“Thanks, but you didn't need to,” Daniel replied. “Last night was purely business. I met my private eye there. He's helping me with tracking down Drake.”
“No more on Vincent tonight, please? For the next four and a half hours, I don't want to hear or even think about that man.”
“Deal,” Daniel said. “Just dinner and a movie for a stressed out girl. Too much cobalt blue and titanium white or something.”
I laughed. “Something like that. Although after today's painting, I think I need a few more tubes of black and gray.”
I was surprised when he nodded. “I saw. I liked it.”
“Really? I thought it was terrible,” I said. “Not realistic at all—too dark, just . . . not me.”
“Maybe not, but it's got a lot of intensity. You really poured a lot of yourself into it, and I guess it speaks to me that way.”
“Then it's yours,” I said immediately. “The best way to get through to an artist is to say you like their work, even if the she hates it herself.”
The restaurant lived up to the reviews, with some of the best burgers I'd had in a long time. Daniel enjoyed as well, and ended up licking the barbecue sauce from his bacon barbecue burger off his fingertips, something I'd never seen him do before. At home, he'd always been the epitome of decorum, wiping his hands and mouth with his napkin even if everyone else was nearly under the table drunk. “Worth the thirty-minute drive, that's for sure,” he said. “What did you think?”
“Great. You know the only downer in this?”
“What's that?”
I took a sip of my soda and set my glass down. “You and I were good friends for about five years there, after I came to Uncle Carlo's house. But then we were kept apart.”
“For good reason, Ade. I haven't been the type of man who’s supposed to be friends with a classy girl like you.”
“I think I'm old enough now to pick who my friends are and who I want to spend time with,” I said simply, but I was touched by his compliment. “I guess what I'm saying is, when this is finished, I don't want you to drift away again. I know Uncle Carlo doesn't like it, but I want to talk to him about it later.”
“You can talk all you want, but he’s not going to listen. I'm not worthy of you in his eyes.” Daniel lowered his eyes to the table, and I could tell he wished it weren’t the case.
“And what do you think?” I asked, then shook my head. “Nevermind. That's an unfair question. Come on, let's see the movie. After all the terror of the past week, I need some fictional scares to put all of it in perspective.”
The movie was a remake of a Japanese horror flick, The Ring vs. The Grudge, and had plenty of creepy atmosphere. Sure, it was an amalgamation of two pretty worn out movies, but it was still fun. As the tension built, I pulled my legs up underneath me, my eyes wide and staring at the screen. The first time the ghost popped out to scare the first victim to death, I'll admit I jumped, a little bit of popcorn bouncing out of my tub to rain down on my lap, some of it falling onto Daniel's lap as well. “Thanks,” he said blithely, picking up a kernel and tossing it into his mouth. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I whispered back. “It's why we came anyway. It's therapeutic.”
When the next scare happened, I shrieked loud enough for those around me to jump too. Daniel put his arm around my shoulder, not saying a word.
I fidgeted some, the hard plastic of the arm rest in my ribs preventing me from getting comfortable before I realized that the arm rest lifted. Scooting to the side, I pulled it up and out of the way, snuggling back in closer to Daniel, who rested his arm on my shoulder for the rest of the movie. With his strong arm holding me lightly, I didn't have to jump for the rest of the movie, but I certainly enjoyed some of the scares that were left, and by the end, I was laughing at some of the cheesiness of the two ghostly characters and the idiotic people caught between them.
As the credits rolled and the lights rose, I reached up and gave Daniel's hand a squeeze. “Thanks, I needed that.”
“No problem,” he said, removing his arm, “but I think you and I need to set some ground rules. For our safety, especially mine.”
I nodded, reality poking its ugly head in, and sighed. “I guess so, but can we at least save it until we get to the car?”
Daniel looked like he was about to protest, then just nodded. He reached over and took my hand, entwining our fingers. “Let's go.”
