Take Me

by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin

  Chapter Seventeen

  I woke to the smell of bacon. I’d somehow crawled into bed during the middle of the night. Katrina had been known to put breakfast together when she felt chipper, and I was very grateful for her mood and her hospitality, especially on a work day. I showered and put up my hair, masking the circles under my eyes with some very expensive stage makeup. I was mid-stairwell when I heard a man’s voice coming from the open kitchen. Katrina said something I couldn’t hear above the crackle of pork belly. Then the man laughed.

  “Antonio?” I bent around the iron bannister.

  “He said I have to call him Spin,” Katrina called.

  “Buongiorno! I brought you breakfast.”

  I stepped into the kitchen. “I smelled the bacon.”

  “It’s pancetta,” Katrina said, picking a few squares out of the pan and putting them on toast. “He’s corrected me, like, seven times already. He’s cute but annoying.”

  “Mostly annoying,” he said, shifting scrambled eggs across the pan.

  “Annoy me any time.” She folded up her sandwich and slipped it into a bag.

  “This is a little presumptuous considering the way we left it last time,” I said.

  “Gotta go!” Katrina gave Antonio the one-kiss-per-cheek exit and bounced out with a wink to me.

  I crossed my arms, but I was hungry. The pancetta smelled delicious.

  Antonio pointed the fork at me. “This suit? It’s nice for a funeral.”

  I sucked in my cheeks. I’d chosen a black below-the-knee wool skirt and matching jacket, and he was trying to throw me off in my own house. He looked perfect in a light blue sweater and collar shirt.

  “Insulting me?” I stood next to him and bumped him with my hip. “This is how you seduce me?” I snapped a wooden spoon from the canister and poked at the eggs.

  “If I wanted to seduce you, the suit would be on the floor already.”

  “You don’t want to seduce me?”

  He took a piece of egg on a fork and blew on it. “I do, but as you know, we left on poor terms last time.” He held the fork to my lips, holding his palm under it to catch if it dripped.

  “And tell me, Mister Spinelli, how do you intend to improve the terms?” I let him feed me.

  “By explaining.” He divided the eggs onto two plates.

  “What? I can’t hear you over this explosion of delicious.”

  He looked genuinely pleased that I liked his cooking, and he counted the ingredients on his fingers. “Salt, milk, parmigiano, rosemary, and pancetta, of course. You have all my secrets now.” He put the plates on the center island and pulled a stool out for me. He’d already set out coffee, juice, and toast.

  “You’ve buttered me up quite thoroughly.”

  He sat and poured me coffee. “A compliment for a job well done?”

  “Yes.”

  “I appreciate that. But I want to give you the explanation part now, if the taste of the eggs won’t interfere with your hearing?”

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  He cleared his throat and sipped his juice. “Marina and I were a regular thing until a few weeks ago. She claimed I was distracted, and she was right. So we ended it. Or I thought we did. The other night, I found out that I’d ended it and she’d paused it.” He took a couple of bites of his breakfast then continued. “She comes from the same place I do. A little town outside Napoli. This was a connection between us. She’s a nice girl. I won’t speak evil of her. She took our thing more seriously than I did, and it didn’t break as easily as I’d expected. I’ve spent the past few days making sure she understands. I don’t want any crossover, or however you call it.”

  I sighed and put down my fork. “I’m going to be honest. I like you. And I love this breakfast. But if I end up believing you’re telling me the whole truth, it’ll be a conscious decision I’m making. And with my history, that decision takes some effort. I don’t expect or want a commitment, but I don’t like crossover, as you say.”

  “I don’t either.”

  “And the questions thing? It bothers me.”

  “I can’t negotiate that.”

  “Then what are we doing?”

  “We are enjoying ourselves. Do you object to that?”

  “I guess I can live with it for now. It’ll come to bite us, though.”

  “Maybe.” He leaned in to kiss me, much of his hardness and cocky arrogance gone. His lips looked soft and sweet as opposed to inaccessibly beautiful. His tongue was warm, slick, moving in harmony with his tender mouth. The smell of a pine forest in the morning, all dew and smoldering campfires, swelling my senses.

