“N-n-n-no,” I sobbed.
He shifted on the floor. “Er… there, there. It’s going to be all right,” he said awkwardly.
“N-n-no it’s not!” I wailed. “You’re just saying that to m-m-make me feel better.”
“It’s not really working very well, is it?”
I sniffed, doing a sob slash hiccup thing. “We’re going to die and it’s all my fault!”
“No,no,” Felix said. He shimmed across the floor like an inverted inch worm until he was sitting beside me. “Look, this is as much my fault as it is yours. I should have been watching you better. I was too focused on my lens to notice anything else. It’s my fault we’re here.”
I sniffed again. “You’re right. It’s your fault.”
“Well, you didn’t have to agree with me quite so quickly.”
I looked up to find Felix doing one of his self-deprecating grins again. Maybe it was the darkness, or maybe the impending death, but it seemed just a fraction more charming this time.
“So,” he said quickly, “any guesses where we are?”
I looked around the room again. “A storeroom of some sort.”
“The warehouse?”
I shook my head. Then regretted it as the pounding between my ears went into double time. “I don’t think so.” My eyes had adjusted to the windowless room and I could make out faint writing on the sides of one of the cardboard boxes nearest me. Budweiser.
“The club!” I cried. “We’re at the Victoria.”
Felix nodded beside me, putting it together at the same time. “Someone must have followed us from here. They must have seen you drop me off.”
“Monaldo.” I felt my previous tears quickly turning into anger. That guy was really starting to piss me off. First he gets me arrested, then whacks me over the head. Who did he think he was? I was suddenly wishing Mom had stunned him a little harder when she had the chance.
I was about to let out a string of curses aimed at the creepy little weasel, when the sounds of someone outside the room froze me in place. Felix heard it too, going stiff beside me as both our eyes riveted to the door on the far side of the room.
“If this is the end,” Felix whispered beside me, “I’m sorry I pasted your head on Pamela Anderson’s body.”
“And I’m sorry I broke your nose,” I whispered back.
“Apology accepted.”
I held my breath as the door swung open, the sudden light from the hallway momentarily blinding me. I blinked, squinting at the huge form silhouetted in the doorway.
The door slammed shut behind him and overhead fluorescent lights flickered to life. Again I felt my pupils contracting harshly as I blinked at the man, now bathed in greenish flickering light. Unibrow. And he wasn’t happy. The hairy caterpillar hovered over his eyes in a menacing line as his beady eyes bore into me. Only that wasn’t the scary part. The scary part was the gun he had pointed at my vee necked top.
I bit my lip, for once willing myself not to open my big mouth as Unibrow’s threatening gaze bounced between Felix and me.
But apparently, Felix felt no such compunction.
“Where’s my camera?” he demanded.
Unibrow narrowed his eyes at him. “We don’t like people that takes pictures.”
“I’m a member of the press,” Felix retaliated. “You can’t hold me here. I demand our release immediately.”
His eyes narrowed further. “We ain’t too fond of press either.”
Since Felix was only serving to piss off the man with the gun, I jumped in with a different tactic. “Please, please, please let us go?” I pleaded, throwing on the best innocent little girl face I could while being bound hand and foot amidst cases of longnecks. “Look, we don’t know anything. And we won’t tell anyone anything. Because we don’t know anything. Where are we? I don’t know. Who are you?” I shrugged. “I don’t know. See, I’m just a dumb blonde. I couldn’t give a description of anyone or anything to anybody.”
If it wasn’t effective at least my speech had entertainment value. Unibrow laughed, letting out a quick, dry cough. “I don’t think so. Monaldo was very specific about what to do with you.”
I gulped. “Um, so what are you going to do with us?” I squeaked out. Even though the gun leveled at my chest gave me a pretty good idea.
“Don’t worry” he said, a twisted smile distorting his ugly features. “We’ll take care of you.”
Oh lordy. There was that phrase again.
“Like you took care of Bob Hostetler?” Felix piped up beside me.
Unibrow’s caterpillar hunkered down in a frown again. “Shut up!” he growled.
I nudged Felix in the ribs. Why was he dead set on antagonizing the man with the gun? Ix-nay on the urder-may.
