The Partner

“No, I’m not going to spank you.” Slamming her car door, Risa walked around the rear of the vehicle and came to where he stood. Up close, the fumes were really strong and she wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“I’m not going to do anything with you, Rowling, including work. You’re a disaster waiting to happen.”

He put his hand on her shoulder and leaned closer. She had to hold her breath. “It’s been a bad day, ’Isa. Gimme a break and I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

She looked into his red eyes, the refusal she’d been about to voice dying on her lips along with her anger. The sudden and unexpected hopelessness in his gaze shocked her, but Risa hid it.

“What’s up, Luke?” She spoke calmly, as if talking to an upset child. “What’s wrong? You haven’t been yourself for weeks.”

He laughed, but the sound had a hollowness to it. “I haven’t been myself?” he said. “What the hell is myself? Where am I? Who am I?” He was leaning so heavily on her that Risa had to brace her hip against the fender to maintain her balance. “Tell me how to be who I am, and I’ll be happy to act like I’m supposed to.”

The sound of voices echoed over the concrete and Risa looked up to see a group of uniformed officers spilling out of the elevator. She could feel their stares across the hot, steamy garage, and she tried to back away, but Luke held her fast. Someone snickered then laughter rang out.

“Tell me who I am, Risa.” His pleading voice held a quality she hadn’t heard before. “Tell me who I am ’cause I’m balancing on a thin line here, baby.”

Risa lifted his hands off her shoulders and dropped them, his rambling discourse too strange to understand. “Go home and sober up, Luke. I’ll call everyone and cancel tonight.” She started to walk away, but his answer stopped her.

“I can’t.”

She turned and looked at him, raising an eyebrow. He shook his head slowly.

“You can’t what?” she asked.

“I can’t go home. Melinda says I’m a loser and a freak and she threw me out. I had to leave….” Looking as if he wanted to cry, he managed to choke back his tears at the very last moment.

“God, Luke…” Risa returned to where he stood, a wave of remorse for her callous attitude sweeping over her. “Shit, man, I’m really sorry.”

And she was. Risa knew all about families shattered by the stresses their job generated—she’d grown up in one.

Luke lifted his gaze and their eyes met again. He seldom mentioned his wife, but Risa had suspected trouble at home for that very reason. They had one child, a little boy named Jason. Most happily married men she knew never shut up about their wives and kids.

“I’m very sorry,” she repeated. “I had no idea things were that bad.”

He blinked. “I didn’t, either.”

They stood in silence beside the car, Luke in obvious misery, Risa imagining the rumors that were sure to come. As soon as they’d become partners, a betting pool had started to predict when they’d hook up. The whole thing had irritated her—especially when she’d found out Luke wasn’t bothering to deny the gossip—but over time, she’d been so grateful that he never hit on her she’d let it go. Apparently all he’d wanted were the bragging rights, so who cared? Now she couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. She sighed heavily.

“Give me the keys.” Holding out her hand, she gestured. “I’ll drive, and you can sleep in the car while I talk to Sun.”

His expression filled with gratitude, and he started to speak, but she held up her hand and stopped him. “Don’t say anything,” she demanded gruffly. “Just get a grip, okay? I can’t do my job and yours, too.”

He nodded and mumbled a thank-you, turning over the keys. A second later, she was behind the wheel and he was slumped over in the passenger seat. Before she could wind the big car down the ramp and out to Travis Street, he was asleep.

She shook her head sadly. Risa had always wanted to be a cop, but the thing she hated most about the life was the way law-enforcement families suffered. Her mother had fled her cop-father before Risa had been out of diapers. The youngest in her family, and the only girl, she had three older brothers. They were all in the business, too, and between them, they had four ex-wives and one pending.

Luke’s fate was sealed. He and Melinda would divorce, the kid would get hauled like a sack of potatoes from one house to another, then they’d each find someone else and start over, making a new spouse as miserable as the previous one. Risa flinched at her cynicism, but the truth couldn’t be denied.

There was nothing she could do to change the situation, either. She turned her concentration to the job—where it belonged—and headed out, vowing, as she did every time she heard this story, that she’d never, ever end up with a cop herself.

She merged onto the Southwest Freeway, quickly hitting seventy. Traffic was light for a change, but then again, it was almost two in the morning. They’d wasted time talking down in the garage. Risa frowned. She hated to be late even though the woman she was meeting probably didn’t care, unless she was charging by the hour, instead of the act. The guys made fun of Risa’s obsession with time, but she didn’t give a damn. They didn’t make fun of her collars and she was getting close to topping every one of them.

If things went as planned tonight, Risa would be adding to that record, too. In the past six months, three hookers had turned up at Ben Taub Hospital with their faces pounded into bloody masks. Risa wanted the SOB behind the beatings so badly that she dreamed about making the arrest. After days of negotiating, she’d finally gotten one of the street hookers to agree to meet her and Luke. Sun, the friend of a friend of a friend of one of the girls who’d been injured, had sounded like a flake but who knew? Her information might help Risa find the slimeball.

