Fade the Heat (10 page)

“First of all,” said Winter, replacing a driver in his golf bag, “let me express my heartfelt condolences to the Houston Fire Department and especially to the family of Captain Joe Rozinski, a true hero of our city.”

A hero whose death would be overshadowed, Reagan realized, by this link to Darren Winter. Nausea swept away her hunger, and her shoulders tightened. Her glance touched on Jack’s for a moment before she looked back to the screen.

The obligatory expression of sympathy behind him, Winter’s face hardened, his gray-blue eyes growing flinty. “As for this ridiculous accusation, I am deeply offended by the mayor’s self-serving attempts to profit from Captain Rozinski’s death. As anyone who has read the Bill of Rights knows, free speech is a cornerstone of this great country, one that would be severely
undermined by any ill-conceived attempts to hold journalists accountable for the unfortunate interpretations of sick individuals or the actions of known terrorist factions such as BorderFree-4-All. Now that’s all I have to say on the matter—until such time as I accept the mayor’s apologies for his cowardly attempts to call my patriotism into question for his own political gain.”

Jack might be a family doctor, but he swore with the precision of a surgeon—and the colorful artistry of many of Reagan’s fellow firefighters.

“
Carajo
,” he cursed. “Have you ever heard such self-serving bullshit in your life?”

“Only every time that jerk opens his mouth,” said Reagan as Sabrina McMillan appeared onscreen.

The short-skirted navy suit the mayor’s campaign manager had chosen no better disguised the woman’s long legs than her tightly controlled, rich brown mane offset her bedroom eyes. Her bright red lipstick made her moving mouth look like a wound. Revolted by the thought—as well as the memory of one particular fire call to the woman’s penthouse—Reagan turned off the television.

“We won’t get any facts there,” she said, “just another string of sound bites. Joe Rozinski could have put in his twenty and retired years ago. Instead, he gave this city—gave this city and his family and his friends—everything he had, every day of his life. And for what? So his death could become a damned political football? They don’t even care who he was.”

When she met Jack’s stricken expression, Reagan remembered that he, too, had become a sidebar to the story. “I’m sorry,” she added. “Did you want to see more?”

Shaking his head, he went back to his cooking, his
handsome face both grim and drawn. “I’ve seen more than enough,” he told her as he scraped the eggs onto the plates she took out.

Neither of them said a word while they shared their somber meal. As they were finishing, someone banged at the back door, and both jumped at the sound.

“That must be my sister,” Jack said. “I called while you were dressing.”

But Frank Lee was wagging his tail beside the door, as he did whenever a visitor was someone he knew well. Peeking through the curtain that concealed her kitchen window, Reagan closed her eyes and swore.

Why couldn’t Luz Maria have come and gone already?

Glancing toward Jack, she said, “This could be a little awkward,” then opened the back door to let Beau LaRouche inside.

Beau looked as if he’d had a rough night. His sandy hair was a tangled mess, his faded tan looked sallow, and the stubble of his beard growth made him look more like a north-side vagrant than the pretty boy he usually resembled. Instead of petting Frank Lee, as he usually did, Beau pushed away the narrow head that nudged his hand.

“Hey, Hurley. You get any sleep at all?” His brown eyes looked concerned—until he caught sight of Jack, who crossed the kitchen and offered his hand.

Beau’s jaw thrust forward, and a vee engraved itself into the space between his brows. Ignoring the outstretched hand, he rounded on Reagan. “What the hell is this? You’re having breakfast with this…this goddamned…I don’t even know what the hell he is. But I know this for damned sure. If it weren’t for him making a big name for himself with those BorderFree nuts and
pissing off Winter’s disciples, I wouldn’t be here talking to you about a memorial service.”

She’d seen Beau plenty mad before, usually when one of his firehouse pranks backfired. But she had never seen him like this, had never before imagined that someone who would spend hours conning her into trying paintball—which hurt far more than he’d promised—could look so close to violence.

She stepped forward, meaning to put herself between the two men before Beau took a swing at Jack. But Jack sidestepped her neatly, his dark gaze boring into the younger man’s.

“I want you to know,” Jack said, not looking a bit concerned that Beau was several inches taller and a good twenty-five pounds heavier, “that no matter how the fire started, I’m truly sorry about what happened to your captain. I don’t know what’s going on, don’t know anything except that I go to work and do my job day after day, the best I can. But if someone set that fire to kill me, I will damned well find out who it was.”

