Virgin Heat(35)

Louie mopped his head with a paper napkin. The waitress came over and Angelina ordered coffee.

Then she said, "He tried even harder not to want me."

"He?" said Louie. "Who?"

"Never mind," she said, and read the headlines upside down on his paper.

"Never mind?" Her uncle pushed croissant crumbs with his fingertips. "Angelina," he said, "I'm a meddling old fart and I'm only your uncle. Am I allowed at least to say I'm worried about you?"

Her coffee arrived. She blew on it and said, "Of course you're allowed."

He leaned closer, splayed his elbows wide. "You're a beautiful young woman, Angelina. A million guys would want you. Maybe something isn't right if you have to chase after—"

"Uncle Louie," she interrupted, "what was it like to want Aunt Rose?"

The query stood him up like a good crisp jab. He gestured, his mouth got ready to make words, but nothing came out.

"It's a real question," his niece went on. "I'm trying to understand. Could you just as easily have wanted someone else? Could you have changed what you wanted, like at a restaurant, they're out of lamb chops, you say okay, I'll have the steak? I mean, did you really want her, or was it just what came along?"

Louie pushed his lips out, made little circles with his hand. He was sitting there but he was traveling. He grew young, got trim, his hair returned as he remembered early kisses, the waxy taste of Rose's lipstick and the warm and thrilling breath behind it. His hand on the amazing place where waist flared into hip as they danced the cha-cha. He recalled the charged and lusty peace that happened when the clamor of loins clanged along in concert with the simple tune played by the heart, and he said, almost in a whisper, "I wanted her."

Angelina reached across the table, put her hand on his, and said, "All right, then." She took a small sip of her cooling coffee, then yawned. "Come on," she said, "you'll walk me home."

* * *

The federal offices in North Miami did nothing to dress up the blah neighborhood they stood in. Squat and beige, bleakly new and cheaply functional, it seemed their sole design imperative was the ability to withstand a hurricane or a siege. Inside, furtive blinds sliced up the sun that came through narrow windows; black shoes scuffed along squares of gray linoleum; green metal desks sat in offices defined by slabs of rolling wall that didn't reach the ceiling.

In one such cubicle, a baggy-eyed but pumped-up Keith McCullough stood in city clothes while his supervisor, Manny Links, sat placidly and rocked in a chair that squeaked and scraped with every movement.

"I don't see it," the supervisor was saying. "Why continue with this guy? You got a girlfriend down there, what?"

"I am telling you," said Keith McCullough, "it's just starting to get interesting."

Links looked down at the clipboard on his desk.

He had the clipboard; he had the pipe; he had the square chin and the salt-and-pepper hair: he seemed every inch the senior Fed. But in his mind he'd already moved on to the cushy private-sector security job that awaited him upon retirement. He'd practically forgotten he'd ever been an agent.

"Interesting?" he said, looking down at McCullough's latest report. "The guy's a bartender. He takes a drink on the job. I don't find that so interesting."

"It's a break in the pattern," said the undercover man. "He was very agitated."

Links took his pipe from his jacket pocket, serenely tapped it against his palm. He leaned back in his chair and didn't seem to notice that it screeched. "I get agitated sometimes. Don't you?"

"Look," McCullough said, "he changed right before my eyes. Someone came into that bar that he really didn't want to see. Who was it? Why did he flinch? I think something's going on."

"I think you like Key West," said Links. "There's nothing in this report to suggest—"

McCullough balled his fists, leaned forward so that his tie hung away from his chest. "The good stuff, Manny . . . it's not in the report."

"The good stuff?"

"I have a source."

"A source," said Links. He tapped the clipboard. "That should be in here."

"It's not ready to be in there."

"We have procedures, Keith. A source for what?"

"For what Ziggy Maxx is into."

Links slipped his pipe into his mouth, clamped down on the stem. "Keith, don't go cowboy on me. Who's the source?"

The undercover man ignored the question. "Look, suddenly Ziggy's drinking on the job. Suddenly he's late for work. I think something is breaking with this guy."

"And I think you've wasted enough time looking for it."