by Frank Zafiro
“I also told them that if I find you, I will deliver you up, just as I did with Dobry.” His nose is starting to do the coke runs and he sniffs it back.
“There we go,” I say. “I knew you could finally spill it, my old kumpel, my old fucking pal. The sacrificing me like Dobry part, though, that I’m not so understanding about.”
It’s quiet for a second. I light up another cig and this time put the pack back in the pocket that has the Berretta in it. I lean back a little and casually look at him, no visible anger but I know he can feel the hate.
“Jerzy, this house is safe for tonight and tomorrow. This I swear to you. Andros goes with me now but I will leave the man down in the kitchen and one in a car outside for you.”
I just stare at him.
“After that, though, after four o’clock tomorrow afternoon, I cannot make any more efforts on your behalf.” He shrugs and puts a shaky finger across the bottom of his nose, sniffing again. “Sooner or later they, or we, will find you in Chicago. This is a fact, Jerzy. You know that. Earlier, you mentioned to me that you were leaving for a long time. Please do that. Go away…far away.”
I glance at Andros and his chin is down, staring at his shoes.
Sighing, I stand up, with my hands in my pockets. Patrik’s eyes follow me up. Andros is watching me very close now, too, his hand going slow but sure to the pistol grip.
Time, everything, just kind of stops for a second. The air is a little thin in the room.
Without taking my eyes off Patrik, I say, “It’s okay, crew cut, stand down. I ain’t that dumb.”
Patrik gets up now.
“Look, Patrik, I’m a big boy here. There’s never any guarantees in what we do, huh? Never. I might have done the exact same thing you’re doing to me…but probably not.” I let that sink in a little. “I also know you didn’t have to do this tonight and I appreciate the chance you’re taking. The head start.”
“Very well. This is not a good day, huh? Time is very short. Goodbye, Jerzy. I must go now and take Andros with me.” He actually looks sad when he says it. I’m not some gullible asshole for sure, but I actually think he is.
I look over at Andros and give him a nod and he gives me one back.
“Patrik, I want to tell you something else. The offer of the house here for tonight is great but that just ain’t gonna work out too good for me. I’ll be walking out, side by side, with you.” I go over to the desk, pick up the bottle of Makers Mark. “And this.”
“Very well, but it’s perfectly safe here. I give you my word.”
“Yeah, I hear you, but you know, it’s that personal versus business thing you mentioned a minute ago, huh?” I mimic him from earlier, holding my hands out like scales and going up and down with them. “Besides, I might oversleep, or your watch might be running fast. You just never know about those things.”
Patrik flashes me that shark smile and then turns to Andros. “Call the car around, have them pick us up right now. We are very late.”
Andros gets his cell out and makes a quick call, speaking in Polish. All three of us head out of the room and down the steps.
When we get to the porch, the car has already pulled up and it looks like the same silver Lexus I saw earlier.
Andros leads the way down the steps to the car, head swiveling around in every direction. He’s got his shotgun in clear sight and ready. Patrik stops at the gate, looks back at me.
“Don’t ever let me see you again, my friend.”
“Yeah. Likewise. What would happen if we did, works both ways…promise you that.”
“Do widzenia,” he says and turns, getting into the car. Andros shuts Patrik’s door and doesn’t look back at me as he gets in the front passenger side. The Lexus slides smoothly away from the curb.
I don’t waste any time. I’m outta here too.
TWENTY-TWO
Mick
Around eight, my cell phone rang again. I glanced down at the number and even though I’d only seen it once before, I recognized it immediately.
“Hello?”
“It’s Ania.”
“I know.”
“I got someone to cover the rest of my shift. Can you meet me now?”
What did she think I’d been waiting for since she called? “Of course. Where?”
“Not my place,” she said. “It isn’t safe.”
“Someplace public?” I suggested. “A bar or some restaurant?”
She paused. “No.”
“A park?”
“I don’t think so. I need privacy.”
I swallowed, then asked. “A hotel?”
“That’d be best. Do you know The Drake Hotel?”
“That’s like asking if I know Wrigley field.”
She actually laughed a little. Just a small chuckle that lasted less than a second, but the sound was beautiful. “I guess you’re right. Sorry. Can you meet me there?”
“I can.”
“How soon?”
“Forty minutes or so.” I had to hop a train to get there.
“I’ll be there in fifteen. I’ll get a room. Ask for Mrs. Pierce at the desk.”
“Okay.”
She paused a moment, then said, “See you there, Mick. And thank you.”
I was too gaga over the way she said my name to say goodbye before she broke the connection. I stood at my kitchen counter, enjoying the fading, wispy tendrils of her voice in my ear before I grabbed my pistol, slid it into the small of my back and left my apartment.
I stood on the train, swaying in that familiar rhythm as I held the handle. I tried to shake off the fog in my brain that Ania had induced. Yeah, she was beautiful. Yeah, she had something else going on, something visceral and powerful and mysterious. But she was mixed up with Jerzy and worked at Patrik’s bar, which was basically the headquarters for the Polish mob in Chicago, so I had to be careful. I had to be smart.
