by Kris Calvert
“And by the boys, you mean Hawk and the security team? Because last time I checked, there was a bad ass woman, whom you’ve groped, working with them too.” I knew instinctively it was a request to eat not alone with me, but with the security detail. Leo was in work mode. I could see it in his face. I could even tell by the way he made love to me. There was an unspoken powerful drive behind his eyes—one I hadn’t seen in months. He was happy to be working again.
“Yes,” he replied. “The team.”
“Honestly, I’m more tired than hungry,” I replied, letting him off the hook. “Why don’t I have Liz fix me a salad? I’ll steal away upstairs with some books and leave Bea and the boys to do whatever it is you want to do. You know—drink beer. Fart. Have a strong-ass woman put you all in your place.”
One corner of Leo’s mouth rose with his eyebrow in a parade of amusement. “Is that honestly what you think happens when you’re not around?”
“I have no idea.”
He pulled me close, brushing his lips across my forehead. As much as I appreciated Leo’s protective nature, I wasn’t a china doll and honestly, I felt like I had a better idea of what was going on than he gave me credit for—even if I wasn’t out making drug deals.
I let out a heavy sigh. I was tired, but my head buzzed with ideas. Feeling like I was cramming for an exam at Princeton, my eyes were hooded with exhaustion, my mind overcrowded with information. I wouldn’t sleep until I could put the pieces of the puzzle together. Getting Leo out of the way for a bit wasn’t a bad idea. “Go eat your greasy pizza with the team,” I said, giving him a pat on the butt. “Maybe they’ll give you a nickname by the end of the night—like Handsy.”
Tilting my head back with his big hand, he kissed me hard on the lips and walked away. “I already have a nickname, cher.”
“Z?” I asked, following him into the kitchen.
Turning, a huge grin covered his tan face as he shook his head.
“What then? Wait. Leo.” He was gone. Out the back door through the mud room, he blew me a kiss, joining the others on the lawn between the house and the garage.
I turned and stared at Liz. “Well, how do you like that?”
She didn’t say anything, but smiled. “May I fix you something to eat, Miss Polly? Mr. Leo is having pizza in the guest house with the others tonight.”
“Yeah,” I said, standing on my toes to look out the window over the sink and into the crowd of men. “What do you suppose they do out there all day? I mean, what is there really to guard around here?”
Liz shook her head. “I don’t suppose it’s for me to wonder.”
Knitting my brow, I turned my attention from the window back to her. “Of course it’s for you to suppose. You’re here too—just like me.”
“I was just saying that it isn’t my house, Miss Polly.”
I sat in a heap on the stool where I’d sipped my morning coffee. “It’s as much yours as it is mine, Liz. At least you’re here.”
“Why don’t you let me fix you something to eat? Or did you want pizza too?”
I screwed my face up and shuddered. “No way. I was going to look for something to chop into a salad.”
“I have some beautiful tuna. Would you like ahi on a bed of greens?”
I rolled my eyes into the back of my head and clapped my hands only once. “Now you’re talking my language, Liz. But seriously. I can make it. I like to cook.”
“All right. How ’bout we make it together?”
I slid off the stool and walked to the fridge. Liz followed. “I’ll chop the greens, you do the tuna.”
Grabbing three or four different types of lettuce from the crisper, I walked back to the butcher’s block, snagging a knife from the long magnet on the wall that held them secure. “So Liz, how long have you been at Jackson House?”
“A long time. Mr. Leo was just a teenager.”
I began chopping, but didn’t look at Liz. I didn’t want to seem like I was prying into the Xanthus family history, even if I was. “Did you know Leo’s grandfather? Kostas?”
“Not really. He was older when I was just starting here. I mostly worked for Leo’s parents. Besides, Oscar was the sole caretaker of Mr. Kostas. They did everything together. Mr. Kostas and Oscar were inseparable the last year of Mr. Kostas’ life. I do remember that.”
I hacked off the end of the Romaine with a chop, wedging the hefty knife into the wooden block and eliciting a reaction from Liz.
