“That’s a good comparison, actually,” he said. “The main difference being I don’t have to sneak the beer if I don’t want to.”
“You’re really easing my mind.” Shannon signaled Frank to sit while Michael opened the door.
A gorgeous black woman in a tight red dress stood in the doorway to their apartment, smiling in. She had a head of voluminous, curly hair cut to somewhere around her jawline and her hips had that perfect champagne glass curve Shannon would’ve cut her own toes off for. “Good evening.”
Michael froze in the doorway. It seemed Shannon wasn’t the only one knocked flat by this woman in the red dress. “Shannon, this is Rochelle.” He spoke like his brain was on autopilot.
Rochelle shot him an unappreciative look. “Nobody out here needs to know that name,” she said.
Michael smiled at her.
That smile. There was something in it. Something from Michael which Shannon hadn’t seen since he’d been engaged to Elizabeth Keane.
He guided Rochelle into the apartment with a hand on the small of her back.
Oh my God. He liked this woman—no it was worse than that. He was skipping-in-the-streets, dancing-on-a-lamppost infatuated with her.
When the hell had this happened?
“So good to meet you, Rochelle.” Shannon closed the front door behind her.
“Please, call me Miss Honey. Everyone else does.” She extended her hand to Shannon. “You must be Michael’s sister. I’ve heard about you.”
“Have you?” She gave her brother a surprised look as she shook Miss Honey’s hand. “I didn’t know Michael ever talked to anyone about me.”
“You ain’t got to worry—he always says good things.”
“Really?” Shannon asked. “Like what?”
“I think it’s time we left.” Michael slipped his shoes on his feet, but hadn’t tied them.
“You should at least stick around for a minute and tie your shoes,” Shannon said. “I’d love to get to know Roch—Miss Honey better.”
“No, there’s no time. I have to make sure I get everything explained on the way.” Michael turned Miss Honey around, leading her back to the front door, almost tripping on his laces.
“We’re doing that same old hustle we do, right?” she said. “Ain’t no need to explain that game. I’ve been doing that for twenty-five years, at least.”
Twenty-five years? She didn’t look a day over thirty-five.
“How did you and Michael meet?” Shannon said.
“Let’s not get off-track.” Michael ripped open the front door, and made damn sure Miss Honey got out before Shannon asked more questions.
Miss Honey looked at him, then back to Shannon. “It was a treat finally meeting you,” she said. “Maybe next time we can talk over some tea.”
Shannon nodded. In the thrill of meeting a woman her brother had eyes for, she’d almost forgotten what Michael and Miss Honey were here to do, but now that she watched them walking out the door, the sobering reminder of what was at stake came right back at her.
“Get the ledger quickly,” she said after them as they went down the hall to the building’s front door. “Don’t hang around, and don’t get noticed. And call me!”
Michael waved a hand in Shannon’s direction as he and Miss Honey slipped outside.
Hopefully the neighbors hadn’t heard any of that.
Now to see if she could get in touch with Marcie and make it seem like they were about to pay an incidental house call to Gregory Wendt at his night club.
CHAPTER 37
“I love playing spy.” Miss Honey touched up her lipstick using the rearview mirror in Michael’s car. “Been too long since I’ve done something like this.” She smacked her lips. “Too long.”
They sat in his car, down the block and across the street from The Aces Club, in a bank parking lot meant for customers only. Lucky for them, there weren’t many people banking on a Thursday night.
Michael’s attention was locked to the front door of The Aces Club. Were there any familiar faces going in? Anyone he should be worried about? Anyone who might recognize him or try to kill him?
This was a terrible idea. But Shannon needed him to do this. He just had to calm his nerves.
Michael took his lighter and his cigarette case off the dashboard. He flicked the case open, snatched out a cigarette, and had it lit and between his lips before he could twist his own nerves up again.
“How many of those are you gonna smoke?” Miss Honey cracked her window.
