by TG Wolff
Shoving the kid toward the table, I sat down opposite him and ignored his question. “Eat your sandwich. Jeeze, Dix, how much turkey did you put on it?”
He flopped into the chair, rocking it on the back legs. “There wasn’t much left.” He opened his maw and happily filled it.
“It’s a full pound. I just bought it yesterday.” One slice of whole grain bread floated a good six inches above the other, surfing on alternating waves of deli sliced turkey and baby swiss. My jug of whole milk sat on the edge of the paper towel fronting as a plate. “Don’t tell me you’re drinking from the bottle.”
At least he had sense enough to blush. And not to talk with his mouth full. Silence hung as Dix chewed and I wrestled with what to do. It was embarrassing that some punk juvie found me four hours after I was put in the ground. Kinda pissed me off.
I studied the kid as he ate, wrestling with a circumstance I hadn’t anticipated. He knew. Once someone “knows,” they can never “unknow.” Not while they lived. Alternatives. There are always alternatives to every situation. I could—wait.
There was more color to Dix’s face than rosy cheeks. I lifted the veil of black hair obscuring half his face.
“Nice shiner.” The butterscotch coloring of his mixed-race heritage was sullied by an explosion of reds and purples. His cheekbone was swollen to twice normal size. I got an ice pack from my freezer and wrapped it in a towel. “Put this on it. You walk into a pole while texting?”
He shook his head, his gaze on his sandwich. “Dickhead gave it to me as a birthday present.” Dickhead was his old man. “I shouldn’t have complained last year when he forgot it.”
Dix was completely matter-of-fact about getting beaten on his seventeenth birthday. Most of the kids in the program came from homes where poverty and violence were as commonplace as Cheerios and American cheese. His face sickened me. They coached us not to get involved in these kids’ personal lives. Bullshit. You had to be inhuman not to be outraged at what these kids endured.
Dix would grow into a handsome man. A few years under his belt, a couple dozen pounds on his frame and, yeah, Andrew Dixon was going to be a heartbreaker.
“Do you think I can crash here tonight?”
“Here?” My turn to impersonate a mouse.
“Yeah. Maybe on the couch? I won’t make a mess and I’m quiet.” Dixon prattled on, making his case to stay. It was pathetic. Sad and pathetic.
“Couch surfing isn’t the answer.”
He shrugged. “I got plans. I’m gonna get me my own place. I just need somewhere to crash ’til I make my move. Can I stay?” Cue pathetic eyes. “Please, Ann—”
“Call me Diamond.” Shit. This was not in my game plan. “One night.”
Dix leapt to his feet, jarring the table, and slopping milk out of the carton. “Sweet. Sweet, man. Let’s get going. If we’re lucky, he’ll be passed out by now.”
I shook my head but didn’t make the connection. “You fast forwarded on me. Go where?”
“To hell. I need to get my stuff.” Dix shoved the rest of the sandwich into his mouth. “’ome on.”
Twenty minutes later we rolled passed houses two nails away from condemnation. Bed sheets covered windows webbed with cracks. Lawns were a patch work of broad leaf weeds and dirt with outposts of shrubbery along shabby porches. This street was once something more, a hub of the middle class with a parade of mature oaks and maples on the tree lawns. It had taken the triple hit of white flight, economic downturn, and urban decay.
“That’s me. The one with the beware of dog sign.”
Dixon had named his house “hell.” I’d have named it “junk pile.” I turned into the driveway, pulling the borrowed minivan nose-to-nose with the gate and said sign. “Do you have a dog?”
“No, just the sign.” Dixon leaned into the dash, staring at the house as if to use X-ray vision to see inside. Bass thumped out of the house. “AC/DC. Not good. Come around back with me.”
“What’s bad about AC/DC?”
“Dickhead drinks too much and relives his glory days working security for bands. He was a champion head smasher. I’ll go in through my window and hand you my stuff. He cranks the music up so loud, he’ll never know we were here.”
The house wasn’t much. The small Cape Cod couldn’t have more than a thousand square feet. Dixon stared at it, his eyes wide, his face colorless except for the tag on his cheek. He licked his lips as he faced his hell.
