Isabella adjusts the rearview mirror so she can get a better view of her near-perfect reflection. She plays with the knot of her Hermes scarf, tied loosely around her neck, and feels the ache of the anticipation of when she will force Julia to give up the real safety deposit box number and code and she’ll finally get the money. Isabella pulls out a travel brochure for Spain from her Prada bag and calculates that she can live comfortably there with the two million dollars, in addition to the other one million she stole from Nick, and be far enough away that he’ll never find her.
Isabella scans for her target at the entrance of the hospital again, and tugs at her hair she dyed back to blond in an attempt to evade being recognized, and carefully drapes a long strand along her jawline to cover her one mar—her missing earlobe, the one Enzo Costas cut off at the MGM Grand when he caught her with the lawyer.
From her rearview mirror, Isabella sees Julia and the two policemen leave the hospital and feels a stab of hatred torch through her. The poor little lawyer’s wife always has someone around to take care of her and soothe her grief.
Isabella feels her anger burn brighter as she is sure Nick is already planning a hit on her for not being able to manage the lawyer, and she knows she would already be dead if Nick knew of her true involvement with David and their failed plan. Isabella looks over at her Prada bag and the gun inside and wishes her husband were in the passenger seat so she could tip the barrel against his ear and watch his brains spray across the window.
Isabella cuts her dark fantasy short as she spots Navarro pulling away down the street in front of her. But she doesn’t follow. She knows Navarro is too smart and shrewd and would recognize that he is being followed.
Instead, she weaves through the three miles of city traffic until she gets to Greektown. She parks outside of Plaka’s Restaurant, where she searches the front of the building for the person she solicited to help her with Julia.
Isabella spies the young man walking around the corner of the restaurant. He is in his early twenties, tall and thickly muscled with broad shoulders and a sloping waist, resembling a younger version of her husband. Isabella slowly opens the Lexus driver-side window and calls him over.
“Franco, the job I told you about, it’s happening earlier than we discussed. I need your help right now,” Isabella says, and reaches out her pinky finger to stroke the back of the young man’s hand.
“Now? That’s not possible, I’m sorry.”
She looks up and down the empty street, takes his hand, and cups it over her breast.
“Oh, I think you can and you will,” Isabella says.
Franco swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat.
“Okay. How much will you pay me?” he asks.
“Five hundred dollars and a night with me in my hotel room,” Isabella answers, knowing she would go up to a thousand dollars if need be, but Franco looks like he’d jump in the car and do it to her right in front of the Greek restaurant during the lunch rush if he could.
“That sounds good. Real good,” Franco answers.
“I’ll call you when I’m ready. You’ll drive me first to a residence in Rochester Hills. Have you ever killed anyone before?”
Franco’s beautiful olive complexion pales to two shades lighter.
“Don’t worry, little boy. I’ll handle it. Do you know where the Packard Plant is?” she asks.
“Of course. Everyone in Detroit does.”
“Very good. Go there now and set up a room on a high floor. And stop by a hardware store on your way. I’ll need a chair, some chains, duct tape, and bleach,” Isabella says. “Find a location in the Packard Plant that is secure. Clear out any vagrants or drug addicts you find in there. I don’t want any witnesses.”
Franco looks back at Isabella like a scared child, and he quickly retracts his hand from Isabella’s breast.
“Are you in or not?” Isabella asks, her voice now a razor-sharp stiletto.
Franco looks back at the gorgeous woman inside the car, his decision made.
“I’m in.”
Isabella watches the tight curves of Franco’s hips as he walks away and knows now all she has to do is find a moment when the lawyer’s wife is alone.
CHAPTER 29
Eastern Market on any given Saturday draws a crowd. But throw in the first nice day when the temperature spikes to fifty degrees after another brutal Michigan winter, and Detroiters come out from the woodwork en masse. Julia curses the good weather for luring the larger-than-usual crowd to her destination with her boys and leaving her without a parking space.
“Can I take off my coat?” Logan asks.
“No. I don’t know where I’m going to be able to find a place to park, so we may have to walk a ways and I don’t want you to get cold,” Julia answers.
“Take my coat off, too,” Will chimes in, echoing his brother.
“Stop tag teaming your mother, you two,” Helen says from the passenger seat. “This is a nice family afternoon she planned for everyone.”
“Thanks for that,” Julia tells Helen. “I don’t care what other people are wearing or not wearing. Everyone in this car keeps a coat on, at least for now.”
“Helen, too?” Logan asks.
“I’m going to ignore that,” Julia answers.
She gives up trying to find a space on the street and pulls into a paid parking garage instead.
“I’m going to take Logan and Will to get coneys at Zeff’s, but is there any specific place you’d like to go, Helen?” Julia asks. “We’ve got all afternoon.”
“I must stop at the pierogi booth for Alek. It is his way of taunting me, making me buy someone else’s food for him when he knows mine is better,” Helen answers with a dramatic sulk.
Julia finds a parking spot on the highest floor of the garage. She extracts Will from his car seat and Helen takes Logan’s hand as they make their way to the elevator. Julia lets Will push the down button, and she notices a dark blue Lexus circling their floor for the third time since they left their car. The Lexus disappears down the exit ramp, but a nagging worry still hums in Julia’s chest.
