1 Runaway Man (13 page)

I was wearing a navy blue turtleneck sweater and jeans—sort of like I’d seen Legs Diamond wearing. Okay, exactly like I’d seen Legs Diamond wearing. He’s my fashion icon. Some guys have James Dean. I have Legs.

Sonya led me into the living room and dining area. The building had been gutted and renovated not long ago. It was airy, clean and modern. There was recessed lighting. Polished parquet flooring. New wiring and plumbing, no doubt. Hell, I bet it even had an energy-efficient furnace that didn’t seize up three times a week. The sleek, Danish-y looking sofa and armchairs were upholstered in white leather. The dining table was an oval-shaped glass thingy surrounded by a set of eight Eames molded plywood chairs.

“Nice place,” I observed, noticing the carpeted stairs that led upstairs and down.

“You want the full basement-to-garret tour?”

“You rent the whole building?”

Sonya colored slightly. “Actually, I own it.”

“You
own
it?” I tried to sound calm. Really, I did. But a renovated townhouse on a prime West Village block was worth many millions.

“My father bought it for me as a present when I graduated from Wesleyan.”

“Nice present. I don’t mean to sound crass, Sonya, but are you rich?”

“Why, is that a problem?”

“No, not at all. I’m extremely open-minded. I just always figured your Uncle Al was—”

“A cheapie? A chiseler? A small-timer of a bookie who never has more than two nickels to scrape together? He totally is. But my father is Generation Next. He graduated from Harvard Business School and is in charge of operations for one of the gigantic Indian casinos in Uncasville, Connecticut. When I told him I wanted to teach school in the city he said okay, but he didn’t want me living in some rundown dump with clanky pipes. Know what I mean?”

“Only too well. And I would.”

“You would what, cookie?”

“Like the full tour.”

“Well, right now you’re looking at the living room and dining room, obviously,” she said, leading me toward the glass dining table.

“Sonya, is that cupboard in the wall over there what I think it is?”

She smiled at me. “Why, what do you think it is?”

“A dumbwaiter.”

“Don’t you just love it? It still works, too. I insisted we keep it when they renovated the place. I’ve always had a thing for dumbwaiters. Come on, I’ll show you the kitchen. But we’ll have to take the stairs. The dumbwaiter won’t hold both of us. Your mom is a real doll, by the way,” she chattered, her hips wiggling enticingly in those tight jeans as she led me downstairs. “And is she ever built. No wonder you’re still unattached. There isn’t a girl on the planet who can measure up.”

Sonya’s huge restaurant kitchen seemed to be constructed entirely out of stainless steel. Her six-burner Viking stove had an island unto itself. The dumbwaiter had a wall to itself. A breakfast table was situated before a set of French doors that led out to her floodlit patio and garden.

“Are you okay with Chianti Classico?” she asked, reaching for the open bottle that was breathing on the granite counter.

“More than okay.”

She poured two glasses and handed me one, her gaze grabbing hold of mine and not letting go. “I don’t mean to pry but I’d like to know a little more about what you do for a living. Your mom was really, really vague. ‘We help lawyers,’ was all I could get out of her. And now I find out you carry a loaded gun. Benji, you’re not some kind of baby-faced thug, are you?”

“No, nothing like that. I’m a private investigator.”

“Get out! You’re a private eye? How on earth did you?…”

“It’s the family business. My dad started the agency after he retired from the force. I worked for him as an operative while I was in school. Now I do it full time.”

“A real-life private eye. Benji, that is
so
exciting. Do you spy on cheating husbands?”

“Sometimes I even spy on cheating wives.”

“Can I come with you some time on a stakeout?”

I took a sip of my wine. “Why would you want to do that?”

“I teach kindergarten. I’m with five-year-olds all day. You have no idea how little excitement I have in my life. Don’t get me wrong. I love the little brats. But sometimes I feel like life is passing me by. I’m going to be twenty-eight in September. And the only guys I ever seem to meet are assholes and putzes.” She tilted her head at me curiously. “You must meet gorgeous women constantly in your line of work.”

“Not that many.”

“And you really don’t have anybody special in your life?”

“I really don’t, Sonya.”

“So who gave you that bunny bracelet?”

I glanced down at Sara’s bracelet on my wrist. “A very mixed-up seventeen-year-old girl who needs a friend.”