Something inside Reagan resonated with the raw emotion in his voice. This was no carefully scripted, official “expression of condolences,” as Houston firefighters and Donna Rozinski would receive from public officials for weeks to come. Jack Montoya’s regret over the loss of life was as genuine as his anger and bewilderment about the circumstances.

Yet Beau surged toward him. “You’re a lying sack of shit, Montoya. I’ll kick your goddamn ass—”

“No.” Adrenaline shooting through her, Reagan grabbed his upper arm. “No way are you punching anybody in my house. You hear me, Beau? Jack’s leaving anyway. As soon as his ride gets here, he’ll be making arrangements to go see the FBI and arson, the
police and all those guys. Do you really want him walking in black and blue and telling how you hit him?”

“If he hits me”—Jack’s voice had frosted over—“
I
won’t be the one walking around bruised.”

Reagan sighed in relief when a knock at the front door interrupted. Luz Maria had come to get her brother.

Ignoring Beau, Jack introduced Reagan to her, saying, “I’m sure you don’t remember, but the Hurleys were our landlords for a while. Reagan lived next door before she and her mother moved.”

“You weren’t much more than a baby then, but it’s good to see you again.” Though Reagan was keeping half an eye on Beau, she took in Luz Maria’s big eyes and thick, dark ponytail. Jack’s little sister wore jeans and a tight, cinnamon-colored sweater; her fresh-faced prettiness didn’t suffer from her lack of jewelry or makeup.

Luz Maria offered her a smile, but worry darkened her eyes. “Thanks so much for taking care of Jack last night. Mama and I barely slept, we were so upset about what happened.”

To Jack, she added, “Uncle Julio brought you some clothes and things from his store to get you started. I hope we guessed your size right.”

“Thank you for that. And thanks again, Reagan, for everything.”

As he stepped outside, Reagan wondered when she would next see him, and why the suspicion that he was leaving her life weighed so heavily on her mind.

She watched the siblings walking toward a long white Buick wagon, listened to the drift of their receding voices. “So Mama trusted you with her car?”

“Mama finally got to sleep around four. I didn’t bother waking her…”

The door in front of Reagan slammed shut as Beau reached around her to give it a hard push. She jumped at the unexpected sound and whirled toward him.

Beau glared down at her, caging her against the door with his outstretched arm. “You told me you weren’t seeing him, that you weren’t involved in this.”

She ducked beneath his arms and stalked back toward the kitchen. He might be half crazy with grief, but this was a Beau LaRouche she didn’t know—or much like. “I told you the truth. I don’t have anything to do with what happened, and I’ve never dated Jack Montoya.”

Beau grabbed her arm with bruising pressure and spun her toward him. Frank Lee whined and tried without success to wedge himself in the narrow space between them.

Beau was so close, his unnaturally white teeth were a blur. “So you slept with him instead?”

Her heart ricocheted around her chest, and she had to struggle to keep the fear out of her voice. “Cut it out, Beau. Now. This isn’t you talking. It’s the situa—”

She was falling, head snapping backward, before she heard him shout, “Shut up. Just shut up.”

She landed hard, banging her elbow on the door frame between the dining room and kitchen. But that didn’t hurt half so much as her left cheekbone. He’d hit her, Reagan realized. Beau LaRouche had actually punched her in the face.

Judging from the way he went sheet white, Beau had just realized it himself. He stared down at his right hand as if it were some alien attachment in a plot worthy of a
Star Trek
rerun.

She was so stunned by his action, so blown away that Beau, her buddy and one of the best rookie firemen she had ever seen, had hit her, she couldn’t think how to react.

Beau backed into the kitchen, his eyes round with horror. “Reagan, oh, my God,” he murmured again and again, reminding her of the stories he had told about his father beating up his mother, about how much Beau had hated it.

His hand reached for the knob of the back door.

“Don’t you walk out of this house,” she snarled, her arm draping over Frank’s back as she used the big dog to get up off the floor.

Taking heed of her words, Beau didn’t
walk
out. Instead, the rookie firefighter turned and ran like hell.

A minute later, his souped-up old Camaro revved, and she heard the crunch of gravel as he reversed into the street. Running to the front of the house, Reagan brushed aside a curtain with a trembling hand.

In time to see the silver coupe barreling in the same direction that Luz Maria and her brother had just taken. If Beau caught up with them somehow…

Ignoring the throbbing of her cheekbone, Reagan raced to grab the portable phone. Remembering that Jack’s mother, in her enthusiasm, had given her his mobile number as well his landline and work numbers, Reagan found the slip of paper in her bedroom and hurriedly punched in the digits.

Only to hear a ringing from her own guest room.

