Читать книгу Dangerous Women Part 3 - Джордж Р. Р. Мартин - Страница 11

A grey dawn and low tide revealed the body at the water’s edge, facedown and partially buried in the silt. One arm drifted in the sluggish current as the river plucked at it. A fetid scent drifted to the people standing on the levee, though the odor likely had more to do with illegal sewage than the corpse.

Rain plopped onto the mud in scattered drops as the flatboat inched out to the body, a thick rope dragging in its wake and doled out by workers on firmer ground. Captain Danny Faciane watched from his vantage on the levee and scowled beneath the hood of his raincoat. He fully understood the necessity for the slow progress across the silt, but he still chafed at it. The tide wouldn’t wait for them to complete their business, though at the moment it was more the early hour and the lack of coffee in his system that frustrated him. Yet it paid to be cautious with this river. Since the collapse of the Old River Control Structure, she might not have the teeth she once had, but she still had a few tricks left in her.

Danny’s attention drifted to his right, toward the two bridges that spanned the river. The headlights of cars only crossed along one of them. Not enough traffic anymore to warrant having both. Across the river, a grounded ship leaned drunkenly in the mud. Light flickered from a dozen places, the cutting torches of workers fighting to salvage what they could of the trapped heap. Danny wondered if the salvage workers would attack the unused bridge next, like termites drawn to wood.

“I need to learn how to weld,” a detective grumbled from behind him. Danny glanced back to see that Farber’s attention had also been caught by the crawling lights on the defunct ship.

Danny shook his head. “They’ll be gone as soon as they finish. Only a few ships left to cut up. Probably not even a year’s worth of work left.”

“Maybe so, but in that year those fuckers’ll make three times what we do. Besides, I still think the city’ll have work for ’em. New Orleans has a way of taking care of itself.”

Danny let out a snort. He had little doubt that the welders made more than Farber, but he knew damn well that they didn’t come close to matching his own take. And he sure as hell didn’t share Farber’s bright-eyed optimism about the future of the city. “Filthy work,” he said instead. “And dangerous.”

“What we do is dangerous,” Farber protested. Danny cocked an eyebrow at him, let out a low bark of laughter.

“Only if you’re doing it wrong,” he said, then hunched his shoulders against the gust of wind that sought to drive the sluggish rain into his face. “Like this. Fuck this early morning shit.”

The muttered commands and curses of the men in the flatboat drifted to him as they reached the corpse. They fought the pull of the tenacious mud as the river held on to her prize, but finally managed to get the corpse free of its partial grave. It flopped into the bottom of the boat, one mud-covered foot still on the edge as the workers onshore pulled the flatboat back.

Danny walked over as the men pulled the body from the boat and set it on the ground. “Can you wash his face off?” he asked nobody in particular, waited as someone found a bottle of water and dumped it over the victim’s face. Danny scowled as he crouched by the body, and only part of it was because of the rank smell of the mud. “It’s Jimmy Ernst.”

“Jesus,” one of the men from the flatboat muttered. “We crawled across the stinking mud for that piece of shit?”

Danny’s mouth twisted in sour agreement as he cast a practiced eye over the body. The crime scene tech pulled a pair of gloves out of the side pocket of her pants and held them out for Danny, but he shook his head. He had no intention of touching the corpse and risking getting dirty. Coroner would take care of cleaning the fucking muck off before they did the autopsy.

“Well, that’s damn interesting,” he said, tilting his head.

“Whatcha got?” Farber asked, crouching beside him.

“He was murdered.” Danny pointed to the two scorch marks on the dead guy’s neck. Maybe there were more, hiding beneath the filth, but those alone would’ve been enough. Latest generation of Tasers left that sort of mark, delivering enough punch to paralyze for about half a minute. Long enough to get cuffs on a perp. Or a few licks in. Whichever they deserved more.

Danny straightened, let his gaze drift over what was left of the Mississippi River. This wasn’t the first body to be pulled from the sucking muck and it wouldn’t be the last. The banks were a morass of sinkholes and unpredictable currents. Easy enough to die, especially after a couple of jolts from a Taser.

“I’ve seen enough,” he told the crime scene tech as she snapped her pictures in an aimless, desultory fashion. She didn’t give a shit about Jimmy Ernst any more than he did.

“See you back at the precinct,” Farber said.

