“And maybe we can get Brenda to talk me up to industry folks she knows. People in power, in broadcasting and stuff like that. And then perhaps Carissa Lamb, too. I mean, you work for her now and she must have tons and tons of celebrity friends who need all kinds of different levels of protection, I suspect.”
“I guess that’s got be true.”
“And she likes me,” he said with a wry smile.
That made Skyler cringe. “I think she likes you a little too much, yes.” She noticed the sheet was tenting. “Are you kidding me right now? Why is this happening?!” She pointed at his crotch. “It hasn’t been half an hour! Leonard Little, did this happen because you were thinking about Carissa Lamb and how she has a little crush on you? Honestly!”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Honestly, Leonard. Gross.”
He rolled over nevertheless, lowered his full weight on top of her, and stuck his tongue into her mouth. And then he was inside her again. And this time, he lasted well over 15-minutes, leaving her most perfectly satisfied.
* * *
After another shower, Skyler and Leonard dressed in jeans and sweaters and emerged from their suite to find Brenda, Carter, and the dogs in the living room. Introductions were made between the two men and then Brenda gave Leonard a long bear hug.
“I am so happy you are here,” she squealed. She quickly turned to Skyler, “You ready for this? Georgia has been found and she’s alive and well.”
Carter, who was busy uncorking an expensive bottle of merlot, said, “Well isn’t quite right. But she’s alive.” He encouraged everyone to take seats on the sofas while he filled four glasses.
“This is great news! Details, please,” Skyler demanded. And she got them—at least she got what Brenda was told. “That is just amazing. I am so relieved. How do you think they ended up in Flagstaff and where the heck were they going? California? Mexico?”
“Flagstaff isn’t really the right direction from here to get to Mexico if I remember my geography correctly,” Brenda said. “But then again, Massimo is a deranged Italian lunatic who I suspect has never driven across the American southwest, so, gosh, who the hell knows.”
“Crazy,” Skyler said. “I’m just happy she’s going to be okay. Who’s going to get her?”
“My brother and I will go tomorrow. Haven’t decided if we’re flying or driving yet. I can’t imagine it’s easy to charter a plane on Christmas Eve at the last friggin’ minute.”
“You guys and your private jets,” Leonard said. “Wouldn’t a commercial flight work? It’s got to be a lot cheaper.”
“Bite your tongue with that blasphemy,” Brenda said. “And anyway, you can’t expect an opera singer of her caliber, who’s just getting out of the hospital after having been abducted and knocked upside the head and left for dead in the God-forsaken Arizona wilderness, to fly coach on Southwest Airlines on Christmas Eve! It’s unheard of.”
“Southwest doesn’t fly to Flagstaff,” Skyler said matter-of-factly. “And all they have is coach.”
“Well, how would I know any of that?” Brenda asked with an eye roll. “Why aren’t you a travel agent, Skyler?”
“They don’t make enough money.”
“Mine does,” the chef said. “He’s boutique, high-end all the way. He drives a Bentley—it’s second hand, but still—and he has a second home out on Fire Island. I don’t know how he does it in this day and age of the internet, but he makes a mint and a half.”
“I have got to warn you all,” Carter said as he finally sunk down onto the sofa next to Brenda with his glass of wine. “A gentle warning. Our kid brother will be in town any minute now. And Darby is a first-class pain in our asses. A major fuck up, really. Well, until recently. Sullivan thinks the kid has pulled himself together and grown up a lot, but I seriously have my doubts about that. Just wanted to put that out there. He’s a lot to handle. And he’s cocky.”
“Is he staying here?” Skyler asked.
Brenda shook her head. “No. I think we decided that no one is staying here. Pack up your crap, people. We’re decamping to the twin’s house.”
Skyler sighed. “It’s been a game of musical houses since we got here,” she said to Leonard. She turned her attention back to Brenda. “Why another move?”