“Be careful with that knife, now. If we have to go to the emergency room tonight and take that entourage outside with us, that will be quite the production and I can guarantee Mr. Leo won’t be happy.”
I grimaced at her remark and waved the knife in the air with my hand. “Mr. Leo can get over it. He’s too protective. Anyway. What do you mean Oscar was with Kostas nonstop?”
Liz spoke, but continued to prepare the ahi tuna, melting butter and olive oil in a skillet on the stove with peppercorns. “Just that. Mr. Demetri was trying to take over the business side of everything. Mr. Kostas didn’t like that much. They fought a lot.” She stopped and turned, her eyes as big as saucers.
“It’s fine, Liz. You aren’t spilling any family secrets I don’t already know.” It was true. Leo had told me Kostas and Demetri didn’t get along at the end. Demetri turned the bootlegging empire his father had built into something ugly—hooking them up with the Sicilian mob. The Marcello Family. When Leo joined the FBI, his father was unaware of what he’d done. From that point forward, it was a tightrope walk until the day his dad died.
I looked up from my lettuce chopping, pointing the knife into the block to rest my hand. “So what did Kostas and Oscar do when they were together? Or did Oscar just simply take care of him?”
Liz shook her head. “No. It was more than just an employee and employer situation. They were like best friends. Mr. Kostas was like a father to Oscar. I remember how devastated he was when Mr. Kostas passed. He was in charge of every detail of his funeral.”
Reaching into the cabinet, I picked out a flat salad bowl and began piling my heaps of various lettuce in. “Like what? You mean he picked out the flowers and stuff?”
Liz shook her head slowly as she pressed the seasoned tuna into the skillet, watching over it carefully.
“What else is there? I’m sure Leo’s mom and dad wanted him buried next to his wife and there was a regular funeral and all.”
Liz shook her head again.
“What do you mean?”
Removing the tuna from the skillet, she began to slice it with precision, the layers so beautifully thin and delicate I found myself gasping. Taking my bowl of lettuce, she quickly added onions, tomato, corn relish and squash, then drizzled a balsamic dressing across the top dabbing a cucumber wasabi sauce on the side before cleaning the edges of the bowl with a towel and handing it to me.
“This is art,” I said. “Thank you.” One forkful into my mouth, I moaned in delight.
“You’re very welcome, Miss Polly.”
Liz began to clean up quickly. “Don’t you want to eat in the dining room?”
I shook my head. “I want you to answer my question. What did Oscar do for Kostas’ funeral? Because you’re acting like it was out of the ordinary.”
“I don’t want to talk out of turn, ma’am.”
“Okay, first off, no ma’ams and secondly, this is me. I’m not one of them,” I said, pointing outside to where Leo stood with the security team. “I’m a Xanthus, but in name only. I’m trying to figure all of this out,” I said, turning my hands in circles. “And it helps to have people like you who’ve watched quietly from the sidelines. Because frankly, Leo is somewhat blind to it all. And without Oscar….”
We both looked away and paused.
“Oscar wouldn’t let nobody but him and the funeral director put Mr. Kostas to rest in the mausoleum. It was in Mr. Kostas’ will—or so I understood. Mr. Demetri was mad as a hornet over it. It was like Oscar was his son, and not Mr. Demetri.”
I narrowed my gaze. “But Oscar was like a son to Kostas.”
Liz tossed the kitchen towel she’d been twisting in her hands to the counter and crossed her arms. “And Mr. Kostas was like a father to Oscar. We could never figure what the fuss was. It wasn’t like Mr. Kostas left Oscar his fortune. He left that to Mr. Leo.”
I choked on my salad. Liz slid a glass of ice water with lemon to me and came closer, her face masked with concern.
“Are you okay?”
I swallowed the chunk of tuna I’d nearly inhaled and took a drink. For the first time I was hearing that Kostas left the family fortune not to his own son, but his grandson. “Are you saying Kostas left nothing to Demetri?”
