by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin
The bouncer nodded to the bartender and opened a door to the back room for us. We passed through then down steps, past a smaller door, into an underground office. I should have been scared, but I was too pissed off. Even when I saw four men lounging around the room, two playing backgammon, one on the phone, and one tending blood on his knuckles, I wasn’t afraid.
Before anyone had a chance to explain our presence or introduce us, I spoke. “Which one of you is Scott Mabat?”
One middle-aged dirty-blond man in a black leather jacket, bent over the backgammon board, raised his hand slightly, the pointer extended to say, one second.
“Scotty, come on,” the skinny guy across from him demanded. He pushed aside a tiny cup with a lemon peel in the saucer.
“Shut the fuck up, Vinny,” Scott said.
“This is a fast-paced game.”
Scott moved his piece. “Not when I play it.” He stood. “Kat, nice to see you so soon. Who’s the friend?”
“She’s—”
“I’m the money.” I wanted to throw the envelope down and storm out, but common sense cut through my anger. “I’m putting up her interest, and I’ll be paying off her loan next week.”
He stepped around the desk and slowly opened his top drawer. “Cash.”
“Cash.”
“I recognize your face.” He flipped through a folder. “You marrying the district attorney?”
“No. Let’s get this over with. I have last week, this week, and next week on me. I’ll get you the—”
“Whoa, whoa, lady. Don’t rush. Kat, did you explain that our terms changed?” He spoke to her as if she was a child.
I wanted to kill him slowly.
“No,” she said.
I’d never seen her so cowed. She was the fucking Directrix, for Chrissakes.
“This is the contract,” he said. “It’s easy as shit. A moron could understand it. The studios give you a ream they nail together. You go to the Giraldis, they don’t even write shit down. You’re lucky.” He flipped me two stapled pieces of paper. The contract was in bullet points and looked as if it had been the result of a hundred generations of photocopying.
“Point four,” he said with his arms crossed. “Kat, would you like to read aloud to the class?”
She held out her hand for the pages. Was she insane? That docile girl couldn’t direct a movie.
I read point four myself. “‘Recipient has made no misrepresentation of their ability to repay the loan.’” I shrugged. “Okay, so?”
“So?” he said. “So!”
Throats cleared and chairs squeaked. A heightened intensity vibrated in the room.
Scott pointed his rigid finger at me as though he wanted to stab me. “This bitch didn’t tell me she was poison. I put up half a mill on an Oscar nominee, not a whining cunt no one wants to touch. Her fucking shit’s gonna be at the CineVention selling to Latvia for five G.”
“A little underwriting would have gone a long way, Mister Mabat.”
The guy whose knuckles were now fully bandaged snorted a laugh.
“That’s fucking funny?” Scott said.
Knuckles shrugged. Scott, a man who could not be rushed through a game of backgammon, picked up a dirty coffee mug and bashed Knuckles in the back of the head so hard his neck seemed to shake back and forth like a seizure. It happened so fast, Knuckles’s head had dropped to the table before either of the other guys could stand to aid him.
“This was easy money.” Scott pointed the cup at me. There was blood and a single black hair on it. “A no-fucking-brainer. Terms changed. There are no prepayments. There’s a thirty-year schedule she’s keeping.” He slapped the cup down. “We’ll be happy to take it out of her ass when she can’t shell out.”
I was scared finally, but I didn’t flinch. Knuckles was conscious and being tended by his two compatriots. Katrina sniffled behind me.
“Shush,” I said to her. I held my chin up to the loan shark. “You will take the prepayment, plus five thousand, and you will be happy with that.”
“Oh, really?”
“Really.”
“Or what? You getting the mayor after me? I’m all grown now. He can’t do shit.”
I pressed my lips together in a smile. “He can’t. But if you knew my name, you’d know I have a family. And if you knew anything about how they settle debts, you’d back away slowly.” I pulled the envelope out of my jacket and plopped it on the desk. “I suggest you do your research before dismissing my offer out of hand.”
