She folded her hands in front of her. “Are you going to tell me what it’s all about? You’ll have to unless you plan to send me home after we eat. When you first answered the phone, I thought you were going to fall over, and I’m sure it would take a lot to make you fall over.”
He didn’t plan to send her away after dinner. “It’s about my mother.”
“Is she okay?”
“My mother died many years ago.”
“I’m so sorry. The phone call...?”
Clearing his throat, he stashed his phone in the pocket of his slacks. “My mother was murdered.”
Gina crossed her hands over her chest. “That’s terrible. How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
“And your father?”
“Long gone before then.”
“What happened?”
“I never really knew. She was shot in the back of the head in an alley.”
Gina had been approaching him slowly from across the room and when she reached him, she placed a hand on his arm. “That must’ve been horrible for you.”
He met her dark eyes and couldn’t look away from the compassion that made them glow. All this mess was going on in her own life and she had feelings to spare for him?
“I want to help you, Josh, like you’ve helped me.”
“Help me? You don’t have to, and I don’t even know that you can. I’ve been living with this hell for twelve years.”
“You’ve been living with it by yourself, haven’t you? Tell me about it. Unburden yourself. You might feel a little better.” She shrugged. “I’m going to find out about it after dinner anyway. I’d rather hear it straight from you than...?”
“Detective Potts.”
“Detective Potts.”
“It’s an ugly story.” He picked up her hand from his arm and kissed the inside of her wrist.
She took his hands and dragged him toward the bed. “Tell me about it, and tell me why you’re meeting Potts tonight. Like you said, I was a little early and we have some time before our dinner reservation.”
He sat beside her on the mattress while she kept possession of his hand, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. “My dad was out of my life by the time I was two and my brother, Jake, was four. My father was a junkie and my mom was, too.”
Gina squeezed his hand but if she kept that up through all the sad parts of his story, she’d cut off his circulation after about ten minutes.
“Where’s your brother now?”
“Prison.”
She blinked a few times and then pressed her lips together.
“When my dad left, my mom waitressed and walked the streets a little to make ends meet—feed us and feed her drug habit. She was still doing drugs and part-time hooking by the time I was a teenager. How she managed to survive that long and keep custody of us is beyond me, but she did. Then her luck ran out.”
“Was she killed by one of her...johns?”
“That’s what the cops thought, but Jake had his own theory. He was sure Mom’s murder had to do with the guy she’d been seeing, Joey O’Hanlon. Joey O disappeared after the murder. Jake kept trying to tell the police about him, but the cops had their narrative and they were sticking to it.”
“Did they have any good reason to stay with their story?”
“One of the working girls on the street saw my mother walk away with a guy who’d been trolling, swore he was a regular john. The cops focused on him but never found him. Unsolved murder, cold case.”
“What happened to your brother? Why is he in prison?”
“He found Joey, claimed he killed him in self-defense but had to take a plea for second-degree murder.”
Gina shook her head. “That’s just all kinds of messed up.”
“But I’ll never forget what Jake told me. He said before he and Joey struggled over the gun, Joey claimed that Mom was murdered over drugs.”
“She was? Was she selling or dealing?”
“No, but Joey O was.” Josh skimmed a hand over his short hair. “We tried to tell the police, but they wouldn’t listen to us.”
“So, you’d already lost your dad, you lost your mom to murder and you lost your older brother to prison.”
“Told you it was a sad story.”
She trailed a hand down his back and he shivered. “What does Potts have?”
“He thinks he knows the killer, after twelve years as a cold case.”
“Then you absolutely have to meet with him, and I’ll gladly give over our dessert and coffee time so you can get some closure.”
“Closure. I guess we all need some of that.” He kissed the tips of her fingers and pushed up from the mattress.
* * *
JOSH SURVEYED THE restaurant and was glad he’d changed clothes. Plenty of men were wearing jeans, but they’d paired them with silk shirts in bright hues, unbuttoned to create a V on their chests and adorned with several gold chains. Not his scene, but his black slacks and white shirt fit in with all the peacocks.
Gina had ordered a mojito again but he stuck with beer. Josh liked his food—and his women—spicy, so the Cuban dishes—and Gina—made his mouth water. They both ordered the ropa vieja and spent most of the meal talking about Isla Perdida and RJ.
“I feel so blessed that RJ is a happy boy, and he makes friends easily. We already had Diego, a little friend of his, over to Mom’s for a playdate.”
“Does he ask about his father?”
“Did you? You said your father was out of your life by the time you were two. RJ was about the same age.”
Josh chased a kernel of rice around his plate with his fork. “I don’t remember. I’m sure the questions didn’t come until later, when I got to school and saw other kids with fathers. I think a boy will always miss a father figure in his life.”
“Your mother never remarried?”
His lip curled. “She and my father weren’t married and while she brought a lot of men around our apartment, she never married and I’d hardly call them father figures.”
