The words “moron” and “jerk” vibrated through the wood. The guy with the higher voice was pissed. “Merchandise” and “Lola” followed. Then the word “gun.”
I stifled a gasp, adrenaline quickly surging through me. I pressed my entire body up against the door, straining to hear more.
The low talker mumbled something in response, and the first guy got angry again. This time I had no trouble hearing his response. “I don’t care how you do it. Just take care of him.”
I froze. The way he said “take care of him” didn’t sound like he meant a pampering foot massage. Suddenly Dana’s Godfather scenario wasn’t feeling so farfetched. Take care of whom? Larry? My mouth went dry and my heart started racing faster than a car chase on the 101.
The voices went low again and I strained to hear more. All I could hear were footsteps. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize they were moving toward the door until it was too late. It swung open, catching me squarely in the face.
“Uhn.” The door slammed into my nose, smacking my head against the wall behind me as I crumpled to the floor. I blinked, dazed. Then I looked up to find two men staring down at me. One was huge. He seemed to fill the entire hallway with his bulk. And it wasn’t fat. This guy was built like a linebacker. He had a long scar cutting across his face and one thick unibrow that hovered over his eyes like a hairy caterpillar.
But it was the second guy who creeped me out. He was smaller, his features sharp and precise. He was impeccably dressed in a dark designer suit with closeclipped dark hair and olive skin, slightly flushed from his previous shouting match. His eyes were small and black, staring down at me with a kind of cold calculation that sent a shiver up my spine. I’d bet my Blahniks this was Monaldo.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, his voice tight with a restraint I could easily see snapping.
“I, uh, was looking for the bathroom.”
He looked to the right at the restroom sign, blinking in two-foot-high neon. Then he looked back at me and raised one perfectly waxed eyebrow.
“Huh,” I said. “Guess I had the wrong door.”
He narrowed his small eyes. “Wrong door, huh?”
“Sorry, I’ve, uh, had one too many cosmos tonight.” I scrambled to my feet and didn’t even have to fake the stumble as I lunged for the ladies’ room door.
I locked myself in a stall and sat down, taking big breaths. Ow. Big breaths hurt. I gingerly touched my fingers to my nose, hoping I hadn’t broken it. I did a ten count, then came out of the stall to inspect the damage in the mirror. Red, but it wasn’t bleeding and it didn’t look terribly swollen. Okay, maybe a little swollen, but at least not Marsha Brady sized. I pulled out a tube of concealer and dabbed some on the red parts as I mulled over what I’d heard.
It was obvious the creepy little guy was pretty pissed at Larry. But why, I wasn’t sure. Did it have anything to do with the gunshot I’d heard last Friday? A terrible thought occurred to me. Maybe instead of getting shot, Larry had shot someone else. Maybe that’s why Monaldo was so mad. I had a hard time picturing the decked-out Lola taking a potshot at Monaldo while his goon looked on, but I had to admit it wasn’t impossible.
After doing the best I could with my rapidly swelling nose, I snapped my compact closed and gingerly peeked out the bathroom door. The hallway was empty. I could see Unibrow and Mr. Creepy standing at the bar. I quickly slinked out of the bathroom and skittered down the hall. I closed my eyes and silently prayed to whichever saint looked after those who committed breaking and entering for really good reasons, and opened the office door. Empty.
I mouthed a “thank you” at the ceiling and jumped inside, shutting the door behind me.
Okay, so maybe breaking into the office wasn’t my smartest idea ever. In fact, it might even be pretty low on the list. But I was fresh out of smart ideas so I went with the only one I had. I didn’t quite know what I was looking for. Maybe a gun, or a written statement saying Monaldo had pushed Harriet off the roof. Some detailed plan about how they were going to…I mentally cringed…“take care” of Larry. Most of all, I guess I was just looking for some clue as to why Larry’s roommate was in the morgue and said roommate’s boyfriend was going around shoving guns in people’s faces. (Okay, and I guess a teeny tiny part of me was actually looking for some kind of plaque that said “Honorary Mob Member.”)
