The Given

by Vicki Pettersson

  “I’d like to ask you to stay here at Marin’s this afternoon,” Grif said to Kit. He knew better than to demand it. “Uncle Al and I can see to the business at the casino.”

  He was praying that they wouldn’t have to fight about it for long. He couldn’t explain in front of Zicaro and Marin why it was important, but she’d want to know. She always did. So even Grif was surprised when she only nodded. “I think that’s best.”

  “You do?” Marin asked.

  “You do?” said Zicaro, also goggling.

  “You do?” Grif said.

  “Sure,” Kit said, blinking back at them all. “Divide and conquer, right? You guys can go compare the size of your flash drives with the bad guys, but there’s a ton of information that still needs to be combed through.” She glanced at Marin, her look growing pointed. “I can’t do it all myself.”

  Marin’s jaw clenched as she shoved back from the table. “I have to get ready for work.”

  She strode from the room without another word, obviously upset, though Grif didn’t know why. He was just relieved that Kit would remain out of danger. “So you’ll let me handle this part?”

  “Us,” Zicaro corrected.

  “Happy to,” Kit said, and rose as well, heading to the kitchen with her coffee cup, gone before Grif could even frown, much less question why.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Grif worked the North America beat as a Centurion, but it’d only been that way for the past decade. When he’d started ferrying wounded souls to the Everlast—the murders and the suicides, the hit-and-runs, the skydivers with badly packed chutes—Sarge had been worried that Grif wouldn’t be able to keep his emotions in check, so he’d confined Grif’s Takes to Continental Europe, where speech and cultural relativism were barriers to Grif’s understanding. Where the dead couldn’t burden him with the details of their demise.

  In retrospect, Grif could admit that it’d worked. He’d been so busy using body language to convince some newly dead sap to follow him into oblivion that he didn’t have time to consider how their deaths, time and again, made him feel.

  Most memorable from those first few decades were the Takes he’d been assigned in France, a society that, as a whole, continued to baffle Grif to this day. Broadly speaking, they were resistant to change, and had extreme and unyielding opinions regarding what constituted the joie de vivre, the dual starting points always being family and France. These stubborn traits seemed to double immediately upon death. Try pulling a soul that nationalistic away from his home and family and terroir, even after death.

  Yet what struck Grif most about the French was each person’s heartfelt reluctance to leave not only their bodies and loved ones behind, but to be forced to abandon the raw minutiae of life itself.

  “But the frommage,” lamented one Frenchman, staring back at the Surface with sad, hangdog eyes, even though he was perched on the cusp of the Universe. He’d been decapitated while riding his motorcycle through the Alps, so Grif didn’t understand his complaint. He no longer had a mouth to savor said cheese with anyway.

  “But I will not be able to feel the sea breeze upon my face,” complained another Take, a woman who had, ironically, drowned. “If there is no Riviera waiting for me in heaven, then I want no part of it!”

  Grif had been pressed for time that day—he had another Take within the hour in Corsica—and told her that if that’s the way she felt he’d go ahead and let her sink to the bottom of the sea. She stoically said au revoir. Sarge had forced him to double back for her anyway.

  So it was with those experiences coloring his view that he gazed up at the tricolor atop the Paris Hotel with more than a little trepidation. He tried passing the look off as boredom when he caught Zicaro watching.

  “I don’t get this place,” he grumbled, carefully avoiding eye contact with the doormen as he wheeled Zicaro through the front entrance.

  “They’re trying to make it feel like Pair-ee,” said Zicaro, inhaling the casino air deeply, and gagging on air-freshener instead of smoke.

  “Not this place,” Grif said, though that was exactly what he meant, but he gestured back to the long bank of doors and the Strip behind them. “The whole damned street. Paris is over here, old Rome is over there. Venice is down the block, and a mountain village is spraying water all over the corner of Flamingo Boulevard. They’ve gone and mashed it all together and none of it looks like it’s supposed to. It tries to look like everything but ends up looking like nothing at all.”

  “Sure it does,” Zicaro argued, taking another deep breath and sighing contentedly. “It looks big and shiny and fun.”

