“What is it?” Lily asks, no doubt tired of our cryptic discussion.
“It’s a bar that just opened a couple of months ago called Bar63.”
“Why is that significant?”
“My father has this saying: ‘You, me, and sixty-three.’ He used it as a clue last year when everything went down with the mob. I always thought the sixty-three was meaningless, something he just made up because it rhymed and it was catchy. But now there’s this bar.” I look up at Murphy. “I don’t know, Murph. This one really could be just a coincidence.”
“I thought so, too, when I first read the article. But something about it kept nagging me. So I dug around a bit, and I found something else pretty coincidental.”
He uses the keyboard shortcut to bring up the next browser window. The Wikipedia page for Victoria Febbi appears. Except it’s not Victoria, it’s Vittoria. And it’s not a page about a bartender. It’s a page about the actress who voiced the Blue Fairy in an Italian production of Pinocchio.
“We already know from the inscription on the gun that the blue fairy somehow relates to your mom,” Murphy says, his bespectacled gaze intense. “What if the sixty-three relates to her, too?”
I stare at the screen without really seeing it. Is that what my dad meant? Every time he said You, me, and sixty-three, did he mean my mom? All these years, I thought it was just me and him against the world; I thought my mom had left us without a backward glance. But maybe that’s not what happened at all. Maybe my dad was trying to tell me something.
“Well…” I shut Murphy’s laptop. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Forty minutes and a fake Loyola student ID later, Murphy slows the van to a stop on the street just outside Bar63.
“Are you sure you want to see what’s behind that door?”
It looks like a harmless enough door. Dark wood siding, lanterns above it. People bustle by, some of them bona fide Loyola students, and their reflections in the bar’s front window follow them from pane to pane.
“I think I can handle it,” I say, giving Murphy a halfhearted smile and slipping out of the van.
I thread my way through the passersby and pull open the heavy oak door, the darkness inside greeting me like a shill roping a mark. It’s packed for a Tuesday night. All the seats at the bar are filled, and I can make out only the bartender’s back in the dim light as she hustles to make drinks for the sports-cheering patrons.
Taking advantage of the crowd, I loop around the perimeter, scanning the walls for clues. But if there are any among the vintage team shots and event posters, they’re too well hidden for me to find. The room is long and narrow, with a row of two-seater tables along the right wall. It connects in the back to a series of adjoining rooms, some filled with high tables, others with sofas. One of the rooms contains a closed door marked OFFICE.
The crowd explodes into a simultaneous cheer that makes me jump. I look over at the screens they’re riveted to and see a brown diamond surrounded by a green field. I lean against the rough granite wall across from the bar, which is still too crowded for comfort. I want to actually talk to the bartender, not just order a drink and have her flit off again. I can afford to wait, though. It’s the bottom of the ninth, and the Cubs aren’t doing very well.
Since I’m waiting anyway, I pull out my phone and open Contacts. As I scroll up to Mrs. Antolini’s number, I happen to pass Sam’s number. And as I often do when I see it, I hesitate with my thumb over the Call button. I’ve talked to him only once since he left for military school—only one time since that night. I tried to call him on his birthday. I tried to call him on my birthday. But he won’t answer my calls. So I gave up trying. And soon maybe I’ll stop hesitating every time I see his name in my contacts.
Of its own volition, my thumb moves to the Delete Contact button. I might as well save myself. I could do it with a simple press of my finger. But then I hear Sam’s voice in my head, telling me why he’d decided to accept his dad’s military-school ultimatum. That he didn’t know who he was without me. That he needed to find that out before he had anything to offer me. I don’t pretend to know what the hell that means, much less how the hell I feel about it. But regardless, he’s still the best hacker I’ve ever met, still my partner…always my best friend. Whether or not either of us still believes it, it’s the truth.
