Tequila Shuffle

"Crestridge Medical Center. I'm an LPN. Pay isn't great, but the insurance is good, you know?"

I leaned back and pretended to study her ass. Okay, I really pretended to pretend. "And it obviously has a really great gym."

She shot me a smug smile and gave a tiny wiggle. "Damn right."

Miguel looked over at the bus. "We got a field of tomatoes waiting on us, José."

I nodded. "Yeah. Thanks again, Rosa, I mean it, you saved me."

"I'm glad I could help. You let me know what's going on, okay?" She turned and walked away toward her trailer, not bothering to clutch her robe to keep the playful Santa Anna winds from giving glimpses of that perfect butt.

"Wow," Maisie muttered, scratching herself through the unbuttoned side opening of the overalls, exposing a broad expanse of bare skin. "Sop that up with a biscuit."

Leonard rolled his eyes at Maisie. "For God's sake, she's half your age."

Maisie grinned luridly. "Yeah, she is."

"Pervert."

"Yep."

*****

It took Isobel six days to get pictures of both of Beth's regulars. We sat in her living room as she pulled them up.

One was Voorhees. I'd barely noticed him except as a worker drone in Beth's office. I'd certainly never pictured him as a guy I'd thought would be sneaking over and banging her in my bed when I was at work.

The other guy was a puzzle. I didn't know him; I'd never seen him at Beth's office or mine. Big blonde crewcut guy with a decent suit and a briefcase.

"Nothing?" Miguel eyed me.

I shook my head. "Nothing."

"Maybe he works for your old company?" Isobel was enjoying her role as a spy, I could tell.

"No, I've never seen him." I was certain.

"What about at your wife's office" Isobel looked at me intently, as if ready to grab a trench-coat and head out 'into the fog" to get "back on the case."

"I visited there a few times. I mean, I recognized Voorhees, didn't I? I suppose he could work in a different department there. The brokers were all in my building, but the support staff is in the headquarters building."

Miguel looked disappointed. "You know, I got a cousin who does security there."

"Really?" I was beginning to suspect Miguel's family tree looked like a sea urchin.

He nodded, frowned a little and pulled out his cell phone. "Let me text him." It was bare seconds before he had a response. "Yeah, we can drop by and he'll take a look."

Isobel's husband grabbed Miguel and talked quietly to him for a second as we headed out.

Miguel was chuckling softly as we pulled away. "Isobel's husband wants us to keep investigating."

I squinted in confusion. "Why? He hasn't even been involved."

"Yeah, but Isobel really gets a kick out of it and she's kind of spun up when she gets home from work instead of just being tired all the time."

"Wha... oh. So, she's... uh..."

"Yeah, apparently she's had this sexual fantasy about being a detective for a long time. She even went out and bought some handcuffs and a fingerprint kit..."

"Stop. I really don't want to know."

He chuckled wickedly. "But it's really..."

"Dear God, Miguel, just stop. Or I'll tell you about Leonard and Maisie and the spatula."

"Ugh. That's nasty. You win."

We pulled up to a small apartment building and Miguel led me up the stairs to the third floor and rapped on a green door.

I blinked when the door was opened by a powerful red-haired giant of a man. Miguel introduced us. "José, this is my cousin Björn. He manages the security team at your ex-wife's building. They hired him away from the NYPD."

"Um, Miguel, he doesn't look very Mexican."

"Yeah, well he's Norwegian."

Björn gave a weary sigh. "Swedish."

Miguel chuckled. "Yeah, 'bork, bork, bork.' Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish. Whatever."

The huge man waved us in with a tolerant smile. "Miguel's still pissed about that FIFA match last year."

"Oh, not that shit again. Get lucky one time...."

Björn looked thoughtfully upward. "Get lucky on a hundred-dollar bet...."

"Get lucky with your sister, man."

"She's taller than me, dude. She'd have to hold you by the feet and use you like a dildo. How long can you hold your breath? Maybe I'll give her a call."

Miguel winced comically. "Dickhead. So where is Kelsea? She's the high point of visiting you."

Björn pulled out beers and handed us each one. "She's stuck in traffic. Had a gig on the east side."

Miguel gestured to a picture of Björn with a cheerful-looking and pretty, but extremely pale woman. "Kelsea's a clown. Like a real one, went to clown school and everything."

Miguel gestured to a picture of Björn with a cheerful-looking and pretty, but extremely pale woman. "Kelsea's a clown. Like a real one, went to clown school and everything."