That’s not always been easy for you where women are concerned, has it, Hero?
I heard Jerzy’s voice in my head when that thought passed through. A tickle of irritation sprang up in my chest, but I pushed it away. The thought was my own, Jerzy’s voice or not, and the thing is, it was accurate. Connie wasn’t the first mess I ended up in that centered around a woman. Even the deal that drove me off the job had a female element to it that was the same damn thing.
Of course, women make up fifty percent of the human race, so no big surprise that a lot of my problems would involve them, right? But it wasn’t that women were involved, though, was it? No, it wasn’t. It was how they were involved.
It was always the romantic connection. Always love or at least lust, and me being stupid about it. I picked out the ones who needed rescuing. Or the ones I knew would never stick around because they weren’t the type or they had something else going on. Hell, in Connie’s case, I had found both.
Why?
“Fuck it,” I muttered. I was glad the train car was mostly empty and there was no one to hear the crazy guy talking to himself. “Now is not the time to play psychologist.”
It wasn’t. It was time to see what this Ania wanted. See what her play was, because that’s what it was sure to be. Some kind of play.
Right?
I walked into The Drake and glanced around the lobby in as casual a manner as I could. I didn’t see anyone I recognized. No one seemed interested in me, even if I was a little under-dressed for their regular clientele. Of course, maybe I fit right in. We live in a casual age now, where billionaires wear blue jeans and their heirs wear flip-flops.
The Latino at the front desk wore a name tag that read “Jorge.” He looked up at me with a practiced smile. “Welcome to The Drake, sir. How may I serve you today?”
“I’m Mr. Pierce,” I told him. “My wife checked in a little earlier.”
“Of course,” Jorge said, his voice betraying only a hint of his native accent. He tapped the keys of the computer to his right. “She is in room 1789, sir. The elevator is right over there.” He po
inted.
I thanked him and made my way through the lobby to the elevator. Another scan of the area came up with the same results. Nothing suspicious. No one seemed interested in me.
I stepped into the elevator and pushed the number seventeen.
Every meet has a feel to it. A vibe. It doesn’t matter if it’s on the dark side of the law or if it happens in a corporate board room. There’s always a character to each meeting, a tone. I didn’t feel like I was being set up here. At least not for something bad to happen to me at this meeting. I had no clue what Ania wanted, but I didn’t think it was to hurt me.
But could Jerzy have sent her? Did he want to eliminate me? Hell, would Ania even be the one to answer the door?
Only one way to find out.
I got off the elevator, headed down the hall and stopped at room 1789. The numbers on the door were ornate and stylish. The hotel spared no expense. Was this someplace a guy like Jerzy would set someone up to be killed? Somehow, I doubted it.
I stood to the side of the door, anyway. No sense in abandoning caution entirely. I gave the door three solid raps with my knuckles. My right hand closed around the grip of my pistol.
A few seconds later, the door swung open. Ania’s head poked out. When she saw me, her features lit up. “Good! You came.”
I released my hold on the gun.
“Come in,” she said, pulling the door the rest of the way open.
I walked past her into the hotel room. As I brushed close to her, I could smell perfume. It was light and airy but had a musky hint to it, like walking in the forest on a bright day where you could smell the earth beneath you.
She closed the door, then stood leaning against it. She took a deep breath and let it out. I stared at her, waiting. My entire body zinged with electricity, almost as if there had been a chemical reaction when I walked into the room with her.
Jesus, what was going on?
“I’m glad you came,” she said.
“So am I.”
“It’s asking a lot.”
“Not a lot,” I said. “It’s a short train ride, that’s all.”
She smiled, and looked away for a second. When she looked back, her eyes had an intensity to them that reached out and grabbed me in the chest. “No,” she whispered. “It’s more than that. And we both know it.”
I had no answer to that.
Ania pushed away from the door slowly. She walked toward me. No, flowed toward me is a better way to put it. Her eyes, those ice blue daggers, remained locked on mine with fiery intensity. She didn’t stop when she reached a comfortable talking distance. Instead, she slipped inside that range and kept going. Right up to me. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me to her. Her body pressed against me as her lips reached for mine.
I kissed her. It was the most natural thing I’ve ever done and the most powerful. The passion that blasted out to every corner of my body wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt before. Those previous times were pale shadows.
She was the sun.
She was -
Fuck!
I broke away and pulled out of her embrace. Her expression was full of surprise and hurt. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. My heart was pounding. My body was alive and aching for her. “It’s all just…sudden.”
“Sudden?” she asked.
“Yeah.” I shook my head, trying to clear my mind.
“Sudden,” she repeated to herself, looking away. She shrugged. “Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe I made a mistake.”
I wanted to scream that she hadn’t made any mistakes, that everything was very right, but I forced myself not to answer.
She looked up at me. Now her pale blue eyes were rimmed with sadness. “I guess what I felt at the church, and at the bar, I guess that was just me. I thought there was some kind of connection between us. Something different, something I couldn’t quite explain, but…” she trailed off. Her eyes watered, but she looked away before any tears fell. “Maybe I was wrong.”