Following the sound, she located Jack’s cell phone on the carpeted floor, where it lay half hidden by the quilted comforter of the neatly remade bed.

So what now? By searching for Jack’s number, she’d blown the chance to try to follow Beau.

She could call Jack’s and Luz Maria’s mother, but she hated the idea of upsetting the woman over what would probably turn out to be nothing. She thought of calling 911, but that would mean getting Beau in trouble for something she only imagined he might do, not to mention dragging the police into what had taken place between them. It might also end the career that he had worked so hard for, only hours after both of them had lost a man they loved.

Tears hazed her vision, and still her index finger hovered above the lighted keypad. Should she make the 911 call and destroy a good friend unhinged by guilt and grief? Or should she risk allowing him to hurt or maybe even kill another man?

“How stupid can I get?” she asked herself as she hit the speed-dial number she should have punched in in the first place.

“Answer,” she whispered repeatedly into her phone. And wondered what to do if Beau did not.

His new lawyer’s paralegal drove Jack to a Cheap Wheelz location near Telephone Road just after dark. As was the case with all the other outlets in the franchise, this one operated out of an old storefront in a mostly empty strip center in a neighborhood predominated by small homes and apartments that had seen better days.

His driver, a pudgy redhead in her late fifties, gazed at a chain-link fence topped with curls of razor wire. On the other side, parked in neat rows, sat a ragtag collection of vehicles Paulo regularly rounded up at bank repo and government seizure auctions. A few were nice enough, late-model sedans, pickups, or sports coupes that gleamed beneath the color-muting security lights. More, however, bore visible dents and scrapes or mismatched quarter panels.

“People actually
rent
these things?” asked the paralegal before darting a nervous glance toward a pair of young black men carrying long-neck beer bottles.

As the two passed, Jack nodded toward one and
lifted two fingers from the dash in greeting. He had immunized the man’s infant son a couple of days earlier.

“Not everyone has credit cards or auto insurance policies,” he explained. “Cheap Wheelz serves a need in low-income neighborhoods.”

Defensiveness came naturally when Jack spoke to an outsider, but the realities of Paulo’s enterprise were far more complicated. From what Jack had heard, rentals at places like Cheap Wheelz were anything but cheap, and the business’s true income, which came in the form of cash, was easily hidden from the IRS. Paulo’s chain, which he promoted as a form of civic-minded philanthropy, could as easily be seen as a parasite on the community it served.

After thanking the woman for the ride, Jack walked into the storefront, a clean, beige-tiled space ringed by inexpensive plastic chairs and softened by large tropical plants in painted pots. Framed photographs and news clippings decorated the walls, all of them featuring “Paul” Rodriguez, his successes, and his contributions to various local charities. In every case, the outsized Paulo dwarfed the officials pictured beside him.

When Paulo came around the counter, his jowls were a little heavier than in the photos, and the streak of premature gray in his goatee was more prevalent than the last time Jack had seen him. He looked good, though, with his expensive haircut, huge diamond-stud earring, and a dark gray suit far sharper than anything Jack had ever worn. No tie, though. Paulo’s shirt was partially unbuttoned and light green, the color of new money.

Grinning, Paulo pumped Jack’s hand energetically. “You get things straightened out?”

Still wondering if he’d been wise to accept his old friend’s offer, Jack scrounged around for a halfhearted
smile. “Working on it. Thanks for staying open late for me.”

“
No problemo.
”

“The other day, I meant to ask you. How’s the family?”

“You know, the usual: Carlos and Jaime in the joint again, both of ’em sayin’ how they didn’t do it.” Paulo shook his head over the brothers who had never taken to the straight and narrow. “Mama’s takin’ care of my boy while I’m working.”

The last Jack knew, the woman was bad-mouthing Paulo all over town on account of how her oldest son had somehow cheated the other two out of their share of the business. Maybe Paulo’s success had changed her mind, or maybe she’d been won over by the special needs of her grandson—or by whatever she was paid to look after the boy. Senora Rodriguez had always struck Jack as the mercenary sort. But maybe she had to be, since her good-for-nothing husband had drifted out of her life many years before.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the use of one of your cars,” Jack said. “Otherwise, I’d be walking.”

“Don’t worry about it, ’
mano.
” Paulo produced a set of keys. “In this neighborhood, we look out for each other, especially when some outsider’s gunnin’ for us. Now, did you get to talk to Winter?”

Jack accepted the keys but shook his head. “This federal task force kept me busy all day rehashing the same old stuff I told the arson investigator and the cops last night. But from what I understand, Winter’s getting a lot of flak for what he’s done.”

