“You don’t smoke,” I said.
“I never said it was for a cigarette.”
“I’m fresh out.”
She took her leg off the chair and sat down.
“May I sit?”
“No.”
If she was going to play coy, she was dealin’ with a master: I learned at my momma’s knee.
“Jackal, I’ll be straight with you, all right?”
My eyes wandered over her shapely calves.
“Your words will be the only straight thing about you, doll.”
“My husband’s been kidnapped and I know who took him. His brother Jerry.”
“Why has Jerry become his brother’s keeper?” I asked.
“The last unresolved item from their father’s will has finally cleared probate. We thought that everything had been divided up years ago, but then we found out about the . . . diamonds!”
My heart started beatin’ a little faster. Yeah, I was all guy, but I liked the sparklies. The mere mention of ice in a cocktail sent me all a-flutter . . .
“Lose this part,” I recommended.
“But why? If I am going to expose to exploration and analysis the innermost workings of my soul, then it must be fully,” Spinelli said, taking a tiny sip of his orange soda.
“ ’Cause it makes you sound like you should be served on a plate with cheese.”
“If I may offer a different opinion . . .”
“Never mind.” I sighed, reaching for a potato chip. “No one ever listens to me until it’s too late. Go on.”
“Diamonds?” I inquired . . . casually.
“Five flawless diamonds, perfect in color, cut, and clarity. The smallest weighs in at seven and a half carats. The largest . . . is bigger than the Hope. John, Jasper and Jerry’s father, left them specifically for Jasper . . . I mean Jax . . . God, I hate using his first name; it’s like he’s a five-year-old. I didn’t even know about the diamonds. Jerry has been holding them up in probate for years, so Jax didn’t even bother to tell me . . . an oversight which he and I will discuss at a later time. Jerry has taken Jax and is holding him prisoner—torturing him so that Jax will tell him where the diamonds are!”
“How do you know this, Mrs. Jacks? How do you know your husband hasn’t gone out for a shot of tequila and a redhead?”
“First of all, my husband’s Australian . . . He would never drink tequila. And second, I have this.”
She reached in between the lapels of her mink and withdrew a scrap of paper. As she was drawin’ it out, a tiny pink ribbon-end came with it. I recognized the color: “Hinky Pinky” was only found on certain items of Victoria’s Secret lingerie . . .
“Okay!” I said, slamming my pen on the table. “I’ll say it again . . . you talk like this and people will think . . .”
“A brief interruption, learned solicitor,” Spinelli countered. “I only know this because my own true love, the fair Maximista, wears almost nothing but items in Hinky Pinky.”
“Oh, all right, then,” I said, begrudgingly. “But you might want to mention that somewhere.”
“As you wish.”
“Okay,” I said, suddenly craving a cheeseburger . . . and a Rob Roy.
“. . . and I realized that Mrs. Jacks was wearin’ precious little under her mink sweatshirt.”
She handed over the note. In that childish scrawl common to many psychopaths, the note read:
My brother’s life for a few simple stones. I know you know where they are, darling Carly. If I don’t have them by tomorrow evening, I’ll finish Jax, and then I’ll come for the kids.
Understand, sweetheart?
Don’t go all white on me, lady . . . 10:00 PM. And come . . .
. . . alone.
“It doesn’t even say where I’m supposed to go!” Carly moaned.
“When did you get this?” I asked, wantin’ to slap her . . . for no reason.
“About two hours ago.”
“Do you have the diamonds?”
“Jax insisted that I sew them into the hem of my mink, because I so rarely take it off.”
She flashed open the mini-trench, letting me catch just a peek of Hinky Pinky and five dark lumps at the bottom of the fur.
“And you haven’t called the police?”
“No . . . I mean the note specifically didn’t say that I shouldn’t, I just thought it was best.”
“Good girl.”
“Does that mean you’ll take the case?”
She looked up at me with those pool hall eyes, brimmin’ with tears. Her mink fell off her shoulder the teensiest bit. She’d brought all the weapons with her; if the waterworks didn’t do it, the striptease just might.
“I’m four hundred dollars a day, plus expenses.”
