Guardian For Hire

by Christine Bell

  The phone rang three times before a hoarse male voice greeted him on the other end. “McClintock. Haven’t heard from you in a while, friend. You have a new case? Want to talk to the commissioner?”

  “No, Joey, I called for you. I need a…favor.” Joey Wilkins was a cop so crooked that some of the more educated thugs referred to him as Joey Scoliosis. If there was one guy who was willing to do something shady for an extra buck, it was him. Vito’s crew had obviously gotten the line on him through the grapevine but couldn’t approach him directly for fear of a setup, so they’d decided to use Gavin as their broker. The only issue was that he’d been pretty vocal in his distaste of the man and his dealings in the past. Having to go to him for a favor was unpleasant, to say the least.

  Whatever it takes to protect Sarabeth, he reminded himself. Eating a helping of crow was infinitely better than attending a funeral.

  There was a long pause. Gavin was about to ask if Joey was still on the line, but then the old man whispered, “Ah, how the mighty have fallen.”

  “It’s not like that,” Gavin began.

  “No, no, it never is. I understand. Believe me.” He let out a noise somewhere between a cough and chuckle, and the sound made Gavin’s stomach turn. “What can I help you with?”

  “I need the tapes from The Healing Place evidence locker. Today.” He was already speeding toward his office, only seconds from the parking lot.

  “Ah, so there’s a rush. Well, see, that’s a lot of work on short notice. Sounds like a pretty important deal.”

  “It is.”

  “Expensive, too.” Joey dropped the casual act and his true malevolence laced his every word, piercing and abrasive.

  “I’d figured that.” Gavin parked and rushed toward the building, making his way toward his office with long, quick strides.

  “Fifteen K and you can have them tomorrow,” Joey whispered, his voice muffled.

  “Twenty, and I’ll be there for them in half an hour,” Gavin shot back.

  “Look who’s playing hardball.” Joey laughed. “Thirty, if it’s gotta be a rush job. I’ve got a family to feed, friend.”

  “Twenty grand should feed them fine. Especially since your family is you and your dog, Joe.”

  The man on the other end of the receiver sniffed. “Twenty then. Forty-five minutes.”

  Gavin glanced toward the clock hanging above his desk. Quarter after twelve.

  “Done,” he said.

  A dial tone buzzed in his ear, and he took it as a bargain well struck. He strode toward his bookcase and pressed hard on the spine of Oliver Twist, and the bookcase descended into the floorboards, revealing a large metal safe hidden behind it. He tapped the touch-screen digital interface and the vault decompressed, swinging itself open. There was the small jewelry box his mother had left him, the only thing he’d taken with him when he’d moved from Edinburgh, some important personal documents, and in the very center of the shining steel cavern were neatly stacked mounds of cash. He grabbed a stack and made quick work of sealing the remainder, ensuring that everything returned to normal before stuffing the money in his waiting black briefcase and barreling back out to the parking lot.

  His phone buzzed, and an encrypted message from Joey lit the screen, instructing him to meet behind the Cooter Cabaret on the end of Hope Road. He sped off without another thought, all too relieved to have everything taken care of at long last. Sarabeth would be safe and sound, even if that meant he’d had to entrust someone else to do his dirty work.

  While he waited in the alley behind the strip joint, three different women accosted him, asking if he’d like services in which the club apparently specialized in the back, and he dismissed each woman with a quick shake of the head. When Joey’s car rolled up, it was like a siren to the women, and they flocked to him, already opening the back door and climbing in as though his arrival were part of a well-practiced routine. The whole thing made him sick to his stomach.

  Joey lumbered from his car, leaning against the driver’s seat with a girl who’d introduced herself to Gavin as Loretta, and Gavin laid on the horn as Joey was about to follow the woman inside. “All right, all right.” Joey waved him off, flapping his walrus flipper of an arm as he approached Gavin’s vehicle.

  He patted his coat with a wink. “Have what I need?” Joey asked.

