Nick was at least three inches shorter than the smallest of the lot and was outweighed by a good fifty pounds, and yet he was the focal point of the action. One by one he outmaneuvered them and they dropped at his feet with incredible ferocity, sometimes accompanied by a great deal of pain. Although his face remained blank there was a look of deep satisfaction in his eyes. Quickly, I shut the door. If I wasn’t convinced before that Nick was dangerous, that little demonstration changed my mind in a hurry.
While I waited for the class to be over, I turned on the TV hoping for some comedic diversion. I guess the networks don’t think people need to laugh during the dinner hour, because breaking news permeated the airways. Two young boys were playing in a ravine when they came across a car that appeared to have been firebombed. Inside were the charred remains of its driver. They cut to a tape of earlier today and suddenly Bobby’s face flashed across the screen. I’d always known Bobby’s job was stressful. At times it could be incredibly gruesome. This was one of those times. I stared into his haggard face and felt very sad for him. He imparted the following information as succinctly as possible.
“The victim appears to be a white male in his mid to late twenties. The coroner has estimated that the victim has been dead for at least two days. His identity has not yet been confirmed. If anyone has any information regarding this crime, please call the number located at the bottom of the screen.”
A shudder ran through me. What a world.
Nick drove me home. I hadn’t eaten anything the entire day, so we stopped off at Hop Li, the Chinese restaurant around the corner from my parents’ house. I ordered a whole bunch of food, hoping I could entice him to stay for dinner. I really didn’t want to be alone in case another goat’s head showed up at my door. Then again, there’s nothing like a severed head to kill an appetite.
As we pulled up to the house I noticed Bobby’s car parked out front. He was slumped in the driver’s seat, eying Nick and me as we emerged from the Jaguar. He didn’t look happy. I began pulling bags of Chinese food out of the back seat. Bobby appeared at my side and relieved me of some of the packages. Nick came around the other side and took the rest of the bags from me. I closed the car door and began rooting around my pocketbook for my keys.
Nick sensed my discomfort and smiled brightly. Evidently, this was great entertainment for him. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“Oh, sorry,” I said, not looking up. “Bobby, Nick. Nick, Bobby.”
Nick stuck his hand out and Bobby reluctantly did the same. “I feel like we know each other,” Nick told him.
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“Well, from what I hear, you did a little research on me. Was it captivating reading?”
“Not really.”
“Found them!” I said a little too loudly. I held up my keys for inspection. The guys eyed each other like roosters in a cockfight and followed me to the door.
“Um, does anyone want to stay for Chinese?” They both took me up on my offer. Lucky me. As if things weren’t complicated enough already.
I set out plates and grabbed some beers from the refrigerator. Bobby sidled over to me and bent down, whispering in my ear. “I’ve got to talk to you. Privately,” he added, pointedly. I looked at Nick who was busy digging into his Moo Shu vegetable.
“Oh, that reminds me. I saw you on tv today. That poor guy in the car.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. They’ve identified the victim.”
Nick glanced up from his plate. “Pass the soy sauce, please.” He looked very sweet sitting at my dining room table, happily munching his Moo Shu. I had to remind myself that he could chop a man in half with the flick of his wrist.
I passed him the soy sauce and turned my attention back to Bobby. “Bobby, maybe we should wait until after dinner.” If we were going to discuss burned up bodies I’d rather do it on a full stomach.
He shot a look at Nick. “When is he leaving?” Bobby whispered hoarsely.
Nick raised his head and flashed a beatific smile. “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I keeping you two kids from something?”
“No!” I’d had enough male posturing at this point to last a lifetime. “Bobby, if you have something to tell me, just say it.”
“Fine. The guy in the car was Curtis Maitlin.”
“Get out!” I dropped my plate and chow mein noodles went flying. Ironically, they landed on my mom’s Oriental rug. “Are you sure?” I shouted scooping noodles back onto my plate. I had to move fast. That grease can really stain a carpet.
Nick stopped eating. “Well, this puts a new spin on things.” No duh!
