Fan Fiction

Kay

Seeing the police station where Angelo's father worked, I genuinely laughed.

"What's so funny," Angelo said as we climbed the stoop to the entryway. I looked down, squeezing his hand while we passed through the glass double doors, and answered, "It looks like a big purple cake." He let out a relaxed giggle, smoothing his favorite, red and blue outfit.

At the reception desk, I said, around my cottoned mouth, "Where can I find Detective Rico Tubbs, please?" The secretary, impressed, as I expected her to be by my jacquard dress, amethysts, and Fendi sandals, said crisply, "You can find him in the Vice Squadroom, ma'am, down the hall and to your left."

I thanked her; she and Angelo exchanged smiles. Following her directions, we narrowly missed colliding with a heavy-set, blonde man when we entered that room.

"Watch it, tiger," he said, patting Angelo on the head. I heard the man pause in his hurry after we passed through the door he held open. Yet he continued down the hall and the boy and I through the doorway.

Every detective in the pale pink room either typed out a rap sheet or interviewed a prisoner, telephones rang off the hook, and the gurgle of a ramshackle coffeemaker completed the cacophony.

A black-haired detective adding cream to her coffee noticed my confusion and said, "Can I help you with something?"

"Yes, I'm looking for Detective Tubbs."

"It's sort of a madhouse in here. How about I get you and your boy a couple sodas in the meantime while I find him?"

"Thank you."

She stared a bit at Angelo before she left. I scanned the room, feeling faintly irritated by the inexplicable behavior until I saw a reason why.

A man with Angelo's same beautifully lash-fringed eyes stood by a desk at which a second blonde man was seated. I walked toward them with Angelo, my heart banging against my ribs. The speech I'd planned became irrelevant because they glanced toward us while conversing. The man I'd presumed to be Tubbs, breathy from laughing at the seated man's joke, said, "Is there something I can help you with?"

I gulped, moved behind Angelo, and lightly rested my hands on his shoulders, saying,"This is Angelo Tubbs."

The other man's green eyes widened in shock while Tubbs stood transfixed. Unable to look at Tubbs, I watched his son's tense breathing. Suddenly, his stance easing, Angelo moved hesitantly to where his father stood and said, "Daddy?"

Tubbs dropped to his knees and swooped the boy close, quietly sobbing. I finally noticed the silence and the overwhelming gratitude gleaming in Tubbs' tears. A torrent of applause built. The black-haired lady absentmindedly handed me the sweating sodas as I let her and the other detectives squeeze past me. I set the drinks on the green-eyed man's desk.

Obscured by the onrush of wellwishers, I backed away, slipped out the propped-open door of the squadroom, and stepped on someone's foot in the process of sneaking down the hall.

In the parking lot, I dashed to my Volvo and peeled rubber, babbling, "Can pet my cat, finish school, sleep in my bed, hug my parents . . . " Seeing the carseat in back made me burst into tears.

Angelo had been heartbreakingly self-sufficient when he joined me where I was held in the Calderon compound. Born to the daughter, Angelique, of the Calderon patriarch by way of her romance with an undercover Vice cop named Tubbs, Angelique's brother--her murderer--stole this baby away. Grandmother Calderon influenced her late grandson to retain the child's surname but she couldn't do more. Bereft and bereaved, Angelo's understandable lack of expression impelled me to bring out the child in him.

Squatting to look him in the eye, I said, "How about playing a game?" Angelo came forward so dutifully, I almost groaned in chagrin. "This game is called Flying Baby---it's more like a ride," I explained. "Rest your tummy on my feet, get comfy--good. Now, hold my hands tight. Ready?" He nodded, saucer-eyed, while I slowly lifted him into the air with my feet as I lay on my back.

I began to seesaw, gradually alternating it with the climb and descent of a helicopter; my speed varied depending upon how much he giggled. When I gently lowered him onto the carpet, his eyes gleamed as he reached out to me.

"Do it again!", he squealed. I first bearhugged him.

Busying myself to avoid remembering more, I maxed out my Calderon-supplied credit getting a cash advance on the way to the Fontainebleau Hotel; the $10,000 would make for a fine fresh start at home and true luxury of a first-class into Meadows Field.

Mom, torn between relief and fury, nearly hung up on me when I phoned Bakersfield; she finally promised to keep quiet. "I'll be home before Dad," I gently teased.

