by JB Lynn
“You here to tell me you did Gary?” He sounded hopeful.
I shook my head. “I need your help”
“I told you. I can’t help you with this thing. It’s all you or it’s nothin’.”
“I just need to get in touch with our mutual friend.”
He stared at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. I did my best to project confidence and to hide my fear. “You gonna eat that?” He pointed at my remaining pudding, which I’d carried over with me.
“You gonna give me a phone number?” I said with false bravado.
He chuckled, scribbled some digits on a napkin and pushed it toward me. I slid the dessert in his direction.
“Good luck.”
I nodded. I needed it. So badly, in fact, that I’d taken the four-leaf-clover Aunt Leslie had brought with her, and put it on before I left the house.
It just so happens that a hospital is one of the few places around that still has pay phones, so I used one to call the number Delveccio had provided. Rubbing the necklace for luck, I held my breath as the phone on the other end rang three times.
“Hello?”
“Please don’t hang up, it’s me,” I begged Patrick breathlessly.
“Mags?” He sounded surprised.
“Uh huh.”
“How’d you . . . never mind, I can guess. What’s up?”
“I’m in trouble.”
“Are you in a safe place?”
“Is any place safe?” I countered.
I heard a crunch and figured he was chomping on one of his mints. “Can you meet me at my place?”
I nodded.
“Mags? Did you hear me?”
I’d forgotten he couldn’t see my nod. “Yes. Yes, I heard you. Yes I can meet you there.”
“Okay, I’ll be there within the hour.” He hung up.
I drove over to the street the apartment was on, parked under a streetlight, and double, triple, quadruple-checked to make sure my car was locked up tight, though I wasn’t sure what kind of protection I expected my windows to provide if Gary the Gun took a pot shot at me.
The street was deserted. And creepy. Fortunately I didn’t have to wait long. Within five minutes of my arrival, Patrick’s truck slid into a parking spot.
I leapt out of my car. “Thank you so much for coming,” I said as he slid out of his vehicle.
“What did you say to convince Delveccio to give you that number?”
“I gave him my chocolate pudding.”
He cocked his head. “Is that a euphemism for something I don’t want to know about?”
I laughed. “No. I just told him I needed your help and he traded me the number for a chocolate pudding. I think I got the better end of the deal.”
“That’s because you’re assuming I’m going to help you. Come inside.”
I followed him into his man cave. It was obvious that he hadn’t been expecting company. He hadn’t cleaned up.
An assortment of handguns and ammunition were laid out on the couch like produce at a farm stand.
Just what I needed to kill Gary, a shiny new gun. I stepped toward them.
“No touching,” Patrick warned. “Do you want something to drink?”
“Okay.”
I didn’t touch, but I did bend over to examine the weapons. I didn’t spot the Magnum I’d used to kill Cifelli.
“Soda, right?”
“Beer if you have it, I could use one,” I muttered, still studying the instruments of death, wondering which one could be used to bring about the end of Gary.
I heard Patrick open two beers and then a crinkling of a cellophane bag which I took to mean there’d be a snack served with the drink. I was up for that . . . as long as it wasn’t donuts.
“Here you go.” Handing me my beverage, he put his own down on the floor and started gathering up the guns to make a place for us to sit. When he was done with that, he sat down and patted the cushion beside him.
I looked around for the snack. A bag of pretzels remained on the counter.
“Okay, so tell me about this trouble you’re in.”
Refusing to sit, I instead paced the length of the couch nervously. “It’s Gary the Gun.”
“You promised you weren’t going to go after Gary.”
“I didn’t ‘promise’.”
“All right. You told me you weren’t going to.”
“I wasn’t.”
“So what’s the problem?”
I took a big swallow of alcohol for courage. “He has pictures.”
Patrick took a long swig of his beer, sat all the way back in his seat, and closed his eyes, as though this conversation with me was giving him a headache. “What kind of pictures?”
“I screwed up.”
“Will you please sit down? You’re making me nervous pacing like that.”
Obediently, I perched on the edge of the cushion beside him. “I’m sorry.”
“What kind of pictures, Mags?” I got the distinct impression he was being deliberately patient with me.
“Of me pulling the trigger,” I admitted in a whisper.
His eyes snapped open. “Did you not pay one whit of attention to me? Did I not tell you right off the bat what Rule Number One is?”
“Don’t get caught.” Even though he’d stayed perfectly still and hadn’t raised his voice, I could tell he was steamed. I couldn’t blame him. “He’s blackmailing me.”
Tilting his head back, he chugged the rest of his beer without coming up for air.
“He wants me to pay him ten thousand dollars.”
He put the bottle down with exaggerated care beside the couch. “That’s not so bad.”
“A month. For a year.”
“Greedy bastard.”
“Or he’ll turn the photos over to the cops . . . not you.”
“Not me?”
“He said that redheaded freak. I assumed he meant you.”
“You think I’m a freak?” He sounded hurt. “Cuz I’m not such a bad guy. I mean sure, I do some bad things, but I’m a pretty good guy.”
