Strictly Need to Know

by MB Austin

  “Are you okay?” Rose asked, mercifully not following to check.

  “Fine,” Maji answered, her voice not as steady as she’d hoped. “Just trying to remember I’m a professional.”

  Maji listened to Rose roll off the bed, and her steps reach the door.

  “I’m going to go back down to the kitchen, then. Would that help?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “If you make that cold shower quick, I’ll save you the last waffles.”

  “Deal.” Maji waited until the door clicked shut before standing up. You are so whipped, Rios.

  Maji reclined on the one chaise by the pool that didn’t have to be moved to find shade. It also afforded a view down the hill toward the Sound while she kept an eye on Rose. The afternoon was dimming fast as clouds moved in from the south. No rumbles yet, though. And unless there was an actual flash in the sky, Rose would keep slicing through the water in her easy, methodical rhythm until all her laps were done. Relentless as a long-distance runner, and equally graceful.

  The screen door banged closed behind Angelo, who jogged over to Maji and handed her an iPod and earbuds. “Frank’s home from the hospital. Take a listen, courtesy of Rey.”

  Maji pictured Rey slipping into the hospital room in scrubs, never looked at twice.

  Rose stood up in the shallow end, water sluicing off her upper half. She removed the goggles and said loudly, “Ang! You taking a break finally?”

  “I wish, hon. No Marco Polo today.” He sounded genuinely regretful.

  Rose swam toward them and tried to hoist herself out, then looked frustrated. “Give me a hand.”

  Ang leaned toward her, his arm outstretched. He nearly pitched in when she yanked on his hand. “Hey! No fair! I got clothes here, a watch.”

  Rose gave no ground, still clinging to his hand at the center of their tug-of-war. “Promise you’ll get your suit and come in for twenty minutes, and I’ll let you go. Twenty minutes, Ang.”

  “Fine. I’ll be right back. Finish your laps.”

  She smiled beatifically at him, resettled her goggles, and resumed her swim as he turned back to Maji, shaking his head.

  Maji slid an iPod earbud into the ear without the comm. She watched Tom and Dev come out in their matching khakis and blue button-downs, the hired-security uniforms Angelo had crafted for them. Jackie must be close behind. Sure enough, Angelo’s mother appeared next, in a coverup and sandals. They settled in across the pool, in the sun. Maji gave them all a small wave and gestured to her ears. Tom gave her a nod in reply, while Dev leaned over and spoke quietly to Jackie.

  “She’s working,” Maji heard through the comm.

  “When isn’t she?” Jackie replied. “Best fake girlfriend Ang ever had.”

  Maji shut off their voices in her ear with a single click, and pressed play. She heard the hospital room door, then footsteps and Ricky’s voice: “Wow. You look like shit.” He sounded more smug than sympathetic.

  The bed creaked. “You’re lucky I can’t move fast,” Frank rasped. Then, “Why?” in a wounded tone.

  “That you gotta ask that, Frank, troubles me.” Gino sounded indulgent, almost patronizing. “Max always said what you lacked in smarts you made up for in loyalty. Like a fucking Irish setter.”

  “Whatever I did, Mr. B, I’m sorry. I would have stopped if you’d told me what it was.” Frank’s plaintive tone and undisguised fatigue hurt to hear.

  Gino sighed. “Frank. You been with the family what, thirty years or something?” There was a pause. “Who took you in?”

  “Max.”

  “No, Frank. Max might have got you home from ’Nam in one piece, and got you clean, but he wasn’t capo. It was Pop cut the deal with the Lucchetti family, made you a Benedetti.”

  “I’d never hurt the Family,” Frank pleaded. “I haven’t talked to nobody about Ang’s thing.”

  A smack sounded sharply, and Maji flinched. “There’s the problem in a nutshell, Frank. It isn’t Ang’s thing. It’s mine. He’s mine, you’re mine. All of this is mine now. Am I getting through to you? Am I?”

  “Yes, Mr. B. It’s just…I thought looking out for Ang was my thing. I promised Max, and—”

  “You see Max here?” Another pause. “Nobody you answer to lives in that house anymore. You can go fetch for the kid, and drive those girls around, run whatever the fuck errands he says. But you remember this…everything you do for him, you do for me.”

