Unmarked Man

by Darlene Scalera

  “Nick…” She would plead if she had to.

  His mouth fastened on hers. She kissed him back hotly, greedily. His weight fell on her as he wrapped his arms around her, holding her to him, carrying her with him as he took her with a fevered urgency to the edge of passion. She wrapped him tight in her own arms, moving with him, her hips rising, her thighs squeezing, mindless once more with only pleasure. Together they fell, together over the edge, his hoarse cry joining hers as they plunged into an abyss of ecstasy.

  She clung to him shamelessly, long past caring. He rolled off her, tucked her body into his. The protector. His lips lay against her temple. She heard his even breaths and thought he was sleeping, but then his arms tightened and he pulled her closer to him. She buried her face into the warmth of his chest, allowing herself a few moments’ delusion of feeling safe. She’d never been safe. Not where Nick was concerned.

  “Cissy.” He was the first to speak, the braver of them both.

  She rolled away, already too comfortable in his embrace. She glanced over at him. His eyes watched her. An urge to make this easy for him, for them both, filled her as strongly as the passion that had ravished her.

  “Well, at least we got that out of our systems.” Still her palm went to his strong face, lay on his cheek for too long a moment. The phone rang. She jerked her hand away. He sat up, reached over her, grabbed the phone.

  “Fiore.”

  She watched him openly, wanting even now to touch him, straddle him, take him again. She rolled on her side, buried her face in her pillow, trying to remember the Italian equivalent for “putz.” Not that she regretted making love to Nick. What she regretted was falling in love with a man who, like her, had seen the worst paraded as love and had lost faith long before their first kiss.

  She listened to the one-sided conversation consisting mainly of “uh-huh,” and “okay” from Nick. He clicked off. She felt his welcome weight again as he leaned over her to set the phone back on the bedside stand.

  She rolled over and looked up at him. Not a trace of sleepy satiation remained on his features. His face was hard and set, his lips fused into an implacable, straight line. The Nick she knew and loved.

  “You were at the Golden Cue today, right?”

  So much for pillow talk. She sat up, pulling the sheet up with her, suddenly too aware of her nakedness. “You know I was. You were having me followed like a politician on the take. Not that I learned anything. You made sure of that, remember?” Back to battle positions.

  Nick got up, walked to the closet for a change of clothes. Cissy despised the desire that swelled in her, but boy, she would not mind taking a big bite out of those buns.

  Nick pulled on underwear, jeans. Cissy watched in fascination. He turned, stared at her as if waiting for an answer.

  “Huh?” Focus, Cissy.

  “I asked who you talked to there.”

  “The bartender. Usually they’re Jo Jo’s best buds.”

  “But you didn’t find anything out?” Nick pulled a T-shirt with the police department insignia on the pocket over his head.

  She shook her head. “Not really. He said Jo Jo used to come in once, twice a week, sit at the bar, have a few drinks until this guy she was meeting showed up. A businessman. Uptown type.”

  Nick looked up from lacing his sneakers.

  “What’d he tell you?” she asked.

  He still didn’t answer her. He went into the other room. Grabbing one of his button-down shirts, she put it on and followed him into the main living area.

  “Is there a problem, Detective?”

  He’d strapped on his gun, cuffs, ID, and didn’t answer.

  “You’re going out?”

  He finally looked at her and saw her in his shirt. A flash of smoldering darkness took his gaze. It could have been desire; it could have been anger. “There’s a problem. Stay here, understand? Don’t leave this apartment. I’ll be back.”

  He grabbed his car keys. He was almost to the door when he stopped, came back to wrap his hand around her neck and pull her to him for a hard, swift kiss. He looked at her unsmiling, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. He went out the door, slamming it, testing it from the other side to make sure it was locked.

  Cissy walked to the door. “That man better stop trying to tell me what to do,” she muttered as she slid the bolt into place. But as she leaned against the door, her lips still tingling from Nick’s kiss, she knew he was right. She was in real danger now.

  Chapter Eleven

  Her mother missing. Her sister missing. Phil Lester dead. Jo Jo’s boyfriend dead.