I wondered if he’d been drinking before he’d met me, because I sort of doubted that one beer could make someone ramble like that. “I just assumed he meant you because I don’t know any other redheads.”
“I’m just trying to do what’s best for my family . . . families,” he said sadly.
“And,” I said, trying desperately to return his attention to my plight, “he threatened my family. I mean he confronted me in Katie’s room. He was waiting there. Studying my routine. Hunting me just like you said he would.”
Patrick shook his head. “I told you he was a bad man.”
“So now you understand why I have to kill him, don’t you?” Placing my beer on the floor, I twisted in my seat so that I could look him in the eye while I pled my case.
“I can’t let you do that, Mags.”
“You have to!”
“If I let you go after him alone, he’ll kill you for sure. I’m going to have to help you. You have to agree that we’ll do it together.”
“You’re going to help me? I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. I was pretty sure that was in violation of a number of his rules.
He nodded.
“Really?”
His mouth twitched as though he was holding back a smile. “Really.”
I threw my arms around his neck. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” This was more than I had dared to hope for. I thought I might have had a chance to convince him to arm me, and maybe an outside chance he’d help me hash out a plan of attack, but I’d never imagined he’d actually offer to help me.
For the first time in weeks, something was finally going my way.
Leaving my hands looped around his neck, I leaned back and searched his face. “You mean it, right?”
His stared at me, soaking up my expression. “I’ve never seen you happy before.” Gently, his touch as soft as a feather, he brushed the hair off my face with his fingers. He didn’t b
other to hide his smile as he tucked it behind my ear.
I knew he was going to kiss me, and even though I knew it was probably a bad idea, I wanted him to. I let my eyes drift closed, inviting his approach.
“It’s a good look on you,” he whispered, before he touched his lips to my . . . forehead.
Yes, he pressed a chaste kiss to my forehead like I was a five-year-old. Pushing away from him, he jumped to his feet, stalked into the kitchen and dug into the bag of pretzels.
For my part, I just sat on the couch, too stunned to move. How had I misread his intentions so badly? I felt like the world’s biggest idiot.
“You want another beer?” he asked through a mouthful of crunch, opening the fridge and staring into it.
“Still working on this one,” I managed to choke out, snatching it up.
“Did he give you a deadline for getting him the money?”
“Seventy-two hours.”
“So we’ll have to work fast.” He was still standing in front of the open refrigerator, leaving me to wonder if he was memorizing the contents or trying to get what he really wanted to magically materialize. I found that I did the latter myself quite often when I was home.
A cell phone buzzed. Pulling it from his pocket he glanced at the caller ID and frowned.
I wondered which of his wives was calling. Even if he’d only had one spouse, it seemed to me that the man was never home.
“Hello?”
He closed the fridge door. “Yeah . . . okay.”
He held out the phone toward me. “He wants to know if I’m with the ballsy broad.”
I took it, trying not to notice that it was still warm from his body heat. “Hello?”
“So you asked for my help,” Delveccio boomed.
I held the phone away from my ear. “Yes . . . we made the trade . . . the number for the pudding.”
“I like you, Miss Lee.”
“Um . . . thanks?”
“Which is why I’m going to give you some more help.”
I waved Patrick over to sit beside me so that he too could hear the conversation. “What kind of help?”
“I’ve got . . . friends in the Coroner’s office. Word is some teenagers were messing around in the park and found a body.”
My breath caught in my throat. That meant it was time for Gary the Gun to collect my fee for killing Delveccio’s son-in-law.
“The thing is . . .” Delveccio continued, “they’re kind of swamped. There was a bus accident on the highway. So I’ve asked my friends to sort of stick the guy from the park in a back drawer, as it was. You get what I’m saying?”
I did. Tony/Anthony Delveccio was buying me some time.
“They figure they won’t get to that particular stiff for about two days. You get my meaning?”
“Yessir.” That meant I had two days to get rid of Gary the Gun, collect my fee from Delveccio, and save Katie.
The mobster chuckled. “Yessir . . . I could get used to that. You’ve got two days, Miss Lee.”
He ended the call. I handed Patrick’s phone back to him.
“I take it you didn’t tell the boss that Gary’s blackmailing you.”
I shook my head.
“Smart girl.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to feel that you are anything but the world’s biggest idiot during Insuring the Future’s quarterly staff meetings. It’s not because the information they’re passing along is difficult to understand, but rather it’s because they deliver it to you as though you’re a kindergartner.
Who’s been kept back.
Twice.
Patrick had insisted that I stick with my regular routine, meaning showing up for this mind-rotting, soul-sucking day at work, while he drew up a plan to deal with Gary the Gun.
While I sat in the World’s Most Boring Meeting Ever, I kept myself entertained by coming up with different ways to kill Harry, the World’s Most Annoying Boss Ever. My favorite so far was rigging that damn laser pointer he was so fond of to explode in his hand. I wasn’t certain that would kill him, but I did think it would be pretty damn satisfying to watch him screaming and bleeding.