Due to my sweaty, wild-haired state, the concierge wanted to call the police and I spent fifteen minutes discouraging him before he promised to keep quiet, too, and I could turn in my room key. I felt featherlight as I left the Fontainebleau to wait for my cab.

8:30 the same morning, back at the squad

Rico

I didn't want to let Angelo loose, so he sat on my hip drinking 7Up. Trudi found Chianti somebdy stashed in the back of the community fridge and poured the stuff into the water cooler cups. Sonny--damning department procedure as usual--toasted, "To Angelo's homecoming;" I coulda bust something when the whole squad drank to my boy's health.

Like that Who song, my heart had never '"grown too old to be on fire"' to find Angelo; it just got harder, as years past, to spend a whole weekend or vacation looking for him without thinking he'd wind up like the missing child of the week before. "Hey, let's not forget who made this possible," I said, wondering how I'd toast a woman that had justified all the crap I'd been through.

Trudi, a little wicked despite being sweet on me, joked,"That's sort of given, Rico." Gina played at smacking her in the arm while I, God knows why, blushed.

"No, I meant the lady who brought Angelo. Where is she?" They all puzzled.

"She was right by your desk, Rico. I bought her sodas," Trudy said.

"She's probably in the powder room, partner," Sonny said.

"Not That I noticed," Switek said, adjusting his fly as he joined us.

"How would you even know?", Gina said.

"She's five feet-eight inches tall, 140, young, expensive-looking;" he paused to pop open the can of cola on a corner of Crockett's desk. "I might add she nearly crushed my big toe while leaving the building."

Crockett's eyebrows raised, he said, "She'll be back."

Switek resumed, "Not the way she flew out of here in that blue Volvo, license-"

"Show-off," Trudy teased.

Fresh laughter broke off when Castillo (that explosion should have killed him) said, "Let Switek finish, Trudi, then call the DMV. Gina can give you the young woman's location ofn the way there, Crockett."

I asked, "what's the big deal, Lieutenant?", as Gina, Trudi, and the rest returned to their desks.

"The girl's taken your son from the Calderons and she has intimate knowledge of their organization. We need to find her before she's silenced."

Crockett and I rushed to the parking lot; I answered the carphone as Sonny's Ferrari roared onto Unity Boulevard. Gina said, "The car is registered to a Sandor Pinal, last known address: Silverbluff Estates, Coral Gables."

"Rico," Trudy added, "a Volvo with that license number was the subject of a 411 call at the Fontainebleu."

"Got it. Thanks." I hung up, saying, "She's at The Fountain."

"Hold on," Sonny growled, making a sharp right onto an exit for a feeder street to Lincoln.

The Fontainebleau breezeway

Kay

A black convertible loudly braked to a stop fifty feet in front of where I sat on my suitcase by the curb. Tubbs and the second blond, who I guessed to be partners, jumped out and rushed toward me.

"We'd like a moment of your time," Tubbs said.

"The baby's seat!", I said, intentionally obtuse. "I forgot to take it out of the Volvo, but you should find it easy enough. Sorry, I can't stay to help."

Looking bemused, the blond said, "Where're you going?"

"Do you know how long it's been since I've seen my family: two years! And maybe make it four while I'm waiting to be state's witness? ! It's done, I'm going home!"

"The cartel will leave it at that? You can't be so naive," Tubbs said.

"You don't understand."

"Lady, they'll find you anywhere and take out anybody to get to you, even Rico's kid, if you don't give us an edge over them. You aren't 'done' until we say so."

I left with them, holding the infant seat on my lap, a police tow truck following with my car.

On reentering the squadroom, I saw the female detective I'd met playing Ring-Around-the-Rosy with Angelo in an office; a solemn, black-mustached man with a fluorescent-yellow teddy bear in the crook of one arm sat to the left and behind them in a desk chair. The atypical sweetness of it all wasn't lost on Tubbs or his partner, who seemed similarly fazed.

Tubbs, first to shake it off, called out, " Hey, little man!"

"You brought Kay! ," Angelo toddled over to us.

"For a little while, honey," I said, bending to kiss Angelo on the cheek.

"We appreciate your cooperation," the man I assumed to be captain rasped.

"Today's been hectic; bring Miss Barratt here in the morning, Crockett. We'll expect you early," he concluded with intensity.

Ashamed, I merely nodded. Crockett, Tubbs' partner, led me back to his Ferrari and we began another drive in silence. I passed the time by looking at my first untinted view of downtown and waterfront Miami. "The palette of the senses," I thought.