  Cissy poured a soda, added ice and sat down at the table. Stacks of cash under Cherry’s front seat.

  She stood, opened the refrigerator, wasn’t encouraged. Stared at the fish she was becoming too fond of, chalked it up as displaced attraction to Nick. If she stuck around much longer, she’d be telling him it was time he settled down, started a family. Thirty-two and her mother’s genes were kicking in.

  She stood, paced from the couch to the fish tank. The sky was only beginning to hint of night, the horizon a red-orange streak that promised more steamy weather tomorrow. The afterglow of hot sex had faded to thoughts of food. She walked back to the kitchen, found a can of honey-roasted peanuts in the cupboard. She grabbed the nuts and the evening paper Nick had thrown unopened on the table and headed to the couch. She spread the paper out on the coffee table. Munching on the nuts, she flipped through the pages, skimming the headlines, too wired to read the small newsprint until she got to the local section. Phil Lester’s murder was on the front page. The reporter had taken the fish-out-of-water angle, asking why an unassuming, private man would end up shot and dumped in a motel room.

  “Why indeed?” Cissy asked. She thought about the tidy two-story house, the kitchen with checked curtains and the herb garden on the windowsill over the sink. Not exactly a portrait of a pistol-wielding, Harley-riding maniac. Or a man who would end up a corpse-a-gram. Then again, Stevie the Sledgehammer hadn’t dropped into Grandview Estates to collect for the March of Dimes. Phil Lester had a secret life.

  She flipped to the obituaries. Lester was survived by his mother, predeceased by his father. A younger brother had also died two years ago. Lester had worked for the Department of Taxation. He was also a member of the Table Tennis Association of America. No mention of good ol’ Phil’s preference for black hogs. Calling hours were from seven to nine tonight at Malone’s on Crestwood. Cissy set down the paper, looked at her watch.

  Seven-ten.

  She should go pay her respects. The man had been found in her motel room. And just because she’d slept with Nick, didn’t mean she was going to let him tell her what to do.

  She shook out the designer suit from her previous life, the one before missing family members and dead bodies and Fiore on the legal side of the law. She dressed, mulling over Phil Lester with his table tennis membership and herb garden and big black Harley. How did he figure into her mother and Jo Jo’s disappearances?

  Her gut still said Eddie was involved big-time. He was the one the police should be following around—not her.

  She slicked Raging Red on her well-kissed lips, smacked them together twice, then wrote across the mirror, Went Out. She had a responsibility not only to herself but to women everywhere to keep Nick Fiore on his toes. She unbolted the door and went out into the night.

  She was at the sidewalk before she remembered they were supposed to pick up her rental car when Nick got home today. She’d been so mad about being trailed by a cop, and then…well…she’d been occupied.

  The heat had remained hellfire. She calculated the walking distance. She’d never make it without Reeboks. She watched for a taxi and had walked three blocks before one pulled over. She climbed gratefully inside, cursing the masochist who had come up with the idea of pointed-toe shoes.

  Malone’s receiving room had the velvet brocade furniture mothers used to cover with plastic in the sixties. A few naked litho
graphs and the parlor could as easily been Madame LaPierre’s House of Pleasure. Lester’s mother, suffering from the same loss of hair as her son, sat stiffly on a red velvet brocade armchair, dry-eyed and steel-jawed. A few others milled about, conferring in hushed tones. A silver-haired man in a dark suit Cissy assumed was Malone or one of his main henchmen welcomed her with professional graveness. Cissy glanced at the guest book, saw only three other names and was tempted to add her own just so Phil’s mother could feel her son did not die without being able to drum up enough people for a decent poker night. But considering the circumstances of their acquaintance, Cissy refrained in a rare nod to good taste.

  She went up to the casket and looked down at Lester, a prayer from childhood coming automatically and offered sincerely. Malone had done a good job covering up the bullet wound. Lester’s waxy expression was calm, his hands folded across his chest. She finished her prayer, stared down at the dead man as if expecting answers.