  I wanted him. His neck, his jaw, his legs between mine. I wanted to suck on his fingers and thumbs. I reached between his legs, and he stopped me.

  “This was only breakfast.”

  I groaned. “Please?”

  “Tempting, Contessa. But it’s been twice, and too hurried both times. The next time we fuck, it’s going to be for a few hours, and you’re going to need to be wheeled out. I’m not cheating you again.” He reached for the dishes. “I’ll clean up. Go get ready for work.”

  By the time I’d brushed my teeth and put my hair and makeup in order, he’d finished clearing the island. We walked out the door kissing. I didn’t think I’d ever been so happy. Then I remembered what I’d promised Daniel, and by the time Antonio closed my car door and stepped away, my happiness had been worn away by the friction of reality.

  I’d told Daniel it was over, and that had just changed, and I didn’t even know how. I was curious about Antonio’s alleged corruption. I couldn’t be with a criminal, much less a murderer. Not since my first experience at thirteen, which left me scarred and the boy dead, had I encountered a dangerous man. I’d kept clear of all manner of worthless street punk—until Antonio, who could still back off any question he didn’t feel like answering.

  We were together. We weren’t. It didn’t matter. I was looking at those books.

  Chapter Eighteen

  My expertise was in accounting, but really, it was in the movement and flow of money. I looked at ledgers with a broad eye, finding patterns and flow. Like rivers on a map that fell into lakes, disappeared into mountains, and got spit into the ocean, the shifts of money were seen best from far away, with the finer details removed.

  Bill and Phyllis, the core of the DA’s financial analysts, were a married couple who had met in the Los Angeles district attorney’s office forty-three years previous. They were detail people, in all their Midwestern glory—she was from Cadillac, Michigan and he was from Collett, Indiana. They reveled in getting it right, in not one shred of a detail falling through their fingers.

  Thus, they missed everything.

  If they’d understood the first law of fiscal dynamics—that money cannot be gained or lost, only moved—they’d understand that it all went somewhere. It was most important to follow a flow of cash downriver, and let the creeks taper into mysterious blue points. The answer was in the streams’ and the rivers’ undercurrents.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hello, dear,” Phyllis said, gracing me with a brilliant smile. “How are you?”

  “Fine.” I put my bag on the table.

  Bill sat at the old banker’s desk, tapping on a loud keyboard, his face a few inches too close to the screen. “Got mail from the boss.” His chin pointed at his screen, eyes squinted. “Miss Drazen’s looking at the Giraldi files. That right, Miss Drazen?”

  “Theresa. Yes. If you don’t mind?”

  “We looked at them already. There’s nothing there. We had the guys from downstairs working with us.”

  “Probably,” I said. I didn’t want to step on his toes, or the toes of the hundreds who had pored over the documents. “Just a new set of eyes.”

  “Have at it.” He felt abused, if his expression was any indication. He dragged four document boxes from a shelf, one at a time, with the scratch of heavy cardboard sliding on wood.

  “Anything digital?�
� I asked.

  “Some,” said Phyllis, opening the boxes. “I’ll get it for you.”

  Bill wiped his nose with a cotton handkerchief, fidgeted, and sat. Poor guy. I’d flattened his toes, and it wasn’t even lunchtime. I slid folders out, and with them came a scent. Not the musty odor of dust bunnies and paper residue. It was cologne, spicy and sweet with an undercurrent of pine trees after a rain. I caught a hint of something that I couldn’t identify until I’d unloaded the whole box.

  I inhaled again, trying to catch it, but it was gone. Only the dewy forest morning remained.

  I hadn’t spent more than an hour with the ledgers before I caught something. Just a few million in property tax payments. Legal payments from legal accounts containing legally obtained money.