I stood in the entry way of that hotel room, my nerves jangled, my heart pounding, my cock raging and my voice stuck in my throat. All my life, I’d hoped for what she described. That magical connection. Didn’t everyone dream of that? Even those of us who refused to admit it? How else do all those romance books sell, if not to feed into that basic human desire?
And here it was. A beautiful, mysterious woman that I felt that immediate connection with. And she was standing in front of me, professing to feel that same connection. Was she lying?
No. Every fiber of my being told me she was sincere. All my street smarts and cop smarts told me the same thing. She was for real. And if I pushed this away because I didn’t have the guts to trust it, I’d spend the rest of my life regretting it.
I reached out and slid my hand along her cheek, resting it at the back of her neck. She needed no more encouragement than that. Her lips found mine again, kissing me without reservation. I felt heat from every direction and I poured that heat into her.
It was an hour later before we spoke another word. In the interim, only the moans and cries of pleasure and then the silence of satisfaction afterward filled the room. My clothes lay strewn across the pathway to the bedroom. She gave no reaction to the thudding sound my gun made when I dropped it to the carpeting at the side of the bed. Her eyes were alight with hunger and she’d pulled me onto her.
Lying beside her now, I listened to her breathing. The smell of her perfume, our sweat and sex, drifted in the air. She was tucked in next to me, her head on my chest, my arm draped over her. I felt like I could lay there forever.
“I wanted this,” she finally whispered, stroking the finger of my hand where it hung near her breast. “From that first moment I saw you in the church, I wanted this to happen.”
“Me, too,” I said softly.
“Is that horrible?” she asked. “To want something like this so badly at a time like that?”
“No. It is what it is. We’re human.”
“Some of us are,” she said. “Others, I don’t know.”
I felt my chest tighten a little. “You’re talking about-”
Her hand covered my mouth. “Don’t say his name. Not here.”
I waited until she removed her hand. Then I said, “But you’re with him. Why?”
She didn’t answer me for a long time. Her breathing was even and steady. I thought maybe she’d fallen asleep.
“I was afraid,” she finally said.
That didn’t make sense to me. “Afraid of what?”
“I see a lot of things in that bar. People meeting people, you know? The kind of people who didn’t want to be seen with the people they were meeting. And I heard things. Dangerous things.”
“So quit. The money can’t be that good.”
“The money is the best I can ever remember, at least for tending bar. But it isn’t the money that keeps me there. It’s the fear.”
“I’m still not following you,” I said, but with all the talk of her being afraid, I gave her a reassuring squeeze on her arm, anyway.
“I’m afraid that if I quit, they’ll get suspicious about what I might know and hurt me,” she said. “As long as I’m still there, I’m part of the group, so I’m safe. But if I leave…”
Then I understood. “And he’s your way out.”
“I thought so, yes. He has the respect of those people. They’d let me go without suspicion if I was with him. He was strong enough to make it happen.”
A rush of sudden jealousy exploded in my chest. They say jealousy is green, but that’s not how it felt to me. It felt black and red and full of hatred. “So you got your wish. All you had to do was fuck him a few times.”
She turned her head, staring up at me in stunned silence. Tears sprang to her eyes. I felt a hitch in her chest. “What do you think I am? Some kind of whore?”
“I never said that. I said you fucked him.”
She shook her head. “I haven’t.�
�
It was my turn to be stunned. “You haven’t?”
“No. I’ve put him off.”
I looked at her, uncertain. “I wouldn’t figure Jerzy to be sticking around a woman in that situation.”
“Maybe I’m not just any woman.”
“No argument here.”
She smiled slightly, then shrugged. “He pushes, but I told him I want to take things slow.” She gave me an earnest stare. “But I don’t want to take things anywhere with him. I just want out. And from what I heard, he would only be here a few days. Long enough to leave with him, but a short enough time to…”
“To lead him on and then cut and run once you’re clear.”
She nodded. A single tear rolled down her cheek. “I know that’s horrible, but it was a matter of survival. Patrik’s been looking at me in strange ways the last few weeks. And Andros, too.”
“Andros?”
“Patrik’s bodyguard. The big guy with a crew cut.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t know for sure what their intentions are, Mick, but I know they’re not good. So I took the opportunity when it came through the door.”
“So you’re clear,” I said.
“No. I don’t think so. In fact, I think I’m worse off than before.”
“Why?”
She let out a rueful laugh. “Why? He’s your brother, Mick. You know him. He’s more heartless than everyone in Ambrozy’s put together. He won’t keep taking it slow, no matter what I say. And now he’s told me things. Things about diamond earrings.”
I paused. So she knew about that.
Ania started crying in earnest. She didn’t make any noise, but her body hitched and jumped. Tears splashed onto my chest and rolled down my body. I held her close to me, my arms wrapped around her protectively.
When her tears dwindled, she spoke in the dim light of the room. “He’s going to kill me,” she said, her voice full of dread certainty. “As soon as he has the diamonds, he’ll realize I know too much. And when he figures out that I don’t really want to be with him, that’ll be the end. He’ll kill me.”