“Well,” she said, snifflin’, “counting today and tomorrow, that’s only eight hundred dollars. What a deal!”
“I’ll have a lot of expenses. Startin’ with a new car.”
“But we don’t even know where to look for Jax.”
“We could hop in a cab and be there in five minutes. Or my new car, if I had one.”
“Whaaaa? You mean you’ve already figured out where Jerry is holding him?”
“Simple, sweetheart. It’s in the note. Why would Jerry tell you not to go all white on him, lady, huh? I mean who writes crapola like that? What does that even mean?”
“I . . . don’t . . . know?”
“That’s right. So I have to figure it’s one of those stupid sentences that somebody says when they want somebody else to look a little deeper. So I did, and what did I find?”
“I . . . don’t . . . know?”
“That’s why you should always stay pretty, Valkyrie . . . Brains ain’t your department. White and lady. Ring any bells?”
“You mean, our yacht? The White Lady?”
“You do all right when it’s spelled out for you, kiddo. That’s right, the White Lady.”
“But she’s not in Port Charles. She’s docked up at our every-other-summer home in Bar Harbor.”
“Then it looks like you and I are takin’ a road trip . . . in my new car.”
“No new car.”
My autobahn dreams never materialized, but bright and a little too early the next morning, Carly Corinthos Jacks pulled up to the building, two cups of steamin’ something in her Porsche’s cup holder. We’d decided not to take my Toyota Echo . . . even though it was silver . . . all right, primer . . . Jerry was expecting to see Carly’s silver 2010 Porsche Cayman S Coupe.
“Venti chai lattes, breve, sugar-free vanilla, no water, no foam, extra hot.”
I nearly spit the creamy concoction all over her tinted windows.
“You don’t like it?”
“No . . . it’s good. It just reminds me of Christmas. And I hate Christmas.”
The late October woods were on fire, like my derriere after a bowl of Dennison’s. The drive up to Bar Harbor was uneventful until Carly started to open up, and I don’t mean the throttle. We were only a couple of hours outside of Port Charlie when she asks, real casual like, what goes into my idea of the perfect woman.
I start tellin’ her: a pound of sass, gams like a couple of flagpoles, a pouty mouth, and brains enough to know when to keep it shut!
I look over just in time to see a big Karo syrup tear run down that high cheekbone.
“What’s with the waterworks, doll?”
Her lip started to quiver. I get nervous when the lip starts to quiver.
“I try to be all that and more for Jax. But it just seems like we’re fighting all the time. I know he’s not happy . . . but I swear, Jackal, I try, I really do. If we get him back . . . I’m going to make him the happiest man in the world!”
“First of all, toots, it’s not a question of if, but when we get him back. And second . . .”
I watched as she reached for her chai latte with the thing and the thing. I realized she’d been suckin’ on it since we left the city. There was no way there could be anything le
ft. Then I saw the move. Sly and quick . . . real cute. She pulled a hip flask from under her mink mini-trench, took off her cup lid, poured about six drops of . . . what was it? . . . whiskey . . . into the cup, popped the lid back on, and slid the flask back on her thigh like she was passin’ a note in grade school. The whole thing took about three seconds. I was impressed. Then I tightened my seat belt.
But Carly was drivin’ like an ace. It was just her emotions that were getting all screwy.
“. . . and second, I’m sure you’d make any man feel like a high-roller. You’re a champ, Carly . . . You’re Big League.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Of course, I wouldn’ta said it if . . .”
She took her eyes off the road for the first time and trained those baby-blues right on me.
“Do you . . . really . . . think so?”
“Sure,” I said, drownin’ in those two cups of blue curaçao, not realizing she’d slammed the Porsche to the side of the road.
“I’m glad to hear it,” she purred, grabbing the parking brake. Then she planted one on me that made me happy to be alive. And a man. And glad I’d never had a tonsillectomy, ’cause she was givin’ one to me now. Suddenly, what little sense I had left returned, and I pushed her away, rough, but not too rough.
