Unmanned (4 page)

I wanted to hit him, but last time it had only made me feel guilty when the skin around his eye had turned a metallic magenta color. Well, a little euphoric, but mostly guilty. “He was embarrassed that he’d shown up unannounced. He’d thought Mandy would have told me. He was shy. Thoughtful. I was trying to put him at ease, so I led the way through the gate.”

“Which you hadn’t locked.”

I was about to launch a scathing rejoinder when he raised his hand, fending off my verbal attack. “What time did he arrive?”

“Eight forty-two.” My tone might have been a little sullen.

“Exactly?”

“I wanted to see how late you were.”

“And he didn’t come in.”

“No.”

“So you stood out on the stoop talking to him.”

“I didn’t know it was a crime,” I snarled.

“Did you know it was stupid?”

“Listen—”

“Men are bastards, Chrissy,” he rasped. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?” He was standing very close, pressing me back.

I pursed my lips and glared up at him. “I’m doing a case study.”

He stared at me, then relaxed a little and almost smiled. “Did you notice anything unusual on the way to the garage?”

“This is L.A.”

He ground his teeth. Sometimes my sense of humor makes people do that.

“It was quiet,” I said.

“Has there been trouble in the neighborhood? Any other shootings or—”

“No.”

“Petty crimes? Maybe just a neighborhood spat?”

“No.”

He exhaled carefully. “Do you know of any reason someone would have wanted this guy dead?” He looked angry again. “Think hard.”

“I didn’t know him.”

“You never saw him before, not at the market, not in a parking lot somewhere?”

I shook my head.

“Did you ever hear the name prior to yesterday?”

I couldn’t manage an answer.

“How about Elijah Kaplan?”

I swallowed. “Is that who’s trying to kill me?”

He paced the limited kitchen space, propped his ungodly lean ass against my counter, and glared at me.

“Is it?” I asked.

“Elijah Kaplan died on your lawn last night.”

I shook my head. “His name was—”

“Vince Horst, Wally Hendriks, Nick Walker.”

“Will Swanson,” I corrected, stomach tilting.

The room went silent.

“His name was Will,” I repeated. “He said so.”

Rivera glanced out the window toward the Al-Sadrs’ lawn. It was groomed to perfection. If my lawn looked that good, I’d raze the house.

“Wasn’t it?” My voice was very small.

Anger jumped in his jaw. “He grew up in Amarillo. His father was a small-time grifter. His mother had a drug problem.”

“When did he move to Oshkosh?”

Rivera exhaled slowly.

“When did he live in Wisconsin?” I asked, holding on to normalcy with both hands.

“Elijah Kaplan did three years for breaking and entering.” He stared at me, silent for a second, then: “And five for attempted murder. The boys in Texas think he might be a shooter.”

“A—”

“A hired killer,” he said.

4

A wedding is no way to begin a marriage.

—Lily Schultz, owner of the Warthog, who skipped out on her second wedding and went straight for the honeymoon

I
FELT FOR A MOMENT
like I was living in a vacuum. Nothing moved, nothing breathed. Will Swanson—excuse me, Elijah Kaplan—was a hired killer…who had been killed…in my yard.

Life is damned near hilarious.

The phone rang. I started, then stood up. The receiver felt blessedly solid in my hand.

“Hello?”

“Christina?”

“Yes.”

“This is Holly.”

“Holly…?”

“Pete’s girlfriend.”

I wobbled into the nearest chair. “My brother Pete?”

She laughed a little. “Are you okay?”

Why did people keep asking me that? “Yeah.” It was just another…What the hell day was it? What year? “Sure.” I paused, waiting for my neurons to make some sort of sense of life. They failed. “Holly…how are you?”

“Fine. Good, actually. We’re getting married, you know.”

The neurons were scrambling now but still making no headway. “We?”

There was a pause. “Is something wrong?”

“No. You and Pete? You and Pete are…” I couldn’t quite force out the words.

“June tenth. Here in Chicago. And I wanted to thank you. I mean, you’re the reason I decided to go ahead with the wedding.”

I winced. A guy had just been gunned down in my yard, now this. “Me?”

“I did what you suggested. You know, made some demands to see if Pete was willing to bend to get me back. And he did.”