Pulling into a private section of the Miamarina, Crockett parked near a berth with a small yacht. I hung my beach bag over my shoulder, laughing to myself at the ship's name.

Crockett broke into a wicked grin. "I really itched to have it," he said.

"If you say so, Detective."

"Hell, I was lucky I only caught this Vitus in my misspent youth."

"Oh, you're so ancient," I laughed as he helped me aboard.

He took off his white blazer, revealing taut pecs framed by a sea-blue tank. I busied myself with looking over the yacht instead.

"The safehouses were out of my way for this time of night, but the cabin's comfortable; the head and the galley are on your right."

"Thanks," I said, started below deck, and gingerly reversed direction upon noticing a large, slithering tail in the moonlight.

"That's Elvis; he's a little pissed since the Miami Zoo kicked him out for overfraternizing with the ladies and sold him back to me," Crockett said with a glint in his eye, "Keep in mind that he's an alligator or he'll get real offended."

"I'll try to protect his delicate sensibilities." Crockett brought Elvis up on deck so I could get to bed. I packed away the outfit I wore, making a mental note, "The Next stop for the Calderon Collection is the thrift store."

I threw on part of what I had left from the day the whole mess started---my orange-and blue-striped, Cal State Bakersfield tee shirt---and slipped under the covers.

The rocking of the boat couldn't relax me. "God, this smells like Crockett." Now aware the tantalizing note of coconut tanning oil signified "He sleeps on these pillows," I rose off the bed, crawling backwards on the mattress until I fell off the foot. I sat there, imagining the contrast of his perfect tan against its white sheets and the flexing muscles I'd seen between his holster straps while his strong arms curled around the pillows. I could almost hear his stubble scrape fabric as he burrowed his face between their softness. I rubbed at the genesis of a headache.

Climbing on deck to breathe, careful to not awaken Elvis or Crockett on the foredeck, I tiptoed to the railing, then stretched my arms with a sigh as a breeze ruffled my tee shirt.

"Can't sleep?", Crockett said.

"You, Detective, --" I began to hiss.

"Sonny," he corrected me.

"Sonny," bashfully continuing, "I nearly jumped ship," hand on my heart. Seeing his bare chest and that the top button of his jeans was undone, I warned myself, "Don't look below his neck."

"Sorry," he said. I prayed the faint moonlight didn't show my red face, although he only referred to startling me.

"Mind telling me something?", Sonny said, staring quizzically.

"No."

"Didn't you want to escape?"

I stared back in confusion until concluding he meant from the Calderons. "But--"

"The money kept you. or was it the coke?"

I wanted to smack him out of his cynicism. Instead, I willed my lower lip still and eyes clear to explain:

Spring Break, Miami, 1988, The Fontainebleau Hotel

After my Gamma Phi Beta sisters finally passed out from their End-of-Break mixer, I left our hotel room to go to the nearby Kennedy Park because the stench of stale sweat and cigarette smoke and spilled beer overwhelmed me.

Stepping over my sleeping, Theta Chi Big Brother, I laughed to notice a protrusion in his happy-face patterned boxers, "Talk about rise and shine."

The waterfront, albeit similarly still, certainly didn't match his tumescence at seven in the morning. I took off my sandals and shuffled through damp sand, between faded pastel baby swings and smallscale earthmovers, to the tall steel swings at the end of the playground. Noticing one sedan in the closest section of the parking lot, I overlooked it as one more of the haphazardly parked cars I'd seen.

Settling into a swingseat, I heard a footstep, almost obliterated by my swing's clanking support chains, crunch in the sand at my feet. A solemn, two-year-old boy held out a handful of something to me, saying, "Have a Ding-Dong."

I smiled into his sweet, brown eyes, saying, "Thank you."

He nodded in reply, tucking his thumbs under the straps of the tiniest blue corduroys I'd ever seen. He sat Indian-style to my right, his miniature red hightops beneath him,; one point of the collar of his matching denim shirt turned askew.

I unwrapped the Ding Dong and handed him half of it, saying, "Whose little boy are you?"

He pointed behind us. Turning, I saw a man in a sharkskin suit staring down at me through mirrored sunglasses. Chilled, I stood.

The man said, speaking with a thick Spanish accent, "Are you interested in a position as the child's nanny?"

"Sorry, I'm only in town for Spring Break and--"

"The question was merely a formality, " he interrupted.

