“Don’t let it get you down,” I said. “They don’t know what they’re up against.”
“Ac … tually … they … don’t,” Victor said.
CHAPTER 36
There is no scent of freshly baked bread in Little Italy, no Italians singing love songs or speaking boisterously while flapping their arms in the air. Still, enough charm remains to inspire a walk, if you’ve got the time. I did, so I told my driver to wait while I headed down Mott, and Mulberry, and Elizabeth and Baxter.
The area is gradually being swallowed up by Chinatown, and most of the people who can speak Italian have long since moved to the Bronx. But the streets are still lively and colorful, and the fire hydrants are painted green, white, and red, the colors of the Italian flag.
I didn’t find anything to buy, but I had a decent lunch and managed to clear my head after the meeting with Victor and Hugo. I didn’t think for one minute Victor and Hugo’s army of little people could take over the world, but I was gaining confidence that they could help me take down Joe DeMeo.
A couple hours after lunch, I found my driver and had him push his way through the traffic to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where I got a room at the Hotel Plaza Athenee. By five, room service had delivered an incredible panini sandwich filled with fresh spinach, mozzarella, and roasted red peppers. They also brought me a bottle of Maker’s and a heavy glass tumbler. I ate the sandwich and washed it down with three fingers of bourbon. By six, I’d had a hot shower and was freshly shaved and dressed. I watched the news on Fox for twenty minutes and still had more than enough time to walk the quarter mile east, to Third and Sixty-Sixth.
It was Tuesday, after all.
“For me?” she asked.
There was an empty chair waiting for her at the tiny table I’d staked out at Starbucks, and Kathleen had instantly spied the raspberry scone on the small square of wax paper across from me. To my utter surprise, she rewarded me with a radiant smile, removed her coat, and joined me at the table.
“Who’d a thought it?” she said.
“What’s that?”
“There’s a romantic component at work here,” she said, “one that might even rival your desire to separate me from my panties.”
“The mystery never ends,” I said.
“Do I want to know where you’ve been since Wednesday, what you’ve been up to?”
The angel on my shoulder urged me to tell Kathleen everything and let her run out of my life so she could find true happiness. Of course, the devil on my other shoulder said, “When in doubt, just smile and change the subject.”
“Can I get you a coffee?” I asked.
Kathleen frowned and shook her head. “That bad, eh?”
“I’ve had worse,” I said, and immediately realized I was telling the truth. I thought, What a rotten thing to have to admit, even to myself. I looked at Kathleen across the table. Her eyes were locked onto my mouth, as if she could read my thoughts by watching me speak the words. If that could possibly be true, I wanted to give her something better—a happier thought, one she might enjoy hearing. It would have to be something sincere.
Lucky for me, I had one. “I missed you,” I said. I’d wanted to say more about it, wanted to say it better, but at least I’d said it.
Her eyes remained fixed on my mouth while she processed the validity of my comment. Then she slowly twisted her lips into a smile, and I felt that thing I always felt in her presence.
Hope.
Maybe I still had it in me to be a better person than I’d been. Maybe I hadn’t yet descended so deeply into the pit that I couldn’t experience a woman’s love, capture her heart, have a decent life.
She took a bite of her scone and made a production of licking the sugar from her upper lip. She gave me a sly smile. “You really like me, don’t you!” she said.
I laughed. “Don’t get cocky.”
“Oh, I can get cocky,” she said. “Judging by the way your tongue is hanging out of your mouth, I can get cocky anytime I want!”
“That’s pretty big talk,” I said, letting my tongue hang out of my mouth.
“Pretty big what?” she said, laughing.
“Keep talking like that and you’re never going to get me in bed.”
“Oh, yes, I will!” she said.
CHAPTER 37
The Arabelle is the Plaza Athenee’s signature restaurant. It was also far too ostentatious, Kathleen felt, for the way she was dressed. “However,” she said, cocking an eyebrow at me, “the Bar Seine was voted ‘Best Spot for Romance’ by the New York Post.”
“Then we’re in the right place,” I said. We strolled across the lobby and entered the Bar Seine. I pointed across the leather floor to an empty couch that was covered with an animal print fabric.
“Wanna cuddle over there in the private alcove?” I said.
“Slow down, Romeo, and get me a sandwich first.”
“You can think of food at a time like this?” I said.
She winked. “I need to build some strength for later, you lucky dog.”
We sat beside each other in overstuffed chairs with ridiculously high armrests. There was a small octagonal coffee table in front of us. “Maybe I’ll order a bottle of courage,” I said.
“They don’t serve bottles here silly,” she said. “This is a highclass joint.”
I looked around. “They’ve got a signature hotel, a signature bar, probably got a signature drink,” I said.
