Still, she figured that Smith would tell her if he thought arrests were close. At the least, he would warn her prosecutors were starting to lean on targets, How can you help us? How can we help you? She needed to be ready if Sullivan turned squirrelly.
The deals she’d seen firsthand had been clean. Mostly. A little Section 8 fraud, minor tax evasion, low-level skimming. Misdemeanors, basically. Nothing to justify GULFSTREAM’s time and expense. Sullivan liked teasing her, hinting he was breaking the law without letting her see the details.
She needed to do more.
* * *
He started to quote-unquote flirt with her harder. She let him.
“We gonna run away together, Rachel?”
“Ask your wife.”
“Suzie don’t care long as she goes to Buckhead, shops at Neiman’s. Know how much that woman spends on clothes? Come on, have dinner with me. Up north if you like.”
“You mean New York?”
“I mean Birmingham. New York, please.”
A week later he called her again, to tell her about a deal in Mobile.
“Land straight from the city. Double our money. Only my old friends get this one.” The more corrupt and profitable the deal, the closer Sullivan held it.
“Double? For realsies?” For realsies was definitely Rachel, not Rebecca.
“You want in?”
“You know it, Dray.”
“Then have dinner with me.”
“One condition.”
“I don’t wear rubbers, sweetheart.”
Rubbers? Who said rubbers? Sixty-five-year-old men, that’s who. “I want to hear about the deal. Not the usual. I want to know how it really works.”
“Better if you don’t.”
“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Dray. No surprises. I’m in, I’m in all the way.”
“In all the way. I like the sound of that.”
“Bet you do.”
* * *
Dinner was at Bottega, Birmingham’s best Italian restaurant. She dressed conservatively, a knee-high black skirt and a simple black blouse, knowing Sullivan wouldn’t need any encouragement. She figured he’d be handsy, but she wasn’t worried. Smith had asked her if she wanted to have backup in the restaurant, but she’d laughed him off, You think I can’t handle Draymond after all this time?
Now they sat side by side on a banquette at the back of the mezzanine, out of sight of prying eyes. She lived on the other side of the city, ten miles north. Still, doing anything in Birmingham brought an inevitable risk that someone who knew her as Rebecca might see her. Sullivan’s desire for privacy was simpler and more priapic. He kept touching her, her hand and arm and knee.
The food at Bottega was good. Sullivan ordered course after course, lamb and rabbit and steak, eating like the hungry teenager he’d once been. He washed everything down with glasses of Johnnie Walker Blue. The scotch loosened his tongue, and he obligingly walked her through not just the Mobile deal but all his greatest hits, a laundry list of tax fraud, public corruption, kickbacks, and bribery.
“That sounds even more illegal than everything else,” she said, after he told her how a South Alabama sheriff had lifted seven ounces of cocaine from an evidence locker for him. He’d passed it to a hospital executive deciding where to build a new surgery center.
Sullivan laughed like he’d never heard anything funnier. “More illegal!” Haw-haw-haw, haw-haw-haw! “It’s all illegal, sweetheart, every last bit.”
By this point Sullivan was five scotches in. Heavy pours. She was trying to keep him from a sixth. She worried that he would slur his words so badly the recording would become useless.
She almost felt sorry for him as he put his head in the noose that she and the bureau had so carefully knotted.
Then he tried to kiss her. She pulled away.
“Gimme kiss.” He leaned over, put his gnarled right hand on her skirt, trying to push it up.
“No, Dray.”
“You promised.” Promisssed. The Return of the King had come out a few months before. She couldn’t help thinking Dray sounded like Gollum. He was sitting to her left. She clamped her legs together but he leaned in, pressed his right hand between them until his hand was between her knees.
He twisted over, swiped his left hand at her breasts. She grabbed his wrist with both hands—she didn’t think he would feel the mic but she couldn’t take the chance. Then she felt her skirt riding higher as he shoved his right hand up her thighs.
“Enough.”
“I say the same. ’Nough teasing, Rachel.”
His old-man sweat overwhelmed a peppery aftershave that belonged on a frat boy. He was not just heavy but stronger than she expected, stronger than she was, muscle under all that fat. His bulk blocked