“Or what about Hank?” Felix asked, not giving in. Even under threat of thirty-eight special in the schnoz he was all reporter.
“I didn’t do nothing to Hank,” Unibrow protested.
Felix smirked. “That, my hulking friend, is a double negative. You didn’t do nothing implies that nothing was not done, which means that the opposite of nothing, which is something, was, in fact, done by you. So, in essence, you just admitted that you did do something to Hank. Something quite nasty, I’d venture to guess.”
Unibrow hunched his caterpillar down low in a perplexed stare. “Huh?”
“You see, it’s really a quite simple rule of grammar-”
“Shut up!” Unibrow growled again, shoving the tip of his gun against the white bandage covering Felix’s nose.
Felix snapped his mouth shut with a click.
“I’ve had enough of you,” Unibrow said, his voice low and scarier than a Wes Craven villain.
I heard my breath come out in deep ragged gasps as I held myself rigid against the wall. I heard the gun cock, the chamber loading. Oh God, he was going to shoot Felix!
Then, as if to prove me wrong, he added, “But ladies first.” He swung the barrel of the gun to the right, catching me squarely in the chest.
Oh God, he was going to shoot me!
I closed my eyes, feeling hot tears run down my cheeks again. Images of Mom, Faux Dad, Larry, and, oddly enough, Ramirez flickered through my head at lightening speed as I silently said a prayer to the saint of hopeless causes. Saint Jude. Funny that I should remember that now. But I did, with crystal clarity. So, I prayed with all the desperation of a woman who hadn’t been to Sunday mass in years, promising to give money to the poor, to volunteer with sick children, to stop having unholy thoughts every time I watched Ramirez walk across the room in his butt hugging jeans. Anything! As long as the next sound I heard wasn’t the shout of a gun redecorating the sparse walls with my innards.
I waited, my breath hitched in my throat, my eyes clamped shut, my lips pursed into a thin white line.
Only the gun didn’t click. Instead, I heard the sound of glass breaking just outside the door.
I popped my eyes open. Unibrow had heard it to. He froze, his entire pea brain focused on listening to the commotion outside the door. Which was growing. Something thudded against the wall and I heard voices, all yelling incoherently. Unibrow took a step toward the door. Then paused looking back at Felix and me, his one eyebrow hunching down in concentration. Apparently it was a big decision – shoot the blonde first or go break up the bar fight?
Luckily, Unibrow was not the sharpest stiletto on the rack and chose option number two. Two lumbering strides and he was at the door, hand on knob. Only he never quite got the opportunity to turn it as the door came bursting off its hinges, slamming toward Unibrow like a battering ram was on the other side. Unibrow stumbled back before regaining his grip on the gun. He may have been slow witted, but years of mafia experience had made him quick on the draw. Before I could yell out a shout of warning to our would-be rescuers, he had his hands around the trigger and was squeezing off shots that cracked against the door jam, sending splinters of wood flying into the air. Crack, crack, crack. He got off three shots in a row, bef
ore one really loud bang echoed from the doorway and Unibrow fell backwards, a bright red stain spreading across his chest.
I screamed. A long, loud, roller-coaster worthy scream that echoed in my own ears even after I ran out of breath to sustain it. I looked from the toppled giant to the doorway, expecting to see police, the Feds, Ramirez, the LVMPD and good old Detective Sipowicz.
Instead I saw a smoking black LadySmith attached to the shaky hands of my best friend. Dana.
I think I screamed again. Only this time it was more like the second time you ride the roller coaster, when you realize that as long as your harness actually does hold you in, those dips and rolls are actually kind of fun.
Behind Dana the cause of the commotion came pouring into the room - the Nanny Goat bartender from FlyBoyz, a whole army of bikers in black leather, Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt holding broken beer bottles out like weapons, Marco (cowering behind Nanny Goat) and a guy who looked like The Rock’s bigger brother. Rico.
He put a hand on Dana’s arm, lowering the LadySmith as she stared at the stain now seeping onto the concrete floor. Her eyes were as big as Maybelline compacts, her mouth dropped open into an ‘o’ of surprise.
“Did I get him?” she asked, her voice cracking.
