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“A likely story,” Jon Blackhawk scoffed as he manned the console next to Joceline’s.
“I thought you were having dinner with them at home,” she said to Jon, indicating his brother and sister-in-law.
“We did, but this is our favorite hangout,” Jon said. “We like the games.”
“If we had a bigger apartment, I’d import some like this.” Mac chuckled. “It will be great for the kids.”
“Your son seems to like it,” Jon commented to Joceline as Markie took down another fighter.
“Look! I hit it!” He laughed.
“Good shot, there,” Jon agreed, smiling at the child, who smiled back.
“Get in much practice in real life, do you?” Mac asked the boy with a wink.
“I don’t get out much,” Markie said in a very adult tone, and with rolled eyes at his mother.
Joceline laughed. “He’s not allowed to carry antiaircraft weapons in public,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.
“Aw, Mom.” Markie sighed. “I never get to have any fun!”
“Tell you what, first enemy fighter jet that dives on you, I’ll get you the best missile launcher I can find,” Joceline told him.
“Wow,” Markie said with pure worship in his eyes. “Thanks, Mom!”
She shrugged. “Nothing’s too good for my boy,” she said, and winked at him. She fought down her discomfort at having Markie around her boss. She didn’t want any problems to crop up, and Jon Blackhawk’s mother would be livid if she knew he was even playing video games with his administrative assistant outside work. But she wouldn’t know. Hopefully.
CHAPTER FOUR
JOCELINE AND MARKIE walked toward the exit an hour later. They’d spent the balance on their game cards, although Mac and Jon had subsidized them, in a nice way.
“Thanks,” she told Jon at the door. “Markie had so much fun. So did I,” she added, but with averted eyes.
“It’s all right to admit that you like something I do,” he murmured dryly. “You so rarely approve of my actions.”
“We wouldn’t want you to get a superiority complex, would we, sir?” she asked.
“Why do you call him ‘sir’?” Markie asked.
“He’s my boss,” she replied.
“Oh. Like those guys in the military call their bosses ‘sir.’”
“Something like that,” Joceline agreed.
“Does he put you in ‘time-out’ if you do something bad?” Markie persisted.
“I would never do such a thing,” Jon assured him. “And your mother has never done anything bad.” He hesitated. “Nothing really bad,” he amended, giving her a speaking look.
“Menial tasks are not part of my job description, sir,” she reminded him. She smiled.
“Making decent coffee isn’t menial.” He sighed.
“That depends on your definition,” she retorted.
“You shoot real good,” Markie told the tall man. He was looking pointedly at the bulge under Jon’s jacket. “You got a gun.”
“That’s right,” Jon told him. “I work for the FBI.”
“I know. Mom talks about you all the time.”
“We should go,” Joceline said, a little flushed. “Thanks again,” she added. “I’ll see you Monday, sir.”
“Mommy …” Markie protested as she rushed him out the door.
Mac had been listening. He glanced at his brother. “Talks about you all the time, huh?”
“I’m sure he meant in a work-related way,” Jon said stiffly. “Joceline has worked for the agency for several years.”
“So have you.”
Jon glared at his older brother. “She works for me. Period.”
Mac pursed his lips, but he didn’t reply. He just chuckled and went back to the table where Winnie was waiting for him.
JON WAS OUT of humor when he walked into the office Monday morning. Joceline was still putting away her jacket and purse, having only just beaten him to work.
“You’re late,” he muttered.
She pointed to the clock over her desk. She was absolutely on time. It was eight on the dot.
He shrugged and went into his office to see what he had on his day planner. The phone rang while he was searching it.
His intercom buzzed. “Yes?” he replied.
There was a pause. “It’s for you, sir. A Mr. Harold Monroe.” She said the name pointedly.
He frowned and picked up the phone. “Blackhawk,” he said.
“Hiya,” he replied. “Remember me? I’m out now waiting for a new trial. I’ll beat that trafficking charge. I got a great lawyer.”
“Congratulations,” Jon said. “I’ll send over balloons.”
There was a pause. “Balloons?”
“For the celebration.”
“Cele … oh. Oh! Ha ha ha.”
“Was there something else?”
“No, nothing else. I just wanted you to know I was out.”
“Thank you.”
Another pause. “You made a mistake.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah. You want to be careful. My family gets even with people who hurt it. Always. I’ll be seeing you, Agent Blackhawk.”
He hung up.
Jon stared at the receiver before he replaced it. “It takes all kinds,” he muttered.
He was on his way out the door when Joceline called to him.
“Rick Marquez wants you to stop by his office while you’re out,” she told him. “He says it’s important.”
“What is it about?” Jon asked, turning.
She put a finger to her forehead and closed her eyes. “I see mountains. Trees. Birds flying.” She opened her eyes. “However, not being psychic, I have no idea.”
“He didn’t say?”
“Apparently not.” She smiled vacantly. She cocked her head. “Would you like to know what the new skirt length is out of the Milan fashion shows …? Sir, it’s not polite to turn your back on people who are talking to you!” she called after him.
