“Yes.” Cissy confirmed the fact her mother would return. “I’ll be talking to the funeral home today, but I called you because I remembered you said maybe, with your connections—”
“Anything, Cissy. Anything. Listen, you’ve had a heck of a couple days. How ’bout we meet for lunch at La Serre? Get your mind off things. We can discuss everything then and I’ll see what I can do.”
She hesitated. Nick came into the room, ready for work. “All right, Tommy. Yes. Maybe that’s just what I need.”
“Great. Shall I pick you up?”
“Why don’t I meet you there? Twelve-thirty?”
“Perfect. I’ll have my secretary call for reservations.”
Cissy hung up, met Nick’s gaze. “I’m having lunch with Tommy at La Serre today.”
“Good.” He strapped on his gun belt. “At least I know you’ll be out of trouble for two hours.”
“Not necessarily.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Trying to make me jealous, Spagnola?”
Embarrassed, she realized it was exactly what she had been trying to do. “Don’t you have to go save the world?”
“Nope. Just the city. Come here.” He drew her up into his arms, kissed her hard on the mouth. He looked down into her eyes which were beginning to focus again.
“Go see my sister.”
“Go save the city.”
“You’re beginning to really bug me, Spagnola.”
“Don’t sweet-talk me, Fiore.”
Their smiles met, then their mouths. Her earlier assessment had been wishful thinking. Whatever was going on between them, there was nothing simple about it.
SHE HAD TAKEN a shower, was standing in the middle of the bedroom naked when she realized she had nothing to wear. Her sweaty suit from last night lay in a crumpled heap on the carpet. She dressed in the pair of shorts she’d bought her first day back, rummaged through Nick’s bureau drawers and found a T-shirt much too big for her. She got her wallet and sat down on the bed, emptying its contents. She had to have one credit card that wasn’t at its limit. She pawed through the plastic squares. She’d only had one that hadn’t been maxed out when she’d arrived, but the car rental would take care of that. She propped her chin on her hand. The money she’d found stuffed in between Cherry’s cushions was gone, except for a twenty. Her first unemployment check should be waiting when she got back to New York. She could borrow a little of the money she’d stashed in the safety deposit box yesterday, pay her mother back once she cashed her check. She stacked the useless plastic cards. She should cut them up. She slid them back into her wallet. She was brave but, like the cards, she had her limits.
The phone rang as she headed out. It was Al’s Auto Palace, telling her the car was ready whenever she wanted to pick it up.
“How much?” Her brow furrowed as she heard the answer. “Any discount for cash payments?”
Pleased by the answer, she mentally added it to her loan and told Al she’d be over this morning.
She went to the bank, counted out a thousand dollars in a private room, fanning the money in front of her. She replaced the bundles and left. The day’s heat was already searing. She headed to Al’s Auto Palace, dropping off her rental on the way.
“You were lucky. I was able to call around the junkyards and find a fender for that particular year’s model,” Al told her. “Had to charge you extra, though.”
“I understand.” Cissy peeled off twenties. Her hands were sweating, the cash sticking together. She rubbed her hands on her shorts.
“Spoke to Hank over at Auto Restoration and was able to match the paint. Custom color, though. That cost you, too.”
Cissy continued peeling off twenties. She smiled at the man with the grizzled beard and the warm quart of beer, one-third empty on the counter behind him.
She left the top down as she pulled out of Al’s, although it didn’t help beneath the climbing sun. She headed toward the mall, sweating in the hot breeze but happy to have the Thunderbird back. She turned on the radio loud to drown out her thoughts and pressed on the gas, letting the speed and the sun and the new morning convince her everything would be all right. Repeated glances in her rearview mirror showed no unmarked sedans or masked motorcyclists. She arrived at the mall, hot and thirsty, and bought a bottle of water. She made her purchases and headed back to the parking lot, its asphalt spongy from the heat. In the car, she took out the money she’d “borrowed,” counted what was left as she drank the rest of the bottled water.
