by A. J. Lape
“Missing you,” Dylan murmured. “Do you know how fricking proud I am of you? I’ve told everyone how much of a stud you are.” He paused and chuckled. “I’ve even told complete strangers.”
“Let’s hope it’s permanent.” I sighed.
His stubborn chin lifted. “Of course it is,” he said, not willing to accept anything else. “It’s only week-one. I swear, you’re going to knock off everyone by the time this whole thing is over. Jesus, I love to face rub. Do you know how much I’m going to face rub when that happens?”
Dylan occasionally mixed up his potential with mine. I smiled. “I can only imagine.”
“Huxley behaving himself?” he asked.
Huxley was a minefield of pain-in-the-ass, sexual invitation. Combined with the ego of Narcissus, there was a one hundred percent chance he and I would never be friends. I’d told Dylan about him and his strange fascination with me, and as I could’ve predicted, Dylan despised the guy already.
“His good attitude is still under construction,” I offered diplomatically.
Dylan made a vibrating sound in the back of his throat. “Let me know if I need to run interference.”
Dylan meant his words literally. “I’m good. I can handle him.”
Our eyes locked, and a cocky smirk curved Dylan’s lips. “Of course, you can. Listen, you’re never going to guess who I’m at the club with. Well, who I’m shutting the club down with to be exact.”
“If it’s a good set of boobs and a butt, consider yourself dead to me.”
He giggled, his mouth curving into a sinful smile. In a shock of shockers, Dylan unloaded some grapevine gossip I wasn’t expecting. Domino had flown back to Gainesville to reconnect with Remy Waters—a trip occurring last minute since Domino and Remy had been burning up the phone lines across the time-zone divide since meeting. Evidently, when Cupid released his bow, he’d released it with the force of a rocket launcher. Problem was, a guy like Domino probably didn’t have much cash on hand. I knew he worked for his father, but last-minute airfare was not cheap. Squirreling away cash wasn’t easy if he’d made minimum wage like I had for years.
Dylan panned the camera on his phone around a table where he sat, focusing on the lovebirds and Finn, Lucas, and Hootie. They were waiting for Willow who was uncharacteristically pushing the fashionably part of fashionably late. My heart twinged with a deep ache because all I’d wanted to do was kick back with a little bit of Dylan lovin’ after a hard week.
Life, as it went, was pulling me one way…and Dylan the other.
Sliding out of his seat, Dylan strolled down the hall by the bar to find more privacy. Truth was, Dylan could never have privacy. Someone said “hi” or “hey” to him wherever he went. “This is so weird,” he murmured into his phone.
“What?”
“Domino being here and Boozy in the MIA status,” he explained. “I still can’t wrap my head around the fact they’re brothers.”
Domino told Dylan that Boozy was still only speaking to people via text, if at all.
I sighed. God only knew if Boozy was messed up in something else, but I’d worry about that later. “The only thing stranger would be if one brother lost his memory when he woke from a coma or rose from the dead after a traumatic cruise ship blowup,” I spouted off. “Or—”
“Both fell for the same girl,” Dylan muttered in interruption.
I got lost in his eyes…just like that 80s song by Debbie Gibson. “Wish I was there,” I whispered. God help me, I then teared up. A little thing called a dollar sign kept me on one end of the U.S. with him on the other, and my bank account was practically in the red. Talking to him was the worst thing I could’ve done before bedtime, but like always, I couldn’t stay away.
His gaze faltered. “Aw, Darc. Don’t. School’s almost out, and you’re going to get sick of me because I plan on spending most of the summer with you. We’ll see a lot of each other,” he said calmly and resolutely. “Promise.”
I had no choice but to close my eyes and pray that one out.
No sooner had I drifted off when a ringing phone jarred me awake. Fumbling around on the nightstand, I located the sound and slid my finger across the screen to the talk position. Someone was yelling, and after a few blinks of please-go-away, my brain realized it was Rollo asking me to pick up a shift.
“Can’t. Have the Zika virus,” I muttered.
“Not a legit excuse,” he grumbled and ended the call.
