Russell's Attic, Books 1 - 3

by SL Huang

  “I’ll owe you one,” I promised. It wasn’t something I liked to say lightly, especially not to a member of the American Mafia, but I was getting impatient. “Come on, Benito, it’ll take you five minutes. Just tell her I’m coming.”

  “What you are asking me,” he said, an unhappy frown in his voice, “this is a very large favor.”

  Yeah, yeah, cry me a river. “I won’t forget it,” I said, as solemnly as I could while still shouting over a dance beat.

  “You owe me one. A big one.”

  “Sure.”

  “Introduction only.”

  “Just let her know I’m coming,” I said again.

  “All right. But you owe me.” My ears rang in the sudden silence as he hung up. Great. I was already pissing people off. To be fair, I did tend to be good at it.

  I got in my car and headed into the Hollywood Hills.

  The Hollywood Hills are a strange phenomenon. The sprawl of Los Angeles allows them to be right in the middle of the city, with the few canyon roads that wind all the way across becoming clogged to a standstill every rush hour. But the untamed elevation lifts them out of the urban mire enough that they’ve become an oasis of wealthy, private mountain estates. The rich get to have the best of both worlds: a secluded mountain hideaway that’s still smack in central Los Angeles, right next to Hollywood and fifteen minutes from downtown.

  Los Angeles is such a culture of entitlement. It just figured that all the movie stars—and mob bosses—were able to have their cake and eat it, too, even when it came to real estate.

  The address Checker had given me was up a twisting road that seemed graded far too steeply to be a good idea, especially considering the skill level of the average LA driver. I parked precariously around a blind curve and wondered how people who couldn’t do snap calculations of gravity versus static frictional force managed.

  Since this was—at least for now—a civilized visit, I went up to the iron gates and rang at the intercom. I heard a click and a buzz, and then an impersonal voice said, “Yes?”

  “My name is Cas Russell,” I said, hoping Benito hadn’t copped out on me. “I’m here to see Madame Lorenzo.”

  After a brief silence—during which I automatically did all the calculations I’d need to vault the gate and be inside the estate before anyone could react—the intercom buzzed and the gate swung open on creakingly slow automated mechanics. I headed toward the house and tried to figure out which part of the grandiose architecture was supposed to be the front door.

  Once I found it, a housekeeper let me into a polished foyer with a high, vaulted ceiling. Everything was spotless—the crystalline lighting fixtures, the ornate side tables, even the gleaming vases of fresh lilies that adorned them. The housekeeper took me through a maze of rooms (seriously, what did they do with so many rooms?) to the back of the house. I glimpsed panoramic vistas of the city through some of the windows, where the mountain dropped away to reveal spectacular views.

  The housekeeper knocked lightly on a door, then opened it slightly and gestured for me to enter. Surprised at not being asked to wait, I pushed the door open and found myself in an opulent but tasteful study that was rich in dark wood and leather furnishings. It was a large room for a study, and all the way at the other end, seated behind a long, sleek desk like a woman on a throne and attending to a neat stack of paperwork on her blotter, was Mama Lorenzo herself.

  She stood as I entered. I guessed her age at somewhere near fifty, and she was a very tall woman, with a figure that suggested she dieted aggressively and kept a personal trainer on retainer. She was sheathed in an ivory cocktail dress with lines severe enough to make it seem like it should be called a business suit instead, and which had definitely cost more than every item of clothing I owned combined. Her dark hair was pinned up in elegant perfection without a single strand out of place, and her makeup was exquisite and dramatic, all contrasts of shadow and scarlet.

  “Miss Russell,” she greeted me. “Please, sit down. I only have a moment, but my son speaks quite highly of you, and he told me you wished to speak with some urgency.”

  Her son? Oh. Oops. “Thanks,” I said, dropping into one of the leather chairs across from her desk. She reseated herself in a way that made me feel entirely ungraceful. I took a deep breath. “I won’t waste your time. I’m here because I believe you’ve made threats against a friend of mine for sleeping with your niece.”

