by Kyra Davis
“Yeah, but those guys are usually into granny panties,” Dena said. Our waitress came back and Dena took one of the drinks for herself. “How ‘bout my sex toys? Did he get those?”
The waitress gave her a funny look and took off quickly.
“I did see those.” Marcus said, taking a swig of the remaining drink. “I think they’re all there but a few of them, like your vibrator, had been thrown on the floor.”
Dena made a face. “Looks like I’m going to have to soak that in alcohol before I bring it anywhere near me again.”
“You could,” Marcus said, “or you could just toss it and try to make do with the remaining twelve you have at home.”
Dena eyed the plastic bag in Marcus’ hand. “What’s that?”
“Hair products.”
“Well, all right then,” Dena flashed us a relieved smile. “We’ve got leather underwear, sex toys, hair products and a gun. That pretty much covers the necessities, right? Oh,” she reached into her large hobo bag and pulled out her iPad, “we also have this. I can’t say I have your manuscript stored on it but at least we do have access to the Internet.”
I exhaled in relief. It was a small thing since I still had my smartphone but at this point every little advantage helped.
“Sophie wants to go see Alex again.”
Dena hesitated. “That’s probably not such a bad idea.”
Marcus’ mouth dropped open in shock. “But you’re always against Sophie taking risks!”
“And she never listens to me,” Dena pointed out. “Look, Sophie hasn’t been arrested yet so clearly this Alex guy has followed through on at least one promise. Find out from him if there’s anything else we need to worry about and if there isn’t lets get the hell outta Dodge.”
“But—” Marcus began and then stopped short. “Look!” he said in an urgent whisper.
I followed Marcus’ gaze to the middle of the crowded casino. And there he was, standing next to the roulette table.
“Oh my God,” I hissed. “It’s Bo-Bo the gay mafia thug!”
Dena lifted her eyebrows and took a sip of her cocktail. “Well that’s a new one.”
“Should we get out of here?” I asked.
“No,” Marcus said thoughtfully. “Go deal with Alex, I’ll deal with this guy.”
“You can’t be serious! Natasha could be around!”
“Maybe…but I doubt it.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, I do. He may be a fighter by profession but he’s a lover at heart. He just needs the right guy to bring it out in him.”
“Marcus,” I stepped in front of him and grabbed both of his arms. “This isn’t like the time you decided to try out that gay biker bar. This guy really is a violent criminal, no matter what he did for us back in the limo!”
Dena looked at Marcus curiously. “What did Bo-Bo do for you in the back of a limo?”
“Not as much as I would have liked,” Marcus admitted with an evil grin before turning back to me. “I’m going to take care of Mary Ann and Leah. I’ll protect them like…like they were my own little Bumble & Bumbles. But this time you have to trust me.”
I glanced at Dena who shrugged. “I don’t know what the fuck either one of you are talking about so I don’t have an opinion. But I do agree that if we’re going to confront this Alex guy we should do it now and do it together.”
“We’re not going to confront him.” I glanced back at Leah and Mary Ann. There seemed to be several stacks of chips in front of Leah. Had she emptied out her savings account or something?
“What are we going to do then?” Dena asked.
I hesitated. “We’re going to play him,” I finally said. “We’re going to make him believe that he has our trust, get his guard down and get the information we need, even if it means we do a tag-team search of his house.”
“And how long is this going to take?” Marcus asked, his eyes still on Bo-Bo.
“I don’t know, don’t wait up.”
That was enough to get Marcus’ attention. “Now you’re the one who can’t be serious.”
“I’m not going to do anything bad…but if he offers me a room to stay in, with Dena, then I’m going to take it. He’s not going to murder me in the middle of the night. What would be the point? But I need him to trust me enough to let me wander around his place without being watched. It might be easier to do that if we stay the night.”
“Now that’s crazy.”
“It is,” Dena agreed. “But like I said, I want to get this whole drama in the rearview mirror. I’ll be with her,” she said to Marcus, although she was looking at me. “I won’t let her completely throw caution to the wind.”
“I have to do this Marcus.”
“For Anatoly?”
“For my manuscript.” And for Anatoly, I added silently.
Dena patted Marcus on the arm. “Try not to sleep with the enemy.” She started to pull me away, showing surprising strength for a woman who used a cane.
“Why are you being so accommodating of this?” I asked as she pulled me out of the casino and toward the hotel lobby. “You never go along with my crazy plans.”
“Never say never,” Dena said dryly. “Come upstairs with me. We’ll throw a few things in an overnight bag just in case we do end up sleeping over.”
I stared at her. This was so unlike her. She sighed, clearly impatient with my lack of response, and pulled me toward the elevator.
We didn’t say much as we picked a few things from the mess in our rooms and put them in Anatoly’s duffle bag, and I didn’t say a word when she led me out of the hotel and worked with the valet to get us a town car for a decent price. I was paying more for town cars than I had paid for my hotel and plane tickets combined.