The joint was popping with life when I found myself walking into Ugly Pizza twenty minutes later, yawning. I spotted Rollo where he normally was—in the kitchen, cursing and butchering some love song. Rollo was short on looks with a big, square head and red cheeks the color of the scarlet letter. His brown eyes were close-set with black, bushy brows that resembled the hair in your shower drain. “Walker, we’ve missed you this week,” he said when he spotted me. “It’s just been hell. I hired someone to take your place, and she’s always an hour late, and by then the pizza has ossified. And Lennon, don’t get me started on Lennon. The girl gets lost all the time. And don’t even get me started on Roach. He’s all of a sudden in auditions out the ass.”
Roach was the other full-time delivery driver for Ugly Pizza. Like everyone, he aspired to be an actor. The life of most in Hollywood.
Tossing some pasta into a pot of boiling water, Ephraim met my eyes with a shy, lopsided smile as he wiped his hands on a white dish towel. Ephraim wore black readers and was the bald nightshift cook who looked like Gollum but with the heart of Frodo. “It’s all true, Darcy, but we’re happy you’re finally doing what you want to do,” he said quietly.
Rollo scoffed at Ephraim’s words. “We’re not that happy,” he grumbled, swiveling around to remove a pizza from the oven. “It just sucks around here. Sucks. Sucks. Sucks. And I don’t do the sucks.”
Scanning over the orders, I grabbed a two-liter cola from the refrigerator for one stop and caught a fresh breadstick Ephraim tossed at me, tugging off a bite. “The academy is harder than I anticipated,” I told them in between mouthfuls. “Two people quit this week, and we haven’t even been given a major test yet.”
Thoughts of failure had been looping in my brain since Eugene Anthony and Superjock girl bowed out. The physical evaluation rank was one thing. A written exam could see me drop all the way to the bottom. When I relayed my class placement peppered with my insecurities, Rollo spun around, his brown eyes dotted with mist. “You’re not a quitter, okay? It might be hard, but you don’t ever quit. A person can live with disappointment. Living with regret is not something you ever want to do if it is within your power to avoid it.”
Something my boyfriend had told me earlier…
After I double-checked the pizzas with the receipts attached to the lids, I loaded them into the red insulated carrier, snagged the two-liter, and piled into my car. On a whim, I phoned Detective Shafer to see if he’d been serious about doing a ride along. Turned out he was. It was zero dark thirty when I rolled up to his home. He stumbled into my 4Runner, groaning. “Lord, I did say I would do this, right?”
“I do recall you opening your mouth, expressing enthusiasm.”
Shafer was in street clothes—old jeans and a white, lightweight hoodie with a 49ers ball cap on his head. To keep him awake, I programmed my GPS voice to be a Boy Band. When one of the BBers belted out a street name in a rich, resonant voice, Shafer jarred himself to attention, chuckling low. “Walker, you’re so bizarre. Turns out I speak fluent bizarre.” Inhaling Rollo’s secret pizza sauce, he moaned. “I’m hungry too. If I eat, I’ll stay awake.”
Pitching my chin toward the backseat, I instructed him to take whatever he could find that wasn’t to be delivered. After fumbling around, he retrieved an old wadded up bag he’d discovered in the floorboard. Pulling the seatbelt across his shoulder, he clicked himself back into place and opened the bag. “Can I eat this?” he inquired, removing and showcasing a smashed breadstick that was the victim of a human shoe.
&nb
sp; “Have at it.” It was two weeks old, er possibly three.
Shafer tossed it in his mouth, and I slid one eye over, waiting for a reaction.
He swallowed it down with a cough. “Tastes like a sweaty armpit,” he mumbled.
“It’s pushing three weeks old and definitely in the mold range.”
He coughed once more, giving his Adam’s apple a workout. “You’re evil.”
“It’s part of my charm.”
“So are you good at this job?” he inquired.
I almost shrugged…but was too tired to execute the process. “Being me is a thankless job. Long hours. Little pay. I do it all for the mental kudos. But if I must brag on myself, I’m the most profitable driver Rollo’s Ugly Pizza has had to date. And I have a four-star rating on Yelp.”
He chomped down on another bite of stale bread, same exact reaction on the swallowing thing. “So what’s the key, superstar?” he muttered.
