A MAN LIKE SMITH Page 4

  Although his words carried a bit of a sting, she looked up at him and smiled brightly. "Aw, Smith, you shouldn't doubt yourself that way. Your career's advancing just fine. You know you'll be a full-fledged U.S. Attorney with or without convictions in the Falcone case."

  His smile came reluctantly, then disappeared. "You say you want to see him punished. Prove it."

  "How?" She asked it casually, as if she didn't already know what his answer would be. As if she didn't already know what her answer would be. What it had to be.

  He waited until they were inside the restaurant, then until they'd been seated at a courtyard table, before he replied. "Tell me who your source is."

  "I can't do that. Next request."

  "Ask him to talk to me."

  She leaned back in the wrought iron chair and gazed around the courtyard. It was large, enclosed on two sides by the restaurant itself and on the other sides by the neighboring buildings. Ivy grew across the brick facade, a fountain gurgled in the center, and the paving stones that unevenly supported the iron and glass tables were ancient and chipped. The place was old and charming, similar to any number of French Quarter courtyards.

  She remembered when it used to be a parking lot.

  Ask Nick to talk to Smith. She could do that. She could call him— No, she couldn't. He had contacted her through Jamey O'Shea last time because he'd known that the FBI had a line ID—and possibly a wiretap—on his phone. At the very least, they knew the numbers of every outgoing call, along with the number from which every incoming call was made. With a wiretap, they would be recording every conversation.

  So she could go by Jamey's place. He and Nick had been friends forever, had grown up together on the streets and at St. Jude's. When Nick had gone off to college, Jamey had gone off and joined the army. After a time they had both come back home, Jamey to take over a shabby little bar on Serenity Street, Nick to work for Falcone. She didn't know whether Jamey had played it straight the last ten years or whether he'd shared Nick's taste for criminal activity. If so, he certainly hadn't shared Nick's talent; judging from the condition O'Shea's was in, the years hadn't been prosperous ones for him.

  But apparently he'd kept in touch with Nick. He could pass on Smith's message for Jolie.

  For whatever good it would do.

  "I can ask," she said, plucking a rose petal from those that had fallen to the table from the center bouquet. "But it's pointless, just as your asking me is pointless. His answer will be no."

  "You don't know that."

  "Smith, if he were interested in cooperating with your office, he would have gone to you, not me."

  "Maybe he could be persuaded."

  There had been a time when she would have given all she had and everything she might ever have to persuade Nick. She hadn't wanted so much of him at that time—just to be a part of his life. To continue seeing him. To continue believing he loved her the way she loved him. It wouldn't have cost him so very much to give her that.

  But what Smith was asking could cost him his life.

  "Not by me," she said flatly. When he started to protest, she went on. "I'll talk to him. I'll ask him if he'll talk to you. But I won't try to convince him. If his answer is no—and, I promise, it will be—then that's the end of it."

  He still looked as if he wanted to argue, but instead he nodded once. "Fair enough."

  "Now you be fair with me. Is Warren going to be watching me?"

  It was his turn then to scrutinize their surroundings. When he finally looked back at her, there was regret in his eyes. "I can't answer that."

  "You call that fair?"

  "You're following your conscience, Jolie, and that's fine. But I have to follow the law. If I give you information regarding a federal investigation, then I'm as guilty as everyone else in this mess. I can't do it."

  Jolie picked up the menu with a faint sigh. Pointless questions, predictable answers. Smith couldn't break the law, she couldn't betray a source, and Nick… Hell, no one could make Nick do anything.

  Then, after choosing an entrée, she laid the menu down and smiled slowly at Smith. "You know what one of the good things is about living and working here for so long?" When he shook his head, she went on. "I know everybody. I know all the cops, everyone in the sheriff's department, everyone in your office." Her smile grew more smug. "I know everyone in the FBI office. So if Shawna wants to keep me under surveillance in the hopes that I'll lead her to my informant, tell her to borrow someone from another office. And give her one other message."

  Looking mildly amused now, he waited.

