by Unknown
“Him, too,” Phoebe added, nodding as she stood up, needing to put some distance between them before she did something stupid, like throw herself onto the floor while sobbing But I don’t want this to end! “And I should try on the clothes that Yashi got for me, and figure out what I’m going to do with my hair. If we’re supposed to be dressed up, I should probably look less like a refugee.”
“I love your hair.” Ian looked a little surprised by what he’d just said.
And okay. She, too, was also a little flustered, both by the way he was looking at her, and the fact that he’d used the word love in a sentence that started with I. True, it was only her hair that he loved. Still …
He added, “And however you want to wear it, I’m sure it’ll be … beautiful.”
“You were going to say fine,” Phoebe realized, “but you recognized that no one, male or female, ever wants to be told that they look merely fine, so you did a quick substitution. That is truly remarkable.” She started to slow-clap, mostly because it kept her from grabbing him and kissing him. “You are, indeed, a highly evolved Homo sapiens.”
But as Ian laughed, he pushed his chair away from the table, pulled her down onto his lap, and kissed her. Thoroughly. In front of everyone.
When he finally stopped, her fingers were in his hair—his beautiful, thick, wavy hair—and as she held his gaze, as he smiled at her, Phoebe dared to say it back. “I really love your hair, too.”
* * *
Berto’s Miami warehouse was mostly empty, and Francine’s footsteps echoed as she went inside.
It was cooler in there than it was out in the blazing heat of the parking lot, but not by much, which meant this whole stage of the job was going to be a sweaty, stinking ordeal. But that somehow seemed appropriate, considering she was back in a warehouse with the man whom she’d once believed was the love of her life.
The boxes of computer towers were stacked close to the loading dock, but other than that, there were only a few other small hills of crates in the entire huge space.
There was, however, a line of forklifts at the ready, should the need arise.
There was a small office in the back corner—a bathroom, too, which was good. That meant she wouldn’t have to pee in the parking lot, since she was here for the next few hours—until Ian and the Dutchman came and went.
Martell had driven over here with her and Berto—that had been a fun half hour ride. Francine had closed her eyes and pretended to sleep in the back, while Martell rode an uneasy shotgun. He’d started a short discussion about music. Stevie Wonder. Al Green. Motown. Nobody hated Motown, so it was a good try. But Berto clearly hadn’t wanted to chat, so they soon fell into an uncomfortable silence.
While he drove, Berto had made a phone call to the security team that checked in on his property as part of their local rounds—letting them know that they should scratch his address off their list for today and tonight. He was, ahem, holding a private party in his building, and didn’t want to be interrupted.
Apparently, it was not uncommon for him to make that request.
Berto had opened up the huge bay doors to the loading dock when they arrived, and now, with Martell close at hand, he followed Francine as she looked around.
She squinted upward, where there was a metal catwalk. As the daylight continued to fade, it would disappear into the darkness of the high ceiling and become invisible. It wasn’t her first choice for a sniper position—she would be vulnerable to counterattack—but it was probably the only real option.
The benefit would be a bird’s-eye view of the action. If she positioned herself right, she’d have a clear shot of the driveway and the well-lit loading dock, too.
Martell knew what she was planning and was concerned. “We’ve got time—we can move some of those other crates closer,” he said. “Give you some cover.”
“Said the man who’s going to be lying out on the floor in a puddle of fake blood, with his hands cuffed and a bag over his head,” she countered.
“Yeah, that’s going to be harder to do than I thought,” he agreed. “Let’s make sure Dunn has blanks in his weapon, aight? Or maybe we could stuff those rent-a-cop unies with straw instead?”
Francine smiled. “Yeah, because the Dutchman won’t notice that. No, the catwalk’ll do fine. Even if I’m needed for a demonstration of force, I’ll be far enough away that he won’t see my face.”
Berto spoke up. “When I bought the place, I had a five-year contract with a regional pharmacy chain,” he said, apparently feeling that he had to explain the lack of ware in the house. “Four months in, they went bankrupt. We’ve been limping along, month to month, ever since.”