It was simple. I tried to create a dopamine experience. Insert some dopamine and people became return customers. After I gave him my tricks of the trade, my conscience reminded me I could not afford to live in LA without the Taylors’ cutting me a break on rent—a thought that left me eternally indebted and therefore why I never turned down a shift when offered.
Since I had Shafer as a captive audience, I decided to bend his ear to see what detective life was like from someone other than Lincoln and Paddy. Exactly how difficult is it to make detective? How many cases do you average a month? And do you have a lot of cold cases? Again, my working frame had only come from Lincoln and Paddy, two of the best to ever work as detectives in the vice unit. But what was it like for the normal suit and tie who never went undercover?
“I made detective on my second try,” he said.
“Didn’t pass the test?”
“Didn’t pass the accompanying interview part,” he mumbled.
“What did you do? Stumble around? Make a bad call? Hit a superior or something?” I joked.
His voice was grim. “Yes, yes, and regrettably yes.”
I circled the wheel in a left turn, giving him both eyes after I merged into a turn lane. “For realsies?”
“For realsies, Walker.”
I struggled not to laugh, thinking he just could be my long, lost twin.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Leaning over on my left hip, I removed it while the Boy Band suggested I turn right. Glancing at the screen, I found a text from Jaws that requested—no, demanded—I call him.
I rolled my eyes. “Boyfriend?” Shafer asked.
It felt like I’d just tripped over my own grave. Jaws and the word “boyfriend” were probably a death sentence—for whom was debatable. “Nah, just a good friend,” I said. I placed my iPhone on the console between us, ignoring the message.
Barely a minute later, my phone trilled once more. Figuring it again to be Jaws in one of his bossy moves, I instructed Shafer to pick up my phone, so I could dictate a message.
Shafer snatched my iPhone and thumbed back, Listen, bud. I’m working. Kiss the lips of whoever-the-flavor-of-the-month is and quit riding my back for two seconds.
I giggled when he struck the send key because I knew that precise verbiage would make Jaws’ face go the color of a container of raspberries.
Jaws hit Shafer right back with: I’m actually alone at the moment, but you can rectify that if you’d like to join me. At my office. One hour. I’ll cater a meal and even have Downton Abbey rolling. Perhaps a nice bottle of red if you want to decompress after what happened at the firing range. You had me scared. It’s a feeling I don’t often have. I would like to see you.
Oh, God…Jesus…Holy Spirit…one of those Ouija boards if it were a good spirit.
Worst fears confirmed.
The AVO Padre wasn’t done with me yet.
Chapter 16
PRESCRIPTION FOR A MELTDOWN: ANGRY, DRUNK, AND A SCORNED LOVER.
The blood in my veins went cold.
Alejandro Gutierrez, the Padre from AVO who’d saved me from a deepfreeze of death, had sent me a text. I hadn’t crossed paths with him for weeks, but the memory of those eyes—and the intel he’d been at one-time a hitter for his organization—sent a tidal wave of fear into my bones. Like Jaws, he had an all-knowing property or at least the resources to help him be in the know. He’d basically inquired how academy life was treating me—even asking how the incident at the firing range had gone. I couldn’t fathom how he would know what went down with law enforcement, but nothing surprised me where Twenty Bucks was concerned. His ear was always to the ground, if anything to remain one step ahead. But his curiosity, involvement, or casual inquiry into my life was a situation that could not be left unaddressed.
We weren’t friends…not even close because he’d kidnapped Bodhi…and as far I was concerned, we were square.
Had we spoken in depth after he’d saved my life? No. What was I supposed to say? Uh thanks? Does this make us even? Let’s be besties and go for coffee? Feeling like I should at least acknowledge him, I’d had a temporary moment of insanity and sent the man a fist-bump emoji the next day. An idiot move, especially when he hit me right back with a fist bump and laughing smiley emoticon.
“Sounds like you have an admirer,” Shafer said right as a Boy Bander instructed me to turn right.
“Trust me. It’s unrequited,” I muttered. A relationship with Twenty Bucks? That would be like sleeping with the Devil and expecting him to kiss me goodnight…instead he slit my throat once I closed my eyes.