A desk sat in the middle of the room, flanked by two armchairs in front and a cushy office chair behind. Bookcase to one side, a few framed photos, some official-looking documents on the wall stating they could sell liquor, and three side-by-side file cabinets. All in all, your typical office. I started with the file cabinets. Locked. Damn. I moved on to the desk drawers, turning up rubber bands, paper clips, and a dirty magazine. Nothing terribly helpful there. Except the fact that Monaldo apparently liked his women big and buxom.
I checked the bookcase next, randomly pulling out volumes of employee manuals, binders, and books, checking for anything out of the ordinary. No such luck. I turned my eye to the photos on the wall. Lots of pictures of Creepy doing big cheesy smiles with his arm around people—mostly men in suits I didn’t recognize, which didn’t mean a whole lot. I was usually more apt to flip on Seinfeld than the news, so these could have been anyone from politicians to former Mob dons. In fact the only person I did recognize was Larry, in a pink leotard fringed with peacock feathers. I looked down at his shoes. Silver spangled strappy sandals with a butterfly clip. Mental forehead smack. No wonder I’d passed as a drag queen.
Next to Larry was another man in pink, shorter and chubbier than Larry, with curly blond hair. He had his arm around Larry’s shoulders and I wondered if this was the unfortunate Hank. Beside them stood Monaldo, doing a big “cheese” at the camera and pointing up to the Victoria Club sign.
Since staring at a picture of my father in heels and feathers wasn’t totally in line with my denial theme, I shook my head and moved on. The only place in the room I hadn’t checked yet was the trash. A wire basket sat in the corner of the room, bulging in a way that said Monaldo wasn’t much of a housekeeper.
As a general rule, I don’t go pawing through people’s trash. It’s rude, invasive and downright icky. But I was out of options. And quite possibly out of time before the gruesome twosome came back to argue about what kind of cement shoes to order Larry. So I closed my eyes and shoved my hands into the wastebasket. Luckily, I didn’t hit anything too slimy or disgusting. Mostly just discarded papers and receipts. I quickly scanned the first few on top. Nothing jumped out at me. Until I unballed one piece of paper that looked like a computer printout of an eBay auction. That alone wouldn’t have gotten my attention except the auction, listed last Wednesday by a BobEDoll, was for a pair of pink Prada pumps. In snakeskin leather. New in box with dust bag. I felt a little drool form at the corner of my mouth as I wondered if the auction had ended yet.
I was trying to figure out why Monaldo would be in the market for a pair of pink pumps (Okay, so he did own a drag club, but Monaldo hadn’t exactly struck me as the Dude-Looks-Like-A-Lady type. He seemed more like the Dude-has-an-Uzi-in-the-closet type), when I heard the sound of footsteps outside the door. On impulse, I quickly shoved the piece of paper into my purse.
Just as the door swung open.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Monaldo, a.k.a. Mr. Creepy, stood in the doorway, his black eyes flashing at me.
I froze. “Uh…wow, this isn’t the bathroom, is it?” Okay, so thinking fast in a crisis isn’t my strong suit.
He narrowed his eyes at me, his jaw clenching tightly. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked in a voice that was freakishly calm for how vividly angry his eyes were.
I bit my lip. “All right. You got me. Ha.” I faked a laugh. “Okay, here’s the truth…” I racked my brain. Quick, Maddie, what sounds truthful? “I’m, uh…with the L.A. Informer. A reporter. Yep, that’s me, reporter gal. Like Mary Tyler Moore. Only without the pillbox hats because the Kennedy chic thing is so overdone. Wel
l, I mean, some women can pull it off, but I’m more of a Sarah Jessica Parker-style girl. You know—all about the shoes? Which is why I’m doing a story on…” I bit my lip again, my eyes searching his office. They landed on the photo of Larry’s strappy sandals. “Shoes! Footwear fashions for transvestites. It is such an overlooked market, don’t you think? And I thought maybe I could get a couple choice quotes from you for—”
But he cut me off. “Get the fuck out of here!” he roared.