“RJ would look for his father, and his grandfather. He’d say their names. I tried to explain to him they were gone.” She swirled her drink. “I don’t know how much of that he took in. I’m gearing up for the questions later, and I honestly don’t know how I’m going to answer them. How’d your mother handle it?”
Giving up on the rice, Josh stabbed a bean. “She told me and Jake that our father was a no-good bum and we were lucky he was out of our lives.”
“That’s one option.” Gina pushed away her plate and asked a passing waitress for the dessert menu.
Rolling his wrist inward to check his watch, Josh said, “It’s almost ten. Potts will be just in time to join us for coffee.”
They ordered a key lime pie to share and two cups of Cuban coffee. Halfway through the pie and two sips into the sweet brew, Josh noticed the waitress leading a short, broad African American man with graying hair to their table.
Josh jumped up from his chair and extended his hand. “Detective Potts?”
“Good to meet you, Mr. Elliott.”
“Josh. You can call me Josh and this is Gina.”
When he was finished shaking Josh’s hand, Potts engulfed Gina’s in his clasp. “I hate to interrupt your dinner like this, but it seems like we’re both on tight schedules.”
“I’m glad you made it down here. Do you want some coffee? Dessert?”
“I ordered a cup of Cuban from the waitress while she walked me over here.”
Josh crumpled up his napkin and tossed it next to his plate. “You know the name of my mother’s killer?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Complicated? Did Joey O’Hanlon have one of his dirtbag pals do it? I know he
had an alibi, but my brother always thought he was to blame.”
“Your brother’s up for parole in a year.”
“You sayin’ you can help with that?”
“I might be able to, but Joey wasn’t the one who ordered your mother’s death, although he was indirectly responsible for it.”
“I knew it.”
“Joey O was a small-time drug dealer, which I’m sure you know by now. What you probably don’t know is that Joey was stealing from his supplier, doing a little selling on his own.”
“That’s dangerous business.”
“It’s all dangerous business.” Potts stopped talking and smiled his thanks at the waitress who delivered his coffee. He took a careful sip from the dainty cup. “Anyway, the supplier caught on and his boss caught on and so on and so on, and someone came out to pay Joey O a visit.”
“He must’ve known what was coming down because he took off.”
“That’s right.” Potts cradled the cup in his palm. “But your mother didn’t. The hit man sent to take care of Joey couldn’t find him, but he did find a substitute.”
Josh’s eye twitched. “Do you know the name of the hit man?”
“No, and we may never locate him, but we know who ordered the hit and you may get some satisfaction out of knowing that person is dead.”
“Who was it? Who ordered the hit on my mother?”
“A big-time drug dealer—Hector De Santos.”
Chapter Eight
Potts’s words punched Josh in the gut but before he even had a second to react, Gina dropped her cup and it broke right in half, the dark liquid pooling in the saucer.
It was enough to distract Potts from Josh, giving him time to compose his features. So, he’d killed Gina’s husband and her father had killed his mother...indirectly. A match made in heaven.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” Detective Potts reached across the table, picked up a piece of the cup and placed it in the saucer.
“I—I’m fine.” Her face drained of all color, Gina grabbed her napkin and blotted up the drops of coffee dotting the table.
Josh coughed. “Hector De Santos. Isn’t he the head of some big drug cartel?”
“He was. As I mentioned, he’s dead now—no big loss.”
“A guy like that was concerning himself with some small-time drug dealer in the Bronx?”
Potts spread his hands. “We all have to start somewhere. De Santos was still solidifying his empire twelve years ago, and that’s one way he rose to power so quickly. He didn’t mess around. You toyed with Hector De Santos, you paid the price.”
“So, even if the NYPD back then had made this connection, there wasn’t much they could’ve done about it. The triggerman was probably on his way back to Colombia within hours of murdering my mother.”
“Could be and I’m sorry about that, but I thought you’d want some closure and I meant what I said about your brother, Jake. Tough rap for him when any one of us might’ve done the same thing to someone who’d wrecked our mothers’ lives.”
His mother had wrecked her life long before Joey O crashed onto the scene. “I appreciate the effort, Detective Potts.”
“Allen.” The detective pulled a card from his wallet and slid it across the table to Josh. “Let me know if you need anything and thank you for your service, chief.”
The men shook hands, and the detective nodded at Gina as he pushed back from the table.
When Potts walked away, Gina folded her hands on the table, an incredible stillness falling over her as if she were resting in the eye of a storm.
There would be no storm.
Josh dabbed at a crumb from the pie plate with the pad of his finger. When he caught it, he sucked it into his mouth, meeting Gina’s gaze for the first time since Potts delivered the bombshell.
She blinked her long lashes once but held his stare. “You don’t seem very surprised.”
“To hear your father’s name from the detective’s lips?” He hunched his shoulders. “It threw me for a loop, but it kind of makes sense. It’s like some perfect circle.” Gina didn’t realize how perfect a circle it was.
“I’m—I’m so...”
He held up a hand. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry. It’s not your fault that your father was a drug dealer. It’s what you do going forward that counts.”
