“Sounds like someone likes our little Princess.”
“I doubt that. He’s got no interest in anyone beyond what he can squeeze out of them or manipulate them to do for him.”
“Ouch. You nursing a scratch there?”
“Really, Ethan, sometimes I don’t know where your head’s at.”
Behind her, she heard Pierce’s voice. He was talking to Callaghan and Calhoun and she knew he was talking about her. “Listen, got to go. I’ll call you soon, all right?”
“Long as your cell holds up in the dungeon. Be, er… be careful, okay? Look after yourself.”
“You too, Ethan.” She held the phone, silent for a moment. “Stay safe.”
~
When she returned to the living area, she heard Pierce say, “Calhoun, Callaghan, while Princess is with us, I need one of you to have an eye on her and for one of you to watch the elevator. Constantly.”
They both said, “Yes, boss.” They had thick Irish accents. Not like Boston or Chicago Irish, or Pennsylvania Irish. Oirish from Ireland. Ebony black skin and they spoke with Irish brogues.
“When she sleeps,” he told them, “it should be enough for you to take shifts on the door.”
Princess scowled and jutted her bottom lip. She stood as she called out, “I’m still here, you know.”
He ignored her. “Calhoun, for now, you make sure that Princess has all that she needs.”
Her hands were on her hips. “You mean, ‘make sure she doesn’t get out, cause trouble or break stuff,’ don’t you?”
He gave her a weary look. So, maybe she was making some progress. Perhaps she was wearing him down. “You like to call it the way it is, don’t you, Princess?”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. “I think you’re just doing all of this to find out how we react, learn how quickly we respond, see if we make an error.”
She stepped toward him, letting her hips sway as she did. He lifted an eyebrow. “Keep us jumping and guessing. It’s tactical, isn’t it? You’re probing and looking out for ways you might get an upper hand.”
“Oh, I think the probing,” she said as she pushed her body against him and pressed. Through his pants his stiff cock twitched. “The probing,” she shook her breasts against him as she said it, “now, that’s you, isn’t it, Pierce Agostini?”
Agostini grabbed her by the chin and held her tight. It hurt. He pulled her up toward his face. “You know you can’t get away. You know that if you did, it would all go badly for your father as well as for the club. You know all of that, don’t you?” His voice rose and was tense. “Don’t you.”
She raised her eyebrows innocently.
“So, stop playing games, little girl.” Oh, that made her mad.
“Look,” she said, “people say you’re in the Mafia. People talk about you like you’re some huge gangster figure.”
“People talk a lot of horseshit.” His top lip sneered. “I’d have thought a girl from clubland would know that. Especially Wall Street clubland.”
“Maybe. But how do I know that you aren’t going to chop me into little pieces or feed me to an ornamental piranha lake? How do I know you aren’t planning to sell me to a gang of Balkan slavers?”
He let go of her chin and his eyes softened. “You have a vivid imagination, I have to hand it to you.”
Calhoun shifted and his mouth twisted. Without looking around, Agostini said, “Well, Calhoun, out with it.”
“It’s nothing, boss.”
“Say your piece, Calhoun.”
“Well, fair play to her, she’s got a point. We know and you know, but how’s she to know none of that’s true. Or something worse.”
“Worse?” Pierce scowled. “You’ve got more imagination than she does. What’s worse than any of that?” He raised a hand. “Okay, tell me later. Your point’s made.”
He looked back into Princess’ face. His voice softened as he held out the palms of his hands and took a step back. “We aren’t going to chop you into little pieces or hand you over to sex-crazed savages or throw you to a hungry tiger. Scout’s honor.”
He stepped away, moved casually back down into the seating area. “I want to treat you as a guest, but you’re going to have to show me that you can act like one.”
“You’ve brought me against my will and now you want to complain about how I act? Well, forgive me, Mr. Agostini, if I haven’t brushed up lately on Miss Manners’ etiquette for kidnap victims.”
“Well,” he strode back and his nose almost touched hers, “isn’t it mainly how to hold a soup spoon in a concrete cell when the man with a scarf over his face brings gray sludge in a metal bowl?”
“The solution’s simple enough, mister. Take me back.”
“That could work, only if I did, there would be nowhere to take you back to, since I’d have to throw you and your daddy out on the street, and all because he’s such a lousy drunk and a stupid card player.”
Her cheeks were hot and her fists balled. “You’ve no right to talk about him like that. You don’t have the first idea of what he’s been through. That club is his life. He built it and you’ve no right to take it away.”