"Academy. It's Clown Academy. Björn good-naturedly corrected. "She's a medical clown now; works in the children's wards at a couple hospitals." I met her when I worked in New York, She was a busker, mostly working Times Square, clown act with street magic. She got stuck there when the circus she was working for shut down. I arrested her."

"Seriously?" I took a sip of Björn's damn good beer.

"Yeah, she got in an altercation with a mime and I had to arrest them both."

Miguel snickered. "Did you keep a straight face when you told the mime he had a right to remain silent?"

Björn chuckled. "Took me three tries to get it done. Then I had to search Kelsea and it turned into a real fiasco. Probably a dozen balloon animals, three rubber chickens, a joy buzzer, six giant lollipops, two of those bulb horns that clowns use, and finally about 50 yards of tied-together handkerchiefs. When I finally pulled the last handkerchief out it had a red t-back lace thong tied to it..." He sighed. "Took fifteen minutes and we drew a huge crowd. She played it for all she was worth. Hell, the search netted her nearly six hundred in tips."

"Helluva way to meet." I savored another sip.

"Yeah, she found me on duty a few days later, gave me her phone number and demanded a date."

The door to the apartment popped open and an honest to God clown walked in. Not one of the weird creepy ones; she was bouncy, cute and cheerful.

"Hey Miguel! Nachos Cheese Doritos!" She looked over at me with a ridiculously cheerful grin and comically raised eyebrows. "It's the only Spanish I know."

There was something infectious about her silliness, and I shook my head and laughed. She abruptly leaned over and studied me intently. "Björn's giving you some line of bullshit about me, isn't he?" She threw her hands up over her head. "He runs around telling everyone I'm a clown."

"You do have on clown make-up and you're actually carrying a rubber chicken."

She held the chicken up. "Dinner. And maybe I did get a little carried away with the eye shadow this morning." She deadpanned it perfectly, then grinned again. "Anyway he exaggerates about how we met. It was only 43 handkerchiefs, not 50. And whatever he said, he loves the clown thing."

She spun into a ballet pirouette before smoothly sliding into Björn's lap. "Don't ya, Babe?"

He gave her kiss and she spun back out of his lap just as smoothly. "Be right back. Gotta get the make-up off."

Björn watched her leave and his expression shifted. "The texts sounded serious. What's up?"

"José here has a problem. Somebody is trying to set him up and he doesn't even know why."

The big guy eyed me for a second and raised an eyebrow. "He looks more like a Joseph than a José to me, Miguel." He tipped his bottle slightly toward me. "I have pretty clear instructions to keep you out of the complex no matter what, so I hope that's not the kind of help you're looking for."

"What's the problem?"

It took about fifteen minutes to bring him up to speed and as we did, Kelsea popped back out, face scrubbed, in jeans and a "Snoopy" T-shirt. She grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat next to Björn. "Sounds like a mess. Ex-wife hate you that much?"

I shrugged. "No reason for it. Not that I know of."

"What are you going to try to do?"

"Right now, we're just trying to figure who this is." Miguel pulled up the picture of the blond guy with Beth. "You ever see this guy?"

Björn didn't even hesitate. "Yeah, all the time for a while, not as much for the last few months, but he still comes around." He paused. "I didn't know he was friends with Beth though. I didn't even know they knew each other."

"Do you know if he hangs out with Alan Vorhees?"

"That weasel? No. Nobody hangs out with him."

"It looks like Beth has been having an affair with Alan for years."

"Her? Seriously, the security teams see a lot of shit we turn a blind eye to because it isn't our problem, but I've never seen her do anything. Comes in, does her work, goes home."

"Apparently she and Alan have been hooking up over the lunch hours."

Björn looked thoughtful. "Accounting kind of eats lunch in two shifts and they leave at the same time. Along with a bunch of others."

It wasn't looking like we were getting anywhere, so I figured I'd get what we could. "So who is the blond guy anyway?"

"His name is Evan Batchelder. I know him because he flexed on me when he first showed up. Some of the steroid babies do that by reflex. Weird name, too."

I glanced over him. "I don't think he's in your league. So what department does he work in?"

"He doesn't work for us. He drops by to do his job. He's an SEC investigator."

*****

Miguel and I were pretty quiet most of the way back to the trailer park. He pulled to a stop at the trailer park gate.

"So, I gather not all your cousins are really cousins."

He shrugged. "You got family you're born with, that's one thing. Then you got family you choose."

