A Stolen Season

Chapter Eleven

Everything I had been thinking about, this whole idea of how hopeless this thing with Natalie was, how breaking it off now would be the best thing for everybody…That was gone in about two seconds. Seeing her here in my cabin, waiting for me, that pretty much took care of everything right there.

“Natalie,” I said. I still couldn’t quite believe it. “I don’t understand-”

“Are you going to say hello to me or not?”

She stood up and came over to me. My sweatshirt was three sizes too big for her. She looked tired. I put my hands on her shoulders, held her there in front of me.

“Hello, God damn it,” I said. Then I pulled her close to me. I kissed her and stroked her hair and remembered that this was the way she felt and the way she smelled.

“Why are you here?” I finally said.

She put her finger to my lips and led me to my bed without another word. She hesitated as we were starting to take our clothes off. I was shivering.

“Why are you all wet?” she said, feeling my shirt.

“It was raining.”

“Let me guess, you were working on the cabin.”

“Uh, no. Actually-”

“Never mind. Tell me later.” She fell back on my bed and took me with her.

“Sorry this place is such a mess.”

“Will you shut up already?” She kissed me again and that was it for the talking. At least for a while.

I may have come home cold and miserable, but she changed all that in a hurry.

“So tell me,” I said later. My arms were around her and she was facing away from me. Her hair was in my face, her skin was touching mine, back to chest.

“Tell you what?”

“Why you’re here. Did you make the bust?”

“Actually, no.”

“You didn’t?”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet? So why aren’t you still undercover.”

“Who says I’m not?”

“I don’t get it.”

“We called a time-out,” she said. “We had to back out for a couple of days.”

“Why? What happened?”

She took a long breath. “God, Alex. You wouldn’t believe it. After all the prep work with Rhapsody, all those meetings in the coffee shop every morning…We finally got the big meet set up. Antoine Laraque in a hotel room, ready to buy guns. Or so we thought.”

“So you thought?”

“We never got him to say it. We never got to the punch line. He and Rhapsody came to the room…Don and I were there…”

“Don Resnik, your partner.”

“Right. My supposed bodyguard. He had this suit on, black sunglasses, the whole deal. I’m this woman with a connection in Michigan, somebody who wants to move guns across the border. A lot of guns. We’ve got it all set up, and then finally, they’re both coming up to the room. Rhapsody comes in first. She’s wearing this wild zebra suit. Zebra shoes, the works. And then Laraque comes in. The man himself…”

“Yeah?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Was he wearing a zebra suit, too?”

“No,” she said. “Laraque was not wearing a zebra suit.”

“So tell me about him.”

“I don’t know how to say it. It’s going to sound ridiculous.”

“Go ahead.”

“He wasn’t that big, first of all. Don’s like six foot five, remember. Laraque couldn’t have been six feet tall. Maybe five ten, tops. He wasn’t really built, either. I mean, he didn’t look that strong. I’m sure Don could have thrown him through the window with no problem.”

“Okay…”

“He had short hair. A very high forehead. He was wearing glasses. Hell, I’m making him sound like an accountant.”

“So far.”

“That’s just it, Alex. I can’t describe what he was really like. You’d have to see him in person. You’d have to see him move around a room and shake your hand. And then sit down across from you and look at you…I mean, remember, I had cops in the room behind me, cops in the room in front of me. I had a cop out in the hall. I had a cop built like a football player in the room with me. All of them had guns. Even Don, standing right at my side. I was the safest woman in Toronto…And yet, I have never felt more terrified in my entire life.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Because he was there. This man. He just had this…this power about him. I can’t explain it. But I could feel it.”

I thought about it. “Okay, so what happened to the bust?”

I still couldn’t see her face. It was just her voice, and the tension in her body.

“I tried to get him around to the punch line. I even had some samples with me. Some handguns, a couple of small machine guns. I put them out on the table, told him I had a supplier in Michigan, asked him if he’d be interested in doing business. He said he’d like to know how I came to consider him for such an enterprise. That’s what he called it. An enterprise. So I told him about running into Rhapsody, hearing all about her in prison. The whole story. Rhapsody was right there, but she didn’t say a word. She just leaned back in her chair and took out a cigarette. I was getting a little rattled, so I actually told her it was a nonsmoking room, just to see if I could get back on top of things.”

“What did she say to that?”

“Nothing. She took out her lighter and lit up.”

“And then blew the smoke in your face?”

“Women don’t do that. She blew it straight up in the air. With a little smile.”

“Very smooth.”

“No,” she said. “Not really. I think she was just as terrified as I was.”

“What, being in the room with you guys?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure, exactly. But remember, this woman didn’t just do hard time at Kingston, it sounds like she practically ran the place. This was the worst prison in Canada, before they shut it down.”

“Then how could she be so scared?”

