Beyond Paradise

by Barbara Nolan

  “As long as she wasn’t lying under you.” Her grip on him tightened.

  He gently removed her hand. “We said a long time ago we weren’t gonna ask each other those kinda questions.” He stepped back, refastening his belt.

  “What if I did? What would you say?” She lifted the tumbler to her lips but didn’t drink.

  “I’d say we don’t ask each other those kinda questions.” Game over.

  She lowered the glass, her eyes sharp as she stared at him.

  “We had a good run but—”

  “A good run?” She slammed the tumbler onto the granite bar top. “What am I a goddamn horse?”

  “It’s just not working for me anymore.” He swallowed a big gulp. Why the fuck did he start this at two in the morning?

  “You’re breaking up with me?”

  His casual shrug lit a fire under her. She slammed herself into the bathroom and returned a few minutes later fully dressed.

  “You can spend the rest of the night with that damn cat. I’m out.” Then she flung the negligee at him. “And you can give that to your latest whore.”

  She huffed out of the bedroom slamming that door too, and Jonny released a sigh of relief.

  He refilled the tumbler and sipped deeply. Whatever they’d had died a long time ago. Their relationship centered around making the club a winner, and they’d competed for every ounce of success. Sure, she had a bangin’ body, and in the beginning it worked, but Angela’s first love was money, and they’d both used each other to get what they wanted. Now, it was just business with benefits, nothing more.

  It did surprise him she left so easy, but revenge was more Angela’s style.

  He stepped over the negligee and gazed out into the dark night, rolling the tension out of his shoulders. Time to move on, time to—Cheryl popped into his brain again. The gutsy way she barged into his office and threw his shit back at him. A savvy, in-your-face confidence, with none of Angela’s manipulation. Yeah, if Cheryl stabbed you, she’d show you the blade first.

  Chapter 6

  The persistent buzzing of Jonny’s cell phone, and the bright sunshine streaming through the windows doomed his morning before it even began. Squinting at the glare, he checked the caller ID. Everybody knew he didn’t open his eyes before noon.

  Annoyed, he swiped the screen. “Yeah, Frank?”

  “I need to see you in my office.”

  “At eight o’clock on a Saturday morning?”

  “I needed you at seven, but I let you sleep till eight. What’s the matter? You getting soft from too much fuckin’ around?”

  “No, what’s the problem?” He stretched and rotated his tight neck muscles.

  “The problem is your attitude. Now get your ass down here.”

  He didn’t appreciate being summoned like an errand boy. Trudging into the bathroom, Jonny showered, dressed, called Max for the car, and thirty minutes later he stood in the elevator.

  The traffic from Manhattan to Brooklyn was light. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who slept in on Saturday mornings.

  When Max eased up to the rear of the warehouse on Pier 59, Jonny stared at the Barnett Coffee Importing sign painted in white over the cracked brick. Frank’s way of fooling everybody into thinking he was legit.

  “What the hell is that?” Max pointed to what looked like a dog’s tail as they walked toward the metal stairs of the warehouse. Frank had three German Shepherds who roamed the docks for security purposes, but they were so skinny, he doubted Frank ever fed them. He guessed if they ever bit anybody, it would be more from hunger than defense.

  “What the fuck?” The dog lay on its side with a bullet hole square between its eyes. Jonny followed Max up the metal stairs, stopped on the landing, and looked at the animal. He swallowed hard as he fingered the dog biscuits he always stuffed in his pocket when he went to the docks.

  Max stayed behind to talk to some of the guys in the warehouse while he trudged down the hall to Frank’s office. He knocked and opened the door.

  “You finally got your ass out of bed.” Frank motioned to the wooden chair opposite his desk.

  Frank’s compact, stocky frame housed an ego the size of the Empire State Building. In his mid-forties, he dressed like he’d just left the golf course in every color of polo shirt and pleated chinos in the Ralph Lauren collection. And even though he paired them with matching pullover sweaters, he still looked like a Brooklyn hood.

  Twice divorced, with a teenage daughter in college abroad, he never talked about his personal life, stayed away from social media and never talked to the press. Keeping a low profile was a characteristic his associates admired.

  “I pull late nights at the club.” Jonny stifled a yawn. “Ain’t getting home till after three a.m.”

  “Aren’t getting home till three a.m.,” Frank corrected.

  Just what he needed, another goddamn English lesson.

  “You didn’t get me down here to rag on the way I talk.”

  “The way you speak. No, I didn’t, although more attention to your grammar would prove useful.”

  His back stiffened against the hard wooden chair. Frank and his subtle ways of getting his point across. Even his office was subtle. No flashy decorating, only the basics. Wooden desk, computer, printer, and fax machine. Even crime had gone high-tech.

  Off in the corner, a small, free-standing bar was stocked with Jack Daniels. Frank’s favorite. He wasn’t a man who was into pleasing others.

  “What’s with the dead dog outside?” Jonny asked.

  “Damn thing wouldn’t stop barking.” Frank shrugged. “It was annoying.”

  His heart pounded hard against his ribs. Fucking psycho.