“Is this guy giving you problems?” he asked, a gallant defensiveness in his tone.
Shafer was on to me, so I had to pivot. “Nah, I’m good,” I said, lying through my teeth.
“Are you sure? You look like someone just died.”
I pulled the metaphorical mask over my face—a practice I normally performed at ease—but right then, I wasn’t so confident. “It’s just indigestion. Hey, totally off subject,” I segued, “but what do you know about AVO?”
If Shafer had been asleep, let’s just say his mind woke up and smelled the coffee. “Do you have a relationship with anyone in AVO?” he murmured suspiciously. He angled his body toward me, all ears.
I went Pinocchio for a third time, telling him I’d read something in the papers recently.
“They’re pretty active,” he said, reaching into the bag for a second smashed breadstick. A big piece of fuzz lay on top of it. Flicking it off, he shoved it in his mouth. “Believe it or not, we cross paths more than you would think since I do theft. People steal things and sell them on the black market to pay off AVO loan sharks.”
A fact Boozy, Domino, Bodhi, and I could attest to since Bodhi had been held as ransom until Boozy found a way to pay his debt. “Let me guess. You never successfully bring AVO down because those you convict on theft offenses won’t press charges against the ones they’re trying to pay off.”
Shafer made some sort of anguished sound of my-job-sucks I interpreted as confirmation. Pulling into a condo unit, I jumped out of the car and delivered a Deli Delight to Maria Fernandez. She tipped with a respectable amount, so I was in and out quickly, moving on to Sister Mary Margaret—a retired nun, who ate a Cardiac pizza sometimes three times a week.
The woman was eighty-nine years old, but good genetics and an above average spiritual life had to be the only things keeping her in this world. She had the diet of a college student who wanted to die tomorrow…or maybe by the end of the day.
Pulling into her neighborhood, Detective Shafer raised a brow, acknowledging it wasn’t the best section of LA. “I’m getting out for this one,” he muttered.
“It’s about time,” I muttered back. “You’ve been pretty lame up to this point.”
Shafer chuckled lowly and wadded up the white paper bag still in his hand, pitching it into the backseat. Gripping the handle on the door, he punched it wide and exited, looking out in the darkness, canvassing the terrain.
“I’ve found it best if we just keep walk
ing,” I told him. “If we stand still, there’s more chance of a bullet hitting us.” Shafer dropped a JC and swung his hand gracefully out in front of him in a ladies-first gesture. “Here’s what I do,” I said, remembering my time with Dylan as my wingman. “Customers at this time of night are usually studying, troubled, have insomnia, or something else only God and them know about. It’s up to me to read their faces in a flash and decide if they are talkers and what will help me walk away with a tip.”
Being that detailed woke him up, and he tilted toward me, surprisingly anticipating my answer. “And if you find they aren’t talkers?” he prodded.
“I merely unload the pizza and pray they’re generous.”
“Sounds simple.”
Begging for money was never simple. Once you got past the embarrassment of it all, you had to get your head in the game and figure out how to crack into someone’s pocket book. “Have you ever begged for money, Detective Shafer? Because let me assure you, it isn’t simple.”
Detective Shafer’s cheeks flamed a bit. The man was uncomfortable. “No,” he murmured. “My parents live in Beverly Hills, and my grandfather started a tech company in Silicon Valley. I have a trust fund I’ve never touched. So, no. Not technically.”
Well, well, well, Detective Shafter was all but a blueblood. I wondered if he was acquainted with Dylan’s grandfather on the maternal side. Lachlan Townsend, of Townsend Tech, was a member of the three-comma club and was so arrogant it befuddled me how Dylan’s sweet mother had come from his sperm. I didn’t like him. I’d never voiced it to anyone—not even Dylan out of respect—but as sharp and attractive as Lachlan was, the guy beeped on my sleazeball meter without me even activating it. I had the rest of the night to inquire about Shafer’s family tree, but right then, Sister Mary Margaret deserved a warm pizza. Giving her door a five-beat rap, I plastered on some Ugly Pizza cheer and waited for her to answer.