“Not fuckin’ likely,” Ellis answered, which was also the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He eyed Colin. “What do you want to do about it?”
That was the $64,000 question, all right. Colin had been thinking of little else since his son gave him the unwelcome news. Sighing, he said, “Seems to me we’ve got to find out how deep Darren’s in. If this was a onetime thing, if he scored more than he could use for a while and was selling some, then I guess we shine it on. But if he’s dealing dealing, if you know what I mean. .”
“Then we got to drop on him.” Rodney didn’t ask that, either-he said it. Colin made his head go up and down one more time. Rodney went on, “And whatever we do, we got to do it so Chief Mike doesn’t know we’re doin’ it.”
“Probably a good plan,” Colin agreed, so dryly the other cop guffawed.
“I trot over to the chief’s office now, man, you’re fucked,” the African-American detective said.
“Yeah, I know.” Colin left it right there.
Ellis stared up at the acoustic tiles on the ceiling. He let out a sigh of his own. “And if I don’t go to Pitcavage, if I start working this like it’s a case, and he finds out, I’m fucked, too.”
“I’m sorry. Shit, I’m sorry all kinds of ways,” Colin said. “If you want to make like this entire conversation never happened, hey, I can see why you would. Long as you don’t rat me out, I won’t hold it against you.”
“Wanna know something weird, Colin? I believe you,” Rodney said. “Anybody else in the whole wide world’d be blowin’ smoke up my ass. Pitcavage sure would, Lord knows. But you, I believe. Doesn’t matter any which way, though, on account of I’m in. If Darren’s dealing, he’s got to pay the price, same as anybody else. Wasn’t for his daddy, he woulda paid some prices a while ago by now. ’Bout time he finds out the rules don’t have except for you in ’em anywhere.”
“Looks that way to me, too,” Colin said. He hadn’t been so relieved since. . since when? Since Kelly’d said she’d marry him-that was the only answer that crossed his mind. “Thanks, man,” he added a moment later. He’d never been one for big shows of gratitude.
“It’s cool, Colin.” Yes, Rodney’d known him long enough to have a notion of how he ticked. “Anybody who deals, he ain’t no friend of mine.” He peered up at the ceiling again, as if trying to extract wisdom from the random patterns of holes in the tiles. “Talk about friends, though. . We end up busting the chief’s kid, this whole goddamn department’ll go off like a grenade.”
“That did occur to me, yeah,” Colin said. “Be careful while you’re working on it. Be careful who you pick to help you, too. You know the old line-three guys can keep a secret as long as two of ’em are dead.”
“I didn’t, but I like it.” Thoughtfully, Ellis continued, “Not the only reason to be careful. Darren, he’ll make a lot of cops. A couple of the brothers who haven’t been here since dirt, maybe not. Let’s hope he’s one of the white guys who figure all black folks look alike.”
“That’s a bunch of bull, too,” Colin said. “You don’t look one damn bit like Halle Berry.”
Rodney laughed. “Well, you got that right, anyway. Long as we’re here, you wanna really talk about the robbery?”
“Sure. Let’s do it,” Colin said, so they did.
* * *
Deborah started to nurse. Kelly felt her milk let down. That was a sensation she’d never known-never even imagined-till she had the baby. Well, so was labor, but this was a lot more pleasant than that.
Deborah sucked and gulped, sucked and gulped. Then she tried to gulp when she should have been sucking or something, because she choked and swallowed wrong. The first time that happened, it had horrified Kelly. Now she got that it wouldn’t kill her firstborn daughter. She pulled Deborah off the breast and hauled her up onto her own shoulder, patting her on the back till she could breathe easily again. It didn’t take long. Then the baby went back to supper.
Kelly’d just switched her to the other side when her eyelids started to sag. Up on the shoulder she went once more. Kelly wanted to get a burp out of her before she crashed. She also checked the baby’s diaper. Deborah was dry. That was good.
“Okay, kid, you can sack out now,” Kelly said, rocking in the recliner. With luck, Deborah would stay sleep long enough for Kelly to make dinner, perhaps even long enough to let her eat it. That was bound to be against the babies’ union regulations, but the local hadn’t come down on Deborah yet.
The front door opened. Somebody was back from work: Colin or Vanessa. “Don’t sl-” Wham! Too late. Deborah jerked and yelled. “Shit,” Kelly muttered.
Vanessa sauntered into the front room from the foyer. “Aw, did I wake her?”
“Yeah, you did. Thanks a bunch.” Kelly was too frazzled to stay cool; maybe that horseshit Aw had something to do with it. No, for sure it did. “I tried to tell you not to slam the goddamn door, but did you listen? Fat chance.”
Vanessa blinked. Kelly’d done her best to play the easygoing stepmom-till now. “Well, excuse me, Ms. High-and-Mighty,” Vanessa said. “Can I kiss your ring?”
“You can kiss my ass, Vanessa,” Kelly said, meanwhile rocking to try to calm Deborah down again. “Now that somebody’s been dumb enough to hire you, the sooner you get the hell out of here, the happier everybody else will be.”
“Fuck you, too,” Vanessa snarled. She stomped up the stairs and slammed the door to her bedroom, too.
Kelly’s stomach churned. She didn’t like fights. She didn’t do them very well, or she didn’t think she did. And she was damn glad she’d already nursed Deborah, because if she hadn’t the baby would be chowing down on sour milk right this minute.
Deborah was just going back to sleep when Colin walked in. On the off chance that she might be, he closed the door quietly. When he walked into the front room, he stopped short. “Good God in the foothills!” he said. “I’ve seen guys we tased who didn’t look so ready to bite holes in things. What did I do? Whatever it is, I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything,” Kelly said, and not another word.
“Uh-oh.” Colin didn’t need any fancy DNA analysis to work out what must have happened. “You and Vanessa fired away, huh?”
“Yeah, we did.” Kelly sighed. She wasn’t proud of it, not even slightly.
“What went on? Do I want to know?”
She told him. It didn’t take long. She finished, “You go upstairs, you’ll hear a different version, though, I bet.”
“Uh-huh. Hearing a bunch of different stories comes with being a cop. So does deciding which one you believe, or whether you believe any of them,” Colin said, the corners of his mouth turning down. “I already have a notion about that, but I am gonna go upstairs.” And he did, more slowly than Vanessa had. He knocked on her door. She said something. Kelly couldn’t make out what, but Colin answered, “It’s me,” so she must have asked who was there. The door opened, then closed again.
Rocking Deborah, Kelly could hear Colin’s voice and Vanessa’s, but, once more, she couldn’t follow what they were saying. By their tones, she counted herself lucky there. Then Vanessa was, in the classic Nixonian phrase, perfectly clear: “Get out of here! Everybody hates me!”
If she’d been thirteen, that kind of thing would have come with the territory. Kelly remembered screeching the same words in the same tone. But since Vanessa was more than twice thirteen. .
The door to her room opened and closed again. Colin came down the stairs. His face held no expression at all. Kelly got to her own feet as fast as she could without bothering Deborah. The baby muttered, but her eyes stayed shut. “I’m sorry,” Kelly said.
“Not your fault.” Colin went into the kitchen. Kelly followed him. He got the Laphroaig bottle down from the top shelf of the pantry and poured himself three fingers’ worth.