Dangerous Women Part 44

"I'll take over," Danny said, moving into the room. He s.h.i.+fted his gaze, caught Farber's eye. The other man hesitated, then flicked a glance back at the girl, hid a grin.

"Yeah, sure thing." He stood and picked up his things. "By the way, Ernst had a gun on him. It's been sent to the lab." Ballistics testing was routine. Maybe they could pin some cold cases on Ernst and improve their stats. Farber's eyes flicked toward the girl, then back to Danny. "Lemme know if you get anything," he added, the double meaning hanging in the air.

Danny waited for him to leave, closed the door, and took a seat in the empty chair. "I'm Captain Danny Faciane," he told her. "I'd like to ask you a few questions."

"Okay." She paused. "I'm Delia," she said, releasing her grip on the paper cup.

"Last name?"

She sat back. "Rochon. Delia Rochon. I talked to Jimmy last night. About midnight or so, I guess. He used to come by the club a lot." Distaste skimmed across her features.

He wrote her name on the pad. "Club?"

"Freddy-Z's." Her eyes dropped to the hands in her lap. "I'm a dancer."

A stripper. Freddy-Z's was one of the best in what was left of the city. Danny jotted the info down. Not because it was important to the case, but because he wanted her to think it was, that it wasn't simply important to him that he knew where to find her again.

He went ahead and asked her about her conversation with Jimmy Ernst, went through the motions the same way they did with most other cases like this. She gave him a clear but spa.r.s.e tale of the encounter. Jimmy had asked her about a girl who'd used to work at the club, wanted to know where she was now. Delia hadn't told him anything. Nothing too exciting.

She didn't like the victim. She never came out and said so, but it was clear in her manner, the hardening of her eyes when she spoke of him. Then again, Danny knew that he'd be hard pressed to find anyone who did. Jimmy was a pimp, specializing in girls who looked really young.

Danny finally set the pen down on the pad. She looked at the pen, then to him. "Am I under arrest?" she asked, voice small but steady.

He let out a snort. "For Jimmy? Nah. We don't give a f.u.c.k about him." No one would ever go to jail for that murder. Not unless they came to the station and made a full confession-and that's how it was for most of the murders in this city, not only for sc.u.m like Ernst. Danny, and everyone else, did just enough to keep from being indicted for malfeasance.

The cops in this city knew how to survive. And a few smart ones, like him, knew how to prosper.

He walked her out, offered to have an officer drive her home, but she merely smiled and shook her head. It was raining again, a steady downpour that would wash all the trash into the streets and clog the drains, but she simply opened her umbrella and walked out into it without a hitch in her stride. He watched the red umbrella grow smaller in the distance until it was lost in the grey haze of the rain.

Danny talked to the bartender at Freddy-Z's later that day, found out that Delia had started there about a month ago. No one knew much about her. Then again, no one really cared, according to the bartender. They didn't give a s.h.i.+t about the girls' personal lives as long as they showed up on time and kept any trouble they were in away from the club. Delia did both.

She was working that night. He made sure he was there to see her. He didn't even try to convince himself he was checking out a possible witness. He knew d.a.m.n well that he wanted to see more of her, and not simply the more that happened when she pulled her clothing off.

Neon flashed in tempo to the ba.s.s thump of the music. The mingled scents of sweat and s.e.x, money and misery, swirled around the dancers and the men gazing up at them. Delia worked the pole with a lithe grace and sureness that spoke of years of training, and Danny wondered if, in some distant past, she'd been a far different sort of dancer. Yet, despite her obvious strength and control, she exuded a sensuousness, a base s.e.xuality, that he doubted she'd learned in a ballet cla.s.s.

She only looked at him once, a lingering caress of attention paired with a shy smile, at odds with the sultry glances she bestowed on the other patrons. And because it would have seemed odd or rude for him not to, he held up a fiver and slipped it under her G-string when she paused before him, then felt dirty for doing so with this girl.

"She's a f.u.c.king hot piece," said a familiar voice. Danny turned his head, forced a smile for Peter. The other man's eyes were on Delia. Appreciative. Admiring. Hungry.