  "Tell her he'd better be damned good at what he does. Because I'm the best at what I do."

  * * *

  Saturday was sunny, the sky filled with puffy white clouds that cast fleeting shadows as they crossed over Jackson Square. The moments they blocked the sun were too brief to lower the temperature even one degree, but it felt as if they did, and that was as good as an actual cooling, Smith decided.

  He was standing on Michael's balcony, three stories above the square, looking down on a crowd of tourists and residents alike and listening to the mélange of voices, music and traffic. This was the French Quarter at its best—loud, chaotic, a million things happening at once and people everywhere. They had become more than a group, more than a crowd, but a mass, now moving in rhythm to the music, now yielding to the enervating drain of the lazy summer heat.

  But there was also much to be said about the Quarter at midnight. Maybe that was its best time, when most businesses had closed for the day, when Bourbon Street still seethed with life but most other streets slept for the night. There was a quiet then that wrapped itself around you, disturbed only by distant echoes from other streets, from other lives.

  And a damp, foggy dawn in the square held its own appeal, when the humidity was so heavy that you could see it swirling about your legs when you walked, when St. Louis Cathedral rose, solid and enduring, out of the insubstantial mist. That was the Quarter at its most peaceful, its most serene.

  He had lived in New Orleans for twelve years now, in Louisiana for sixteen. He had moved to Baton Rouge when he was eighteen, fresh out of school and ready for college. Just as it was family tradition that he would become a lawyer and go into public service, it was also family tradition that he could earn his undergraduate degree wherever he chose, and he had chosen Louisiana State. It was a university he'd known little about in a city he'd never visited and a state where he knew no one. It had been his first chance in eighteen years to be entirely on his own.

  It was a decision he'd been grateful for every one of the nineteen years since.

  No one at LSU had known or cared about his family background. For the first time in his life, he had been accepted as just one of the guys; he had been treated no differently from anyone else. There had been no special favors and no proving himself, and he had made the best friends a person could ever ask for. Michael, Remy and Evan had become his family. Evan's death some fifteen months ago—a cop, he had been killed by a kidnapper while helping Michael rescue the man's eight-year-old victim—had been the most painful loss he had ever suffered.

  He had come South nineteen years ago for four years of college and to temporarily escape the burden of being a Kendricks. When he had returned seven years later after finishing law school, even though it had been to a different city, to one he barely knew, it had been like coming home. This was where he belonged.

  It was where he intended to stay.

  Behind him the French door opened and feminine voices drifted out. Susannah Sinclair and Valery Bennett. Susannah was a midwesterner, a transplant from Nebraska, but in her short time here—a half year, maybe a little longer—her accent had already started fading, giving way to the softer, rounder Southern sounds. Valery was a native Louisianan, born in New Orleans, growing up first here and then in the tiny town of Belclaire, up the river halfway to Baton Rouge. To his New England ear, she sounded typically Southern with her languorous drawl and word
s that flowed slowly but effortlessly, musically, one into another.

  When the door closed again, their voices vanished, but they were replaced by Michael's. "Anything interesting going on out here?"

  "There's always something interesting going on out here." He rested his palms on the iron-lace railing, feeling the day's heat, sharp and uncomfortable, seeping into his skin. Gazing out over the square, he made the request he had come here for. "Care to discuss work?"

  Michael's chuckle was dry. "I'm a cop."

  And cops were always ready to share cop talk. That was something Smith had learned early on. "Tell me what you know about Jolie Wade."

  Moving to stand beside him, Michael offered one of the cans of soda he carried, then popped the top on his own. "She's fair. Trustworthy. If she makes a promise, she'll keep it."

  Although those were interesting points, they weren't what he wanted to know. He wanted to know things like what men she had been involved with, even temporarily. He wanted to know whether she ever got involved with anyone she had to deal with through her job. He wanted to know what it would take to compete with that damned job of hers.

  But those were personal questions, and he had specified business.

  "You've known her a long time, haven't you?"