My thumb moves again, past Sam’s number and up the alphabet to Mrs. Antolini. I tap the number, and then clear my throat as I press my phone hard to one ear to block out the sound. I move to a quieter corner of the room and put my palm over my other ear. I should probably wait until I’m outside to do this, but I don’t want to lead her on. If I’m changing my mind about the job, she deserves to know as soon as possible.
After three rings, her voice mail picks up.
“Hi, Mrs. Antolini. This is Julep Dupree. I’m sorry, but I’ve reconsidered taking your case. Based on my preliminary research, I don’t think it’s a good fit for my team. I have a list of private investigators who might be able to help you. I can email it to you in the morning. Thanks for your understanding.”
As I press the End button, I get a text message from Mike.
Twenty-minute warning.
Halfway across the country, and he’s still tracking my curfew.
Angela’s making me cookies as we speak.
That’s proof? She always makes cookies on Tues. How about I call her?
Chuckling, I reply,
You got me. I’m on my way back now.
Better be.
Just then, the crowd heaves a collective sigh of disappointment and breaks into smaller groups of twos and threes. Most groups head for the door, while some stay to finish their drinks. A stool opens up at the south end of the bar. I pocket my phone and make my way over to it.
After sliding onto the stool, I signal to the bartender that I’m ready to place my order. She’s probably in her late thirties or so, and looks like a cross between a biker and a hippie—dark jeans, a form-fitting tie-dyed tank revealing a barbed-wire tattoo, and bleached dreads piled messily on her head. Her brown eyes linger on me a beat too long before she goes back to smearing the guts of a lime wedge on the rim of the glass she’s holding. If she’s the famed Victoria Febbi, then we can pretty much chalk this one up to coincidence. She’s about as far from my überfeminine, fashion-forward mom as it is possible to get.
“What’ll you have?” she says, wiping her hands on a towel as she comes over to me.
“Club soda,” I say. “With a twist.”
She snorts. “Can I see some ID?”
“For a club soda?”
“For being in the bar at all. No minors.”
“I didn’t see a bouncer,” I say, producing my fake Loyola ID.
She glances at it and hands it back. “I need a license.”
Wow, not even a smile. Such customer service. I take out my fake driver’s license and hand it to her.
She pulls a black-light flashlight from under the counter and checks the hologram. Good thing I know what I’m doing in the fake-ID department—just ask the hundred or so St. Aggie’s students I made IDs for last year to cover rent while my dad moonlighted as the mob’s pet bullet-cushion. On second thought, don’t ask them. They’d probably give me a lousy reference, since I threw them all under the honor-code-violation bus to save the Ukrainian girls from both Petrov and deportation. And speaking of getting kicked out of places…
“Is it the Catholic schoolgirl getup?” I say to the bartender, heaping on the charm as she pores over every molecule of the license. “I’m in a play. Dress rehearsals all this week. I just came in to catch the end of the Cubs game.”
She studies my face, and then hands back the license. “Club soda?”
“With a twist.”
She stows the flashlight, grabs a glass, and fills it using a soda gun. She’s watching me with an expression that’s half suspicious, half befuddled, and there’s a certain tension in her shoulders that, in my experience, usu
ally indicates fear. Which makes no sense. Even if I were busted as a minor in her bar, I’d be the one with a black mark on my rap sheet. She carded me. She did her job. So why the fear?
The bartender plunks the glass down on the bar in front of me, sans twist, and starts her retreat. I have to act now if I’m going to figure anything out.
“I read about this bar online. Are you Victoria Feb—Fab—Fib— Help me out here.”
“Yes,” she says, eyeing the other patrons, but she doesn’t elaborate. My heart sinks an inch or two as her admission confirms my guess that my errand here has been for nothing. As much as I don’t believe in coincidences, this bar really must be one. There’s nothing here but a bevy of masochistic sports fans, a surly staff, and an unusual couple of names. Nevertheless, I’ll give it one more shot.
“You know, you remind me of someone,” I lie, sipping my soda. “Her name’s Moretti. Any relation?”