I nodded, tears of relief mingling with the tears of terror still staining my cheeks. “Yes, honey, you got him.”
Dana blinked, looking from the gun clutched in her white knuckled grip to the big hole in Unibrow. She licked her lips. “Wow, Mac wasn’t kidding. This baby packs quite a punch.”
Chapter Twenty
For once I was glad to hear that Marco hadn’t been able to keep his big mouth shut. After he’d left me, he’d gone down to the casino where he’d found Mrs. Rosenblatt at the Big Apple Bar. One comment on his fishy aura and Marco had broken down like a ‘73 Pinto going up a steep hill. He’d told her all about my plan to play Larry (which Mrs. Rosenblatt had immediately said was not a good idea for a person with karma like mine), then Mrs. Rosenblatt had tracked Mom down at the craps table and told her. Mom had nearly fainted (which cost her thirty two dollars when she’d hit the table for support and the dealer had mistaken this for a bet on a hard eight) but once she’d recovered, Mom called Dana to see if she was with me. Obviously, she wasn’t. Dana had been on her way to the airport to pick up Rico who had surprised her by flying in to personally hand deliver her new LadySmith and ‘compare hardware.’ (And I wasn’t entirely sure we were talking guns here.) Dana did a few ‘ohmigod’s, then told Rico, who then called his friend the bartender who had then gathered the entire patronage of FlyBoyz.
Long story short (I know, too late) Unibrow hadn’t been the only one following us into the desert. Twenty minutes behind him had been Marco riding with Mom and Mrs. Rosenblatt in their rented Dodge mini-van, Dana and Rico in the Mustang, and a whole slew of Harleys bringing up the rear. By the time they were traveling down Lone Hill Road, they passed a long, sleek Town Car speeding in the opposite direction. Dana had recognized it and, on instinct, followed him to the Victoria where her impeccable timing had just saved me from becoming fish food.
Once Rico pried the gun from her hands, Dana started alternating between crying and shaking, swearing she was never touching that thing again. And considering it was now evidence, it didn’t look like she’d have the opportunity anytime soon anyway. When the police finally did arrive, Dana’s hands were swabbed for gunshot residue, then she and Rico were escorted into one of the back rooms for questioning by Detective Sipowicz, though we were assured it was just a formality and that considering the circumstances no charges would be brought against them. Just in case, Mrs. Rosenblatt stood at the ready to call her dead second husband Carl’s law firm at the first sign of handcuffs or extraneous sodas.
Somehow in all the commotion, Felix had slipped away, no doubt rushing to summarize his version of the event before the Associated Press picked up on the story. Mom, Mrs. R, Marco, Nanny Goat, the lot of burly looking bikers, and the ‘girls’ in feathers were all corralled onto the main floor of the club where they were called one by one to give statements to a team of uniformed police officers that now outnumbered the drag queens two to one. The room looked like some sort of weird costume party gone bad - leather chaps mixed with sequined leotards mixed with Mrs. Rosenblatt’s neon pink and blue spotted muumuu. I had a feeling this was what a bad acid trip was like.
As for myself, I was parked on a vinyl barstool, wrapped in an ugly green blanket, wondering when my teeth would stop chattering. The paramedic who first arrived on scene told me I did, in fact, have a mild concussion, but other than that I was physically okay. Mentally, however, was another story. It wasn’t every day a girl saw her best friend blow a hole the size of a softball through someone’s chest. And while I wasn’t mourning the loss of a scumbag like Unibrow any, the sight of gooey red stuff pooling around his head was permanently etched in my brain. Trust me, the real deal was a lot more disturbing than a CSI episode.
“Maddie!”
I turned to see Ramirez hailing me from the front doors. He flashed his badge to one of the uniformed LVMPD, then pushed through them, making a beeline toward me. I quickly swiped a finger under my eye to check for black smudges. With the way I’d been crying that night I was sure I had mascara streaks clear down to my chin. I swiped the other eye and fluffed my hair a little. Hey – I was shaken up, not dead.
“Maddie!” he said again, then grabbed me in a hug so fierce I thought he might crack a rib. He held me there for a long minute, not saying anything. “Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again,” he finally whispered into my ear. Only this time there was no Bad Cop in his voice. This time it was, dare I say, almost tender.