Sonny said nothing. Growing more agitated, I said, "Haven't you ever put someone's happiness above your own?"

He looked away into the night. "Yeah."

"I talk too much."

"Don't worry about it," he smiled with a touch of sadness. My dismay lifted when he quietly chuckled, "Your hair's in your eyes."

His bare feet drummed against the deck's bleached wood. As Sonny tried to fingercomb my bangs back, his hand became entangled.

"I should have warned you: my hairspray . . ."

His kiss surprised both of us. He jerked his head away, then his other hand slid into the wisps at the nape of my neck.

"Wait," I panted, a weak hand on his chest to stop him. "I helped your friend, but that's no reas-"

Sonny's lips interrupted; his warmth, breath, and flavor consumed me. My arms snaked up his back, my hands dug into his spiked hair, and I prayed, "Please don't stop this." He laid me on his mattress on the foredeck.

Atop me, wrapped in his arms, Sonny nevertheless said, "I'm too old for this."

"I beg to differ."

"Don't give me that," he said ruefully, "We've got to be in early tomorrow."

I growled in frustration and rolled us to face the water. "See you in the morning," I said, snuggling teasingly to sleep.

Sunlight already blazed at seven. My legs snared in a patched bedsheet, I opened one eye to the glare of white espadrilles. "Don't even say it," I grumbled.

"Good morning, sunshine."

"Aaargh!" I swung at him with his pillow; he used the momentum to get up.

"We better get going before it's quarter past lunch and Castillo has my hide. Drink this," Sonny said with gruff kindness, handing me a mug of coffee as we sidestepped the rigging around the cabin.

"Ugh," I groggily refused it. "Don't you have any juice?"

Sonny, in mock exasperation, swatted my butt as I went below the deck. "This ain't the Fountain, princess. Get dressed."

I stuck out my tongue at him.

Humming the first bars of "Freeway of Love" over the noise of Sonny revving the convertible's engine, I now enjoyed the sun's heat on my legs. Eying him with complete satisfaction at a red light during the drive to the station, I slid close to him as possible with the stickshift in the way to purr, "What shall we do this evening?"

Sonny downshifted at the change to green, saying without looking at me, "We remember you're an informant."

My smile crept sideways, receding to nothing by the time we pulled into the lot. In the squadroom, the detectives I'd met already waited around a conference table within an anteroom. The man Sonny had corrected me to refer to as 'Lieutenant' Castillo sat at the top.

I cleared my throat. Sonny pulled out a chair, allowing me to regain some of the poise I'd lost in the car, although I felt uneasy. He took the place beside Tubbs and I focused on the lieutenant.

The lieutenant switched on a worn tape recorder; the microphone near me crackled. Folding his hands on the table, he said, "July 7, 1990: witness statement on Calderon organization. Name and legal residence:"

"Kay Violette Barratt, Gamma Phi Beta Sorority, Tevis Ranch, Bakersfield, California".

Castillo rasped, "Time: eight a.m."

Guessing I should begin, I wiped my palms on the hems of my shorts after relating the wherefore. "Everything but the kid scared me: raucous men and guns everywhere after not having been around either much in my life, knowing I'd never see my family again, the kidnapper insisting his hospitality was at my disposal.

The guy handed the boy to a guard who barely stopped to shift his rifle's butt out of the way. The kidnapper drank bourbon-on-the-rocks and read mail at his office desk like he was an executive. Then he led me through his villa--totally incongruent to its owner.

He opened double doors leading to a huge patio and, first saying this smooth, dulcet '"call me Sandor"', courteously led me through a garden dripping with hibiscus, jasmine, and ferns. '"Your duties will be light. I shall personally oversee the task of anticipating your needs." That velvet solicitousness's what really scared me because the hand he'd wrapped around my elbow grew painfully rigid.

Sandor gave me a key, then gestured for me to unlock the front door of a jewelrybox of an Art Deco guesthouse. I felt still more unnerved after I opened it. The place reeked of fresh paint.

It was like some weird dream about everything I'd ever wanted in a house : coral living room with voluptuos sofas, Aubusson carpets, and chairs in a Scalamandre poppy print; lemon-yellow kitchen with, ostensibly to peak my curiosity appliances I'd never seen before; and a bedroom so similar to my own room that homesickness pinned me straight through. I tried to return the key. Sandor shook his head and left.

