Double Espresso (A Loretta Kovacs thriller)

by Anthony Bruno

  She turned around and looked at Marvelli between the seats. “So what’re you thinking? I know you’re cooking something up.”

  Marvelli opened his door and started to step out. “Meet me at the White Castle up on Kennedy Boulevard.”

  “What?”

  “The burger place. You know. It’s just over the border in Union City.”

  “I know where it is,” she said, about to be exasperated with him. “Who’re we meeting now?”

  “No one,” he said. “I’m just hungry.”

  “It’s almost two o’clock in the morning. How can you eat now?”

  He shrugged. “Just meet me there. You don’t have to eat. You can just have a coffee.”

  “I wish,” she muttered.

  “Oh, I forgot you gave it up. You can have a soda or something.” He started to close the door.

  “Hang on,” she said. “What about Sammy Teitelbaum? What’re we gonna do about him?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get there.” He shut the door and walked away.

  Loretta glared at his back, but her eyes were drooping, and her head was fuzzy. She wanted to get to bed.

  “Have a coffee,” she grumbled sarcastically. “Sure. Why not? Maybe I should have two.”

  8

  When Loretta arrived at the White Castle, Marvelli was already sitting at the stainless-steel counter along the front windows, eating. He waved to her through the plate-glass window as soon as she got out of her car, his mouth full of something, chewing away like a cow in cud heaven. She dragged herself across the blacktop lot, yawning all the way, and pushed through the steamy glass door.

  Two Hispanic women—one in her teens, the other in her fifties—stared at her with bored expectation from behind the counter. Their dark hair was imprisoned in nets, and the teenager’s eyeliner was melting in the heat rising from the grill. Two neat lines of little square hamburgers sat heating on the grill next to a mound of chopped fried onions. Some of the burgers already had buns balanced on their backs like turtle shells, ready to be scooped up and put together at a moment’s notice.

  But the smell of the burgers did nothing for Loretta. It was the smell of the coffee dripping into a clear Pyrex pot that caught her attention. The aroma tantalized, teased, and mocked her all at the same time. She felt like a junkie in a drugstore.

  Other than Marvelli, there was only one other customer, a bus driver engrossed in a newspaper laid out on the counter. Swirls of steam quietly rose from a jumbo cup of coffee poised in his hand. He was a big man with a big gut and a big butt. The wages of sitting behind the wheel of a bus all day, Loretta thought.

  Marvelli was hovering over a cardboard tray full of those little square hamburgers, each one in a little white open-sided box. Loretta counted the boxes, both full and empty. An even dozen. Plus two orders of fries and a humongous paper cup full of soda that she could have stuck her fist in halfway to her elbow. He was still wearing that funny little smile that he’d had back at the parking garage.

  “Are you pregnant?” she asked as she took the stool next to him. “Looks like you’re eating for two. Or three. Or four.”

  “What’re you talking about?” he said, taking another bite. “It’s not that much.”

  “Twelve hamburgers isn’t much?”

  “Nah. They’re small.” He picked out a fresh one and held it out to her. “Here. You want one?”

  She shook her head. “No thanks.” It had taken her years to stop midnight snacking, and she still broke the rules now and then, but not for greasy burgers in the wee hours. Ice cream, of course, was a different story.

  “You want anything?” he asked. “A coffee.”

  She shook her head.

  “A soda?”

  Cola had caffeine, she thought, and she shook her head again. “I don’t want anything. I’m fine,” she said. “So tell me. Why do you look so happy?”

  “I’ve got an idea on how we can catch Sammy.” He shoved the remainder of the burger he was holding into his mouth and held up one finger to say that he needed a minute to swallow. He was eating like an anaconda. At this rate his descendants would eventually develop the ability to unhinge their jaws so they could eat an entire roast pig in one bite.

  “So what’s your idea?” she said, propping her chin on her fist.

  Marvelli picked up another burger. “If Sammy’s going to the Northwest, I know one place where he’ll definitely put in a stop: Seattle.”

  “Why Seattle?”