The three hundred and twenty-three steps from the theater to Daniel's car were the best part of the evening, as for the first time in nearly a year, I felt totally like a normal girl, free from all the stress and worry of what I'd been through. I imagined that it was like what girls who weren't Mafia princesses felt like most Saturday nights when they were out with a cute guy.
Daniel held my door open and got in afterward, sticking his key in the ignition. “Did you enjoy yourself?”
“I did,” I said with a smile. “You know, Daniel, when you want to be, you're a pretty decent guy.”
“Don't let the secret out,” he said with a chuckle. “But Ade, we're pushing a very dangerous line, one that I don’t think we should cross.”
“I know,” I said, sighing and looking out the windshield. “The problem is, I like spending time with you. Beyond what that could mean, I'm just saying that going out with you is a lot of fun. Even when we've been bumming around campus, just you taking me to classes and stuff, I've enjoyed myself. I keep wishing you were an actual student.”
Daniel's short laugh and nod told me both that he agreed but also felt it was impossible. “Ade, I don't even know my real last name. The Social Security number I used to get my concealed carry permit is invalid, connected to a man who died a decade ago overseas in Zimbabwe and therefore cannot for certain be declared dead. Besides, while I learn what your uncle asks me to, I’m more of a hands-on type of man. But yes, I've enjoyed my duty for the past two weeks.”
“Has it been just duty?” I asked quietly, stopping him. Daniel stared at me, his mouth working silently for a moment, and I could see the answer in his eyes. “That's what I thought. Your duty and honor is stopping you . . . stopping us.”
“It is what it is. We can enjoy this time, the times when we can be friends . . . but nothing more,” Daniel said, the last words said between tightly-clenched teeth. He started his car and put it in reverse. “If it means anything, I wish things were different.”
“Yeah . . .” I replied, looking out the passenger window so he couldn't see me cry. “Me too.”
Chapter 10
Daniel
I took Adriana back to classes, the two of us leaving early enough that we got to her first class twenty minutes early. I went inside and did a security check of the room while she sat quietly in her spot next to the emergency exit. The professor, a bespectacled woman who looked like she probably worshiped Annie Leibowitz, looked on with mixed emotions. She wanted to support Adriana as a female and a victim of violence, but at the same time, she didn't like that I was there. “Young man,” she said as I checked under her podium for any listening devices, “I don't think that—”
“That's exactly your and everyone else's problem at this school,” I said quietly, low enough that Adriana couldn't hear me. “You don't think. You're more worried about your political leanings, your bureaucracy, and covering your asses, and you've forgotten that there is a very scared, very threatened young woman involved in all of this. But I haven't. I've pledged to keep her safe, and lady, if I were you, I wouldn’t get in my way.”
She blanched, then nodded. “Just be quick about it, okay?”
“I'll be done by the time your class starts,” I replied, continuing my search. When I sat down next to Adriana, she looked at me questioningly. “Just a disagreement about Picasso's Blue Period.”
“Uh-huh. And that's why she's staring at you in abject fear right now?” she asked, amused.
I shrugged. “I have that kind of an effect on people sometimes.”
The class started, an
d it was one of Adriana's more boring classes really, a lecture class that only went to labs and actual production during the last few sessions of the semester. Until then, the teacher wanted the students to supposedly focus, to draw inspiration from the life around them.
In my opinion, it was all bullshit. You want inspiration? Look around you. The world is a beautiful and fucked up place. Inspiration existed in almost every moment of every day. You didn't need to focus to find an inspiration.
As an example, I did my first hit for Don Bertoli when I was nineteen, soon after I'd completed high school. The guy I was to take out was a piece of shit meth dealer who'd not only stiffed Don Bertoli on his payments, but had also been caught more than once dealing bad shit, which could cause the police to poke around more than normal. Nobody wants that, and so I was sent in.
I found the dealer in the parking lot of a Pizza Hut that he used for a lot of his business. I was wearing all black and a face mask, but still in my suit. I was supposed to make sure a message was sent.
