He met her gaze. “For a thug with no culture, you mean?”
“Or even a thug with a little culture.” His eyebrow lifted and she said, “Okay, some culture.” She stretched. “Now. How about a proper fuck?”
“You sure?”
She opened the other eye. “You mean, ‘do I think I can stand it’?” She rolled to face him on her side. Even then, she drew her arm up to cover her breasts. “I’ll take the chance, gangster.”
“No.” He stroked her shoulder. “I mean are you ready for this to be your time?”
She wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “Wut?”
“You only get the one time. Everybody does.”
As he’d said it, he was hesitant. This had been different in some way. Something had changed, and he hadn’t quite caught up with it.
When she glowered at him and gathered up her clothes, he didn’t feel the usual sense of relief. He sympathized with her. As the words came out of his mouth, he’d thought it was a dick move.
But that was his rule. Always had been, always would be. Everyone knew it. Well, everyone but Princess. She knew it now, though.
Seeing her crouch, picking up her shoes, he’d forgotten the party going on downstairs, the fact that there were another half dozen people in the apartment. He saw in her face that she’d realized the same thing at the same moment.
So, she was trapped. She had to dress in front of him, most likely in a hurry, so probably quite badly, or she had to run bare-assed with her dress bunched in front of her and her shoes in her hand, downstairs to the dungeon.
He stepped around her, went to the back study, and closed the door. He gave her at least ten minutes. In that time, he wished she’d wait.
With her clothes on or off, it didn’t matter, but he wanted her to stay. Let him talk to her. Maybe make her understand. Maybe something else.
When he opened the door and peered around it, she was gone. He felt an emptiness. And, damn, the taste of her. The memory lingered on his tongue.
~ ~ ~
Next morning when Agostini made breakfast, he noticed Callaghan and Calhoun carefully not giving him looks. Both of them strenuously avoided eye contact.
He had to restrain himself from saying, “Okay, I fucked the hostage. Kind of. But not really, all right? And, anyways, what’s it to ya?”
Thinking that only told him that it was his own discomfort he was worried about, not theirs. He sliced up some red and green bell peppers for the omelets and boiled up some water for poached eggs.
No sign of Dino yet. “How many of those dancers are still here?” he asked Callaghan and Calhoun. “Either of you know?”
Calhoun’s eyes flicked to the floor and back up at him. “Mona, Toni, and Kat went with Dino into the guest room.”
Good going, even for Dino. Calhoun looked down again, then he said, “Julz and Shawna I left in my room.”
Callaghan said, “Yeah, Dawn and the other one are still sleeping.” Agostini looked at him. Callaghan spread his palms, “Okay, I can’t remember. In fact, I don’t really know. They’ve all got nicknames for each other.”
Agostini kept still and raised his eyebrows. Nothing took the sting out of a little discomfort like seeing someone else being awkward. “These two, they kept on calling each other ‘Sausage.’ ”
Calhoun’s eyes widened, too. Callaghan said, “I know, right?”
When Princess emerged, she looked defiantly into Callaghan’s eyes and he dipped his head. Then Calhoun. He did the same. When she looked straight at Agostini, he nearly lost the balance of the omelet pan.
“Ready to give me back my club now, Agostini?”
Somehow, the world seemed to slowly spin as they both froze for a moment. Then they both broke off. She went to perch at the end of the counter and started to grab juice, coffee and an omelet.
She knew it wasn’t going to be as simple as that and something would have to be worked out around her father’s idiotic debts. But she wanted to know that he made the agreement in good faith. And he was sure that he had.
Agostini sat himself halfway along the counter with just a coffee. At least there were a whole list of high-five, whoop-worthy successes to count. Some of his mood of the conquering hero, generous in victory, returned to him.
He lifted the phone. A quick round-up of the winning bidders would restore some more of the shine to the day. First, he called Clemson. “Jay. Good morning. Not calling too early, I hope? I was so glad you could make it last night.”
Clemson sounded old. “Mr. Agostini. This isn’t the best time.”
Taking a tug on his coffee. Pierce said, “No problem, Jay, tell me when’s better for you. I can call you back.”
There was a pause.
“Agostini, I may have a problem completing.”
Agostini listened. The room was still. The look in his eyes must have quieted everybody down. “You do remember that you signed a contract, Jay?”