  One house in particular, in the center of the lots, had been purchased three years earlier with money from an international trust. The rest had been snapped up in the previous six months. It was a lot of property, tight together in the hills of Mount Washington, and it rankled.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Margie’s red hair was tied back in a low ponytail, but strands had found their way free to drape over her cheeks. She was on her second chardonnay, and lunch hadn’t even arrived. She could have had seven more and still litigated a murder trial.

  “Mob lawyers are consiglieri,” she said. “They learn the law to get around it. But they don’t get to be boss.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re not made. Before you ask, made means protected. And other things. It’s a whole freemason ceremonial shindig. They have to kill someone. Contract killing, not a vendetta. Now do I get to know why you’re asking?”

  “Because you’d know.”

  “Oh, shifty sister. Very shifty. You know what I meant.” She waved as if swatting away murder. Then she nodded and sat up a little.

  I followed her gaze to Jonathan, who sauntered toward us after shaking hands with the owner. He kissed Margie first, then me. A waiter put a scotch in front of him.

  “Sorry, I’m late,” he said.

  “How was San Francisco?” Margie asked.

  “Wet, cold, and amusingly liberal. I saw your picture in the paper,” he said to me. “You’re taking him back?”

  “No.”

  “She has other things on her mind,” Margie said.

  “Such as?” He looked at me over the rim of his glass.

  “Nothing.”

  “She’s either writing a book or dating a mafia don,” Margie said.

  I went cold and hot at the same time. I set my face so it betrayed nothing. If Margie or Jonathan had suspected anything, they would have noticed the two percent change in my demeanor, but they only knew what I’d told them.

  “Top secret,” I said. “This doesn’t leave the table. Drazen pledge.”

  “Pledge open,” Margie said.

  “Pledged,” Jonathan agreed, holding up his hand lazily.

  I dropped my voice. “Dan got some files on a certain crime organization from the NSA, and he’s having me look at them.”

  Their reaction was immediate and definitive. Margie dropped her fork as if it was white hot. Jonathan picked up his whiskey glass, shaking his head.

  “Is he trying to get you killed?” Jonathan asked.

  “He needs to grow a set of fucking balls,” Margie added.

  She tilted her head a little, as if checking to see if I was going to make a fuss about her language. She’d once verbally cornered me at Thanksgiving dinner, bullying me into describing why, which I couldn’t. Mom had begged her to stop, and Daddy had broken out laughing at my tears.

  “Marge, really.” Jonathan tapped his phone. “It’s not that big a deal. He’s the DA. If he can’t protect her—”

  But Margie continued undaunted. “Please, let me be the one to explain the obvious. If the mafia doesn’t come after you for looking into their books, whoever’s running against him will use you to undermine him. Think Hillary Clinton doing healthcare. Giving your disgraced ex-fiancé—”

  “Thanks. I appreciate you defining me.”

  “The press will do a fine job without me,” she said.

  “Leave it to them then.”

  I glanced at my brother. He was fully engaged with his phone, smiling as if the Dodgers had won the Series. I knew he’d heard everything but had no intention of stepping into rescue me.

  “Is he trying to get you back?” Margie asked. “This is his plan?”

  “This was fun.” Jonathan glanced up from his phone while still texting. “No, wait, we’re in pledge. This wasn’t fun at all.”

  Part of being “in pledge” was secrecy partnered with honesty, no matter how hurtful.

  Jonathan put down his phone and leaned into me. “Most things, Dad can save you from, and he will.”

  “For a price,” Margie muttered into her glass.

  “Right,” Jonathan continued. “But this? The mob? I don’t know. That’s big fish.”

  Our food arrived: sour lemon salads and more wine than anyone should drink at noon on a workday. We leaned back and let the waiter serve us, laying down oversized white plates and offering ground black pepper. Margie and Jonathan started eating, and I smoothed a crease in the tablecloth. Everything looked washed out by the sun and fill lights, every corner and curve of my body visible.

  “We don’t know if it’s organized crime,” I said. “Everything looks clean. Dan’s looking for something illegal.”

  “I don’t like it,” Margie said.

  “That’s because you hate Daniel,” I said.

