On Thin Ice Read online

  She remained silent.

  “Prison,” he taunted, thinking of her previous reaction to the word. “The Pen, the Big House, the Slam—”

  “Anger,” she screamed and thumped him one on the chest. “Okay? You wanna know what my first reaction is when I think about what you did? It’s pure, undiluted anger” They were standing close, nose to nose as they battled in the old familiar manner, a habit that had its origins way back in the days of their very first arguments. “Damn you, Lon, I’m so mad at you I could spit!” Her chest heaved with the force of her emotions as she stared up at him. “We had a place. For the first time in our lives, we had a place where we were accepted just for ourselves; where we didn’t have to explain to anyone what makes us tick . . . or apologize for our very existence. And you screwed it up!”

  “I screwed it up for me!”

  “Oh, and you think it didn’t reflect on me? You think people believed I didn’t know all along exactly what you were up to? God, I can’t tell you how sick I got of being the goddam outsider again.” She placed her palm on his chest and gave him a furious shove. He was bigger and stronger than she; it merely rocked him back a step, and her control slipped another notch. “It was Kells Crossing all over again, you self-absorbed sonofabitch. The only difference was that this time nobody tried to grab my ass or feel me up!” Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over, and she struck out at him blindly. “Damn you, Lon Morrison. Damn you, damn you, DAMN YOU! ”

  He stilled her pounding fists by the simple expedient of grabbing her wrists and manacling them in one hand. With his free arm, he snagged her around her shoulders and hauled her up against him. “Holy shit,” he muttered, pressing her face to his chest. She shook with great, wrenching sobs. Holding her tightly, wordlessly, until the worst of the storm had abated, he finally pulled back a little and inquired, “So why the hell didn’t you ever tell me any of this back then, Sasha . . . back when I was going through the arraignment and trial?”

  “I don’t know.” She wiped her nose against his shirt. “’Cause you had enough on your plate without heaping my problems on it, too, I guess.”

  “Yeah, that’s the Sasha we all know and love, all right,” he agreed with a humorless bark of laughter. “Wouldn’t want to bother anyone with anything as inconsequential as fuckin’ up her life.”

  She dashed a hand under her eyes and glared up at him. “Would it have changed anything, Lon? Would it have kept you out of jail, or turned me into a damn Homecoming Queen?”

  He looked down at her red-rimmed eyes and runny nose and dragged her over to the night stand by the bed. Pulling out a Kleenex, he extended it to her. “Here,” he commanded, “blow your damn nose. Jeez, you got snot all over my new shirt.” Watching to make sure she complied, he then pressed on her shoulders until her knees buckled and she collapsed onto the side of the bed. He squatted down in front of her and reached for her hands.

  “No,” he answered seriously, staring up at her. “It wouldn’t have kept me out of prison. And it was probably too late by then to win you any popularity contests. What it might have done, though, Saush,” he told her soberly, “was save your stomach more than five years’ worth of wear and tear. Or are you gonna try and tell me you haven’t been letting it eat at you all this time?”

  She knuckled her eyes and scowled at him. “Don’t flatter yourself, bud.”

  Lon laughed. “You’re right,” he said. “The Sasha Miller I know wouldn’t have sat around brooding about it. Hell, you rebuilt your life, snagged the Silver at the Olympics, made friends and influenced people, and generally got on with it, just the way you’ve always done. It was probably only in the odd moments that it ate a hole in the lining of your gut.”

  One corner of her mouth tipped up. “Yeah, that just about covers it.”

  He rose to his feet and then sat down on the mattress next to her. Slinging a brotherly arm over her shoulders, he gave her a little squeeze. “I can’t change what’s gone before,” he admitted. Turning his head to look at her, he added, “What I can do, though; what I will do, Saush, is keep my nose clean from this day forward. I won’t let you down again . . . I swear.”

  His intentions were the best and he was totally sincere as he made the vow. He just didn’t realize how hard it was going to be to keep that particular promise.