I thought I could escape for all of one second, then Sandor locked me in with a another key. Barricading myself in the bedroom by placing a vanity bench that must have weighed thirty pounds against the door, I curled up in a velvet armchair. Hugging my knees, I somehow fell asleep resting my head on my kneecaps.

The next morning, I woke up to a bad version of The Little Princess. Flinging a wedding ring quilt off me so I could find an aspirin, I saw a blue Volvo 735I--my dreamcar in high school--sitting in the guesthouse driveway.

A bolt not previously on the inside of my bedroom door completely freaked me out. Piles of hand-tatted lace, real chiffon, pure silk, or cotton sateen lingerie in all my favorite colors covered the bedspread. Nauseated, I swept it on the floor to have a place to sit and reassemble my brain."

Her form mirrored twice in his eyes, Sandor left his spot outside her bedroom window.

"The luxury sickened me because Sandor knew getting my dream house, car, walk-in-closetfull of designer clothes, and favorite chocolate or perfume that I can't afford would normally be thrilling. So any pleasure I might have felt, he laced with a liberal amount of pain.

By that token, the dream house held no food, books, or music and only the bath lacked security cameras. Everything I wore propped me up to Sandor's 'advantage'. Every special occasion, he managed to celebrate exactly as did my family.

I can't imagine the money and time he spent planning my abduction. Yet Sandor miscalculated my reaction to "work." To feed the happiness Angelo's arrival that day brought to my strange jail, I reached back in my memories for stories about Little Miss Suzy, Crictor the Boa Constrictor, and Graham Cracker City. I sang Angelo my mother's lullabies and let him sleep with me if he got scared."

Sandor's grip shook the frame of her darkened front door. Her voice, expanding in his body, breathed with his lungs and tindered his heart. He remembered tree ceilinged days at play and eating tapas from his mother's hand. He cried out from that lost soul.

"A year later, worrying over Angelo anesthetized me to gold-filigreed, Tanzanite chokers and Sandor's other knife-twisting ploys. Eavesdropping on the men in the main house while cooking and cleaning allowed me to learn that Grandmother Calderon was dying; other cartel members contested Angelo's figurehead leadership.

At her death, a power struggle within and without the cartel shuttled the boy and myself throughout Miami. Sandor disappeared."

He watched his former protege rob his pockets; Sandor could do nothing, each gasp spewing his life. Jose seemed to be no louder than his pulse.

"Die like you begged for her," Jose told him, Sandor's pistol the next-to-last appropriation he'd planned from his patron. "I will have what you weren't man enough . . . " Jose droned on to sightless eyes and deaf ears.

"Jose continued the tradition of weekends the guards referred to as "poke-her nights. He marked the following Friday after becoming the new headman by forcing Angelo to fast in punishment for spitting on a guard who insulted Angelina's virtue.

Moreover, the bolt Ricardo and I had used to secure us in my bedroom durin "poker" was absent from the new, northwestern Coral Way safehouse by the railroad tracks.

On his way out that night, Jose smiled suggestively at my door after bringing me a unfamiliar yellow pill--the one Sandor always managed to sneak into the milk Ricardo and I drank with weekend dinners was blue."

"Does she never sleep? !," Jaime roared with hilarity at him from between the slobbered breasts of a scraggly-haired hooker. The poker regulars jeered.

"She cannot outlast me!", Jose retorted, refusing to admit El Calderon's presence in Kay's clothed, exhausted arms had forestalled his ardor.

"I put fresh fear to good use.My bag and the boy waited in my room, three weekends later, while I crept through the dingy home to the kitchen. Having earlier made the guards' coffee, I dropped my unused collection of sleeping pills into the remaining half-pot, leaving just as quietly.

The laughter this poker night no different from the first time I'd heard it. "Are we going to my daddy? ," Angelo asked, hugging my leg, when I returned to our room.

"Pretend we're playing Bloody Murder and you have to be very careful so "it" won't surprise you?"

"Yes."

"Hold my hand and we'll go."

He climbed onto my shoulders over the large beach bag I wore like a backpack, and I sprinted out the front door of the house, barely stopping to check Jose and the rest were really out cold.

I buckled Angelo into his carseat facing the Volvo's backseat. Releasing the parking brake once I strapped myself in, I shifted the gearshaft into neutral, letting the car coast down the private-entry road. At the bottom of the hill, relying on what more I'd learned at the old compound's main house, I bypassed the security gate's alarm and motors to noiselessly slide it open. Once we rolled through the gate into the public street, I hotwired the Volvo and cruised back the direction I'd come two years earlier. Going to Detective Tubbs seemed best because there's been a contract out on Ricardo since June."

