I have never been under like this and I don’t know whether to crow in delight or book it to a cheap motel room and hide out until I see what’s up.   

The City of San Francisco has rented me a fucking penthouse in a gated community overlooking the bay.  I have 4,000 square feet, fully furnished, with polished hardwood floors and exquisitely thick plush carpeting and enormous oriental rugs worth probably a year of my salary and the Golden Gate Bridge less than a mile away.  It’s a split level loft with one whole side of it basically nothing but windows looking out over the water, a fireplace large enough to house a few homeless people and constructed of “white veined black marble” according to the Detective escorting me and a kitchen done in the same, full of expensive looking equipment I’ll probably lose fingers to.  

There’s a wrought iron spiral staircase leading up to the loft bedroom where I have a closet the size of my apartment back home already full of clothes with a bunch of names on them I am apparently supposed to recognize and a pale green wrought iron four poster draped in what I think might be white satin.  And of course, skylights overhead and a private elevator I can take up from the underground parking area, where my black Porsche convertible is carefully stowed in my assigned parking space and covered with some sort of luxurious car blanket contraption.   

I’m terrified I might actually be required to drive it sometime.  They’ve given me keys and everything.   

The guy who contacted me at the Marriott and identified himself as Detective Massey with SFPD’s Internal Investigation Department drove me over in an unmarked black Lexus.  I’m too freaked by the Legaspi/Exstead thing and my Lieutenant’s warning to stay on my toes until I figure out what’s going on to mention the ritzy car he’s driving and when we roll up to the gates which swing open after he swipes a magnetized security card through a slot I am speechless about my new digs.   

Detective Massey, unfortunately, is not.   

I’ve taken an instant dislike to the man.  He’s blonde, with a beefy ruddy face and too white teeth he shows too often in a carnivorous grin.  I wonder if I should tell him that I’m not one of those humans who mistake the bearing of teeth as a gesture of friendliness.   

He’s supposed to be filling me in on my assignment, but all I’ve been handed is a sheet of paper with club names on it and a platinum Visa and what looks like at least fifteen thousand dollars in cash.  Now, I have no aversion to luxury and filthy lucre and having the cash to flash is a part of the drug world but this is nothing like any under cover job I’ve ever even heard of.  Shouldn’t there be filth, cockroaches, and junkies?  

“You’re not in Texas anymore, Miss Finn,” Massey tells me, showing those fucking teeth again and putting a hand in the small of my back he steers me across the room to the sectional sofa set four steps up in the glassed in area overlooking the bay. 

“We deal in a much different type of drug user than you’d be arresting in say, old El Paso.” 

 I decide to let the “Miss” slide by.  This time.   

 He apparently thinks he’s been witty pronouncing the city name the way it’s done in the picante sauce commercials and crosses to the wet bar chuckling at himself.  It’s poised on a level six inches higher than the room below and six inches lower than the area above with steps on either side of it and is complete with a fridge, small sink, a full wooden wine rack and leaded crystal glass doors which swing open from either level to reveal more booze than I’ve seen outside a club.  

I can feel my eyebrows climbing up into my bangs.  If I’m not an alcoholic already, I am likely to be one before I leave here.   

Massey mixes me something without asking what I like or want which is fine by me since I have no idea about anything alcoholic other than beer anyway.  I take it when he hands it to me and repress the shudder when his fingers linger just slightly too long over mine.  I keep my face carefully neutral, but I let him sink deep into the butter soft black leather of the sofa and then stroll nonchalantly over to the window and stand looking out.   

When I’d asked in the car about all the information I’d gleaned was missing from the files and reports I’d been given and asked if I’d be given access to that info he had been very vague and very toothy.  When I’d asked when I would be meeting with the Captains of the precincts involved he’d beamed at me and handed me a, “Soon”.  When I asked if any more drugs had been removed from the evidence locker his response was ambiguous and when I inquired if a surveillance camera had been rigged as per my request four days ago he had graced me with a beatific smile and warned me against relying on hardware to make my case for me.   