“Let’s just walk in front door. We go in, get your shit, walk out.” It would be my pleasure to handle the man who handled Dixon.
Dixon withdrew subtly, shoulders curling in, and he leaned back against the door. “L-let me just go in through the window. I do it all the time. It’ll be easier.”
I disagreed but wasn’t going to force it. “I’ll leave the car running.”
“I’ll open the gate. Pull back past the house. He can’t see you then.” Dixon moved hurriedly to the gate. He walked hunched over and on the balls of his feet, his gaze on the house. He opened the gate slowly, more slowly when it squeaked. He cleared the driveway and hurried me through with a frantically waving hand.
I let the car roll forward, under a window, past a door to a blind spot with my tail lights at the corner of the house. By the time I had it in park, Dixon was standing on two inverted five-gallon buckets and had a window lifted high. Hands pressed to the window frame, he jumped and disappeared into the house. I left the comfort of the van to stand in the fenced square of competing weeds.
“Take this.” A thirty-two-inch flat screen came out the window.
I took it, setting it down carefully. A second one came and then the desktop computer and a box with a keyboard sticking out of the top. Then came a leg.
“Dixon!” I snapped his name in a whisper.
His face appeared over his knee. “What?”
“Clothes.”
“Oh, yeah.” The face disappeared, and the leg retreated. I got busy settling the electronics into the van. The monitors snuggled into the floor mats of the rear seat. The tower and box of accoutrements went in the back.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Shock blanched the slurred speech.
“Nothing. I’m not here.” Dixon spoke too high, too fast.
Racing back to the car, I retrieved a set of handcuffs and my 9mm.
“You’re stealing from me!” There was a crash, heavy and dull. “You worthless shit.” Another crash, and Dixon cried out.
I removed the safety as I sprinted to the side door. Five steps up and I was in a small hallway. Ugly, violent words blasted from the room to my right. Dixon laid on the floor, curled into a ball while two hundred plus pounds of drunk, ghetto trash kicked him in the ribs.
The calculations happened in an instant. It took me twice as long to execute, but then the senior Dixon was on the floor sucking up whatever crap littered the soiled carpet. I planted my boot on the outstretched hand, enjoying the crunch. “How’s life on the receiving end?” Dickhead cried out. Dixon was still curled in a ball. I couldn’t get to him to see how bad the damage was but needed him on his feet. “Dixon. Get your stuff. Dixon!” He lifted his head then, and I saw the boy battered, bullied, broken by the man who should have been his hero. I centered my sights over said man. “He’s never going to touch you again.”
Maybe it was the calm truth in my voice, but Dix clamored to his feet. He upended a tin Redskins’ garbage can and stuffed in clothes from the dresser.
“Wh-who are you? Po-lice?” Dickhead craned his neck. His teeth were stained pink with his own blood.
“Yeah, I’m the po-lice. You have the right to remain silent.” I kicked him in the balls. He waived his right. “Anything you say can be held against you. You beat your son? You like beating on a kid?”
Dickhead cuddled his swollen nectarines. “He’s a waste of air. Worthless. He needs discipline.”
A geode Dix had sitting on a shelf fell and landed on the
old man’s ear. Oops. “You almost done, Dix?”
“Yeah, sure.” He shoved a fist full of T-shirts in the can.
“Take your stuff out to the car.”
He nodded and went to the window.
“Dix, we’re using the door.” I moved around the old man, giving the boy the room he needed.
The can filling his arms, Dix leapt over his father as though he were fire, then he ran out of the house. When I heard the back door slam, I crouched close to the old man.
“People like you sicken me. You don’t feel like a man unless you’re beating on someone weaker. You don’t like your life, that’s your problem. You take it out on a kid, you’ve made it mine. Me? I’m a problem solver.”
The door slammed again, and Dix landed in his room, leapt over his father, then moved a pile of clothes from the closet floor to an empty box. He ran the box to the car and returned. He then pulled his pillow out of the case and filled it with trinkets from the room. Including the rock sitting next to his father’s head. “I’m done.”
