Glancing back at Sabrina, I said, “So, she’s richer than shit. Ya don’t suppose she likes girls, do ya?”
With a chuckle, he said, “Couldn’t hurt to try, I guess, but I’ve only seen her with men.”
“Damn. Oh, well. Which is the guy with the gold?”
“The one with the slicked-back dark hair. Donny Petrino. He’s married.”
“Yeah, he’s really acting married,” I said, and the bartender laughed.
I took the drinks back to where I left Wil.
“Bartender says she’s in here a couple of times a week, and he thinks she’s Sonia. Have you ever heard of a Donny Petrino?”
Wil grinned. “Yeah, that’s the guy she’s rubbing up against. He’s a captain in the Capozzi organization.”
“Really? My, my. You really can’t swing a cat in this town without running into the mob, can you?”
“That’s my home town,” Wil said, taking a sip of his beer. “That’s also why this city is in an uproar right now. Everybody who’s ever taken a bribe is quaking in their boots, and rightly so. I’ve ordered an additional two hundred agents to fly in from other posts. I want enough manpower to keep an eye on the city government and the police, because I’m going to arrest about fifty Chamber personnel in the morning. We’ll see how excited the hornets’ nest gets when that happens.”
I rolled my eyes. “Can you imagine that? A corrupt Chamber of Commerce employee. What is the world coming to?”
Wil was staring at Petrino, and his eyes were hard.
“You know that guy,” I said.
“He used to date my sister.”
I didn’t even want to know.
Wil was gone when I woke up the following morning. I turned on the screen and browsed through the news sites but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
I ate some fresh fruit, figuring that if someone was going to poison my food, I should at least go while eating the most luxurious food I could get. Then I wandered around the suite, staying away from the windows, and doing basically nothing at all. I played a game for a while and checked the screen again several times.
Nellie finally got up, and I busied myself with getting her coffee. We chatted for a bit, and then I checked the infonet again.
“What in the hell is the matter with you?” Nellie asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, of course not. You’re acting like you’re waiting on the sky to fall.”
I sat down, poured myself a cup of coffee, and told her what Wil had said the previous evening.
Nellie bounced up in her chair and leaned on the table. “Really? He’s purging the Chamber?”
“Not a thing on any of the news sites,” I said.
She shook her head. “There wouldn’t be. I’ll bet no one will ever know. He’ll ship them to an off-planet penal colony before anyone even knows they’re gone.”
“What? No, what gives you that idea?”
She giggled. “And you’re always saying other people are naïve. Libby, the Chamber can’t afford to be seen as corruptible. It’s the arbiter that controls everything. It has to be above all those fallible human traits.”
I blinked at her. “When did you get so smart about how the world works?”
“Keeping my eyes and ears open and my mouth shut. You should try it sometime. At a macro level, our civilization is pretty simple. Sort of feudal, like in the middle ages, you know? And the Chamber sits in the middle of the spiderweb, sort of like the Pope did back in the day.”
I wanted to tell her she was a wiseass, but I didn’t want to see her preen. What she said made sense, and I probably would have looked at it that way if Wil wasn’t involved. He was such a straight arrow, but occasionally I was reminded that he was corporate. Corporations were ruthless, and he wouldn’t have reached such a high level at such a young age if he didn’t fit in. Stability and order were vital to keep profits flowing, and that was the Chamber’s job—keeping things stable.
I kept checking the infonet, but Nellie got bored.
“Look, I understand that you’re paranoid about us going outside, but that doesn’t mean we have to sit around here all day. We can at least go down to the gym and do something to contain my ass spread.”
That didn’t sound like a bad idea, so we changed, gathered towels and stuff, and headed out for the exercise room. Walking down the hallway to the elevator, we turned the corner to find three men with pistols pointed at us. A half-glance over my shoulder showed three more coming out of the stairway behind us.
“Oops,” Nellie muttered under her breath.