"And Rosa?"

"Nah, she really is my second cousin. Hadn't seen her in years before I got back out here." He paused. "You know she likes you."

"Weren't you the one who said she might try to kill me?"

Miguel grinned. "She might, but that doesn't mean she don't like you." His grin dropped away. "What are you gonna do?"

"I don't know yet. I've got to look some stuff up. Beth even seeing the guy from the SEC is a serious ethics violation, I'm pretty sure of that... and there's stuff that maybe..." I stopped. "I'd rather just leave it alone."

"But she won't leave you alone." Miguel looked steadily at me. "Don't do anything stupid, you need help, I'll help. Okay?"

I nodded. "Not sure what I can do anyway."

He pulled away and I walked across the dimly lit trailer park.

The only sound was the crunch of gravel under my feet until I was almost to my trailer.

"Hey, pervert." She said it so softly I barely heard it.

I looked over at Rosa's trailer. She was sitting in a chair in front of it with her feet up on another. "Hey, Rosa."

"Looks like you had a bad day."

"Yeah, pretty much everything I thought I knew about my wife turned out to be bullshit."

She held up a half empty bottle. "Need a drink? Tapatio out of Jalisco."

I took a couple steps toward her. "That's the good stuff. You don't need it waste it on me."

Rosa smiled gently. "I've been there with my ex. I can spare some." She pulled her feet down, sat up straight and patted the empty chair next to hers. "Besides, you promised to let me know what's going on."

I slumped into the chair and took the proffered bottle. "I don't have a cup..."

She laughed softly. "Tequila kills germs. It's okay, you won't catch any of my cooties."

I took a sip and shook my head. "More worried about you catching whatever kind of shit luck I've managed to catch."

"So what happened?" She leaned forward a bit, a dim shape in the darkness.

I did it. I told her the whole stupid story about what we'd learned.

"What does that mean?"

"I can't prove it, but it looks like Beth has been setting me up for years. A couple of accountants could have put that trading account together, they'd have needed help but they could do it. Whoever was doing it got tipped to the SEC investigation. Beth is in the center of it all. She was sleeping with the SEC guy over a year before the investigation came down. She was screwing Voorhees for two years before that. And..." I stopped for a second. "She was trying to get Fish to put me back in prison."

I could see Rosa pull her feet up into her chair under her. "How long were you guys married?"

"A little over four years. So she was fucking Voorhees practically from the beginning."

She sat quietly for a bit. "You think maybe she married you to set you up?"

"That thought makes me feel even better."

She leaned over and took the bottle from me to take a sip, then handed it back. "Manipulating men is what some women do best." She looked at me intently. "So what are you going to do? Get revenge?"

I shook my head. "At least you're straightforward. I just want out of this, but that isn't going to work."

Rosa held up the empty bottle, then stood up. "Maybe another bottle would help think it though? I think I have one inside." She walked up the steps to her door and I started to get up.

When she opened the door, the light from inside seemed to dissolve her robe as she looked back over her shoulder at me. "You coming?"

I followed and shut the door behind me, entranced by the rhythmic sway of her hips. She paused for a second and I saw the Chihuahua jump from where he'd been sleeping on the couch and race under a chair. "I think the bottle is in my bedroom." She pointed to an open door.

I took two more steps toward her and she turned to me with a wicked smile. Her robe was completely open and I reached inside it to pull her against me. Her rapacious smile widened further as she looked up at me. "You can't say I didn't warn you. I told you that manipulating men is what some women do best."

She hooked one leg around my thigh and thrust against me in an almost lazy grinding tempo. She started to say something else, but I couldn't resist those full red lips and I cut her off with a kiss. She returned it hungrily and shrugged out of her robe, her full breasts mashing up against me.

Picking her up, I carried her into the bedroom, a low growl following us from under the chair.

I probably should have shut that door. I'm certain we emotionally traumatized the Chihuahua, he lost his voice from howling about two hours later.

*****

Rosa lay half across me; I could feel her heartbeat in my own chest and I knew exactly when she was waking up without her moving a muscle. She slowly raised her head and looked languidly at me with those soft brown eyes.

A slow smile crept across her face. "Wow. You must have been saving that up for a long time. I'm a little... tender." She looked down off the edge of the bed for a second. "I'm probably gonna throw that pillow away."

"Yeah. Even if you wash it..."

She shook her head with a soft laugh. "No, I think I'll just buy a new one."