“Because Massimo is still on the loose, that useless excuse for a protective team has flown the coop, and the security system here in the house is seriously screwed up beyond repair. Or at least it’s not going to be repaired before Christmas. We have no choice but to skedaddle.”
Carter took a big swig of his wine. “But there’s icing on this here cake, my friends.”
“Which is?” Leonard asked.
Carter stood up and yanked up his sweater, revealing a hand gun strapped to his torso. “I’m armed.”
Leonard smiled and stood up, too, revealing his own police-issued sidearm. “Me too. Twice.” He pulled gently on his pant leg and the group could see a smaller gun—a purse-sized, semi-automatic .22 handgun that once belonged to his late grandmother—strapped just above the cop’s ankle.
“Great,” Skyler said, “the boys are comparing dick sizes.” She looked over at her best friend and slowly shook her head back and forth. “It’s going to be the O.K. Corral up in this bitch.”
“Not this bitch,” Brenda corrected. “The bitch on the other side of town.” She pointed toward the north side of the house. “And I think it’s high time we got packed up and get a move on. This place has lost its charm.”
* * *
After Carter left to make sure the guest suites at the twin’s house were up to snuff, Leonard got on his hands and knees, plugged in an extension cord, and then sat alone in the living room staring at Georgia’s elaborate Christmas tree. He hadn’t been there long enough to unpack, so he waited patiently while the girls shoved mounds of clothing, shoes, and beauty products into their many bags.
He was mesmerized by the twinkling lights and it took him back to a simpler time when his grandmother would go all out decorating her grand old house as if she were competing in some kind of neighborhood contest. All of her possessions were in storage now, but it warmed his heart knowing that all of her carefully curated things were somewhere he could get at them, if he needed to. Leonard wondered if Skyler would appreciate enough vintage ornaments to cover a half dozen live trees; his grandmother always insisted on fresh cut Maine Balsam Firs, he remembered clearly, each lovingly selected at Farr’s Tree Farm in Scarborough. It was a family tradition that disappeared when she passed away, mostly because of laziness and partly because Leonard’s father absolutely detested how the pine needles would linger in the bed of his truck for months after he hauled away the very dead, dried-up trees for his mother. She’d always stop watering them after New Year’s, but hated to see them come down, so she’d wait as long as possible to pack up the forty or so boxes again. She amusingly claimed it was sacrilegious to leave them up until Valentine’s Day, so that never happened. But she got damn near close a few times.
Lost in thought, he didn’t hear when Skyler entered the room. “I wish we could take it with us.”
“The tree?” Leonard asked. “I think that would be too much work.”
“Georgia had a local design student pull it together. We could track her down somehow, I suppose.”
Leonard stood up and turned toward his girlfriend. “A student? In the house?”
“How else would she do it if she wasn’t in the house?”
“How did Georgia find this girl?”
“I don’t recall, actually,” Skyler said, looking confused. “Why do you care?”
“Was she vetted?”
“Oh my goodness, Leonard. I see where you’re going with this. I don’t know if the police talked to her, no. I’m not sure she was ever mentioned to the authorities or to the Mallard people, to tell you the truth. I guess everyone just forgot about her. If anyone thought about the Christmas tree—and I doubt anyone did, for goodness sake—then they proba
bly assumed that Georgia did the decorating herself.”
Leonard cocked his head. “You told me that when Brenda was with Georgia at the dress shop, that Grey’s people checked the whole store and that the back door was locked before they allowed Brenda and Georgia into the shop. Isn’t that correct?”
“Yes. That’s what Brenda said.”
“And there were two other people shopping in the store while they were there?”
Brenda heard part of the conversation as she struggled into the living room with her luggage. “Yes, Leonard,” she puffed. “An ancient bitty and some young woman with glasses.”
“Maybe a young design student?”
“Wouldn’t Georgia have recognized her and spoken to her if it was the same girl?” Skyler turned to Brenda. “Did Georgia talk to the girl in the shop?”
