Indulgence (327 page)

“I’ll bet you taste real nice,” Carlos’s words oozed out
with syrupy sweetness.

Two other gang members entered the room just before the next
dancer began her gyrations. They were enthralled with the skinny girl on stage,
who looked all of fifteen years old and was scared to death. Her slender thighs
had bruises on them she’d tried to cover up with makeup. Gina knew she was
probably a young runaway and a drug user.

Making a mental note to have the girl’s ID checked, calling
it in, Gina focused on Carlos again. He looked pleased to be the recipient of
her attention.

“How about it?” he asked.

“Sorry.”

“Are you, really?” Carlos looked between Mia and Gina. “You
fancy chicks?” he asked Gina.

“No. I’m just not in the mood,” she answered. It was the
truth.

“I can fix that.”

Gina made a mental note to watch her drink. She knew Carlos
would find a way to slip something in on her if she wasn’t vigilant. She had no
intention of getting that close.

Mia came to Gina’s defense. “Hey, get away from my friend.
She told you no. What part of that don’t you understand?”

Carlos licked his lips. “I just want a little taste. Or
maybe she might like to give me a little something.” Carlos wiggled his
eyebrows. Then he turned his face to Mia. “Darlin’ I need a mouth on me quick
or I’m gonna spill. You guys got me all bothered.”

Mia pointed to the dancer, “She looks like your type.”

The young girl bent over, giving the sparse crowd a view of
her quivering buttocks bifurcated by a silver G-string. Carlos smiled and
backed away from the two girls until he got close to the stage. While looking
at Gina, he took out what looked like a one hundred dollar bill and placed it
under the elastic of the teenager’s G-string. He leaned over to the offered
soft flesh of the young girl’s rear and gave her a lick and then a kiss. He
rubbed himself and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was staring right
at Gina.

Adrenaline pumped through Gina’s chest as she resisted the
urge to run away from this, from the police work, this seamy undercover stuff,
from Mia and Sam and even Armando. It wasn’t the work that bothered her.

It was that she felt like bait.

Gunny greeted his son, Sanouk Wattanapanit, at the San Diego
airport with Kyle and Armando at his back. Armando felt like they were standing
in on the old former Marine’s wedding procession or an official award of valor
citation. The tall well-muscled boy of twenty-two was handsome, with Eurasian
features and smooth light brown complexion. But his ears identified him as one
of Gunny’s offspring. The protuberances stood out and were probably as useful
as large, flat handles on a bowling ball.

Gunny’s first words were, “Holy shit. You look just like
your mother.”

Armando noticed the boy’s embarrassment as he bowed slightly
and gazed down at his supersized feet, encrusted in torn canvas sneakers
without laces. When he finally looked up, Sanouk’s smile became heartbreakingly
respectful and contrite.

“Father, I have been waiting my whole lifetime to meet you.”
His English was perfect, flawless, with just a hint of accent. He’d been well
schooled, Armando thought.

“I’ll be goddamned,” Gunny blurted out. “I thought we’d have
to be, like, doing sign language, and I was wondering how that was going to
work out.”

Armando shared a smirk with Kyle, and knew his Team Leader
had entertained the same thoughts. The sign language obviously hadn’t stopped
Gunny from knocking Sanouk’s mother up, after he married her, of course.

As the awkward seconds drifted away, Gunny finally asked his
son The Question. “So, how is she?”

“
She
is named Amornpan, and she is well. I have a
stepfather she married soon after you left.”

This brought a scowl to Gunny’s face. He grunted acceptance
and stepped back a bit when the boy came forward to give him a hug. The young
man towered over Gunny by several inches, and though Gunny stiffly accepted the
gesture, the boy tenderly held his biological father and patted his back.
“Thank you for my life,” he whispered over Gunny’s shoulder.

Armando knew about the loss of a parent. His own father had
been gunned down in the line of duty in Puerto Rico shortly before his mother
moved him and his sister to L.A. Being the surviving family of a murdered cop
wasn’t especially safe in Puerto Rico. Armando struggled with the loss all
during his teenage years, years he did things he wasn’t proud of. He made it
into manhood with an overwhelming need for revenge, and a desire to protect
good people. It was stashed away in the back of the SEAL’s psyche along with
his lost childhood. But, as limited as his own father’s time had been, he
couldn’t imagine not having known his father at all, like this boy.