  The phone was picked up on the third ring. “Hullo?” The greeting was offered in Ivan Petralahti’s usual abrupt, telephone-calls-are-a-nuisance tone.

  “Ivan?”

  “Sashala!” His voice warmed by several degrees. “It hass been too long since we last spoke, my dahlink. How iss everysing with you?”

  “Pretty good,” Sasha replied. “And how about you? I’ve missed you.”

  They spoke in generalities for a while, catching up on the latest developments in both their lives, exchanging gossip from the figure skating world. Finally, knuckles whitening as she tightened her grip on the receiver, Sasha hesitated and then said, “I, uh, wanted to let you know that Lon is here. He’s out of jail.” There was a frigid silence on the other end of the line and she rushed to fill it in. “He was paroled on the fourteenth and I got him a job with the Follies. In the line, that is—he’ll be skating in the line.” She knew she was babbling, but her nerves were on edge, fearing his reaction.

  Not without good reason. “Lonnie iss dead to me,” he said, and there was no doubting the finality in his tone. “I haff told you this before.”

  “Ivan, please . . .”

  “No, Sasha. I saw him through the trial but I told him then, as you well know, that that wass the end.” He was quiet for a few seconds and then burst out, “He had a bright future . . . and he threw it away. He sacrificed everysing—in- cluding, almost, your future—to make money from z’filthy drugs. No! He iss no more to me. We will speak of somesing else.”

  And that was that. Sasha felt a sick clenching in the pit of her stomach. She needed so badly to be able to talk of Lonnie to Ivan; he was the only other person in the world who understood how it had been for the two of them in the old days, the only one who could possibly understand her conflicted feelings where her old friend was concerned. And what was that old saw about a problem shared being a problem halved?

  But Ivan, whom Sasha secretly believed had to be similarly conflicted by the same opposing emotions that tore her apart, absolutely refused to discuss it. It was nothing new; she shouldn’t be so disappointed. He had cut off that particular conversational avenue the day Lon was indicted, and clearly he was no more willing to reopen it now than he had ever been.

  In a way, she even understood his hard-line attitude. Ivan was Old World, possessed of a rigid code of honor, and he held firm views and strong beliefs. But understanding didn’t make it easier to accept. It would’ve made a world of difference to her if he’d been willing to at least listen while she worked through her own confused feelings. His frigid refusal to discuss it at all punished her right along with Lonnie.

  She could feel him waiting for her to change the subject, and she knew that if she didn’t the conversation would have to be terminated. Out of nowhere a bone-deep loneliness struck and she blurted, “I miss Mama.”

  She hadn’t known she was going to say that, but suddenly her sense of loss was overwhelming. It hit her the way it used to in the early days right after her mother’s death, and she had a sinking feeling that the emotions were embarrassingly evident, coloring her voice.

  Ivan’s voice gentled. “I know you do, Sashala. She wass a good woman.”

  “Ivan, do you think . . .” she faltered but then came out with a quetion that had been on her mind quite a lot lately “. . . do you think she knew what was going on with the millworkers? Do you think they took their dislike of me out on her?” Do you think I should have asked her about it myself instead of being such a coward and waiting until it was too late, the chance forever eliminated?

  “No,” he immediately replied. “Remember when you won the Silver and the networks broadcast t
hose signs in your hometown that said, ‘We Love You, Sasha Miller’?”

  Her voice was bitter. “Do I ever.” She could still recall her shock when a sports announcer had thrust a mike in her face and asked how it felt to have the support and love of an entire town behind her.

  It had felt like the worst sort of hypocrisy.

  She could remember going back to her room in the Olympic Village and watching with cynical disbelief the coverage of Kells Crossing millworkers marching through the streets with banners that stretched from sidewalk to sidewalk. Banners that proclaimed their love for her.

  “Well, I sink that was for your mama. I sink that when she bragged about you at the mill, they separated their jealousy of you from their respect for her. You were never accepted as one of their own, but your mama wass, and I always sought those banners were their way of showing her their support during the games.”