“No. He left him some money and to live in Jackson House—with stipulations.”
“Like?”
Liz looked around. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Oscar would fire me on the spot for opening my mouth right now.”
“Look,” I said, grabbing her open hand. “Oscar isn’t here. If he were, I’d be asking him these questions, or maybe none of his would be happening, but for now, I’m trying to figure some stuff out. You’re helping. You’re helping a lot.”
“Mr. Leo’s parents lived here but paid rent to Leo.”
“What?”
“A dollar a year until they died. That was the deal. The house has been in Mr. Leo’s name all along.”
“And how do you know this?”
“I mean, I’m here. How do you not know?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I get it.”
I took another bite of my salad and thought about my visit with Oscar—my ring—the drawing. “Liz?”
“Yes ma’am. I mean. Yes, Polly.”
“I found a silver case upstairs in the master with poker chips and dice—you know, cards.”
“Yes?”
“Did Kostas play a lot of games? Gamble? Here?”
Liz smiled. “Miss Polly, I’d venture to say there’ve been as many card games played in Jackson House over the years as Vegas.”
“Leo?”
She nodded. “Sure. All the Xanthus men are card players.”
I thought of all the times Leo spoke of missing poker while we were out to sea. There were lots of fancy casinos where he could’ve played to his heart’s content, but casinos meant cameras and we avoided those—and fancy places. We’d played plenty of strip poker. Games he’d always won.
“So did they play upstairs in the Master suite? I mean, that’s where I found the case.”
Liz cleaned the skillet she used and hung it over the Viking range. Wiping her hands, she walked to me and rested her fist on her hip. “Miss Polly, they play their games at Jackson House in places where I dare not go. Oscar took care of that.”
I took another bite of my salad and watched Liz push her way out of the kitchen through the swinging door. My next stop? The safe room.
16
LEO
If felt good to know I’d be in the company of a team again. Not that I didn’t enjoy lounging about in the sun with my beautiful, half naked wife on the bow of the Andromeda. But I was an agent at heart. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it until now. Hawk had the team on a tight schedule and I was more than pleased with the way they’d handled everything—even my snafu with Bea. Even Tree.
It was dark by the pool house, the water reflecting the intermittent moonlight that snuck through the trees each time the wind kicked up. Hawk had kept the artificial lighting to a minimum, working only with what we had on the grounds of Jackson House. To the outside world and an untrained eye, my home looked the way it always did—a pristine and beautiful addition to the Garden District of New Orleans. Even though there was a team member hidden at each entrance, two others sweeping the grounds at all times and a guy with the call sign Barbie on the terrace, who was such an eagle-eyed badass, he’d been known to split a bullet on an axe.
Hawk took off his baseball hat and scratched his head. He was armed from head to toe with artillery and a Kevlar vest. As I stood next to him in my jeans, t-shirt and loafers with one Glock tucked into the back of my waistband, I felt underdressed. In the distance, I could see Dinah bringing ice and drinks into the pool house, no doubt readying the place for everyone to eat in shifts. I watched Third Street as they did—like a hawk—waiting for the pizza to arrive. The night was quiet and I suspected it would remain that way. With Oscar now on the County Coroner’s list of the recently deceased, the Balivino brothers would have no choice but to come back to Jackson House. When they did, I’d be waiting for them.
An ailing pick-up with one headlight slowed on its way down Third Street as if checking the house numbers. I guessed it was our delivery. If we were going to eat pizza, I was choosing the place and paying for the pies. The truck turned into the main entrance and idled. The house phone rang inside from the gate and I hustled up the back steps to take the call.
“Jackson House.”
“I’ve got your pizza.” The delivery guy’s words were mumbled.
I looked out the window to Hawk and gave him a single nod. He slipped back into the darkness with the others, gripping his AR-15. My heart raced and I took a solid breath. “C’mon back. I’ll open the gate for you,” I replied, holding down the star button to open the security gate.
