by Diana Palmer
“It isn’t too late.”
Mikey looked up, with the saddest expression Paul had ever seen. “Yes, it is, Paulie. It’s too late. And I did it to myself, by not telling her what Jessie said and giving her a chance to tell me what she felt.”
“We all make mistakes.”
“Even you aren’t in my class, cousin,” Mikey said. He leaned back in the chair. “At least you’re having that happy ending people dream about,” he added with an affectionate smile. “You got lucky.”
“I wish you had, too.”
Mikey shrugged. “Let’s just hope that Cotillo doesn’t.”
* * *
They were prophetic words. A day later, the story broke on all the major news networks. A New Jersey mob figure named Anthony Cotillo was found dead in his apartment of apparently natural causes. A friend said that the man had no apparent health problems and that it came as a shock to his associates.
“Can they detect an air embolism?” Mikey mused. “It doesn’t matter—they’ll have people in the coroner’s office to make sure that doesn’t go into the report.”
Paul sighed. “Well, it’s a novel way to take care of an interloper without getting the government all stirred up,” he agreed. “No mess, no blood trail, no nothing. But I wonder who hit him?”
Mikey smiled. “Marcus Carrera has many friends from the old days,” he pointed out. “Some of them owe him really big favors.”
Paul’s eyebrows arched.
“Really big,” Mikey emphasized. And he smiled.
* * *
Tony Garza came home to New Jersey amid promises from an obscure New York outfit family that the loose association of bosses, the one that had existed since the Five Families were scattered by pressure from the feds, had no problem with him. They assured him that no more problems were expected, and that they had several people making sure of it. The message was clear—Carrera might not be a mob figure any longer, since he’d gone straight, but he was still a power to contend with in the States. A lot of people were afraid of him. Tony was going to be safe.
“So I guess I’ll go home now,” Mikey said sadly, when he was having supper with Paul and Sari. “I’ll come back for the christening, though,” he teased.
“Wrong church,” Paul teased. “We’re Methodist. Although, Reverend Blair does have a sort of christening ceremony, but not like the one you’re thinking of.”
“We can pretend. I’ll come anyway.” He toyed with his food. “So I guess Jessie and Billie worked for the New York boss.”
“I guess so,” Paul said.
“Carrera was a terror when he was younger,” Mikey remarked with a smile. “You could just say his name ten years ago and people would start running for the door.”
“It shocked everybody when he went legit,” Paul said. “Even the feds. Now he’s got a wife and two sons and he’s the happiest man on earth.”
“Families are nice,” Mikey said absently.
“You should get married and have one,” Sari said firmly.
“Chance would be a fine thing.”
“You never know,” she replied. “Strange things happen when you least expect them.”
He smiled at her. “They do, don’t they? What do you guys want, a boy or a girl?”
“Either,” Paul said.
“Both,” Sari said, and grinned.
“No twins on our side of the family, cousin,” he told Paul.
“But there are loads on my side,” Sari laughed. “Distant cousins, but at least three sets of twins among them.”
“Son of a gun! You could have your whole family in one year.”
Paul laughed. “Who knows?” he teased, and he looked at his wife with eyes that absolutely ate her. She looked back at him the same way.
Mikey felt more alone than he ever had in his whole life. Much more, although he was happy for his cousin. But he was leaving town. His heart would stay here, with that sad little woman who lived in Mrs. Brown’s boardinghouse. She’d never forgive him for Jessie. He knew it without asking. It was the worst mistake of his life, and he couldn’t fix it. Nobody could.
* * *
He packed his bags and Santi packed his. His heart was breaking. Bernie was the light of his life and he was leaving her behind. He hadn’t felt so low since the death of his grandmother, and the murder of Paulie’s wife and little girl. He felt the grief like a living thing.
“Where we going, boss,” Santi asked. “Vegas or Jersey?”
“Vegas,” Mikey said without missing a beat. “I need a diversion. A big, bright, flashy, glitzy diversion.”
“Vegas is a nice place,” Santi said. He grinned. “Lots of glitzy girls there.”
“You’re welcome to all you can find,” his boss replied glumly. “You can have my share, too.”
“That’s nice,” Santi replied.
They packed their things into the convertible. Mikey went to the office and took care of the bill. Santi was waiting just outside the door in the limousine as he came out.
Mikey put himself into the back seat and leaned against it wearily as Santi pulled out into traffic. It was early morning, so they’d probably hit the work traffic on the way to the airport. He didn’t care. Santi had been a wheelman for Mikey in earlier times. He was still a great driver.
“Do me a favor,” Mikey said suddenly.
“Sure, boss. What?”
“Drive through town. Past the courthouse.”
Santi didn’t say anything. He just smiled.
* * *
The women who worked in Kemp’s office were just filing in. There was Glory Ramirez and Sari Fiore. Olivia was ahead of them all. And there, behind them, in an old tweed coat, walking slowly with a cane, was Bernie.
“Slow down, okay?” Mikey asked, sounding half out of breath as he watched Bernie’s slow progress to the door. She was hurting. It was a cold, rainy day, and he imagined she was having one of her flares.