As I had heard it, she’d kicked him out of the house. Even knowing she was carrying his child, she’d slammed the door and changed the locks, which had subsequently caused him to return to the place of our births—i.e., our parents’ house. Peter John, the middle of my three idiot brothers, may be a moron, but apparently he’s not brain-dead enough to want to return home. I hadn’t been sure until that instant.

Rivera disappeared from sight, and a moment later, Harlequin romped into the kitchen, happy as sunshine.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Holly said. “I’m crazy about him. I mean, he’s a great guy. Funny. Easygoing.”

Translation: lazy.

“But with the baby coming, I was worried he was…maybe…a little immature.”

Translation: an idiot.

“A-huh,” I said.

“But he’s been great. Did everything I asked him to do. So I’m calling to ask if you’ll be my maid of honor.”

My mind went blank as a dozen images flashed through my mind. In each I was a bridesmaid. But my dress never changed. My hips looked wide enough to transport heavy equipment.

“Christina?”

I blinked.

“You sure everything’s all right?” she asked.

“Listen, Holly, things are a little hectic right now.” Hectic, that’s what I call it when folks drop dead by my garage. When they’re killed in my house, I call it messy. “I don’t think I should commit to such a momentous occasion when—”

“Please.” She always had a kindergarten voice, but now she almost seemed to lisp. My dim-witted brothers gravitate toward sugar-sweet women. Although I had to admit, Holly had done all right for herself. Although I didn’t know a lot about her background, I knew she had a good-paying job as a legal secretary with Stock and Peterson. “Please, Christina, it wouldn’t be the same without you.”

“Well, I’ll certainly try to be there, but—”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you! I don’t have any sisters, you know. And this means so much to me.”

“As I was saying—”

“Well, I have to go. I can’t wait to tell Pete. Bye, now.

See you soon,” she said, and hung up the phone.

I did the same.

Rivera was scowling at me. “Bad news?”

“Holly’s marrying Peter John.”

He thought about that for a minute. “Peter John of dead-rat fame?”

Last time Pete had visited, he’d left a rodent in the freezer atop my favorite Häagen-Dazs. Rivera had seemed unsurprised by its presence. I wonder what that means.

“Dead rat, sheep droppings…” I paused, lost in age-old grievances. “If it’s decaying, it’s his friend.”

“You’re in the wedding?”

I gave a teetering nod. “Maid of honor.”

“Isn’t she just about due?”

I had told him about the impending birth of the little troglodyte-to-be, perhaps with some misgivings. I mean, as idiotic as my brothers are, they’d never been stupid enough to procreate before now.

“Wedding’s next month,” I said.

“Slipping under the wire.”

“Hope she can limbo.”

He was watching me. “Maybe this is good timing.”

I still felt hazy. “If they wait any longer, the kid could be their ring-bearer.”

“I mean, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to get out of L.A. for a while.”

I scowled. “Get out of—”

“Listen.” He toed a chair up beside mine. “I don’t like you living alone. If you were at your parents’ house—”

I snapped to my feet, panic brewing like Starbucks’s finest. “What about my parents’ house?”

“Sit down.”

I tried, but sheer terror kept me rigid. “What about Mom’s house?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, sit down,” he ordered, and yanked me down by my waistband. It was the color of pomegranates…and Prada. I think there’s some kind of rule that one cannot be yanked around by their pomegranate Prada waistband. But maybe there’s a loophole if it’s already been slept in. “I’m just saying, you’re going to have to go home for fittings or whatever, so maybe you should just plan to stay a while.”

“I knew you were mean, Rivera, but I didn’t think you were vindictive.” I thought about it a moment, then, “Well, I knew you were vindictive, but I didn’t think you were truly evil.” Pause. “Well—”

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he asked.

I gave that some thought, mouth open.

“You could have been killed! Last night. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers. I tried not to jump. Failed. “One minute you’re alive, the next you’re not. You think it can’t happen but—”

I popped to my feet and stormed into the living room. “I think that can’t happen?
I
think that can’t…” I jerked around, cackled. “I was there, Rivera, two feet away when he died, when he was—” My voice broke.

“Then, think, God damn it!” He was standing close, eyes intense, expression madder than hell. “Why was he here?”