Michael checked his watch. It was 9:54 PM. Six minutes to go-time.
“This is the last one.” He held the cigarette case out for Miss Honey. “Put this in your purse for me.”
His hands jittered so hard, anybody on this side of the street would’ve heard the steel Zippo lighter rattling around inside the case.
Miss Honey stared at his gesticulating hand. She had a look in her eye like she didn’t know whether to hold him or tell him to turn around and go back home. It was the first time he’d ever seen her worry about anybody.
“Just nerves.” He dropped the cigarette case in her lap to quit the damn thing’s rattling. “I’ll get over it.”
“Ain’t you done things like this a thousand times before?”
“Who told you that?” He sucked down a lungful of cigarette smoke and held it.
“I hear people talking about this and that,” she said. “It’s my business, just like getting into places you ain’t supposed to be and going after people who ain’t want to be found was your business.”
Of course she knew about his past. Hiding that from her was like trying to hide sunlight by cupping it in your hands.
He let the cigarette smoke go. “That was different,” he said. “The rules have changed.”
“I don’t remember anybody handing out a rulebook for this kinda thing.”
“The only rules we have are the ones we make for ourselves.”
“That right?” She leaned over the center console in his car. The tip of her manicured fingernail brushed his thigh—probably on accident—and a little excitement flickered under his skin. “What kinda rules you make for yourself? No cussing? No drinking on the job?”
“No cracking anybody’s head open,” he said. “Not anymore.”
That must’ve amused Miss Honey. Her eyes smiled at him, but she was polite enough to hold the laugh in. She slid back to her side of the car, opened her red clutch bag, and dropped Michael’s cigarette case inside.
“I can go it alone,” she said. “It ain’t a big deal for you to sit this one out. Might be good for you to keep an eye on the door for me.”
“Nope.”
She laughed. “I ever tell you how poetic you are sometimes? It’s a shame you didn’t take up the pen instead of the gun.”
He held his hands up, showing her he was unarmed. They still shook something awful, so he busied them by grabbing the cigarette out of his mouth and ashing it out his open window.
She leaned back against the car door and took him in with her eyes. What was it that sometimes made him feel naked when she rolled those eyes over him? There was no way to keep a secret from her, that was true, but it went beyond that. Like she had a way of lifting the misdirections and lies a person wrapped himself in and peeking at the soul shivering underneath.
“You don’t want to go,” she said. “You’re trying to put the messes you’ve made behind you, but for some reason nobody except you knows, you keep dragging that mess around because you don’t trust yourself enough to let go.”
“What do mean I ‘don’t trust myself?’”
“You keep your old habits in a glass case,” she said. “And there’s a part of you holding the hammer, ready to break it.”
She moved so close to him, he saw the ridges and pits in her big, light-brown irises trapping his reflection.
“You might’ve been good at all that psycho, kneecapping, finger-breaking nonsense you did for Ewan Keane, Michael,” she whispered
to him. “But there’s more in you than that. I see an intelligent man with a good heart that got turned inside-out by terrible people—people who abused the trust you put in them. Trust abused so badly, you can’t trust yourself no more.”
Michael dragged his teeth across his lip while he thought about what she said. “Maybe you aren’t wrong—and maybe what you said will change something about me down the road.” He looked through the windshield at the entrance to the club. “But right here and now, it won’t change a thing. I’m not staying behind. Shannon needs me to do this, and I need to do it for her. I got a look of what it’s like to have a normal relationship with my sister again, and I got it because I helped her. No way in hell am I staying in this car and letting that get away from me.”
Miss Honey sat up straight and looked him over. “Okay then, tough guy.” She capped her lipstick. “Let’s get our hustle on.”
CHAPTER 38
The Aces Club was a cavernous warehouse stuffed with people and noise. The walls were painted dark, the only illumination coming from dimmed sconces throwing orange light upward.