“Of all people, Agostini, I don’t expect you to start getting legalistic on me.” He sounded pouty, resentful.
Of all people. Agostini wondered whether Jay would prefer Agostini’s more usual means of problem-solving. Calhoun and Callaghan could be with him in no time at all. He gripped the phone.
“What happened, Jay?” His mind raced. “What’s happened between last night and this morning?” And before Clemson replied, he saw it.
“I had a call from an associate of yours. A Mr. Markov?” Yvgeny. “He said there was some risk that we hadn’t been made aware of.”
The risk that Yvgeny might not like you completing on the deal. Agostini said, “Look, let’s talk this through, Jay. I’ll be with you in about an hour and a half.”
“No, Agostini, I’m–”
“Sorry, Jay, you’re cutting out. If you can hear me, I’ll see you later this morning.” And he hung up. He breathed deeply. “Callaghan, get over to Clemson right now.”
“I’ll be there in less than fifteen minutes, boss. I’ll make sure he’s waiting when you want to get around there.”
“Come with me, Callaghan. We’ll get around to see the others.”
Princess was watching him. She’d figured out the big picture. “Let me help.”
He stopped. “Okay, what do you think you can do?” It wasn’t a challenge, just a simple question. “Have you got something that our investors might be persuaded by?”
“I might have, Pierce. Leave me their numbers.”
He was skeptical. “Something they might fear more than Yvgeny?”
“I think it’s worth a try.”
“Okay. Do you need a car?”
“No, I’ll use cabs. They’re easier to park.”
He looked at her like he hadn’t really seen her at all up to now. And yet he had. For the whole night, he had been awake and trying to keep the smell of her fresh.
“Before you go,” she said, “better leave me your cell number, too.”
What the hell does she think she can do? he wondered. He thought that he probably should stop her, but what if she did have an idea? And what if his approach didn’t fly as fast or as well as he needed it to?
The whole purpose in Yvgeny’s coming to the launch last night was to have enough people to tell him who the investors were. That, Pierce realized, was all that he needed to do.
Arthur Cane wouldn’t have been much good to him but, like Dino said, Russians are chess players. He would have got to some others, too. A waitress maybe, a barman. Even one of the croupiers.
Cane could have been a sacrifice. A knight to distract the opposition while pawns did the job. Would his Princess do the job of a pawn? Or even of a queen?
It surprised him to notice that he’d thought of her as his Princess.
Princess almost had her club back. She’d kept her part of the deal, and she knew that she could make Agostini keep to his.
She wasn’t about to let anything or anyone stop her from getting Hotsteppa’s back. Not her father or his gambling creditors, not P
ierce Agostini, not any of the investors, not even Yvgeny.
Agostini and Calhoun had left. Princes wanted to talk to the dancers. She realized that she didn’t even know what rooms any of them were in. No matter. She washed up Agostini’s omelet pan and dried it. A big steel serving spoon on the rack was what she needed.
She beat the back of the pan with the back of the spoon as hard as she could a couple dozen times, like a dinner gong in an old stately home.
She walked around the big main room banging the pan, then she shouted, “Girls? You have to get out here and help me.”
Then she banged the pan some more. The girls began to straggle out from rooms Princess didn’t even know were there.
“I need your help,” Princess told all of them, “very urgently.”
Toni came out grumpy. “You didn’t have to make all that fucking noise.” Even with makeup smeared all over her face and her hair looking like she put it on backwards, she still looked like she could be on the cover of a magazine.
“You know what you girls look like right now?”
Toni nodded, gravely. “And I don’t appreciate being hauled out like this.”
“Exactly.” Princess said. “If I’d been any more considerate, you’d all have spent the next half-hour fixing your hair and your faces. I need your help, and I need it right now.”
Toni raised an eyebrow and tilted her head. “Fair enough. What is it you need?”
“Were any of you keeping company with the investors last night?” The girls all looked at each other, still bleary. Their frowns seemed to say, What is she talking about?
Mona said, “We all were. It was what Dino asked us along for.”
Princess sighed with relief. “That’s perfect. Grab some coffee and get around the counter. We’ve got work to do.”