“Might is right, Princess.”
“You’re pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you, Mr. Agostini?”
“Only when I know what I’m doing.” He took a step back. “I suppose that would be most of the time, though.”
He turned to walk away. Without thinking, she said, “You have women’s clothes in the closet of your dungeon, Mr. Agostini. Are they trophies or are they for a hobby of yours?”
Over his shoulder he said, “I know it will break your heart, but you aren’t the first occupant that suite has known.” He picked up a laptop and took it to the coffee table in the sunken lounge area.
“Did you have to drag most of the others there, too?”
Sitting on the couch and opening the laptop, he said, “No. Even better, I actually wanted some of them to be here.”
“What, even the next morning?”
“Oh!” Calhoun called out from the kitchen
Callaghan said, “She shoots, she scores!” The two Irishmen laughed. Agostini glowered. Calhoun and Callaghan were immediately quiet.
Agostini said, “Callaghan, come and tell me about Pennsylvania land registry.”
As Callaghan approached the table, Agostini said, “Princess is going to have to come along with us tomorrow.”
Callaghan’s face furrowed. “But are you sure now, boss? Come with us to Marley’s?”
“To all three. There’s no other way. I can’t leave one of you behind, and if she’s here on her own, she’ll launch her own one woman flying academy.”
Callaghan said, “Right enough. If she’s left alone, she’ll do damage or harm or both.”
Agostini looked down at his screen. The matter was settled. “We’ll take the Grand Cherokee tomorrow, Calhoun.”
Princess wondered where it was they were going, and why Callaghan was so unhappy to have her along.
In the morning, Agostini made coffee and omelettes for breakfast and sent Calhoun to wake Princess. She shuffled out, bleary-eyed and grumpy, peered at the fluffy omelettes, and then at him.
“No steak?” she said, “No caviar?”
He shook his head slowly as he watched her take some coffee. “You really think you’ve got me pegged.”
“Sure. You’re a thug. A gangster in a penthouse.” She perched at the kitchen counter and took a bite of her omelette. “A gangster who makes a decent omelette and pretty good coffee, though. I’ll give you that.”
As she ate, she asked him, “We taking a trip today, Mr. Captor?”
He studied her puffy, insolent pout. Whenever he looked at her, he seemed to feel the opposite of what he ought to feel. When he first saw her in the club, he should have just seen her as baggage. A thing he would have to take, with the problem of keeping it safe to hold over old man Grace.
He had an uneasy feeling of complications arising. Pierce
hated complication.
She was exactly what you’d expect as the daughter of an irresponsible gambler, the single parent father of a daughter just out of her teens. She was pretty in a careless kind of a way and she was spoiled.
But when he looked at her, something surged inside him. Something unfamiliar and disruptive.
“We have some errands to run, Princess, and we can’t leave you behind.” He saw her eyebrow lift. “Unfortunately.”
He sent Calhoun down to the garage to fetch the car around front. “Send the elevator back up after you.”
It took some of his patience to get her to be ready to leave. Callaghan, Princess and Agostini took the elevator and stepped out into the lobby. Agostini stopped at the sweeping reception desk. “How’s it going, Mikey?”
Mikey, filling his uniform white shirt and blue serge pants to capacity, gave him a wide open smile. “Everything’s peachy, thank you, Mr. Agostini. How are you today?”
“I’m great, Mikey. We’ll be out for the day. You know my number if you need to be in touch, right?”
He had nothing to say, but keeping a regular contact with the doormen, Mikey, Cyril and Georgey, was important. They were the building’s security, and if anything happened around the building or the apartment, he wanted them to call him first. Before the police, for sure.
To keep that relationship fresh, as well as finding excuses to give tips that were only a little over-generous, Agostini made a point to visit the reception desk and chat with them at least once every day.
Calhoun pulled up in front of the big glass front of the gleaming steel reception, and Agostini installed himself and Princess in the back of the big black SUV. She scowled and sulked in the corner of the back seat. That was okay with him. Maybe she could stay quiet and not cause trouble for a while.
In the morning light, Calhoun drove through Manhattan traffic to the Lincoln tunnel. Callaghan and Calhoun made what talk there was, and it was mainly about the roads and the drive. “New Jersey still feels like you’re in a tunnel.”
“For Highway Nine, you’ve to take the turn-off for Jersey City.”
“New Jersey is just a wilderness of chain-link, car lots, and pawn shops.”
“This part is, for sure. Here, this is the turn. You get to I-9 from here, and then it’s a straight shot.”