  “It’s not fun to me,” Grif grumbled as machines clanged on every side of him, making him hunch his shoulders.

  “Because you’re boring,” Zicaro scoffed, as they rolled past the craps tables. “That’s your squeaky-clean midwestern upbringing rearing its head.”

  Grif cut his eyes at Zicaro. “You did do your homework, didn’t you?”

  “Absolutely. Though one look at you and it’s clear you’re corn-fed.”

  “Then why were you always trying to intimate that I was made?” Grif said, tone curt. “If you’d really done your homework, you’d know that I would never cotton to working for the boys.”

  “Oh, I knew that.” Zicaro waved his hand in the air, scoffing as Grif stopped in place. The couple walking behind them cursed, then swerved, nearly hitting Grif with a plastic drinking cup. “But poke enough bears and you’re bound to rouse at least one growl.”

  “You’re lucky you didn’t rouse more than that,” Grif grumbled as he resumed pushing the chair.

  The old man shrugged. “Why do you think I threw in the stories about aliens falling through hidden portals?” And this time, when Grif stopped to stare at him, Zicaro’s face widened into a grin so large it almost erased the wrinkles.

  “Why, Loony Uncle Al,” Grif said, tilting his head. “I think you just said something incredibly sane.”

  “Finally.” Zicaro pointed at a sign that read PROMENADE. “Someone who appreciates my genius.”

  The Promenade of the Paris Hotel was linked to Bally’s, its sister property that had held court on the corner of Flamingo Boulevard for more than forty years. While Grif stood by his censure of the themed casinos, they were something to see. Everything on the glittering main drag had been produced by minds that believed anything was possible. It was an ode to excess, and since Vegas averaged a hundred thousand new visitors a day, despite any complaint Grif lodged about shopping malls with painted ceilings made to ape the outdoors or neon that strong-armed nighttime skylines into burning like midday, the general public seemed to enjoy it. It was a world meant to turn everything on its head.

  So it was fitting that, as they wheeled into the replica of a Parisian street corner, he and Zicaro would do the same.

  “Follow my lead, right?” he said, as the Parisian street scene engulfed them.

  “I don’t know,” Zicaro replied, undaunted. “Hard to do when you’re pushing me in front of you.”

  Grif spotted Justin and the two orderlies. They were taking up the whole of a park bench, lounging beneath a faux evergreen, and sharing, it seemed, what was left of a warm baguette.

  A snort rose from Zicaro’s wheelchair as he spotted the trio, too. “Yeah, that helps them blend.”

  Though warm enough indoors to remove his coat, Grif kept it buttoned, and felt Justin’s coal-dark gaze on his right pocket as they approached. He was clearly remembering the gun Grif had pulled on him the day before.

  The wheelchair bumped over the faux cobblestones, a jarring journey that the three men evidently found amusing. When they came to a stop, Larry, no longer wearing his name tag, flanked Grif’s left. The other man, Eric, took up the right.

  “Where’s Ms. Craig?” Justin asked, squared in front of them all.

  “We figured you got well enough acquainted with her on the phone last night,” Grif replied drily.

  “That we did,” Justin s
aid, motioning Grif to the bench. “Sit.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  Grif just tucked his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels as he glanced around. Spotting a cocktail waitress on her way back to the casino, he beckoned her over.

  “Can we get a few of those?” Grif asked, nodding at her full tray.

  The cocktail waitress gave them all a bored look. “You can have them all. My ‘customers’ put in an order and then left without tipping me.”

  “Well, that ain’t right,” Larry said, taking a drink from the tray. Justin and Eric followed suit. “Tip the girl, Griffin Shaw.”

  “Sure.” Grif pulled out his wallet. “Might as well make it a party.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” said Justin, accepting his drink and toasting Grif. “We’ll celebrate you returning our flash drives.”

  Grif nodded at Zicaro, and the old man pulled the flash drives from his sweater pocket. “So now what?” he asked, handing them over.

  “Now you walk out of here with us,” Justin said, tucking the drives into the pocket of his leather jacket. “And then we take you to an undisclosed location where we can kill you.”