“Not that I remember, no. I mean, no way. That place was tiny. I would have noticed and Georgia would have certainly introduced us. Right?”
“Maybe she was wearing a disguise of some sort. A wig? Maybe she didn’t normally wear glasses?” Leonard asked rhetorically.
“I know you’re a hunky cop,” Skyler cooed, “but when did you become a clever detective?” She smiled widely.
“It’s not rocket science.” He went over to the tree and unplugged the lights. “She had access to the house like no one else has since Georgia bought the place. We need to know more about this chick and see if there’s some kind of connection between her and Maraschino.”
“Massimo,” Skyler and Brenda corrected in unison.
“Shit, we sound like the twins,” Brenda laughed. “Okay, Leonard, will you please start hauling this stuff out to the cars? I’m hungry and I want to get settled over there and get cooking. I’ve got Christmas cookies to bake.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
He’d been licking his wounds and laying low. There was nothing on the television news about it—he’d been watching regularly—but instinct told him Georgia had been found and was in the hands of the authorities…or maybe even back in her Santa Fe house already. And if that was indeed the case, the F.B.I. and the Arizona State Police would certainly be out in force looking for the accidental kidnapper.
He hadn’t set out to abduct her, but she wouldn’t listen to reason and none of his threats had worked. After decades spent laser focused on her career—my entire adult life has been devoted to her!—he was thrown away like garbage.
He made her.
She didn’t care.
Massimo spent a lot of time cursing himself for his careless actions of the previous day. Thinking it was a good way to avoid the police, he decided to leave the highway a few towns east of Flagstaff and was navigating deserted country roads when the rental car ran out of gas. And since Georgia was still unconscious, he left her in the backseat when he went searching for another vehicle—at that point, he thought that stealing was a matter of survival—or for a place where they could hide out for the night. When that quest turned up nothing, he returned to an empty car. No Georgia and no iced tea. After walking in the desert for hours, he’d been imagining how satisfying the leftover McDonald’s tea would be. He was dehydrated and exhausted. He hadn’t slept for more than a few minutes at a time in several days.
But off he went again—what choice did he have?—searching for hours for the opera singer until it got too dark to navigate in the countryside. It was pitch black outside and when he stepped in a large hole, twisting his ankle so that he fell onto the ground, cursing in Italian, he’d had more than enough. He managed to limp to a main road and successfully hitched a ride to town with an old man in a vintage pickup truck, who probably should have known better about picking up strange Italian men in the dead of night.
Massimo checked into a cheap, 1950’s-looking motor court across the street from a boarded-up Olive Garden restaurant. The seedy motel was the kind of place where one could lay a few twenties on the counter with absolutely no questions asked. No guestbook to sign. No identification checked. Of course, there were no frills either. A squeaky bed, paper-thin sheets, and rough grey towels that were probably crisp white a few decades earlier. He looked around on the nightstand and bureau for the television remote but couldn’t find one. After few more moments he understood he wouldn’t need a remote: the T.V. was huge, with a convex screen, and knobs and dials on the side. It took several seconds for Massimo to realize he had to pull one of the knobs out with his fingers to turn it on. He sat at the end of the bed. A bald man was telling the ugliest little girl Massimo had ever seen—Dio mio! Scimmia!—that the girl’s performance had moved him to tears. Not as much as having to sit across a table from her would, Massimo thought. Then he remembered how he’d been moved to tears when he first saw Georgia perform, and his tears of gratitude when she agreed to have sex with him, and his tears of disbelief when she simply said, Sure, certainly to him when he asked for a 40% cut of her earnings.
Angrily, he reached and turned the channel dial. Static, then more static, then onto Fox News—he recognized the logo on the bottom of the screen—where one man was saying, “That’s the problem with dressing rooms when you got all these athletes showering together—when one gets the flu, they all get it.”
Just like that, Massimo thought to himself that Georgia and her friends probably thought he was as stupid and pathetic as this man speaking, and his anger came back.