I'd been training for years already, a decade spent preparing myself, knowing that the day would come that Don Bertoli would ask me to start repaying the generosity he'd heaped upon me for taking care of me all those years. Walking across the parking lot, the throwaway S&W 9mm I was going to use felt heavy in my hand, when suddenly, things started to go wrong.
The target, supposedly a tweaker who never carried anything on him, spun at the sound of my approaching footsteps. Seeing the suit, he knew exactly who I worked for, and instead of running like I'd suspected he'd do, he reached for a pistol in the waistband of his pants. I barely got my gun up in time before he squeezed off a round, which ricocheted off the pavement, nicking my right leg as it whined by. I pulled the trigger, and his chest nearly exploded, blood bursting from his back in a massive spray that painted the side of the Pizza Hut in a crimson Rorschach diagram.
The next day, after getting my leg bandaged up, was the most beautiful day I’d ever had. Each bite of my breakfast was the greatest meal I'd ever feasted upon, and each breath was sweet and perfect in my lungs. You want inspiration? I had inspiration, forty-five caliber inspiration that came in semi-automatic.
When the lecture was over, Adriana had an hour to wait before her next class, a painting lab that almost always left her covered in enough paint that I thought she looked like she was trying out for a clown spot in the local circus. We hung out in the university library, where we could at least grab a quiet corner and I could keep an eye on the comings and goings. Adriana picked out a romance novel, of all things, and sat down reading. “Really?” I asked, seeing the illustration on the cover. “I figured you for a better quality of literature than that.”
“Don't knock it until you try it,” Adriana said. “Besides, at least it lets me live vicariously.”
I didn't know if her comment was aimed at me or just a general complaint about the situation she was in, so I didn't reply. Instead, I looked at my phone, wishing Adam would call. He was normally much more involved in keeping me updated, but other than the once-daily messages that boiled down to 'no news yet,' I'd gotten nothing.
“Hey, Dan?” Adriana asked, shaking me from my thoughts and focusing my attention back on her. “Sorry.”
“Don't worry about it,” I said. “Is there something you need?”
“I know you're screening my emails, so can you pull up my system and see if I got any new ones? I'm expecting a message from my marketing professor on an assignment he gave while I was at home.”
Nodding, I took the laptop, a brand new one that was scrubbed of any viruses that Vincent Drake's last message could have downloaded. The new one ran every email in a virtual box setup that was supposedly foolproof, although I bet that Adam could get past it if we had enough time.
I pulled up the email client, which downloaded three messages. “Let's see—one from a Dr. Roberts, that's the one you want, I assume, a message from the university saying that if you want tickets to the next home football game you need to turn in your request for student section tickets by Friday, and . . . shit.”
“What?”
“Peter Gabriel,” I said. “Do I even need to tell you who that is?”
Adriana shook her head. She knew the members and former members of Genesis even better than I did by now, and turned pointedly away from me, picking up her book from her lap and pretending to read. I stuck a headphone into the sound jack and opened the mail in the virtual box, hoping the system would hold. I didn't want to have to tell Carlo that we had to buy another new computer.
The music was unfamiliar, and I'd spent the time over the past week listening to most of Genesis's famous songs. This one was different. The sound was more classic rock than what I'd expected, and the lead singer certainly wasn't Phil Collins. I assumed it was Peter Gabriel—I wasn't sure. The song was hacked and cut, the lyrics blended from different parts of the same song with a clumsy homemade transition, probably put together quickly on a laptop.
It took me a second with how the lyrics were jumbled, but then it came to me. It was of course a song from Genesis — called “Am I Very Wrong.” The images were like before, shots of the lyrics crawling by karaoke style with stills of Drake's crimes in between, but this time, interspersed with the blood-soaked shots of Angela's murder, were photos of Adriana herself, taken within the past two weeks around campus. I knew that for sure, because I saw myself in three of them and knew exactly when they'd been taken.