There was a nice playing card motif all over the place—like the backlit diamonds and hearts on the walls, or the clubs and spades cut into the railings of the balcony which ran the perimeter of the upper level, looking down on the main floor where Michael and Miss Honey moved through the crowd.
On the far wall, there was a fifteen-foot-tall painting of an ace of spades done in an art deco style—a focal point for all the madness.
A bar big enough to sink the Titanic held down the club’s center. It towered over the entire room, going from floor to ceiling like a wide, rectangular monolith. Its glass and mahogany shelves supported unused liquor bottles, clean glasses, and all sorts of other bartending odds and ends. A librarian’s ladder was used to help pull the extra stock down from the upper levels.
It looked evil.
Michael half-expected to see a geriatric billionaire sitting in a calfskin chair in front of it, puffing a pipe, waiting for any excuse to pull a bottle forward to reveal the Satanic chamber hidden behind the shelves.
“If that Gregory Wendt fella owns this place, he don’t look like a two-bit hustler to me.” Miss Honey looked gravely serious. “Seems like that man has his fingers in pies.”
“Let’s do what we came to do and get out,” Michael said.
He didn’t want to think about what would happen if Gregory Wendt were better connected than he assumed. It was best not to get his nerves going again.
“You see anything that looks like they’re trying to hide a casino here?”
“I see all sorts of things,” Miss Honey said with a smile. “It’s like they’re begging to get caught with all the crap on the walls.”
“You’d think they’d try to make it look like a pet shop.”
“Maybe if it’s 1919 and you’re trying to outsmart the liquor police.” She smiled.
Something about her eyes caught him. Maybe it was the lighting, maybe it was his nerves, but he’d never seen them so beautifully auburn.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she said. “Let’s go find our spot.”
She took his hand. As soon as he felt the softness of her palms, the warmth of her radiating into him, Michael’s fingers decided they were ready to tremble again.
“Your hand is shaking again.”
She smelled like nectar and cinnamon.
“I’m fine.” His drum-rolling heartbeat shook his voice. “Let’s go.”
They waded further into the sea of club patrons. All around them were dark suits and neckties, stiletto heels and sequined clutches.
She led him toward a pair of empty stools at the bar. Michael helped himself to one, then Miss Honey sat down next to him and sunk the neckline of her dress.
“You should wear something like that more often,” he said.
“I would, but you’d get drool all over my couch.”
“I never liked that couch, anyway.”
She laughed and slapped his arm. Then something caught her eye and she snapped back into work mode.
Miss Honey leaned over the black-marble bar so anyone in front of her—like the bartender with his back to them, for instance—could see all the way down the top of her dress.
Sure enough, he turned and caught an eyeful of her.
Miss Honey smiled and waved at him.
He smiled back. It was unsettling—how quickly she had him hooked, and how obvious his intentions were to anyone paying attention. “Can I get you something?”
“A dry martini,” she said. “He’ll have a beer—doesn’t matter what.”
The bartender nodded, then turned around and went to the work of pulling bottles of liquor down from shelves and mixing her drink. A moment later, he turned around with a half-full martini glass and a bottle of some microbrew Michael had never heard of.
“Your beer.” Into the martini, he dropped a toothpick with two green olives skewered on it. “And your martini.”
“Thanks, sugar.” Miss Honey slid a $50 bill across the bar toward him. Where she got it, Michael couldn’t say. “You keep the change for yourself. Don’t let no one else here claim it from you.”
He winked at her, then turned around to busy himself with something else.
“Well, now, hold on a minute,” Miss Honey said.
The bartender turned back to her.
“I thought a bartender was supposed to offer up a little conversation to his customers.” She slid her hand across the bar top and stroked his knuckles. “But I bet you get tired of women chatting you up all the time.”
“Only when they can’t hold up their end of a conversation,” he said.
“Well, you’ll never get tired of me.” She playfully tapped his arm, and it was like she’d pushed a button hidden under his skin. His body language changed from guarded to wide open.