“Well, at first I thought it was Laraque who was making her so nervous. But I’ll tell you, all he had to do was touch her, just once, and she was fine. The same old Rhapsody I’d meet every day in the coffee shop. Totally cool. On top of the world. It was like he was recharging her, you know? Giving her energy. Or hell, like they were having really good sex, except it was just him reaching over and putting his hand on her arm. Two of his fingers on the back of her wrist. That was it.”

“Yeah?”

“I know it sounds crazy, but I saw it with my own eyes. I asked Don about it later, but he had no idea what I was talking about.”

“It wasn’t obvious?”

“I guess not,” she said. “Or maybe a woman would be more likely to pick up on it.”

“A woman who knows all about good sex, you mean.”

“Whatever you say, Alex.”

“No, seriously. So what happened next?”

“Well, that’s when it got even crazier, because no matter what I said, Laraque refused to play along with us. He’d almost say something, like yes, he was interested in imports from the States. But that he had, what did he say, he said he had other offers to consider, different combinations of merchandise, different terms…He started talking about it like it was just another investment opportunity, and how there were cold markets and warm markets and hot markets, and how much he respected men down in the States who knew how to make money. He even quoted Warren Buffett, something like, how did it go…‘Be afraid when others are greedy, and greedy when others are afraid.’ You ever hear that one?”

“No, I haven’t. But it makes sense.”

“Yeah, it does. But the whole time he was going through all this…I mean, I didn’t think he was even carrying, but it was like I kept expecting him to stop, and to reach over…and touch me. Except instead of making me feel better, like he was doing for Rhapsody, he would kill me. Just like that. One touch and I’m dead. It was like he had me hypnotized.”

It was hard to hear, but I wanted the whole story. Every detail. “But you’re saying he never made a real offer,” I said. “He didn’t give you something you could nail him on?”

“I swear, Alex. It was like he knew exactly what we were doing. The whole thing, the setup, the cops in the other rooms, recording him, listening to every word. He knew I was a fake, Don was a fake, everything was fake. And that one wrong word from him would bring it all crashing in on his head. But he didn’t say it. The whole time, he was just toying with us. And when he got tired of doing that, he stood up and he walked out.”

“Do you really think he knows you’re a cop?”

“I don’t see how he could. But deep down in my gut that’s exactly what I was feeling when we were in that room. This guy can see right through me.”

“So what happens next?”

“He told us he wanted to meet again. He wanted me to go back to my contact and to have him send samples of other merchandise…Notice how he didn’t say guns. The whole time, he never once said the word ‘gun.’ And when he said ‘other merchandise,’ if you took him literally, he could have been asking me to bring back samples of fabric. So he could make some nice suits or something. He also said he’d like us to come to his office next time, let him be the one extending the hospitality, because it was his city, after all.”

“You’re not really going to his office next time…”

“I don’t know, Alex. I have no idea what’s going to happen next. They told me to disappear for two days, to make like I was really leaving town to confer with my connection. That makes you a gun dealer now, by the way.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Anyway, I need to call them tomorrow, to see what they’re thinking. The leader of the task force wants to keep pursuing it, but my CO wants to pull me.”

“I’m with him. You can’t go to his home turf. What are you gonna do, walk in there wearing a wire?”

She turned on to her back and looked at me. “It’s not up to me,” she said. “I’ll see what they say.”

“You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. You know that.”

She closed her eyes. “You’re not helping.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You’re supposed to tell me I need to go back and finish the job. Get the bad guy and help shut down his operation.”

“I’m not thinking about that part,” I said. “I admit it, I’m only thinking about you and keeping you safe.”

She pulled me closer to her. She held on tight.

“When I think about being in a room with Laraque again,” she said, “all I can think about is how much I want to be with you. I’ve never felt this way before, Alex. About anybody. It really scares me. It’s like I have a life now. You know what I mean? It sounds kind of corny, I know, but it’s like I have something to live for.”

It killed me. What she was saying, it absolutely killed me. I knew I’d have to tell her my own story, about what had happened that very day, being led to the edge of the water and believing that my life was over, and how I thought about her and was glad that she would keep on living without me. That she would be better off in the long run.

It was always me pushing this, me trying to keep us together, when she had her own problems and it felt like she was never letting me get too close to her. But now, on a day when we both faced our own deaths in different ways, it was Natalie who wanted to hold on to us. It was Natalie who wanted to keep on living so we could be together.

“So what do we do now?” I said. Suddenly, anything was possible.

“I don’t know. But I do know two things for sure.”

“Yeah?”

“One is that I want to go to sleep right now.”

“And the other?”

She settled in next to me. It was cold outside. It was dark and colder than any summer night should ever be.

“I can’t even say it…”

“What?”

“I’ve never walked away from anything in my life,” she said. “Not because I was scared.”

“You don’t want to go back?”

“Don’t let me.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes,” she said. “Whatever you do, don’t let me go back there.”