  “I was there. I saw what he did to you.” Margie speared salad and glanced at me, head not moving, expression bland and open. Her lawyer look.

  “I think I found something,” I said. “But I’m not sure.”

  “Proceed quietly.”

  “I noticed some transactions. Real estate taxes. I followed the addresses to Mount Washington. The lots are grouped together in a really bad area. Fire sale prices.”

  Jonathan plopped his phone down and leaned back in his chair.

  “You look like you just ate a canary,” Margie said to him.

  “I’m about to,” he said. “Now, Margaret, stop bullying her. You’re being bitter.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He turned to me. “Theresa, tell me about those buildings. Open permits? Zoning changes?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Calls to the police about squatters? Still water?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Complaints to Building and Safety?”

  “Should I be making a list?”

  He pushed his plate aside and put his elbows on the table. “If they’re warehousing property, they’d raze the structures to get rid of the reporting problems. Then they’d just build an ugly apartment building when they had the land they needed. But they’re keeping fire and liability traps standing. And that neighborhood… there’s no way some kids won’t use those buildings for business and burn the places down cooking meth.”

  “Who the fuck cares?” Margie moaned.

  “Real estate fraud isn’t covered under RICO, so they won’t be federally prosecuted if they get caught doing whatever they’re doing. You’d have mentioned that if you weren’t busy giving her a hard fucking time.”

  “I’m trying to discourage her.”

  “Something’s going on with those buildings, Theresa,” he said. “Get your man to figure out what it is.”

  “Great idea.” Margie put her napkin on the table and stood. “Encourage her. I’m going to the ladies’. By the time I get back, I expect bullets through the window.”

  We watched her stride across the room.

  I sighed. “She thinks I’m made of sugar.” I pushed my salad around my plate. Jonathan didn’t say anything, and I didn’t realize he was staring at me until I looked up.

  “What’s going on?” he asked as if he expected an answer. As if “nothing” wouldn’t cut it.

  We knew each oth
er too well. As kids, the eight of us had had the option of banding together or falling apart. As a result, the youngest and the oldest had wound into two cliques, held together on the spool of Margie.

  “Is this your way of getting him back?” Jonathan said. “Keeping an eye on him?”

  The silence between us became long and tense, but he wouldn’t give an inch. I thought Margie had gone to the bathroom in Peru.

  “It’s not that simple,” I said.

  “Go on.”

  “There’s someone else. I won’t talk about it more.”

  “Ah.” He leaned back. “Use someone else as a threat, and then he tries to get you back with these books as an excuse? You’re a tactician. I forgot to thank you for your suggestion to bring a woman I wasn’t related to. Worked.”

  “Really? Jessica came back? That’s amazing.”

  “Yes, but I don’t want her. I’m keeping the new one. Unexpected upside.”

  I was stunned into silence. He’d let go of something he’d been holding onto for a long time. “What happened to change your mind?”

  “It was just gone. Whatever was there. Poof, gone. And for a while, too. Which is great, but neither of them is going to get me killed. You? You’re getting deep in shit.”

  I didn’t want to say another word about it because I didn’t want to spin out of control. I just wanted to find out about Antonio without asking him questions.

  “You speak Italian, right?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  He spoke everything. It was his gift.

  “Come vuoi tu. What does that mean?”

  “Kind of ‘as you wish,’ more or less. Why?”

  “Pledge closed,” I said.

  “Fine. Pledge closed.”

  Margie came up behind us. “Closing pledge. Who wants coffee?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Like every other part of central and eastern Los Angeles, Mount Washington was facing a real estate renaissance. Yet that particular hill seemed to have been passed over. The commercial district was a row of empty storefronts with gates pulled shut, broken glass, some burned out, and most graffitied over. Five blocks of third-world devastation stretched in either direction. I turned left up the hill, cracked asphalt bouncing my little car. The sidewalks ended under deep, thorny underbrush. Even at nine in the morning, I heard the beats of someone’s music on the other side of the hill.