I didn’t think it was wise to disobey. I was across the room in two quick strides. But Creepy blocked the doorway, grabbing me by the arm.
“Not so fast.”
My heart sped up to the beat of club music pulsing through the hidden speakers, threatening to pop right out of my ribs and Macarena across the floor. Creepy’s eyes bore into mine, black and oddly flat. If eyes were the windows to the soul, I’d swear this guy didn’t have one. His fingers gripped my arm so hard I whimpered. Which caused a smile just this side of sadistic to tug the corners of his thin lips.
He turned and yelled over his shoulder to one of the bouncers by the bar. “Bruno! I want you to take care of someone for me.”
There was that phrase again. I gulped.
I held my breath, panic starting to rise as Bruno worked his way through the shadowy hallway toward us. Bruno looked solid. Not as big as the linebacker, but he had the shape of someone who liked the gym a whole lot more than I did. I think I whimpered again.
Creepy got close to my face, his nose almost touching mine. I could smell a dinner of garlic and fish on his breath. “If I ever see you near my office again, reporter girl,” he sneered, “it’ll be the last place anyone ever sees you.”
I didn’t have to worry about my heart beating out of my chest because I think it actually stopped. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“Here,” he said, pushing me backwards into the solid wall of Bruno. “Get rid of her.”
“No problem.”
I froze. I knew that voice.
I whipped my head around and this time I’m positive my heart stopped as “Bruno” and I locked eyes.
Ramirez.
Chapter Eight
Ramirez spun me around, his hands maintaining a tight grip on my shoulders as he marched me down the hallway.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he whispered into my ear.
“Me?”
“Shhh.”
“Me?” I whispered. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Working.”
“I didn’t know you moonlighted as a bouncer in a drag club!”
“I’m undercover.” His breath was hot on my neck and I could feel his anger bubbling just beneath the surface. “A cover you could very well have blown back there.” He turned me left at the bar, muscling our way through the club patrons, heading downward toward the stage. “One little thing,” he muttered, as he shoved me in front of him. “I ask you to do one little thing. Steer clear of Vegas. Just stay home. But can you do that for me? No. Just like a woman.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that.”
“I’m going to pretend you’re going to listen to me this time.”
Hey, if he wanted to do denial too, who was I to judge?
He steered me through a doorway in the wall and into a dimly lit backstage area. Woman slash men in various states of undress ran between guys in flannels smoking cigarettes and manning pulleys. None of them paid us any attention. I guessed they were used to Bruno “taking care” of people back here.
Ramirez pushed me to a dark corner behind one of the curtains, then whipped me around to face him.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here,” I said, “but I—”
But before I could finish, Ramirez’s lips were locked over mine, his body pinning me against the wall. Not that I was going anywhere. The second his mouth touched mine, any fight I might have had melted faster than a popsicle on the Venice boardwalk. Man, he was a good kisser. So good, I’d almost forgotten about that sexist comment by the time we finally came up for air.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Ramirez mumbled onto my lips.
“Do what?” I admit, my brain was a little hazy after he’d just about kissed the pants off me.
“Give me a heart attack by breaking into a family man’s office.”
“Oh right, it’s okay for you to go undercover as Bruno the manhandler, but I happen to find one little unlocked office door and—wait, did you say ‘family man’?”
Ramirez pulled away, his jaw tightening into that silent Bad Cop routine again.
I gulped. “Please tell me you mean he attends his kids’ soccer games?”
No reaction. Crap. I hated it when Dana was right.
“Where are you staying?” Ramirez whispered. He glanced over his shoulder as a couple of the yellow sequin “girls” walked past.
“New York, New York. Room 1205.”
He nodded in the darkness. “I’ll be there in half an hour.” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead pulling open a door behind the curtain and shoving me through it.
Before I knew what had happened, I was standing outside next to an overflowing Dumpster and heard the unmistakable sound of Ramirez locking the door behind me. I looked around, trying to reorient myself. It was cold and I had a pretty good idea that thousands of tiny rat eyes were staring at me from behind the piles of garbage. I did a quick mini-jog back around to the front of the building and hailed the first cab I saw.
