Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

I
T WAS
G
OD’S
idea to call Patrick. Personally, I wasn’t too enthused about the suggestion, since I was afraid he’d demand his cut of the fee Delveccio owed me. A cut he’d failed to mention throughout our dealings. It made me worry about the other secrets he must be hiding.

Patrick told me to meet him at an address on the other side of town at midnight, so I curled up and napped a few hours before our rendezvous. I didn’t even have to set an alarm. God woke me at 11:15, just as he’d promised.

Driving to the address Patrick had provided, I was surprised to find myself outside a little boutique. Even in the dark I could see sparkly party dresses displayed in the window.

“Crap!” I must have gotten the address wrong. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I’d screwed everything else up. Frustrated, I kicked the front tire of my car.

“Did it do something to offend you?” Patrick’s familiar voice seemed to come out of nowhere.

I whirled around. All I saw was shadows. “If your shin was handy, I would have kicked that.”

Stepping out of the darkness, he approached me warily. “Why’s that?”

“You never mentioned I was going to owe you a cut.”

He shrugged. “I figured our boss had explained it to you.”

“He hadn’t!”

“Let’s go inside and talk about this.” Placing his hand in the small of my back, he propelled me toward the store.

“I don’t have your money.” If he was going to get angry at me, I preferred for it to happen out here on the deserted street instead of inside the empty building.

“We’ll work it out. Come on inside.”

I stopped in my tracks. “We can’t work it out. I can’t pay you.”

His palm slid from the small of my back up to the base of my neck. I stopped breathing.

“I got a pizza. Do you like pizza?”

“Everybody likes pizza.”

“C’mon.” Stepping in front of me, he led the way down an alley that ran parallel to the store.

I hesitated, debating whether I should go after him or run for my life. I ended up following. The man knew where I lived and worked. There wasn’t much chance I could hide from him successfully for long.

Unlocking a door, he guided me inside the building. He switched on an interior light. To my surprise we didn’t end up in the shop or a storeroom. We stepped into a small, studio apartment, complete with a couch and a big-screen TV.

“Welcome to my man cave,” Patrick joked as he grabbed a pizza box off the kitchen counter. “I don’t usually have visitors. Hell, I’ve never had anyone here before, so I’m afraid we’re kind of limited in terms of seating space. The couch is it.” He thrust the pizza box at me. It was still warm, and the aroma wafting out of it was heavenly. “Have a seat on the couch.”

Obediently, I sat on the sofa and balanced the cardboard container on my knees. I watched as Patrick grabbed a handful of paper napkins and a stack of paper plates. I wondered how many people he was expecting to feed with this single pie.

“Beer or soda?”

“Soda, please.”

Grabbing a couple of bottles, he joined me on the couch. “I wasn’t sure what you’d like, so I got half plain and half with olives.”

“Olives are my favorite.”

He grinned. “I kinda guessed that.”

“How?”

“I am a detective you know.” Sliding an olive-laden slice onto a pile of plates, he chuckled. “You have like six different kinds of olives in your fridge.”

I’d forgotten he’d peered into my fridge during his unannounced nocturnal visit. I wondered what else he’d noticed.

“I know I owe you, but I can’t pay you.”

“So you’ve said.” He took a bite of pizza and chewed it thoughtfully. “How come? You don’t think I earned it?” There was no challenge in his tone, just quiet curiosity.

“Delveccio didn’t pay me.”

Putting down his pizza with deliberate carefulness, his eyes narrowed at that, his features suddenly growing hard. “Why not?”

I hung my head, suddenly ashamed by my failure to collect the money owed to me.

“Talk to me, Mags.” Cupping my chin with the tips of his fingers, he applied gentle but insistent pressure, forcing me to look up at him. “What’s going on?”

I shook my head, causing his hand to slide up my cheek. It felt so much like a lover’s caress that my breath caught, and my eyes drifted closed. Instinctively, I leaned closer to him, wanting nothing more than to lose myself in his touch.

“Mags.” There was no mistaking the desire in the usually unflappable detective’s tone.

My eyes fluttered open as he swept his thumb over my lower lip. I’d never in my life wanted to be kissed as much I did in that moment. And he wanted it, too. I could feel it in the possessive weight of his hand on my face and see it in his eyes.

I waited for him to close the small gap between us.

But he didn’t.

Instead he pulled his hand away, as though burnt by a flame. Leaning away, he picked up his pizza. “Why didn’t Delveccio pay you?”

The slap of rejection had me sitting back in my seat, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Or, more importantly, what hadn’t happened.