When I casually mentioned sometime during the tour that this housing arrangement was more extravagant than what I was accustomed to living in on assignment, he bared all the teeth at once and made it even more horrific by winking at me.  He explained that this was the home of a young lady who divided her time on both coasts and graciously consented to allow SFPD to use it to house visiting officers, knowing of course this insured it with greater security.    

When I point out that this is hardly the sort of place a cop would be able to afford on any salary I have ever seen on a paycheck, he looks at me blankly until I tell him I assumed my cover would be as an incoming officer.  How else am I supposed to infiltrate the blue wall?  Or am I playing the bad girl with a party habit?  In which case this place is perfect, but I’m going to be out here a lot longer than planned since it’s going to take months of me going out and laying groundwork, making inquiries, months of me putting myself in the right places and seeing which one of the five, if any, shows up.  But then, of course, if this place is well known to SFPD… won’t that tip someone off?   

He gazes at me, amused, as if it’s so entertaining to see the little blonde cop’s brain working.   

“You just leave all that to me and IID, little lady.  You have a list of places we think are worth checking into and you’ve got money to spend at them.  You’ll do just fine.”  The last is drawled out with a wide toothy grin and a glassy sweep of the eyes over my breasts, waist, and hips.   

I know there is deep shit laid down and I am plowing through it up to my knees but I hold my tongue.  I can play dumb blonde with the best of them.   

I am being set up and dangled as bait and I know this because it isn’t the first time.  

It’s part of the job when you are female, relatively good looking and when you project the gauzy steel of Southern womanhood which somehow induces men to see whatever they want when they look at you.  This is a neat trick in an undercover cop’s repertoire.  The only problem with being bait is now and then you are eaten alive.   

 I lean my forehead into the window so the glass is cold against my skin and I beat back the irrational feelings of isolation and abandonment. Being out here alone is so much harder. I need Jase; it’s like missing an arm, or my eyes.  I’m not whole anymore.   

I absolutely cannot afford to lose it right now.  I am the one who insisted that nine months was time to deal with it and that I had indeed dealt.  I’ve seen Legaspi as ordered, I’m playing their game, I have a job to do and if I fuck up now this might be the last one I’m given. I am too young to retire and I am an adrenaline junkie and would die a slow death by Doritos and doughnuts if forced to sit at a desk.   So suck it up, Finn. 

Massey has stood up behind me and I can see his reflection in the glass over my shoulder.  I let my eyes unfocus so he is hazy and indistinct and center myself and calmly stand there knowing he is leering at my ass and I am going to have to deflect some sort of unwanted attention, if not tonight, then soon.   

 I’m bait all right.  And judging by the way he is looking I have passed muster to land this particular fish, fowl or beast.  I decide that sometime before I fly back to Texas I am going to rack Detective Massey’s balls clear up to his pink, fleshy cheekbones.   

Let him look though.  I’m holding a face card Detective Massey doesn’t realize I’ve drawn from the deck.  He may have an Ace tucked up his sleeve, but I’m holding a Queen named Captain Kate McCafferty. 

Sarge has warned me the phones are probably tapped as if I am some rookie right out of the Academy.  I swallow the sarcasm in my voice when I intone in what I hope is a sweet voice, “Oh, yeah, Sarge.  Thanks!”   

I’ve been under in El Paso, San Antonio, Corpus, Abilene, Austin, Houston and Odessa.  One of the first things I learned was never go anywhere without a cell phone and never give that number out to anyone who does not have a personal investment in keeping you alive, or leave that phone unprotected and waiting for bugs. Whither thou goest, thy cell goes also; to bed, to bath, to sordid dealer tryst.   Jase taught me that.   

I call Captain McCafferty from the bathroom upstairs just off the bedroom loft with the skylights and the amazing bed~~ at least I think it’s the bathroom.  It might be some sort of shrine to heathen decadence given the amount of gleaming brass Kohler fixtures and more of that white veined black marble.  I give the drawers and cabinets of the double vanity a quick eye and hand sweep, then rummage through the coral colored face cloths and towels, just in case.  Cop Etiquette puts the bathroom off limits for wires and cameras, but I have no idea what I have stepped in this time, except this is not the way you catch a piss-ant dirty cop siphoning off relatively minute amounts of narcotics and I’m not even convinced there are any missing drugs, actually.  That Detective Massey wants me to believe there is I am certain of; if any actually are, is up for debate right now along with pretty much everything else to do with this mess.   