  “There’s word Carl at Local 1126 is talking strike.” The dog forgotten, Frank moved on to business. “Empty trucks don’t make money.”

  “So what does that have to do with me?” He stretched his legs out in front of him.

  “I want you and Eddie to set up a meet with Carl on the docks. Reinstate the reasons why a strike is not advantageous at this time.”

  Frank sounded like a college graduate even though he’d never made it past the tenth grade, and Carl was nothing but a thug who’d muscled his way up the teamsters’ union. He liked to take kickbacks for getting his men jobs, then extorted the bosses with strike threats. And Jonny wanted nothing to do with any of it.

  “C’mon Frank, Eddie and I don’t do that kind of work anymore.” He shifted forward. “I think it would be better . . .”

  “I don’t pay you to think,” Frank interrupted. “I pay you to do as you’re told.” He kept his voice silky smooth, but his meaning was clear. “Just ‘cause you’re walking around in a designer suit and screwin’ every high-class piece of ass in the club doesn’t make you a celebrity. When you came to me, you were nothing but a punk kid from Bensonhurst in need of a big favor.”

  Frank used Jonny’s past like a noose around his neck. The more he resisted, the tighter Frank pulled. Lately, he was starting to choke.

  “You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

  Even if Frank wasn’t shoving it down his throat on a regular basis, he would never forget. How could he? That day changed his whole life.

  A hot, steamy July night in Brooklyn. Like walking through water, and unless you were from there, you couldn’t know it. On nights like this everybody hung out on the front stoop because their tiny, airless apartments were stifling.

  Jonny climbed the stone steps, and the animated crowd became silent. They stared and whispered behind their hands, and he knew that something terrible happened. Arms held him back, but he broke free and followed the trail of yellow crime scene tape to his mother—dead on the kitchen floor.

  His heart shattered into pieces. The cops were saying something. Domesti
c fight, yelling, screaming. Did he know anything about it? He knew too much about it. It was his life for all of his seventeen years. His mother’s bloodied face and broken body weren’t a surprise.

  Guilt propelled him out of the room, then out of the apartment. The cops called to him, wanting to question him. He hit the street running.

  By the time he barged into Frank’s office, he wanted revenge. His mother’s death wrecked him. He wanted his father to pay for what he did.

  “No, I haven’t.” The familiar tic in his left eye kept a beat with the pulse in his neck.

  “Good, good.” Frank stood, moved around his desk, and placed his hand on Jonny’s shoulder. “Oh and . . . We don’t have to worry about Nicky anymore.”

  Jonny furrowed his brow.

  “He’s paid in full.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Not able to reach Eddie on his cell phone, and knowing he wasn’t at the penthouse, Jonny told Max to take him to the apartment above the club.

  His mood ran somewhere between frustrated and pissed off. Frank didn’t push his buttons he stomped on them. Sending him and Eddie down to the docks? What kinda shit was that? Just another way for him to control them and keep them down.

  And what was that crack about Nicky? No way that deadbeat came up with the money. Thoughts of Nicky brought thoughts of Cheryl and a whole new level of frustration.

  Finding Eddie’s bedroom locked, he yelled through the door. “Eddie, you in there?” Not getting an immediate response, he pounded harder and shouted louder. “C’mon Eddie, unlock the fuckin’ door.”

  A few seconds later, Cheryl flung open the door in Eddie’s T-shirt and boxers, her hands planted on her hips.

  He looked past her to the empty rumpled bed, and his mind scrambled. He envisioned sliding her between the sheets and running his hands up her smooth, toned legs until he wrapped her around him while his mouth sucked on those beautiful . . .

  Then his fantasy exploded in his face. What if those rumpled sheets were the result of her and Eddie? He gave serious consideration to killing his best friend.

  “Where’s Eddie?”

  “He left.”

  “Was he here last night?” He already knew the answer, and it made him wanna put his fist through the wall. Fuckin’ ridiculous.

  “Yes, but I can’t see where that’s any of your business.”

  The same attitude from last night seeped from her every pore, and it all became clear and ugly.

  “Mmmm, I bet.” He caught the way Eddie’s T-shirt fell low enough to catch plenty of cleavage. Frank said Nicky paid up, and now he knew how.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nicky sent you here to con Eddie into giving you the money he owes, right?” He glared at the unmade bed, then at her. “And what better way to do it than on your back.”

  Her eyes widened. “Seriously?”

  Wow, she was good. Giving him the big eyes and playing the defenseless girlfriend at the Oasis. Nicky taught her well.

  “Eddie’s my friend, but when it comes to women, he doesn’t make the best choices.” He shoved his fists into his pockets to prevent him from yanking out every tousled blond hair on her beautiful head.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Jonny leaned on the doorjamb, getting in her space. “He tends to go for the ones in trouble, the ones who want money, the users. So why don’t you be a good little girl, get yourself dressed, take whatever money he threw at you, and slither on back to Nicky.”

  She squeaked out an exasperated yelp, then slammed the door in his face. Yeah, she was good, and he’d fallen for it. Hard.