He remembered her sitting up with him when he’d had the migraine. He remembered carrying her into the boardinghouse the day they’d met, when she had fallen in front of the car and he thought she was playing him. It seemed so long ago.
She made her way into the building, not looking behind her. She’d screwed her beautiful blond hair up into a bun. She looked tired and in pain, worn-out. He grimaced as he watched her disappear into the office. The door closed behind her.
Mikey felt the loss of connection like a blow to his chest.
“We leaving now, boss?” he asked Mikey.
There was a hesitation, only a very brief one. “Yeah,” Mikey said finally. He slumped a little. “Yeah, we’re leaving. Let’s get to the airport.”
“Sure thing,” Santi said, and sped up past the office building, leaving it and Bernie behind, perhaps forever.
Chapter Fourteen
Bernie, never a late sleeper, woke very early the next morning. She couldn’t get what Sari had said out of her mind. Suppose Jessie had told lies to both her and Mikey? She had been too shy to speak to him about something so intimate, and he would probably have been reluctant to say anything to Bernie about her supposed distaste for his background.
Jessie had been putting on an act. Why? The woman was patently out of place in Jacobsville, which led to a worrying conclusion. What if she was a lookout for that man who was trying to have Mikey killed? It really bothered her.
She got up and dressed, aching and barely able to walk for the pain and stiffness. After a few minutes, she felt better, but she’d still need the cane, even on level ground. Rheumatoid arthritis flares were painful and fatiguing. She took her medicines regularly, but they’d begun to be less effective, as many drugs became over the years. She recalled the wonder shot that was used to control it, but even with a large discount, she’d never be able to afford the monthly expense. It might have made a difference in her quality of
life. Days like this, cold and rainy, were agony to people who lived with arthritis.
* * *
She didn’t tell the other women that she’d walked to work, because they’d have fussed. Any one of them would gladly have offered her a ride, but she wanted to be independent. It wasn’t good to lean on people. Her father had always said that they had to take care of their own problems and not advertise them to the world. It was a burden that honorable people shared. She smiled, remembering the wonderful man who’d raised her. She missed him.
“You’re just on time,” Sari Fiore teased, smiling.
“I’m always on time,” Bernie replied with a small laugh. “I wouldn’t want Mr. Kemp to fire me.”
“No danger of that, as long as you don’t tell Ted Regan that court’s been dismissed,” Olivia said, tongue in cheek.
They all laughed as they filed into the office.
Bernie was the last one inside. She almost stumbled going in, but she regained her footing quickly, holding on to the doorknob. The back of her neck tingled. Odd, she thought, that feeling. But it was probably nothing. She ignored it and went on inside the building.
* * *
Sari was pregnant. It was happy news, and the whole office went wild when they knew. Even Mr. Kemp congratulated her, grinning from ear to ear.
“You’ll find that babies are addictive,” he teased. “Which is why we have another one on the way, too.”
“That’s wonderful,” Sari said, smiling. “I know Violet’s over the moon. Are the twins coping with your toddler?”
“The twins?” Bernie asked curiously.
“He has two Siamese cats,” Sari explained. “He made them mad one day and they tag-teamed biting his ankles and ran under heavy furniture afterward.”
Mr. Kemp chuckled. “They’ve calmed down. Well, a little. Violet learned early that they like salmon, so she keeps cans of it handy.”
They all laughed. Bernie was thinking about children. She’d wanted one so badly with Mikey. Just as well, she realized, that she’d never been intimate with him, considering the way things had turned out.
In his world of glitzy women and casinos, he probably had a procession of beautiful women at his beck and call. Including Jessie.
But she remembered that Sari had told her Mikey was no longer in danger; nor was his boss, Tony Garza. Apparently a group of bosses had decided that Cotillo was calling too much attention to certain underworld figures, and he’d been taken out of the equation. It was called “natural causes,” but Sari said it wasn’t at all, that the mob knew how to cause sudden death that looked natural.
That was Mikey’s world. Death. Violence. Glitter. Of course, she was well out of it. Her health wouldn’t have allowed her to endure the stresses of his profession, much less the strenuous lifestyle he enjoyed.
But she missed him terribly. It had sent her into days of depression when she knew he was gone. He’d left without even bothering to say goodbye. But what, she reasoned, could he have said? That he couldn’t live with a disabled woman, that he preferred her sexy coworker, that Jessie was great in bed? All those things? It would have tormented her forever. No. It was better the way it had happened—a quick ending, as painless as possible. It was over.
Now all she had to do was adjust to her new reality. Maybe one day she could look back and remember a handsome, dashing man who’d taken her places and kissed her as if he’d have died for her mouth, who’d seemed to love her. Maybe she could recall just the joy of being with him, without remembering how it had ended. It would be a pretty memory, tied up with ribbon and tucked away in a scrapbook.
* * *
Mikey watched people come and go in the casino with hardly any interest at all. Beside him, Tony Garza, who was breaking his California trip with a stop in Las Vegas to see Mikey, was sipping a whiskey highball.
“They ever find out who hit Cotillo?” Mikey asked.