  “I thought I was. Honest.”

  Gino cleared his throat. “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. This one time. From now on, Ricky says I want something, you give it. You hear something I should know, you don’t wait. You fucking tell me. You’re my eyes and ears down there, Frank.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Anything. Everything. Don’t decide what I need to know or don’t. Just tell me. Well, tell Ricky…he’ll decide what’s important. You can do that.”

  “Without letting Ang know?”

  “Yes, you retard!” Ricky interjected.

  “Basta!” Gino spat. “Frank, let me make this as simple as I can. Who owns you?”

  “Only you, Mr. B,” Frank answered. “Only you.”

  The recording clicked off, and Maji took the earbud out. She clicked her comm back on but didn’t speak. The guys looked relaxed, sitting quietly on either side of the reclining Jackie. Angelo was splashing Rose, who tried unsuccessfully to get behind him and into dunking position. Maji let the recorded conversation filter through her brain. Frank would be reporting to Gino now, that much was clear. Would they need to cut him out of their daily lives? As if they could. No way to do that without tipping Gino off.

  Gino was smart enough to figure out what scared Frank more than death, and mean enough to give him a taste of it. How could he do that to a guy whose only fault was looking out for his brother’s and sister’s kids too well? Some reward for thirty years of giving up having a family of his own to live over their garage, always on call. Maji pictured Frank the last moment she’d seen him in the hospital, the flash of panic in his eyes when the nurse had called Rose his daughter. Those sweet brown eyes, so tender like hers. Fuck.

  Angelo must know. Maybe that was why Frank was planning to turn state’s evidence, risking his own life to help Angelo take down Gino. And why Angelo was sure they could trust him. Like one of the family. Rose’s words came back to her, infused with irony.

  Standing and stretching, Maji felt the familiar dissonance that always hit her at some point in a mission. On the surface, the six of them were just relaxing on a cloudy Sunday afternoon, alert to no threat greater than a thunderstorm. At the first rumble, they’d gather up their towels and traipse inside for drinks before dinner. But Maji would go in and gear up for another performance as Ri, sitting at the table with boyfriend Angelo, both of them chatting with Gino and Ricky like they had no idea what mendacious pendejos they really were.

  A distant boom sounded, more like a jet than thunder, and Maji squinted at the horizon, out toward the cloudbank shadowing the Sound. Something larger than a bird, just visible at this distance and up too high for the security cameras to capture, hovered in the sky. A remote-control plane?

  Maji picked the binoculars off the café table and zeroed in on the object. Then she waved at Ang, getting his attention without yelling. “Drone five hundred meters out,” she said into the comm, at the same time giving Ang hand signals. “Move!”

  Angelo grabbed Rose, speaking low and moving quickly. Dev hoisted Jackie from her chair, while Tom drew his sidearm and covered the four of them, scanning in all directions while moving toward the house. Maji ran for the tree line, heading toward the water under cover of the leafy branches.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Maji zigzagged down the yard just inside the tree line, trying to keep out of view of the drone without losing sight of it. “Coming into range, under cover,” she said.

  “Hold your position,” Angelo ordered over the comm. “I got nothin
g from the ground cameras. Is it weaponized?”

  Maji couldn’t be sure yet, but it looked as though only a camera hung from its lattice of support bars and rotor arms. “Negative. Eighty percent.” Which were not the best odds that it wouldn’t shoot her.

  “Dev?”

  “Eyes on front of property, nothing in the sky or on ground.”

  “Tom?”

  “Rear view from second story clear.” So wherever the operator was, they probably couldn’t see him or catch him once he realized they were hunting his very expensive toy.

  In a few seconds, the nearly silent baby helicopter would glide by her, if it held its course. “Preparing for takedown,” she spoke in a near whisper. If it had audio on board, no point giving her position away.

  “Scrub if you have to,” Angelo replied. She nodded, preparing to step out for a clear shot as soon as the drone had its camera pointed safely away from her. Of course, he couldn’t hear the nod. “Rios, confirm.”