“Yeah. I been keepin’ an eye on the TV.” Paulo gestured toward a set bracketed—and padlocked—to a shelf high in the corner. “But the bastard’s turnin’ the
situation all around like it’s some big-ass damn conspiracy with BorderFree, the mayor, and the whole freaking Democratic party.”

Something on the screen had attracted Jack’s attention. “Could you turn the sound on? Higher—please.”

Wearing one of their trademarked desert camo hoods, the spokesman for BorderFree-4-All stood, fist raised, before the camera. When he spoke, his deep voice boomed out an accent more reminiscent of upper-crust Mexico City than the penniless border-runners he claimed to represent. “We will never allow the martyrdom of Dr. Joaquín Montoya to go unheralded, nor will we allow the tyranny of bureaucratic oppression to go…”

The words faded as the news show segued into images from last May’s INS bombing and the broadcasts that had made BorderFree-4-All both a despised presence and a household word.

“This is all I need—” Jack’s words choked off, and his eyes widened as he recognized one of the unhooded faces in the background of the story.

It was Sergio. His sister’s boyfriend.

“Son of a bitch!” Jack swore. “Luz Maria’s going out with that guy, the one in black, with the long ponytail.”

Paulo shook his head scornfully. “That punk? Your sister’s got no taste, man. I asked her out a few times, but she never gave me half a chance to—”

“I have to go talk to her,” Jack said, a terrible suspicion overwhelming his surprise that Paulo would hit on the much-younger Luz Maria. “Which car do I take?”

After switching off the television and locking up behind himself, Paulo led Jack to the nicest vehicle on his
lot, a jet-black Mustang convertible that couldn’t have been more than a year or two old.

Jack shook his hand. “Thanks, Paulo. I promise you, I won’t forget this.”

“I’m counting on it,
compa.
”

Paulo’s smile as he spoke was wide and bright and friendly. But as Jack started the car, he couldn’t help wondering: Did small fish see that same expression before the shark’s jaws split to swallow them alive?

“Joaquín, you did not call me,” Jack’s mother accused the moment he walked in the front door of the little purple house on Waverly. Just beyond the entry, the dining room was lit with at least thirty Our Lady of Guadalupe candles, which were meant as a plea for miracles—no doubt, on his behalf. In case Guadalupe wasn’t up to the challenge, Mama had also dragged out the wrought-iron-framed portrait of Saint Jude, her collection of tiny lucky plastic skeletons found over the years inside loaves baked to commemorate the Day of the Dead, and a lime-green rabbit’s foot, which she stroked continuously with her short fingers.

Never let it be said that his mother didn’t cover all the bases.

“All day, I cannot go to the
yerbería
because I worry for you. I worry and I worry, so much I am shaking—see?”

When she raised a spastic hand in evidence, Jack decided he had seen less expressive grand mal seizures. “You should get that looked at,” he said dryly. “It might fly off any minute.”

Both of her hands stopped shaking and fisted at her hips. “What is the use of leaving messages if you never listen to them?”

Jack used two fingers to rub the bridge of his nose. The last thing he needed was one of Candelaria de Vaca Montoya’s legendary it’s-all-about-me attacks. Yet as much as he wanted to plug his ears and walk past her, he did owe her an explanation—and an apology as well. With her still-black, short curls deflated, her favorite purple pantsuit wrinkled, and her spiky black lashes clumped with moisture, she did look genuinely distraught.

He encircled her with his arms and let her lean into his embrace. Tiny as she was, the top of her head barely reached his chest. “I’m sorry, Mama. The interview ran later than I thought, and I never got your messages. I lost my phone somewhere, maybe at Reagan Hurley’s last night.”

He should have called Reagan from the station when he had realized it was missing. But this morning’s run-in with her coworker had made him hesitate. Whatever her health status, Reagan was a firefighter. And the firefighters were clearly closing ranks against him.

Though he’d used a pay phone to call Paulo about a car, Jack realized he’d only delayed the inevitable. With his home—and home telephone—destroyed, his cell was the only means his answering service had of reaching him if one of his patients needed him. Though he wasn’t on call this weekend, he couldn’t in good conscience remain out of touch.

His mother pulled away to look at him. “I still cannot understand why you would not come here last night. I could have shooed away all those reporters. Did you see when you drove up? They all went away this morning, after I show them your pictures. Such a sweet baby you were, how could anybody think you would do those bad things they are saying?”