Francine nodded as she again looked around. “You could subdivide this space. Bring in some mattresses. Turn it into a whorehouse. Warehouse, whorehouse—I’m surprised you didn’t think of that sooner.”
“Easy there,” Martell murmured.
“I’m not a pimp,” Berto said on a tired exhale.
“Oh, so it’s your father who handles that part of the family business?” she asked. “While you just, what? Look the other way? I guess that’s not as bad. Oh, wait. No. It is.”
“Let’s get this makeup and costume thing happening,” Martell interjected. “Review the scenario.” He clapped his hands, in Tony Robbins–like fake excitement. “So, the story is that Berto drives up, and finds two men and a truck parked here at the loading bay, getting ready to steal his extra-special, mind-altering, super-valuable shipment of computers. His guards are tied up, bags on their heads, one of them’s dead—that would be me—the other’s unconscious.”
But Berto had turned to face Francine. “You have the right to hate me for a lot of things, but not that,” he said.
“I have the right to hate you for whatever the fuck I want!” she shot back, and she heard Martell sigh.
“Look,” Martell said. “Kids. This isn’t the time or place—”
“I didn’t mean to kill that man,” Berto told Francine, surprising her by just saying it, outright. “That night.”
“Or maybe it is,” she heard Martell say, as he gave them both some space. “I’ll be over here, if you need me.”
“He broke into the warehouse—our warehouse—and he came screaming out the door like a bat out of hell,” Berto told her. “Scared the shit out of me. He came right at me. He was out-of-his-mind high.”
The man who was talking, the man Francine was looking at, was tired and aging ungracefully. He was overweight and balding and the lines on his face were markers of sorrow, not laughter. And yet, in his eyes, she could see a ghost of the boy he’d once been. And she couldn’t look away.
“He was fried,” Berto told her. “He was fucked up, and he came right at me, with his crazy hair and his psycho eyes and … He jumped me, he tried to knock me over, he tried to take the gun, and it went off. And then he was dead.”
“You fired twice,” she whispered. “Aaron heard the gunshots.”
He shook his head. “I don’t remember that. I guess I must’ve, if that’s what he heard. But it’s really a blur. Although the trigger was always … sensitive, so …”
She believed him. Still … “Why did you take your gun?” she asked. “Why did you even have it with you?”
“I wanted to scare him,” Berto said. “Aaron.”
That she didn’t believe.
He corrected himself before she could call bullshit. “I wanted to kill him, but I wouldn’t have.”
“I think you would’ve,” she countered. “I think you were going to. Because I know you knew what your father was doing to me—probably right when you were loading that fucking gun.” She could tell from his eyes that she was right. He had known. “And I think you brought Aaron there—to our place, our special place—to punish me even more.”
“Maybe,” he admitted.
“I consider myself lucky,” she said, “that I saw the real you, the ugly you, before I did something stupid, like marry you.”
> Except even as she said those bitter, angry words, she had the sense that the boy she could still glimpse in this man’s eyes was, in truth, the real Berto Dellarosa. Even after all this time.
“Yeah, well, then, lucky you, right?” he said as he blinked, as he turned away from her, as the boy disappeared. But then he turned back, this man, this stranger, and said, “You know, I forgive you, Francine.”
She laughed her surprise, but he was serious.
“For not telling me, in advance, what you were doing,” he continued. “For not trusting me, long before that, with the news—and it was a knock-me-over news flash when I found out that Shel was gay. For assuming—ridiculously—that I really believed that you loved me, that I didn’t wake up every fucking day and wonder what someone like you was doing with a piece of crap like me.”
His words made her want to throw up, filling her with a mix of anger and frustration and sorrow and despair. She honed in on the anger, using it to banish the less-useful emotions. “Do you forgive Davio, too?” she asked, her voice harsh. “When you’re busy being so generous?”
“Do you forgive a rabid dog for acting like a rabid dog?” he countered.
“Fuck you, Confucius,” Francine said. “You don’t forgive a rabid dog, you fucking put it down.”
