Date with the Devil (Crimson Romance)
Page 6
“What happened?” he asked again, his voice neutral.
“Went to see a contact,” she said. She moved away from him, using one arm to lower herself into the chair by the window, the other arm clenched against her side.
“Attacked in an alley near where I met my contact,” she said.
“Louisville slugger?” he asked.
She nodded.
“If it was Vlad, you’d be dead,” he pointed out.
“You know, I add a surcharge to your bill every time I get the shit knocked out of me,” she reminded him. Her tone made him feel a lot better. If she were seriously hurt she wouldn’t be thinking about money. “Nadine Grossman is the only person in this city who knows I’m asking questions.” Then, just as he expected, she added, “Other than you, and whichever of your colleagues you’ve shared the information with.”
“I’m pretty sure none of my colleagues attacked you with a baseball bat,” he said patiently. “But let me look into it. It’s more likely that Ms. Grossman mentioned our visit to someone of a suspicious nature. Maybe the attacker was supposed to pry some information out of you.”
“Could be,” she said.
He relented, knowing she wasn’t in any mood to play the guessing game. But he would hypothesize plenty on his own time. Who had sent the attacker, and why? What had he hoped to accomplish? The questions would keep him occupied as he lay in his bed tonight, not sleeping. He hadn’t slept since Alexis —
Don’t go there.
He had a plan. It was a good plan. All he had to do was see it through. This was no different from any other case. He’d close it, no matter what.
“What’s next?” he asked.
“I’m going to visit the appraiser.”
The appraiser. He shifted uneasily.
“I need a weapon,” she said.
“Something other than your right hook?” he said, baiting her out of habit. “You want a nine?”
“Yep. I’d prefer a Beretta.”
“Look at this,” he said, removing his Sig Sauer from the small of his back and holding it out to her. “See how light this is?”
“Very nice,” she said, not touching the pistol, as if she suspected he wanted to get her fingerprints on it so he could plant it at a crime scene. Where was the trust? “I like my Beretta just fine.”
“Whatever. Can you stay out of trouble until I take care of it?”
She gave him a look. Okay, he was the one who’d dragged her into the middle of the shit and now he was telling her not to get her shoes dirty.
“I can try,” she said.
He slipped quietly out of the room, the door snicking shut behind him.
• • •
Victoria bolted the door behind Michael and put the chain on. Not that that would keep him out. But she believed in discouraging the less persistent demons. She hoped the weapon he eventually procured for her hadn’t been used in the commission of any major felony. She still hadn’t figured out why he’d manipulated her into this. She wasn’t here because she was the best he’d ever worked with, she knew that. Even if it was true, and it might very well be, it wasn’t sufficient.
She glanced at the clock. It was an hour earlier back home, which meant Rosemary would still be awake. Settling herself on the bed, trying to find a comfortable position that didn’t stress her ribs, Victoria picked up the phone and dialed the number she knew by heart.
When Rosemary answered, she said, “I need some help.” Unlike Victoria, Rosemary was always ready and willing to help out any compadre in trouble. Some people never learned, no matter how long or painful the experience.
“Go ahead,” Rosemary said. Maybe she’d been waiting for Victoria’s call, being psychic and all. Victoria heard a scrabbling sound, which was not Rosemary reaching for a notebook and pen. Then she heard the flare of a lighter.
When her sister was stoked and ready, Victoria said, “I want to know as much as I can about the treasure of Constantinople. Its original owner — the person who commissioned it — was a princess named Simonis.” She heard Rosemary take a deep drag. “Will you write that down?”
“I can manage, hon,” Rosemary said. “What’s this for?”
“The project,” Victoria said shortly. “You can probably start with a Byzantine history professor on campus, or maybe someone in the art history department.” The university in the center of town might annoy the locals but it had its uses.
“Okay,” Rosemary said. “I’ll get the info for you, whatever it takes.”
Victoria had a vision of Rosemary seducing a hapless history professor on his desk.
“All you have to do is ask,” she emphasized. “This is not classified information.”
“You bet,” Rosemary said, and Victoria supposed she was mentally picking out the perfect thong and pushup bra combination. What the hell. So someone was going to get lucky. Wasn’t Victoria’s job to put a stop to it.
“So how’s it going?” Rosemary asked. “I had the weirdest vision last night — ”
Of the things Victoria felt like hearing, Rosemary’s latest vision did not qualify for a position on the list. Victoria wished she’d done the damned research herself instead of picking up the phone. The New York Public Library would have had everything she needed to know. She knew better than to argue, though. “Tell me about this vision.”
“There’s a man — a manipulator — behind the scenes,” Rosemary said.
Victoria couldn’t tell if this was a question or a comment, so she said, “Okay.”
Rosemary swallowed and then she said, “In the vision — he’s going to get me, Tory. That’s what I saw. He’s going to get me. What do I do?”
Chapter 9
Michael hadn’t delivered her weapon yet, so although Victoria was dressed, she still felt naked as she hit the stairs down to the subway platform.