  “Because my sister-in-law Jennifer lives there. Rene’s kid sister. She and Sammy are married, but they separated when he went to prison. He’s still crazy about her, though. Obsessive crazy. If he’s anywhere in the area, he’ll definitely look her up.”

  “So what’re you gonna do? Overnight your sister-in-law a pair of cuffs and tell her to hold Sammy if he shows up?”

  “No,” Marvelli said, pausing to suck the straw in his bucket of soda. His eyeballs nearly touched, he sucked so hard. “I think we should go out there and wait for him, use Jennifer as bait.”

  “What do you mean ‘we’?” Loretta didn’t want to get her hopes up.

  “I can’t do this one alone, Loretta. Sammy knows me. Once he spots me, he’ll head for the hills. But he doesn’t know you, and he probably won’t suspect a woman.”

  “Julius will never go for it,” she said.

  “Yeah, he will,” Marvelli said. “You heard him yourself. If Sammy pulls off this hit, the Bureau of Parole will get crucified, especially by the feds. Julius will find the money to send us out there when I tell him about my sister-in-law. Don’t worry.” Marvelli chomped into another burger.

  Loretta was skeptical. “How do you know Sammy hasn’t already been to see … what’s her name?”

  “Jennifer.”

  “Maybe he’s already been there and gone.”

  “I sincerely doubt it. Annette, my mother-in-law, talks to Jennifer every other day. They talked last night. If Jennifer had seen Sammy, I would’ve heard about it.” He rolled his eyes. “Believe me.”

  “I take it your mother-in-law doesn’t like Sammy?”

  “She despises him. Hated him from the moment she met him. She’s afraid he and Jennifer will get back together. Those two have that kind of relationship. One minute she loves him, the next minute she wants to kill him.”

  “I had one of those once,” Loretta muttered. “What happened?”

  “When I realized I was spending more time wanting to kill him, I decided I’d better leave him before I actually did it.”

  “Good move.” Marvelli slid another burger out of its box.

  Loretta looked over her shoulder at the globe-shaped coffeepots sitting on the big double-decker coffeemaker. She could have a decaf, she thought, but that wouldn’t help her kick the habit. It would just make her want a real coffee. Better to just go cold turkey, she decided.

  “So how long has Jennifer lived in Seattle?” Loretta asked.

  Marvelli shrugged. “Only a couple of months. She said she wanted to be on her own. I guess she needed some space.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, she got married right out of high school. She and her bum of a husband were only together about a year when he went to jail. In the meantime Rene started getting real sick, and Jennifer moved in with us to help take care of her. It was like one thing right after another for her. After Rene died, the kid needed a break. I hated to see her go, but …” He shrugged. “Hey, what can you do?”

  Loretta noticed that Marvelli had stopped eating. He was staring down at the clutter of empty burger boxes, his face suddenly sad and vague. Loretta knew what he was thinking. He was thinking about Rene.

  Loretta’s brow wrinkled. She felt sorry for him. He wasn’t over his wife yet, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he never got over her. In his mind he was still married to Rene. No woman was going to get anywhere with him. She sighed and glanced back at those coffeepots again, four of them, two on the top shelf, two on the bot
tom. Her new forbidden fruit. She closed her eyes and rubbed her face. God, she needed something.

  “Can I have one of these?” she suddenly said, reaching over and taking one of the burgers.

  “Sure, go ahead,” he said. “Take what you want. There’s plenty.” He emerged from his fog for only a moment, then went right back in, staring out the window at the starless night.

  She looked at him sideways as she bit into the burger. She was eating, and he wasn’t. Great, she thought. He was going to mourn for the rest of his life, and she was going to keep eating. Wonderful.

  “Guess we’ll have to leave for Seattle pretty quick,” she said. “Ummm …” He was a million miles away. “I don’t supposed the feds out there will be any more helpful than they are here.”

  “Ummm …”

  She stared at him glumly as she chewed, then reached for his gigantic cup and helped herself to a sip. He didn’t seem to notice. She finished the tiny burger and picked up another one. “So tell me,” she said. “What’s your sister-in-law like?”

  “Hmmm?”

  Loretta sighed. “Never mind.”

