Texas Proud

by Diana Palmer

“How much in advance?” he asked, producing his wallet.

  She told him. He handed her several bills.

  “I don’t rob banks, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said with a wry smile. “I’m a businessman. I live in New Jersey, and I own a hotel in Vegas. Which is why I hate staying in them.”

  “Oh! You have business here, then?”

  He nodded solemnly. “Business,” he agreed. “I’ll be around for a while.”

  “It will be nice to have the room rented,” she confessed. “It’s been vacant for a long time. My last tenant got married.”

  “I’ll see you later, then.” He hesitated, looking back toward the room where he’d left Bernadette. “She’ll be okay, you think?”

  “Yes. She might look fragile, but Bernie’s tough. She’s had to be.”

  “Bernie?” His eyes widened.

  She laughed. “That’s what we call her. We’ve known Bernadette all her life.”

  “Small towns.” He smiled. “I grew up in one, myself. Far from here.” He pulled out a business card and handed it to her. “The lower number is my cell phone. If she needs anything tonight, you call me, okay? I can come and drive her to the hospital if she needs to be seen.”

  Mrs. Brown was surprised at that concern from a stranger. “You have a kind heart.”

  He shrugged. “Not always. See you.”

  He went out, motioning for Santi to follow him. They got in the limo and drove off. Mrs. Brown watched it go with real interest. She wondered who the outsider was.

  * * *

  Mikey was all too aware of the driver’s irritation. “They told me to keep an eye on you all the time,” he told Mikey.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not sharing a room with you, no matter what the hell they told you. Besides,” he added, settling back into his seat, “Cash Grier’s got one of his men shadowing me with a sniper kit.”

  “It’s a small town,” Santi began.

  “A small town with half the retired mercs in America,” Mikey cut in. “And my cousin lives right down the road. Remember him? Senior FBI agent Paul Fiore? Lives in Jacobsville, works out of San Antonio, worth millions?”

  “Oh. Him. Right.”

  “Besides, I know the sniper Grier’s got watching me.” He chuckled. “He doesn’t miss. Ever. And they snagged The Avengers to watch when the sniper’s asleep.”

  “The Avengers?” Santi roared. “That’s a comic book!”

  “Rogers and Barton. They’re called the Avengers because Captain America’s name in the series is Rogers, and Hawkeye’s is Barton. Get it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I know how bad Mario Cotillo wants me, Santi,” Mikey said quietly. “I’m the only thing standing between Tony Garza and a murder-one conviction, because I know Tony didn’t do it and I can prove it. Tony’s in hiding, too, in an even safer place than me.”

  “Where?” Santi asked.

  Mikey laughed coarsely. “Sure, like I’m going to tell you.”

  Santi stiffened. “I’m no snitch,” he said, offended.

  “Anybody can hack a cell phone or the elaborate two-way radio we got in this car, and listen to us when we talk,” Mikey said with visible impatience. “Use your brain, okay?”

  “I do!”

  “Well, you must be keeping it in a safe place when you’re not using it,” Mikey muttered under his breath, but not so that Santi could hear him. The guy was good muscle and a capable driver. It wouldn’t do to upset him too much. Not now, anyway.

  Mikey leaned back with a long sigh and thought of the woman he’d met tonight. He was sorry he’d misjudged her, but plenty of women had thrown themselves into his path. He was extremely wealthy. He had money in Swiss banks that the feds couldn’t touch. And while he’d been accused of a few crimes, including murder, he’d never even been indicted. His record was pretty clean. Well, for a guy in his profession. He was a crime boss back in Jersey, where Tony Garza was the big boss. Tony owned half the rackets around Newark. But Tony had some major new competition, an outsider who saw himself as the next Capone. He’d targeted Tony at once, planned to take him down on a fake murder charge with the help of a friend who worked in the federal attorney’s office. It had backfired. Tony also had friends there. So did Mikey. But Mikey had been with Tony in a bar when the murder had taken place and by chance, Mikey had a photo of himself and Tony with a date stamp on his cell phone. He’d sent copies to Paulie and Cash Grier and a friend down in the Bahamas. Before the feds could jump Tony, who might have been dealt with handily and at once before it even came to trial, Mikey and Tony had both skipped town.