“Here we go again,” she giggled. “Actually, they do have a signature drink!”
“As long as it doesn’t contain the words venti or doppo,” I said.
“If I tell you the name, promise you’ll order it?”
“Is it really pretentious?” I asked.
Her laughter started bubbling up, spilling out into the room.
“More puffed up than the coffees at Starbucks?” I said.
She feigned a snooty look. “Those are bush league by comparison,” she huffed. “Mere pretenders.”
I smiled. “Okay,” I said, “hit me with it.”
Our waitress came, and we ordered a watercress sandwich for Kathleen. “And to drink?” she asked.
“I’ll have a pomegranate martini,” Kathleen said.
The waitress smiled and looked at me. “And for you, sir?”
I looked at Kathleen.
“Say it,” she giggled.
I sighed. “I’ll have a crystal cosmopolitan,” I said, and she howled with laughter.
The drinks came, and I didn’t want to ruin the moment, but I had to know what happened to make her change her mind about seeing me.
“Augustus,” she said.
“Augustus?”
“You sent him to guard Addie.”
“I did.”
“Even though you and I were through at the time.”
“So?”
“So you really cared about Addie and wanted to keep her safe. That warmed my heart, Donovan. It says everything about your character.”
I remembered how I’d ruined the moment with Lauren the week before and was determined not to react or say anything that could turn the tables on what promised to be an epic evening. I thought I’d stick to a safe topic.
“You had a chance to spend some time with Quinn?” I asked.
“I did,” she said. “Augustus is wonderful with the children—so loving and gentle.”
I couldn’t recall ever hearing the words Augustus and loving and gentle in the same sentence before.
“Did you talk to him about me?” I asked.
“Of course!” she said, her eyes sparkling.
“And?”
“And I told him I thought you were seriously flawed.”
I nodded. “And what did he say?”
Kathleen grew serious for a minute and paused to give weight to her words. “He said you were chivalrous. That you’re always on a quest.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. That you’re a good friend to have.”
r /> “Did he mention I liked puppies and butterflies, too?”
“No … thank God!”
An hour later, we entered my suite, and she mugged me with kisses before I got the door shut. Our hands were all over each other, racing to see who could touch the most skin in the shortest period of time. I pinned her against the wall in a full body embrace, and our mouths worked hard to keep pace with our passion.
Then Kathleen broke away and dragged me to the bedroom. She spun me around and pushed me onto the bed. I sat up and reached for her, but she slapped my hands away.
I said, “Damn, those pomegranates are amazing!”
“You mean these?” she said. She ripped off her bra, and my brain circuits spun like tumblers in a slot machine.
“Now, Donovan!” she said.
“Now?”
She stepped out of her clothes. Licked her lips.
“At your cervix,” I said.
We made love like teenagers, wrecking the sheets, rolling all over the place. At one point, she started moaning like a porn star, and I said, “Hey, calm down. We both know I’m not that good!”
CHAPTER 38
The wind in Cincinnati whipped and swirled under a gunmetal sky. Bits of paper came to life on currents of air. A bus stopped at the corner of Fifth and Vine, and a young lady stepped off, wearing a short gray sweater dress with pleats. The sudden gusts played havoc with her dress, causing it to flutter and dance about her legs in a way that revealed more than she’d intended. A cellophane wrapper rose from the gutter and became part of a tiny swirling cyclone that covered some twenty yards along Vine Street before coming to rest on the sidewalk in front of the Beck Building.
The Beck was an austere building located a stone’s throw from the Cincinnatian Hotel, where I’d spent the previous night. It was also the building that housed he law firm of Hastings, Unger, and Lovell.
According to the concierge, my corner suite on the second floor of the legendary hotel was tastefully flamboyant. Still, the kitchen and parlor offered a great view of downtown Cincinnati, as well as the Beck Building’s front entrance, so I did my best to ignore the décor while waiting for Augustus Quinn to call me.
Quinn had arrived in town an hour earlier, carrying only a duffel bag. Now he and the duffel were locked in the trunk of Sal Bonadello’s black sedan.
I could only hope he was still alive.
Actually, I was almost certain he was alive, because that was part of the plan.
Every city has a rhythm, and I absorbed what I could of the sights and sounds of downtown Cincinnati from my window, trying to get a feel for it. Half a block away, a homeless person sat on a frozen park bench in what passed for Cincinnati’s town square: a block-sized patch of green with a gazebo and enough open space to accommodate a small gathering for outdoor events. It was practically freezing outside, but he had a couple of pigeons hanging about, hoping for a bread toss. I wondered if he’d had a better life at some point, and hoped so.