The bartender doesn’t so much as bat an eyelash at the name. “Nope. I have a niece Sylvia in Spokane, though.”
I slump over my drink, depressed. Looks like I may have to take that NWI job after all. I need to find my mom. Especially now that I know she’s officially missing. I pull out a five and leave it on the bar. I didn’t really want the soda anyway.
I slide off the stool and head for the door. Just as I reach for the handle, my phone buzzes with a text notification. I glance back at the bartender, but someone else has taken my stool already, so all I see are her bleached dreads. My phone buzzes again. I pull it out of my pocket, and when I read the two messages from Dani, all thoughts of biker-hippie bartenders fly out of my head.
Where are you?
You are in danger.
I don’t bother texting back as I swing the door open and step out onto the sidewalk. Dani picks up on the first ring.
“Where are you?” she says.
“I’m on North Broadway, near Loyola,” I say, scanning the street for Dani’s rental car. It’s not in sight, though, which doesn’t do much to improve my anxiety. “What do you mean I’m in danger?”
“I just heard from one of my contacts. He is not reliable, but if he is telling the truth about this—”
“Back up. Telling the truth about what?”
“There’s a contract out on you.”
A contract. Perfect. “That means the Chevelle was about me, wasn’t it? Dang it. I hate it when Murphy’s right.”
“This is not a time for jokes,” she says, her accent getting thicker.
“It’s not a joke. Murphy is unbearable when he’s right. Thank god Mike’s out of town, or I’d be on a one-way flight to Albuquerque before I could say—”
“Stop talking,” she says sharply. “I am coming to get you. Go somewhere bright and full of people and text me the address.”
I agree and hang up, checking over my shoulder, because it is physically impossible not to when someone’s just told you there’s a hit man targeting you.
The Popeyes across the street definitely fits the bill for brightness, and its proximity to a college means it’s relatively populated, even at nine-forty-five at night. I glance at the number on the door as I start to cross the street. Unfortunately, I’m too busy tapping the address into my phone to notice the headlights barreling toward me until it’s almost too late.
The squeal of accelerating tires betrays my would-be killer. I throw myself behind a Corolla parked illegally in front of the bar. Glass shatters as bullets rip through the car’s rear windshield. I cover my head instinctively and curse when the glass nicks my skin.
Gunshots are almost unheard of in Edgewater, so of course people pour out onto the street like idiots when they should be barring their doors. Popeyes is out of the question now. I make a run for it, my heart slamming against my rib cage. The rational part of my brain says the hit man won’t come back, not with so many witnesses on alert. But the rational part of my brain is no match for survival instinct.
The “L” station is packed and full of light. I jump the turnstile and sprint across the platform, but I don’t feel safe here. I won’t feel safe until I see Dani. I curl up behind a nice metal map display, wrapping my arms around myself to keep my body from shaking to pieces.
Granvlle L staiton.
I tap to Dani, typos rampant from clumsy fingers.
Two things on my to-do list: First, force myself to breathe, and second, figure out who the hell would want me dead.
“Are you all right?” Dani asks. The soothing glow of streetlights washes over the car as we pass from one pool of light to the next. I want to think about the light, or the oral report I have to give in history, or anything other than bullets flying at my head. And as soon as I think that, the pools of light turn to pools of blood under Tyler’s body.
“Yeah,” I say, blinking back the image for the fiftieth time. “I got away. Total amateur hour.”
“You or him?”
I’m still too rattled to snort, though I appreciate her efforts at distraction. “Both.”
She reaches across the console to lay her hand on top of mine. I must be pretty out of it. She never touches me voluntarily, not without a specific purpose. I’m not sure her touch helps, though. It makes me nervous for a different reason, one that involves me leaning on her too much when I’m clearly a danger to anyone stupid enough to be friends with me. Her job is already dangerous enough. She doesn’t need my crazy life adding to that.