Eyes burning, Castillo said, "Location and security of last-known Calderon safehouse?"

"I'd have to drive you there myself to find it. The ten guards have AK-47's. They might still be groggy from the dope I gave them."

"How?", an incredulous Switek blurted.

"I put almost a dozen, little yellow sleeping pills in their coffee."

"Shaped like blossoms? ," Sonny asked. I nodded.

"That many rufees would do it," he said, ineffectively holding back his laughter.

Even Tubbs couldn't help it once the others started. I wished they would let me in on the joke.

Lieutenant Castillo leaned back slightly from the table. The rest began to stretch, check watches or gather their notes. "We'll finish tomorrow. You and the Tubbs go to the Surprise Lake safehouse with Crockett," Castillo said, switching off the recorder. I didn't notice the room emptying until Switek's folding chair scraped the floor.

Looking for the restroom, I rounded a corner and walked into a fight between Sonny and Gina, the second detective I'd originally met in the squadroom.

"I waited through Caroline, Christine, Caitlin, " Gina seethed, "G's are difficult for you, Sonny."

"Gina, it's not--"

"Tell me you didn't take her to the boat last night, that you didn't pull out her chair at the briefing," She interrupted, throwing me an accusatory glare. "You can't be with me or face turning forty---don't look at her!", Gina hollered. Suddenly broken by her storm, she left, saying dismissively, "Go play college hero with Miss Gamma Phi. I'm through." She brushed past Trudy, who looked askance at me and followed Gina.

"Sonny," I began to apologize. He only stared with eyes like ball lightening before stalking off.

Half-hysterical, I found the public ladies' room, choosing the stall farthest from the entrance and beside the back wall. Bracing the stall door with my hands because of the broken lock, I choked over two years' worth of tears rushing from me. I'd gone from captive to the hero to manstealer in forty-eight hours.

"It's too much. I think I'll never be able to let a man near me and when I can, he's someone I shouldn't have."

Trying to calm down, I left the stall to wash, but I remembered his hands in my hair while I pinned it away from my face. Kicking at and beating my hands on the counter, I sobbingly protested, "Years of nothing!"

Worn out, I dried my eyes with toilet paper, tossed the wad of tissue in the door-flanking bin, meandered past the reception area, and out the station.

Bypassing convenient restaurants for fear Gina or Sonny would be there, I stopped for fast food and to picnic at a park called Bayfront. I sat near a rowdy volleyball game on one of the peeling, white benches and chewed thoughtfully on my lunch. After crunching up the fry box and burger wrapper in the bag, I dusted crumbs from my lap.

Jose appeared on my horizon as the worst mirage: he was real. "Katerina, where have you been?", he said, smiling like a piranha. I convulsively gripped my purse, keeping silent.

"You only had to ask if you wanted to take El Calderon on an outing," Jose smoothly lied, right hand twirling his black shades by the earpieces, "but two days, Katerina . . . " His voice trailed off as he shrugged, making "tsk-tsk" noises.

"I won't give him back." Whatever desperation I felt, if I offered myself up and didn't talk, he could never hurt Angelo. With my skin crawling, I said, "Let's go," walking to him. At that, Jose seemed mildly surprised.

One-thirty p.m., the station

"Damn it, where the hell is she?", Crockett said, pacing in short spurts and dragging a hand through his hair.

"She's probably off somewhere in the building to have a good cry."

He gave Tubbs a quelling glance and resumed pacing. "She wouldn't go home; she's too goody-two-shoes to risk a bench warrant."

"You're working yourself up for nothing."

Castillo grimly spoke up, "A Calderon soldier was reported in the last known vicinity of Miss Barratt's vehicle."

"I knew it."

The original Calderon Compound, later that day

A lookout held a rifle aloft in salute as Jose's white superstretch limo pulled into the Coral Gables compound's driveway. Gesturing with a cigarillo, Jose smirked, "You see how I have come up in the world."

I instead noticed, too shockedly amused to be afraid, the dearth of guards around the house and that the grounds were going to seed. The limo's brakes whined to a stop, causing Jose to cuss, "Viejo brujo!", in embarrassment.

The driver, unimpressed by Jose's bluster, turned off the engine, got out, and ambled off, ignoring Jose, who fumed a moment more, "Chepete!"