There was just enough of Maitlin left to be able to identify him. Turns out he’d had a bunch of priors, some of which included some pretty violent sex crimes. He’d managed to beat the rap on them, but due to the similarities the cops are looking at him as the prime suspect in Konner Novack’s death.
But that still didn’t answer the question of who was protecting Maitlin in the first place and why. And it sure didn’t give any clues as to why suddenly he was expendable. The method of death, on the other hand, was a dead (no pun intended) giveaway.
“Thurman Williams,” I surmised, aloud. “I mean it had to be. Fire bombing. The guy’s a demolitions expert. He blew up John’s boat.”
“And now he’s gone missing.”
Bobby whipped his head in Nick’s direction. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve had some people keeping an eye on him. He vanished about two days ago.”
Bobby gave him a begrudging nod. “Just about the time Maitlin was whacked,” he concluded.
Nick finished his meal and passed on the almond cookies. “I’ve got to run,” he said.
“So soon?” It was the first time Bobby cracked a smile all night.
I walked Nick to the door and stood out on the porch with him, away from Bobby’s prying eyes.
“Nick,” I put my arm out to him and he turned, facing me. His expression was unreadable, and not for the first time I felt infinitely younger than he was in every way that counted. “I just wanted to thank you for letting me crash at your place today. And for helping me and—and for being my friend.”
Nick looked beyond me towards the house. “Some people may think that’s not such a good idea.”
“Yeah, well, some people had better just get used to it.”
That earned me another smile. He kissed the top of my head and left.
Bobby was cleaning up the dishes when I got back inside.
“Thanks.” I took a towel and began drying and putting them away. I knew he was dying to ask me about Nick. In fact he looked about ready to burst. To his credit, he asked instead how my day was, if I’d had a nice time with Janine and oh, by the way, how’d I end up getting driven home by what’s his name again—Mic?”
“You know damn well it’s Nick,” I smiled sweetly. “You spent enough time investigating him.”
“Sez him.”
I arched my eyebrows. “Do you really want to do this?”
Bobby sighed deeply. He rinsed off the last dish and turned off the water. Then he pulled out a chair and sat down. I followed, grabbing the almond cookies. Since Nick hadn’t wanted his, I took two and offered Bobby the other one. We sat there eating cookies and processing the new information.
Williams was hired by somebody to suppress evidence about Curtis Maitlin. We came up with two possible reasons why someone would want to help Maitlin get away with murder. Bribery or blackmail.
“Okay, let’s look at bribery,” Bobby started. “If Maitlin was paying someone to destroy information that could link him to a murder, then why would that person then have Williams kill him? That doesn’t make any sense. On the other hand, if Maitlin was blackmailing that person into helping him, there’d be a reason to want him dead.”
“Makes sense to me.”
“We also know that Williams wasn’t the only one helping Maitlin out. Someone from the precinct was involved in pulli
ng the evidence and passing along information.”
“Not to mention whoever’s been stalking me. Y’know, paying crooked cops and hired assassins can’t be cheap. This guy must have some bucks to be able to afford an operation like this.”
I polished off the cookies and wiped the crumbs off my hands, onto the kitchen table. Bobby grabbed the sponge off the sink and wiped down the table. When did he become so domesticated? He picked up my elbows to wipe under them.
“You seem to be enjoying this a little too much,” he said.
“What?”
“This whole investigation business.” He tossed the sponge back into the sink.
“That’s just what Johnny said,” I replied, sulkily. The phone rang, interrupting my sulk. It was my mother. “Oh, hi, Mom. How’s Daddy?”
Little crunching noises emanated from the other end of the line. It sounded like celery. “Your father’s fine, honey. Crunch, crunch.” It was really getting on my nerves.
“Mom, you’re crunching.”
She stopped, mid crunch. “I can’t help it. I started a new diet, today. I’m starving. But I can have all the celery I want.”
“Well, do you think you can hold off until we hang up?”
She stopped crunching and then she threw me for a loop. “I got the oddest phone call from Doris Gentile, today.”