Despite my reservations, my tremors eventually subside under the warmth radiating from her hand.
“I should be stronger than this,” I say. “I used to be invincible.”
She squeezes my hand. “The first time I was ordered to kill someone, I shook so badly, I missed at point-blank range.”
Seriously. This is what she comes up with.
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” I say.
She smiles at me, unapologetic. Sometimes I forget that most of my friends can take care of themselves.
“The first time you were ordered to kill someone?” I continue.
She releases my hand, moving hers back to the wheel. “Do you really want to know?”
Do I? Or would I rather exist in this fantasy I’ve built up that Dani is as much a victim as the other girls I rescued from Petrov? I know she’s a mob enforcer, but knowing is a far cry from witnessing. I’ve never seen her do any actual enforcing. Do I want to go down that road, or do I want to leave Dani in this nice gray area where she’s just like me—a crook with an unfortunate weakness for the innocent?
I’m not much for truth, generally. But in this case, I think I do want her to tell me. I want to know her better, and that includes all the pieces that she usually keeps hidden. She shows up every time I need her. She tells me what I need to hear every time I need to hear it, whether I want to hear it or not. Since the day we met, she’s never hurt me, left me, or asked anything of me I couldn’t give. I can’t say that about anyone else I’ve ever met. But I still don’t know her. And I need to know her to have even half a chance of repaying her someday.
“Yes, I do,” I say. “But not tonight. Tell me a happy story instead.”
She falls silent for a moment, thinking. “In Kharkiv, a group of us orphans lived in an underground maintenance area for the city heating system. Lots of pipes that steamed, kept us warm in winter.”
Holy crap. This is a happy story? I keep my mouth shut, though. This is the first time Dani’s ever actually talked about her past.
“One day, Tatyana—she was six or seven then—came through the manhole carrying a bedraggled cat. It had only one eye and a chunk out of its ear. The fur was patchy and covered in so much grime we could not tell what color it was. The cat took one look at us skinny gutter rats and thought it was about to get eaten. It clawed free of Tatyana’s arms but couldn’t figure out how to get back through the manhole, so it flew around our shelter, bouncing off kids and pipes and yowling at the top of its lungs. We were all scrambling, trying to catch it and throw it out
before it drew militsiya attention. Mykola finally forced it out. He was covered in scratches, but he was the hero for the day, so he got the largest portion of food. Poor Tatyana. We teased her about it for months afterward.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. It’s a horrible thought, Dani as a child living underground in a post-Soviet concrete jungle, dodging cops and scrounging for food, but the mental image of a bunch of kids hopping around trying to catch a cat that’s gone nuclear is like something out of a sitcom.
“Did it ever come back?” I ask.
“The cat?” Dani says, smiling enough to actually show teeth. “No. But Tatyana couldn’t help herself when it came to animals. She was always dragging in some poor unfortunate creature with a limp or when it was zero degrees outside. Sort of like you.”
“Ha. Ha-ha. You’re so hilarious.” I’m itching to ask her for all the details—how long did she live in Kharkiv, how did she hook up with Petrov’s crew, what happened to her parents, how is she even still alive—but I don’t. I may not know her history, but I know her personality enough by now that digging for information directly is the fastest way to get her to clam up. “Do you ever think about going back?” I ask instead.
“I do,” she says. There’s more she’s not saying. The silence that falls is heavy with it. She wants me to figure it out, but I think I already have.
Dani pulls the car up to the curb in front of the Ramirezes’ house.
“Thanks for coming to get me, Dani.”
“I will always come and get you,” she says.
I’m not sure what to say to that, so I don’t say anything.
With a deep breath, she leans back and taps the steering wheel. “Before you go in, we should figure out how to keep you from getting shot.”
I’m proud of myself for not wincing at that. “There’s not much we can do beyond figuring out who’s behind the contract, is there?”
Trust Me, I'm Trouble Page 4