Gunny’s hacking cough interrupted his son’s hug. He pulled
out a handkerchief with trembling hands, placing it over his mouth. “Sorry,” he
mumbled, trying to hide bloody remnants of an earlier coughing attack.

Sanouk eyed the red stain on the handkerchief with alarm,
and then drilled a worried look into the two SEALs. “You are my father’s
friends?”

“Glad to meet you,” Kyle said as he extended his hand.
“Perhaps you can talk some sense into your father. I’m Kyle.”

“And I’m Armando.” They both took turns shaking the boy’s
firm grasp. Gunny continued to cough.

“You are unwell?” Sanouk asked his father.

“Rot of the flesh. Nothing more.” It was Gunny’s standard
answer whenever he didn’t want to explain himself to a stranger. Armando hoped
the coming days would give Gunny a new reason for living. He was hoping the boy
could convince Gunny to go back to the doctor for treatment.

Crowds from the arriving planes were shifting all around the
group. Sanouk picked up a computer case and slung it over his right shoulder.
“I have bags,” he said as he started to follow the signs to baggage claim.
Obviously, the boy was used to traveling.

Father and son walked next to each other in awkward silence
as Kyle and Armando trailed behind. Sanouk carried himself like an athlete. His
long limbs appeared powerful despite the lithe gait. Unlike other Thai men
Armando had met, Sanouk had a western frame, not only in height, but thickness
too. And from the shape of his broad shoulders and long arms, Armando could
tell he was in perfect physical condition and probably worked out on a regular
basis.

“He’s not at all like what I expected,” Kyle whispered to
Armando.

“No shit.”

“Thank God he must take after his mother,” Kyle continued.

“Yeah. Except for the Dumbo ears.”

The two SEALs chuckled, causing Gunny to turn and give them
a worried frown.

Armando thought it odd Gunny was suddenly lost for words. He
noticed the side-glances the older man gave his son, checking him out whenever
the boy looked elsewhere. Since Gunny had always been a loner, it was odd to
see the early forms of attachment, the fatherly bonds Armando knew were
unfamiliar to him. He’d spent years making wisecracks about the women he had
married and children he must have fathered.

The baggage turnstile coughed up Sanouk’s bags like one of
Gunny’s attacks. Armando was surprised the two bags consisted of an overstuffed
black duffel and a set of golf clubs, which Gunny tried to pick up but Kyle
grabbed away from him.

Everything was piled into Kyle’s black Hummer. Sanouk rode
shotgun admiring the vehicle. He was every bit the typical American kid, and
when Kyle turned on some hip hop, Sanouk began to make some dance moves.

Gunny was breathing heavily as he sat next to Armando in the
back seat. His eyes watered from the coughing or something else welling up
inside. Armando guessed it was the latter. The old Marine couldn’t stop staring
at his son.

Armando gave the thumbs up as the Hummer wound its way back
to Coronado. Gunny’s expression was somewhere between shock and meltdown, that
look Armando sometimes saw on young servicemen after they’d taken their first
hit and were being medevac’d out.

A short time later they pulled up to Gunny’s gym. A small
crowd of former and active SEALs, as well as other military and civilian
personnel, had gathered inside the place. Someone had brought a couple of large
tubs of ice with water bottles and long-necked beer stuffed inside. Three large
delivery boxes of pizza were stacked up on Gunny’s duct-taped, empty display
case. Several of the Team guys had brought their wives and babies. Kyle stood
behind Christy and their kid and wrapped his arms around his family.

“Welcome to San Diego, Sanouk. We’ve sort of adopted your
father, here,” Kyle said.

Gunny searched the audience and nodded his appreciation for
the turnout, but Armando had never seen him so uncomfortable. He fisted and
un-fisted his ham-like hands, rubbed his palm up over his forehead to wipe the
sweat away, and seemed to totter whenever he walked. His labored breathing was
of most concern. Armando slapped him on the back.

“You okay, Gunny?” he whispered in the man’s ear.

“Right as rain. I’m just wondering who’s gonna clean up the
mess,” Gunny said, deflecting the conversation.