  “That’s an interesting proposition,” Grif said, nodding like he was considering it.

  “Or we could just play some craps,” Zicaro tried, angling his drinking glass up as if in toast.

  The large man just looked at it for a moment before slapping it out of Zicaro’s hand. It shattered musically across the glossy cobblestone.

  Eric and Larry laughed and clinked glasses. Larry downed his drink, while Eric merely sipped. Grif remained still.

  “You’re with me,” Justin said, angling himself behind Zicaro. “You two, get him.”

  This was not going as planned. Grif looked around, but their backup hadn’t arrived yet, and the waitress—a friend of Kit’s—was long gone. So he reached out to stop Justin himself . . . exactly what the man was expecting. Justin swung to backhand Grif, who dodged just as Larry stepped between them. Justin immediately whirled away with Zicaro, and Larry grinned as he reached for Grif’s arm.

  He stopped grinning when he wobbled.

  Realization struck Eric’s face just as Grif’s fist struck Larry’s jaw. Eric was so shocked that he, too, dropped his glass, and though he tried to grab Grif’s forearm, he swayed as well. “You fucking—”

  A voice interrupted, causing him to jolt. “Is there a problem here?”

  The police officer stood directly behind Eric.

  “Yes,” Grif said to Dennis, though his gaze darted in the direction that Justin had disappeared with Zicaro. How could they have vanished so quickly? “These men are inebriated.”

  “Intoxicated?” asked the officer.

  “And assholes,” Grif said.

  “Intoxicated, inebriated assholes at a casino in Vegas?” Dennis’s eyes went wide and he lifted a groaning Larry from the ground. He turned him toward the exit. “We can’t have that.”

  And Dennis couldn’t carry Larry and control Eric at the same time. So, despite his worry over Zicaro—despite spotting an empty wheelchair parked at the elevator banks—Grif looped his arm around Eric as if they were buddies.

  “Anything happens to him,” Grif whispered, steering Eric toward the garage, “and I’m going to take it out on you.”

  And finally, rightfully, Eric looked scared.

  Ray DiMartino was the infamous Sal DiMartino’s only son.

  Ray DiMartino was the man who, just last year, had told Kit and Grif about Barbara, saying that she hated Griffin Shaw, though he couldn’t say why, or where she was now.

  Ray DiMartino would also know about the three jumbo diamonds that went missing from his mother’s dressing room fifty years earlier.

  Which meant that Ray DiMartino hadn’t just been holding out on Kit and Grif when they questioned him earlier this year . . . he’d been out-and-out lying.

  And that was why Kit was going to question Ray while Grif and Zicaro were busy returning the flash drives. Kit knew she’d surprised Grif when she’d agreed to let them handle the meet, but she just couldn’t get the phone call out of her head. The one that’d come through Barbara’s phone on the same night of her murder. Is it done?

  “They were working together,” Kit muttered, jaw going tight as she squinted up at the sign of the Masquerade strip club. It was only two in the afternoon, so the rest of the lot was near empty, with only a few cars pocking it like a disease.

  Kit wished she had Grif’s ability to bypass any alarm system with nothing more than a flick of her wrist. She’d rather have done that than call to make an appointment under a false name, claiming she wished to audition for a job. She’d once asked him what it felt like to be able to enter any secured structure without obstruction, and he tried to explain to her as best he could what it felt like to be angelic.

  “The power starts behind my shoulder blades,” he said, and she nodded. She knew there were two feathers from a Pure angel buried back there. It had been meant as a form of punishment. Just like his forced return to the Surface. “It spreads to my shoulders from there, then shoots through my veins to whatever part of the body I’m thinking of.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “It’s . . . uncomfortable. Warm and thick and sluggish, like salsa in the blood. But it’s also powerful, quick as a solar flare.”

  But Kit didn’t know what that felt like, either . . . and she didn’t care. To a woman with relatively little physical power, it sounded . . . well, divine.

  Checking her image one final time in the rearview mirror, Kit sighed. She’d just have to use what she had. Unfortunately, she’d curated her retro look so rigorously over the years that she could do little to alter it now. She simply didn’t fit the modern standards of female perfection. Her skin was too pale, her hair too dark, her curves too aggressive.