  She moved to the mother, extended her hand. “Mrs. Lester, I’m sorry for your loss.”

  The old woman rocked back on her heels, eyed Cissy through slitted lids. “What’s your story? You going to claim you’re carrying Phil’s love child?”

  She should have forgone the Raging Red. “Why would you think that?”

  “I figure it’s only a matter of time. Get in line, sister. Call yourself a lawyer. He left the money to me.”

  “Money?”

  “The innocent act, huh? Is that how you got Phil to play stuff the kielbasa?”

  Cissy had to love this dame.

  “He was a good boy.” Mrs. Lester stared at the casket, reality sneaking up on the old woman. She looked at Cissy. “How long did you string him on? I’ll bet you’re in on it. Maybe even the one who offed him.”

  A gray-haired woman standing to the side came forward, gave Phil’s mother a scolding glance, offered her hand to Cissy.

  “So nice of you to come. I’m Mrs. Lester’s companion.”

  “Overpriced baby-sitter is more like it.” Phil’s mother glared at the woman.

  “I’m a retired nurse,” the other woman told Cissy. “Mrs. Lester’s son hired me two years ago.”

  A full-time caretaker, Cissy thought. On a civil servant’s salary.

  “Mrs. Lester, I only recently made Phil’s acquaintance.” Cissy tried to clarify.

  “Only takes thirty seconds, as my husband, God rest his soul, liked to say. Listen, girlie, you can pump a whole litter of Lesters out of that carburetor of yours but you won’t see a dime of the estate.”

  Cissy pictured the small two-story in the middle-class development. Grandview Estates. Cissy smiled. Mrs. Lester, with her whacked-out frame of reference, must have confused the name of the housing development as her son’s residence and decided she was rich.

  “More money than you can shake your booty at, babe.”

  Cissy looked at the caretaker. The other woman’s expression was resigned. Nearby Malone nodded with his professional smile. Two people were standing awkwardly by the mint bowl. Malone moved away to greet another arrival.

  Cissy tried to get more information from Lester’s mother before she had to move on for the next guest. “So, you got the Harley?”

  The woman narrowed her eyes. “Why, you a biker chick?”

  “No, how ’bout you?”

  The woman smiled. “Nah. No one’s ridden that Harley since my youngest son, George, died. It was his bike. He restored it, would hardly ride it himself. In the end it was a Pinto that took him out.”

  The woman’s expression turned tragic. “Phil hated motorcycles, but his brother had loved that machine. Phil couldn’t bear to part with it. He registered it in his name but never took it out. Scared to death of it.”

  So much for Cissy’s theory that Lester liked to walk on the wild side. Someone else must have been on the Harley yesterday. But who? Lester’s murderer? Why had he come after her?

  “Phil liked games. He took after me in that respect.”

  “Games?”

  “Games. Cards. Bingo. Parcheesi.”

  Cissy remembered the computer icons. She thought of Stevie the Sledgehammer and his past employment with the Gambino brothers. “Games of chance?”

  “Any game.”

  “Pool?” It was a long shot but maybe it was a long shot that had taken Lester’s life.

  “Yeah, he played. But he was no Fats Domino, I’ll tell you that.”

  “I think you mean Minnesota Fats,” the caretaker corrected.

  “I know what I mean. Take a look at that arrangement there. Look. The one with the big gladiolas.”

  Cissy knew, in the end, a man is measured by how big his gladiolas are. She turned. Based on what she saw, Lester had achieved the success shared by any man in a mediocre life.

  “His friends at the Golden Cue sent that.”

  “Hello, Candy.”

  Cissy was digesting Mrs. Lester’s revelation when the elderly lady she’d met outside Lester’s joined the group. The woman looked at Lester’s mother. “This was the hussy at your son’s house the other night. She has a key.” The woman looked at Mrs. Lester knowingly.

  The mother eyed Cissy with new disdain. “We already met.”

  “Your son must have been a regular at the Golden Cue?” And Otto Chandler must have known him. Had Jo Jo? But the bartender had said the man Jo Jo met had thick brown hair. Lester was bald.

