The Night Café. Taylor Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ now a tissue-thin gray. Jerry Garcia’s hairy mug was barely visible on the faded cotton.

      “Hey, girlfriend,” he said. “Not much. Just tightening the bolts on Mellie’s seat. We went for a ride today and it was feeling wobbly.”

      Mellie was his two-year-old daughter and she loved going for rides, whether on the back of Travis’s bike or in the jogging stroller that Travis’s partner Ruben pushed ahead of himself when he went for a run. The guys said the wind in her hair made her life. Child was obviously a born speed demon, although the cerebral palsy that threatened to lock up her little body left her unable to travel under her own steam.

      There were only three units in the converted building. Travis and Ruben had the biggest space, with two large bedrooms and a massive open kitchen and entertaining space. On the other side of them lived a yuppie couple who seemed to work all the time. The couple had been in the building for over a year and neither Hannah nor the guys had seen either the husband or wife more than a couple of times. Their cars, matching black Mercedes sedans, were rarely in their driveway. Ruben said they were CIA assassins who spent all their time abroad carrying out nefarious plots. Ruben had an overactive imagination.

      “Didn’t you have Gabe today?” Travis asked.

      Hannah nodded. “We went down to my sister’s. My nephew was home for the weekend, so the boys spent the afternoon in the pool.”

      She stood in the open doorway watching Travis tighten the bolts that held the baby seat in position. He was a little guy, a couple of inches shorter than Hannah’s five-seven, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in wiry fitness. The Grateful Dead T-shirt bulged around the sleeves as he worked the wrench.

      “Great day for a pool,” Travis said. “Don’t ya just love how spring arrives with a bang in this place?”

      Travis had grown up in North Dakota, so like Chicago-bred Hannah, he had a real appreciation for Southern California’s nonexistent winters and early springs, even if they did they miss fall colors and the sparkle of snow at Christmas.

      “For sure.” Hannah pushed off the Jeep and sorted the keys on her chain, looking for her front door key. As she did, a thought occurred to her. “Hey, Trav, you ever hear of Moises Gladding?”

      “The arms dealer?”

      “Yeah. Wasn’t he under indictment for something a while back?”

      Travis paused, straightened and leaned against the workbench. Ruben owned a reconditioned 1967 Mustang convertible that was parked to one side of the space. Neither bicycles, tools, nor anything else were allowed to approach with two feet of the Mustang for fear of scratching its lustrous red acrylic finish. Travis, on the other hand, owned an ancient and much-dinged Jeep 4x4 which he generally parked in the driveway or on the street. He had no qualms at all about clutter on his side of the garage.

      Case in point: as he pondered Hannah’s question about Moises Gladding, the bike suddenly took a tumble and crashed down against a small mahogany table that stood next to the workbench awaiting refinishing. Hannah winced as the carrier basket on the front of the bike scraped its way down the carved leg of the thrift-shop table, but Travis seemed more concerned about the cry that sounded from his daughter’s open bedroom window.

      “Shoot! We just got her to sleep,” he murmured. The misfiring synapses in her brain always seemed to twitch her awake just as she was finally dozing off.

      He paused to listen. Then, they heard Ruben in Mellie’s room, crooning softly. After a moment, the toddler’s crying snuffled out.

      Travis picked up the bike, satisfied himself that the baby’s seat had taken no damage in the fall, then quietly lifted it onto its hanging pins on the wall. Grabbing an old rag off the workbench, he wiped his hands.

      “I don’t know that Gladding’s under indictment,” he said quietly, “but there was that Venezuela business. I also seem to recall that there were questions about him supplying arms to anti-Castro activists in Miami a while back.”

      Hannah rolled her eyes. “Like that old fart isn’t going to keel over and croak any day now. Jeez Louise, when are those people going to figure out that we’re better off trading with Cuba and letting Big Macs and MTV corrupt the revolution?”

      “No kidding. So why are you interested in Moises Gladding all of a sudden?” Travis gave her a stern look. “Hannah Nicks, tell me you’re not going to work for him, because, girl, that really would be beyond the pale. He is one sleazy customer, from what I hear.”

      “No, not work for him. Not exactly, anyway.”

      “‘Not exactly’? What does that mean?”

      “Somebody wants me to make a delivery.”

      “Weapons?”

      “No way. A painting.”

      Travis snorted. “Yeah, right.”

      “Really. My sister’s old college roommate owns a gallery over in Malibu. She got a commission to buy a painting for Gladding and she asked me tonight if she could hire me to deliver it to his home in Mexico.”

      Travis looked skeptical. “I don’t know, kiddo. You sure you want to get mixed up with something like that?”

      “It’s just a painting. Trust me, I will examine it very carefully before I agree to carry it, and I’ll supervise the packing myself. Nobody’s slipping contraband into anything that I’m schlepping. Still, it’s a quick in-and-out job and the money’s good.”

      “You want me to do some checking up on Gladding, see what he’s been up to lately?” Travis was a data wonk in the Los Angeles office of the federal Homeland Security department. His job was to manage the computer systems intended to help the feds track and identify suspected terrorists.

      There had been a time, Hannah mused, when a gay man like Travis, no matter how brilliant, hardworking or honest, would have been barred from any kind of government work requiring a security clearance. In recent years, however, the feds had finally figured out that a person couldn’t be blackmailed into betraying secrets if he were out of the closet before the whole world, including his own blessed grandmother.

      “If you get a minute,” Hannah said. “Just see if anything jumps out at you. I only told Nora’s friend that I’d think about taking the job. I can still back out, but if it’s just a matter of carrying canvas down to Puerto Vallarta and coming right back, I’m not about to sneer at easy cash.”

      Travis nodded, but he looked unconvinced. “I’ll see what I can find out first thing tomorrow. Don’t leave town till you hear from me, promise?”

      “Yeah, yeah.” Hannah turned and headed up the walk to her condo. Just what she needed—one more bossy older sibling.

      Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

      Moises Gladding stood on the broad, red-tiled terrace of his seaside villa. The last indigo light of day was slipping down to the horizon. Out over the ocean, a gilded moon was hanging over the sea like some splendid god casting shimmering coins across the water. The night was hot and humid, but an onshore breeze had arisen, clacking the stiff fronds of the rows of palms that traced lazy lines in the sand. Gladding’s prize blue peacock, roused from slumber, cried out to the moon, its plaintive, two-tone wail a counterpoint to the low, steady drone of Pacific СКАЧАТЬ