Danny nodded, turned away, walked back over the rocks of the now-pointless levee, over the weed-covered train tracks, and up to the street. The rain had paused, and a glance at the sky told him that he had time enough to grab some coffee and finish waking up before the skies opened up again. No pressing need to get back to the precinct station. There sure as hell wasn’t any rush to close this case. He’d give it a week or so and then suspend it for lack of evidence.

Café Du Monde was open and already catering to a few persistent tourists, but he continued past and up North Peters, his footsteps echoing back at him from the many silent storefronts. Three years ago, before the river changed course, the Quarter would already have been bustling at this hour, with vendors making deliveries and shop owners hosing off sidewalks and garbage men calling out to each other as the trucks rumbled their way through the narrow streets.

Near the French Market, he crossed over to Decatur Street, made his way to the coffee shop on the corner of St. Peters. He flashed his badge to get his coffee and croissant for free, then returned outside to sit at a table under the green-and-white-striped awning.

A scrawny dog reeking of wet and sewage and despair slunk along the sidewalk toward him. Grey with one black ear, hope flickered in its eyes that Danny would throw a piece of the croissant its way, drop a crumb. It had probably been a pet at one time. Lots of animals had been left behind after the Switch, when their owners had abandoned their houses and all ties to the area and rushed away in a desperate flight to find new opportunities elsewhere, as any industry in New Orleans that depended on the river dried up.

The dog whined and sat about a foot from Danny. “Go away,” he muttered, shoving the dog carefully away with his foot. To his annoyance, that contact only seemed to encourage the mutt. It came back, and this time put a paw on Danny’s knee. He swore and pulled his leg away, pissed to see a broad smear of who-the-fuck-knew-what left behind. “You fucking mutt!” He shot his foot out again. It wasn’t a savage blow, but he made sure there was enough force behind it to get his message across. The mutt let out a high-pitched yelp and went sprawling back, then crouched, eyes on Danny. For a brief instant, Danny wondered if the dog would attack him. There were plenty of desperate animals in the city, and a smart person stayed alert. His hand twitched to his gun, more than ready to shoot the thing if it came at him, but after a few seconds, it lowered its head and loped unevenly away, taking its stink with it.

Danny let out a sigh of relief as he snatched up napkins and wiped at the grime on his pants. Shooting the dog here would have drawn all sorts of fucked-up attention. Wouldn’t have mattered if the dog had been attacking him; there’d be plenty of people ready to Monday-morning-quarterback the decision, explaining how he should have used less force or found a way to be absolutely certain that the dog intended to cause him harm. There’d even be those who’d insist that, as an officer of the law, he ought to have been willing to suffer a bite or two, and had progressed to lethal force too quickly.

Fuck that, Danny thought grimly. You did what you had to do to survive, especially in this city. You looked out for yourself, because no one else was going to do it for you.

He dropped the soiled napkins onto the table and stood, scowling down at the remaining stain. He picked up his coffee and croissant, began to cross the street, but paused at the sight of a woman on the opposite corner who was holding a folded red umbrella in one hand.

She was beautiful, with dark hair and lighter eyes, and skin a pale brown that made him wonder if she had a touch of Creole blood somewhere down the line. She had on shorts and sandals, paired with a black sleeveless T-shirt that hugged a sleek and toned figure that still held curves in all the right places. Young—early twenties, perhaps. Not rich. That was easy enough to tell. The rich who’d stayed behind were obscenely rich, had found ways to make even more profit from the shift in the river, and were far from subtle about flaunting that wealth and influence. A waitress maybe? A stripper? She sure as hell had the body for it.

But it wasn’t just her looks that caused her to stand out to Danny. It was more that she didn’t have the familiar beat-down look about her, the desperate shift of the eyes, as if seeking any possible escape from this fucked-up shell of a city. She seemed calm, perhaps a touch of worry or sadness in her eyes as they met his. Then she smiled, and he knew it was for him. Daring and coy at the same time, with a whisper of amusement skimming across her features before she broke the gaze, turned away, and continued down the street away from him.

He took a step to follow, then stopped as his phone buzzed in a familiar cadence. He breathed out a curse as he snatched it off his belt, skimmed the text.

Replacing the phone in its holder, he watched the girl continue down the street until she turned a corner. Then he spun and walked the other way to answer the summons.