“Delveccio must have given you a reason.”

“Gary the Gun claimed credit before I got to the hospital tonight,” I mumbled, suddenly numb.

“Oh crap.” He frowned at his slice. “Bad news. I told you that guy is bad news.”

“But there is good news.” I sounded way too chipper.

Patrick eyed me suspiciously. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“If I kill Gary before Delveccio pays him, the Cifelli money is mine.”

“That bastard!” Tossing his plate of pizza on the floor, the redhead jumped to his feet and began pacing.

“If you help me come up with a plan—”

“Are you out of your mind?” For the first time since I’d known him, Patrick seemed to be on the verge of losing his grip on that constantly cool façade of his. It probably should have frightened me, but I was fascinated. “Gary’s going to know you’re pissed about him taking your money. He’ll be expecting you to come after him. He’ll be ready.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Just let it go. I can’t do that. I can’t let Katie down. I can’t . . . I’ve lost them all . . . everybody . . . I can’t . . . I didn’t save . . .” My fear of failure had my words tumbling on top of each other like the cars of a train in a wreck.

“Who have you lost?”

The question was asked with a deceptive casualness that morphed my panic into anger almost instantaneously. He wasn’t asking a polite question; he was forcing me to address an issue I couldn’t bear to examine. “Are you really going to pretend you don’t know,
Detective
?”

My sarcasm could have peeled paint, and he flinched.

“I didn’t mean . . .”

“What?” I spat. “You didn’t mean to pretend that you don’t know that my father is rotting in prison or that Theresa died in that car accident?”

Patrick said nothing. He stayed very still, watching me carefully.

His reaction, or, more accurately, lack of reaction, enraged me. Unable to sit still, I jumped to my feet, balling my hands into fists. “Or maybe you’d like me to believe that when you were checking up on me, you didn’t find out that my mother is locked up in the loony bin.”

“Take it easy.”

“Is it in the official police report that when my younger sister Darlene was taken by the animal who eventually killed her, I was too busy watching my mom, making sure she didn’t get into trouble? I should have been watching the kids but I was too busy baby-sitting my parent. Does it say that? Does it say that it’s my fault?” I was screaming at a man who could easily kill me, but I didn’t care.

Instead of retreating, he took a step toward me. “None of what happened is your fault, Mags.” The pity in his voice softened his words to just a whisper.

I couldn’t decide whether it made me want to cry on his shoulder or punch him. My emotions were getting the better of me. I couldn’t afford to let that happen. I hadn’t gotten through everything I’d endured by indulging in freakouts. Taking a deep breath, I made an abrupt turn in the conversation, bringing us back to the business at hand. “You have to help me kill Gary.”

Patrick halted mid-stride. “I can’t.”

“You mean you won’t.” Suddenly deflated, I sank back down onto the couch.

“Alfonso Cifelli was a thug. Gary the Gun is a killer. Chances are he’d get to us before we ever got near him.”

“So you’re afraid of him?”

“Damn right, and you should be too!”

It occurred to me that if a cop/hitman was scared of this guy, and a mob boss wanted him whacked, that I was probably going after a genuine badass. “I’m in over my head, aren’t I?”

Sitting down heavily on the seat beside me, Patrick buried his head in his hands. “Sweetheart, you’re in so deep, you’re not going to be able to figure out which way is up.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

I
MAY HAVE FELT
like crap when I showed up for work the next morning at Insuring the Future, but Armani looked even worse than how I was feeling. Her inner Chiquita had gone into hiding. There was no spark to her as she limped past my desk. She didn’t even acknowledge my deadpan greeting of “Good morning.”

Something was really wrong, but I didn’t have the time or energy to wonder what that might be. It took all of my concentration just to get through my calls. I’m pretty sure I forgot to say, “I’m so sorry to hear that” on multiple occasions, but I really didn’t give a shit. All I cared about was figuring out a way to get Gary the Gun before he got me.

Patrick had made it abundantly clear that I was on my own with this one. I’d asked him for a gun, and he’d refused, saying I’d just end up getting myself killed. So I was all alone. Except, of course, for God, who’d insisted I leave the TV set to the true-crime station, in the hopes that he’d find us some inspiration.

I’d taken a quick inventory of the possible weapons in my home. My choices seemed limited to kitchen knives and copious amounts of pain relievers. And of course I had my car . . . maybe I could just run him over. Sure, I probably wouldn’t get away with it, but how much time could someone with no criminal record get for vehicular manslaughter? At least I’d be alive and I’d have gotten the money for Katie. Prison couldn’t be that much worse than Insuring the Future.