“Sorry,” I mumbled against his chest.
He released me and stood back to get a good look at me, doing a quick check of my person for broken bones with his hands. Though I admit as his palms skimmed over my thighs, I went warm in a totally inappropriate way considering the circumstances. “Are you okay?” he asked, his fingers moving upward to gently probe the goose egg at the back of my head.
“I’m fine.” I paused. “Okay, maybe fine is a bit of a stretch. But I’m not dead.”
He blew out a big breath, running one hand through his black hair. He looked down at my outfit, taking in the platforms and drag queen chic bustier. “Jesus, Maddie, what were you thinking? You know, I almost had a heart attack when LVMPD called me.”
“You did?” I asked, my body doing that inappropriate thing again at the concern lacing his voice. “Really?”
“Yeah, I did.” He reached a hand up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his knuckles brushing softly against my cheek. “I hate it when I miss all the action.” His mouth quirked up at the corner.
“Ha. Ha. Very funny, tough guy.”
He grinned, though his hand lingered in my hair, making little goose bumps break out on the backs of my arms.
As my body continued to equate near-death-experience with horny-teenager-worthy-hormones I cleared my throat and forced myself to ask after the one person conspicuously absent from the night’s activities. “So… what happened to Monaldo?”
Ramirez stopped doing the hands-in-hair thing and I could see him mentally switching back into cop mode. “He’s been taken into custody.”
I let out a long breath I’d been holding since I first stepped into Larry’s shoes.
“The Feds picked him up a few minutes ago outside his penthouse and he’s being processed as we speak,” Ramirez continued. “No formal interviews have been conducted yet, but the minute he heard he’d been under surveillance, he started squealing like a stuck pig, naming at least three Marsucci family members in the counterfeit shoe ring. He even said he’d cop to killing the customs agent and Bob Hostetler if we pleaded down to manslaughter and promised him protective custody. The Feds are so happy I think I saw one do a cartwheel.”
“What about Hank?” I asked.
Ramirez shrugged. “Monaldo still says he had n
othing to do with Hank’s death, but I think he’s just holding out for a better deal. Honestly it doesn’t really matter. Any way you look at it the Marsuccis are going down and Monaldo’s going to jail for a long, long time. Everybody wins.”
Except Unibrow, I thought, remembering the sickly red stain.
“So, what now?” I asked.
He took my hands in both of his, his voice taking on that tender quality again. “Now you go home and get some sleep. You’ve been through a lot tonight, you need some rest.”
I felt the heat of his touch pulse through my palm. I licked my lips. “And you?”
He looked down at me, his eyes like two melted pools of Hershey’s Special Dark. But instead of promising to spend the night showing me a hundred and one new uses for those handcuffs of his, he glanced at the front door. “I’ve spent the last six weeks living this case, Maddie. I’d really like to be there when they question Monaldo.”
I felt my heart sink. Work. Again.
But, considering I had a personal stake in seeing Monaldo disappear into maximum security for a very long time, I didn’t complain. Much.
“You’re leaving?” I whined.
He glanced from the door to me. “Look, if you need me to stay, I will,” he said. Which I took as a small victory. At least he was pretending he’d put me before work. That was a start.
“Go. I’m fine,” I lied.
“You sure?” he asked. Though he was already pulling away.
“Yes. Go. I’ll be okay, really.”
He placed a quick kiss on my forehead. “Get some sleep and I’ll call you as soon as I’m done. I promise.” Then he spun around and stalked back out of the club with purpose.
I watched his denim clad butt walk away, my inappropriately charged body sighing in disappointment. Then I slapped both hands over my eyes. Hey, I had promised Saint Jude, hadn’t I?
* * *
The sun was rising over the horizon by the time Detective Sipowicz finally told us we could go home. But considering home was 100 miles away and the New York New York was just a few blocks, Mom, Mrs. Rosenblatt, Marco, Dana, Rico and I caravanned back to the hotel instead. We were making our way across the casino floor, the ding, ding, ding of the slot machines making my goose egg throb like a trombone in my ear, when Slim Jim caught my eye.
High Heels Mysteries Boxed Set (Books 1-5) Page 50