The floor was cleaner without piles of clothes. The table working as a desk was empty except for a stack of textbooks and binders.
“Take the school books and get in the car. I’ll be right there.”
Dix started to argue on the need for the books but then his gaze focused on the nose of the 9mm and where it was pointed. “What are you going to do?”
“Bad things happen in bad neighborhoods.” The poundage beneath me began army crawling across the carpet, raking a hundred pounds of fat over the coarse fibers.
“Let’s just go.” Blood dripped from Dix’s nose, his long hair dragged it across his face. He trembled, a dog running from a fight. “He’s not worth it.”
Dickhead made progress by inches, aiming for the gap under the bed. I put the cuffs to good use, then bound his legs using a belt. “He’s not but you are. He’s your boogey man, the thing under your bed. You’re not going to be free as long as you’re afraid he’s going to come after you.”
Dickhead kicked his feet, teetering on his lump of belly fat. “You want to live on your own, think you can do better without me? Get out. You ungrateful shit. After all I gave you—”
“Gave me?!?” Dixon roared. He stood taller, thrusting out his thin chest. “Like the time you gave me a broken rib? Like the time you made me lie to the cops about falling down the stairs? It’s no wonder why Mom left, it’s a wonder she f-fucked you in the first place.” He loomed over his pater, fear transformed to anger and then…it dissolved. Like sugar in a glass of hot tea, it was there one minute, gone the next. A smile grew across his face and then he laughed. “Let’s go, Diamond.”
Dixon made the key to his prison and walked out a free man. We left like normal people leaving a normal house. Dickhead? I left him on the floor, hands cuffed behind his back, legs bound. Sooner or later, he’d work his way out. Or he wouldn’t. The neighbors would come, maybe the cops. Didn’t care. In the minivan, we cranked the radio until the windows vibrated. We sang at the top of our lungs, leaving one life behind and racing into a better beginning.
Happy birthday, Andrew Dixon.
With his business was taken care of, I could get back to mine.
Grieving Widow Seeks Husband-Seducing Biotch
Spring had taken hold of Rome. Beneath my window, I watched Italians walk leisurely along the narrow street before the midday break, basking in the warm, bright sun. Tourists did the same but pointed out sights to each other and stopped to window gaze. Their cameras and bags hung across Rubenesque figures, bisecting breasts on men and women alike.
I yawned, which reminded me I’d been awake for—shit—longer than I could figure. It would have been smart to sleep after I got Dix settled. Instead, I pored over Ian’s file like syrup on pancakes. Speaking of food, Dix nosed his way in, crunching on an apple. The kid was like an overgrown lap dog. It didn’t matter how many times I slapped his nose, he just kept coming back for more. I thought of his father and stopped pushing him away. When I wouldn’t talk about my work, he started talking. He had plans and plans for his plans. It got to me, knowing it was the last time I’d see him. I left him with a restocked refrigerator and enough cash for him to make his start. I hoped he would make it.
A bird swooped close to my window, drawing me back to the here and now.
I called my voicemail and there was a message from Alexei. The stress in his voice mixed anger, frustration, and insult into a Russ-lish rant. I had to listen three times to get the whole picture. Short and sweet—Quili saw him for ten minutes. She claimed the work in the lab as fully and solely hers and dismissed my husband’s contribution. Alexei promised a lawsuit and to give her crops the equivalent of the Russian evil eye so they would wither like her heart. I hoped he was talented like that.
Sitting on the wide windowsill, I laid my head against the window frame and closed my eyes. I had been in Rome a half-dozen times; never as a tourist. Only the last one haunted me. Refusing to be tormented, I invited the memories in. Blurs of light and color raced by as if moving at a hundred miles an hour. My first hours as a widow. Focusing, focusing, cobblestones formed beneath my feet. I had heels on and couldn’t walk evenly on the rounded stones. Proof I wasn’t in my right mind. I knew better than to wear heels in old cities. Nameless people encouraged me along, but I wasn’t fast enough. They pulled away. Fear of being alone swamped me. I took off my shoes and began to run. There was no ambient sound. No underlying rhythm setting the tempo for life. My own heartbeat pulsed in my ears. Through a door, into a building, and then I sat in a waiting room, on a chair upholstered in worn, red velvet. A woman spoke to me in a language sounding more like music than conversation. I didn’t understand a word.