"She's a witness in one of my cases," Danny found himself saying. Maybe Peter would be scared off by that. He was usually pretty careful about not a.s.sociating with criminal types. After all, that's what he had Danny for.

But Peter merely smiled, kept his gaze on Delia.

Danny knew what would happen next. Peter would get a lap dance, then pay for a private room. It was possible that he'd invite Danny to come with him, and with any other girl he'd have gone and enjoyed himself.

Danny stood, moved to the bar on a pretense of getting another drink. The envelope crinkled within his jacket and he frowned. He'd been so caught up in thoughts of her that he'd forgotten to take it out and put it someplace safe. But now he felt only relief. He didn't even think before calling the manager over, paying the money for a private room with Delia and another one for Peter with a different dancer. Part of him knew that there was every chance that this wouldn't work. Peter had money and influence and was used to getting what he wanted. But Danny had his own sort of influence. He slid the manager a hundred, along with an agreement to help the man out if he ever got into the sort of trouble that Danny could help with. A few minutes later, the club's second-prettiest dancer made her way over to where Peter sat.

Peter raised an eyebrow as the blonde draped herself around his shoulders, chuckled under his breath as she rubbed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s on the back of his neck. He scanned the room for Delia, then asked the blond girl a question. She shrugged and nodded in Danny's direction; he fixed a smile on his face and lifted his drink as Peter looked his way, tried to make it look as if he'd bought the girl for Peter simply because it was a cool thing for one guy to do for another.

The two men locked eyes, gaze broken when the blond dancer took Peter's hand to lead him to the back room. He stood and followed, paused as they neared the bar.

He leaned in to Danny. "I saw what you did there," Peter said, mouth showing amus.e.m.e.nt that his eyes didn't share. "I think it's cute that you like that girl enough to pull a stunt like that." He paused. "Don't you ever f.u.c.king c.o.c.kblock me like that again."

He turned without waiting for a response and continued through the curtains to the private rooms.

Danny stayed where he was, hands clenched into fists in the pockets of his jacket, telling himself he was controlling himself from going after Peter and beating that smug, superior smile from his face, but knowing that he was actually fighting down the sick knowledge that he and Peter might be cut from the same cloth, but they sure as s.h.i.+t weren't equals, weren't partners of any sort. And as much as he hated Peter at this moment, he knew that when the man summoned him he'd go and do what he was told, like a G.o.dd.a.m.ned trained dog. Too much to lose if he didn't.

He also knew that he didn't want to go to a private room with Delia. He turned back to the bartender. "The redheaded kid down by the left stage. Is he a d.i.c.k to the girls?"

Bartender shook his head. "Nah. Comes in with twenty bucks a coupla times a week. Never caused trouble."

"Give him my room. Tell him happy f.u.c.king birthday." He peeled off another hundred to cover a tip. "And tell him if he gets out of line with Delia, I'll break his f.u.c.king neck."

He left the club, waited in the bar across the street for her to finish her s.h.i.+ft. When he finally saw her step out of the back door, he dropped a twenty to cover his tab and went out to meet her.

She was with two other women. A pet.i.te, mousy thing who tried and failed to do "s.e.xy librarian" and a curvy Hispanic with big t.i.ts and long legs. As he approached they paused their low conversation. Delia's eyes held a whisper of uncertainty, but the other two watched him with the naked wariness of a rabbit watching a fox.

He wanted to growl to the two rabbits to get lost, watch them skitter off, but instead he merely asked Delia, "Can I buy you a cup of coffee?"

As if she hadn't heard his question, she turned to the other girls. "I'll see y'all tomorrow night," she told them, exchanged quick hugs. Not until the two were halfway down the block did she return her attention to Danny. Her mouth pressed into a tight, thin line.

"I'm not a wh.o.r.e," she said flatly.

Danny found himself smiling. "I know. I promise, I just want to buy you a cup of coffee."

The look she gave him was measuring, doubtful. He wondered if she knew what he'd done in the club and, if so, whether she could possibly understand why. Then again, he didn't completely understand it himself.

"There's a cafe over on Decatur," she finally said. "It's really good, but I don't like walking there by myself at night."