He turned the dial again through seven or eight blizzards of static and then he landed at the only other channel the set picked up. And there was Georgia’s new friend—that cow, Brindle or Grendel—no, Brenda, that’s it—smiling and talking about her olive oils—and what did this bovine cagna know about olive oil? His great grandmother Nonna Cinghiale—Gramma Wild Boar, because of the long wiry hairs on her chin and cheeks—now, she pressed genuine olive oil! He turned the television off and lay back on the bed.
He was in pain, faint from hunger, dizzy from thirst, and now bored out of his mind.
But he had gone too far to turn back. He knew that he had to get back to Santa Fe to finish the job, whatever that job was. He was determined not to let her win, even if it cost him his freedom. He just wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do next. He successfully abducted her once, but he knew that the new friends she surrounded herself with would be extra diligent. She’d never be left alone.
But what do I have to lose? he asked himself. He knew that he’d probably never make it back to Italy, nor would he see his family again, unless they deported him (a fact that he hoped would not come to pass, as he suspected American prisons were worlds more tolerable than Italian ones).
Is that my fate? What have I done? What have I become?
He had $92—boring American bills with pictures of long-dead politicians on them—left in his wallet. He couldn’t use his credit cards for fear of being tracked. His cell phone was out of juice and he had no charging cords. And he had no clothes besides what he was wearing; his luggage was in the rental car somewhere out in the country. And it probably wasn’t there anymore anyway. He decided that the car was most definitely sitting in an impound yard. It was evidence now. One of the scenes of his crime.
He pulled the knob and the television came back to life.
He watched as a plump blonde woman with a perma-smile plastered to her fat face demonstrated the wonders of some Tupperware-looking plastic food storage containers that were purportedly going to change the course of homemaker history for the better. Massimo watched in awe as the saleswoman went on and on about the stupid rainbow-colored boxes as if they were heaven-sent. He considered for a moment pulling out his credit card to make a purchase, but then he remembered his situation.
Massimo grabbed the Bible from the nightstand and threw it as hard as he could at the ancient television set then got off the bed. He stripped down and hobbled into the bathroom and into the mildew-stained shower stall. He wasn’t going to waste any more time watching the Home Shopping Network in a Godforsaken, no-star Flagstaff, Arizona motel room. He had to
figure out how to get back to New Mexico, ruin Georgia for good, and get his hands on a very large stash of cash.
Because that was who he’d become, and it made him quite sad, but more determined than ever.
* * *
Both Carter and Sullivan were equally flabbergasted by the buttoned-up appearance and sickeningly sweet demeanor of their younger brother. Darby was holding court on the living room sofa, between Skyler and Brenda, enchanting both ladies with his good looks and witty tales. He was sitting up straight up, his hair was perfectly coiffed, and he was smiling.
The twins stood several yards away in the kitchen unloading Brenda’s paper grocery bags.
“I haven’t seen that kid smile in a decade,” Carter said. “What is he on?”
Sullivan shook his head slowly. “He says, nothing. The entire car ride from the airport, he talked about having turned it all around. No drugs, no binge drinking, no blacking out, no gambling. He claims that on our parents’ graves—his words, not mine, especially since they were cremated—that he’s cleaned up his act.”
“And you’re buying what he’s selling?”
“Carter,” Sullivan said, “look at him. Darby is a new man. Watch the way he is with the girls. They’re eating it up. And I suspect that you can’t fool people like Brenda and Skyler. They know how to see through peoples’ bullshit. And it’s not like we didn’t warn them ahead of time.”
“He wants something. Plain and simple.”
“Maybe. But maybe he deserves something now.”
“Maybe.” Carter stuffed a carton of milk into the already crowded refrigerator. “Just make sure you always know where your wallet is. You tend to leave that thing in random places all over the damned house. If he gets his hands on it, you’ll be cash poor and light of a few credit cards.”
“You always think the worst of everyone.”
The New Mexico Scoundrel Page 20