“Mrs. Gentile called you? Whatever for?” I thought she’d stopped all communication after the Santa Shooting of ’87.
My mother hesitated. I could hear her muffled crunching before she spoke again. “She said that Bobby DiCarlo has been coming over quite a bit and that last night,” she dropped her voice, dramatically, “he spent the night.” That little snitch! “Of course I told her to mind her own damn business. What my daughter does is none of her concern, and she can just keep her big nose out of it.”
“Good for you, Mom!” I shouted, proudly.
“Brandy,” she wailed, “tell me it isn’t so!”
It took me fifteen minutes to calm her down. I made up some wild story about how I’d won tickets to the policeman’s ball and he’d come over to tell me the good news, but he’d forgotten to bring me the tickets, so although it looked like he’d spent the night, in actuality he’d left and come back early the next morning. I am going straight to Hell.
When I hung up with my mother, I found Bobby bent over the kitchen table scribbling on a napkin. I leaned over his shoulder to get a better look. “What’s that?”
He’d drawn a diagram with the name “Williams” encircled in the middle and arrows pointing away from it, with other names encircled as well. On the top of the napkin he’d written “CONNECTIONS.”
“This is just conjecture, but let’s assume for now that it’s all true. We’ve got Williams, who blew up John’s boat in order to keep evidence about Maitlin from surfacing. We know that Williams is on the Hoffman and Gruber payroll as a demolitions expert.” He then pointed to the next arrow, with the words Mayor Richardson encircled. “We suspect that Hoffman and Gruber Construction are financing the mayor’s campaign in exchange for highly lucrative contracts. We’ve got a cop—”
“Or cops—”
“Or cops who are stealing evidence that could incriminate Maitlin. Now again, assuming all this is true, and we’re going with the blackmail theory, here, who has the most to lose if secrets about him suddenly became public? Who has a direct connection to the police force, and unlimited funding, thanks to a silent partnership with a very rich construction company?”
“The mayor!” I yelled excitedly, as if I’d just discovered the number one answer on “Family Feud.”
Bobby sat back, a satisfied grin on his face. “Now, all we’ve got to do is prove it. We can start by figuring out what Maitlin had on the mayor.”
“Isn’t that obvious?” I asked. “Maitlin somehow figured out that the mayor was being secretly funded by the construction company, so the mayor had to pay him off to keep his secret. But Maitlin didn’t want money. He was in big trouble and took his payment in stolen evidence. But then something changed.”
“What?” There was a spark in Bobby’s eye, and I could tell he enjoyed watching me try to figure it all out.
“Well,” I said, slowly. “Maybe the mayor got cold feet over protecting a killer, so he decided to put an end to the blackmail once and for all.” Unfortunately, the one person who held the answers was AWOL. Thurman Williams. “I think I should pay Philip Gruber a little visit.”
Bobby blanched at my suggestion. “What are you, nuts?”
“I thought we were past the name calling stage. Besides, what’s wrong with my asking a few questions?”
“Not a thing. Write me a list and I’ll be glad to ask them for you.”
“You’re not leaving me out of this, DiCarlo. I mean it.”
“Brandy, use your head. I’m a police officer. I can go there on official business. What are you going to do, say you’re with Early Edition News in Los Angeles, and you want to get the fashion scoop on what “hardhats” are wearing this holiday season?”
Sometimes even mule-headed Irish-Italian cops come up with good ideas.
Bobby had to get back to work. Before he left he inspected every door and window in the house to make sure they were locked up tight. He even offered to come back at midnight when his shift was over, but I steadfastly refused. “Mrs. Gentile has already ratted us out to my mother. That’s all you need is to have it somehow get back to your wife that you’re having sleepovers with your ex girlfriend.”
He knew I was right so he didn’t press the matter, but I was touched that he cared. Maybe it was possible that we could be friends again.
The night stretched before me. Janine had a date with a guy she met over the Internet. I was supposed to call her at nine to see how it was going. If it turned out that he was dyslexic and when he wrote in his online profile that he was 6’ 3” he really meant 3’6” she’d need an excuse to end the date early. Maybe that was shallow, but, as she says, being a five foot nine inch fourth grader was no picnic, either.