“You look like you know how to keep a man interested.”
“Who, me?” She giggled.
He inclined his head toward Michael. “That your boyfriend?”
Miss Honey looked over her shoulder and winked at Michael. She knew she was in. “Why?” she asked. “Would that make you jealous?”
“Maybe.”
She pulled Michael closer and wrapped her arm around his shoulder. “This is Marty,” she said. “He’s a good friend.”
“Nice to meet you,” Michael mumbled.
He’d helped Miss Honey pull this hustle off once or twice before. He was the sweet idiot with too much money, and she was there to make the mark—in this case, the bartender—think she was going to help him drain Michael of every cent he had.
It worked like magic on anyone with a little too much greed for their own good.
“He had a hell of a thing happen to him today,” she said. “You should hear it. You’ll probably think he’s lying when he tells you, but I swear to you, he ain’t.” She looked at Michael. “Go on, Marty—tell our new friend what you found.”
“Really?” Michael kept his eyes fixed on the bar and played with the tips of his fingers. “I don’t know. I thought I shouldn’t tell anybody else.”
“Oh no, it’s okay. You can tell—” she looked at the bartender “—what’s your name?”
“Jerrod,” the bartender said. He filled up a glass of ice water.
“You should tell Jerrod. I bet he can help us out.”
Michael glanced at Jerrod for only a moment before his eyes darted back down to his fingers. “I found a lottery ticket a couple weeks ago,” he said.
“Oh yeah? You win some money?” Jerrod leaned in and flashed another smile at Miss Honey. He was nibbling the bait.
“Yes, sir.”
“One hundred thousand dollars.” Miss Honey’s eyes lit up. “Can you believe that? I thought only people in movies won the lottery.” She tapped the bartender’s hand again. “But you gotta hear this—it’s the best part. Tell him where you found the ticket.”
Michael shook his head. “I’m embarra
ssed.”
“Where’d you find it?” Jerrod sipped the water.
“On the bus.”
“On the bus!” Miss Honey threw her head back and howled laughter. “I thought he was lying to me. I couldn’t hardly believe him when he said it. Told me he was going to work—he’s a janitor at some high school—and he saw the ticket laying under the seat in front of him. I saw him grinning at the end of a bar two nights ago, and when I asked him why, I about fell out my seat. But, you know what? He about fell over when I told him I could help him triple his money.”
“Oh yeah?” Jerrod asked. “How do you plan on doing that?” He tried to play it cool. The eagerness in his eyes gave him away.
“We’re going to The Shamrock.” Michael sounded like a child about to head off to the zoo.
“Yup. We got a car rented and all that.”
“That casino in Hammond?” Jerrod sneered. “You don’t want to go there. That place is for old ladies playing penny slots and dummies ready to get their pockets picked.”
“Ain’t no other casinos around here,” Miss Honey said. “So we’re bound for Indiana.”
“No, you’re not. See that bottle up there?” Jerrod pointed three-quarters of the way up the booze monolith behind the bar. “Go get your money, put it in a big pile on the bar, then I’ll pour that stuff on it and we can light it up. I’ll save you the gas and the trouble of going to The Shamrock to lose your money—free of charge.” He tipped the glass toward them and winked.
“What’s Marty supposed to do? Give his money to some crooked banker who’ll run off with it in the middle of the night?”
“No,” Jerrod said. “Marty doesn’t look stupid enough to fall for that—but I know a place you can make your money back five—no, ten times over.”
Miss Honey put up a little facade of doubt. That was the best way to reel somebody in—act like you weren’t interested.
“Where?” Michael asked.
“Hey now, hold on.” She put her hands on Michael like she was trying to reel him back to her. “We got a plan. We’re gonna stay at The Shamrock for a couple days, remember? And I’m gonna call my friends up to come keep us company? Remember that picture of Kristina I showed you?”
Chicago Broken: Detective Shannon Rourke Book 2 Page 19