“You and me, Danny,” Peter Bennett said as he looked out over the dregs of the river. Rain pattered against the broad window of the condo, streaking the view of the deserted Riverwalk and the empty wharves. “We’re a lot alike.” He flicked a glance back at the cop. “We know how to go along with change, find the ways to make it work for us.”

Danny leaned up against the back of the black leather couch, hands stuffed into his pockets as he gave the lanky man an agreeable smile. “I’m cool with doing what needs to be done,” he replied. After the Old River Control Structure crumbled beneath the weight of spring flooding and insufficient funding, Peter was one of those very rich who’d not only stayed in the city but managed to get even richer. Judicious investments in the Atchafalaya Basin had paid off handsomely when the river changed course, but the real money had come from Peter’s uncanny ability to land cleanup contracts. A threefold increase in the amount of water flowing down the Atchafalaya River had, of course, caused a fair amount of destruction, and the man knew there was much to be gained during times of disaster. There’d been plenty of men like Peter who’d made their fortunes after Katrina.

“And that’s the key to it all,” Peter said with a firm nod. “Too many other people want to clutch their chests and worry about rebuilding, get everything back to how it used to be.” He let out a snort. “Did you know the city council is still whining to the governor about having the river dredged so that shipping traffic can resume?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Waste of time. Time to let the old New Orleans die. That river is a toothless whore compared to the badass bitch it used to be, but there’s still a lot that can be done with this city. Gotta change with the times.”

“That’s right,” Danny replied. He didn’t say the first thing that leaped to mind, that even a toothless whore could still shove a knife into you. Jimmy Ernst could testify to that. But Peter didn’t want to hear that sort of thing, and Danny was damn good at knowing when to keep his mouth shut. “So, you got something that needs doing?” That’s what the text had said. Got something I need you to do.

Peter turned away from the dismal view, picked up the cup of coffee from the table by the window, and took a gulp. “Cold.” He grimaced. “Get me a new one, will you, Danny? Get one for yourself too.” He smiled, magnanimous.

Danny nodded and pushed off the couch, headed to the sleek black and chrome of the kitchen. “Glad to. Your coffee’s damn good.” He knew where the mugs were, knew how the man took his coffee.

“It’s a free enterprise thing, see?” Peter said while Danny poured and stirred. “There’s a shop down on Dumaine Street in the Quarter. I bought it about a year ago and rented it out to a guy who sells old books and shit. Dunno how he makes a fucking living with that, but he pays his rent.” He scowled at that last bit, took the mug that Danny handed him.

“You want him out?”

Peter took a sip. Smiled down at the coffee. “That’s damn good.” Looked back up at Danny. “I have plans for that space. Council’s going to vote my way about the poker room. I’ve made sure of that.” His smile widened. “You made sure of that.”

Danny chuckled. Easiest drunk-driving arrest he’d ever made. Helped that he’d been tipped off by Peter that Councilman Walker was leaving the wine tasting to drive the one and a half blocks to his house.

“But there’s a little thing in the guy’s lease that says I can evict him if there’s evidence of criminal activity,” Peter continued.

Danny nodded, took a sip from his own mug. It was bitter, too dark a roast for his liking, and he preferred it with a lot of cream in it. But Peter took his black and Danny didn’t want to nitpick. “I’m sure I can do something about that,” he said.

The bedroom door opened. A young woman with sleep-tousled blond hair, wearing only underwear and a tank top, peered out. Her gaze took in Danny and dismissed him, then settled on Peter. A pout formed on her full lips, or at least that’s the expression Danny thought that she was trying for. There was a little too much uncertainty and not enough confidence, if any, for her to be able to pull it off, and he couldn’t help but think that the girl on the corner would’ve been able to do it and make it alluring and amusing at the same time.

“Hey, babe,” she said to Peter, leaning against the doorframe in what she tried to make a sexy position. “Come back to bed. I need a morning workout.”

Danny took a sip of coffee to hide his grin at the sad display. He’d seen it a dozen times before, watched Peter’s girl-of-the-month pitch a desperate bid to win back his interest, and seen it fail every time. Peter liked the new and shiny, and got rid of anything with too much wear and tear on it. Didn’t matter that he was the one who fucked it up. He was a good-looking man—blue eyed, dark haired, athletic build—as well as being one of the richest men in the city. There was always more new and shiny to be had, more girls convinced that they might become the next Mrs. Peter Bennett.

Peter waved a dismissing hand, eyes on the rain-streaked view. “I’m busy.”