Frankie and Carla dropped by at eight to see if I wanted to join them at the movies. The Earlen Theater was playing Nightmare on Elm Street. They didn’t even know how funny that was. After they left for the movies I did two loads of laundry and scrubbed out the refrigerator. As a reward for all my hard work I ate a chocolate TastyKake. Well, not the whole thing. I ripped off the cakey bottom and just ate the icing. At nine o’clock I called Janine.
“Can you talk?”
“Yeah, he’s in the bathroom.”
“Well,” I said, “does he look like Johnny Depp, like he said in his profile?”
“Oh, he looks like Johnny Depp, all right. In ‘Ed Wood.’ He’s wearing a dress!”
“Are you sure it’s a dress? Maybe it’s a kilt. He could be Scottish.”
“I don’t think so. Plus, he ordered a ‘Pink Lady’ and he threw a hissy fit when they forgot the umbrella.” I offered my condolences and hung up.
At ten Franny called to remind me that tomorrow the bridesmaids were going for a final fitting on their dresses. Damn, that meant I’d have to shave my legs. I hadn’t worn a dress in ages and I hadn’t had sex in longer than that, so there’d been no big rush to attend to that bit of female vanity. I pulled up my pant leg. Ahhh! I was going to need a power mower to get the job done. Well, that should kill the rest of the evening.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
On Saturday morning six women of various shapes and sizes stuffed themselves into identical gowns in the communal dressing room at Mia’s Bridal Shop. “Mama Mia” as she insisted everyone call her, bustled back and forth, pinning, poking and prodding us into submission as Franny beamed with pride. I don’t know what it is about weddings that transform “Brides to be” into Fashion Nazis, but Franny proved to be no exception.
“Franny,” Janine said with surprising restraint, “I thought we’d agreed to lose the ass bows. Remember we all voted against them at the last fitting.”
“Yeah, well I voted them back in,” Franny said. “I think it gives the dress more pizzazz.”
“Pizza?” chirped Eddie’s cousin, Gina. She’d just flown in from Milan and spoke about five words of English, all food related.
“Well, I’m not walking down the aisle with a gigantic bow stuck to my butt,” Janine whined. “I look like a float in the Rose Parade.”
Franny gazed around the room. Her eyes settled on Celine, her buddy from work.
“Celine?” she asked hopefully.
Celine actually looked a little afraid. She refused to make eye contact. “I could live without pizzazz,” she gulped.
“Brandy?”
“I love ya, babe, but I’m with Janine on this one. I vote no on the ass bows.”
That just left Carla. “Well, I think they look great!” Carla enthused, unasked.
Franny sighed. If Carla thought they looked great, there was only one thing to do. She turned to Mama Mia. “Lose the ass bows.”
After the bridal shop we stopped by Victoria’s Secret, because Carla insisted it wouldn’t be a proper honeymoon unless it involved crotchless panties. Personally, I was never one to go in for kinky underwear. I get embarrassed just looking at thongs. Eeew! I’m more of a “military surplus underwear” kind of gal. Wholesome and modest and thoroughly boring.
I sighed, fingering some pale pink silk bikinis, and my thoughts began to drift to Nick. Decidedly unwholesome, immodest thoughts. And suddenly my old utilitarian underwear just wouldn’t do for a moment longer. While the rest of the crew was busy picking out slut wear for Franny’s big night, I sidled up to the counter surreptitiously holding three pair of very lacy French-cut bikinis, in black, mauve and beige. For the black ones I even threw in a matching bra. No need to make a big announcement. Just buying some underwear. No big deal. “Do you have any plain paper bags?” I whispered to the saleswoman, in hushed tones. She looked at me as if I were crazy, which I was. On impulse I’d just bought seventy-five dollars worth of panties because when I fantasized about having wild, unbridled sex with Nicholas Santiago, I wanted to look nice. Like he’d ever see me naked. Chance!
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