Within minutes, Risa reached the part of Richmond Street known locally as “the Strip.” For several miles on either side, bars stood next to massage parlors, which stood next to strip joints, which stood next to bars. The cycle seemed to go on forever, the signs the only thing that changed as one place went out of business and another one opened. The people who haunted the area stayed the same and so did the level of trouble they generated. When the clubs closed and the heat got to everyone, they’d take to the streets and drag race. Any sane person stayed away after eleven o’clock at night.

Slowing the Crown Victoria, Risa eased into the right-hand lane to join the line of vehicles waiting to get into the parking lot of Tequila Jack’s. Luke was now snoring with his mouth open, his head propped up against the window.

A space of two—maybe three—feet opened up between her bumper and the car ahead of her, and immediately the Impala behind Risa honked. She glanced into her rearview mirror. A wildly colored low-rider was sitting on her tail, the two pachucos inside laughing and passing a bottle of something between them. She closed the gap then looked back again. Catching her glare, the driver raised his bottle in her direction as if to offer her a drink, then he made a kissing motion with his lips. She held his eyes until he looked away.

Fifteen minutes later she parked the Crown Vic, grabbed her bag and opened the car door. The air hit her like a soggy blanket, steamy and thick. She instantly broke into a sweat that dried into clamminess when she entered the air-conditioned club.

She felt eyes following her as she headed for the bar, but she was accustomed to the sensation. All her life men had watched her enter a room. In the past, they’d done so because of how she looked; they did it now because of how she acted. Obviously they didn’t know who she was or what she did, but they knew she was someone they probably wanted to avoid. She’d worked on the attitude since she’d been a rookie and she had it down pat.

Pushing through the crowd, she took one of the empty seats at the end of a long Formica counter, the music so loud she could hardly think, much less hear. Screaming her order for iced tea, she ignored the bartender’s arch expression. Lots of cops drank on the job, but not Risa. She did things by the book. A minute later, the aproned man came back with a glass of something amber-colored, a few listless ice cubes floating on top. The watery concoction tasted like used dishwater, but the glass was half-empty when she put it back down. In the meantime, the bar stool next to her had filled. She glanced to her right.

The girl who’d sat down didn’t look old enough to even be in the place legally, much less be a hooker named Sun.

“You’ll have to find another spot.” Risa turned back to her drink. “I’m saving that for a friend.”

“I am your friend.” The teen’s voice was high and sweet with a Hispanic lilt. Risa barely caught her words over the music and the girl had to lean in closer and repeat them. A tidal wave of cheap perfume came with her as she laid her fingers on Risa’s arm. Her nails were painted with silvery polish. “It’s cool…”

Risa looked down at the girl’s fingers. They felt bony and slight as Risa lifted them and placed them back on the bar. “I really am waiting for someone else,” she said firmly. “Why don’t you—”

“You’re waiting for me.” She met Risa’s eyes. “You’re Risa, right? I’m Sun.”

The image of the last beaten prostitute, Janie Seguaro, superimposed itself on the girl’s childlike features and Risa had to take a deep breath. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was.

“You’re kinda young to hang out with Janie’s crowd, aren’t you?”

The teenager shrugged. “I guess. I dunno…” Reaching over, she took a deep pull from Risa’s drink then made a face and stared at the glass. “Yuck! What is that—”

“It’s iced tea—” A ripple of noise and then movement caught Risa’s attention and she swiveled her bar stool to get a better look. As she did so, one of the two men who’d been in the car behind the Crown Vic—the driver, she thought—charged past, glancing at her for a millisecond before he kept going.

She wanted to ignore whatever trouble was taking place, but Risa was a cop through and through. Something inside her wouldn’t let her stay where she was.

“Don’t leave,” she hollered to the girl above the noise. “I’ll be right back.”

Shaking her head, the girl frowned, her warning almost childlike in its naivete. “I wouldn’t mess with that guy if I was you—he looks crazy.”

“I’m used to crazy.” Waving off the teenager’s words, Risa pushed away from the bar and followed the pachuco. They were on the other side of the club when he came to a halt in front of a couple on the dance floor. Tightly twined around each other, the couple saw him a moment too late. The driver grabbed the second man, ripped him away from the woman and threw him to the parquet, screaming in Spanish as he did so.

Risa felt her pulse rate increase. She’d been off patrol for almost three years, and she hadn’t had to deal with this kind of stupidity in ages. She glanced around for the bouncer but he was nowhere in sight. Pulling out her cell phone, she speed-dialed Luke and prayed he wasn’t too far gone to wake up.

“Get in here,” she yelled above the music. “I’ve two drunks going at each other and I need some backup!”

Flipping the phone shut without waiting for his answer, she pulled back her jacket to show her shield and gun, then yelled, “Police,” striding to the men who were now tussling on the floor.

“Okay, that’s it, ladies,” she barked. “The cops are here. Stop right now and let’s all cool down.”