Her pout deepened. “But I’m ready now, sweetie. Come give me some.”

Now Peter looked her way. He took in her expression and her state of partial undress. Annoyance crawled briefly over his face instead of the lust she was surely hoping for, but then it shifted to amusement as Peter jerked his head toward Danny.

“Let him,” he said, eyes on her.

Shock flashed across her face, but only for an instant. Eyes dead, she turned her pouty smile onto Danny. She had nothing to lose, even if it meant buying just a few more days in Peter’s care, such as it was. It was worth it to her, Danny knew.

Danny set his mug down, moved to her, gave her a mild push to precede him into the bedroom.

When he came back out, he closed the door behind him. She wasn’t sniveling, at least. Still, she’d probably be gone by the next day and Peter would be on the prowl for some other chick he could use up and throw away.

“That didn’t take long,” Peter said, without looking up from his laptop.

“I wasn’t trying to make her happy,” Danny replied. He looped his tie back around his neck, knotted it quickly.

A smile twitched across Peter’s mouth as he tapped an envelope on the table. Danny scooped it up and tucked it into his jacket. He didn’t bother counting it.

“I think I’ll go visit a bookstore now,” he said with a grin.

“Tell me if you find anything dirty.”

The aroma of sweat and stale coffee greeted Danny as he entered the station with his arrestee. He kept a hand on the upper arm of the handcuffed man, guided him around the other dregs and the other cops.

“You can’t do this!” his guy kept saying, as if hoping that if he said it enough, it would be true, that a cop couldn’t simply walk into his bookstore and find drugs that were never there before. “Please. Please! I have a family. You can’t do this. Those drugs weren’t mine. You—”

Danny gave him a hard yank, pulled him off-balance. His guy let out a yelp as he struggled for footing and went down on one knee. Danny crouched, making a show of helping him back to his feet while he leaned in close to the guy’s ear.

“You need to settle the fuck down and be a good boy,” he said in a calm, low voice. “This is going to happen whether you behave or not. You want it to be worse?” He met the guy’s eyes. “It can be worse.”

Sweat tracked down the side of the man’s face. Danny watched as a spark of rebellion struggled for life within his eyes.

“There’s a lot of paperwork in an arrest like this,” Danny continued smoothly. “Some of it might get lost. Maybe it’s the part that describes the evidence and the chain of custody. Or maybe it’s the part that says you were booked into jail and need to have a bond set. Which one you want lost? You want to have the case thrown out before it goes to trial? Or you want to spend an extra week or so in central lockup?”

The spark of rebellion died. His head dropped.

“That’s right,” Danny said, helping the unresisting man back up to his feet. “You be a good boy and this’ll all be over soon.”

Danny booked him in, filed the initial paperwork, and was on his way down the hall to his office when he saw her sitting in an interview room. The girl from the corner. She’d changed into jeans and a deep maroon blouse, but he’d have known her no matter what she was wearing. She looked small and scared in the metal chair, her hands clasped around a paper cup of coffee and her eyes on Detective Farber in the opposite chair.

He stepped into the open doorway, knocked on the jamb. She jerked her eyes up to his. A whisper of a smile touched her mouth and he thought that maybe now she didn’t look so scared. “Whatcha got?” he asked Farber without taking his eyes from her.

“She talked to Jimmy Ernst late last night,” the detective explained. “Might’ve been the last one to see him alive. We’re just getting started.”

“I’ll take over,” Danny said, moving into the room. He shifted 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 sparse 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 fuck 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 scum 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 shit 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 damn 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 bass thump of the music. The mingled scents of sweat and sex, 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 sexuality, that he doubted she’d learned in a ballet class.

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 fucking 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 associating 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 breasts 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 amusement 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 fucking cockblock 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 shit 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 goddamned 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 dick 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 fucking 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 fucking neck.”

He left the club, waited in the bar across the street for her to finish her shift. 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 petite, mousy thing who tried and failed to do “sexy librarian” and a curvy Hispanic with big tits 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 whore,” 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 café 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 cocked in disbelief.

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

He thought about that for a moment while he drank his café au lait. The night breeze brought the stagnant scent of the river, mingled with the aroma of beer and piss 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 goddamn 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 café. 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 café, but she insisted that she didn’t mind walking.

His place wasn’t overly messy, but it sure as hell 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. Décor was limited to a pile of magazines with scantily clad women on the covers, a cluster 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 assholes and pricks.

