoes to someone else. In hopes of someday moving beyond SpongeBob slippers, I’d lately started doing a little freelancing on the side, for-wonder of wonders- actual adults. Okay, so I’d designed and constructed a pair of purple size-thirteen sequin-covered heels for my father’s birthday. (Yes, you heard me right. Father. He danced in a Las Vegas all-male “showgirl” revue.) And I’d recently put the finishing touches on my first Maddie originals for myself: pink pumps with three-inch heels, leather ankle straps, and tiny crystal details on the buckles. All in all, I was rather proud of them.

I let myself into my apartment and kicked off my abused heels, then dragged myself into the shower, careful to rinse all the bits of broken auto glass out of my hair. I pulled on an oversized Guns N’ Roses T-shirt, left over from my college days, and curled up on my futon with my TV remote. Three late-night episodes of Cheers later I was fast asleep.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d actually been asleep, but I knew it wasn’t long enough. My phone was ringing from somewhere deep inside a lovely dream of Ramirez and me doing horizontal acrobatics across my kitchen counter when I cracked one eye open to stare at the digital clock beside my bed. 6:15 A.M. Ugh. I’m not exactly what you’d call a morning person. I’m more of a stumble-out-of-bed-at-ten-and-make-a-break-for-the-nearest-Starbucks kind of person. Which may be why my voice sounded like I’d been sucking on sandpaper as I croaked out a “Hello?” in the vicinity of my phone.

“Maddie! Oh my word, honey, what happened?”

Instinctively, I pulled the phone away from my ear. 6:15 A.M. was too early for anyone to be that loud.

“Mom?” I croaked out again. “You don’t have to shout. I can hear you.”

“Sorry. I’m on a cell phone, sweetie, ” she yelled.

I felt a headache brewing between my eyes.

“Maddie, what’s going on? I was having breakfast with Mrs. Rosenblatt, and we saw a man reading the L.A. Informer at the next table. Honey, your picture was on the front page. Were you involved in a shootout last night?”

I smacked my palm to my head. Leave it to L.A.’s sleaziest tabloid to sensationalize a simple misunderstanding between a girl and her beau into a Wild West showdown at the OK Corral. “It wasn’t a shootout, Mom. Just…a misunderstanding.” Okay, I admit, when I said it out loud, the Informer’s version sounded closer to the truth.

“Are you okay? They said you were taken hostage.”

I groaned again. “Mom, I’m fine. I promise.”

“Oh honey, I’m coming over right now.”

“No!” I fairly screamed into the phone. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother. But the last time she was in my apartment she insisted on organizing my underwear drawer, covering my cooktop in aluminum foil, and feng shui- ing the entire place by moving my television into the bathroom and my futon next to the refrigerator. “No, I’m fine, Mom, really. Never better.” Except for the headache that seemed to be spreading to my temples.

“Now, don’t try to be all adult and independent on me, Mads. I know when my baby needs me.”

I rolled my eyes. I was facing the big three-oh this year. God forbid I should be adult and independent.

“Mom-”

“Nope. No protests.”

“But-”

“And no buts.”

I rubbed my temple, hoping I still had that travel-size bottle of aspirin in my purse. “Okay, how about this, Mom. How about I just come down to the salon later? That way you wouldn’t have to drive all the way out here, and I could get my pedi fixed at the same time?” I asked, hoping for a compromise that didn’t involve rearranging