“Have lunch with me,” Armani ordered as soon as our lunch hour rolled around. Something was definitely wrong. She had no sparkle, no edge.

We walked over to our favorite picnic table in silence, a first for us, since my work-friend usually chattered incessantly. I noticed that her limp seemed more pronounced than usual.

I was the one that broke the oppressive quiet. “Are you okay? Are you sick or something?”

Lowering her butt onto the bench with more care than usual, Armani shook her head. I wasn’t sure if she was signaling that she wasn’t okay, or that she wasn’t sick.

“You’re freaking me out. What’s going on?”

“You don’t believe.”

“Believe what?” I sat on the seat opposite her.

“That I’m psychic.”

“Is that what this is about? You’re pissed at me?”

“I’m not pissed. I’m worried about you.”

This conversation wasn’t making any sense. I tried to get a look at her face, but her expression was hidden behind the sheet of her dark, glossy hair. “You’ve lost me.”

“The Scrabble tiles, all that crap, it’s a gimmick, but you have to believe me that I have a gift.”

“A gift?”

“An ability. Sometimes I sense things before they happen.” She pushed her hair off her face so that she could stare at me intently, as though that would make me believe her. “The problem is that I usually interpret things incorrectly. Actually always. I always misinterpret what I’ve seen. It isn’t until afterwards that things make sense, but by then it’s too late.”

I stared at the woman before me. I didn’t know this stranger. It was like all the badass bravado that made her unique had been sucked right out of her; only her meek, mousy shell was left. No doubt if she’d had two hands she would have been wringing them. Instead she was compulsively shredding a leaf that had the misfortune of ending up on the tabletop.

“I’m sorry, Armani, but I’m having trouble following you.”

“I had a dream.”

“Seriously? You’re this bummed out over a dream?”

“But before I tell you about last night’s dream, I have to tell you about the one I had the day before . . . before your accident.” She looked away as though she felt guilty.

My spine stiffened. Had she known what was going to happen and failed to warn me? Was Theresa dead and Katie in a coma because of her?

My logical self dismissed the notion, but the part of me that needed to make sense of the horror was quick to latch onto the idea that Armani was somehow to blame for all my problems. It would be a hell of a lot easier to hold her responsible for my misfortune than to just accept that it was a cruel twist of fate.

“The dream was about a spider web,” she said.

I exhaled. I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding my breath. I almost laughed out loud at my foolishness. Had I really expected her to reveal some sort of psychic vision that had foretold of a drunk running a red light and colliding with us?

“Does that make any sense to you? A spider web?”

I shook my head automatically, but something tickled the back of my consciousness.

“There was music, singing, I think, and the web was silver, but then it turned green, and then red. The music stopped, and it broke apart, all those strands, they just snapped.”

I was starting to think that Armani had just snapped. I could see no other reason why she’d be so upset by a dream. I told her as much. “It was just a dream, Armani. Maybe you’re suffering from arachnophobia or something, but it was just a dream.”

“Iraq-what?”

“Arachnophobia. A fear of spiders.”

“You think I’m afraid of bugs?” She said it like it was the craziest thing she’d ever heard.

I refrained from pointing out that getting upset about a dream about a cobweb was one of the nuttiest things I’d heard in a while . . . and I was conversing with a lizard on a regular basis.

“I’m not scared of bugs. You need to listen to my story.” She pounded her good hand on the table for emphasis.

“Okay, okay, I’m listening.” I was already on the bad side of Gary the Gun and on the verge of pissing off Tony/Anthony Delveccio. I wasn’t in any position to cross Armani Vasquez.

“Okay, so the web breaks apart, but then the weirdest thing happens, it re-spins itself.”

I found myself asking, “With or without a spider?”

“Without. It re-forms into a crystal version. I didn’t know what it meant at the time. I would have told you if I did. I should have told you.”

I could tell by the intensity of her gaze and the uncharacteristic pleading note in her voice that she was looking for some kind of absolution from me. “It’s okay,” I told her. And it was. After all it was just a dream. A dream that didn’t make any sense.

She pulled paper out of the pocket of her pants. “When I woke up, I drew it. The crystal spider web.” She tried to smooth out the sheet, a tough task with one hand and a steady breeze blowing.

Reaching across the table I helped her. “Hey, this is pretty good.” I hadn’t known that my favorite Chiquita was an artist, but her sketch, done in pen, proved she was.

“You don’t recognize it?’

I couldn’t name it, but something niggled at me like an itch demanding to be scratched. It did look familiar. “Don’t all spider webs look pretty much the same?”