I walked through the house, not nervous to answer my own door, but that one of the guys would get trigger happy if something should go awry. I didn’t want a dead delivery man on my front porch with two hundred dollars’ worth of pizza lying at his feet.
When the bell rang, Dinah beat me to the door. “May I help you?”
“Pizza delivery for Jackson House?”
I opened the second double door wide and stared into the eyes of a pimply-faced dude, dressed in baggy jeans and a jacket that looked to be three times too big for him. Small in stature, the ten pizza boxes he carried weighed him down. “I’ll take care of it, Dinah.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Need some help?” I asked, taking half the boxes from atop his stack and setting them inside the house on a table nearby.
“Ah, yeah. And you have ten more in the cab,” he said, handing over the last stack. “I’ll get them. Are you paying in cash? The bill is two hundred and eighty-five dollars, man.”
I placed the second set of pizzas with the first and turned to find him still standing in the doorway. “Don’t worry. I got you covered. How ’bout you get the last ten pies and I get you three eighty-five in cash and we can both go about our business?”
He fidgeted with his hands and nodded, then turned to walk back to his truck. I called out to Dinah to take the stack of pizzas from my arms and heard it. Gunfire.
“Get down! Get down!”
Rushing to the front door, I pulled my gun. Tackled from behind, I face-planted, my body slammed on one of the Persian rugs. “Stay down, sir!” Taco Six, one of the men I’d barely spoken to had come out of nowhere, throwing me to the floor.
“Where’s Polly?” I shouted.
“Tree’s got her!
The exchange of gunfire was quick and over almost as soon as it began. Then in a flurry, the security team rushed in through the front door, kicking the lifeless body of the pizza delivery guy from the entrance.
“What the fuck happened?” I shouted.
Hawk looked through the glass pane that surrounded the main entrance and answered me without looking my way. “He went to the cab of his truck and pulled a machine gun, sir. He came back to the front door shooting. We had no choice but to take him out. Snacks fired two shots from behind the side wall of the house. He’d been sent to kill you.”
I looked around and saw everyone but Polly. “Where’s Polly? Polly!” I shouted, running through the house toward the kitchen. Throwing open the door, I found her behind the upturned butcher block table. Food everywhere, she’d pulled her gun and was ready for action. Tree was doing his best to shield her, but she wasn’t having it.
Dropping my shoulders in relie
f, I sighed, “Jesus. There you are.”
Polly scrambled to her feet, rushing into my embrace—guns still squarely in our grips. “What happened?”
“The pizza delivery guy tried to kill me.” I blurted it out before I thought it through in my head. It was the truth. But I didn’t know if she was prepared for it.
“What?”
Tree was on his feet, clearing the area, chatting with the others on the security team. I was trying to listen to what they were saying, but Polly was talking too fast and I couldn’t keep up with both of them.
“Is he dead? Did they kill him? Did Balivino send him? He knows we’re here. Oh my God, we have to leave. We have to leave now.” Polly rattled off every thought in her head like a machine gun. I wasn’t as upset. I assumed it was coming and was now glad I’d had the wherewithal to hire the clandestine security team I did. Problem was, I had a dead man on my front porch and a beat up truck in my driveway.
I didn’t answer her questions, but walked her back to the front room where Hawk had regrouped with the others, talking to those still outside checking the perimeter and the team inside, combing the house. “Has anyone checked the safe room?” I asked.
Tree flanked me. “Let me clear it, sir. Then we’ll secure you both down there.”
“How did this happen?” Polly asked the question of the group. Leading her by the elbow away from the front room, we walked toward the back of the grand staircase and the secret entrance to the safe room. “Are you okay? Anything hurt?” I looked her over from head to toe.
“I’m fine. I just—”
“What?”
“Leo, how are we ever going to live a normal life? Is this our life forever? Shootouts in our own home?”
I didn’t know how to respond. What if I couldn’t make the arrangement with Falconi? “I don’t know, cher. For now all I care about is keeping you safe.”
Tree emerged from the bottom of the stairwell that led to the secret room. “It’s clear, sir.”