  Gavin gave a single nod, extending the briefcase with one hand and holding out the other. Joey reached inside his jacket pocket for a long time, and finally pulled out several miniature cassette-sized tapes. He tossed them onto Gavin’s passenger seat and took the briefcase in one fluid motion.

  “Are you sure this is all of them?”

  The other man had the balls to look hurt. “Hey, if I’m going to take a job, I’m going to do it right.”

  “If I find out—”

  Joey smirked and nodded. “Yeah, yeah, save it, buddy. I already know. I like my life too much to risk it on something I don’t give a good shit about, you know? Those tapes don’t mean shit to anyone but you right now.”

  If only that were true. But Gavin kept quiet.

  “Well, it was a pleasure doing business, sir. You need something, you know where to find me.” Joey winked, lumbering over to Loretta with a sort of pelvic thrust that Gavin would have paid good money to unsee.

  “Right.” He put the car into drive and pulled out of the parking lot, relief warring with disgust, watching in his rearview mirror as the girls crowded around Joey. The man was an absolute piece of shit, but there was nothing to be done about it. He couldn’t stop guys like that from doing bad. Hell, he couldn’t really stop Vito DeSalvo, but if he was going to be damned certain of one thing, it would be Sarabeth’s safety. And with that in mind, he pounded on the gas, bolting toward his house to finish his work before five o’clock.

  Sarabeth was settled on the couch when he came crashing through the front door, tapes in hand.

  “Are you—” she called, stepping through the hall to meet him at the door. Her hair was still slightly damp from her shower, and the urge to slip his fingers onto the the dark strands washed over him for a minute. Instead, he shook himself to the present, forcing himself to concentrate on the task at hand.

  “How did you get those?” Her eyes widened, her mouth hanging open the slightest bit while the color drained from her face. “I thought you said you wouldn’t do it?” she whispered, her lashes downturned so that he could no longer meet her gaze.

  “I said I wouldn’t do it. And I didn’t. The rest is irrelevant.” He opened the door to the basement, motioning for her to walk ahead of him. She complied without comment.

  “I don’t really know what to say.”

  “Nothing to say. Now that we have the tapes, you’re almost free of this. But before we turn these over, we need to make ourselves some insurance.”

  She shuffled into his office and he followed suit, closing the door behind them before winding around to the computer and popping in the specialized cassette tray on his desktop. The tape whirred, making zipping sounds as the strands of film wound to the right spot. He opened his digital upload software and set the program in motion, burning everything playing on the screen onto a DVD.

  Vito would get the copies. The real tapes would be kept with Gavin, a bartering chip to ensure Sarabeth’s—and everyone else’s—safety.

  “I wonder what’s on there.” Sarabeth had been standing behind him, her arms crossed over her chest, watching him as he worked.

  “Maybe he fell into the same trap that everyone else did. He was cheating on his wife with the dance instructor or the massage therapist and doesn’t want it coming back to him.”

  “You think a mob boss is afraid of people finding out he cheats on his wife?”

  He looked over his shoulder, and her mouth was tilted in a thoughtful slant. She narrowed her eyes, lost in thought. “That doesn’t seem right to me.”

  Funny, because it hadn’t seemed right to him either. But the other possibility—that Vito had committ
ed a crime on film, maybe even a violent one—was giving him twinges of conscience that he didn’t want to feel. What if there was a murder on those tapes? Could he really squash that information? And if Sarabeth saw something like that, would she even allow it?

  Please, let it be anything but that.

  He kept his tone matter-of-fact. “Would you want your spouse to find out you were cheating?” he asked.

  “No, but what’s she going to do? She’s a mob wife. It’s almost expected in that sort of situation. I mean, have you ever seen anything associated with the Mafia that didn’t at least have one affair? Prostitute or otherwise? I don’t think I have. No…something else is going on here.” She leaned against the wall, staring at the ceiling.