  “Shhhh,” she breathed, stepping out from under the branches with her pistol trained high.

  Five shots from the semiautomatic, and at least one connected. The drone spun down onto the lawn, digging up grass where it collided with the earth. “It’s down. No weapons visible.”

  “Sending backup,” Ang replied. “Rios, approach with caution.”

  “Roger.” She skirted around behind the big black metal spider on the grass, keeping out of line of sight of the camera suspended underneath. Tilted awkwardly where it had crashed, the golf-umbrella-sized flier sat motionless, its eight rotor blades still. “Anybody miss it yet?”

  “Negative. Disable feed, but watch your six.”

  Maji nodded, still not willing to put her voice on its audio feed. As long as the big bug had power, it was still transmitting—sound, images, location. The camera whirred, turning on its axis via remote control. She placed herself in the machine’s six o’clock position, where the camera lens couldn’t point. She hoped.

  Before Maji could dig out her penknife, Angelo’s voice halted her. “Wait! Scan for an IED.”

  “None,” Maji breathed. Since the thing had no gun mounts, explosives had come immediately to mind. But apparently this drone was for surveillance only. She clipped the cable to the transmitter and then, for good measure, gave the camera lens a sharp smack with the handle of her gun. The crack was satisfying. Maji peeked over the top of the drone carefully, and sure enough, the lens was fractured. She sighed and took her voice back. “Disarmed. Where’s my sherpa?”

  “Close enough,” Tom answered in the comm.

  Maji took a knee and watched Tom jog down the hill, carrying his rifle with scope. She had indeed been close enough for him to pick off when he’d answered her, before Maji could spot his approach. As always, she was grateful they were on the same team.

  Tom gave the downed machine a careful once-over, then slung his rifle over his shoulder and prepared to hoist it up off the ground.

  “I’ll carry, you cover me,” Maji said. If unwanted company appeared, he was better able to handle it from a distance.

  “Negative,” Angelo’s voice countermanded. “You’re on the house cams, Rios. Act a little girly, for once.”

  Knowing her stealth run and sharpshooting had probably been caught on the security feed, Maji snorted. “Dream on, lover.”

  She and Tom walked up to the house, each with one hand holding an arm of the drone, their other on a weapon.

  Rose watched over Jackie’s shoulder from the kitchen doorway as the three guys dismantled the center of the odd machine taking up the entire kitchen table. Maji leaned against a counter, arms crossed, watching them as well.

  “This guy’s starting to irritate me,” Angelo said. “And you.” He pointed at Maji with the needle-nose pliers. He continued the thought in Arabic.

  Maji shrugged and replied in kind. Then Dev said something, and Tom gave him a little shove. Angelo snapped at them. Although Rose had heard Maji and Ang speaking in Arabic, it surprised her to hear the incomprehensible language from Dev’s and Tom’s lips, too.

  “What the hell?” Jackie said, almost to herself.

  “I keep telling Ang it’s rude,” Rose said. “Isn’t that right, akhi?”

  Tom nudged Angelo, and he looked up from the guts of the machine. “What? Oh, sorry.” He looked over his team and seemed to come to a decision. “I have to tell Gino, sooner the better. But unless I say otherwise, when Sander gets back Monday, none of this ever happened.”

  His teammates each gave him a nod. When Angelo looked to Rose and Jackie, Jackie answered for them both. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Thanks, Ma.” He pointed to Maji and Rose. “You two drop in on Frank, let him know he’s not feeling well enough to come to supper at the Big House.”

  “He’s not?” Rose asked, then felt stupid. “Oh. All right.” To Maji she added, “Just let me go shower and change. I’m not dressed for cloak-and-dagger.”

  Rose felt sheepish going to Frank’s apartment, after all these years. She’d only been inside twice before, once when she was twenty and he had the flu. More recently, she’d gone in to pull him out for Max’s and Carlo’s funerals, finding him bandaged from the crash and suffering from a bad case of survivor’s guilt. Rose climbed the stairs on the side of the garage and let Maji knock on his door. Something thudded inside, and Maji opened the door, motioning Rose to wait. Seconds later she was back.