“Yeah, but Uncle Manny wouldn’t like that,” Berto said. “He feels responsible for Davio. The rabid dog is still Manny’s brother. You of all people should understand that, all those years you spent searching for Pauline.”
“Whatever,” Francine said as she led the way across the scarred and pitted concrete floor to the air-conditioned office where they’d get Berto into his blood-soaked bandages. “You want to think there’s a comparison between a child and her abuser, you go on and think that. But you’re full of shit.” She raised her voice. “Martell!”
“Yes, ma’am!” He was, as he’d promised, nearby, and as she looked into his eyes, she knew he’d heard everything. “Whatever you need. I stand ready to help.”
Francine had to look away. “Let’s do this thing,” she said.
Everyone was wearing radio headsets for this phase of the job. Martell and Yashi would wear a security guardlike version beneath their burlap sacks. Even Phoebe wore one. Hers and Ian’s both looked like Bluetooths, and since she’d never used one before, it felt cumbersome and cyborgish attached to her ear.
According to Ian, Sheldon was already in place. He would be monitoring the entire meeting from the safety of the surveillance van. He’d have access to the feed from a collection of strategically placed security cameras, and if something went wrong, he’d be their eyes and ears.
Aaron, too, had already reported in from the warehouse. The 18-wheeler was in position. In fact, he and the others—Shel, Francie, and Yashi—had already moved half of the boxes into the trailer. Berto and Martell were sidelined from that task, due to not wanting to mess up their realistically bloody stage makeup.
At least Phoebe hoped it looked realistic.
She tried not to be nervous as she and Ian headed for Georg Vanderzee’s house.
“I may need some help,” she told Ian. “Some coaching, in how to hide my revulsion.”
He smiled briefly as he glanced at her. “I focus on the outcome,” he said. “Saving those kids. Getting Aaron’s record wiped clean. And if that doesn’t work, I think happy thoughts. You and me. I’ll replay this morning. That’ll make me smile.”
“I could imagine learning to love my alarm clock,” Phoebe agreed, even as she blushed a little, “if that always happened, immediately after it rang.”
“Alarm cock,” he said, glancing at her again. “Sorry, I had to say it. You know you were thinking it.”
“Sorry,” she said, laughing. “But I wasn’t. Because I’m not a fourteen-year-old boy disguised as a thirty-something anti-hero.”
“I think I might be on to something that could sell really well,” Ian said, full on ignoring her anti-hero comment.
“Yeah, if you’re what you’re selling,” Phoebe countered. “The alarm part kind of doesn’t work without the … you know.”
He glanced at her again. “Say it, say it, say it. I bet that you won’t say it,” he said beneath his breath, but of course, intentionally loud enough for her to hear.
“You’d win that bet, man-child,” Phoebe told him as she laughed.
“Will you promise that you’ll whisper it in my ear, if something happens,” Ian said, “and it looks like I might die?”
He realized, maybe because she’d stopped smiling, how completely unfunny she found his request. Joke. It was supposed to be a joke, but God.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said quickly. “Shit, I’m sorry.”
“Cock,” she said. “Okay? Now you can … die happy, or whatever.”
“Okay,” he said. “Whoa. Wait. I wasn’t ready for that. Totally unexpected. Would you mind very much saying it again?”
Phoebe laughed again, despite herself. “Yes,” she said. “I would mind.”
They were approaching a red light, but instead of stopping, Ian pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store. He jammed the car into park, grabbed her, and kissed her.
And when he was done, he held her face between his hands and looked into her eyes and told her, “Nothing bad is going to happen to me, and I’m going to make damn sure that nothing bad happens to you. We’re going to smile at this asshole, we’re going to do this job, we’re going to save those kids, and then I’m going to kiss you, just like that, for about four hours. Okay?”
Phoebe nodded, looking into his eyes, unable to speak. But then she found her voice. “Ian, we really need to talk about—”
“Shhh.” He kissed her again. “One goatfuck at a time, okay?”