"I'll protect you," he replied.

She liked her coffee sweet and rich, added enough cream to where it matched the pale mocha color of her skin. Her croissant she tore into small bits before eating it in dainty bites between sips of coffee and conversation.

Like anyone else in the city, they talked first about why they were still there after the Switch, why they hadn't abandoned the city the way that the river had. After all, anyone who could had left, leaving only the very poor, the rich who knew how to profit from disaster, and the few people those rich needed to get richer and stay comfortable.

"Lots of cops left and went over to Morgan City," he told her. "Plenty of work there. But ... I dunno. I didn't want to leave, and I had enough seniority to avoid the layoffs." And plenty of stroke, too, he added silently. He'd called in a lot of favors to make sure that not only would he stay but those in line ahead of him for promotion would get the ax instead. He'd made captain less than six months later.

"This is my home" was all she said to explain why she stayed. "I love this city."

"Even now?" he asked her, eyebrow c.o.c.ked in disbelief.

"Especially now," she replied, a soft smile on her lips.

He thought about that for a moment while he drank his cafe au lait. The night breeze brought the stagnant scent of the river, mingled with the aroma of beer and p.i.s.s in the street. Even hours before dawn, the muggy air wrapped around them with warm tendrils, promising a brutal summer to come. But this city suited him, suited his personality. The Switch had been the best G.o.dd.a.m.n thing that had ever happened to him.

"Me too," he finally said, because he knew she expected it, and pushed aside the strange twinge of sadness that came from realizing that he loved it for far different reasons than she did.

Though he never went back inside the club, he waited for her each night and walked her to the cafe. On the third night, she tucked her arm through his as they walked. On the fifth, she greeted him with a kiss and a smile.

On the seventh, she asked, "Do you have a coffeemaker at home?"

He had an apartment south of the Quarter, a more than decent place where he lived for free, thanks to a desperate landlord who agreed that it was better to have a cop live there than have squatters take up residence. With so many vacant homes and apartments in the city, it was rare for any cop to pay rent.

It was almost a mile from the cafe, but she insisted that she didn't mind walking.

His place wasn't overly messy, but it sure as h.e.l.l wasn't set up as a nice place to have company. The curtains had been left behind by the previous tenants, and had likely been old back then. Decor was limited to a pile of magazines with scantily clad women on the covers, a cl.u.s.ter of empty beer bottles on the coffee table, and, by the door, a framed newspaper article from several years back with the headline: Witness recants testimony. NOPD officers cleared in wrongdoing.

He never brought girls back here, had never thought what it would look like through a woman's eyes. Oddly ashamed, he started to apologize, but she stopped him with a smile. "It's all right. It's good. You're a good person." Which only made his shame increase, because he knew that he wasn't, though it had never mattered to him before.

He snaked his arms around her waist and pulled her tightly to him. She let out a small squeak of surprise. "Nah, I'm a bad boy," he said, trying to be flip, yet feeling it like a confession. He instantly felt silly for saying it and sorry for being rough. He didn't want this girl to think of him like that. He didn't want her to be the kind who was only attracted to the a.s.sholes and p.r.i.c.ks.

But she simply smiled and laid her hand on his cheek. "You're not fooling me," she said, voice low and husky. "You're my good boy."

Danny knew how to f.u.c.k, how to get what he wanted, how not to care. He'd lost count of the number of prost.i.tution "arrests" he'd made-girls who'd paid their fine directly to him with their mouth or c.u.n.t. It had been a long time since he'd had any sort of concern for the pleasure of his partner, and he felt like a fumbling virgin as he touched Delia, shamed and horrified when his uncertainty translated into a betrayal of his own physical response.

Yet she neither mocked nor took insult. Lowering her head, she gently coaxed him back, easing him, exciting him. And before he could squander her efforts, he s.h.i.+fted her to her back and returned the attention. She tasted sweet and wild, and as she tightened her hands in the sheet and cried out, he couldn't help but feel a pleasure that nearly matched her own. When she finally lay spent and shaking, only then did he move up and find his own release, thrilled beyond measure when she clasped her arms and legs around him and cried out his name.