Sonya topped off our glasses. “Are you ready for the rest of the tour?”

“I’m ready. This is really good wine, by the way.”

“You like it? Daddy’s wholesaler sends it to me by the case.”

The entire third floor of Sonya’s brownstone was a plush master bedroom suite. She had a king-sized bed and a queen-sized dressing room with a walk-in closet paneled in cedar. Her bathroom had a Jacuzzi. On the top floor she had a guest bedroom and an office.

“Sonya, this place is amazing. I can’t believe you have it all to yourself.”

“Well, I’m hoping to share it with someone someday,” she confessed, leading me back downstairs to the living room. She sat on the sofa with her legs curled beneath her. I sat down next to her. “And not just
any
someone, Benji. The right someone. I want a husband. I want kids. I want a great big smoochy dog. I want the whole
megillah
.” She sipped her wine, eyeing me somewhat guardedly now over the rim of her glass. “I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me. I don’t jump into bed with some guy who I’ve just met. I like to take things slow.”

“Good.”

She blinked at me in surprise. “Good?”

“Absolutely. I wouldn’t want to get involved with someone who doesn’t think that sex between two people is something really, really special.”

“Okay, I cannot believe you just said that.”

“Why, Sonya?”

“Because I’ve never heard those words come out of the mouth of any living creature who has a penis. You
do
have a?…”

“Yep. Fully equipped here.”

She took another sip of her wine, looking at me shyly. “I shouldn’t admit this, because it’s totally uncool, but I got a funny feeling when I met you in the basement of B’Nai Jacob this morning.”

“Funny ha-ha or funny weird?”

“Funny as in you’re someone who is going to become important to me.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely, Sonya. I felt the same exact way about you. Instantly. And now
I’m
the one who has to confess something.”

“You
don’t
have a penis?”

“No, no, I do. Trust me.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”

“That’s so sweet, cookie. Really?”

“Really.”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s never happened to me either.”

We clinked glasses on that, gazing into each other’s eyes.

I cleared my throat. “Are you a
hungry
old-fashioned girl?”

“Starved.”

“Good. Where would you like to eat?”

“I thought we could eat here. I love to cook. I was thinking linguine with white clam sauce. Are you okay with garlic?”

“I love garlic. You want to eat now or after?”

“After what, Benji?”

“After I tear that blouse off of you.”

She looked at me through her eyelashes. “Just the blouse?”

“It’s a start.”

“My, my. What happened to going slow?”

“Trust me, Sonya, I am going slow. I didn’t jump you when I walked through your front door. Or when we were down in the kitchen. Or up in your bedroom. I’ve been really, really patient—considering that all I’ve wanted to do since I met you this morning is strip you naked and ravage you from head to toe.”

Sonya shook her head at me in disbelief. “Does your mother know you talk like this?”

“Who do you think taught me how to talk like this?”

She didn’t say anything to that. Just drank down the last of her wine and set her empty glass on the coffee table. Her hand trembled slightly, I noticed. And a vein was throbbing in her forehead. She sat back on the sofa and ran her hands through her shiny black hair, staring at me with an extremely dark, serious look on her lovely face.

“I apologize if I shocked you,” I said. “But when I see what I want I don’t know how to hold back. Plus I am
so
tired of being alone. I’ve never been so tired of anything in my whole life. But I really did mean what I said before. If you want to take it slow we’ll take it slow. It’s just that, well, in our case I don’t see the point, do you?”

In response, Sonya Posner unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it aside. Those stupendous girls of her were now staring me right in the face. “No, I don’t, Benji,” she said in a husky voice. “I don’t see any point at all.”

*   *   *

IT WAS 3:30 IN THE MORNING
by the time I limped out of there—hobbled, bruised and covered with a million little bite marks and scratches. I would have been perfectly willing to spend what little was left of the night right there in Sonya’s bed, but Sonya thought I ought to go home. She was thinking of my mom.

“Abby will be wondering where you are,” she pointed out as we snuggled there together under the covers.

“No, she won’t. I guarantee you she’s fast asleep.”

“I guarantee you she’s not. The poor woman’s wide-awake at this very minute. And scared to death that something has happened to you.”

“Sonya, my mom doesn’t keep tabs on me.”