  Time to roll the dice and hope that they caught a break this time. “Let’s play the tapes, then. Find out what happened.”

  He pulled a photo of Vito from the file Maddy had left with him the week before. He’d studied the picture until it was ingrained in his memory—a short, portly man with a handlebar mustache and tired eyes. In the mug shot Maddy had pulled, he looked as though he was starting to form jowls, but by the time he’d gotten to The Healing Place, Gavin imagined they would have been fully developed facial flaps.

  He tapped open the recordings and sped through the tapes until he spotted the man in question. When he found him, he was in a room with a tall, curvaceous woman beside him. He was probably nearing his early sixties, but the woman beside him couldn’t have been more than thirty. She was a busty lady, with huge ringlets resting against her shoulders. The rest of her body was generally obscured by the distracting swell of her chest. In a chair kitty-corner from them, talking quietly with clipboard in hand, was a slight woman with a long blond ponytail trailing down her back. Sarabeth.

  “Oh,” she murmured. “Yes, I remember them. Although they didn’t check in under the name DeSalvo. Her name was Sheree and he called himself Emilio, last name Direnzio.” Her face clouded, and she swallowed hard.

  “Sorry, we can skip ahead, I only thought—”

  “No, it’s okay. It’s better. It’ll help.” She cleared her throat. “He didn’t seem like the type to cheat on her. He adored her. I’d never seen a man fawn more over his wife.” Her cheeks colored, but she continued. “Except maybe Owen with Lindy. Although, I haven’t seen a lot of loving families, so, maybe my judgment isn’t the best on that score.” She laughed a hollow, humorless laugh, and his stomach turned. He wanted to throw his arms around her and pull her to him, but there was no time for comforting her. Not yet.

  “We’ll skip ahead.” He fast-forwarded, surveying the dance studio in one instant, and the massage parlor in the next. Sometimes the scenes featured couples together; others featured more compromising positions for the people therein.

  “Wait, stop.” She grasped his shoulder, and he paused the screen, the video stopping to reveal a woman with a mess of blond curls in the gym, a muscled young instructor grasping her wrist and helping her pull a weight toward her chest. Then, he took the weight from her gently and settled it on the floor by her feet. He swung her around to face him and kissed her once, lightly, before her arms circled around him to pull him deeper into the embrace. The tape continued on, and it became clear exactly why Vito DeSalvo thought these tapes would be bad for business.

  He wasn’t a cheater at all.

  His wife was.

  “Ohhhh…” Sarabeth murmured. “That’s Marcel with her. I guess that explains why he killed him. And maybe Nico for masterminding the whole thing. Still, that’s a long way to go over jealousy. And it doesn’t explain Liza…”

  “I think he was probably more worried about his street cred than jealousy. Who goes to the cuckold in a business like theirs? To guys like that, it’s all about power. The strongest thrive and the weak get picked off. If he can’t even keep his woman in line, sure as shit there will be a line of guys waiting to take his spot ruling an empire. It’s emasculating.”

  As they watched, though, it got a whole lot worse.

  “Tell me what you like, gorgeous,” Marcel murmured, tugging the shirt over Sheree’s head.

  “Baby, just the fact that I didn’t walk in to find you wearing one of my dresses and heels puts you head and shoulders above my husband.” She let out a cruel, humorless laugh, and that last bit of uncertainty lodged in Gavin’s gullet faded away.

  Now that was worth killing for if you were a man like Vito. Once his wife had found out about the scam and knew the tapes had been taken, she must have confessed to having both the affair and the conversation that would seal his fate in a community of tough guys. They would surely balk at taking orders from a man who dressed like a woman behind closed doors, and his whole world would come crumbling down around him. “But why you? This is obviously the first you’re seeing of this.”

  She frowned and then shrugged. “Maybe he was concerned that Sheree talked to me about his proclivities during therapy sessions?”