She went back to Nick’s to change. She twisted her hair into a topknot and planned to put the convertible’s top up on the way to the restaurant. The open windows would still have their way with her, but at least she wouldn’t look as if she’d just emerged from a wind tunnel when she met Tommy. She got to the restaurant twenty minutes early, more than ready for air-conditioning and a cold drink.
She told the hostess she was meeting someone and went into the lounge to wait. She ordered a water with lemon, tipped the waitress when she brought it and stuck the rest of the cash on the table beneath her glass.
She took a handful of peanuts from the bowl in the table’s center, watching the noon news on the television suspended over the bar. She frowned at the slight stain on her fingertips as she was about to pop a few peanuts into her mouth. Her hands must have been damp or the ink must have been wet on the newspaper she’d scanned at Al’s this morning while she waited for him to bring the car around. She picked up a cocktail napkin, dampened it with the condensation on the outside of her glass and rubbed her fingertips.
She half listened to the weather report promising hot, hot and more hot, and ignored the sports report. She glanced at the clock. The news was almost over. She watched the door while the broadcaster promised they’d be right back with an interesting follow-up to a story reported yesterday on counterfeit bills being found in Wisconsin. Several people came into the restaurant, but no sign of Tommy yet.
“Nuns with funny money,” the waitress commented as she came up to see if she could get Cissy anything else. “Now I’ve heard it all.”
“What?” Cissy turned her attention away from the door.
“Just on the news now.” The waitress tipped her head toward the television. “Counterfeit money found in the Midwest was traced back to grocery store purchases made by a local convent for their community soup kitchen.” Shaking her head, the waitress walked over to another table.
Nuns with funny money. Cissy rubbed her fingertips together, studying them. She slid out the five-dollar bill the waitress had brought from beneath her glass. She wet her fingertips on the outside of the glass, rubbed the five between her fingers. She took the bill away. No stain.
She fumbled in her purse for her wallet, pulled out a twenty she’d taken from the safety deposit box this morning. She wet her fingertips again, rubbed the bill. She looked at her fingers. No stain.
“Cissy?”
She jumped, not having noticed Tommy had come in.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” He glanced at the bills littering the table. “Our table’s ready if you are.”
“Yes, let me just get my things here.” She picked up the change from her twenty, the other twenty still in her hand. She stopped, the bills in either hand. She rubbed them between her fingers, the texture of the twenty different, its weight thinner, its grain slicker. She shoved the money inside her purse.
“I’m going to stop at the ladies’ room a moment. Why don’t you get our table and I’ll meet you there.”
His eyes studied her as he returned her smile. “Sure.”
Cissy slipped into the ladies’ room, dropped her purse on the counter beneath a wall mirror and opened her wallet, her hands sweating now, and not from heat. She felt the other twenties, compared them to the ten and five the waitress had brought her. She wet her fingers, rubbed the other bills. Again, no stain. She smoothed her fingertips across the lone twenty still crinkled from being stuffed in the car’s seat cushions. She pulled her
hand away, saw her fingers had darkened. She wet her index finger again, rubbed the tip hard over the twenty’s surface. She pulled it away, her skin darker.
She stared down at the bill, heard Pauline’s voice. I keep thinking about the nuns… They were looking for your mother. Start telling her how much they appreciated her generous donation.
Cissy gathered the money, real and fake, off the counter, shoved it in her purse and went into the dining room.
“Tommy, I’m sorry.” She ignored the chair he’d pulled out for her. “Something’s come up. I can’t stay for lunch.”
Tommy’s expression darkened with concern. “Cissy, what is it? Is something wrong?”
She shook her head. “I’ll call you. I’m sorry.” She rushed out of the restaurant, pulling her cell phone and a worthless twenty out of her purse and dialed information as she walked toward the Thunderbird parked two blocks down. She asked for the number and address she needed, writing them down in reverse on the counterfeit bill—an old memory trick she’d learned in high school. From one of the nuns.
“Sisters of the Sacred Heart.”
“This is Cissy Spagnola.”
“Yes, how can I help you?”