“I’ll get you some water. You go introduce Sanouk to the
group,” Armando suggested. Gunny nodded.

“Everyone, thanks so much for coming. Sanouk here came a
long way to check out his old dad, and I appreciate the turnout. I hope you’ll
help me show him around, but keep him away from the ladies, and let’s temper
the barhopping, okay? My only requests.”

The group erupted in huzzahs and waters and beer bottles
were raised. Several older SEALs came forward and slapped the young Sanouk
heartily on the back, buffeting the young man back and forth as he tried to
smile and address each one of them. Armando could see the boy’s eyes widen with
admiration, and it made Armando proud, too.

After all, Gunny was one of their community and any
offspring, no matter the roots or origins, no matter if he’d been created in a
steamy jungle because of his father’s fondness for Asian women who didn’t speak
English, he was still family. To them all.

Gina called in the runaway she’d spotted at Babes, and
Kozinski promised he’d have two child welfare workers stop by to check on her.
Then he asked if she’d buried the hatchet with Sam.

“Not yet, sir. I know we need him. I just don’t understand
why he has to show up when I’m on duty. It places the operation and me at risk.
Can’t you see that, sir?”

“Look, I go back nearly twenty years with Sam. I don’t have
any reason to question his judgment…”

“Except for the little stunt he pulled with me,” Gina
blurted out.

“From the way I hear it, you were about as hot for him as a
lioness in heat. Sorry, darlin’, but I take Sam’s side on this one. He’s only a
man.”

Who thinks he’s God’s gift.

“He was a married man. He never told me. None of you guys
did.”

“Take that as a compliment, Gina. Take it to mean we think
you can handle yourself. Not like the first time anyone in the department has
gotten involved in an affair outside of work. It’s ruined a lot of careers. You
guys handled it well. It was over before I had to do anything. Now I want to
just forget about it.”

“But Sam won’t.”

“I think you’re reading too much into it. Roll with it,
Gina. He thinks he’s acting a part that works. So part of it is true. So what?
Use it.”

“But I don’t want to play his girlfriend.”

“Okay, but let him tease you a bit. Let him be the jilted
one. Work it however you want to, but work it. These guys will be the only ones
to bail your ass out of a really bad situation if it goes wrong. Remember that.
The Scorpions kill people for petty, stupid reasons. You’re dealing with some
dangerous dudes. Be grateful.”

That last comment grated on her more than all the rest.

Grateful? More like enduring. So, it was going to be a test.
She’d used up her allotment of complaints and anything further would be just
perceived as whining. She was on her own.

Gina decided to try one last time to reason with Sam. Though
she’d written it off as a very bad idea, the near-confrontation at Babes with
Carlos caused her to reconsider. She needed Sam’s intel. Tito, one of Carlos’s
runners, was a kid Sam had busted earlier, and he had given the task force
everything they needed to catch the gang in a couple of sting operations. But
Carlos had always eluded them, and he was the prize. Gina knew it would be
nearly impossible
not
to have Sam involved and still complete the
mission.

If he could just stop making references to their shadowy
past, there was a part of Sam she thought she could still trust. But his need
to totally control her, confine her, stop her, was getting in the way. That,
and her own fear.

Thinking back to their hot involvement last year, she
remembered Sam had not
physically
hurt her, but had refused to let her
leave his room, demanding she stay in his bed until he had fucked her multiple
times. He was rough. He’d wanted to tie her up.

And, she was ashamed to admit to herself, there was a dark
part of her that had liked it.

God help me, am I one of those people?

At the time she could have grabbed a phone and called the
Department. She could have struggled to get away, or screamed. But she’d
stayed. She’d let him screw her over and over again. She’d submitted to him and
found something there that was arousing. Gina tried to put it out of her head,
but she couldn’t.

No, best to stay away from him completely.

But how?

They still worked in the same department. It would be
impossible to avoid him altogether. She’d had high hopes when he returned to
the force after his messy trip to New York. But at their first meeting, there
was no denying the sexual attraction he still felt for her. The outburst at the
strip joint was the first time Sam had stepped over the line since his return.
Maybe the insertion of the SEAL brother had thrown Sam off guard, or maybe he’d
been drinking. Could this be just one isolated incident?