Jack winced and breathed a silent prayer that his bare-bottomed
niĊo
-on-the-rug shots weren’t gracing the airwaves as they spoke. Now that he owned virtually nothing, his last scrap of dignity didn’t seem too much to covet. But it didn’t surprise him that the media hadn’t bothered coming back. Knowing Candelaria, she had lined up everyone from old priests to his kindergarten teacher to legions of her faithful customers to vouch for his good name. Like Luz Maria, their mother had a tendency to bludgeon obstacles until they were bloody pulp beneath her size-four feet.

“You’re a wonderful mother,” he said, and meant it. Embarrassing and hypercritical as she could be at times, he could at least count on her to defend him to outsiders. And unlike the attorney she had recommended to him—the “genius” son of a favorite customer—his mama wasn’t charging him a dime.

She beamed and touched his cheek before a worried look crossed her expression. “Now, about this Reagan Hurley. If you ask me, this young woman is in too much of a hurry to start giving me
nietos
, with this inviting you to spend the night in her house.”

Jack rubbed his aching forehead. “I told you this morning, you don’t have anything there to worry over. Reagan was just being kind to an old family friend, that’s all. Believe me, after the situation with her captain, romance was the last thing on her mind.”

But the thought sliced through him that sex had not been, that the pain that put her in his arms could as easily have put her in his bed. Remembering the way she’d kissed him, the way that lean, fit body felt against his, Jack turned sharply from his mother and walked into the kitchen, where he grabbed a can of cola from the fridge. Partly because he needed the
sugar-and-caffeine boost, but mostly to get his mind off Reagan’s tight curves before his body’s reaction to the thoughts disgraced him.

“Is Luz Maria here?” he asked to change the subject.

As eager as he was to confront his sister about Sergio, he realized she was unlikely to be at home. The last time Luz Maria had spent a Saturday evening home alone, she’d been sick with an acute case of strep throat.

But his mother nodded. “She is in her bedroom, doing who-knows-what on that computer. She says she is upset about your problems, but I think she have some kind of fight with that boy, Sergio. I told her he was no good. A man who never speaks of his past, who will say nothing of his family—how could such a person make a husband?”

Under other circumstances, Jack might have figured that Sergio did not enjoy playing Spanish Inquisition with his girlfriend’s mother. But the news video pointed to a far darker explanation. “I’ll go and speak to her, then.”

“You would talk to Luz Maria and not tell me about why these questioning people must keep you all day?”

Tired and stressed as Jack was, he knew his mother well enough to sidestep her landmines in his sleep. “As soon as I finish with Luz Maria, nothing would make me happier than to get your advice about my troubles—unless I could do it while eating some of your good cooking.”

His mother beamed, apparently satisfied for the moment. Jack kissed her cheek, then started down the hallway, his soda in hand.

He hadn’t made it to Luz Maria’s room before the phone rang and his mother called him. Coming down
the hall, she cupped her hand around the mouthpiece of the cordless. “A lady for you—and she is Senor Mayor’s
personal assistant.
She says it is
muy importante.
And unlike my only son, this busy lady has been calling here all day.”

With that, she thrust the receiver toward him. “Here. You talk to her now. Luz Maria can wait, but this lady, she has other important things she must do for her important job.”

Her voice dropping to a whisper, his mother added, “She is single, too, this woman—and no boyfriend either. I asked last time she call.”

Staring at the telephone, Jack sighed. He didn’t care whether this woman represented Mayor Youngblood or the president; he didn’t want to take the call.

But his mama had him cornered, and he realized that in less than the time it took to explain his reluctance to her, he could easily brush off one of the mayor’s flunkies.At least dealing with Darren Winter’s barrage all week had taught him something useful…

Accepting the cordless, he said, “I’ll take it in your room,” mostly because that was the location of the other extension. Otherwise, his mama would most likely hurt herself in her rush to pick it up to eavesdrop. No one was as impressed by titles and the trappings of power as good old Candelaria. She would be telling her customers for weeks, Jack figured, of how she’d spoken to Senor Mayor himself—even though, if pressed, she wouldn’t be able to come up with Thomas Youngblood’s name.

“Jack Montoya,” he told the caller, quietly closing his mother’s bedroom door behind him.

“Sabrina McMillan.”

A current of sensuality rippled through the sylla
bles, and instantly Jack recalled the woman from her frequent television interviews. No mere assistant, this was the woman the mayor had brought in from her last position in Atlanta to resurrect his faltering campaign—a campaign in which he’d spent far more time shadow-boxing an officially undeclared opponent than his official, and hopelessly outmatched, rival. Sometimes known as “the politician’s secret weapon,” Sabrina McMillan had worked all around the country, where she had racked up an astounding twelve-year winning streak.