“No two webs are exactly alike.”

“I’m pretty sure that goes for snowflakes, not webs.”

“Webs too.”

I shrugged, conceding her point.

She pulled another piece of paper from her pocket. This one was a folded-up newspaper article. “I should have told you. Warned you. I hope you can forgive me.” She extended the clipping across the table.

A chill skittered down my spine as I took it from her. Slowly, with a sense of foreboding I unfolded the paper.

I gasped when I saw the spider web.

Of course it wasn’t really a spider web, rather it was glass that had cracked, its splintering crystalline lines spinning out in a web-like pattern. It also happened to be a photograph of the windshield of Theresa’s car.

The newspaper clipping consisted of the picture of the wreck and the headline: D
EADLY
A
CCIDENT
C
LAIMS
T
HREE –
T
WO
O
THERS
G
RAVELY
I
NJURED
.

The remembered terror of the accident welled up within me like a black cloud of smoke, blurring my vision and cutting off my air supply.

“Are you okay?” Reaching across the table, Armani shook my arm as though she was an on-stage-hypnotist bringing me out of a trance.

Blinking, I forced myself to take a breath. The darkness dissipated but the scent of fear still hung in the air.

“You there, Chiquita?” She knocked on the table three times. Maybe she thought that would allow her entry to my psyche.

“I was unconscious at the scene,” I whispered. “I never saw . . .”

“I shoulda warned you.”

“You think?” I would have glared at her, but she looked pathetically miserable huddled on the opposite side of the table.

“Now do you believe I’m psychic?”

I looked from her sketch to the photo of the cracked windshield. They were remarkably similar. “I’m willing to admit there might be a possibility,” I said carefully. After all, I believed I was able to converse with a lizard, not to mention I’d killed a man. Something I would have thought impossible not that long before. The idea that a coworker was psychic wasn’t that far-fetched in my new reality.

Armani perked up a bit. “Good, because I need you to pay attention to what I have to say.” She paused to make sure I was listening.

“Which is . . . ?”

“You need to meet the guy.”

“Meet a guy?”

“No. Meet
the
guy. It’s important. I’m not sure why, but it sort of feels like a life-or-death kind of thing.”

“Meeting a guy is a matter of life-or-death?” Even in my new warped world that made no sense.

She shrugged. “I suck at interpreting them. That’s why I don’t usually act on the premonitions.” She lifted her handless arm. “Do you know what the sign for this was?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“Hearing Vanilla Ice crooning, ‘Ice, ice, baby,’ every time I closed my eyes for two weeks straight!”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The idea of Vanilla Ice delivering a psychic warning was just too much. “I’m sorry!” I wheezed through a gale of laughter. It wasn’t right to laugh at Armani’s gift, or her disfigurement. It wasn’t right, but it was damn funny.

She chuckled along with me. “It’s funny now, but when I was lying on the ice at the arena with that damn Zamboni coming at me, I was pretty pissed.”

“I bet.”

She grew serious. “But I mean it, Chiquita. You’ve got to meet the guy. Have you met anyone lately?”

I nodded. The image of Paul Kowalski, half-naked in my kitchen, sprang to mind. I hadn’t heard from him since I’d abruptly kicked him out of my place, when God had reminded me that I had a gun stuck under my mattress.

“Tell me about him.”

“He’s a cop.” And a hell of a kisser.

“That funny-looking redhead?”

The memory of Patrick staring at me with undisguised desire had every muscle in my body tensing.

“The hero cop? What’s his name? I’ll do his number for you.”

I shook my head. Even I wasn’t dumb enough to get involved with a guy with two wives and a sideline assassination business, no matter how much I found myself attracted to him. “A different cop.”

“You think he’s the one?”

“The one, what?”

“The one you have to meet.”

I considered that for a moment. “When did you have your dream?”

“Last night.”

“Then I don’t think so, seeing as I’d already met him.”

She thought about that for a second. “Maybe you’ve got to meet him for a date.”

“I doubt it. He hasn’t called.”

“Well, keep an open mind and just keep telling yourself that you have to meet the man. Work on your . . . what’s the word for it? It starts with
man
?”

“Man-catching?”

“That’s not a word!”

“Manhunting?”

She cocked her head to the side and eyed me like I’d lost what little mind I might have had.

“What?” I asked defensively. “You’re the one who can’t think of the word.”

“Manifestation skills.”

“What?”

“Manifesting. Believing in a wish strongly enough that it comes true. Oprah did a show about it a few years ago.”

I tried to manifest that this conversation had never occurred. My wish didn’t come true.