“To kill me?” The words hurt my throat.

His brows lowered a notch. “Who wants you dead, McMullen?”

“Nobody. Why would they? I’m a good person. Well, I’m an okay—”

“Fucking hell, woman, think!” he said, and grabbed my arms. “Who have you pissed off recently?”

I winced. “Besides you?”

For a second he almost smiled. His grip loosened the slightest degree. “Yeah,” he said, “besides me.”

“I didn’t tip my waitress very well last weekend.”

“Come on, you probably annoyed a dozen people since breakfast.”

There was a noise in the kitchen.

“I think the dog ate mine,” I said. “Breakfast.” Another noise. “Probably yours, too.” Something clattered to the floor. “Maybe the silverware.”

“Who else?” he asked, and sliding his hands down my arms, took my fingers in his. “An unhappy client? A disgruntled commuter?”

His hands were warm and callused. He swept his thumb across my knuckles, reminding me that I was still alive.

“This is L.A., Rivera, if I worried about every disgruntled commuter I’d have fifteen different kinds of ulcers.”

He blew out a breath. “I didn’t even know there were fifteen different kinds.”

“I’m practically a doctor.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Smart
and
sexy,” he said, and moved in closer. His chest felt hard against mine, and when he kissed me, I remembered I didn’t really want to be dead. “Go to your mother’s house, McMullen,” he murmured.

“Not on your life.” My voice sounded kind of iffy.

“If I beg?” he asked, and kissed me again, a little tongue this time. It had been—and I kid you not—seven hundred and two days since I’d shared my bed with a man. Wait. No, that’s not true. It had been seven hundred and two days since I had shared my bed with a
straight
man. I sighed.

“No,” I said.

“How about if I promise to sleep with you?”

That gave me pause. “You’d prostitute yourself for me?”

“I’m a giver.” His dick was hard. “What do you say?”

“No,” I said, but it was more difficult to make my lips function properly this time. Seems they had other things in mind.

He kissed the corner of my mouth. “I’m fantastic in the sack.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Yeah?” He kissed my neck. “From who?”

“Whom.” My breathing was getting a little shaky. “The correct pronoun is ‘whom.’”

“Good thing you told me. Wouldn’t want to screw up the grammar while we’re screwing.”

My breath stopped completely. “Are we going to…” I drew back a little. “You know.”

He had backed me up against the living-room wall. I seemed to be straddling one of his thighs, or some other hard part of his anatomy.

“The dog’s busy,” he said, touching my face again, “and life’s short.”

I tried to nod, but there was a lump in my throat.

“You’re not going to cry, are you?” he asked.

“Crying’s for wimps. And hormonal teenagers.”

His fingers felt warm and soothing against my face. “When I drove around the corner and saw you…” The muscles in his jaw jumped. “…on the ground…”

“You’re not going to cry, are you?” I whispered.

“Maybe a little,” he said, and placed both hands on the wall behind me, locking me in.

“That dog’s not going to eat forever,” I said.

He grinned, kissed me hard, and led me toward the bedroom.

Then his cell phone rang. We froze. His brows lowered.

“If it’s another fiancée, I’m never sleeping with you again,” I said. We have something of a history. Not much of it is good.

“After today?”

“After today.”

He grinned, then reached into his pocket (I wished I had thought of that) and pulled out his phone. Flipping it open, he glanced at the screen, gritted his teeth, and held my gaze just an instant before pressing the
TALK
button.

“Yeah.” There was a murmur from the other end, a moment’s hesitation as he stared at my lips, then, “Okay,” he said, and shut the phone. “They’ve got a witness.”

“A witness?”

“Someone saw a man running down Hillrose Street about the time of the shooting.”

I felt a little desperate. And kind of hormonal. And sort of like a teenager. “Won’t he still be a witness after we…?” I nodded toward the bedroom.

He kissed me again, pushing me back against the wall, ravaging my mouth. My ovaries squeaked. “I don’t just want a quick fuck here, McMullen,” he growled.

My throat felt stretched tight. “What do you want?”

His cell rang again. Irritation ticked in his jaw. “Rest up. Get naked, then clear a week,” he said, and searing my lips one more time, turned away, already snarling into his phone as he stalked off.