I ran my fingers through her hair, then down her neck, feeling goosebumps raise as I did it. "I haven't exactly had the most active social life."

"You didn't hook up with that horny old lady at the club?"

"No..."

She cut me off with a soft laugh. "I know you didn't. I was keeping an eye on you."

"That's fair, I had an eye on you, too."

"You had your eyes on my ass." She shifted and nestled a bit into my side. "And I lied. That stuff at the club was for your benefit." Rosa looked suddenly serious. "I need to tell you the truth because I don't want you thinking I'm like your ex. I knew you were going to be at the club, that's why I went."

"I'm gonna kill Miguel."

"He didn't know I was going to be there. He asked me for a decent place to go. So I kind of decided to show up."

"Why?"

"Because I needed to stop being a bitch. I know I've been awful since that shit with my ex-husband. I've been so damn angry all the time."

"But why me?"

"Now you can blame Miguel. He told me how your wife dropped you and I figured you might understand how I felt. Besides, I got a damn good look before you picked up that sombrero."

"Pervert."

She giggled softly. "Yep."

"So you decided to wiggle your butt at me and lure me in."

"It worked, didn't it? You may think you're being subtle, but I could see you drooling over this ass every time I went outside."

"Is that why you wear that robe all the time?"

"Sometimes, but I've always been kind of an exhibitionist, anyway."

"Either way, I think you found my weakness." I reached down and gave her butt a squeeze.

A knock on the trailer door interrupted harshly. Rosa pulled on her robe and answered the door while I got my jeans on.

I walked out of the bedroom to find Rosa staring at me with narrowed questioning eyes. "This...girl...says she needs to talk to you."

Kelsea stepped out from behind her. "Hey, José. Got a minute? I need to talk to you about something."

"Rosa gets to hear it, okay?"

That wasn't what Kelsea wanted to hear, but I was sure it was what Rosa needed. Kelsea's eyes shifted oddly and she sighed. "Okay, but this doesn't go to Björn, okay?"

"I wasn't really under the impression you had secrets from Björn."

"There's difference between secrets and stuff that Björn just doesn't need to be bothered with. I mean he knows, but he doesn't need to have it rubbed in his face, okay."

I nodded once slowly.

"When the circus went bankrupt, I was kind of screwed. They'd lost all our money and I couldn't find a job. I started doing the street performer thing and got involved in small con stuff, like three card monte."

"Björn said you did street magic."

"Toughest kind of magic there is, just you and the marks; no stage sets, no assistants..." She grinned. "I was damn good at it. I had a lot of experience with it in the circus."

Rosa had obviously figured out who Kelsea was from my story. "What does that have to do with everything here."

Kelsea blew her breath out. "I was doing the small cons, but you do that, you hear stuff. The big cons. And, maybe, I helped on one or two of those as an extra. Björn doesn't need to know that. He thinks he rescued me before I got into anything deep, and he mostly did. I didn't do badger games or play the hook or anything like that. Maybe I would have eventually though, being broke in the city sucks. I don't want to tarnish what he did, he doesn't deserve that."

I looked over at Rosa and saw a gentle smile cross her face and I thought about her comment about women manipulating men. Rosa laughed softly. "I understand."

Kelsea grinned back at her and shot her an exaggerated conspiratal wink, then looked at me. "I think you're looking at it the wrong way."

"Why?"

"Because you're wondering why they are doing this to you. But this is just another big con, and you're not the mark." She paused. "No offense Joseph, but you can't be the mark. You don't have anything to take." She glanced at Rosa. "I mean no money or stuff to sell for money."

I know I grimaced at that. "Then why set me up, why try to come back and put me in prison?"

"You're not the mark, you're part of the con." Something a little manic lit in her eyes. "You're the Shuffle."

I stared at her silently for a minute. "I don't know what that means, but I'm guessing it's not good."

She shrugged. "It means you're the distraction. They want everybody looking at you, not them."

Rosa looked at her. "How do we stop it?"

Kelsea grinned and raised her eyebrows. "That's easy. Just convince the Mark that they're being conned."

I choked for a second. "Dammit, I'm an idiot."

"Why?" Rosa looked at me puzzled.

"The Seychelles. We were going to go to Fiji for our honeymoon and Beth suddenly changed it to the Seychelles."

"Why does that matter?"

"Banking laws. She sent me out deep sea fishing one day and she stayed at the spa all day. Or said she did. I bet she set up an account. In person, so there'd be no trail to her."