While Calhoun drove, Agostini called all of the other investors. Each one of them was evasive, hard to reach, or unavailable. It angered Agostini, but it was exactly what he expected.
“Boss,” Calhoun said, negotiating the Grand Cherokee around Columbus Circle, “when we get with Mr. Clemson, are we going to be using diplomacy or force?”
“Clemson’s had Callaghan staring in his face for about forty minutes. He will have considered all the ways to say ‘no’ to us and their immediate implications. I think he’ll be ready to ask what we want and how we’d like it wrapped. We can just wait until he makes an offer with cherries on it. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I’m thinking it’s going to take us seeing all of the investors to put this straight. One at a time.”
“I’m sure that it will.”
“So, if we can do it with diplomacy, then all well and good. But if we have to put the arm on one or two of them, then word could get to the others.”
“Yeah. Could get messy.”
“Sure, and any of those that hear about it, they’ll be thinking to themselves, ‘Well, which of them should I be more afraid of, Yvgeny or Agostini?’ You know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. These guys, they’re bankers. They may do horrifically bad things to hundreds or even thousands of people any day of the week, but they never have to look any one of them in the eye.”
“No,” Calhoun said, “and they’ve no experience of being on the thin end of it, either.”
Agostini nodded. “Apt to be unpredictable,” he said. “I don’t know what we can do about it, but it’s good to keep in mind.”
The morning traffic was frustratingly slow. Agostini admired Calhoun’s ability to stay cool. Driving in this with the day they had ahead, Agostini would not have been calm.
“Boss, do you think that Yvgeny has been to visit Clemson, or has he just spoken to him on the phone or on Skype, or whatever?”
“I don’t know. Clemson’s not an early riser, so my guess would be that Yvgeny wouldn’t have had time to get to him, unless he dragged him out of bed.”
“So, how could he have made such a powerful impression on them? What could he have said to make them all suddenly get all shy like that?”
“I thought about that. If the situation were reversed, I think what I would do, the fastest thing, would be to call and say something scary about the legitimacy or the credibility of the deal. Make them believe that their money’s at risk.”
“Ah, that would make sense.”
“So then, my guess would be that he’d aim to buy them out.”
Calhoun nodded. “But on the cheap.”
“Naturally.”
Calhoun thought a moment. “So their money really would be at risk.”
“Sure. At risk of Yvgeny gouging it.”
Calhoun worked the car across the traffic to get off Broadway. “Making them a kind of fire-sale offer, you mean.”
“Exactly. ‘Take this low-ball now, or your money could be gone by tomorrow.’ That would spook them, all right.”
Even avoiding the approach to Times Square, they were still making slow progress in fits and starts. “Now,” Calhoun cleared his throat, “that little girl, Princess.”
His tone was different. Agostini knew that whatever it was he had in mind, he wasn’t comfortable talking about it. It was the same feeling he got from Calhoun and Callaghan earlier where they wouldn’t meet his eyes. He knew that it was about him and Princess. He thought it was kind of funny.
Calhoun went on, “She’s got a head on her shoulders, knows what she’s about right enough. Do you think she might have an angle on this thing?”
“I don’t think we can count on it,” Agostini told him, “but it is possible that she can help.”
“Would you know what she has in mind?”
“I have a guess, but I don’t know for sure.”
”It’s a shame one of us couldn’t stay with her.”
“Yeah, I thought that, too. What we have to do, though, it could take you, me, and Callaghan.”
“She’s a bright kid, that one, wouldn’t you say, boss?” There he was again, just like he was around breakfast time, taking care to not watch Agostini, avoiding his eye as he answered.
“She’s bright, sure, Calhoun. What are you getting at?”
“Well, I’d say that you’ve enjoyed having her around. Would that not be so?”
Agostini looked hard at Calhoun. “Where are you heading with this? What the hell is in your mind?
“Oh, nothing.”
Agostini was impatient. “Spit it out, man.”
Calhoun hesitated. They got stuck at a red light. He took a breath and said, “Well, it’s just this. With her being a hostage and all, I’m thinking it could be time soon to be handing her back. I don’t know what’s in your mind at all now, but those are my thoughts and, well, you know. How are you going to feel about that?”
The light changed and they moved off. Two blocks along, Calhoun made a left.
Perfectly Bad: a bad boy romance Page 17