“I will do anything I can to help you, starting with Isla Perdida.” She grabbed his hands. “Did it help seeing Potts? Did it give you that closure he mentioned?”
“It gave me...resolve.”
* * *
THE NEXT DAY, Josh looked into the small, upturned face, dark eyes wide with curiosity, and cleared his throat. What were you supposed to say to a three-year-old? Was RJ too young to watch basketball? Too old for nursery rhymes?
RJ tugged on Josh’s sleeve and pointed to a plastic truck on the floor.
“Is that your truck?” What a dumb question. Whose truck would it be? His mother’s? His grandmother’s?
RJ didn’t seem to mind the stupid query as he nodded and smiled. He also tugged on Josh’s sleeve again.
Josh dropped to his knees and placed a hand on top of the truck. He rolled it on the tile floor, and RJ scooted along beside it, tossing obstacles in its course. Josh dragged the toy over every magazine, coaster and pillow RJ put in the truck’s way and even started making roaring truck noises in the process.
The heavy scent of musky perfume invaded his nostrils, and Josh twisted his head over his shoulder, his nose almost colliding with Joanna De Santos’s kneecap.
She raised her penciled-in brows. “Getting to know RJ?”
“Just...uh—” he lifted the truck into the air, its wheels still spinning “—playing with the truck.”
“You and Gina were awfully private about your dating. You’ve been seeing each other a few months and are ready to jet off on vacation together and this is the first time I’m even heard your name.”
“Mom, I told you we wanted to keep things low-key.” Breezing into the room, pulling a suitcase behind her, Gina nodded toward RJ, now constructing a full-scale obstacle course for the truck.
Joanna fluffed her dyed red hair around her shoulders. “When Gina told me you two were heading to the Bahamas together, I insisted that she introduce you to us before she left.”
“A good idea and understandable.” Josh crawled forward a few feet, pushing the truck ahead of him and aiming it at the tunnel RJ had created by propping up two cushions against each other.
“Yeah, well, Gina doesn’t have the best taste in men.”
“Mom!” Gina rolled her eyes at Josh. “This is exactly why I didn’t bring him around. Would you please let me tell my own life story in my own way?”
“Sure, sure.” Joanna flicked her long fingernails at Gina. “You two go off and have fun. God knows, you deserve it.”
“Remember, just take RJ to his daycare like usual. I talked to the mother of Diego, his friend, about a playdate, so you can follow up with that. Remember, she brought him over here a few weeks ago.” Gina leaned over and kissed her mother’s cheek. “I’ll text you when we get there, but let’s not do any video chatting with RJ. I don’t want him to be confused.”
Crossing her arms, Joanna said, “Check, check, check.”
Josh completed the obstacle course as RJ coached him. Then he ruffled the kid’s hair and pushed to his feet just as Gina crouched down next to her son.
She touched noses with RJ before dragging him into her lap. “Be a good boy for Mami, and I’ll bring you a present.”
RJ curled his arms around Gina’s neck and said, “Can I play with Diego?”
“I think so, and I won’t be gone long so if Mami doesn’t take you to Diego’s, I will when I come back.”
RJ cupped a hand over G
ina’s ear and whispered.
She smiled and kissed him. “I think he’d like that.”
RJ jumped to his feet and scampered into the family room.
Earlier Josh had poked his head in that room, with its multitude of toys and a big-screen TV with beanbag chairs and game consoles—a little boy’s paradise. Grandma must be footing the bill for that, too.
Two seconds later, RJ bolted out of the room, clutching something in his small hands. He raced to Josh, arms outstretched.
“Whaddya got there?”
“A truck.” RJ opened his hands where a red truck balanced on his palms. “A toy for the airplane.”
“Thanks, RJ. That’s just what I need.”
He heard a soft snort behind him. Joanna didn’t trust him for some reason—not that she should, but they couldn’t tell Gina’s mother the truth. If Gina’s mother knew who he was and what he’d done, she would be doing more than snorting at his back.
Gina came up behind her son and combed her fingers through his messy hair. “That was thoughtful of you, RJ. Now, give me a big kiss before I leave.”
She scooped him up in her arms and they traded kisses back and forth.
Whatever else Ricky Rojas had done, he’d given Gina a son and she obviously didn’t regret that. Did she regret anything about that marriage? She’d said very little about Rojas, and Josh hadn’t wanted to encourage her in case it led to the truth of what had happened that day in Colombia. Even after Potts’s revelation last night, Josh wasn’t ready to reveal he’d been the one looking at Ricky through the scope.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drop you off at the airport?”
“No, Mom. We’re good. Just take care of RJ.”
“Of course.”
Ten minutes later, they were clambering into a taxi, their bags in the back. Josh collapsed against the seat, feeling as if he’d just navigated through an obstacle course—just like that truck. “Your mom really didn’t like me, did she?”
“She’s just...protective of me.”
“Protective?” Joanna’s criticism of Gina had left a sour taste in his mouth—not that he didn’t agree with it. “Your mother doesn’t have much room to talk about bad taste in men.”
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