I had a pistol in my gym bag, but I doubted our new friends would let me get to it.
“May I help you, gentlemen?” I asked.
“Drop the bags,” one of them said.
I dropped it, and Nellie followed suit. Someone came up behind me and stuck what felt like a pistol barrel in my back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man move up behind Nellie and she stiffened.
“Just walk nice and slow,” the man behind me said. “Get in the elevator, and don’t try anything funny.” Since the pistols held by the men in front of us all had silencers, I assumed those behind us did, too. I followed directions. They walked us into the elevator. As I entered, with my hands in plain sight, I slowly reached up and pushed my hair behind my ear, then dropped my hand back to my side. A little buzz let me know that the tracking device behind my ear had been activated. The door closed, and they took us down to the parking garage beneath the mall under the hotel.
One of our captors made a call on his phone. He had a very brief exchange with someone on the other end.
“We got them. Yeah, both broads. No, no trouble. On our way now.”
When we exited the elevator, we found two large town cars waiting for us. They put me in the back seat of one, and Nellie in the other. The car I was in took off, and the other one followed us. My kidnappers were very tight lipped, not saying a word as we drove northeast for forty minutes. I kept trying to ask where we were going, and why they kidnapped us, but they never answered me. I talked because if the device behind my ear was broadcasting, Tom would know I was still okay.
We drove through areas that looked somewhat familiar, and soon I realized we were headed to the part of the city where we found Sabrina. Looking at the goons in the car with me, I couldn’t make any sense of that. They looked like mobsters, not muties.
I had two major problems. Being dressed for the gym, I wasn’t armed because my Mini-Stealth was in the gym bag. I didn’t think it would be too difficult to take a gun away from any of those guys, but with four of them guarding me, the chances of getting shot increased. Getting shot was something I tried to avoid.
The second problem was Nellie. I didn’t dare do anything that might jeopardize her safety.
We finally pulled into the driveway of a house that wasn’t Sabrina’s, but the neighborhood was similar. The car carrying Nellie parked on the street.
“Out of the car,” the guy next to me said, poking me in the ribs with his pistol.
They marched us to a side door and inside, through the kitchen, and into the living room. That’s when I got my biggest shock of the day.
Clarissa.
“How nice to see you again,” Clarissa said. The tone and expression on her face were anything but friendly. I guessed my humanitarian gesture at Safari wasn’t appreciated. Obviously, I just should have killed her.
“Hi, Adrienne.”
She walked up to me, balled her fist, and hit me in the jaw. It rocked me back on my heels. But before she could take another swing at me, Nellie kicked her in the stomach. Clarissa doubled over, then fell on her butt. One of our guards snickered.
We all just stood there, looking at Clarissa and waiting for her to get up. She was wearing a white, ruffled dress with blue accents, and her crumpled form on the floor reminded me of a flower that had been plucked and discarded.
She managed to regain her feet, her hair looking m
ussed, and her face red with an expression like a child about to cry.
“You’ll pay for that,” she told Nellie, but she didn’t try to come close to us again. Her voice escalated. “Just wait until the boss gets here, and I’ll watch you die!” The last word was screamed.
That didn’t seem to leave much room for negotiation, and I started sizing up the five men in the room with us. So far, I had seen eight men. I didn’t know if the other three were still outside, or in another part of the house.
A knock sounded at the door. The men looked at each other and Clarissa, but it didn’t seem that anyone knew what to do. Finally, one of them shrugged, walked over to the door, and opened it. Tom stood there holding a sawed-off pump shotgun. His first shot blew the guy in front of him through the air. The body knocked down one of his buddies and landed on Clarissa.
I grabbed Nellie and threw her to the side, landing on her to shield her with my body. I heard the side door to the kitchen splinter, and gunshots from that direction, then the shotgun fired again.
Someone came through from the kitchen, and there were more shots, another loud blast from the shotgun, and then things got very quiet. Someone was moaning, and someone else sounded as though he was trying to scream through gritted teeth. Clarissa was whimpering very softly.