I dragged Katrina out by the forearm and didn’t look back. I pulled her up the stairs, through the club, and into the street. I walked with my shoulders straight, confident that I owned everything in my sight. My friend blooped the car and got in. I followed and got into the passenger seat as if I was being chauffeured. It wasn’t until Katrina stopped at a light on Temple that, in order to release the tension, I started crying.
Katrina rubbed my back. “Look, I’ll pay what I can, and he’ll get bored of me at some point. I mean, he can’t make it so bad that I go to the cops.” She laughed bitterly.
“Your memoir is going to be a blockbuster.”
“How To Ruin a Perfectly Good Career in Two Years.”
“The Girl With the Busted Kneecaps.”
“Maybe I’ll make him fall in love with me. I’ll be Katrina Mabat.”
“Oh God. no. You’d drive him to his ultimate death,” I said.
“I think you should back off. Self-preservation is honorable.”
“I’m paying him off and walking away. You’ll release your movie, and everything will be back to normal.”
She sighed and left the dead weight of it in the air. There was a shadow and a clack clack clack at the window that I recognized from my car breaking down in Mount Washington. Bald guy. Cigarette.
“Who’s that?” Katrina asked.
“My shadow.” I rolled down the window. “Hi. Can I help you?”
The smell of turned earth overwhelmed the air coming into the car. He handed me his phone. I hesitated.
“Spin,” Turkish Cigarette Man said. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Wow, Tee Dray. Wow, okay? Weird and possessive much?”
I took the phone. I had to stop myself from calling him Capo in front of Katrina.
He took the moment’s pause to demand my attention in a tight voice. “Contessa?”
“Hi.”
“You were in an Armenian nightclub? This somewhere you usually go?”
That was him asking me what I was doing without making assumptions. His tone was a coiled spring. He needed a flat truth, or he would wind himself tighter.
“I was seeing Scott Mabat.”
He was silent, but in the background, I heard the mumblings of men, as if he was in a crowded room.
“Antonio?” I said.
“Otto will take you to me.”
“No, I have—”
“He will pick you up and carry you.” He would have been shouting if his voice had been raised, but he kept all the power and tension while practically whispering.
I knew then why he was capo. I hung up on him. I wouldn’t disobey him, but I didn’t have to tolerate the tone either.
“Kat,” I said, “this guy’s driving me to see Antonio. We’re going to follow you home first and make sure you get in the door, okay?”
“Okay, Tee Dray.” Her voice was suspicious even as her words were compliant.
I turned to Otto. “Okay?”
He held up his hands in surrender and smiled. Both of his pinkies were missing. “It’s no problem.” He had a thick accent.
He opened my car door. I started to get out, but Katrina put her hand on my forearm.
“Thank you,” she said.
“It’s no problem,” I said in Otto’s accent.
She smiled. “You’re pretty badass. I didn’t know that about you.”
“Me neither.”
Otto had parked his incredibly nondescript silver Corolla
two spaces down, and he opened the back door for me.
When he got in, I said, “The car smells nice.”
“Grazie. There’s no smoking in the car. Still smells new, no?”
“It does.”
“Okay, I take your friend home, then we go, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
“Where are we going?” I asked after we’d walked Katrina to the door.
Otto tapped on his phone from the front seat. “The office. But I confirm now.”
“How long have you been watching me, Otto?”
He shrugged and pulled out. “A week. I sleep in the car. But no smoking in it. My wife, she’s mad I’m not home, but I have a job to do until the boss tells me to stop doing it.”
“I hope you get to see her again soon.”
He waved the notion off with a flip of his four-fingered hand. “Spin, he save my life. She just make me crazy all the time. Watching you? Like a vacation.”
“How did he save your life?”
“That is a long story, I promise.”
“I have time.”