5

When men age they’re called sophisticated. When women age they ain’t called at all.

—Doris Blanchard, quick-draw and philosopher

O
KAY, I’LL ADMIT IT
; my body wanted sex…long, hard, ludicrous, weeklong sex. But my mind…What did
I
want? Shouldn’t I want more? Shouldn’t I
demand
more? Intimacy. Honesty. Security.

From Rivera?

The idea was almost laughable. The dark lieutenant was one bone-through-the-nose short of being a club-carrying Neanderthal. And yet, sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to watch him sleep beside me at night. To wake up with him on Sunday morning. To discuss politics and history and why small dogs make twice as much noise as big dogs.

It was stupid, of course. Because Rivera wasn’t that kind of guy. I’d known it even before he’d made my endocrine system sizzle, had seen it on his face a hundred times. The most I could hope for from him was a seven-day orgy.

Holy shit.

I thought about that and squirmed on the Porsche’s leather seat as I merged onto the 2, heading south. I hadn’t planned on going to work, but as it turned out, the Magnificent Mandy hadn’t actually canceled all my appointments. In fact, she’d only called one client before becoming distracted, possibly by a laser pen or a ball of string.

Micky Goldenstone was a couple of minutes late when he stepped into my office nearly an hour later. I’d been counseling him for fewer than six months, and I admit that the first time I saw him I was a little taken aback. He stood just over five-nine in his Nikes, was as black as an eight ball, with short cropped hair and eyes that spoke of a darkness I could only just imagine. Upon first impression, I thought he might be one of the Hell’s Angels’ brightest, but as it turned out, he taught fifth grade at Plainview Elementary in Tujunga.

It had taken me two weeks to learn he had also been a prison guard at Folsom. It had taken me eight to find out he’d been neglected by his mother and abused by her boyfriend. He’d left D.C. long ago and had kept the past hidden away for most of a lifetime. There’s some sort of ungodly guilt associated with domestic abuse. Some kind of guilt that is harder than hell to purge. He had seen a psychiatrist in the past, but only for a short time, maybe because he hadn’t been ready.

But he seemed ready now. In fact, we had become friends of sorts. He’d even offered to slip me cigarettes if I was ever a guest of the California penal system. Apparently, he had some clout. The way things were going, it was good to know, but today he seemed a little tense, a little sad. I prodded gently.

“How is work going? Last time we spoke you indicated you were concerned about anger issues where your students were concerned.”

He sighed. Leaned back against the couch cushions. “Fifth-graders.” He looked introspective, inhaled deeply, flaring his nostrils. “Makes me wonder why Grams let me live past middle school.”

The way he’d explained it, Grams was the reason he
had
survived. She’d taken him in after his mother had overdosed for the third time. Taken him despite a myriad of protests, governmental and familial. “Do you have reason to believe she resented your presence in her life?”

He stared at me a moment, then laughed, but the sound was coarse. He glanced out the window. “I threatened her with a switchblade once. Did I tell you that?”

I didn’t answer. It wasn’t unusual for him to leap right into the fray, to slap my sensibilities aside and leave me mentally gasping.

“I wanted to shoot hoops with the boys…” He paused. “‘The hoodlums,’ as she called them.” A glimmer of a smile appeared. I watched. He looked a little like Don Cheadle to me, but had a dark, damaged demeanor I couldn’t quite explain or condone.

“
Were
they hoodlums?”

“We were all hoodlums. Hoodlums or worse.” There was sorrow again in his soul-tortured eyes. Another careful breath. “They called me ‘Pit Bull.’ Or ‘Bull.’”

“They?”

He looked as if he hadn’t heard me. “Shi’s dead now.

Terrence is doing life. And Cole…Haven’t heard from him in years. Could be he made it,” he said, but he shook his head, doubting.

“You still wanted to be with them, though.”

“They were my niggers. My dogs. They got me.”

“What did they get that your grandmother didn’t?”

He caught me with his eyes, panther black, startling in their intensity. “That I was damned. Worthless. Like the fuckin’…” He jerked to his feet, paced, angry and quick.

I gave him a moment, then: “So your grandmother didn’t think you were worthless.”