“Are you all right?” Wil said, an instant before a pair of hands fell on my shoulder and back.
“Yeah. I think so.” I pushed away from Nellie and turned my head toward him. “Man, am I glad to see you.”
A shadow fell across me, and I looked up to see Tom holding the shotgun and bending over to see to Nellie.
“Little sis?”
“Took your goddamned time getting here,” she said, pushing herself up from the floor. “Hey, blondie, think you can get your fat ass off me? You’re heavy.”
Tom chuckled. “Sounds like she’s doing okay. Nothing wrong with her voice.”
“Where is that bitch?” Nellie demanded. “You didn’t kill her, did you?”
Glancing over his shoulder, Tom said, “You mean the broad with white hair? Naw, she’s not hurt.”
“Good, because I want to kill her myself,” Nellie said, struggling to her feet.
Chapter 27
“You got here pretty quickly,” I said.
“We had you covered before you even left the hotel,” Tom said. “Both of you switched on your mics at almost the same time. Called Wil and he met us on the way. God, these guys are stupid. After a few blocks, they didn’t even check to see if anyone was following them.”
I looked around. Men in Chamber tactical gear swarmed the place, and of the five men in the room with me before the shooting started, four were down, and the other one stood against a wall holding his bleeding arm.
“Did you get all of them?” I asked.
“Yeah, the three in the kitchen and the two outside,” Wil said.
Clarissa sat in the middle of the floor next to the guy Tom had shot. The goon was dead, and she was covered in his blood, but it didn’t look like she was hurt. The dazed look in her eyes told me she was probably in shock, though.
“She said their boss was coming,” I said.
A shout from outside drew our attention. Wil walked to the door, and I saw a grin spread across his face.
“Well, well. Isn’t this a surprise,” Wil said, not sounding surprised at all.
“What’s going on here?” I heard David Capozzi’s voice.
“I think it’s better if I ask the questions,” Wil said. “What are you doing here?”
David sputtered a bit, then said, “A friend of mine lives here. I just came to visit her.”
“I see. Does that friend work for you?”
“Uh, no.”
“Well, why don’t you come on in and help me identify the people here, and tell me which one is your friend,” Wil said.
A couple of tactical officers pulled David into the room. At first, his face paled as he surveyed the carnage.
“David! Oh God, help me,” Clarissa wailed. “They broke in here and killed everyone, and it’s her fault!” She pointed at me.
I had always pegged David as being weak, an effeminate dandy, but the look of cold malevolence he turned on Clarissa made me reevaluate. She froze, terror on her face, and I could see she realized her mistake.
David sneered at her and asked, “Where’s Betty?”
When no one replied, Wil asked, “Who?”
“Betty. My friend. I don’t know any of these people.”
“She seems to know you.”
David gave an almost-violent shrug. “That’s her roommate. Clarise, or something like that. Look, I don’t have anything to do with whatever happened here. I want to go now.”
That wasn’t going to happen. Wil took him down to Chamber headquarters along with Clarissa. The wounded kidnappers were taken under guard to a hospital, and Tom took Nellie and me back to the hotel. A long hot bath, a couple of whiskeys, and a large pizza later, I felt better.
“Blondie? Fat ass?” I asked Nellie as we sat at her table with the remains of the pizza between us.
“I was under stress, so I’m not accountable. But you are heavy.”
I couldn’t argue, being nine inches taller and about sixty or seventy pounds heavier than she was. I stuck my tongue out at her. She replied with a smile and a wink.
Wil didn’t drag in until after Nellie finished singing that night. He hadn’t eaten, so I ordered another pizza from room service, and poured him a drink while we waited for it.
“Busy day, huh?”
He downed half the drink in one swallow. “It was a busy day before you overturned the apple cart. Then it got exciting.”