She nodded.
“Tell me again,” Ian said, “what you’re going to say, when we get to the warehouse.”
Phoebe widened her eyes, and gasped in appropriate horror as she said, “Berto, my God! What happened? Were you shot?”
* * *
“I’m okay.” Berto’s response came through the radio headsets that Sheldon and all of the other team members were wearing.
As Shel watched on the surveillance van’s main monitor, Berto limped toward Phoebe. Ian, the Dutchman, and the Dutchman’s bald-headed, bulgy-eyed, little bodyguard were right behind her.
The limp was maybe a little much, but Francine had done such a first-rate job with Berto’s bandaged wound—it was leaking just a bit of “blood”—he could get away with the extra drama.
Deb was in the van, monitoring along with Shel.
Just moments ago, as Ian’s car had turned onto the road leading to the warehouse’s driveway, he’d announced to the team, “Here comes Eee and Phoebe. They’ve got Vanderzee with them in their car—he’s got one, repeat uno, guard with him. Everyone, final check in.”
“Deb, in the van. I’m here, too, gang. I didn’t think I’d make it back in time, but I did. FYI, the yacht’s perfect.”
“Aaron, out by the truck.” Shel’s husband waved to the camera that was out on the loading dock.
“Martell. I’m dead. So I’m not moving.”
“Yashi. Unconscious. Also not moving.”
“The camera on you guys is working fine,” Shel reported. “You look great.”
“Berto.” Shel’s half brother sounded and looked tense as he gazed up into camera seven.
“Annette, overhead.” Trust Francine to make the smartass Mouseketeers reference in a deadpan from her perch up in the catwalk.
“Ian and Phoebe, I know you’re close enough now to be listening in. Do not acknowledge this, but—all of you—know and believe that I am the Lord your God for this phase of the mission,” Sheldon reminded them. “If you hear my voice in your ear, you do it, you don’t ask. So here they come—Ian is parking, Phoebe’s getting out. Here comes Berto to greet them.…”
“Berto, my God! What happened? Were you shot?” Phoebe could’ve worked in film—she
was that realistically shocked as she caught sight of Berto’s bandages.
And now, over Shel’s headset, Berto gave an account of the story: “I pulled up and there was a truck in the bay, and I walked in on a fucking robbery. I started shooting, they shot back, and I got hit. One of my guards is dead, the other is unconscious—I find it fucking hard to believe this wasn’t some kind of inside job, because who else knew this shit was stored here?”
“Your father knew.” That was Ian.
Phoebe: “Berto, you should sit down.”
Berto: “We need to move this stuff now—get it the fuck out of Dodge.” They moved into range of the loading dock camera, and he looked at Vanderzee as if he’d just realized the other man was there. “Are you the new buyer?”
Ian answered for him. “He was.”
“Was? What the fuck, Dunn?” Berto was doing great. Shel wouldn’t have thought he’d be much of an actor, but he was convincing in his own thuggish way.
Beside him in the van, Deb switched off her lip microphone and pointed to the part of the screen that showed the feed from the surveillance cam that was out on the main road. “Vehicle approaching. Looks like an SUV.”
It was still some distance away—lot of turnoffs between where it was and the street leading to this warehouse’s drive. Still, there wasn’t much traffic in this recession-hit part of town at this time of late afternoon, so it was certainly worth the mention. Shel covered his mic. “Let’s keep an eye on it.”
Deb nodded as the show at the warehouse rolled on, and Ian and Phoebe helped Aaron lug the rest of the boxes into the truck.
Ian was explaining to Berto what he’d obviously explained to Vanderzee in the car. “My friend Georg found us an interested buyer, but at a dismal three point six. Not that I didn’t appreciate it, since it was significantly better than the nothing we were looking at. Still, this morning when we spoke, I told him it was contingent not only on his testing the quality of the product, but also on our not finding another buyer between then and the time we hit Cuba. And while we were on the way over here, hallelujah, I got a call. Martell’s backup guy came through, and we’re going to get a full five mill.”