  Chapter 7

  Had Jonny just called her a hooker? Slamming the door in his smug face was too good for him. How had she ever envisioned him as a good guy? Obviously, she’d been wrong. He’d probably only given her his card so she could become another one of his harem women.

  No, thanks.

  Cheryl yanked on a pair of sweatpants she found in the dresser drawer, rolled the waistband a few times, and smoothed her hair in the mirror. The nerve of that arrogant ass. Daring her into a fight, in his designer clothes and impressive body. The same one she’d admired up close and personal last night. And his voice. A threatening rasp that made her think of sex, or how he would sound whispering in her ear while he . . . What on earth was the matter with her?

  Restless and irritated, she cracked the bedroom door to make sure he’d gone, and then she stomped around the empty apartment. Her natural curiosity coaxed her into peeking in the bedroom at the end of the hall. By the designer clothes in the closet, she guessed it belonged to Jonny.

  The double framed photos on his dresser intrigued her. One showed a girl circa 1960 in her teens, with palm trees in the background. The other, a recent picture of a girl in a parochial school uniform, both with a remarkable resemblance to Jonny. They appeared so pure and innocent. Somehow she expected someone like him to have naked women plastered over the walls.

  Back in the living room, the sun streamed through the floor to ceiling windows giving the whole space a bright open appearance. A long way from her dumpy apartment over the Oasis. She’d contemplated going there and getting the money herself, but that could be risky. What if someone asked about Nicky or saw her coming out of the alley last night? Or worse, she ran into Frank Barnett.

  When she retrieved her phone from the bedroom, she noticed the battery was almost dead. She’d need to ask Eddie for a charger. She punched in her brother’s number and prayed that he’d answer. As much as she loved him, she couldn’t depend on him. At twenty he was as street smart and savvy as a forty-year-old, yet as immature and reckless as a fourteen-year-old. But she loved him with the intensity of a mother and the critical edge of a sister.

  By the fourth ring, she anticipated the automated recording when he picked up.

  “Dylan?”

  “Cheryl?”

  “I need your help.” Sheets shifted, and a female voice whined in the background. “Are you with someone?”

  “Yeah, we were partying kinda hard last night,” Dylan mumbled. “Can I call you back?”

  “No,” she yelped. “Listen to me. I want you to go to the Oasis and get my money. It’s in a tampon box under the sink. Then bring it to the Paradise Lounge.”

  “Why there?”

  “My phone is going to die soon, so just listen. Come in the back door of the club and take the elevator to the third floor. I’m in the apartment over the—”

  She pulled the dead phone away from her ear and mumbled a curse. At least she’d gotten through to him, and hopefully, he would pull it together and do as she asked. Following orders and going by the rules were not Dylan’s style. Number one reason he’d been in and out of juvie since he was thirteen and even her warnings of real jail time now that he was twenty fell on deaf ears.

  Granted the kid had a rocky start with a mother more interested in drugs and men, sometimes one more than the other, instead of her own children. And although Cheryl protected him when he was younger, she’d hardly been a shining example. An argument Dylan threw in her face whenever she came down too hard on him. Yet, underneath all his swagger and false bravado, she saw the scared little boy who cowered against her in his bed when the yelling got too loud, or the party got too wild.

  She occupied herself with a few trade magazines on the coffee table, flipping through the pages, and checking the wall clock every three minutes until finally there was a knock on the door.

  She opened the door, they hugged, then separated as Dylan checked out the apartment.

  “Nice place.” He stepped around her. “Fuckin’ huge.”

  He towered over her at six-feet-four, and his muscular built, shoulder length dark brown hair and the scruff outlining his jaw made him ap
pear much older than his twenty years.

  Her backpack slung over his shoulder filled her with relief.

  “What happened last night?” he asked.

  “Long story.” She would not involve him in her mess.

  “Something to do with the douchebag?”

  Dylan didn’t like Nicky either.

  “It’s complicated.”

  Dylan eyeballed her for a second then strolled around the spacious living room. “This place rocks. How’d you end up here?”

  “Eddie Morgan from the old neighborhood owns it with another guy.” Who is annoying, arrogant and ridiculously hot. “They also have penthouses on the Upper East Side.”

  “Not bad.” He picked up one of the crystal glasses off the bar. “What happened to Nicky?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He usually has you on a short leash. Where is he?”

  By now, probably at the bottom of the East River.

  “We broke up.”

  Short and simple. Truth and lies intricately twisted.

  “No, shit?” He had the same disbelief in his voice as Eddie.

  When had she become that submissive and predictable? “We’re over.”

  “About time.” Dylan stepped behind the bar distracted by the different liquors showcased on glass shelves. “You gonna be staying here for a while?”

  “No. Now that you have my stuff we’ll go ahead with the original plan. You got the money, right?”

  “Yeah, about that?”

  Oh, she didn’t like the sound of that at all.

  “Please tell me you got the money.”

  “When I got there Sal already tossed all your stuff out. Bitching how you and Nicky ran off and ditched him for three months’ rent.” He held out the backpack. “I was lucky to get this.”

  “The money was under the sink.” A steady pulse pounded in her ears. “In the tampon box.”