“She fed me spinach. Slimy shit from a can. Said it’d make me strong. Kept praying for me. Always praying till I wanted to…” His hands were curled around nothing. “So I pulled a knife. When I was fourteen. Said I was running my own life from there on out and there wasn’t nothing she could do about it.”

“Were you right?”

He glanced at me, cords pulled tight in his throat.

“Was there nothing she could do about it?”

He watched me for several seconds, then laughed a little. “The woman was built like a nose tackle. Backhanded me so hard I couldn’t walk straight for a week. Took my knife. You got any idea how embarrassing it is to tell your gang your grandmother took your blade?”

I steepled my fingers and tried to imagine the terror and guilt of his childhood, but I couldn’t. By comparison, my own background looked pristine, a glittering mirage of normalcy.

“Cole laughed at me. Called me a pussy.” He lowered his head, laughter eerily gone, looking past his brows, eyes gleaming with an emotion I couldn’t quite read. My breath clogged in my throat. “I coulda beat the shit outta him. But it wouldn’t a mattered.” He was slipping into a different dialect, a different place in his mind. “Made ’im pay, though.” His tone was throaty now, chilling the back of my neck, lifting the hair on my forearms, making it difficult to speak.

“How so?”

“He had him a sister.” The words were almost whispered. “Twelve, maybe thirteen.” He paused.

I was gripping the arms of my chair and forced myself to ease up a little.

“Met up with her in the alley between a crack house and the porn shop. She was with her friends. Her peeps. But she had a thing for me. I knowed it. Even then I knowed it. Told them to go on ahead.”

I was holding my breath.

“Biggest fuckin’ eyes I ever seen. Flirted with me like a…” He closed his eyes, swallowed, seemed to come back to himself. “She begged me not to.” His fists tightened, loosened. He wouldn’t look at me. “But I was a man. Had to prove myself.”

Oh God.

“Afterward…” His face was drained of emotion. “She never cried. Never…” He cleared his throat. “There was talk…later…that she got an abortion.”

At thirteen. I felt like barfing. “Did Cole know?”

He drew a careful breath, lifted his chin slightly, found my gaze. “She never told. And I was too much of a…” He glanced toward the door. “I told myself it would just cause trouble if her brother found out. I felt bad. And that was enough, wasn’t it? Guilt.” Anger flared in his eyes. “I prayed for forgiveness, just like Grams taught me.”

“But you don’t believe you’re forgiven.”

“I’m not,” he said, and I knew what he meant.

“How about the girl?”

“Kaneasha.” His voice was soft, mourning. I braced myself, fearing the worst. “She left. Went to live with her aunt.”

“You haven’t spoken to her?”

He tensed as if waiting for a blow. As if almost welcoming it. “Should I?”

“Do you think you could be forgiven?” I asked.

“I raped her.” He said the words through his teeth. “A child. A kid with eyes so big they could swallow you whole.” He turned toward me, his own eyes haunted, pleading. “Would you forgive?”

No. “I meant
you,
” I said. “If you spoke to her, do you think maybe you could forgive yourself?”

I
t was nearly two hours later that I stood up to retreat for lunch. But the doorbell rang again. I could hear Mandy’s hushed voice and then my intercom line lit up. I’d never been more proud than the day she’d figured out how to use it.

“Yes,” I said, using the professional tone I keep for such occasions.

“Yeah, Chrissy.” She sounded a little breathless. “There’s a guy here wants to see you. Got a face like one of them poet fellows and an ass like a frickin’—”

I rubbed my forehead rhythmically. “He can hear you.”

“What?”

I felt old and pretty damn tired. “You know he can hear you, don’t you?”

There was a moment of silence, then, “Even if I’m talking on the intercom?”

I sat back and thought for a moment. “I miss Elaine,” I said.

She sighed. “Yeah, she seemed like a good egg. You want I should send this guy in?”

“That would probably be best.”

I’m not sure whom I was expecting, but when the door opened I was surprised and temporarily uncertain.

“Mr. Manderos?” I asked. I know my hesitation seems strange, especially since he’s one of the guys about whom I habitually fantasize, but Julio Manderos bears an unnerving resemblance to Senator Rivera, Lieutenant Rivera’s father. In fact, he’s been known to impersonate the good senator, but only at the other’s request…at least as far as I know.