“I believe you already have.” Cissy slid into Cherry, started the engine. “I’d like to speak to my mother or sister, please?”
“I’m sorry? Are they members of the order?”
Just her luck. A nun who didn’t crack. “Ask Jo Jo who got into a hair-pulling match when I found out she ripped up my poster of Menudo.”
She didn’t know whether the silence at the other end was a good sign or not.
“Please?” she pleaded as she pulled out into traffic.
“One moment.”
Cissy said a prayer aloud while she waited. Finally the sister returned on the line.
“Jo Jo said she’s sorry she ripped up your Men-undo poster.”
Cissy blinked back the tears, blurring the traffic. “Tell her I’m sorry, too. Tell her everything’s going to be okay.” Something nudged her side. Thinking her gym-bag-sized purse had slid, she absently pushed at the annoyance. Her hand landed on something solid. She looked down to see a gun stuck into her side. The hand that held it had an upside-down cross tattooed on the inside of its wrist.
“Now tell her,” Big Bill’s voice came from the back seat, “we want what she has or you die.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Are you there?” The nun at the other end of the line waited for Cissy to answer.
Cissy glanced down at the gun shoved into her side. It had been the hottest part of the day. The car was parked in plain sight on the street. She’d left it unlocked, the windows down. “Hello? Hello?” she said as if she couldn’t hear the nun on the other end.
“I’m right here, Miss Spagnola.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.” She shook the phone. “My phone must have died.” She heard a disgusted sigh from behind her.
“Give me the phone,” Big Bill growled.
“I can hear you perfectly, dear,” the nun said at the other end of the line. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Give me the phone.” The gun went deeper into her flesh.
“Yes, yes.” Cissy answered both the nun and the bum in the back seat. She felt a new pressure at the base of the seat.
“That’s a 9 mm at your back to make sure you behave.” The other gun left her side. The hand came back empty, grabbed the phone.
“Tell Jo Jo we’re done playing games. Either she gets everything we need to us by tonight or she’ll be telling her sister she’s sorry for a lot more than ripping up some poster. What? What’s that? You’re going to pray for me?”
A nun they couldn’t crack. And Cissy had thought she could hang tough.
“You pray that Jo Jo gets us what we need or we’ll all be saying prayers for her and big sis.”
Cissy heard the phone click. She reached out for it.
She heard a chuckle. “‘Scrappy Cissy.’”
“The bitch of it is I genuinely liked you, Big Bill. So what’s the plan? Kill me like you killed the others?” As she chattered, she searched for ways she could draw attention to the car. Emergency flashers had a distinctive, repetitive tick. Big Bill would notice them right away.
“Take a left at the corner, get on the interstate.”
“Bodies have been piling up faster than seventy-five-cent pitcher night since I’ve come home. No wonder you’re getting a little testy.”
“So don’t aggravate me.” The gun burrowed into her rib cage again. The pressure at the base of her spine stayed strong.
“What kind of gun is that?” Cissy indicated the pistol at her side. “A .22?”
“A .22? That’s a girly gun. This is a .38 Special. Designed to take care of business.”
So Big Bill wasn’t the killer. All the victims had been killed with a “girly” gun.
“What has Jo Jo got that you need?”
“Don’t worry about what Jo Jo has. You just worry that she gets it to us.”
“Counterfeiting is a change from the Lords’ usual crimes. What, they expanded their horizons in prison?”
“Thought I told you not to aggravate me.”
“What does Jo Jo have? Evidence on the operation? Did she take the account books? The printing plates?”
Big Bill gave a mean chuckle. “Printing plates? This is the computer age, doll. Nobody uses presses.”
She thought of the computer equipment she’d seen in Lester’s house. “So Lester’s hobby was more than printing neighborhood fliers. But how’d he get hooked up with the Lords?”
“He didn’t. He wasn’t working for us.”
“So that’s why you killed him.”
“We haven’t killed nobody…yet.”
“Tell that to the county morgue.”
“Listen, I’m telling you the Lords had nothing to do with those murders.”