What do I do, Rosemary had asked last night, about a nightmare, gossamer, insubstantial, probably meaningless. Even if Rosemary’s predications had an uncanny way of coming true, Victoria assumed her accuracy had more to do with her being good at figuring out human relationships than it had to do with some inexplicable psychic ability.
Shoot on sight, she’d told Rosemary, and Rosemary had hung up on her.
Now Victoria pushed open the heavy glass door that led to Bonida Galleries. Stanchev had given up the name when she’d talked to him, but she was suspicious of why he’d done so. Of course, she was suspicious of why anyone did anything, so that was nothing unusual.
She’d put on her black suit and bought a burgundy leather briefcase at one of the shops on Madison Avenue, using the credit card she’d lifted from Michael’s wallet. She’d been enough out of practice that she was afraid he’d notice, but he hadn’t. Which meant her skills hadn’t gotten as rusty as she feared. Or else he’d relaxed his vigilance around her. Or maybe he’d noticed but for some obscure reason hadn’t called her on it —
Christ. She was getting to be as bad as he was. She leaned over a display of glittering pretties in a glass case. She sighed, apparently with enough force to draw the attention of a dapper little man who came through a swinging door from the back room, a welcoming smile on his face. He approached her and said, “Yes, good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon,” she said, with one of her own warm smiles. Michael claimed she had no such thing, but what did he know. “I’m here on behalf of a client.”
The dapper man inclined his head in a regal gesture that indicated she had his attention.
“It’s a little complicated,” she said, guileless and open. Well, not guileless and open but pretending to be. People would put up with a lot when you told them it was complicated. They wanted to prove that it might be complicated to you but it was really quite simple to them and they’d be happy to set you straight.
“My client has particular interest in Byzantine pieces.” She hesitated, then added, “I can assure you he’s quite discreet.”
The dapper man looked at her, no longer guileless and open. “Byzantine?”
Classic stalling tactic. Why did he think stalling was called for?
“My client is very interested in anything Byzantine,” she affirmed. She knew how to stall, too: say the same thing in a different way. “He wanted to be sure that if any artifacts ever came on the market that he would be allowed to bid.” There. That covered a multitude of possibilities. She gave the dapper man another warm smile. He blinked. Then he nodded, looking over her shoulder for a second before bringing his attention back to her face.
He cleared his throat and said, speaking very clearly and distinctly, “What made you think of Bonida Galleries for that?”
Her smile became less warm. Was he wired, or was the shop? Why hadn’t she expected the surveillance? Dammit — Michael hadn’t warned her. He had to know the appraiser was under surveillance. She tapped the top of the display case. No. If he had, he would have told her that the shop was under surveillance and then she would have taken precautions. Unless he didn’t think her precautions would be good enough. Always possible; a lot had changed since she’d been in the business. But then why had he come to her in the first place? Because he could predict what she would do.
Which meant —
He knew she’d find out who the appraiser was. That was basic, something she had to do to get a line on the missing collection.
Which meant —
Which meant he had intended for her to show up here and get taped. He had set her up. Again.
“Thank you,” she told the dapper man, and left the shop.
• • •
The sick feeling in her stomach didn’t dissipate as she walked north. She tried to think of another explanation. He was outside the Bureau on this project, so maybe he hadn’t known. But it he did know, what was the purpose letting her show up on tape? Just walking into a shop and asking about Byzantine artifacts wasn’t anything illegal. Unless he wanted his colleagues to turn their attention to her. So he could —
So he could what?
Or maybe he merely wanted to alert his colleagues to the fact that she was working on the project. Why? Was he using her as bait? For what?
She hardly noticed the crowds until someone jostled her arm shoving past her. Apparently she wasn’t moving fast enough. That reminded her that she couldn’t afford to be distracted. She needed to focus, be on her guard. Especially now that she suspected Michael was setting her up.
Awareness without paranoia was what she told her students. Today she felt paranoia was probably called for.
She pushed aside her preoccupation with Michael and focused on the next step, turning down a familiar street and walking toward a familiar building.
Detective Morningside’s battered gray desk looked significantly more battered than it used to. The detective himself also looked significantly more battered. Hell, it had been a long decade for everyone.
Morningside wore his brown hair cropped shorter than usual, probably because of the amount of gray that showed, which no doubt he was too vain to color. He still had the picture of his wife and young kids on his desk although she knew for a fact his wife had left him and the kids were grown.
Denise Vanderveldt, the unit clerk, gave Victoria a slight smile before turning back to her computer. She’d had the hots for Morningside back when Victoria had been a more frequent visitor. Maybe she still did. Maybe no one had ever figured out how to outsmart biology. Dammit.
“I thought you were smart enough to get out of the game,” Morningside said when he spotted her. He leaned back in his chair, which gave an ominous creak, and laced his fingers behind his thick neck. He didn’t ask her to sit down.
“You know how it goes,” she said.
“Tough to be straight,” he said, not at all sympathetic. “Work hard, live paycheck to paycheck, who knows if there’ll even be a pension at the end of it?”