  The next obvious play by Cotillo would be to put out contracts on Mikey and Tony. Mikey smiled. He knew most of the heavy hitters in the business. So did Tony. It wouldn’t work, but Cotillo didn’t know that. Yet. Meanwhile, Mikey and Tony were playing a waiting game. Both had feds on the job protecting them. Mikey wasn’t telling Santi that, however. He didn’t trust anybody really, except his cousin Paul. The fewer people who knew, the safer he was going to be.

  Not that life held such attractions for him these days. He had all the money he’d ever need. He had a fearsome reputation, which gave him plenty of protection back home in New Jersey. But he was alone. He was a lonely man. He’d asked a woman to share his life only once, and she’d laughed. He was good in bed and he bought her pretty things, but she wasn’t going to get married to a known gangster. She had her reputation to think of. After all, she was a debutante, from one of the most prominent families in Maryland. Marry a hood? Ha! Fat chance.

  It had broken his heart. Even now, years and years after it happened, it was a sore spot. He was more than his reputation. He was fair and honest, and he never hurt anybody without a damned good reason. Mostly, he went after people who hurt people he cared about.

  Well, there was also the odd job for Tony when he was younger. But those days were mostly behind him. He could still handle a sniper kit when he needed to. It was just that he didn’t have the same need for notoriety that had once ruled his life.

  Nobody needed him. Funny, the main reason he’d enjoyed the debutante was that she’d pretended to be helpless and clingy. He’d enjoyed that. Since his grandmother’s death, there had been nobody who cared about him except Paul, and nobody who needed him at all. Briefly, he’d helped his cousin protect a young woman from Jacobsville, Merrie Grayling, before she married the Wyoming rancher. But that had been sort of an accessory thing. He’d liked her very much, yet as a sort of adoptive baby sister, nothing romantic. It had been nice, helping Paulie with that little chore, especially since he knew the contract killer who’d been assigned to get Merrie. He had known how to get the hit called off—actually, by getting Merrie, an artist of great talent, to do a portrait of Tony. The contract killer had ended badly, but that happened sometimes. Most sane people didn’t go against Tony, who’d told the guy to call off the hit.

  But all that had been three years ago. Life moved on. Now here was Mikey, in hiding from a newcomer in Jersey, trying to protect his friend Tony.

  He thought again about the young woman who’d fallen in front of the limo. He felt bad that he’d misjudged her. She was pretty. What had she called herself—Bernadette? He smiled. He’d been to France, to the grotto where Saint Bernadette had dug into a mudhole, found a clear spring and seen the apparition she referred to as the Immaculate Conception, and he’d seen Bernadette in her coffin. She looked no older than when she’d died, a century and more ago, a beautiful young woman. He wondered if her namesake even knew who Saint Bernadette was. He wondered why she’d been given that name.

  So many questions. Well, he was going to be staying in the same rooming house, so he’d probably get the chance to talk to her, to ask her about her family. She was nice. She didn’t like pity, although she had a devastating medical condition, and she had a temper. He smiled, remembering that thick plait of bl
ond hair down her back. He loved long hair. It must be hard to keep, for someone with her limitations.

  His little Greek grandmother had been arthritic. He recalled her gnarled hands and the times when she hadn’t been able to get out of bed. Mikey had carried her from room to room when she had special company, or outside when she wanted to sit in the sun. He couldn’t remember what sort of arthritis she’d had, but it was in the family bible, along with plenty of other family information. He kept the bible in a safe-deposit box back in Jersey, along with precious photographs of people long dead. There had been one of the debutante. But he’d burned that one.

  The car was eating up the miles to San Antonio, where Mikey had left his luggage in a hotel under an assumed name. He’d send Santi in to pick it up and pay the bill, just in case, while he waited outside in the parking lot. You couldn’t be too careful. He needed to send a text to Paulie, as well, but that could wait until he was back in Jacobsville. He should ask Paulie about hackers and what they could find out, and how. He still wasn’t up on modern methods of surveillance.