Sarge has given me her home phone number, taken down when he, supposedly discreet, inquired about mental health practitioners she’d recommend. You know, to avoid that nasty little breakdown I’m working myself up for.  Why let a Captain from another agency, even another freaking state, in on my potential meltdown?  That is what I had demanded, trying to keep my voice from shaking in rage and humiliation because even two thousand miles away,  this is my immediate supervisor in the chain of command.   

Whatever I had thought he would tell me, whatever reason or justification I was furiously anticipating hearing, what he said left me speechless and shaken and necessitated a quick end to the conversation.  

“Because,” Lt. Wayne had said, in a tone more gentle than I have possibly ever heard from him, “she is Jase’s aunt.” 

I wanted to thank him for not using the past tense in that sentence, but I couldn’t speak.  I knew if I let a single sound past my lips, it would turn into nothing less than a howl of grief and anguish.   

II can barely read the number I’d written down.  The ink strokes are faint and shaky.   

I let it ring the polite four times and I’m flipping the phone closed when I hear a voice on the other line.   

Only it’s not talking to me.   

“Amanda!  This conversation is not finish~~”   

Even on this end of the line, the slam of the door is deafening.  I grin.  Sarge has given me a quick run down on this woman because she might be the only person out here I can trust.  If I can trust her.  She is divorced, and has a daughter, Amanda.  Who, given what I’ve just heard, is either a teenager, or is lucky enough to still be allowed to behave like one.     

Now the voice is directed at me, and she is quite huffy.   

“What?” she demands again and I remind myself; I am not in Texas anymore.  In Texas, a daughter could just have set fire to the potted ferns and be tossing fifty dollars bills into the flames and while her mother would be devoutly beating the shit out of her with anything handy, were the phone to ring, all trace of anger and discord would vanish in a southern fried sugary cloud of deception.  Family angst is just that.   

“Captain McCafferty?”  

“Yes.”  She’s all business now.  Focused and direct.  I can feel her trying to recognize my voice and coming up short when, probably because of the accent, it suddenly clicks in.   

“Finn.  Sgt. Investigator Finn.”  There’s satisfaction in her voice and it throws me for a moment;  is she pleased I’ve contacted her because I just took one step deeper into the shit, or is she pleased with herself that she placed the drawl?  And then the voice changes again, switches to a lower, husky, more intimate range as she asks, “What can I do for you?”  

She might as well have said Jase’s name; that is how clear I hear it in her voice.  

I close my eyes.  I cannot let the fact that she is his aunt change anything about how I proceed.  I cannot let that make me trust her and slip up.   

Fuck.  I have to see people to be able to read them.  I am good at the guesswork, the almost psychic necessity to derive motive and intent, but my strength is in faces, eyes, gestures, and body language.  All the things you cannot get from a person over a phone or through email.  

I lay my request out to meet with her.  I try to make it sound as if it’s just the first round of legwork in the upcoming investigation.  If she chooses to think I might want to see her because she is a blood relative of the man I love with all my heart, the man who was also my partner for eight years, so be it.   

I’m sweating by the time the conversation has ended.   

I can’t tell.  I can’t read her.  I’m here to investigate the disappearance of narcotics out of an evidence locker in a locked room in her precinct and at least three of the names I’ve been given are under her direct supervision.  This shrieks of some sort of supervisory failure on her part, if it is true, but I don’t catch the wariness, the resentment, the caution she should be feeling.  Either she knows I am out here for some other unfathomable reason, in which case the shit is now up to my crotch and I have effectively fucked myself, or she is simply that confident in her people.  And therefore in herself. 

THE END OF PART THREE 

{~> Crossroads  Next Story, Please <~}