  Her well-shaped eyebrows rose. “Ah—I see. Your friend is the computer specialist, then?”

  “Yes.”

  Mama Lorenzo lifted a white china teacup that was so thin it was almost transparent from a saucer at her elbow and took a thoughtful sip. Then she said, “I’m afraid I cannot help you in this matter. I have no quarrel with you, but your friend’s offense must be dealt with.”

  “What offense?” I cried. “Come on, this isn’t the nineteenth century. Your niece wanted to have some fun; they had some fun. From what I understand, that sort of thing takes two people.”

  Mama Lorenzo studied me over her tea. “It’s possible your friend did not apprise you of all particulars of this situation.”

  Oh, crap. Checker, I am going to kill you. “What do you mean?”

  “Miss Russell, my son tells me you have been of excellent help to him in the past, so as a courtesy I shall explain to you our position.” She replaced her teacup in the saucer and folded her hands on the desk in front of her. “As much as I may not entirely approve of my niece’s choices, the issue at hand is that your friend took advantage of a position of authority. Isabella is currently enrolled in her university studies, and your friend was engaged as her private tutor for a programming class she was having some difficulty with. That he abused the trust placed in him for such a role is unacceptable, and cannot go unanswered.”

  Jesus Christ, Checker, what the hell did you do? Not that I was able to make sense of the labyrinthine world of social contracts myself, but if one went around sleeping with as many women as Checker did, it seemed like common fucking sense to have a handle on these things.

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” I tried lamely.

  “Intention does not go far with our family. I’m sure you understand.” Her voice was calm. Matter-of-fact. If A, then B. A conditional statement true in every case, with no exceptions. “I apologize that I cannot accommodate you on this matter.”

  The study was deeply quiet.

  The world felt wobbly, off-kilter. I had come here with some vague notion that this would turn out to be a laughable mistake—it had seemed too ludicrous not to be; Checker was the type of person who might believably get sued for pirating trashy action movies or end up on FBI lists for hacking into too many secure databases, but become tangled up with the Mob for sleeping with the wrong girl? It was madness. And yet here was Mama Lorenzo, with her perfect dress and her perfectly manicured nails, sitting here in perfect calm and telling me he had committed an unpardonable crime.

  A crime that had to be dealt with in the way the Mafia dealt with such things.

  My tongue felt thick in a suddenly dry mouth. “Are you going to kill him?”

  “Oh, no, nothing so barbaric,” said Mama Lorenzo. “I believe my niece may still harbor some fondness for the boy, and I would not be so heartless to her. No. Your friend—I believe he works as a private investigator, yes?” I made a noncommittal gesture; it was Arthur’s license, but she was close enough. She nodded and continued. “It will be sufficient to bankrupt his business and drive him from Los Angeles. Ensuring he can never again find employment above that of a fry cook is payment enough.”

  The business was Arthur’s, too—she was planning to ruin the only two friends I had. “You’re not serious,” I croaked.

  Mama Lorenzo took another calm sip from her thin china teacup. “I most certainly am.”

  “You would put all that effort into destroying someone’s life—”

  “Oh, it will not take much effort. A few well-placed threats, a few visits from…on
e of our people, these are sufficient for most of our enemies to commit to their exiles themselves. And if it became too much effort, we would still have other, more distasteful options. But I would prefer to avoid those.”

  I swallowed against a throat that wanted to fold in on itself. I’d never faced having a friend threatened before—after all, I’d never had friends to threaten before. “You’ve talked to Benito, right?” I said, trying to sound like I was on even ground with her. “You know how good I am. There’s got to be something I can do for you that will make this go away.”

  She was already shaking her head. “You do not understand our sense of honor in this matter, Miss Russell. It is not a debt that can be repaid. Honor was sullied, and there must be consequences.”

  My grip dug into the arms of the chair, my fingers pressing deep dents into the soft leather.