  He leaned back against the seat with a long sigh. Bernadette. He smiled to himself.

  * * *

  Bernadette took a hot bath, and it did help ease some of the discomfort. Mrs. Brown had been kind enough to add a handhold on the side of the tub so that Bernadette would find it easier to get in and out of the tub. She took showers, however, not baths. It was so much quicker to stand up. Besides, the bathroom was used by all the boarders on the ground floor, although there had been just Bernadette for several weeks, and poor Mrs. Brown had enough to do without having to scrub the tub all the time. She did have a daily woman who came in to help with the heavy chores. But Bernadette was fastidious and it bothered her, the idea of baths when at least one of the former boarders had been male and liked lots of musk-smelling bath oil. For women, especially, baths in a less than spotlessly clean tub could lead to infections. Bernie had enough to worry about without those. So, she took showers.

  She dressed in her pajama bottoms and one of the soft, thick T-shirts that she wore with it.

  There was a tap at the door and Mrs. Brown came in with a cup of tea in a beautiful ceramic cup on its delicate saucer. “Chamomile tea,” she said with a smile. “It will help you sleep, sweetheart.”

  “You’re spoiling me,” Bernadette complained softly. “You have enough to do without adding me to your burdens.”

  “You’re no burden,” Mrs. Brown said gently. “You keep your room spotless, you never mess anything up, and I have yet to have to pick up after you anywhere.” She sighed. “I wish we could say the same for the two nice women on the second floor, and don’t you dare tell them I said that!”

  Bernadette laughed. “I won’t. You know I don’t gossip.”

  “Of course you don’t.” She put the cup and saucer on the bedside table. “What a nice man who brought you home,” she added with a speculative glance that Bernadette missed. “He’s renting a room here, too!”

  Bernadette caught her breath. “He is?” she stammered, and flushed a little.

  Mrs. Brown chuckled. “He is. The one on the other side of the bathroom, but that won’t be a problem. I’ll make sure he knows to knock first when he needs to use it.”

  “Okay, then.” She sipped tea and smiled with her eyes closed. “This is so good!”

  “I put honey in it, instead of sugar, and just a hint of cinnamon.”

  Bernadette looked up at the older woman. “You know, he thought I’d fallen in front of his car on purpose.”

  “You fell? You didn’t tell me!”

  She sipped her tea. “The sidewalk was slippery and my toe hit a brick that was just a little out of place. I went flying into the street. Lucky for me that his driver had good brakes.” She frowned. “It was a limousine.”

  “I noticed,” Mrs. Brown said with a wry smile. “He was wearing a very expensive suit, as well. I think I recognized him. He looks like Paul Fiore’s cousin.”

  “I heard about that,” Bernadette said, “when I was working as a receptionist for a group of attorneys, before I got my paralegal certification from night school and Mr. Kemp hired me. I never saw him, but people talked about him. He was helping protect Merrie Grayling, wasn’t he?”

  “That was the gossip. Goodness, imagine having contract killers stalking two local girls in the same family!” She shook her head. “I had it from the Grayling girls’ housekeeper, Mandy Swilling. She said the girls’ father had killed a local woman for selling him out to the feds on racketeering charges, and the woman’s son put out contracts on both Grayling’s daughters, to get even. He thought their father loved them so much that it would really hurt him.” She sighed. “Well, the man was dead by then, and the woman’s son was charged with conspiracy to commit murder. They say he’ll be in prison for a long time, even though he did try to help them find the killers.”

  “Good enough for him,” Bernie said. “Murder is a nasty business.”

  “That’s another thing. They say that Mr. Fiore’s cousin Mikey is mixed up with organized crime.”

  “His cousin?”

  “The man who carried you inside the house tonight,” Mrs. Brown replied.

  Bernie sat with the cup suspended in one hand. “Oh. Him.” She laughed. She hadn’t really been paying attention.

  “Him.” She laughed. “But I don’t believe it. He’s so nice. He was really concerned about you.”