“One day I’ll strangle her,” Jon muttered to Rick Marquez while they were sitting at the detective’s desk, drinking coffee. He’d just related Joceline’s latest verbal coup.
Marquez chuckled. “You’d never replace her,” he commented. “I’ve seen paralegals come and go. Joceline is in a class all her own.”
“I know.” The other man sighed. “I wouldn’t have half my cases solved without her. She can dig out information that I can’t get. I have no idea how she pulls it off, either.”
“She’s psychic,” Marquez said with big eyes.
“She is not. She’s just very good with a telephone, and she can talk people into telling her things that they don’t want to.”
“She’s a paralegal. Why isn’t she working for a judge or at least a firm of attorneys?” Marquez asked with a curious frown.
“She started out as legal secretary to a firm of attorneys. But the senior partner retired, several more attorneys joined the firm and she was doing the work of three paralegals with the pay of one,” Jon said. “We got her as a result. It was a good thing that Garon Grier didn’t have her put on the rack when he started work at the office,” he added thoughtfully.
Marquez burst out laughing. “What?”
“He was used to female workers making coffee for him. Joceline doesn’t do menial tasks. Or what she considers menial tasks.”
“Our administrative assistants make coffee,” Rick said smugly. “Good coffee,” he emphasized with a pointed look at Jon.
Jon sighed. “None of us can make drinkable coffee. On a bright note, our potted palm seems to thrive on caffeine.”
“Excuse me?”
“Everybody dumps their coffee into it when we aren’t looking.” He chuckled.
Marquez sighed. “Oh, the adventure of working at a federal office.”
“At least we have decent expense accounts,” he replied. “We don’t have to have a receipt for a cup of ice.”
Marquez made a face. “It was a very hot day and our air conditioner wasn’t working.”
“You’re from Mexico originally, and you live in southern Texas. You should be used to the heat,” Jon commented.
“Yeah. Go figure.” Marquez wasn’t comfortable talking about his childhood. In fact, nobody except his adoptive mother, Barbara, in Jacobsville, even knew what his background was. And neither he nor Barbara knew the whole truth, but they were trying to find it. However, he had no plans to share that news with his visitor, even though he liked and respected the FBI agent.
“I didn’t mean to offend,” Jon said, sensitive to the expression that flashed just briefly across the other man’s face. “I know about racial issues. You might have noticed that my ancestry includes feathered headdresses and mounted combat.”
Marquez relaxed, and smiled. “So does mine, actually. One of my forebears was Comanche.”
“Really? So was one of mine,” he replied.
“No kidding? Small world.”
“My mother has Cherokee, my father was full-blooded Lakota,” Jon said.
Marquez’s eyebrows arched. “Cherokees come from back East originally.”
“Yes, they were relocated on the ‘Trail of Tears.’ Cherokees were rounded up in 1838 and removed to Oklahoma in late 1838 and early 1839, in the winter cold and snow without proper clothing, because of gold discoveries.” He shook his head. “One of my ancestors said that we could never coexist with a materialist culture, because we shared everything and the conquerors wanted to own everything,” he added.
“Interesting thought.” He put down his coffee cup and became somber. “Harold Monroe’s been hinting about retribution to one of my informants.”
“I heard they cut him loose.”
“Yes, they did. Like the rest of his family, he has something of a reputation for revenge.” He looked pointedly at Jon. “He’s been accused of racketeering, gambling, prostitution, you name it, but he’s never spent more than a day in jail on any charge. One of the prosecutors in a murder case against his uncle-by-marriage died under mysterious circumstances, along with the only witness, and he was let go. Nothing was ever proven. You had Monroe in jail for several months while his lawyer worked to get the charges dropped.”
“He should blame himself for putting little girls in the hands of pimps.”
“That’s not how he sees things. He said the kid was living in starvation-level poverty. He was just helping her find a better life. Simple.”
“Yes. I saw the result of that better life,” Jon said without elaborating, but the expression in his eyes was eloquent. “Well, they can drop charges, but I still have witnesses who’ll testify. One was the man who sold his daughter to Monroe.”
“That’s the problem.” Marquez grimaced. “The witness says he won’t testify and he’s withdrawn his statement.”
“No problem,” Jon said. “I know where we can find three more witnesses in the same family, two of whom are perfectly willing to testify despite any threats from Monroe.”
“Give me their names and we’ll help you locate them so you can get depositions, since it’s a federal charge he was arrested on,” Marquez replied. “Why didn’t the witnesses come forward before?”
“Because they fell through the cracks,” he said. “We had one witness, the father, who gave us a deposition, and the mother, as well as a sister. The federal prosecutor didn’t think he needed more than a handful. Now we do.” He shook his head. “I hope they don’t go the way of the witness who was supposed to testify against Jay Copper at his trial about the death of that teenager in Senator Sanders’s case. He accidentally fell off a ten-story building.”
Marquez wrote down the names of the witnesses. “We do our best,” he said defensively.