He held her close after, stroking her hair as her breath warmed his chest, savoring the almost foreign sensation of feeling whole, secure. Happy.

The next night they walked out to what was left of the Mississippi, made their way upriver, and stood on a dock where, only three years earlier, the Ca.n.a.l Street Ferry had loaded and unloaded thousands of cars and people. The river had a bit more temper here due to the bend in it and the way the silt had settled. The current roiled beyond the mud, but to Danny it felt like an older woman trying to prove she was young and attractive. Look at me, he imagined the river saying. I still got it. I'm still a bad girl. In a few more years, the silt would build up more and the river would subside, muttering, disgruntled, and hurt to be so unappreciated.

"When I was a kid, my mom would take me out to the levee nearly every Sunday afternoon," Danny told Delia. "We'd sit and watch the s.h.i.+ps and barges go up and down the river and we'd make up stories about what they carried and where they were going."

"That sounds nice," she said, tilting her head to look at him.

"Yeah. It was cool. She'd pack sandwiches and chips and we'd make a picnic of it."

She leaned up against him. "Do your parents still live here?"

"Dad left when I was about six," he said. "Mom died about ten years ago. Cancer." He shrugged to show her how much it didn't affect him anymore. He wanted to tell her that he'd scattered his mother's ashes in the river or on the levee or somewhere that would have been meaningful in some way, but the truth was that he'd never even picked them up from the funeral home. He didn't care what happened to the ashes-not because he hadn't loved his mother, but because he felt it was just one more stupid, sentimental detail that people wanted to believe was important.

He looked out toward the bones of a s.h.i.+p that had been stripped nearly clean by the welders. That's what it's like, he thought. No one cared where that metal would end up. That s.h.i.+p would never be rebuilt.

"Do you remember where you were when it happened?" she asked him, and for an instant he thought she was talking about his mother's death.

"You mean the Switch?" he asked, to be certain. She nodded. "Sure," he said, thinking quickly. The truth was he didn't remember exactly. Probably working. Maybe at home. It wasn't until about a week later that it started to sink in to everyone that nothing was ever going to be the same, but even then he didn't remember being upset or worked up over it. The fickle b.i.t.c.h of a river had run off, it wasn't ever coming back, and that's all there was to it. "I was on a domestic violence call," he decided to say. "I'd just put handcuffs on a guy for slapping his wife when my partner told me the spillway had collapsed and the river was changing course."

She looked at him as if expecting him to say more. He wondered if maybe he should make some more c.r.a.p up, add some details and tell her that the guy worked on a s.h.i.+p and had come home to find out that his wife had been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g another guy. Maybe tell her that he'd slapped his wife in front of their six-year-old son, and that as soon as he was bailed out, he hopped on another s.h.i.+p and never returned.

No, Danny decided. Best to leave it as it was. One thing he'd learned from the perps he arrested was that most of them tripped themselves up by making their lies too complicated. Keep it simple and short. Less to keep straight that way. "So, where were you?" he asked her.

Delia blinked, pursed her lips. "I was at the emergency room with a neighbor of mine. She ... fell and broke her wrist. I was playing with her daughter in the waiting room when it came on the TV."

She turned back to the water, rubbing her arms against the light breeze. "I wonder what they'll name it?"

He slipped an arm around her, pulled her close, smiled as she nestled against him. "Seems wrong not to call it the Mississippi."

She shook her head. "But she's gone. Left us behind. Atchafalaya has her now."

"You think the city needs to get over it and move on?" he asked her with an indulgent smile.

A grin touched her mouth. "It's never going to get her back. New Orleans needs to stop being the mopey boyfriend. It needs to take a shower and start dating again. It can be better than it was before."

He chuckled and gave her a squeeze, but his thoughts were on men like Peter and their plans for the city. It wasn't going to be cleaned up. It wouldn't get better, at least not for the people who weren't running the show. The only thing the city had left was tourism, and they had no intention of making the city "family friendly" or any of that s.h.i.+t.

The city council would eventually cave in to pressure. New Orleans would sell itself out, fill up with casinos and even more bars and prost.i.tutes. It made him sad, which surprised him. That kind of place would suit him and his temperament.