I held onto my silence for the first half of the drive to Alex’s house. Confusion had knocked some of the anger out of me. It wasn’t just the mystery of who was after Anatoly that was nagging at me. It was my friends’ behavior. Marcus I sort of understood. He had been an At-Risk-Youth before he came to terms with his sexual orientation and he had a serious soft spot for dysfunctional, self-destructive closet cases. I thought extending that soft spot to members of the mafia was taking things a bit far, but that was Marcus.
But this wasn’t Dena. Dena restricted her wild behavior to her sexual encounters. When it came to the rest of her life she was amazingly level headed. And yet here she was, encouraging me to spend the night in the home of a mafia affiliate who might also be planning something akin to murder.
I studied her profile. She was staring straight ahead, twisting her cane around and around in her hand.
“This never-say-never thing,” I said slowly as I watched the movement of her cane, “does it have anything to do with Fawn or…what happened to you?”
Even in the dark I could see Dena’s nostrils flare. “I was shot in the back,” she said quietly. “I had to relearn how to walk and while you were out there trying to bring my shooter to justice I was in a hospital bed staring at the ceiling. I wasn’t given the opportunity to so much as lift a finger to set things right. I had to let others do that for me while I lay there…I was…helpless.”
She said the word helpless the way others might say the word vomit or excrement. I bit down on my lip and tried to take her hand but she jerked away.
“Now we have Fawn’s brother,” Dena said, the sarcasm dripping from her voice, “and he wants to help. He’s really, really sorry about almost setting you up for murder, for lying to you about who he is and who he’s related to but now, now we’re supposed to trust him. He wants you to put your fate in his hands. You’re right, I could have tried to talk you out of this and I could have pretended to believe you after making you swear to stay away from him. I could totally turn my back on all of this and let you deal with this mess by yourself, because clearly you’re not walking away. I could put myself in a position where I can’t help you…where I’m…helpless. Or,” she turned to me and the fire that was coming from with
in her was almost bright enough to illuminate the whole backseat, “I could help you. I have a choice this time. I’m choosing the latter.”
“Well,” I breathed, “I guess that’s settled then.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
Again we fell into silence, but this time it was a silence I understood.
CHAPTER 20
“The thing about betrayal is that it can only come from people you trust completely.”
--Death Of The Party
Alex didn’t seem surprised to see me, although he was taken off guard by Dena. He listened with sympathy as I told him about the break in and about how Natasha had kidnapped me. “She’s a whore,” he said smoothly. It was a sweet lie calculated to win my favor. It almost worked but now I was on my guard. He was the viper in Rome’s bosom. I couldn’t trust anything he said without proof. Margarita wasn’t there which is what I had been counting on. The less people in the house the easier it would be to snoop. Besides, Margarita creeped me out. There was just something very off about her.
He offered both Dena and me our own room and Dena insisted on going to bed right away as Alex and I had cocktails in his study. I knew Dena wasn’t really in bed. People often harbored the misguided assumption that those who used a cane couldn’t be stealthy, but Dena was the queen of stealth when she wanted to be. Late tonight, while Alex slept, I would try to look in the rooms she missed.
“How did you get away from Natasha?” Alex asked as he poured me yet another glass of his sipping vodka.
“It wasn’t that hard. She drove me all the way out to some national park in the middle of the desert but all she wanted was to scare me into leaving Vegas. Now that she has Anatoly--”
“She has Anatoly?” Alex interrupted. “Since when?”
“He called her while I was with her. I could just tell that he’s back with her by the way they were talking. I’m done with him.” I raised my glass above my head. “Here’s to new beginnings.”
Alex kept his glass by his side. “Are you leaving Vegas then?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Where are the rest of your friends?”
“Back in San Francisco. They all had their tickets to leave tonight. Dena and I originally had tickets for tonight too but she had our flight switched to tomorrow back when I thought there was something to stay for.” A poker player is only as good as his ability to bluff, I thought to myself. Alex didn’t need to know how much backup I had here in this city. He certainly didn’t need to know that I had seen Anatoly. For once I would be the one with the secrets and he would be the one to show his hand.
But as I watched him stare into the fire I wondered how much he had really kept from me. His lies had all been lies of omission and when I asked more pointed questions he had answered them and every answer had checked out so far. What was it that made this man less worthy of my respect than Anatoly? Was it that he was currently with the mafia while Anatoly had left? Because really, even if Anatoly did leave the mafia he was certainly back in the thick of it now.
“You never told me why they killed your brother,” I said quietly.
For a few seconds Alex just continued to stare into the fire. Then he walked over to the piano in the corner. “This was Kenya’s piano.” He let his fingers run over the smooth, polished wood. I hadn’t noticed before but it shone like no other object in the room. It had been polished and cared for like…well like the memorial it probably was.
“I bought it for him,” he continued. “He loved to play but he never had a decent piano.”
“He had that one,” I noted.
Alex shook his head. “I never got the chance to give it to him.” After a moment’s thought he put his glass on top of the instrument. “It’ll leave a ring,” he said softly. “I’ve been taking such good care of it but you know, what’s the point? If I had given it to Kenya he would have treated it as carelessly as he treated everything else in his life…including his life.”