He made a motion of locking his lips and throwing away the key. “Let him tell you. But he won’t. He is too modesto.”
“Antonio Spinelli? Modest?”
“Like a priest.”
I bit back a laugh.
Chapter Thirty-Two
We approached East Side Motors. The yellow and black sign faded orange in the dimming light. The parking lot was clearer, so we pulled in without much trouble. Antonio stood in the middle of the lot in a black suit, waiting. The security lights cast a sunburst of shadows around him.
Otto pulled up. “Buonasera, boss.”
“Thank you, Otto,” Antonio said as he opened my door. “Go on inside and get coffee, then go home and rest.”
“Grazie,” Otto said and disappeared through the garage door.
Antonio took my hand, and I got out of the car.
“Contessa,” Antonio said softly, his face deeply shadowed in the artificial light.
“Yes, Capo?”
He pushed me against the car. “I told you not to see him.”
“He slapped Katrina around. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t wait for you to take care of it.”
“And did you take care of it?” His hands moved up my rib cage, thumbs tucking under my breasts.
I looked down. “Not really. He won’t take prepayment. He made threats.”
He held my face in one hand, a little too tight, to make me look him in the eye. “He threatened you?”
“He threatened Katrina.” I pushed him off me. “I want to go home. My God, how did I let myself get stuck here?”
I pushed him hard, and he stepped back. Having gotten out from under him, I walked to the open gate. I didn’t know where I was going. I guessed I’d have to call a cab. I could wait for it in the pupuseria down the street, but I knew he wouldn’t let me go. I still wanted the freedom of that open gate and that dark street and those empty sidewalks. I heard him one step behind me, then he grabbed my forearm.
I twisted and yanked away. “Stop!”
His gaze was dark and unreadable for the second I saw him. He shifted, a blur in my vision, then he became a force of movement against me. He picked me up at the waist and carried me over his shoulder. I would have screamed, but he’d knocked the breath out of me. All I could do was watch the light shift on the blacktop as he carried me across it.
I pounded his back, but I was helpless. “Antonio!”
“Be quiet.”
“Stop!”
“Basta, woman.” He avoided the garage where Otto had gone and opened the door to the dark office without breaking his stride, passing the water cooler and the reception desk. He smacked open his office door then slammed it closed with his foot.
With a lung-emptying thud, I was dumped into a chair. He leaned over me, so threatening and powerful that if he demanded it, I’d have told him the sky was beneath my feet.
“Listen to me,” he growled, putting his hands on the chair arms. “I will kill any bastard who touches you. So you walk into a room like that again without me, you’d better want the man dead.”
He meant it. From the tightness in his lips and the lines in his brow, I knew he wasn’t speaking metaphorically. He’d kill for me, and it would be my responsibility.
“I’ll admit I was scared, and you were the first person I thought of,” I said. “And the last person. But in between that, I was afraid of getting you involved.”
“You’re involved. I’m involved. We can’t go backward now. You said you saw that stupid punk face to face, and I went crazy. I saw you with that other ass, the one who cheated on you, and I went crazy. I don’t have a brain when it comes to you. You know how much trouble it could be for me if I get arrested for something stupid? Like beating that guy with the ugly Porsche? But I thought he kicked you, and I lost my mind.”
“You didn’t even know me.”
He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “When I was a young, they called me Tonio-botz because I’d go off over nothing. But I’m a man now, and I don’t do that. Tonio-botz was a garbage kid who had no control over himself. But he’s back every time I see you.”
I was scared of him, for him, about him. I was also turned on. I touched his face. “I bet he wasn’t so bad.”
“Please understand.”
“I do. Would you kiss me?”
With breakneck speed and intensity, he kissed me, using his tongue without prelude as if it was a dick shoved in me. I leaned up and he knelt back until we were both on the floor.
“Here.” I pulled his wrist and slid his hand between my legs. “Feel how wet I am.” I pressed his hand under my skirt to my damp panties, moving until his pinkie touched my soaking skin. “It’s never been this easy, and it’s you. This is how I react to you. It terrifies me.”