  It was what Sasha had always assumed, also, what she’d wanted to believe, so she accepted Ivan’s explanation. It was too late to make a difference now, anyway, and she preferred to believe that her mother had remained ignorant of the millworkers’ true feelings for her.

  There didn’t seem to be much to say after that. She appreciated his reassurance over the matter that had been nagging at her for some time, but what Sasha truly needed from Ivan he was unable to give. Shortly thereafter they said their goodbyes and hung up.

  Sasha grabbed her skate bag and left her room. No sense brooding; life was full of disappointments. You got used to it.

  Besides, she’d promised Lonnie she’d go out to the Dome with him.

  Mick pulled the headset off his ears and punched the rewind button on the tape. Swell. Another conversation that raised more questions than it supplied answers.

  He packed away his equipment and backed out of the closet where he’d been sitting on the floor while he listened to the recorded phone tap. Well, one thing he did know now was how J. R. Garland fit into the picture.

  Sasha had been whoring for Morrison’s job. A simmering anger burned deep in Mick’s stomach. She’d had him all but convinced that she was the closest thing to a virgin and all along she’d been whoring for that heroin-pushing son of a bitch.

  I’ve done something tonight I’m not exactly proud of The memory of her expression that night in the bar, of her tone as she’d said those words, floated across his mind.

  Okay, maybe not whoring exactly. But it was damn sure the reason she’d let that old goat put his meaty paws all over her.

  The tiny corner of his mind that noted absurdities had no sooner whispered a mocking caution against mixing metaphors than it was snarled into silence by a rage ten times more dominant. Anger rode like a green demon on his back, but he forced it into submission by pure strength of will. He had a job to do here and this wasn’t helping.

  What was all that stuff about the millworkers being jealous of Sasha and her not being accepted as one of their own? And how the hell could a mother not know that? Maybe he’d better have her background checked more thoroughly. Often, events that happened yesterday affected events of today—it might give him a handle on what made her tick.

  I miss Mama. Mick glanced at the telephone sitting on the night stand next to his bed. That was the one sentence in the whole conversation he would just as soon not dwell upon right now. Just remembering the grief in her voice kicked at something deep in his gut. There’d been such desolation there, intimations of things too late to rectify.

  I miss Mama. He might not want to hear it, but the words, the tone, kept replaying in his brain. Truth was, lives could change in the blink of an eye. You never knew when you might lose someone.

  Mick crossed over to the night stand, picked up the receiver, and punched out a series of numbers. Flopping onto his back on the mattress, he snagged the body of the phone, plunked it down on his stomach, and tapped out a tune on the plastic between the disconnect buttons while he listened to it ring on the other end of the line. Then suddenly it was picked up, and his face split into a huge smile.

  “Hi, Mom? It’s me, Micky.”

  SEVEN

  A thin envelope was delivered to Mick by special messenger seconds after he hung up the phone. Looking up and down the hallway, he searched for prying eyes, watched the messenger until he disappeared from view, and then closed the door. Hefting the envelope’s weight in one hand, he checked his watch for the time on the other. He really didn’t have time to go over whatever the agency had sent. Lon Morrison was hitting the ice in twenty-five minutes, and Mick planned to be there. Then again, if its size was anything to go by, this didn’t appear to be a missive that would be particularly time intensive . . .

  He ripped open the tape-reinforced envelope.

  A few minutes later he let the single sheet of paper drift to the table and sat back in his chair. Well . . . that was unexpected. He didn’t know why it should catch him by surprise; however—it wasn’t as if anything else concerning this damn case had made a great deal of sense so far, so, hey, why start now? He reached forward and picked up the paper to read it through one more time.

  With the exception of one dead addict, discovered the day after Mick joined the Follies in Sacramento and believed to have made his purchase from an unknown dealer sometime during the day preceding said discovery of body, the string of drug-related deaths connected to this case had come to a halt. The sale of heroin was assumed to have ceased.