I hadn’t been in full command of myself the last time I was here. Maybe if I had been…well, I’ve never been one to dwell on maybes. I fucked up not bringing Ian with me the first time. He barreled through bullshit the way pigs went through slop. He wouldn’t have accepted the ready explanation and called them on their bullshit. I wouldn’t have either if I’d been sane.
I wouldn’t make the same mistake.
I had two hours before my meeting with the event coordinator at the hotel hosting the conference. Ian had established my cover as Celina Matta, a junior investigator for an insurance company. The interview was standard company protocol to verify the details ahead of a very large payout on a life insurance policy. Ian had arranged the meeting with the event coordinator and a translator to assist. With the event coordinator’s help, I would know every movement leading Gavriil to walk out those doors.
Flopping down on the bed, I ordered my brain to turn off. For Gavriil. Just turn the fuck off.
Brring ring. Brring ring. Brring ring.
My pitching hand found the damn phone and air mailed it to the room next door. It bounced off the wall as I came to my senses. Rome. Meeting. Gavriil. The phone rang again, the tone muffled by the carpet. Cursing myself, I rolled off the bed and played fetch. “Hello?” The thick, husky voice didn’t resemble my own.
“Signora Matta? This is Carlo Giancarlo.” The voice sung to me in broken English, a pitch too high for a man.
“Seriously? Is this some kind of fucked up game, Carlo John Carlo?” I got out of bed for this?
“This is no game, signora. Signor Nero, uh, Black, signor Black said to meet you here at three.”
The clock on the bedside table showed three on the dot.
“I need a few minutes,” I said and hung up.
A hot shower had me firing on all cylinders. Opening two cases, I transformed into Celina Matta. Rose-scented lotion. Blond with caramel streaks. Blue eyes. Delicate makeup. An insurance investigator isn’t one to slather on the sex paint. Business attire. Beige skirt, white blouse, simple shoes. Flats with rubber soles. Perfect.
My costumed ass sashayed down the stairs into the hotel foyer. Ian knew what he was doing. The family-owned hotel was close enough to the beaten pat
h to be convenient, far enough away to be discrete. The only man in the foyer was a twenty-something Italian leaning on the registration desk flirting with the girl behind it. He was under six-foot but his long, lean lines gave the impression he was taller. His hair was chocolate brown and curled at the ends. The eyes matched the hair, even the curl at the end, giving him a devilish appearance in the way every girl dreamt about.
“Carlo.”
He immediately dropped the girl’s attention when work called. “Buon pomeriggio, signora Matta.” He came toward me with a toothy smile and an extended hand.
I held up my hand. “English and call me Celina. Let’s do this.”
Carlo bowed his head, recalling his hand but keeping the smile. “Of course. Our appointment is at four o’clock. We should arrive comfortably.” He led the way into the streets of Rome, pointing out buildings and sharing interesting tidbits I couldn’t have cared less about. A few minutes on the constantly changing streets and we were at the subway—la metropolitana. Sounds nicer in Italian. Ten minutes later we surfaced on a street identical to the one we left. Identical. Until we turned the corner.
I staggered, tripped over my own corporately cultured feet when I recognized the street I had stared at for hours through a stranger’s lens. The day faded, and the night rose like a monster from the shadows. I saw the blue awning stretching over the sidewalk, bright lights illuminating Il Leone. The lion. From the mouth, I saw Gavriil walking down the sidewalk, coming to me. He was unmistakable in the rumpled brown suit I had threatened to burn but couldn’t bring myself to.
An arm caught me around the waist. Carlo’s arm. I made a fist, ready to help Romeo understand where my personal space and his pain began.
“Careful, Celina. The traffic may not be heavy, but it is fierce.” He forced me to take a step back before dropping his arm.
My feet were inches from the curb’s edge. How easy it would have been to fall into the street as Gavriil had.