I didn’t expect Quinn’s call for at least ten or fifteen minutes and didn’t plan to worry unless a half-hour had passed without hearing from him. As I stood at the window, I was thinking that I had no reason to believe Sal would double cross me, and yet I had just bet Quinn’s life on that assumption.
I was also thinking what a fine target I’d make standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows.
I shut the blinds, moved to the interior of the room, and—to take my mind off the wallpaper pattern—went through my mental checklist one more time.
We were in battle mode, and I had things wrapped pretty tight. Callie was still in West Virginia keeping an eye on Janet and Kimberly. Quinn had spent the night at the burn center and had been relieved early this morning by two of our guys from Bedford. Kathleen was at her office, and Lou Kelly had put a guy on her just in case. Victor and Hugo were assembling the assault team and working out the final details for hijacking a government surveillance drone.
Sal Bonadello was on the seventh floor of the Beck Building with his bodyguard and two attorneys, hatching a plot to kill me. The attorneys were Chris Unger, whose private suite was located there, and Chris’s younger brother, Garrett, who had formerly represented Addie’s parents, Greg and Melanie Dawes.
Normally attorneys wouldn’t be involved in discussing—much less planning—a criminal activity. But because I am known by the underworld as a counter-terrorist, Joe DeMeo wanted to be extra careful with the hit, wanted everyone to be on the same page. The attorneys were deep into organized crime but they couldn’t afford to be seen meeting with Sal Bonadello and his bodyguard Big Bad—as in Big Bad Wolf—which is why I thought we had a good chance of pulling off the plan I had hatched the night before.
Sal had gotten the call from Joe DeMeo to oversee the hit on me, but Sal claimed my status with the government required a sit-down. DeMeo refused, wanting to lay low until he knew I was dead, but he sent his emissary from New York City, Garrett Unger. Since Sal lived in Cincinnati, and Garret’s older brother, Chris, had his own law practice here, they decided to meet in Chris’s private suite on the seventh floor.
The Beck Building tenants and customers were well aware of the four parking levels attached to the building, but they’d have been shocked to learn that the double-wide garage door labeled “Emergency Exit” actually led to a private parking area for the law partners and their underworld guests. The partners changed the access code before and after every meeting with their criminal clients.
Sal Bonadello was the key to my plan working. He and Big Bad had been met by Chris Unger’s bodyguard and escorted to the private suites moments earlier.
The suites were soundproofed, surrounded by empty offices. No one who worked at the law offices knew of the existence of the private suites, nor could they access them from the occupied offices. The walls of the suites were heavily concreted to provide a high level of safety and privacy.
When a driver dropped off a mob client, the protocol was to stay put, in his car, until the meeting was over. The only other person in the suites during this or any other meeting was Chris’s secretary, whose job was to keep an eye on the private parking area from a monitor at her desk.
The way I’d planned it, Sal would create a diversion and signal his driver, who would pop the trunk. Quinn would get out and call me with the access code. Then I would join him and put the plan into action.
My cell phone rang. I answered it, and the lady on the other end said she’d thought about me all night and wanted to know if I’d been studying how to be a better lover. Then she laughed.
“I confess, I haven’t had time to bone up on the subject yet.”
Kathleen laughed again, and I pictured her eyes crinkling at the edges. “That’s perfect,” she said, “because I can’t wait to teach you!”
“I’m still trying to recover from the exam you gave me last night.”
“Well, be forewarned,” she said.
“Why’s that?”
“The next test is oral!”
“Wow! You promise?” I said.
“Mmmm,” she said.
I could have gone on talking like this a bit longer, but not without putting on a dress.
I flipped on the TV, found the headline news channel. They were hitting the hotel bombing four times an hour, so I couldn’t help but see it again. For the millionth time, they dragged out the footage showing rows of body bags lined up on the sand, waiting to be loaded into ambulances that were in no hurry to leave. There were mangled men and women, family members sobbing for loved ones, expressionless children with bloody faces—all the typical crap you’d expect from the nightly news crews that made shock and horror a dinnertime staple.
When they’d sucked every ounce of pathos from that story, they turned to Monica’s husband, Dr. Baxter Childers, surrounded by shouting reporters as he made his way to a car.
Until recently, Baxter had gotten a free pass from the press, but I knew that wouldn’t last long. Murder-for-hire speculation gi
ves fresh legs to stories that have run their course. For this reason, some talk show hosts had begun digging into possible connections between Baxter and the kidnappers. One moron was even trying to make a connection between the names Monica and Santa Monica. Maybe the next victim would be Monica Seles, he speculated. Yeah, I thought, or maybe Santa Claus.
Even more delicious to newsrooms across the nation, rumors were circulating about a possible love triangle involving Monica Childers and a yoga instructor.