  "Thirteen years. The day she started at the paper, she came down to the station and introduced herself to a bunch of us—said we'd be seeing a lot of her in the future and that she hoped we would work well together. That was long before she started covering crime for the paper."

  "She didn't waste any time, did she?"

  "She still doesn't." Michael paused to drink deeply, then leaned forward to brace his forearms on the railing, cradling the can in both hands. "I don't know much about her upbringing, but I get the feeling it wasn't easy."

  "In what way?" Smith's interest sharpened. Michael was a damned good cop and the best judge of character that he knew. His instincts were always right, his judgments dead center on target.

  "I don't know," he replied with a sigh. "But ambition like that has to come from somewhere."

  "I was ambitious like that, and my upbringing was perfectly normal."

  Michael grinned. "Normal for rich folks, you mean. Normal for living in a fifty-room cottage on a twenty-acre estate and flying off to Europe in the family jet for spur-of-the-moment weekends. Normal for having an entire staff of servants to do everything from dress you in the morning to tuck you into bed at night." Then he grew serious again. "You were ambitious because you had something to prove. You wanted to show everyone that you could succeed not because of, but in spite of, the money your family had. Maybe Jolie wants to prove that she can succeed in spite of the money her family didn't have."

  "Do you know anything about her family?"

  Michael shook his head. "Just that they lived down here when she was a kid."

  "I know she's got twelve younger brothers and sisters."

  "Jeez. Her folks never hear of birth control or did they just not believe in it?" He didn't expect a response and didn't wait for one. "Jolie's hungry. She always has been. When we met, she was just out of college, twenty-two years old and didn't have a dime to her name, but she knew exactly what she wanted and how hard she was going to have to work to get it. Thirteen years later that determination is still there. She still knows what she wants, and she's still working hard for it. She hasn't got it yet, but she's a hell of a lot closer."

  "She's not going to change her mind and cooperate with us, is she?"

  The look Michael gave him was wry and chiding, a silent chastisement for asking a dumb question. "They don't give Pulitzers to reporters who sell out their sources." With one hand he gestured toward the crowd below. "Speak of the devil…"

  Smith didn't need anything more specific than that broad wave, no directions, no pointing out. He looked down into the crowd and immediately picked out a head of silky blond hair, fastened in back with a ruffly red band. Her back to him, she was facing the street performers on the opposite side of Decatur Street, but he knew well that with her height disadvantage, she wasn't seeing much other than the backs of people taller than her.

  Movement at her side caught his attention—Cassie—just as Jolie abruptly turned and tilted her head back to look up at them. Big dark glasses hid her eyes and half her face … but not her slow, lazy, incredibly smug smile.

  Leaning on the rail, Michael greeted her with a good-natured gibe pitched loud enough to carry over the noise of the crowd. "You'd be easy to lose in a crowd, Wade. Surround you with normal-size people, and you can't see a thing."

  "I've never been lost yet, Bennett," she called back sweetly. "What are you guys doing up there?"

  "Enjoying today's festival."

  "You can't enjoy it from up there. You have to be down here in the middle of it. Come on."

  "Not for me, thanks."

  Her gaze slowly shifted sideways to Smith. He swore he could feel it when it made contact, more intense than the sun and more potent than the heat. "What about you?"

  He was a reasonable man—she had commented on it herself last night—but sometime in the past few seconds, reason had deserted him. He knew he'd spent enough time with her last night. He knew he certainly didn't need to be spending part of his afternoon with her. He knew he sure as hell didn't need to be sharing a French Quarter festival on a powerfully hot, humid and lazy day with her.

  Still, when he opened his mouth to decline, the wrong words came out. The wrong ones for what he wanted.

  But the right ones for what he needed.

  "I'll be down in a moment."

  Her smile changed—softened, sharpened—and her voice, even from this distance, seemed throatier. "I'll wait here." Smith watched her turn away, watched her touch Cassie's arm and direct her attention elsewhere, and still he remained exactly where he was.