“Did you have time to torture Clarissa and David, or is that on the agenda for tomorrow?”
He gave me a sour look, downed the rest of his drink, and pushed the glass toward me. I dutifully got up and fixed him another one.
“Yeah, I interrogated them. Adrienne Macron is on her way to a penal colony once we finish getting to the bottom of this mess. She broke and gave us a ton of interesting information. Unfortunately, a lot of it isn’t actionable since there’s no evidence or corroboration. Capozzi didn’t break. In the end, I had to let him go.”
“What?” I came out of my chair. “You did what?”
He pulled his head down between his shoulders like a turtle and refused to look at me. “Lawyers. Macron told us a story so fanciful that I’m inclined to believe it, but Capozzi denies all of it, has alibis, and there are no other witnesses or evidence. I couldn’t keep him, Libby.”
“He showed up at a place where the thugs who kidnapped me were waiting on their boss to kill me, and you don’t consider that evidence?”
“None of those thugs fingered Capozzi. They all say they never saw him before.”
I leaned back and stared at the ceiling, then decided I needed a drink, so I got up and poured one.
“He’s out on the street, so he can figure out another stupid plan to try and kill me,” I said. “And next time he might be more successful.”
“He knows we’re watching him.”
“Great.” I tried to calm down. “So, what was this fanciful story Clarissa told you.”
Wil and his team grilled her for hours, but the major elements tended to substantiate a lot of my suspicions. The diamonds Eileen was skimming and the jewelry Leslie was substituting were going to David Capozzi, who dutifully turned them over to Benito to sell. Clarissa didn’t know that last part for sure, but it was what she suspected. Everyone made money on the deal but Joseph Morgan, who was too rich and too busy partying to notice.
But after Morgan died, David became paranoid. He was afraid that one of the thieves might have killed Morgan, and Clarissa’s bet was on either Eileen or Leslie.
“Adrienne thinks that Morgan caught one of the sisters stealing from him, confronted her, and she killed him. At various times, she pointed the finger at Eileen, and other times at Leslie. David was afraid that if the
murderer was caught, the whole theft ring would unravel, and he’d be implicated,” Wil said.
“And Alysia and Gerry happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I said.
“Oh, no. I didn’t tell you. You know Adrienne is a mutant, right?”
I snorted. “Hell, you can look at her and tell that. Mutations or birth defects, or both. I don’t know how old she is, but she has a body most grown women have to pay for, the face of a little girl, and white hair. I don’t think any of that is fake.”
“It isn’t. Neither are her two sets of genitals. She says she and David were having an affair. She was also having an affair with Geraldine Parker. And according to Adrienne, Alysia was having an affair with half of Montreal.”
“And? David knew Alysia and Geraldine would be at Savatier’s apartment?”
“Yes. He was hoping to take out Eileen, also, but she disappointed him. He had to finish the job, so he killed Eileen and Ricard.”
The pizza came, and I waited while Wil wolfed half of it down in about four bites.
“No dinner?” I asked.
“Or lunch. I think my stomach was ready to file for divorce.”
“And then I come along asking questions,” I said.
Wil washed the pizza down with the rest of his drink. I started to get up to fix another one, but he said, “Not another one. Just water, please.”
While I got a bottle of water, he continued his story. “He’s the one who shot at you from the cathedral, and the one who sent the vampires after you.”
“And the thugs at Le Sommet.”
“Just so.”
“And now that he’s gotten away with murder, he’s willing to let me live my life in peace?”
No answer, and Wil’s eyes were pointed everywhere except at me.
“Wil?”
He gave a slight shake of his head. “I wouldn’t bet on it. We really didn’t get anything out of him, but you could see the rage in his face. Adrienne Macron wouldn’t last an hour if we let her go. My psytech says David really hates women.” He took a deep breath. “No, I don’t think you’re safe as long as he’s free.”
Diamonds and Blood (Chameleon Assassin Book 5) Page 17