  I could kill her. It would be easy. Ducking her security on the way out would be laughable, and Arthur would disapprove, but that was a small price to pay for saving both him and Checker.

  Except that if I killed the woman of power in the Los Angeles Mafia, I’d be starting a timer on my own life. The Mob didn’t forgive, didn’t forget, and couldn’t be bought off. If I killed Mama Lorenzo, I’d have to disappear, and even halfway around the world I’d keep looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. And they might still come after Checker.

  Come to that—even if I managed to kill Mama Lorenzo in a way no one was able to trace back to me, the private army that was the American Mafia was vast and organized. No matter how many powerful people I took out, even I might not be able to stop this from happening.

  Mama Lorenzo rose. “I believe we are finished here, Miss Russell. As I said, Benito speaks highly of you, so I hope this incident will not disrupt your professional relationship with my family. I trust you have seen my points. It would be a shame if you decided to interfere.”

  I stayed seated. “I can do a lot more than retrieval.” The words came out of my mouth before I had decided to say them.

  Mama Lorenzo looked down at me quizzically, as though wondering why I was still talking.

  “I could launder money for you so effectively the IRS would never find it.” I stared straight ahead, focusing on the smooth, varnished grain of her desk. “I could break people out of jail for you. I could, uh, take care of people for you in ways they’d never see coming. Please.” The “What Would Arthur Think?” voice was screaming inside my head, because offering any of those things to this woman, offering to be an assassin for her, this was definitely Not Okay and I had officially crossed into the dark side. I didn’t care.

  Mama Lorenzo hesitated. “That is good to know,” she said finally. “I shall keep that in mind in case we need such…services…in the future. But I’m afraid it can have no impact on the present situation.” She stepped around to the side of her desk, clearly showing me out.

  Shit. I couldn’t kill her, and I couldn’t bargain with her—my mind scrambled—

  I needed time. Time to think, time to plan, time to come up with some way of fighting. Time to find more options, before Mama Lorenzo’s men went and broke all of Checker’s fingers and smashed his face in with a baseball bat.

  I stood up. Mama Lorenzo’s stilettos put her flawlessly made-up face almost a foot above mine, but I stood very still and very quiet and met her eyes, staring that superlative composure down. “Okay,” I said. “Fine. Your honor might dictate you go after a friend of mine. But I’ve got honor, too.” Or something like it, something that might better be called the desperate selfishness of someone who was too fundamentally lonely to give up her only two friends to the leader of a crime syndicate. Time. Just get some time. “If you touch Checker, his business, or any of their clients, then I will declare war on your entire family and all of your operations. Personally. And you will be the first one on my list.”

  Mama Lorenzo’s expression twitched. I knew why: what I was saying didn’t make sense. She had too obvious a solution. All I was doing was throwing myself in between Checker and the Mob as a target that needed to be taken out. My threat was a pointless act.

  Except that it would keep her away from Checker until I could come up with an actual plan. And all I would have to do would be dodge Mafia hitmen for a few days while I figured out that plan.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid, railed a voice in my head. I ignored it. Fucking Checker.

  “I could have you killed right now,” Mama Lorenzo said.

  “Try,” I answered, baring my teeth.

  We stood, gazes locked, every passing second heavy with what might happen next. The moment stretched, suffocating, a struggle for dominance that felt almost physical.

  She wouldn’t try to kill me here. Not where she might be caught in a crossfire.

  Would she?

  “You do not wish to incur our anger,” Mama Lorenzo said finally.

  “Too late.”

  “I am sorry to hear that.”

  “Good,” I said, deliberately misinterpreting her.

  “You would force us to remove you as a threat, as well.”

  “First.” I bit out the word, grating and loud. She had to take this seriously. She had to be afraid enough. “You have to remove me first. Because if I catch the slightest hint that any one of your people gets within shouting distance of Checker, I’m going to come back here, and you’re going to be the one who pays. So you’ll have to take me out first.”

  “I see. And when my people do come after you?”