He sucked air through his teeth. “We’re even then, Contessa.”
“Take me now, please. Fuck me scared.”
He slipped two fingers in me all the way, pressing as if he wanted to get his whole hand in, and I spread my legs as if I wanted exactly the same thing. He put his face to mine until he took up the curves of my vision. His breath fell on my open mouth as he watched me react to his touch.
“I want to fuck you so hard we have the same skin.”
“Yes,” I gasped, reaching for his belt.
A knock came at the door. “Spin? You in there?”
“Fuck,” he grumbled, then shouted to the door. “What, Zo?”
“Uh, sorry, but uh, we got word from Donna Maria. And you said—”
“All right.” He removed his fingers from me.
Zo didn’t get the message. “You said if we heard from her that—”
“Zo! Basta! I’ll see you inside.” He straightened my panties and skirt. “I’m sorry, Contessa. Business calls. You and I will share a skin later.”
“Can Otto drive me home?”
“I’m sorry, but you’re not going home tonight. I’ll have one of the guys go to your house and pack you a bag. But until I take care of Scott Mabat, you’re staying at my side.” He stood, erection apparent under his pants.
I was still splayed on the floor. “Antonio, really?”
“Really. It’s like the kids’ shows. When the song comes, the bouncing ball tells you when to sing the words.” He put his hand out to help me up. “Just follow along.”
* * *
We crossed the parking lot holding hands, and when we went into the pitch dark garage, he squeezed my hand. I heard men talking and a thup thup sound.
“Follow along,” he said and opened a door in the back.
In a low room decorated in wood paneling and cigarette smoke, a handful of men faced the same direction. Zo crooked his arm and straightened it quickly. A thup followed, and the others reacted by exchanging handslaps and cash.
Darts.
An Italian flag draped one wall. The chairs were wooden and well worn, like
the desk and linoleum floor. I recognized a man in a fedora from outside Zia’s restaurant. Silence fell on the room like a lead curtain.
Antonio kissed me on both cheeks, left first, then right. He stared me in the face for a second before facing his crew. “Signori, this is Theresa. Theresa, you’ve met Lorenzo.”
Zo came up to me as if for the first time and took my hand. “Piacere.” He kissed me on each cheek, right then left, and stepped back.
“Otto, you’re still here?” Antonio said.
He stepped forward and took my hand. “Piacere di conoscerla.” He kissed me the same way, left then right.
“Good to meet you,” I said.
“Now go home,” Antonio said. He indicated a man in a checked jacket and receding hairline. “Enzo, meet Theresa.”
“Very nice to meet you,” he said in a clean California accent I wouldn’t have noticed in any other group.
“You, as well.” I counted three more. Fedora was next.
“Niccoló, this is Theresa.”
“Piacere.” He kissed me quickly, in the middle of counting a stack of bills, as if the whole process was inconvenient.
“Nice to meet you, too.”
“Last, Simone, I’d like you to meet Theresa.”
“Good to meet you!” The only blond in the crew, he shook my hand like a car salesman and smiled big, only kissing each cheek when Antonio shot him a look. He did it right then left, and the mix-up meant we almost kissed on the lips. He laughed.
“Enzo, Niccoló,” Antonio said, “go get the half-Armenian strozzino. Call me when you have him. Zo, bring the lady to the little house then pick her up a bag.”
Otto, Enzo, and Nicolo left, chattering in deep voices.
“Antonio,” I said with warning in my voice.
“The ball with the music,” he said. “Please. Call your roommate and tell her Zo’s coming.”
“I have work tomorrow.”
“I hope so.” He whispered in my ear, “I’ll come to you. Just wait.”
Paulie burst in. “Hey! I heard there was a formal introduction.”
“Hi, Paulie,” I said.
“This is Theresa,” Antonio said.