“Christina…” He was dressed well but casually and carried a leather satchel in his left hand. Setting it aside, he reached for my fingers and kissed my knuckles. His eyes were as dark and sexy as Belgian chocolate. “It makes me glad to see you.”

The touch of his hand against mine was strangely erotic, dredging up feelings still simmering from hours before. And even though he was doing nothing more scandalous than holding my fingers, he was doing it with Latino intensity.

Maybe it was that intensity that had helped him survive his early years in a backwater town in Mexico. He had, in his fifty-some years, been an orphan, a stripper, a businessman, and…well, the gigolo I mentioned earlier.

We had met under rather unorthodox circumstances.

Circumstances during which I had learned he had occasionally doubled as Rivera’s politically affluent father. By the time I realized there was a possibility that Manderos was also a murderer, I had gazed into his Puss ’n Boots eyes and heard his childhood story. Hence, I had kept his involvement to myself and seemingly gained his undying devotion. A devotion the junior Rivera didn’t particularly appreciate. But Rivera and I weren’t exactly picking out china patterns and I doubted we’d find time during that brain-melting week he’d mentioned.

I cleared my throat and remembered to take back my hand. “It’s good to see you, too. Please, sit down,” I said, and waved the still tingling digits in the general direction of the couch.

He sat with an easy, masculine grace. His camel-colored dress pants sported a crease down the exact center of each leg. They were cuffed, accented with smooth leather loafers, and topped with a lime green dress shirt of some wrinkle-free fabric that looked moleskin soft. On another man the ensemble might have seemed effeminate. On him it looked good enough to snack on. Or maybe that was just my celibacy stretching behind me like a sex-deprived haze.

“Christina…” He watched me for a moment. I watched him back, reminding myself of several things. One: He’d been known to charge money for sex. Two: He was closely connected to Miguel Rivera, whom the younger Rivera detested. Three: He was old enough to be my father.

But technically, so is Pierce Brosnan. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

“You are doing well?” Julio asked.

“Yes. Certainly,” I said, but he was still watching me with those ever-earnest eyes.

“Something is wrong.”

“No,” I said, but I remembered the dead guy on my sidewalk and may have cringed a little.

“What is it?” he asked, leaning forward.

“Nothing.” I picked off some imaginary lint from my ivory slacks. “So how are
you
doing?”

He sat back a little. “I am well,” he said.

“Business is thriving?”

He owned a place called the Strip Please, where fantastically good-looking men with slicked-up muscles and million dollar smiles took off their clothes to music. If I owned the Strip Please I would be well, too.

“There has been trouble,” he said.

“What kind of trouble?” I asked, and hoped to hell he wasn’t expecting help from me. But why else would he have come?

“I mean to say…” His voice was slow and melodious, his smile tender enough to make me want to cry. “…there is trouble with you. I can see it in your eyes. Little matter how you try to hide it.”

“Oh.” I cleared my throat again, played with a snap on my tailored black blouse, and failed to meet his gaze. “Well, okay, yes, there’s been a little…” Will’s sightless eyes stared at me from my memories. Who had he been and why had he pursued me? “…maybe a little bit of trouble,” I admitted, glancing up.

Manderos had the smooth, tan features of an Aztec warrior, with all the cares and hardships of his people laid across his capable shoulders.

“What is it?” he asked, and sliding off the couch, knelt by my feet to take my hand. “What is it that troubles you?”

I felt my tears well up at the feel of skin against skin, and though I tried to be tough, the words slipped out. “I met a man yesterday.” I swallowed, trying to be all grown up. “He seemed really nice.”

“Good. That is good.” He stroked my knuckles. “You deserve nice, Christina. Indeed, I believe—”

“I think he might have been planning to kill me.”

The stroking stopped. His brows lowered. “I do not understand.”

I shook my head, thinking. “Me, either.”

“Surely no one would wish you harm.”

I laughed. There was a little hiccup at the end.

“Except Mr. Peachtree,” he amended.

Robert Peachtree had been a friend of Senator Miguel Rivera. He’d tried to kill me with a poker. Actually, he’d tried to kill me by several different, and rather ingenious, methods. I cleared my throat and refrained from telling Julio about others who had been similarly inclined. “They think he might have been a hit man.”