“Yeah,” she said, raising her brow at him, giving him, the chair and the desk a once-over that said everything she thought about how hard he was working.
“Bite me,” he said, reading her look with perfect understanding. “What the hell have you been doing for the last however the hell long it’s been?” Not that he cared. Just that talking to her made a break from the job. Had to pass the time to retirement somehow.
“I own a martial arts school,” she said. “And before you get started, yeah, I can still kick your ass.”
“Hey, I was wounded at the time. That how you win all your fights, shoot your opponent first?”
“Wasn’t me who shot you,” she reminded him. He shrugged. It all ran together after a while.
“What’re you here for?” he asked, ending the small talk.
He probably wasn’t going to buy the line that she missed him and wanted to see his smile one more time.
“You had a triple homicide here a couple weeks ago.” The clacking from Denise’s keyboard stopped the moment Victoria made the statement. Victoria didn’t mind Denise listening in. In fact, she was counting on it.
“I ain’t a homicide detective,” Morningside pointed out, as if she didn’t know or might have forgotten.
“I don’t care about the dead bodies,” she said. “When have I ever cared about the dead bodies? I just want the goodies.” The homicide detectives would have alerted the burglary squad to pass along any information about the Byzantine collection that they might have, and to lean on their CIs.
“This the Greek church case?” Morningside asked, as if there were so many triple homicides on any given day a person could easily get confused. Well, in this city.
“Yes.” It wasn’t Greek, but close enough.
Morningside rolled his eyes and shifted some papers on his desk. He said, “If I never hear another word about that case it’ll be too soon. All over the goddamned media and we look like the Keystone Kops. For once I’m glad I’m not Homicide. We got nothing. A big fat zero. And if even we did have something, I wouldn’t give it to you if you paid me a million bucks.”
“Yeah, that’d be cost-effective,” she said. “Nothing from the fences on the antiques? No suspects?”
“Who the hell hired you for this one?” Morningside asked, narrowing his eyes at her. “The church? I should tell ’em you’re just looking to bill a couple hundred bucks a day for services rendered and a per diem.”
“That’s me, doing my best to earn a living without actually working. Oh, no, wait, that’s you,” she said.
“Bite me,” he said, then waved one of his ham-like hands at her. “Get the hell out of here.”
“Oh, that’s right, you’re trying to work. You hear anything you think might be helpful, here’s my cell phone number.” She left her card on the corner of Denise’s workstation.
But he was already bent over the manila folders on his desk, studiously ignoring her. Just like old times.
• • •
Michael crossed against the light. When he and Victoria used to work together, they worked together. Now they might be working the same case, but it wasn’t together. The familiar anger surged through his veins, bitter and useless. How many years had the anger eaten away at him? It never lessened, never changed. Just anger, useless but destructive. He’d tried to release the anger. He’d tried to get on with this life, just as she had. For a long time he thought he was successful.
Until Alexis —
He pushed the thought away. He knew what he owed Alexis. Wasn’t he repaying her the only way he knew how? Reparation for his sins, though nothing he did would bring her back to life. Anot
her grave he’d stood over, thinking there should have been more time.
He passed by Bonida Galleries. Victoria had gone there this morning. Now his colleagues would know. Now his colleagues would act. A slight hitch in his step as he thought about Victoria, unsuspecting. Although, in fact, Victoria was never unsuspecting.
He slipped into the bar, already populated even that early in the day. A thick haze of cigarette smoke showed no one paid much attention to local no-smoking ordinances. He was going to need a shower after he left.
Sheila had pierced her tongue, which went well with the stud in her nostril and the ring in her belly button. She didn’t actually wear earrings in her ears. She had tattoos on her knuckles — L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E — but nowhere else. At least nowhere else that she’d ever shown him.
A leathery worn-out old man gave him a bleary-eyed look, then turned away, hunching over his drink. Victoria used to say any idiot could make Michael for a fed even when he wasn’t trying, and apparently that was true. Not that it mattered: he’d stopped doing undercover work years ago. But it wasn’t the criminal element who’d made him and sent everything to hell.
With the ease of long practice, he moved past the memory and greeted Sheila, who gave him a wary nod in return. She moved to the end of the bar, away from the old man who looked too asleep to eavesdrop but you never knew.
“Need a favor,” he said. She licked her lower lip, showing off the gold stud. He’d heard that such piercings enhanced the pleasure of a blow job, though he hadn’t actually experienced it and didn’t really want to find out the truth from Sheila. He tried to imagine talking Victoria into a tongue piercing. Not even with a gun to her head, he supposed. Still, she managed to do all right with her mouth. He’d never had any reason to complain, personally. What they’d had had been hot and furious and why the hell she had walked away —
You know it has to be you or Jasmine, she’d said, but that was wrong, that was bullshit. It didn’t have to be a choice. He could have changed. She hadn’t even given him a chance.
I will do whatever it takes to keep her safe, she’d said, and apparently that meant never speaking to him again. But she had spoken to him again, when Jasmine was three years old. And everything went so badly wrong that the pain of it still exploded in his chest and took his breath away.