When I got back to the hotel room, I sat down on the bed and stared up at the textured ceiling for answers again. If things had seemed a little odd before, they were into Michael Jackson-odd territory now. It was like I was starring in my own Scorsese movie. Only these goodfellas all wore heels.
Could my dad really be mixed up with the Mob? What exactly did Larry do for Monaldo? And what did Ramirez have to do with any of this? He was an LAPD homicide detective; this was clearly out of his jurisdiction.
Did it have anything to do with the gunshot? I wondered. I may not be Miss Police Procedure, but even I knew something was amiss here. I suddenly felt like the dimwitted blonde in the movie theater who spends the whole time asking her date, “Who’s that guy again?” “Now, why does he want to kill that other guy?” “And what does the donkey have to do with anything?” I was trying to keep up, honest I was. But somehow none of these scenes were fitting together.
A knock sounded at the door and I jumped about three feet in the air.
“Who is it?” I called, struggling to return my heart rate to normal.
“It’s me,” a familiar voice called. “Open up, Maddie.”
I breathed a tiny sigh of relief and undid the lock, letting in Ramirez. I hadn’t even gotten the door closed behind him before his lips were advancing on mine again.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” I put a hand in the center of his chest, warding him off. And almost wavered as I felt his six-day-a-week-at-the-gym muscles rippling beneath my palm.
Almost.
“Uh uh. No way, pal. You have some serious explaining to do before there’s any more of…” I paused, gesturing between our lips, “…this kind of stuff going on.”
He sighed, then sat down on the double bed and rubbed a hand at his temple. “All right. What do you want to know?”
“For starters, what the hell are you doing in Vegas? And why are you working for Monaldo?”
He paused. And for half a second I thought he wasn’t going to tell me, his dark eyes scrutinizing me. Finally he gave in, Lustful Cop for once winning out over Bad Cop. “Okay,” he said. “But it doesn’t leave this room.”
I sat down beside him and held up my right hand. “Scout’s honor.”
“Two months ago,” he started, “the body of a customs agent at the port of L.A. comes floating in with the tide. I got the page that night I was at your apartment. It was pretty clear the way this guy was killed that it was a professional job.”
I gulped. “As
in Mafia?”
“As in not a random act of violence. Apparently the agent had been asking questions about a container that came in from Thailand the week before. The container was stalled in customs. The agent dies, and two days later, customs clears our container.”
“Convenient.”
“Very. We followed the trail of paperwork through a couple of holding companies and dummy accounts, until it finally led us to a name. Monaldo.”
“So why don’t you arrest him?” I asked.
Ramirez sighed. “Trust me, I’d like to. Only it seems we aren’t the only agency investigating Monaldo.
“The ICE—Immigration and Customs Enforcement—thinks Monaldo is involved with the Marsucci family, an organization that’s suspected of having a hand in dozens of criminal activities along the West Coast, including importing counterfeit goods and distributing them here in the U.S. Only they haven’t got enough proof to link the containers coming in through the port of L.A. to the Marsuccis yet. Monaldo could be that link. They’ve had him under surveillance for the last eighteen months, but if they want a case to stick against a family like the Marsuccis, they’ve got to have solid evidence. Monaldo is their best chance at that and if I arrest him for murder, there goes their case.”
My head was spinning. This was all just a little too HBO for me. “So this is where Bruno comes in?”
He nodded. “If I can get enough proof to link Monaldo to the Marsuccis, then, and only then, can I arrest Monaldo for killing the customs agent.”
“What kind of link are you looking for?”
“Money,” he said. “If Monaldo is working for the Marsuccis, he’d have to be kicking back their share of the profits from the sale of the counterfeits to them somehow. So far we’ve scoured all of his accounts and come up empty. He must be handing it over in cash. Only we haven’t been able to catch him in the act yet. And, trust me, Bruno’s been sticking to this guy like glue.”
Killer in High Heels Page 9