  “Maybe so.” He nodded slowly. “Or maybe he’d decided to wipe out anyone with a possible involvement with the scam. With none of the employees left alive but the servants, there would be no call to review the tapes because there would be no one alive to prosecute. Ergo, the tapes would stay in evidence undisturbed for all time.”

  “But if we give him the tapes, then any proof of the infidelity or his cross-dressing is gone and there’s no reason for more violence.” The relief in her voice was palpable, but a frown still furrowed her brow.

  “This is good news, Sarabeth.”

  “I know. And he’s a terrible person. But the tiniest part of me feels sorry for him. When I tell you he loved that woman, I mean he would have burned the earth to the ground to keep her happy. And seeing her doing that”—she nodded toward the now-silent screen—“and hearing her betray him like that. It must’ve made him a little crazy. Crazier than usual, I mean. All you had to do was watch the way he looked at her…” She shook her head, and Gavin let her words sink in.

  He was starting to think he knew what that felt like. Caring about someone so much it hurt. He allowed his thoughts to take root for a brief, sobering few seconds before he was distracted by the look of anguish on her face as she watched the couple on the screen.

  She bit her bottom lip and moved to settle into the armchair across from the desk. “It just seems like nobody got out of that place unscathed.”

  The hurt in her voice left his heart aching for her.

  The screen went black, and they sat in silence for the next hour while all of the video transferred onto his computer and the video burned onto disks. He slipped the disks into cases, then dropped them into a small black bag in the bottom drawer of his desk and nodded at Sarabeth.

  “You ready for all this to be over?” he asked softly.

  Her eyes had been closed when he’d spoken, and it took her a minute to open them.

  “Yeah.” Her voice was distant…tinny. “It’ll be nice to have things back to normal.” She sighed and rested on the back cushion of her chair, then sat up, looking him in the eye with a new fierceness. “Can I go with you?”

  “Not a chance, Doc.”

  She gave him a curt nod and didn’t argue, clearly expecting his answer.

  “Maddy will be here to stay with you in case…” In case something went horribly wrong, at least she wouldn’t be alone. He left the latter unsaid.

  “Be careful out there, will you?”

  Her green eyes beseeched him, and he forced a reassuring smile as he crossed the room.

  A mushy, drawn-out good-bye here would only clue her in to the fact that he wasn’t 100 percent certain how it was all going to turn out. Instead, he held the door open as he looked over his shoulder. “I’m an old pro, don’t you worry. I’ll see you real soon.”

  “Hurry back!”

  He closed the door behind him and started up the stairs, the concern in her voice spreading warmth through his body that followed him all the way outside into the chilled afternoon air.r />
  By the time he pulled onto Beachwood Street, he still had half an hour to spare. A pay phone was there, cast in shadows. To his surprise, as soon as he stepped out of the car, it rang. Which probably meant they had eyes on him. That was no surprise. He picked up the receiver cautiously and spoke.

  “Hello.”

  “The warehouse on the corner of Barnum and Second,” a low voice murmured. The phone disconnected, and a dial tone sounded in his ear. He set the receiver down again and strode back to his car. He’d held out a slim hope that the meeting would happen outside on the street. This second, private location was less than ideal. Still, there was no way Vito had gone through the trouble of killing three people and trying for the fourth only to murder the person who had exactly what he wanted. At least not right away.

  He pulled the car out of the lot and drove the fifteen minutes across town, apprehension building in his gut. When he pulled into the abandoned warehouse lot, his thoughts drifted again to Sarabeth. She’d been so strong. His biggest fear was that something would go wrong here today and she would blame herself. He steeled himself, put the car in park, and grabbed the bag next to him. He’d have to be extra careful to make sure that didn’t happen.

  He was halfway to the wide loading dock doors when he spotted the sniper out of the corner of his eye. It went against the grain, but he pretended he didn’t see him and kept moving. There was no question that Vito would come with some major heat. For all that bastard knew, this was a trap.

  When he reached the doors, they slid open, revealing three giant goons in suits, not a neck between them.

  “Hey fellas, you guys the Welcome Wagon?”

