“Those pimps or madams mention him to you?”
“No.”
“Then nobody recognized him. Quit your bellyaching.”
He stepped back behind his desk and leaned in. “I’m trying to sell your services to a half dozen houses outside this alley. What am I supposed to say when they ask why your boys are dying left and right?”
I could see it now, what he was doing. He was trying to put me on the defensive. Trying to seize the upper hand in our partnership.
Not going to happen. I took a big step toward his desk, big enough to bump it with my thigh. We stood face-to-face, the desk holding us apart. “You tell them my rep speaks for itself.”
“Not fucking good enough.” He punched at the air. The desk standing between us seemed to shrink. “I’m putting my name on the line for this.”
“You quit that shit right now!” I chopped at his desk with my good hand. “I came to you with a gift, dammit. I could’ve brought the same deal to anybody, you hear me? But I came to you, you stupid prick. I thought you’d have the smarts to take proper advantage.”
“Fuck that. Don’t act like you did me a favor, like you took a chance on me. I took a chance on you, you dumb fuck.” He was working himself into a fit, his hands jerking around, his words coming out in a blustery blast. “You were nothing when you came in here a few days ago. Just a burned-out ex-cop. A sad-sack widower. You were nothing. Nothing! ”
I felt spittle land on my face. His red-faced mug was ready to burst. His voice got real low. “You want to get paid, you show some appreciation.”
There it was. Prick just made his play, talking to me like I was his employee, like I was his muscle. He’d figured it out. He’d seen the ragtag group I’d put together, figured out that my influence over KOP was mostly a mirage. He’d seen hints of weakness, and he was going to wring it for all it was worth.
He thought I’d fold, thought I needed this gig in a bad way, thought I needed it to feel important. He figured me for desperate, desperate enough to give him control of this racket in order to stay on his good side.
But I knew this SOB, knew what made him tick. Thanks to me, he was going to collect a piece of every trick turned in this alley. Every dick sucked. Every pussy fucked. A piece of every last buck.
He’d been sitting here in this office for days now. I could picture it, him working through the projections, charting it out, the zeroes added to his bottom line giving him a hard-on. Hour after hour, he’d been salivating over those zeroes, fawning over them like he could screw them.
He was hooked. I knew it. Through-the-gills, jonesing-for-a-fix hooked. Look at him, his eyes greedy as they were beady.
Time to set him straight.
I pulled off my shades so he could get a good look at my eyes. Ice. “Apologize.”
“What?”
“For talking back to me. Apologize and make it sweet before I replace your ass.”
I stepped through the curtain, big-ass wad of cash in my damp pocket. Deluski and Maria waited in the lobby. “We heard you were here,” said Maria, her V-neck top cut low enough to show the top edges of a lacy bra, breasts squeezed up and in. Her eyes were dominated by eye shadow, deep blue swaths coming down like gaudy drapes with each eye blink. “We were worried.”
I smiled and-not wanting to send the wrong signal-patted her shoulder buddy-to-buddy style.
Deluski gave a relieved grin. “Glad to see you made it, boss.”
“Same here.” I held him with a suspicious eye, knowing that in his case, the concern might not be so selfless. Killer KOPs would’ve gone public had I died.
“Sorry it went down like that.” He dipped his head. “I didn’t want to leave you to fend for yourself.”
I gave him an appraising look. His brown eyes hung heavy in their sockets. He raised his brows, but they weren’t strong enough to lift the weight of a long night. The guilt seemed genuine.
“Don’t sweat it. I ordered you to run. You did right.”
A skeptical smile. “What happened down there?”
“I ran like hell.” I stepped in close, leaned forward so nobody but Deluski and Maria would overhear. “We can’t stay here any longer.” I asked Maria, “Know anybody with tight lips who can put Deluski up tonight?”
“What about you?”
“I have to go see somebody, but I’ll have to crash eventually. Can you get a place with room for two?”
She bit her lipsticked lip. “I’ll come up with something.”
“When you find a place, take Deluski over there. Then call the Iguana King Hotel and leave the address for Joe Chin.”
“Who?”
“Just tell them a Joe Chin will be checking in tomorrow.”
She nodded her head, understanding.
I put my hand on Deluski’s shoulder. “Wherever she brings you, stay there until I come for you in the morning.”
Things settled for now, I went out the door.
Maggie. I had to see Maggie.
Morning. The traffic-both foot and wheel-told me so. I’d been sitting on these steps for hours, waiting for her to come out. Didn’t want to wake her up. She was plenty pissed at me as it was.
Rain came down in a constant patter. Water streamed out from a pipe under my feet and ran down a cement gutter before disappearing into an underground pipe. The courtyard was secluded, trees and vines trimmed and shaped, the jungle tamed into a garden. Damp moss filled the air with mustiness.
The door opened behind me. She came halfway down the steps and turned to face me. “What are you doing here?” A porch light lit her face, but her voice was anything but bright.
“We need to talk.”
She looked down at me, at my rumpled clothes, my up-all-night eyes. “No, we don’t. I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t play stupid. You know exactly what I’m talking about. And take off those damn sunglasses.”
I semi-complied by pushing the glasses up to the top of my head. My scalp hurt like hell.
“What were you thinking?” Her voice was amped with impatience.
“I fucked up.”
“You think?”
“I didn’t know Mota would fight me. I thought he’d crumble.”
“You are unbelievable.” She shook her head. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what?”
She kept her voice low. “You still think this is a problem of execution. You think you picked the wrong protection racket to take over. Christ. It ever occur to you that taking dirty money is illegal?”
“What do you want me to say? I’m sorry?”
“An apology isn’t going to do it. Good-bye.” She rushed down the stairs, took the first step into the rain.
I couldn’t let her go. “I did it for you,” I called before she got far.
She spun on me, her face flushed, brows stabbing downward.
I stayed seated but forged ahead, undaunted. “I was trying to build a power base. You can’t be chief without-”
“Stop!” She jumped on my words and stomped them into the ground. “Don’t you dare put this on me. You fucked up. You. ”
“I was trying to-”
“Shut up! Just shut the hell up.”
I shut up. My insides hung heavy. I couldn’t stand to see her angry, couldn’t stand that I’d brought that ugliness to her face. The creases marring her forehead, the squint-wrinkles spoiling her eyes, the thorny little lines surrounding crimped lips, they were all my work, all of them strokes from my black paintbrush.
She was so angry I saw myself in her face, my ugly side reflecting back at me. I wanted to crawl into a hole.
Fix it, Juno. You have to fix it. I told myself I could, that it wasn’t too late. She hadn’t left. She hadn’t given up on me. Not yet. “One question.”
She stayed silent, glaring.