“He was younger than you, right?”
Alex nodded. “Fawn’s my mother’s daughter and Kenya was my father’s son. Maybe if my father was still around he could have convinced the family to keep him alive.”
“Why did they kill him, Alex?”
Alex picked up his drink and put it back down on another part of the piano. “They thought he helped Anatoly bring the FBI agent into the fold.”
I hesitated, momentarily impressed. Once again his story was matching up with what I knew…sort of. Natasha had suggested that the mafia never suspected Anatoly at all, but still it was close enough, right?
He was telling me everything and Anatoly was telling me nothing.
“If you’re serious about not wanting to reconcile with Anatoly…well, I respect that,” he continued. “But if you know where he is I’d like to talk to him.”
“Why?”
“I want to know if the mafia was right,’ he said simply. “If Kenya really did help Anatoly bring that agent in then at least I’d know he wasn’t killed for nothing.”
“That still wouldn’t make it okay for them to have killed him!”
“No…but if a soldier starts collaborating with the enemy you can’t exactly blame his battalion for dealing with him.”
“You would forgive the mafia for killing your brother.” That small flash of respect and trust I had felt for him flew out the window.
“No, but I would understand it.” He turned to me with pleading eyes. “You have a sister, right? Can you imagine if she died and you weren’t able to figure out why it had happened? I can’t get him back. All I can get is understanding. I won’t turn Anatoly in to the others but I deserve the truth. So do you.”
And just like that I was impressed again. “I don’t know where he is.”
Alex nodded and glanced at a clock hanging near the fireplace. “It’s late. Perhaps we should both call it a night and talk more in the morning?”
I got to my feet. “When we talk in the morning can we talk about Margarita?”
Alex smirked. “I’m not sleeping with her, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t. I was wondering why she was in my hotel lobby this morning and how it is that a housekeeper can afford expensive jewelry and designer apparel.”
“Ah,” Alex smiled again, this time ruefully. “Well, I said you deserved the truth. We’ll talk about Margarita tomorrow. She works for me in several different capacities.”
“Sounds kinky,” I teased.
He laughed. “It’s not, I promise you.”
“OK, I’ll take your word for it…for now. Thanks again for letting us stay here.”
“Not a problem,” he said, taking my now empty glass. As he opened the door for me he chuckled. “I can’t believe Natasha drove you all the way out to Red Rock Canyon just to make a point.”
I stopped. “Did I tell you that she took me out to Red Rock?”
Alex blinked. “I’m sorry, I just assumed. There aren’t too many national parks within driving distance of here.”
“Oh, right.” That made sense, right? After all, if he had been following me he would have known that I had been with Anatoly at Red Rock, not Natasha.
We walked up the stairs together. The guest rooms Dena and I were staying in were to the right of the stairs and his room to the left, all the way at the other end of the hall. Again, I marveled at how large this house was.
He pulled me in for a hug and kissed me on the cheek. “You don’t have to stay in the guestroom, you know,” he said teasingly.
I pulled away and stared up into those perfect green eyes. No, I didn’t trust him. I wasn’t sure if I even liked him. But disliking him was getting harder. “I’m going to stick with the guestroom.”
“Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“Mmm,” I said noncommittally. I thought of Tanya in that closet, a bullet hole in her forehead. He had once planned to pin that murder on me…but he didn’t. Did that count for anything?
“Goodnight A
lex.”
He stood at the top of the stairs and watched as I went into my room.
As I closed the door I got a text from Dena:
I’m back in my room and just got off the phone with Leah. Your mom found the USB stick
CHAPTER 21
“I can rarely find the things I’m looking for but I frequently stumble across things I forgot I needed.”
--Death Of The Party
It was everything I could do not to rush back into the hall and pound on Dena’s door but I had to wait until I was sure Alex was in his room. I sat down on the deep red area rug and dialed her. “Tell me!” I whispered as she picked up.
“Did they really bug your house?” Dena asked cryptically. “Do you think they do that often?”
I looked around the room as if I was going to actually be able to spot a recording device. “Um, who knows? I was just calling to say goodnight.”
“Night-night then,” Dena said cheerfully before hanging up.
As soon as we were disconnected I sent her a text:
TELL ME!!!
Dena sent me a response so long it came in the form of three consecutive texts. Basically Anatoly had cut out a small section of a soccer book and put an USB stick in it. Leah was now slowly walking my mother through the process of sending all the files on it as an attachment to Leah’s email (with both my computers gone it was likely that my email account was compromised). Leah was working from the computers in Encore’s business center and would send Dena the information for her to read from her iPad. Still, I shouldn’t expect anything concrete until the morning.
The next series of texts told me that Dena had checked the rooms on our side of the staircase and found nothing of interest. Tomorrow she thought she might check everything on the other side if I could distract Alex again.
I was still dying to rush into her room but it seemed imprudent. After all, Alex thought Dena had been asleep for over an hour now. How would it look if he caught me rushing into her room for a late night chat?