“I’d like to believe you, Big Bill, but I find that hard to do with a gun shoved in my side.”
“If anybody killed anybody, it was the southern network. They’re the ones who moved in while my brothers were behind bars.”
“Is that who Saint-Sault worked for?”
“In the beginning. Mainly running drugs, but he was small-time. He came into the port, learned that with the Lords put away the local operation wasn’t going to make it much longer and saw an opportunity. The southern organization had been looking to expand their territory. They pounced on the ring, brought in the money and muscle, organized access to the ships. Ba-da-bing. The operation’s international.”
“But then the Lords start getting released.”
“And nobody was too happy to find their turf taken over. Saint-Sault was pissed off by this time, too, felt he’d practically put the ring in the southern boys’ laps only to be overlooked. The southern boys knew Saint-Sault used, and they didn’t like it. Drugs make a man unreliable. So Saint-Sault starts feeding information to the Lords, and Jo Jo starts working Lester, trying to find out more about the organization. Who the main associate was in the area that was calling the shots.”
“So the southern network could have killed Saint-Sault. Did they think Lester was working with Saint-Sault and kill him, too?” Cissy wondered.
“Maybe. Somebody was working both sides. Somebody had tipped off the southern network about the New Orleans raid. Not long after that, Saint-Sault is found This Side Up.”
“So, say the southern boys had him killed. Jo Jo gets spooked, not knowing if Saint-Sault talked or not about her pumping Lester. She goes into hiding.”
“Jo Jo was spooked, all right. She calls Eddie, tells him she’s got everything to shut the southern boys down and put the Lords back into power. The price is two million dollars.”
“Money no one was planning on paying her.”
“Hey, the chick’s a garbage head, but she’s got stones, you gotta give her that. Eddie told the Lords not to worry. He’d take care of it. He still owed
them for a favor they did for him a while back.”
Cissy thought of the bar bombing and Nick’s cousin. “He should burn in hell.”
“Nice way to talk about family.”
“He wasn’t family.” But Louisa and Jo Jo were, and she had to save them. Not to mention her own skinny butt.
“What about the bartender at the Golden Cue?”
“Listen, I ain’t got all your answers. The fun and games have gone on too long.”
“So that’s what threatening me and sticking a body in my room was? Fun and games?”
“Your sister isn’t too steady to begin with. By now she’s got the shingles. Any police involvement and the deal was off. So what do you do? Come into town and climb into bed with Nick.”
“I’m staying with him temporarily for my own safety.”
Big Bill chuckled. “You’d think a guy who can ‘cha-cha’ like that could control his women.”
Cissy gritted her teeth. “So the Lords didn’t kill Lester, just stuck the body in my room. Tell that one to a jury.”
“Pure luck there. Stevie Deed was looking to get in good with the Lords, knew it was only a matter of time before they’d be controlling the port again, so he volunteers to go to Lester’s, shake him up. When he gets there, he finds Lester already dead. He gives us a call. We’re trying to figure out what to do about you. Stevie says he’ll take the bike out for a spin, give you a little scare. We tell him not to kill you— Jo Jo might not like that.”
“So Stevie tried to scare me on the Harley, but it didn’t work.”
“You’d think you’d get the message.”
“Scrappy Cissy.”
Big Bill chuckled again. “So Eddie told Stevie to stick the body in your motel room.”
“Then who killed Lester?”
“I’d say somebody who didn’t want him talking.”
“When Stevie found the body, was Lester wearing a toupee?”
“Yeah, he wore a rug,” Big Bill’s voice was amused. “Stevie said the thing must have fell off when he moved the body. Only, he was in such a hurry, he didn’t notice it until he’d dropped off the body and was heading to the tavern to tell Eddie and Manny. The piece was on the floor of the front seat. Stevie thought the damn thing was a wild animal. Scared him half to death. He almost shot it.” Big Bill laughed. “He chucked it in the Dumpster when he got to the bar. Get off at the exit after this one. Take a left off the ramp.”
Unmarked Man Page 16