  “Not when I first fell, he wasn’t,” Bernie said, wrinkling her nose. “He thought I did it on purpose to get his attention.” She hesitated. “Well, you know, he is drop-dead gorgeous. When I first saw him, I could hardly even get my breath,” she confessed. “It was like being hit in the stomach. I’ve never seen a real live man who looked like that. He could be in movies.” She flushed. “Well, he’s good-looking, I mean.”

  “I suppose some women do find excuses to attract men like that,” Mrs. Brown said in his defense.

  “I suppose. He changed his mind when he saw the cane, though.” Her face grew sad. “When I was in high school, there was this really nice boy. I thought he was going to ask me to the senior prom. I was so excited. One of my girlfriends said he was talking about me to someone else, although she didn’t hear what he said.” She looked down into the now-empty cup. “Then another friend told me the truth. He said that I wasn’t bad to look at, but he didn’t want to take a disabled girl to a dance.” She smiled sadly, aware of Mrs. Brown’s angry expression. “After that, I sort of gave up on dating.”

  “There must have been nicer boys,” she replied.

  “Oh, there were. But there were prettier girls who didn’t walk with canes.” She put down the cup and saucer. “I didn’t need the cane all the time, of course. But when I had flares, I’d just fall if I made a misstep.” She shook her head. “No man is going to want a woman who may end up an invalid one day. So I go to work and save all I can, and hope that by the time I need to give up and apply for disability, I’ll have enough to tide me over until I can get it.” She made a face. “Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice not to have health issues?”

  “It would. And I’m sorry that you do. But, Bernie, a man who loves you won’t care if you have them.” She added, “Any more than you’d care if he had them.”

  Bernie smiled. “You’re a nice woman. I’m so lucky to live here. And thank you for the tea.”

  “You’re very welcome. You get some sleep. Tomorrow’s Saturday, so you can sleep in for a change.”

  “A nice change.” She grimaced. “But I don’t want you to wait breakfast for me...!”

  “I’ll put it on a plate in the fridge and you can heat it up in the microwave,” said Mrs. Brown. “So stop worrying about things.”

  Bernie laughed. “Okay. Thanks again.”

  “You’re very welcome.” She hesitated at the door. “What a very good thing that we don’t have many young
women living here, except you.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, that nice man who brought you in is really good-looking, and we don’t want a line forming at his door, now do we?” she teased.

  Bernie blushed, but Mrs. Brown had closed the door before she saw it.

  Chapter Two

  Mikey waited for Santi in a parking spot near the front door of the San Antonio hotel. He hoped it wouldn’t take too long. The streets were busy, even at this time of night, and some of the people milling around were wearing gang colors and had multiple tats. He knew about the Los Serpientes gang. Although they were technically based in Houston, they had a presence here in San Antonio. Paulie had told him about them. They looked out for children and old people. Amazing. Kind of like the Yakuza in Japan.

  Japan was a great place to visit. Mikey had gone there for several weeks after his tour of duty in the Middle East. He’d needed to wind down and get over some of the things he’d seen and done there. He’d been with a group of military overseas that included two men from here, Rogers and Barton, who’d been protecting the Grayling girls from contract killers. He hadn’t served directly with them, but Cag Hart and the local DA, Blake Kemp, had been overseas at the same time. From Afghanistan to Iraq, he’d carried a rifle and served his country. The memories weren’t good, but he had others he lived with. He just added the more recent ones to them.

  He’d been surprised to find his company commander involved with Merrie Grayling. The Wyoming rancher, Ren Colter, had been the company commander of his sniper unit overseas. In fact, the Grayling girls’ protectors, Rogers and Barton, had also been part of his group. What a homecoming that had been. Not a really great one, because Mikey had gotten in trouble scrounging materials for a brothel. But his commanding officer had gotten him out of trouble with Ren, because Mikey had the greatest luck in the world at poker. He never lost. It was one reason he was so rich. Of course, he couldn’t get into casinos anymore. He didn’t cheat. He didn’t have to. But that luck had gotten him barred all over the world, even in Monte Carlo. He chuckled. It was sort of a mark of honor, being barred from those places. So he didn’t mind that much. He had all the money he’d ever need until he died an old man, so who cared?