  So she’d chosen to go boldly in the opposite direction with her appearance. Instead of trying to camouflage the things that made her different from the other girls, she overstated the pitch-black liner of her feline eyes. Instead of pale pink, she’d chosen the most vibrant red lip color in her palette. She’d thrown on a vintage swing coat that likely made her appear coy, but that was more to hide her vintage clothing than the curves beneath. She’d been inside Masquerade before and knew she already stood out against the throng of rail-thin blondes.

  “Well, at least you’ll be an original,” she muttered to her reflection in the rearview mirror before locking up the car and heading inside.

  The hostess said almost the exact same thing before leading Kit to Ray’s office, located at the back of the building. The club music pulsed through the walls like some druggie’s cranked-up heartbeat, and the strobes and blackout curtains turned day back into night. Some people, and some things, were just meant for the dark.

  “Mr. DiMartino will be out in a moment,” the hostess said, then offered what might have been an apologetic smile. “He’s just showering, but he knows you’re coming.”

  Kit couldn’t keep her mouth from falling open as the door shut behind her. Showering? She looked at the black leather sofa, then glanced up at the cameras, eyes glowing red and recording everything. Then she indeed picked up the sound of water running from the adjacent room.

  “Gross,” Kit said, shooting one of the cameras a dirty look as she tossed her handbag on a side table. It didn’t matter. Ray would know as soon as he saw her that she wasn’t there to dance.

  They’d still go a few rounds, though.

  Ray’s office was not exactly a den of iniquity. The walls were off-white and sterile, with only one picture to break up the monotony, an amateur painting of two women kissing as a man looked on. “Glad to see you’re keepin’ it classy, Ray,” Kit muttered, moving back to the center of the room.

  Other than the door leading to the room where Ray could be heard singing in the shower—again, gross—there was one other exit, sporting a bright red sign above announcing the same, and a loc
kbox that meant business. It likely led to the parking lot, allowing Ray—and whomever he summoned through that back door—a quick and private getaway.

  Two long, lacquered desks were pushed together to form an L-shaped command center where paperwork was haphazardly piled and cabinets were shoved underneath. A small bookshelf was tucked beneath the desk’s far end, and Kit scanned the titles with raised eyebrows. Wine for Dummies. Spanish for Dummies. Finance for Dummies.

  Either Ray liked to take shortcuts, or he didn’t think very highly of himself.

  Outside of the heavy desks and long leather sofa, the rest of the room was aesthetically forgettable but for one thing: the raised platform with a shiny pole spearing from its middle. Giving the makeshift stage a dismissive glance, and listening to Ray struggle to find a tune as he showered, Kit crossed the room to riffle through his mail.

  He didn’t seem to be living the life of a big mobster, Kit thought, spotting two delinquent notices addressed to another location, likely his home. She wrote the address down for reference. Maybe he was just getting back into the game. A strip club, and the way cash moved through these doors, was certainly a good jumping-off point. And lack of funds meant he might be desperate to lay his hands on a bigger con. Like a half-century search for diamonds.

  She thought about the case Grif had gotten involved in back in 1960, the kidnapping that’d had him working for the valley’s reigning kingpin of the day. The DiMartinos believed Griffin Shaw had helped the Salernos kidnap little Mary Margaret from her front yard. They were also told by an unidentified source that he sexually assaulted the twelve-year-old before returning her to her uncle. Forget that Grif would never even contemplate such a thing, which Mary Margaret had confirmed last summer; Kit knew he was beyond reproach.

  “So who hated you enough to spread a rumor that got you killed?” she murmured, though one person already came to mind: Barbara. “New question, then . . . why?”

  The shower snapped off in the adjacent room, stilling Kit as she thumbed through a second stack of papers. Ray would have to dry off. She still had time. She didn’t know exactly what his reaction would be upon finding her in his office, though he’d acted friendly enough the few times they’d met. Based on those encounters, there’d be no reason for him to object to speaking with her. He hadn’t known she was a reporter the first time, and after that he hadn’t seemed to care.