“No. And they never will. The New York family arranged it all. Cotillo was about to point the finger at one of their underbosses. It would have devastated the family. So they sent Jack the Mackerel and Billy Tenspot down to visit Cotillo. They had a guy in the coroner’s office swear it was a natural death.”
“What about Cotillo’s family?” Mikey persisted.
“Running scared. It wasn’t that big, and most of them tried to talk Cotillo out of biting off more than he could chew. The New York boss even spoke to him personally and told him how it was. He didn’t listen.”
“Terminal error,” Mikey commented.
“Very.” He sighed. “At least we’re off the hook. I owe you, Mikey. Big-time. You ever need a favor, you know where to find me.”
Mikey shrugged. “No sweat. You’d have done it for me, boss.”
Tony chuckled. “Yeah. I would have.” He paused. “What’s this about some Texas girl you got involved with?”
Mikey’s face closed up. “Closed chapter,” he said tautly.
“I got a good look at Texas women when I gave Merrie Grayling away at her wedding,” he reminded Mikey. “They’re good people.”
“She was. But she couldn’t live with my profession.”
“I heard you couldn’t live with her maybe being an invalid one day.”
Mikey turned. His eyes glittered. “I never said that,” he replied. “Never! It wouldn’t have mattered to me if she couldn’t even walk. I’d have carried her—” He broke off, averting his eyes.
Tony laid a big hand on his shoulder. “Jessie Tennison belongs to the New York boss. She’s his mistress,” he continued. “She made trouble for you because it’s what she does. Nobody likes her, and one day the wife is going to complain loudly enough that the boss will have to do something about her. Something unpleasant. She’s making her own sad future and she doesn’t even know it.”
“I won’t mourn her,” Mikey said.
“Your cousin said she carried tales to both of you,” he said. “She lied and you both believed her.”
Mikey’s face hardened. “Bernie told me herself that she was always on the right side of the law.”
“And you told her that it didn’t matter that she might become disabled one day, yes?”
Mikey’s teeth clenched. “For all the good it did me.”
“It’s your life, paisan,” he continued. “But you’ve been moping around here like a lost soul ever since I walked in the door, when we should both be celebrating. If I were you, I’d go back to Texas and talk to the woman. Really talk to her.”
Mikey grimaced. “I took Jessie out on the town. I know, it was stupid. I was feeling low because of what I’d heard, what Jessie told me that Bernie said about my past. I wanted to feel better, so I took her up to San Antonio for supper. She told Bernie I slept with her. It’s a lie, but Bernie had every reason to believe her. So even if I wanted to go back and talk it out, she’d never trust me again. She’d probably shut the door in my face.”
“There are these things called roses,” Tony mused. “Women go nuts over them. I know my late wife did. Chocolates. Greeting cards. I went through all those things while I was courting her.” His eyes were wistful with memories. “She didn’t even like me at first, but I wore her down. I was a bad man, too, Mikey, and her dad was a cop, but it didn’t matter. She had leukemia,” he added softly. “I took care of her when she had relapses, right up until the last one that took her out. I never minded. She knew it. We loved each other. None of the small stuff mattered. Love kept us together in spite of the difficulties we faced.”
Mikey hadn’t said anything. He just listened. “That’s a lot like me and Bernie,” he said after a minute.
“Yeah. How about that?”
Mikey took a deep breath. “I’ll think about it.” He glanced at the boss. “Roses, huh?”
“Might send yellow ones,” Tony suggested. “Isn’t there some song about yellow roses and Texas?�
��
Mikey actually laughed. It was the first time he had since he’d left Jacobsville.
* * *
It was the middle of the afternoon when the florist brought them in. Judy, who owned the flower shop, came herself, grinning from ear to ear as she carried them straight to a shocked Bernie at her desk and placed them on it.
“Oh!” Bernie’s hand went to her throat. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. There must have been three dozen yellow roses in the arrangement, along with flowers of every single color, and greenery highlighting it all.
“I know, it’s closer to Thanksgiving than spring,” Judy laughed, “but the man said yellow roses, so that’s what you get.”
“The man?” Bernie was dumbfounded. Her coworkers were grinning from ear to ear.
“Read the card,” Judy suggested, indicating it on a plastic stand inside the arrangement.
Bernie pulled it out with hands that held a faint trembling. She opened the envelope. The card only said, “Miss you terribly. Can you forgive?” And it was signed “Mikey.”
Tears were rolling down her cheeks. She read the card again, just to be sure that she wasn’t seeing things.
“Well?” Sari prompted. “What does it say? Who’s it from? Or should we just guess?” she added with a grin.
“Mikey,” Bernie said in a husky tone. “The flowers are from Mikey!”
“Doesn’t he do things in a big way?” Olivia mused, studying the huge arrangement. “Amazing that your back didn’t break under the weight, Judy,” she teased the florist.
“I have liniment,” Judy chuckled.
“They’re so beautiful,” Bernie said, caressing a petal on one of the roses, most of which were in bloom.
“I guess he thinks you are, too, sweetheart, because let me tell you, I could almost retire on what this arrangement cost,” Judy laughed.
Bernie struggled to her feet and hugged the florist. “You always do the most beautiful arrangements, but this one is extraordinary.”