“Oh, Jackal, I’ve wanted to do that ever since you showed up in Port Charles. When Jax was kidnapped, I was glad . . . glad, do you hear? I knew I could get close to you for a fairly decent reason. I could get you alone and let you know how I really felt.”
“Hang on, sister,” I said, tryin’ to keep this clawing kitten at arm’s length, “this isn’t you talkin’, it’s the eighty-proof in your latte. Calm down.”
“I am calm,” she said. “I’ve never been so calm in my life. Don’t you see, Jackal? The way I’ve treated you all these years . . . it was just a ruse, an act, a put-on, so you wouldn’t see my true feelings. But I’m tired of the games . . . tired of trying to make my incredibly rich husband happy. He only loves one thing. He won’t tell me what it is. But it’s not me. I can turn this car around and let Jerry have him and we can put the diamonds in a safety deposit box and my car in your garage.”
I hesitated for only a moment. It was the bad guy in me, the thug, the torpedo.
“The car . . . can I drive it?”
“No.”
That was the slap I needed.
“No dice, doll.” Then I softened. “Look, I can’t blame you for the way you feel, but you and I both know that it would never work. Your problems don’t amount to a hill of beans. Mine, of course, are another story, but the point is you love Jax and he loves you. If you let him go down without tryin’ to save him, you’ll regret it.”
“But what about us?”
“We’ll always have two chai lattes and a summer drive to Bar Harbor.”
“You’re right.”
“And that time you kicked my shoppin’ cart into that pile of avocados in the supermarket.”
“Of course.”
“And that time you let the door slam on my hand when you were comin’ out of the Metro Court.”
“Yes . . . yes . . . stop now.”
“Let’s go get your husband.”
She wiped away those pretty tears and six hours and one speeding ticket later we pulled into the Malvern Hotel. We were gonna use it as a base camp. Then I realized Carly had only rented one room. She’d been pretty sure I’d fall. She was one good-lookin’ dame, but she was hard . . . too hard . . . and I was glad I’d let her down. I told I’d sit in the car while she went in and freshened up. Smart woman, she took the keys.
At ten on the button, we pulled up to the docks and saw the White Lady in her slip. A single light burned in the main cabin. I stayed in the car while Carly went onboard. Of course, we’d taken the diamonds out of her mink, and now they were safely stowed in the secret pocket of my pants. Suddenly, the light went out, there was a crash, and then the sound of a cabin door openin’, and I heard Carly scream. I was out of the car and creepin’ up the gangplank in a flash. Making my way down the side of the yacht, I tripped over a large sack of something just outside the main cabin door.
Turned out to be Jax, trussed up like grandma’s turkey on Thanksgiving. He was out cold. I dragged his body down the gangplank and propped him up against a tackle shed. Back on the boat, I crawled on my belly till I reached the main cabin, then cautiously opened the door.
I saw the flash of a gun. The first bullet ricocheted off a bronze bell and broke a window on its way out. But Jerry had given away his position and he couldn’t move along the windows without being seen in the moonlight. I drew my heater. Jerry was a lefty. He dressed to the left, politics were to the left and his left eye was sharper than his right. He would be holdin’ Carly, in a very uncomfortable position for her, I was certain, to his right.
“I’ve already frisked my sister-in-law, which she thoroughly enjoyed, didn’t you, darling? Unfortunately, I didn’t find any diamonds.”
“Maybe she’s hidin’ ’em someplace special,” I said.
I heard Carly protest; sounded like there was a hand over her mouth.
“Hmmm . . . I didn’t think to look there. But now that you mention it . . .”
“Keep talkin’, ya big maroon,” I thought. “I almost have you.”
“. . . I just might,” Jerry went on. “Sweetheart, would you mind just turning around . . .”
I followed the sound of his voice and aimed right just a hair; I knew I only had one chance or Carly was gonna look pretty on a coroner’s slab. I squeezed off a shot. Carly screamed again and then there were three thuds as Jerry crashed into the cabin furniture. Then . . . silence.
I high-tailed it to Carly in the darkness. Suddenly, Jerry’s figure towered in the moonlight filterin’ in from the windows. I shot again and this time Jerry spun around and crashed, face-first, through the glass. A split second later, we heard a splash in Bar Harbor.