  Mrs. Lester was watching her. “Like I told ya, he was no shark. I guess he fancied himself one, though.”

  Malone, hovering nearby, cleared his throat. Two others had come, were waiting to offer Mrs. Lester their condolences. Cissy touched the old woman’s arm. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Too late to get in on the gold, sister. I’ve already got my eye on the Armory Bingo Parlor.”

  “Oh, I like that one,” Lester’s neighbor interjected.

  Lester’s mother kept a steely gaze on Cissy. “There won’t be a cent left.” She crossed her arms over a bosom that had seen better days.

  “Nice to meet you,” Cissy told the caretaker. “And to see you again.” She nodded to Lester’s neighbor.

  She turned to leave, heard the neighbor whisper, “She’s sucking up to you.”

  Malone met her at the door, thanked her again for coming.

  “Do you know the family well?”

  “They’ve always used my services. Are you a relative?”

  “A recent acquaintance. You did a nice job on him, considering.”

  Malone narrowed his eyes, giving his face a ferret-like look.

  “The wound,” Cissy whispered as if sharing a secret.

  Malone’s sharp expression relaxed. “I tried. Mrs. Lester wasn’t too happy. Said the deceased wore a hairpiece that made him look like a snake-oil salesman but she’d grown used to it.”

  Lester wore a toupee. Dark brown. Thick. Kennedy hair.

  “You didn’t use it?”

  “No one could find it.”

  “Couldn’t find it?”

  “Between you and I, it would have made my job a lot easier.”

  Cissy looked at Mrs. Lester. “Is she all right?”

  “Senile dementia, I understand. I’m not sure she really realizes what is going on.”

  “She wants to buy a bingo parlor.”

  “Gambling.” The funeral director nodded wisely. “That’s where the real money is.”

  Cissy glanced at the casket. “Can’t beat the odds on death.”

  She stepped onto the porch. At the rail, a man stood smoking. He turned as she came out, appraising her. He nodded.

  “Shame about Lester.” She sidled up to the man, glad she’d worn heels. Undoubtedly the sisters at St. Anne’s had been right on the money when they’d caught her and Dee Dee Crocco giggling in the girl’s room, high on sacramental wine. Cissy would burn in hell one day. But for now, she wanted information.

  The man nodded again. “He was all right. Trying at least.”

  Now Ciss
y studied the man. “You work with him?”

  The man shook his head, stubbed his cigarette into an urn filled with sand. “Friend.”

  Cissy took a random shot. “Shame about the…well, you know.”

  The man cut her a glance, tapped another cigarette out of the pack. “Got to give him credit though. Took him a while but he got it out of his system. Had a bad spell after his brother’s death but eventually he worked it out. Wouldn’t even buy a lottery ticket. Now this.” He lit his cigarette. “Makes you wonder.”

  Cissy adopted a thoughtful expression. “Sure does.”

  “That’s where I met him—G.A. He sponsored me. Wish I could say I had the success he did.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “How ’bout we have a few drinks in Lester’s honor?”

  First time she’d been hit on at a funeral. Not that she had any right to judge, snooping for info before the interment had begun.

  “Quite an accomplishment, Lester kicking his gambling problem, huh?”

  The man nodded, cautious now that she hadn’t responded to his offer.

  “He sure did run up some big bills at the bookies in his day though, didn’t he?”

  The man blew out a stream of smoke, eyed her through the haze. “How ’bout that drink?”

  The man wasn’t giving it away. Neither was she.

  She declined and left. Two blocks away, she cursed herself for not calling a cab from the funeral home. At the third block, she decided to hobble back. If it was a choice between hammer toes or fending off horny gamblers, there was no contest.

  She turned around, had gone back a half block when a dark sedan pulled up beside her. Nick rolled down the window and took her in, flamenco heels, discreet peek-a-boo slit in the skirt, silk camisole beneath the light jacket. He didn’t bother to conceal the desire in his dark eyes. The rest of him didn’t look happy, however. “Get in.”

  She rounded the car as he leaned over and opened the door for her. She slid into the seat. “Do you have me wired?”