  Why? Mick wondered on his way over to the Tacoma Dome. And perhaps more importantly, for how long?

  His whole career had been one long association with people involved in the sales, distribution, smuggling, or prevention of drugs. He knew the species from one end of the spectrum to the other, from those who profited to those who busted their humps trying to put a stop to it; from drug lords, the top money men who controlled the trade; to mules, the couriers used for smuggling; to Border rats, the Customs and DEA agents who worked the Mexican border. And if there was one thing that was guaranteed, it was that nobody shut down a profitable operation for long. Not without a damn good reason.

  It was his job in this case to figure out what that reason was. Well, either/or. Either he figured it out, or he just hanged tough until the operation started up again—and it would. But he was a bottom line kind of guy. And the bottom line was that one way or another he planned to put a halt to it.

  He wasn’t exactly knocked on his butt with astonishment when he walked into the arena a short while later and discovered that he wasn’t the only one harboring an itch to learn more about Lon Morrison. The old scandal had been resurrected right along with the discovery that Morrison had been hired for the line, and Mick must have heard at least a dozen different people in the past few days hashing it over in all its gory detail. A goodly number of the Follies’ skaters had turned out today, apparently to judge for themselves whether Morrison could still skate after more than five years away from the ice.

  He could. Even Mick, who was admittedly nobody’s idea of an expert, could tell that the man had something.

  After watching for a few minutes, he pulled his curious gaze away from the skater going through his paces out on the rink and scanned the arena until he located Sasha in the small crowd seated rinkside. He made his way over to the cluster of skaters.

  Through sheer force of personality he cleared a path to his objective. Staking out the seat next to hers, his shoulder jostling her as he settled himself, he nodded to her and to Connie on her other side, but held his silence as he leaned back and gazed out at the man on the ice.

  Morrison’s hair flashed with golden highlights beneath the overhead lights as he skated backwards, his chin tipped into his shoulder to spot where he was going. He whipped along the perimeter of the rink with respectable speed, then launched into a double toe loop.

  “He’s gonna screw it up,” Sasha muttered. Surprised, Mick turned his head to look down at her. Her hands were clenched in her lap, her gray eyes fastened on the ice and he looked back in time to see Morr
ison land on his ass. For no good reason, Mick experienced a little spark of satisfaction.

  Connie leaned forward to peer into Sasha’s face. “How did you know that?” she demanded.

  “He lost his concentration,” Sasha retorted without taking her eyes off the ice. “It always happens when he gets full of himself. Okay, Big Shot,” she muttered to herself as Lon climbed to his feet and shoved off, slowly building up speed once again. “Focus.”

  There was an intimacy in knowing someone as well as Sasha apparently knew Morrison, and it was a familiarity that didn’t sit well with Mick. It made him uneasy in a way that he couldn’t quite pin down, and it gnawed away at a spot in the depths of his stomach. Whatever the emotion that caused it, it was unwarranted and unwelcome and sure as hell not one he particularly cared to examine too closely. He sternly relegated it to a far corner of his mind.

  Morrison’s next landing was not perfect but was nevertheless much smoother. “Better,” was Sasha’s assessment. She turned to Connie. “He needs work, but not nearly as much as I feared,” she remarked. “I really don’t know many who could do so well, having been away from it as long as he’s been.” Reaching out with a tactile gesture that was typical of her, she brushed her friend’s arm with her fingertips. “Listen, Con, you wanna help?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. Go on out and show him the combination for the first number. If I know Lonnie he’s gonna be itching for something specific to practice before he’s even got his basics nailed down again.”

  Connie changed into her skates and climbed to her feet to comply. She met Lon out on the ice and spent a few minutes conferring with him. The moment they understood what she was up to, Brenda and Sara jumped into their skates and joined her. Lonnie and the three women spent several moments in consultation. He watched them demonstrate a series of movements and then all of them skated in slow time through the routine the women had been illustrating.