I hustled Carly off the yacht, got Jax untied, and by midnight we were all enjoying the “lighter-fare” menu at the Malvern. I handed over the diamonds and said good-bye to Carly that night. As she helped Jax up to the room, she looked over her shoulder. I tipped my hat and picked up a Greyhound back to Port Charlie.
The ride home in her Porsche was one I didn’t want to take. Not with Jax there. Not with so many memories of what could have been . . . if only I wasn’t such a sweet guy.
Chapter 3
Damian Spinelli
and the Case of the Quartered Main
Port Charles gets a different kinda rain.
It’s not the steamy, bluesy Southern kinda they see in New Orleans or Memphis . . . the kind that makes you want to sit on your front porch with a bowl of cheese grits until you remember exactly why your wife left and ain’t never coming back. It’s not the endless, dull Seattle kind that makes you wanna take a heater to your melon after a couple of days.
Port Charles rain blows cold off the big pond. It’s never seen land; it knows only itself . . . only water. And it’s the kinda rain that puts to rest any doubts: Port Charles is a town that God forgot.
It was the day after Thanksgiving and I was sick of turkey. Talkin’ it and eatin’ it. I was in the office later than usual; I wasn’t thrilled about takin’ on the weather, and Maxie, who couldn’t care less about a little deluge, was comin’ by with some cheap Chinese . . .
“Oh, Ms. Miller,” Spinelli said, his eyes wide. “Do you think that’s a bit . . . ?”
“You’re talking about take-out food?” I asked.
“Well, of course,” he answered.
“People will get it,” I said. “Go on.”
. . . and I thought I might feed her some chicken lo mein while she was sittin’ on my desk lookin’ all sweet.
Then the phone rang.
Being after hours, I didn’t wanna pick it up, but then I thought it might be Maxie at Yun Chow’s. Maybe she was havin’ a little trouble decidin’ on the dumplings . . . so I
caved.
“Spinelli!?”
It was Big Alice, the Quartermaines’ maid.
“Speakin’.”
“You gotta help! Mr. Edward . . . he’s gone! I think he’s out at sea . . .”
I’d never heard panic in the voice of Big Alice. Whiskey, yeah. Barroom brawl, you bet . . . But panic, never. I was concerned.
“Slow down, Big Alice, slow down,” I said, leanin’ back in my chair. “What do you mean he’s at sea?”
“It will be easier if I explain everything in person.”
“It always is, doll.” I sighed. So much for the dumplings. “Okay, Big Alice, I’m on my way.”
“Thank you . . . Oh, and I’m not so big anymore.”
“Come again?” I said, caught off-guard.
“I’m not going by ‘Big Alice’ these days. I’ve slimmed down. Gone vegan, become heart smart, and I’ve done several marathons. It’s just ‘Alice’ now.”
She waited for me to give her an atta’ girl, but it was hard to think of Alice as anything other than a gorgeous lady of wrestling . . . or a bobsledder . . . or a bobsled.
“Good for you, Alice. Guess I’ll see for myself, won’t I?”
“Hurry!” she said. Then the phone clicked off.
Just then, Maxie appeared in the doorway, arms full of take-out and a couple of bottles of Freixenet (I don’t say nothin’, ’cause she likes it . . . but the stuff gives me the willies).
“I couldn’t decide between pork dumplings and chicken wontons . . . so I got both. Oh, and I slept with the counter guy. I’m sorry . . .”
“I’ll hear it later,” I said. But I’d heard it fine; it was the same old story. She’d slept with someone, she was sorry, and I could hurt her all I wanted in return. Trouble is, I didn’t want to. Not right then, anyway.
“Keep the foo young hot,” I said, bussin’ her cheek. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Are you going on another caper?” she asked, her baby-blues gettin’ all curious on me.
“Case!” I said. “It’s a case! A caper is something in a Nancy Drew novel, or a good chicken piccata. Get it straight, sweetheart. Be good . . . at least try.”
The Secret Life of Damian Spinelli Page 2