  “He’s wobbly,” Maji said. “Leave the lights off.”

  They entered into the dim living room, where Frank reclined in a battered Barcalounger. At the sight of Rose, he fussed with his robe. “I shoulda cleaned up,” he said weakly.

  “Nonsense,” she replied, not raising her voice more than necessary. “Let me freshen that up.”

  Rose took the TV tray by the lounger, with its half-finished sandwich and empty cup, and headed for the kitchen behind him. As she re-emerged with a tall glass of ice water, she saw Maji crouched down by him, holding his hand. Not branding him a junkie and turning her back on him, then, she thought with relief.

  “Thank God,” Frank replied to whatever Maji had said. “I couldn’t have looked Mrs. B in the face today.”

  Rose recalled Frank’s version of a just-say-no lecture on drugs, delivered as an anecdote when she was a teen. The tales of hash smoked on the front lines, trying heroin the first time, and the agony of withdrawal. And the fact that he’d sworn to Nonna on his life to stay clean. She couldn’t believe he would start again of his own accord. Yet Angelo wouldn’t give her an explanation for what had happened.

  “You want the music back on?” Maji asked.

  Rose noticed for the first time the album jackets on the floor by the stack of vintage stereo components. Billy Joel’s Cold Spring Harbor, the earliest of the scattered collection, sat on the record player, hissing softly as it spun. How many times had she heard that on the cassette players of his cars, over her summers here? Music forbidden in California, now nostalgic as part of her adolescent rebellion.

  “No!” Frank snapped. “I got a headache,” he apologized. “Just gonna doze a little.”

  Rose set the cold water by him and gave him a kind smile, taking her cue from Maji. Not that she would have berated him, but there were questions she was dying to ask.

  “I’m so sorry, hon. I let you down again, and—”

  “Stop, it Frank.” Maji popped up from the crouch in her effortless way and stood back where she could make eye contact with both of them. “Lie to whoever else you’re supposed to, but not Rose. She’s too smart, and she needs to know she can trust you.”

  “I can’t,” he protested, looking even more dejected than before.

  Maji looked unconvinced. She turned her attention to Rose. “When Frank picked us up, did he have coffee in the car?”

  Rose couldn’t recall. She shrugged.

  “Well, he didn’t. But there was a take-out cup in the holder when I parked at the hospital.” Maji turned her gaze b
ack to Frank, as if to pin him to his recliner with it. “And whoever brought it to you put your cigarette out in it. Somebody you never thought would slip you a Mickey and shoot you up.”

  “No,” Frank said, shaking his head. “I—”

  “You’re right-handed,” Maji interrupted, poking her left hand inside her right elbow. “But the needle went in here. And not too smoothly, either. Not like someone with plenty of practice.”

  Rose watched him close his eyes, a tear squeezing out from under one lid. “I knew it,” she breathed. “But why?”

  “Because he doesn’t have family to threaten, and getting hooked again scares him more than dying,” Maji said.

  She swore softly in Spanish, the expletives aimed at…whom?

  “Sirko?” Rose asked. “No, you wouldn’t let a stranger bring you coffee while you were on watch. So…?”

  Frank gave Maji an anxious look, and Maji answered with a wry smile. “Too smart by half. And Frank, you won’t let anybody get to you, will you?”

  He shook his head. “I’d die first. But they don’t know that. And, Rose?”

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t know none of this. I can’t help Ang if they don’t think they got me good, and that I’m keeping their secrets. You understand?”

  She couldn’t honestly take it all in, but she nodded. “I’m getting pretty good at acting. I can pretend to be mad at you, and disappointed—whatever makes sense, I guess—as long as you know the truth.”

  He blinked back tears, nodding silently.

  It was frightening to see him so vulnerable. Rose looked to Maji. “Thank you.”

  Maji left Rose in the Big House kitchen with Nonna and went to find Angelo.

  “Ay, Annie Oakley!” Ricky called from the living room.

  So her marksmanship was now on record. Great. It looked like they’d been meeting, the snacks untouched on the coffee table between the armchairs Angelo and Gino occupied and the couch Ricky dominated.