  “They’ll fail,” I said. “But as long as you leave Checker alone, you’re welcome to keep sending them.”

  Mama Lorenzo’s face could have been a marble carving.

  She held my gaze for another three seconds—three very long seconds. Then she broke eye contact and stepped quickly and crisply back behind her desk. “Remove yourself from my house.”

  I did. My shoulder blades itched the whole way out, my heart thumping faster than normal against my ribs. As big as I had talked to Mama Lorenzo, I wasn’t faster than a bullet—the right sniper in the right place could take down anyone, including me.

  And once she did get me, Checker and Arthur would be on the chopping block next.

  Chapter 5

  I called Checker as soon as I was on the road and sufficiently away from the Lorenzos’ creepily perfect estate. “Hey,” I said. “I think I bought us some time with Mama Lorenzo.” I didn’t tell him how I’d done it. Or what deep shit he’d gotten himself into—I doubted he knew exactly how bad it was. “Keep clear of the Hole for now, though, till I can get things sorted completely.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks. A lot. I owe you one.”

  “Damn right you do.” He owed me a lot more than just one. “Speaking of which, do you have anything on my head case yet?”

  “Just the basics. Noah Warren, forty-eight years old, former party clown and magician—”

  “Former what?” I slammed on the brakes to keep from rear-ending a blue BMW.

  “Magician,” said Checker. “And clown. You know, entertaining at kids’ parties, that sort of thing.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Party clowns exist, so some people have to be them, Cas. Shall I go on?”

  Clowns. Sheesh. “Yeah.”

  “He did that pretty steadily for years after graduating from college, but then he dropped off—I don’t know if the gigs dried up or he just didn’t want to anymore. For the past decade or so he’s bounced around, mostly odd jobs—carpentry, custodial work, event security, that sort of thing.”

  “What about the wife?”

  “This is where it gets interesting. Constance Denise Rayal—I guess she kept her maiden name—is a bona fide genius. I mean, most of her recent work is behind trade secrecy, but I was just reading her graduate thesis and it’s nothing short of brilliant. She got headhunted by Arkacite decades back, right when they first started making waves in tech, and worked there until five months ago—”

  “Is that w
hen she died?”

  “Her stated reason for resigning was medical leave.”

  Whatever illness it was must have killed her shortly after she left work, then. “What did she have?”

  “I haven’t gotten there yet. Is it important?”

  “Doubt it. Just curious. What about the daughter?”

  “Geez, a little patience. I haven’t finished on Warren and Arkacite. He tried to bring criminal kidnapping charges against them. When that didn’t work, he filed suit pro se—”

  “Pro se?”

  “It means he did it himself instead of hiring a lawyer. He’s suing for ownership of all his wife’s work.”

  “Shouldn’t he own it anyway if she’s dead?”

  “No. Work product—the company owns it. He doesn’t even have a case.”

  Why would Warren care about her work? “He thinks they’re hiding something,” I guessed. “He thinks they’ve got his daughter and his wife’s files will tell him where.”

  “Or he’s trying to get a foot in the door somehow. Or maybe he’s just trying to annoy them until they cave in on a deal to make him go away,” suggested Checker. “Who knows? You should ask him.”

  “I will.” I readjusted the phone on my shoulder as traffic started to pick up again. “So what did you find on the daughter? Any evidence of a Liliana?”

  “No, you were right—not a whiff. No birth certificate or adoption papers. No school records. No doctor’s visits. They had a son about fifteen years ago, but he died when he was only a few years old, and they never had any other children. The wife’s mother’s name was Liliana, so a kid named after her would make sense, but I can’t find a single shred of evidence for a daughter.”

  “Maybe she was a homeless kid they took in or something?”

  “Then why wouldn’t he tell you that?”

  “Because he’s not right in the head?”

  “If she exists, I should be able to find something,” muttered Checker. “I don’t like this.”

  “He’s probably just crazy and it’s a dead-end case,” I said. Checker didn’t say anything. “What’s the matter?”