Pierce Agostini was occupied with his laptop, the case full of papers and some calls. He called the Marchmade estate office, said that he was from Springfield Land Assay Bureau.
He wanted to let them know that there was a discrepancy in the papers that had been filed on the farm for the land registry. It wouldn’t be too serious or expensive to solve—this was mainly a courtesy call. Just in case they were thinking of transferring ownership.
No, a notification of variance was incomplete, that was all. Probably an oversight, and it was only a formality. There was just the possibility of a federal criminal liability if they sold or transferred ownership before it was cleared up. No, it was no trouble at all. He was glad to be of help.
When he hung up, Calhoun said, “You’re one devious motherfucker, if you don’t mind me saying so, boss.”
“Yeah, that sounded very gangster,” Princess muttered.
“You want to hate me because I am a gangster, Princess, or because I’m not?” Agostini asked.
She stared out the window. “Either way works.”
Princess watched, uninterested, as on either side of the road, the boring ride got even more boring. The land flattened and the greens and browns gave way to gray. The few trees were black and bare.
Two lane roads stretched ahead under a big sky with a far-off horizon. Concrete and glass thinned and faded away. Left and right was mostly green and brown. Fields on one side, trees on the other, and very little traffic. Hills in the distance were covered in thick forest.
They drifted by clusters of white clapboard houses, Dutch barns and long, rickety fences. Wires strung high on poles dipped and rose alongside of the road. Rough walls. Occasionally some silos or factories would drift by. More than a few of them had the look of abandonment.
Calhoun pointed ahead at a sagging structure on an unshaded patch of dry dirt. The spindly skeletons of dead shrubs were all the decoration around it. Callaghan said, “Jeez, is that it?”
Agostini squinted. “It ain’t the Four Seasons.”
They approached the shabby building, drooped in the sun, and Calhoun parked up in front of the tattered awning. The windows were grimy, and inside, it looked dark and unnaturally still.
As he opened the door, Callaghan said, “Will I stay with Princess in the car, boss?”
“Nope.” Pierce sprang out of the car onto the gray dust with a briefcase and adjusted his shades. “We’re all going in together.”
From the way Callaghan’s lips tightened, Princess could see he wasn’t happy about it, but he held open the door for her to step out.
Judging by the dust on the porch, it could have been months since anyone came to the place, though from the look of it, Princess couldn’t see why anyone would. What painted signage there was had all faded into the old, gray wood. It would be almost impossible to read from the road.
The door to Marley’s Roadhouse and Grill squeaked a laughing chatter as Agostini pushed it open. Whatever Princess had been expecting, it couldn’t have resembled what they found in the gloom.
Inside, a fat bluebottle bobbed lazily on the hot, thick air. Wide shafts of hazy, greenish light exposed idle motes of dust and the dull wood and linoleum. The tables were marked and stained, and the chairs looked ancient.
Callaghan and Calhoun followed her and Agostini inside and stood by the door, one on either side. Princess watched Agostini prowl around the bar in the gloom like he had in Hotsteppa’s the previous day. She couldn’t get a hold of the fact that it was only yesterday. The whole world looked different.
A huge mirror behind the bar was matted and cracked right through the old-time “Jim Beam” lettering. In front of the mirror, an irregular row of smeared bottles stood like dull, gappy teeth. Princess hoped their stay here was going to be short.
Deep in a corner behind the counter, Marley himself was in so much shade Princess didn’t see him until he moved. He was as gnarled as his bar and no more appealing.
Something about the man, something Princess couldn’t pin down about the look in his slow, hooded eyes, made her shrink inside her flesh.
Agostini strode around the bar room, looked at fittings and assessed what he saw, and Marley watched him. From the shadows at the far end of the room, he said, “You like it out here, Marley?” The old man just continued to watch him.
Agostini came toward the bar as he said, “You’re not from this part of Pennsylvania yourself, are you?”
“Moved out here when Reagan shut the mines.” Marley’s voice was scratchy like a nail on rusted metal.
The look in Agostini’s eye said, “Sure, but why the hell here?” and she caught herself thinking, I bet he was just as creepy back then as he is now. Then Princess shuddered as Marley’s eyes drifted onto her. Instinctively, she looked at Agostini.
Marley said, “Seems this place really hit the Manhattan map all of a sudden. Was another New Yorker in here.” He seemed to be working something in the back of his teeth. “Not too long ago.” He leaned on his elbows across the bar at Pierce. “Why would you suppose that to be?”
Perfectly Bad: a bad boy romance Page 5