  9

  The sky had been a bit overcast when their plane touched down at Seattle-Tacoma International, but now it had darkened to the color of pewter. Loretta and Marvelli were in the back of a cab, heading up Fifteenth Avenue. Loretta scanned the sidewalks as they whizzed by, taking in the locals—men in business suits, old Japanese ladies in long skirts, scruffy street people wearing newspapers tied around their legs, teenagers with nose rings and brow rings and belly-button rings and hair the colors of Fruit Loops. She tilted her head back and stared up at the gloomy sky through the rear window. How the hell did a place with this much crappy weather get so hip? she wondered.

  Marvelli was staring intently out his window, his brow deeply furrowed. He’d been pretty quiet since they’d left New Jersey. Loretta was beginning to worry about him.

  “Did you tell your sister-in-law we’d be coming straight from the airport?” she asked.

  Marvelli shook his head. “I didn’t tell her anything.”

  Loretta sat up. “She doesn’t know we’re coming?”

  He shook his head again. “I didn’t want to tell her, just in case she told Sammy.”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  Loretta stared at his grim profile. Maybe he was concerned that they’d walk right in on Sammy, that they’d have to take him there and then, bim-bam-boom. Loretta hoped it wouldn’t be that easy. She wanted to see a little of Seattle before they had to go back.

  The cab pulled to a stop at a red light. “It’s up on the next block,” the cabbie said, turning around in his seat and flashing a gold-toothed grin. His skin was golden, and his features were Asian, but he was wearing a multicolored Rastafarian knit cap so stuffed with dreadlocks it puffed out from his head like a tin of Jiffy-Pop popcorn hot from the stove. His photo ID on the dashboard identified him as Cedric B. Ong.

  The traffic light turned green, and Cedric stomped on the accelerator. At the middle of the block he pulled into the right lane, looked over his shoulder for oncoming traffic, then made an abrupt U-turn, screeching to a stop on the other side of the street. He flipped the lever on the meter and looked back at them over his blue-tinted granny glasses, flashing his gold teeth. “Here you go, mon.”

  Cedric was obviously proud of his daredevil driving skills, but neither Loretta nor Marvelli were impressed. They both lived across the river from Manhattan, and by New York standards Cedric was still in the minors.

  Marvelli handed him a few folded bills. “Keep the change,” he said.

  “I and I thank you, mon,” Cedric said with a grateful nod, but Loretta could tell that he was a little disappointed that he hadn’t gotten a rise out of them.

  “Next time try driving on the sidewalk,” Loretta said as she slid across the seat, dragging her garment bag with her.

  Cedric B. Ong scratched whatever he had living under that hat, looking a bit confused as he pulled away.

  “This way,” Marvelli said. He hoisted his oversized gym bag over his shoulder and started walking toward a storefront. He was wearing a pair of pressed, dry-cleaned jeans and a white-on-white pinstriped dress shirt with a huge high-roll collar under a double-breasted salt-and-pepper sports coat. He just might fit in here, Loretta thought. He was so out of date he was practically retro.

  A mechanized sign in the storefront window showed an old-fashioned percolator tipping back and forth, pouring invisible coffee into a huge French coffee cup. “The Grind” was spelled out in jagged lettering that was supposed to indicate a caffeine jolt. As they approached the front door, a young man dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt came out, and immediately Loretta was overtaken by the pungent aroma of espresso beans. It went right to her head and gripped her frontal lobes. She loved espresso. She wanted some badly.

  “This is not gonna be easy,” she muttered as Marvelli pushed through the door.

  “What’d you say?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  The Grind was a homey place with exposed brick walls, a scarred but well-varnished hardwood floor, and ten mismatched tin-topped kitchen tables with vinyl-seat chairs. It was early afternoon so there were only a few patrons, most of them reading. Two young guys were surfing the Internet on the two computers over in the corner.

  “Frank! What the hell’re you doing here?” The accent and volume level were unmistakably New Jersey. Loretta glanced up to see who belonged to the voice.