  At least, until he realized that he was receiving the same sort of steady scrutiny from someone a lot closer at hand. He looked at Michael but didn't quite meet his gaze. "What?" he finally asked, aware that there was a question in his friend's expression, also aware that his tone was far more snappish than Michael deserved.

  "You said work," Michael replied mildly. "Business. You want to know about Jolie? She's a nice woman. She's sweet. She's funny, smart and stubborn as hell. You push her and she's going to dig her heels in. She has about a million friends, from the bag ladies on the street to the mayor's office, and there's nothing she wouldn't do for any of them as long as it doesn't compromise her principles. As far as personal relationships, I've never known her to go out with the same guy more than once, and even that doesn't happen often. I always thought maybe there'd been some guy in her past, someone who'd hurt her, but I don't know."

  Smith walked as far as the door before looking back. "Thanks, Michael."

  * * *

  "He's kind of cute."

  Under other circumstances, Jolie would have winced at anyone, even Cassie, referring to a thirty-seven-year-old man as "kind of cute," but in Smith's case, it applied. While she considered him flat-out handsome, there was something kind of cute about him … in a straitlaced, buttoned-down, preppy sort of way.

  "I think he likes you."

  After losing sight of him in the crowd, she turned to her sister. "Of course he likes me," she bluffed. "Everyone likes me."

  "Except a number of the people you work with. And half the cops in town. And two-thirds of the politicians. And Father Francis."

  The impudent response Jolie had been prepared to make died unspoken at the mention of the priest. She'd had what she supposed was a typical association with him all the years she was growing up, but that had ended when she was eighteen. Although St. Jude's had long ago shut down, he was still in New Orleans. She still occasionally ran into him at some function or in connection with some story, but she had nothing to say to him. She had disappointed him, but he had disillusioned her. She had been a frightened teenage girl, but he had been an adult, a priest, a man of God. Whose was the
greater sin?

  "Oh, yeah, like I care what any of them thinks of me," she responded at last, but her tone wasn't as sarcastic as she had intended.

  "Anyway, Mr. Kendricks is different." Cassie removed her hat, a broad-brimmed straw tied up with a gauzy black streamer that matched her skirt, and fanned herself with it. "It's a different kind of liking."

  "You know, Cassie, he's only a couple of years older than me. I don't think he would object if you called him Smith."

  "You're changing the subject."

  Jolie didn't admit or deny it. Truth was, Cassie was right. Smith's feelings for her—if he even had feelings for her—were a little too important to discuss with a seventeen-year-old, no matter how mature Cassie was. Besides, the idea that she wanted a man—any man—to be interested in her was still new enough to Jolie, still scary enough, that she didn't feel comfortable even thinking about it.

  Even though it was almost all she'd thought about since he'd taken her home last night.

  "Michael was right." Smith sidestepped a stroller built for two before finally joining them. "You are easy to lose in a crowd. Fortunately, I could follow your sister's hat. Hello, Cassie."

  Cassie gave Jolie a sweet smile, then very politely smiled at him. "Hello, Mr. Kendricks. Jolie, I'm going down to listen to the band. Why don't you head that way and meet me there later?" Before Jolie could respond, she drifted away, making her way effortlessly through the crowd.

  "You don't often see a teenager with her presence," Smith remarked.

  "No, you don't," Jolie agreed, still gazing after her. Abruptly, she swung around to face him. "I didn't mean to interrupt whatever you and Michael were doing."

  "You didn't. I just stopped in since I couldn't make it to dinner last night. Susannah's there—she's teaching Valery about quilts for the shop—so we went outside to talk."

  Valery and Michael were in the process, Jolie knew, of buying the antique clothing shop where Valery had worked since moving back to New Orleans. Along with gorgeous old clothing, the shop carried evening bags, jewelry, shoes and shawls and a growing collection of decades-old hand-pieced quilts. Jolie loved to go in and browse, although she had neither the height nor the style to carry off many of the old dresses. Still, she had found a lovely shawl that was now spread across her bed as a coverlet, and the ecru-shaded lace handkerchiefs that were mounted on velvet, framed and hanging on her living room walls had also come from there.