Armani of course, strolled, or more accurately limped, into the meeting late, so we didn’t get to sit together. Midway through the first hour, she got up and walked out for a potty break. This pleased me because it was obvious that it irritated Harry, who followed her painfully slow progress out the door. When she came back in, she whispered something in the ear of one of my co-workers seated near me . . . Laura? Laurie? Lauren? . . . one of those, and handed her a folded up piece of paper.
What happened next made me feel like I was back in junior high, as the note made its way down the aisle in my direction, with every single person communicating to the next who it was meant for. When it finally reached me, there was silence.
I stared at the folded up sheet of paper remembering the time Alice had slipped me a note in homeroom telling me that she had a date with . . . funny, but I couldn’t remember the guy’s name, but he’d been my secret crush for most of the school year . . . and that she hoped I wouldn’t be mad at her. I had been. Furious.
Even worse than her betrayal is that Kurt, my teenage nemesis, and Alice’s second-best friend, had offered me his condolences when he’d found out. I wasn’t sure who I’d hated more at that point in time Alice or Kurt. The memory made me squeeze the paper as though I was wringing the life out of it.
Harry said something about “customer satisfaction” which felt like a cold slap across the face, bringing me back to the present.
I unfolded Armani’s note and read the three words she’d scribbled down: Doomsday is coming.
I considered crossing it out and sending it back to her with a note of my own which would have read: “WTF???”. Instead I spent the rest of the morning session wondering if she was commenting on the state of the meeting, or if it was another premonition she’d had.
If it was a premonition, then things weren’t looking up for my take-down of Gary the Gun. When we finally broke for lunch (meaning Harry said, “You’re dismissed”) I headed straight for our favorite picnic table to wait for Armani. While I sat there I gave my cell a quick check to see if Patrick had called. He hadn’t.
Aunt Leslie had. She apologized for being such a poor guest (which insinuated she’d been invited over, which, for the record, she hadn’t) and had, as I’d requested in the note I’d taped to the shirt she was wearing, left her key for my place on the kitchen table. She sounded hurt that I didn’t want her having free rein to invade my privacy any time she felt like it.
I think it’s important to mention that I never gave Aunt Leslie, or the other two, the key to my place. My sister, Theresa, bless her almost-saintly soul, took it upon herself to do that after I gave her the key in case she ever needed to get away from Dirk the Jerk.
“Hey there, Chiquita,” Armani greeted me with such a fake note of cheeriness, I winced.
“Hey there yourself, Queen of Doom and Gloom.” I waved the paper she’d had passed to me. “What’s this about?”
Settling into the seat opposite me, she tossed her mane of dark hair dramatically.
I wasn’t impressed.
“I had another dream. In it, I kept hearing those three words. Doomsday is coming. Doomsday is coming.”
“And you know for sure they’re a warning for me?”
“They could be for the entire world, but I was thinking I should keep that, if that’s the case, to myself. I probably shouldn’t go around telling a whole lot of people because there would just be worldwide panic and chaos.”
“I never knew you were such a humanitarian,” I told her.
“Seriously though, Maggie, I think it’s meant for you.”
I shrugged. The way my life was going I figured the odds were good she was right, but I didn’t tell her that.
“Did you meet the guy?”
“I’m meeting a guy for a dinner date. The one I told you about, th
e cop.”
“So this is like the third date with him, right?”
I nodded. I’d given her an abbreviated version of the debacle of a date Aunt Loretta had invaded.
“So you must really like him.”
And that was the million dollar question. Did I like Paul? On the one hand he seemed overly sure of his sexual attraction and had the nerve to order me a meal without even consulting me. On the other hand, he hadn’t yet been scared off by my crazy family, and he’d been awfully kind to Aunt Leslie.
“He brought me flowers. I hate them.”
“Flowers are a point in the winner column,” Armani mused. “And he took you to Angelo’s, that’s another thing in his favor.”
I nodded, but was thinking that God didn’t trust him.
“And he is hot enough to melt an iceberg.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I guessed. I mean you did agree to go out with him during your first meeting.”
“I’ve freed my inner Chiquita, and I’m living dangerously,” I said dryly. At least the living dangerously part was true, though if her doomsday prediction was on the money, I might not be doing that for too much longer.
Chapter Thirty-Six
STACY KIERNAN, THE social worker who’d spilled her guts to me, was laying in wait when I got to the hospital for my daily after-work visit with Katie. To the untrained eye it probably looked as though she was just joking around at the nurse’s station, but I knew from the way her eyes darted in my direction the moment I walked through the doors that she was like a lioness after prey.
There was a time, not that long ago, when remarkably unremarkable Maggie Lee would have been alarmed by this development, but now I regularly interacted with hitmen and mobsters. . . . I ate hospital administrators for breakfast now.
“Maggie? Do you have a minute?”
“Sure.” I followed her to the waiting area, amused that she chose the same seats we’d used last time. “How are you?”
“That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I never really got the chance to thank you, but after our talk . . .” She glanced around to make sure no one was listening.
They weren’t. Why would they?