“Let’s take the stairs instead,” Julia says.
“We’re on the ninth floor,” Helen says. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” Julia answers, not wanting to scare the boys.
Julia eyes the stairs but changes her mind when the elevator arrives. Julia lets Helen and the boys enter first and stands guard by the door until it is ready to close, and she slips inside at the last second.
The parking garage elevator levels with the street, and they get off and blend in with the crush of other people moving in the direction of Eastern Market.
“Can I go listen to that guy?” Logan asks, and points across the street to an older black man singing a silky Motown rendition of The Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” accompanied by his acoustic guitar.
“No. We stay together,” Julia answers, and steers the group toward Shed 3, the largest of the open air stalls in the public marketplace, and Logan and Will take their place side by side in front of the two women.
“I’m surprised your police friend isn’t here,” Helen comments.
“He’s working. What do you have against Navarro anyway?”
“He’s lying in wait to make his dirty-boy move on you. Just you wait and see,” Helen whispers to Julia in a conspiratorial tone. “Your husband is gone and he is now plotting to replace that good man.”
“I’ve known Navarro for a long time, and he’s not that person. He’s one of the good guys.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t matter how long you know someone, because the sly ones can hide their true faces,” Helen says.
“Yeah, I know.”
Helen pauses to peruse a stall filled with spring’s first blooms of brilliantly shaded tulips, daffodils, and pansies while Julia scans the scene, second-guessing her decision to bring her children to such a busy location, with Rossi and his wife still on the loose.
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“I have to go to the bathroom. Can you take me over there?” Logan asks Julia, and points to the public restrooms on the other side of the shed.
“Go to the bathroom too,” Will repeats.
“Okay, that’s fine. Let’s go over to the Russell Street Deli after this and then go home,” Julia answers.
“Something is the matter,” Helen says quietly to Julia. “I thought you said we would be here all afternoon.”
“No, nothing’s wrong. I guess everything is just catching up to me and I’m suddenly not feeling well,” Julia lies as her cell phone sounds from inside her purse.
She pulls out the phone and sees Navarro’s name as the incoming caller. Julia lifts her finger to tell the boys and Helen to hold on as she starts to answer.
“I really have to go,” Logan says while dancing in place.
“I can take the boys,” Helen says.
“I have to use the girl’s room?” Logan asks.
“You will live. I will not let you go into a public bathroom in the middle of the city all by yourself,” Helen responds, and walks the boys toward the women’s restroom sign.
Julia searches for a quiet corner to take the call and answers.
“Can you hear me?” Navarro asks. “It sounds like you’re in the middle of Comerica Park. What’s all the noise?”
“I’m at Eastern Market with the kids and Helen,” Julia answers, and moves to the side exit and out into the alley where she can hear Navarro better. “I’m starting to wish we didn’t come here. There are so many people, and I swear I thought I saw a car following us in the parking lot earlier.”
“Just stay alert to your surroundings like I’m sure you’re doing,” Navarro says. “I got a tip from one of my informants a little while ago. The guy is a big doper and shoots up over at the Packard Plant. He tells me one day a few weeks ago, he’s huddled up against a side of the building and sees these two young guys walking out of the plant, and one guy is carrying a suitcase. He says the window of a Mercedes parked across from him opens, and the two guys get popped by the driver. From the informant’s description, the suitcase sounds like a fit for the one the courthouse bomb was in. My guy hid when the driver got out of the Mercedes so he couldn’t give me an ID, but he got a partial on the plate.”
“How accurate can a partial plate from a drugged-up informant be?” Julia asks.
“Let’s just say he was scared sober from what he saw. I’m running the plate now to see if anything connects.”
“I bet money it belongs to Nick Rossi.”
“I’m heading over to the station to see what I can find out about the two dead guys and then over to the Packard Plant to interview the junkie.”
“Let me know if anything comes out of it,” Julia answers.
“I will. Be careful out there,” Navarro answers.
Julia starts to end the call when she is interrupted by a woman’s voice coming from behind her.
“Mrs. Tanner.” The name sounds peculiar in Julia’s ears since no one calls her by David’s last name, the one she never legally took as her own.
Julia shoves her phone in her pocket and slowly turns toward the voice.
Standing a foot behind her is a woman clad in a black, long-sleeved silk shirt, tight black jeans, knee-high black boots, and a turquoise necklace with a long, silver chain.
“You’re a very difficult person to find alone,” Isabella says. “How nice it is for you to have so many sad little male faces following you along with their limp dicks tucked behind them as they trail you like puppies, just hoping they’ll do something right so you’ll open your legs for them.”
Julia studies the woman with platinum blond hair that carefully frames her nearly perfect face. The stunning beauty suffers from a single imperfection—her mangled left ear, the lobe missing, the flesh where it was once connected now a blobbed matrix of twisted red scars. Julia instantly gets beyond the new blond hair color and recognizes the woman as Isabella Rossi.
“Don’t act as if you don’t know me. We’ve met before in my penthouse when you and the officers questioned me. You don’t have any idea how difficult it was for me to keep from telling you how hard your husband screwed me.”