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 fuck, how to get what he wanted, how not to care. He’d lost count of the number of prostitution “arrests” he’d made—girls who’d paid their fine directly to him with their mouth or cunt. 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 shifted 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 Canal 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 ships 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 ship 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 ship 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 bitch 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 crap up, add some details and tell her that the guy worked on a ship and had come home to find out that his wife had been screwing 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 ship 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 shit.

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

“New Orleans will become the whore,” 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 assured him, though a shimmer 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 passed 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 damn 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 cocked 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.”

“Yeah,” Danny managed. “She’s good. We’re good … together. I’m asking you to, uh, please back off.” He didn’t know that Peter had been going to the club so often. How many times had he been in a private room with Delia while Danny waited like an eager puppy in the bar across the street?

“For you, of course,” Peter said with a magnanimous nod. “I wish you both the best.” Took a sip of coffee, walked over to the window to gaze out at the muddy swath that was more bayou than river now. “Of course, for your sake, I hope she doesn’t get a better offer.” He glanced back at Danny. “Or rather, if she does get a better offer, that she doesn’t take it.”

“Right,” Danny said. “Appreciate you understanding.”

Peter set the mug down on the table by the window. “By the way, the final vote on the poker room is day after tomorrow. I need you to lean on Councilman Nagle. Catch him doing something.” His smile widened. “Maybe your Delia can help you out with that.” Then he shrugged. “Or not. Best to keep business and pleasure separate, right?”

“Right,” Danny repeated. It was a challenge, a power play. Peter wanted to know how much he could trust him. Wanted to know how far Danny would go to keep the influence that had protected him for so long.

Yet Danny knew that it didn’t matter. It was already too late. Danny had tried to bare his teeth. From now on, Peter would be watching his back, waiting for the moment when he could throw Danny to the wolves and keep his own hands clean.

Danny simply had to find a way to do the same to Peter first.

He jerked his head in a nod. “Got it. I’ll take care of it.”

Peter’s smile widened. “You’re a good friend. Give my best to Delia.”

The next week was quiet and calm. Danny readied himself for the next time Peter called on him, ready to record the exchange or whatever else he could do, but his phone remained silent. Delia spent every night at his apartment, only returning to her own place to change clothes and water her plants. She told him that Peter had stopped coming to the club and wanted to know what Danny had done. He merely smiled and said, “Better that you don’t know.” He couldn’t tell her that he’d done nothing except grovel, that the only reason Peter left her alone was because it suited Peter to do so.

And, as Danny had feared, it didn’t last.

“He came to my apartment!” she told him after he opened his door to see her standing on his front step. Her lower lip trembled and her eyes were red from weeping. He quickly pulled her inside, took her to the couch, and held her while she poured it all out to him.

Peter had given her an ultimatum—go with him or he’d not only have her evicted but he’d make sure she never found work in this city again.

“I don’t know what to do,” she told him, looking more defeated and beaten down than he’d ever imagined she could be. “I can’t … I won’t leave New Orleans. It’s too special to me.” Delia’s eyes lifted to his. “People like him are destroying this city. I hate it. I hate them all!” Her voice broke on the last word.

Sweat pricked Danny’s palms. He could kill Peter. There were a hundred different ways he could do it and stage it like an accident or suicide. Or maybe Danny could go to the feds, tell them everything he knew about Peter’s dealings.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said, kissing her. He stood up, but she caught at his hand.

“I don’t want you getting into trouble,” she said, eyes wide and frightened.

“It’ll be fine. I promise.” He gently pulled free of her grasp. “You can count on me.”

Danny walked along Chartres Street to Dumaine, headed to Jackson Square and watched pigeons swarm around a bum with a bag of stale bread. A handful of street artists gamely displayed their wares, casting desperate smiles to the sparse trickle of tourists wandering by, and ignoring him, since he was obviously a local and not worth wasting the energy of false friendliness on.

He would kill Peter Bennett, he told himself. That was the only way out. Going to the feds wasn’t an option. Anything Danny told them would sink him just as thoroughly as it would Peter, and he didn’t have any evidence other than his own testimony.

Late afternoon turned to dusk as he sat on a bench in the park and considered his options, planned out his steps. When full dark came, he headed down Decatur, stopped in a sleazy T-shirt shop full of tourist crap, and bought a cap. After that, he cut over to the Riverwalk, entered Peter’s building, and took the elevator to his floor, keeping the cap pulled low over his face to avoid being caught by any cameras.