The last slide of the show wasn't a picture, but a single normal PowerPoint-type slide that read,
“I do hope the new beefcake doesn't mean I'm not number one in your heart, my Adriana. I'd hate to have to hurt him.”
The son of a bitch had been on campus. He must’ve been good to be coming around campus and have no one notice him. Closing the virtual box, I shut the computer down and took a deep breath. My job just became a lot harder, and I wasn't sure what I could do about it, not until Adam or one of the Don's men got me some information to work with. Until then, the only thing I could do would be to stay by Adriana's side and make sure that if Drake did go all the way over the edge and into direct attack, he'd never get within twenty feet of her.
“Wait right here. I'm going to the edge of the room to make a phone call,” I told Adriana, who nodded without a word. I walked the ten feet away to give me enough privacy so that she couldn't overhear, and dialed Don Bertoli.
“Hello, Daniel,” he said, his voice mellow and cultured like he'd been expecting my call. I could hear a bit of the background noise and knew he was at the office, dealing with the legal side of his empire. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes, sir. Adriana received another email from Vincent Drake. If you have your men access the email, it's in a message supposedly from Peter Gabriel.”
“Peter Gabriel?” Don Bertoli said, sounding surprised. In the past two weeks, we'd all become at least passably acquainted with the discography of the group, although the Don himself and Margaret had admitted that at one point, they’d liked them when they were younger. I doubted either of them would be buying tickets to a reunion tour any time soon, not that it was the actual group’s fault. “Anything of particular interest to report?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, lowering my voice. “Sir, I suspect that Drake has been on campus. There were pictures of Adriana and myself on campus going to classes, taken within the past two weeks. While they’re telephoto, they are also clear enough that he was most likely within a couple of hundred yards.”
The silence on the other end told me everything I needed to know. “Okay, Daniel. When you bring Adriana home tonight, make sure your car is clean, and I’ll have someone standing by to install some new security measures on it overnight. Anything else?”
“No, sir. I need to get Adriana to her next class now.”
“We’ll talk when you get home. Goodbye.”
I hung up my phone and walked back over to Adriana, who was still staring at her book but hadn't turne
d a page yet. Kneeling down, I looked her in the eyes. “Are you okay?”
She blinked, her eyes wide and frightened, and shook her head softly. “I just want this to end.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Let's go now. I don’t want to go to my next class.”
After dinner, which I ate by myself in the kitchen while Adriana ate with her family, I went out to meet with Adam, this time at the Starlight Club. The manager, cued in to my coming, met me at the door. “Sir, it is good to see you.”
“Bullshit,” I said with a small chuckle and an apologetic shrug. “You're just worried that I'm going to do something stupid again.”
I took off my coat and unbuttoned my shirt, showing him I wasn't carrying a pistol. I'd left it locked inside the borrowed Lexus that I was driving while Don Bertoli's expert worked on my car. They'd already gone over it in the few hours we'd been home and assured me that nobody had left anything inside, but after they were done, anyone even touching my car would end up recorded, and I'd get a message about it.
The manager of the Starlight Club looked me over, then nodded. “I'll be honest, you had us scared last time.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said, thinking back to the lack of control I'd shown. That might work for your average street gangster, but not for one of Don Bertoli's men. “Is Carmen okay?”
“She took a few days off, but she's back to work,” the man said. “In fact, she's working tonight. Would you like to say hello? No private rooms though.”
“Not right now,” I replied, taking out a small pack of hundred-dollar bills. “Actually, I have a friend coming. He's doing some work for me, and I'd like to reward him with a little private dance from Carmen. She's just his type. After I leave, of course. Think she could schedule him in?”
He looked at the bills, greed flaring in his eyes. In the world of the Starlight Club, sex and money ruled everything. “I think that could be arranged. Your friend knows how to follow the rules?”
Stud Muffin Page 30