Jose slid awkwardly across the seat to open the door himself. He motioned for me to follow, too angry to ape Sandor's "courtesy." I still waited to feel afraid of him.

We entered the dusty, half-shuttered main hall of the main house. Jose flopped into the desk chair in Sandor's former study. The only other guard I'd seen had returned with us from Miami Beach; he stood, ready to fire, in the office doorway.

"What do you have to say for yourself?", Jose said, half-jumping from his chair Stalking around me, neck outstretched, he looked about as threatening as the chicken hawk from Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. I made the mistake of a single guffaw.

Striking like a mongoose, Jose punched me in the midsection. I took a deep breath, only winded, and steadied myself. "Sit," he barked; I chose the club chair against the wall.

"Don't make light of me again; this is a serious matter," he warned, his composure returning while he resettled behind the desk. "I'm sure you have been told what would have happened if I hadn't found you."

"That goes without saying," I said to placate him.

"Granted, I could not treat you in the style to which my patron accustomed you," Jose said softly. "Did you miss your pretty things?"

"No."

The strain off his forced urbanity began to show in his smile. "Perhaps you prefer a firmer hand," Jose whispered.

"No, thank you."

Jose had his turn at laughing while I struggled to keep calm. At last, he dried the corner of one eye with a knuckle. "I have a fitting punishment: you will wear your Scassi dress and sing for me.

Nonplused, my eyebrows nearly met the nape of my neck.

He resumed laughing, saying, "Poor Sandor: all the money he spent on you and the most he would take in return was whatever of your lullabies he could hear while standing outside the boy's window." Jose was still laughing as the guard yanked me from the room.

No less than the cherry red Scassi hung over a chair in the guesthouse's bedroom, the matching heels lying under the rungs. Underwear being absent, I scrounged behind a dresser drawer for the corset and girdle I'd stashed---the least "access-friendly" lingerie Sandor bought me. I grimly untied my sneakers, thinking, "I hope the cavalry shows before my repertoire runs dry."

Almost sunset, in the center of the Silverbluff cul-de-sac

Sonny

Castillo waited with the SWAT team. I sent Gina and Switek off to my right. Trudy followed me, on what wouldna been a nature walk in the best circumstances, to the heart of the compound.

She jokes, "No cracks about 'restless natives'," when this noise starts in the room closest to the front of the courtyard. It became a voice, then two voices:Kay's singing her heart out and some Calderon flunky's trying to shut her up.

Kay kept on singing. When I couldn't hear her anymore, I rushed the side door with my head. It smashed open.

The pipsqueak had Kay on her knees with her windpipe clenched in his elbow. He screamed, "Leave us or she dies! ." The way her dress was torn, I wanted to raise hell; Trudy pulls me backwards the direction we came.

Kay's left foot shifts in a red pump; She--God, I was proud of her--rolled it off, grabbed the sole in one hand, and slammed its glass into the guy's crotch. He squealed, dropping the gun to check the family fortune. Kay even managed to sprint to me once Switek and Gina burst into the front of the room.

The man wheeled on them. HIs .45 didn't have a chance. He crumpled with an odd, little chuckle. I wanted to hold Kay so bad, my arms were already open; she stopped herself before Gina saw.

Surprise Lake, after the trial

Kay

I'd finished packing; In my attempt to straighten the recalcitrant bedspread, I was practically straddling my bed when Sonny, whom I hadn't seen standing on the deck outside my bedroom, said, "How come you didn't do that at my place?" I clambered down, thinking, "You have no idea how much I wanted to."

CCR's "Take a Load Off" blared from the clock radio in the early September morning's cool. His hands in the pockets of his black, raw silk suit, Sonny strolled to the radio.

"You're a little young for Credence," he teased, his winning smile enough to really make me cry. He picked up a book I'd been reading; I dried my eyes. In the midst of reading the cover, he said, "Lord, this came out when I was your age," trying overall to let me down easy.

"Style is ageless," I said, allowing vocalization of the constrained desire he'd only exacerbated. Sonny blushed though his tan, taking my suitcase from me as we left the room. I'd already said my goodbyes to Rico and Angelo.

Sonny stowed my suitcase in the trunk of a green-and-white cab. I got in the door he held open, fussing with my seatbelt so he wouldn't see tears fill my eyes again when he shut the door. "Kay," he gently said. I looked out window to him.

"What's the title of that book translate into?"

His glibness cut. Gesturing to the driver to start the car, I told Sonny, "Game over."

The taxi sped away.