“Maybe.” He leaned in to kiss me, much of his hardness and cocky arrogance gone. His lips looked soft and sweet as opposed to inaccessibly beautiful. His tongue was warm, slick, moving in harmony with his tender mouth. The smell of a pine forest in the morning, all dew and smoldering campfires, swelling my senses.
I wanted him. His neck, his jaw, his legs between mine. I wanted to suck on his fingers and thumbs. I reached between his legs, and he stopped me.
“This was only breakfast.”
I groaned. “Please?”
“Tempting, Contessa. But it’s been twice, and too hurried both times. The next time we fuck, it’s going to be for a few hours, and you’re going to need to be wheeled out. I’m not cheating you again.” He reached for the dishes. “I’ll clean up. Go get ready for work.”
By the time I’d brushed my teeth and put my hair and makeup in order, he’d finished clearing the island. We walked out the door kissing. I didn’t think I’d ever been so happy. Then I remembered what I’d promised Daniel, and by the time Antonio closed my car door and stepped away, my happiness had been worn away by the friction of reality.
I’d told Daniel it was over, and that had just changed, and I didn’t even know how. I was curious about Antonio’s alleged corruption. I couldn’t be with a criminal, much less a murderer. Not since my first experience at thirteen, which left me scarred and the boy dead, had I encountered a dangerous man. I’d kept clear of all manner of worthless street punk—until Antonio, who could still back off any question he didn’t feel like answering.
We were together. We weren’t. It didn’t matter. I was looking at those books.
eighteen.
My expertise was in accounting, but really, it was in the movement and flow of money. I looked at ledgers with a broad eye, finding patterns and flow. Like rivers on a map that fell into lakes, disappeared into mountains, and got spit into the ocean, the shifts of money were seen best from far away, with the finer details removed.
Bill and Phyllis, the core of the DA’s financial analysts, were a married couple who had met in the Los Angeles district attorney’s office forty-three years previous. They were detail people, in all their Midwestern glory—she was from Cadillac, Michigan and he was from Collett, Indiana. They reveled in getting it right, in not one shred of a detail falling through their fingers.
Thus, they missed everything.
If they’d understood the first law of fiscal dynamics—that money cannot be gained or lost, only moved—they’d understand that it all went somewhere. It was most important to follow a flow of cash downriver, and let the creeks taper into mysterious blue points. The answer was in the streams’ and the rivers’ undercurrents.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hello, dear,” Phyllis said, gracing me with a brilliant smile. “How are you?”
“Fine.” I put my bag on the table.
Bill sat at the old banker’s desk, tapping on a loud keyboard, his face a few inches too close to the screen. “Got mail from the boss.” His chin pointed at his screen, eyes squinted. “Miss Drazen’s looking at the Giraldi files. That right, Miss Drazen?”
“Theresa. Yes. If you don’t mind?”
“We looked at them already. There’s nothing there. We had the guys from downstairs working with us.”
“Probably,” I said. I didn’t want to step on his toes, or the toes of the hundreds who had pored over the documents. “Just a new set of eyes.”
“Have at it.” He felt abused, if his expression was any indication. He dragged four document boxes from a shelf, one at a time, with the scratch of heavy cardboard sliding on wood.
“Anything digital?” I asked.
“Some,” said Phyllis, opening the boxes. “I’ll get it for you.”
Bill wiped his nose with a cotton handkerchief, fidgeted, and sat. Poor guy. I’d flattened his toes, and it wasn’t even lunchtime. I slid folders out, and with them came a scent. Not the musty odor of dust bunnies and paper residue. It was cologne, spicy and sweet with an undercurrent of pine trees after a rain. I caught a hint of something that I couldn’t identify until I’d unloaded the whole box.
I inhaled again, trying to catch it, but it was gone. Only the dewy forest morning remained.
I hadn’t spent more than an hour with the ledgers before I caught something. Just a few million in property tax payments. Legal payments from legal accounts containing legally obtained money.
One house in particular, in the center of the lots, had been purchased three years earlier with money from an international trust. The rest had been snapped up in the previous six months. It was a lot of property, tight together in the hills of Mount Washington, and it rankled.
nineteen.
Margie’s red hair was tied back in a low ponytail, but strands had found their way free to drape over her cheeks. She was on her second chardonnay, and lunch hadn’t even arrived. She could have had seven more and still litigated a murder trial.
“Mob lawyers are consiglieri,” she said. “They learn the law to get around it. But they don’t get to be boss.”
“Why not?”
“They’re not made. Before you ask, made means protected. And other things. It’s a whole freemason ceremonial shindig. They have to kill someone. Contract killing, not a vendetta. Now do I get to know why you’re asking?”
“Because you’d know.”
“Oh, shifty sister. Very shifty. You know what I meant.” She waved as if swatting away murder. Then she nodded and sat up a little.
I followed her gaze to Jonathan, who sauntered toward us after shaking hands with the owner. He kissed Margie first, then me. A waiter put a scotch in front of him.
“Sorry, I’m late,” he said.
“How was San Francisco?” Margie asked.
“Wet, cold, and amusingly liberal. I saw your picture in the paper,” he said to me. “You’re taking him back?”
“No.”
“She has other things on her mind,” Margie said.
“Such as?” He looked at me over the rim of his glass.
“Nothing.”
“She’s either writing a book or dating a mafia don,” Margie said.
I went cold and hot at the same time. I set my face so it betrayed nothing. If Margie or Jonathan had suspected anything, they would have noticed the two percent change in my demeanor, but they only knew what I’d told them.
“Top secret,” I said. “This doesn’t leave the table. Drazen pledge.”
“Pledge open,” Margie said.
“Pledged,” Jonathan agreed, holding up his hand lazily.
I dropped my voice. “Dan got some files on a certain crime organization from the NSA, and he’s having me look at them.”
Their reaction was immediate and definitive. Margie dropped her fork as if it was white hot. Jonathan picked up his whiskey glass, shaking his head.
“Is he trying to get you killed?” Jonathan asked.
“He needs to grow a set of fucking balls,” Margie added.
She tilted her head a little, as if checking to see if I was going to make a fuss about her language. She’d once verbally cornered me at Thanksgiving dinner, bullying me into describing why, which I couldn’t. Mom had begged her to stop, and Daddy had broken out laughing at my tears.
“Marge, really.” Jonathan tapped his phone. “It’s not that big a deal. He’s the DA. If he can’t protect her—”
But Margie continued undaunted. “Please, let me be the one to explain the obvious. If the mafia doesn’t come after you for looking into their books, whoever’s running against him will use you to undermine him. Think Hillary Clinton doing healthcare. Giving your disgraced ex-fiancé—”