  The biggest of the three, who looked like he’d been hit in the face with the business end of a shovel, nodded slowly. “Yeah. Sure.”

  He jerked his head to one side, indicating that Gavin should follow. As they walked through the dimly lit space, he quickly counted two more goons watching from afar, one on the catwalk one level up and one hiding behind a crate across the floor. His fists clenched, but he didn’t slow his pace.

  They rounded a corner, and his escorts stopped short as they approached a man sitting in chair, another two goons flanking him. Jesus, what had they expected? A fucking full-on SWAT raid or something?

  Vito stood, a cigarette sitting precariously between his sagging, fleshy lips.

  “You’re a man of punctuality, Mr. McClintock. I appreciate that.” He reached up to take a long pull on his cigarette.

  “You guys really don’t mind fitting the stereotype, do you?” He surveyed the man, shaking his head slowly. On top of the pinky ring, he’d even worn a pin-striped suit. It was as if he had stepped off the set of a DeNiro movie.

  “Hey, if you’re going to deal with the mob, are you going to go with a guy who looks like he’s going to sell you insurance, or with the guy who looks like he could take out insurance on your life?” He shrugged. “It’s marketing. You know how it goes. But that’s not why we’re here.”

  “Speaking of we, you got, what, eight or nine guys here? They taking pictures or are you reconsidering our deal?”

  “I’ve got no quarrel with you. It’s just you and me. The rest, we’ll call ‘security.’”

  “Right.” Gavin frowned.

  “I’m not known for my patience, Mr. McClintock.” He held out his wrinkled, leathery hand. “You have something for me?”

  Gavin carefully handed over the satchel of disks, but one of the members of Vito’s crew reached for it instead.

  Vito waited while the goon dug through and held up discs for his inspection.

  “These are not tapes,” he said, his tone flat.

  Gavin kept his eyes locked on Vito, and a hand on his hip where his gun sat now. If the gangster tried to get squirrely, he sure as hell couldn’t take them all, but he could kill the head of the snake, and that was something.

  “No, they’re not.”

  “So where are my tapes?” His face wrinkled, annoyance playing across his brow.

  “They’re in safekeeping.”

  His softly spoken “fuck” resonated in the silence. “With the police?”

  “With me.”

  Vito’s dark eyes went shrewd. “Ah, you want to be part of the family, is that it? I’m afraid it’s a little harder than all that.”

  “No, I want some insurance.”

  “Insurance?” He sniffed, dangling the bag of discs by his side before swinging them viciously against the concrete floor over and over. By the time he was done pulverizing them, he was breathing hard and spittle had collected on the corners of his mouth. He smiled and set the bag on the floor before smoothing a hand through his hair. The smile he offered was chilling. “You know, people don’t usually play games with me. I’m a very sore loser. And what’s to stop me from finding out where those copies are and then killing you? My guys can be very persuasive.”

  Goon number three cracked his knuckles obligingly.

  “I’m sure they can, but you won’t lose. As long as I don’t either.” Gavin tightened his jaw, planting his feet firmly on the ground, his fists at his sides. “I have no reason to leak those tapes, Vito. But surely, as a businessman, you can understand my position.”

  Gavin slipped a hand slowly down to his coat pocket where his cell phone lay. He’d kept a text queued up there in case Vito tried to pull some shit like this, and all he needed to do was hit send—which he did—and then buy some time. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. That was his motto, and he’d done exactly that. Now to stall for ten minutes to avoid physical torture while he waited for plan B to come to fruition.

  “And I’m sure you can understand mine. I’ve come too far to stop now.” Vito jerked his head toward the ground, and the big fella came up behind Gavin, shoving him roughly to his knees. Okay, so maybe he’d pushed too fast. When one of the muscle brigade came toward him, the butt end of the pistol resting comfortably in his hand as though he was prepped to whip him with it, Gavin realized that maybe ten minutes was longer than he had. But before he could