  Standing behind the glass pastry case was a woman in her midtwenties who was drop-dead gorgeous. Long heavy blond hair covered her shoulders and curved around a set of breasts that stood up at attention and defied gravity. She was tall and slender, and her waist was so small it was hard to believe her frame could support those breasts. She came clumping around the counter in clunky black heels and a denim micro-mini that hardly seemed worth the effort.

  “Jennifer!” Marvelli shouted, dropping his bag and throwing his arms around her.

  As they embraced, Jennifer bent her knee and lifted one leg behind herself the way sexy babes do in the movies. Loretta sniffed the overpowering smell of coffee as she stared at Marvelli hugging a great pair of legs, a great head of hair, a great ass, and a great set of boobs.

  So this is Rene’s sister, she thought.

  “So how you doing, kid?” Marvelli said. Jennifer’s hair was tickling his nose. He wished she’d let go already, but she was squeezing him tight, and it was starting to make him a little uncomfortable.

  Marvelli gently tried to pry his sister-in-law loose. “Jennifer, Jennifer, I want you to meet my partner.” He managed to disengage from her hug, but she still clung to him, standing side by side with her shoulder in his armpit, her head nuzzled against his chest. He knew she didn’t mean anything by it—she’d always been affectionate like this—but she was the same size as Rene, and she sort of resembled Rene, and she reminded him of Rene, and Rene was gone now, and he was feeling something, he didn’t know what, and it was all very weird.

  “Jennifer, this is Loretta Kovacs,” he said, “my partner.”

  “Hi,” Jennifer said, pushing the hair out of her eyes and hooking it around her ear. Rene used to do the exact same thing with her hair, he thought.

  “Nice to meet you,” Loretta said. For some reason she looked a little irritated, but it didn’t take much to irritate Loretta. In most situations she sort of came preirritated.

  Jennifer squeezed Marvelli sideways. “I’m so happy to see you. I really miss you, Frankie.”

  Marvelli smiled nervously. No one called him Frankie outside of his family, and he was supposedly here on business.

  “Frankie’s the big brother I never had,” Jennifer said to Loretta. “I mean, how could you not love this guy?”

  Loretta shrugged. “I don’t know. How?” A tight smile was plastered to her face.

  Jennifer pulled him down by the neck and gave him a big smooch on the cheek. “You’re the onl
y thing about Jersey I miss, Frankie. You and Nina.”

  “Nina says hi, by the way,” Marvelli said.

  “Nina’s his daughter,” Jennifer explained to Loretta.

  “I know. We’ve met,” she said.

  Jennifer beamed. “Isn’t she a doll?”

  Loretta nodded. “She certainly is.”

  “Nina’s lucky she’s got you for a father, Frankie.”

  “Enough, Jennifer. You’re gonna give me a big head.”

  “No, it’s true,” she said to Loretta. “This man is a prize. You know, when I first found out he was going to marry my sister, I was really jealous. I mean, I was just a kid at the time—about twelve or thirteen, Nina’s age—but I had such a crush on him you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Looks like you’re crushing him now,” Loretta said. Her smile got tighter.

  “No, seriously.” Jennifer’s eyes widened. “I really wanted to marry him. I was so upset I crashed their honeymoon.”

  Loretta looked at Marvelli. “Really?”

  “Yeah, she did,” he admitted. “Hitchhiked all the way up to Cape Cod. We’d rented this cottage on the bay. God, you should’ve heard Rene when she answered the door and there was her little sister standing there.” He shook his head and looked at Jennifer. “I thought you two were gonna duke it out right then and there.”

  Jennifer shrugged it off. “What can I say? I was just a kid. Anyway, it’s your fault for being so cute, Frankie.” She pinched his cheek. He didn’t like her doing that, but he didn’t say anything.

  Memories of that cottage on Cape Cod suddenly cluttered his thoughts. He remembered how the light slanted across the white-painted wood floors, how at midday you almost had to wear sunglasses inside. He also remembered Jennifer sleeping in the breezeway on a white wicker couch, pouting the whole time because he and Rene were in the bedroom, doing what people do on their honeymoons. They weren’t terribly sensitive to Jennifer’s feelings, as he recalled. They were pissed that she’d come, and they weren’t going to change their plans on account of her.