“I know who you are. You’re Isabella Rossi. You’re the blonde in the video,” Julia says.
“My starring role, but your husband and I had many encounters that weren’t recorded. I’d be happy to share every detail with you, if you like. I can assure you, he was very, very good. But you know that already. Now, do you see the Lexus parked across the alley?” Isabella asks, and waves at the vehicle.
The darkened driver-side window of the car opens, exposing Franco, who waits obediently with a gun pointed directly at Julia.
“My friend in the car has been instructed to shoot you if you try to run or cause a scene,” Isabella says.
A man wearing a white chef’s coat and carrying a crate of mushrooms hurries down the alley toward the Eastern Market loading entrance, and Isabella slips her arm around Julia’s waist, as if they are two sisters or best friends having a pleasant little chat.
“Don’t even try it,” Isabella hisses in Julia’s ear.
Isabella looks in the other direction as the man passes into the rear market entrance and then pushes Julia toward the waiting Lexus.
Isabella scans the now-empty alley, then throws Julia roughly against the side of the vehicle and knocks on the passenger-side window for Franco to open.
“Is everything arranged?” Isabella asks.
“Yes, I got the supplies you wanted and set up a room in the Packard Plant up on the seventh floor,” Franco answers.
“Good,” Isabella says, and then tosses Franco the keys to her Lexus. “You’ll drive.”
Isabella pulls the back of Julia’s hair in one quick snap and slams Julia’s face against the side of the car. Julia’s jaw makes a popping sound, and she tastes something metallic as her mouth begins to fill up with blood.
“You move, and I’ll kill you,” Isabella says.
Isabella frisks Julia and stops when she feels the cell phone still in Julia’s pocket. Isabella pulls the phone out, smashes it under the heel of her boot, and kicks the broken phone into an opening of a sewer grate along the sidewalk.
“There’s no policeman for you to call for help this time,” Isabella says. She shoves Julia into the backseat of the Lexus and slides in beside her. “David told me he thought you were seeing the policeman behind his back.”
“David was the only person cheating in our marriage,” Julia answers.
Isabella lifts up her hand and smacks Julia across the face.
Franco watches the backseat, nervously looking from woman to woman.
“Don’t you get scared on me, little boy,” Isabella says. “Now drive.”
Isabella pulls a gun out from her Prada bag and holds it on her lap, the barrel pointing at Julia’s chest.
Franco turns the car on Wilkins Street, and Julia feels awash in desperation as she watches Eastern Market, where Helen and the boys still are, disappearing in the rear window.
“If you’re going to kill me, I at least want to know the truth. How did David get involved with your husband?”
Isabella studies the quickly passing downtown core as if she can see the memory in its backdrop.
“As you wish. Nick got word to Enzo Costas from prison that he wanted me to meet David.”
“You were the currier who gave him the money,” Julia says.
“Two million dollars for David to pay off a juror. Nick had dirt on David, a video that proved your husband hid evidence in a case he was prosecuting. If it got out, David would have lost everything.”
“The Anthony Ruiz trial. I found the DVD in your cottage in California. Rossi blackmailed David.”
Isabella shrugs, obviously not caring about the consequences to her former business partner.
“For me, David was just another one of Nick’s jobs at first, but then I realized we could work together
for the good of our individual interests.”
“You used David,” Julia says.
“Everyone uses everyone, and if they don’t, they’re just stupid,” Isabella answers. “I used your husband, and he used me. David figured a way out. He bought the Ruiz video from the bar owner and thought he was off the hook with Nick, so he planned to try the case honestly and we’d split the two million. And when Nick went to prison, I’d be free from that asshole. I needed the money because Nick’s assets would be frozen when he went to jail. I lied to Enzo that David bribed a juror, and I told David about Sammy Biggs.”
“The Butcher,” Julia answers.
“I went to California with David when he went to recruit Biggs to testify against my husband. I knew Biggs’s testimony would be my ticket out of my life with Nick. I told David where to go, and I stayed in the hotel for most of the trip so I wouldn’t be seen.”
“Except when you were outside of Santa Maria Temple, where you took the photo of David.”
Isabella gives Julia a gloating smile as the Lexus crosses city traffic and makes a turn on Mt. Elliott Street.
“I was sure Nick didn’t know about the trip,” Isabella says. “I got instructions from Enzo to bring the two million dollars to David at the MGM Grand, and David agreed to meet me there. Nick had Enzo plant the camera in the room before we got there. One of his people saw David in California, and Nick got suspicious he was going to screw him at the trial. We got to the hotel . . .”
“I saw the video,” Julia answers.
“So you know how good I look when your husband is doing me,” Isabella says. “Enzo showed up to confront David and me, but David had already left. The only good thing you did was kill that monster Enzo. Look what that bastard did.”
Isabella lifts up her blond hair to expose her scarred ear.
“Your husband saw you and David having sex on the tape. I have a hard time believing Rossi didn’t have any problem with that.”
“Nick didn’t care who I screwed as long as I got the job done for him.”
“So Rossi knew David double-crossed him. Why didn’t he kill him?”
Duplicity Page 26