Peter answered the door, eyebrow lifting in mild surprise at Danny’s presence. His gaze flicked to the cap and then back to Danny’s face. “You okay? You look upset.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “A bit. Can I come in?”

“Absolutely.” Peter stepped aside, closed the door behind him. Danny swept his gaze around the condo. No one else here. No one else on this floor, for that matter. No one had seen him come in. He had it all planned. Collapsible baton in his pocket to take Peter down, then make it look like an accidental fall in the shower. Doubtful it would be found out as murder even if there was a proper investigation.

Peter leaned up against the counter, watched Danny impassively. Maybe he knew why the cop was here. Probably did, in fact. He had to have known it would come to this.

“I almost forgot,” Peter said abruptly, pushing off the counter and moving to his desk. “Forgot to give you that, ah, loan money you asked for.”

Sweat prickled Danny’s back and his hand eased toward his gun. This was perfect. Peter was going to pull a gun from that drawer and then Danny could shoot him in self-defense.

But it was a thick envelope that Peter retrieved from the drawer. Danny dropped his hand before Peter could see, heart thudding unevenly. The man was paying him for busting Councilman Nagle with a prostitute earlier in the week. Nagle had agreed to vote Peter’s way rather than face a humiliating arrest, and the poker room had been approved, no doubt the first of many.

Peter held out the envelope to him. “I think you’ll be happy with this. I know I am. Good work with that, by the way.”

He didn’t move for several seconds, then finally stepped forward and took the envelope. Opened it to see that it held at least ten grand.

Danny closed the envelope and tucked it into the pocket in his jacket. “Appreciate this,” he said, voice sounding odd and rough in his ears. He didn’t have to kill Peter. He had other options. He could take Delia away from here. He’d convince her to leave. They could start over somewhere else. Away from this fucked-up city. Away from Peter.

“Come by next week,” Peter said. “We’ll talk.” He paused. “You should bring Delia by sometime. Unless you two broke up already?” He lifted a bottle of water, drank without ever taking his eyes from Danny.

“No,” Danny replied, feeling the weight of the question, responding to the statements.

The man grinned. “That’s real cute. How long you think that’ll last?”

He wasn’t talking about Delia, Danny knew. Peter was toying with him, wanting to know how long this little flare of defiance would go on before Danny settled down and behaved again.

Like the dog at the café, who’d slunk off instead of attacking. That dog was probably dead now, Danny thought, or at the very least still hungry, slinking through the city, willing to brave a few kicks to get a scrap or two.

No more slinking. No more scraps.

“Forever,” he replied. With a practiced move, he pulled the baton from his pocket and snapped it open. Baring his teeth as he stepped toward Peter. Reveling in the shock and fear on the man’s face as the dog finally turned on his master.

He called her in the elevator, asked her to meet him at the Canal Street Ferry. He figured he’d beat her there, but when he arrived at the dock, he saw her leaning on the rail down at the end, looking out over the wallowing river and the blinking lights of cars crossing the bridge.

A tension he hadn’t even been aware of leached away. A part of him hadn’t been sure she’d come, afraid that she’d cut her losses and leave him behind. Yet now he realized that she’d known where he’d gone, had been waiting nearby for him.

She turned at the sound of his hurrying footsteps, watched him as he approached.

“Danny …?” she said, reaching up to touch his face. “What’s going on?”

He caught her hand in his, kissed it. “I love you, baby. I’ll keep you safe forever, I swear it.”

Her breath caught. “Oh God. What did you do?”

“It’s cool,” he said. “I swear. I … I’m good.”

She bit her lip, then closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around him. “Yes, you are.”

He lowered his head and breathed in the scent of her, feeling all the shit and the muck of his life slipping away. “Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s leave this place forever and start over somewhere else.” He didn’t want to stay, but he also knew he couldn’t leave her behind. She’d end up as beaten and broken as those other girls … yet, even as he thought it, he knew that it was an excuse, knew that he wasn’t strong enough to leave without her. But maybe if they both left, started over … maybe he could get unbroken.

She pulled back, shock and disappointment flashing across her features. “You want me to leave? I can’t!”

“It’s just a city, baby,” he said, holding her face in his hands. “Nothing but a bunch of buildings and streets and crap and assholes.”