"New Orleans will become the wh.o.r.e," he said, more to himself than to her.

"Not if I have anything to say about it," she murmured, then sighed and leaned her head against him. Danny wondered if she knew that there was nothing she could do about it, nothing that could stop the city's slide into total debauchery and corruption. There were too many players lined up against her. His gut twisted with the knowledge that, not only was he was one of them, he wasn't sure that he was capable of doing anything else.

A week later, he met her as usual, but her kiss of greeting seemed distracted and her smile forced. He asked her if something was wrong, but she only shook her head. "It's nothing," she insisted. "Just a guy asking for stuff I don't do." Before he could puff up in righteous defense of his woman, she put her hand on his chest and gave him the smile that always touched the place deep inside him that told him that, to this woman even if no one else, he was special and strong.

"It's all right," she a.s.sured him, though a s.h.i.+mmer of doubt touched the corners of her mouth.

The doubt stayed, darkening her eyes and hunching her shoulders. At times he thought she was on the verge of tears. It took several more days for him to coax it out of her, patiently weathering the denials, the false smiles, and the protestations that everything was fine. He wasn't the most honest cop on the beat, but he still knew how to ferret out the truth.

"It's this one guy," she finally confessed while they lay tangled in the sheets of his bed and she rested her head on his chest. A shudder pa.s.sed through her. "He's rich and powerful, which is why the owners don't toss him out." She lifted her head, met his eyes. "It's not that he's mean or a jerk. But he wants me." She swallowed, then managed a chuckle. "Doesn't that sound ridiculously egotistical?"

He smiled, stroked her hair back from her face. "Not to me. I can perfectly understand wanting you."

Delia dropped her head back to his chest, nestled closer to him. "He wants me to be his girlfriend. I told him I wasn't interested." She sighed. "I'm sure it'll all blow over, but right now he's awfully insistent. And, he's ... ugh."

"Skeevy?"

"No, not that. He's clean-cut, decent looking. But it's ... it's the way he sees other people. As things to be used. He's not nice."

He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close, kissed the top of her head while tension curdled his gut. "Who is this guy?" he asked, even though he had a feeling he already knew. "I'll take care of it."

She lifted her head again, a frown puckering her forehead. "I don't want you hurting anyone for me."

"I won't," he lied. He knew d.a.m.n well how to cover his tracks. As long as it wasn't Peter. Please don't let it be Peter. "Give me his name. I'll make sure that he knows you're off-limits. Nice and friendly."

Peter opened the door of his condo at the knock, an amused smile curving his mouth at the sight of Danny on the doorstep. "What a nice surprise. Come on in."

Danny gave the man a short nod, entered. "Need to talk to you."

"I'm always here for a friend," Peter said, closing the door. "By the way, I never did get to thank you for taking care of that business with the bookstore owner." He moved to the kitchen, pulled down two mugs from the cabinet. "I don't know what you said to him, but he took the eviction with nary a whimper." He poured coffee for himself, then slid a look toward Danny. "So nice when people do as they're told. Makes everyone's life so much more pleasant. Coffee?"

Danny jerked his head in a nod. Peter knew why he was there, Danny realized. He'd been expecting him. He took the mug from the man, forced himself to sip at the bitter liquid.

"I've done a lot of stuff for you," he began, then stopped. None of that made a difference in this situation. He had a speech ready, a chest-pounding "get away from my woman" rant, but one look at Peter's eyes told him that it was the wrong tack, that it would be pointless. He swallowed to try to clear the bitter taste from his mouth, took a deep breath. "Look, there's this girl I really like. Delia. She, uh, says that you've asked her out, and I wanted to talk to you, man-to-man, ask you to leave her be." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he hated himself. This wasn't man-to-man. This was the dog groveling to his master.

Peter frowned over his mug. "Delia? Is that the stripper chick you've been mooning over?"

"We've been seeing each other," Danny said, jaw tight.

The other man c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at him. "Is that so? She sure has been friendly with me at the club." The he chuckled, shook his head. "But that's her job, isn't it? I have to say, she's quite good. I could almost believe she really is glad to see me each night."