“Of course she does.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because I’m a woman and
I
would, every minute of every day. I don’t want her hating me, Benji. Besides, I have school in the morning and if you stay over I won’t get any sleep. I’ll just try to start something with you again.”

“Good luck with that. We’ve already broken my single-night record.” Eclipsed it, in fact. Think Bob Beamon’s long jump at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. “But maybe you’re right. About my mom, I mean.”

“Of course I’m right.”

So I got dressed and she led me downstairs in her robe, kissing me lightly on the mouth after I put on my coat.

“Cookie, is this the start of something or am I crazy?”

“You’re not crazy, Sonya. I’ll call you.”

“You’d better.”

A light, chilly rain was falling as I made my way down West 12th Street toward Sixth Avenue. I had the street to myself at that hour, and I was feeling pretty damned good about one Benji Golden. Never before in my life had I experienced such a night of wild humpage. We did a grand total of five different things that I’d never done before. And we did them exceedingly well. I had the insatiable, freakishly limber Sonya’s word for that. A beast, she’d called me.
Me
.

I was feeling so good that I decided to treat myself to a cab when I got to Sixth. I deserved it. Besides, there was no telling how long I’d have to wait for an uptown train at that hour of the night.

I was nearly at the corner of Sixth when the first shot rang out. It hit a trash can about three feet away from me—and sent me diving headfirst down the basement steps of the nearest brownstone as two more shots
chunked
into the side of the building. I’ve seen people make that headfirst dive all of the time in the movies. Those people are stuntmen. I’m not a stuntman. I whacked my kneecap on the edge of a step and came down so hard on my left shoulder that my hand went numb instantly.

I pulled my weapon and poked my head up to the sidewalk, eyes scanning the street, ears straining. I saw no one. But I did hear footsteps retreating into the night. Someone was running away.

Then all was silent.

I crouched there, gasping for breath, my mind racing. The shooter must have been waiting for me outside of Sonya’s place, meaning he’d tailed me there from West 103rd Street earlier in the evening—even though I’d been on high alert for a tail. Or I thought I’d been. Yet I hadn’t made him. Not then. And for damned sure not now. He was a pro, no question. So much of a pro that I knew this much: If he’d wanted me dead I’d be dead.

This had been a warning. Something told me I wouldn’t be warned again.

Next time he’d shoot to kill.

CHAPTER FIVE

“WELL, YOU WERE RIGHT.”

“Right about what?”

“Someone took a shot at me last night on West 12th. Three shots, actually.”

Legs Diamond’s eyes widened at me in the weak winter sunlight. We were rocketing down Broadway in his battered unmarked sedan, his hands gripping the wheel tightly as he bounced us in and out of every pothole. And I do mean bounced. The sedan’s suspension? Shot. Alignment? Shot. Shock absorbers? Don’t think so. “Did any of them come close to you?” he demanded.

“Not really.” Although my right knee still throbbed from that headfirst dive I’d taken.

The morning tabloids lay on the seat between us. Both the
Daily News
and the
Post
had gone with giant banner headlines about Kathleen Kidd’s suicide leap. It was big news, no question. Although their news accounts offered little in the way of details beyond a quote from an unnamed family spokesman, presumably Peter Seymour, who allowed that Kathleen was “a troubled soul who had been rather depressed in recent weeks.” The family was grieving. They wished to have their privacy at this time. Not a whole lot else, except for the standard boilerplate sidebars on the history of the fabled Kidd family—with the emphasis tilting toward Kathleen’s much higher profile brother, Bobby the K, and his wife Meg.

I’d already scoured the stories on the web over my morning coffee and fried egg sandwich from Scotty’s while Lovely Rita kept shooting suspicious looks across her desk at my red-rimmed eyes. I could have sworn she knew that I’d just had the shtupping of my life. But how was that even possible? I hadn’t said a word. It had been past four
A.M.
by the time I got home. A Chevy Tahoe was parked outside of our building. Two of my dad’s old running buddies, Sam Glickstein and Bobby O’Brien, were seated in the front seat keeping an eye on the place. They were still sitting there when Legs picked me up at nine o’clock sharp. Retirees, both of them. Happy to do Meyer Golden’s widow a favor. Besides, they had nowhere else to be.