Loose And Easy

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Voice of experience? Sure, Johnny thought. Tribal culture experienced and studied from the stock end of an M4 carbine in Iraq and Afghanistan-a curriculum otherwise known as war, which, according to Duce, was where Franklin Bleak was headed, if the bookie didn’t get back on his side of the fence and stay there.

Johnny slipped the key in Solange’s ignition, but held off starting her up. Solange the Cyclone-he’d named the car after Quinn Younger’s mother, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She was fifty-four now, and as far as Johnny was concerned, just hitting her stride in the gorgeousness department. The guys at Steele Street had teased him unmercifully when he’d first started calling his ride Solange-but they knew. Each and every one of those pendejos knew Quinn’s mother was hot.

Fast-backed, 4-stacked, and radial-tracked, the 1968 Mercury Cyclone GT was plenty hot, too, but only under the hood. He’d never taken a torch or a hammer to her body. She wasn’t rusted or pitted, so he’d left her alone, let her be the sleeper.

Esme was hot, but he sure as hell hadn’t left her alone. Oh, no. He couldn’t have jumped into the middle of this disaster any quicker if there’d been money in it.

Duce had noticed her, and he’d had plenty of questions about the blonde Johnny had left in the car, especially after Johnny had asked him about Franklin Bleak.

He started to turn the key, then stopped and took a breath.

Had it really only been an hour since he’d been sitting at the Blue Iguana drinking a Corona and minding his own business?

He checked his watch. Barely an hour-dammit.

Leveling his gaze at her from across the inside of the car, he very seriously asked himself if he needed to back off. She certainly hadn’t asked him to get involved; quite the opposite.

But there she was, tucked into Solange’s passenger seat, and there were a few things she needed to know, whether he backed off or not.

“Baby Duce wanted to know if you were Bleak’s Chicago mule,” he said. “Bringing in a few cakes of ice for this deal Bleak’s got going down tomorrow.”

That got her attention. Her eyes widened and locked onto his.

“I told him I didn’t think so,” he continued. “So then he asked me if you were one of Bleak’s girls, and I told him the whole Dixie-tricks-at-theOxford-Hotel scene, and he suggested I call Benny-boy Jackman personally and grease those wheels before anybody had a chance to get themselves all worked up and maybe go gunning for trouble.”

Her eyebrows rose at that, which he considered a good sign. Little Miss Cool as a Cucumber needed to know these guys were heating her up.

“And then he tells me Bleak has been shaking down all his losers for the last couple of months, shaking them hard, hurting a few. A couple of guys have even gone missing, guys who placed bets with Bleak, but bought their blow from the Locos. All bad for business, as far as Duce is concerned. He understands the need to protect profits, and God knows, he’s not above hurting people if that’s what it takes to make his point, but, according to Duce, it’s not like his and Bleak’s customers are stellar examples of humanity, especially Bleak’s, according to Duce. Shit is gonna happen, he says, and a guy who wants to stay in business just has to roll with it.”

For a moment, she just stared at him, and he could almost see the gears churning in her mind, organizing the whole boatload of information he’d just uploaded into her system. He could definitely see the worry suddenly darkening her eyes.

Good. She had reason to worry.

“So what do you think?” he asked.

“I think that’s a… uh, surprisingly philosophical view from somebody who didn’t get past the eighth grade.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought, too. And then I thought, hey, maybe Duce is right, maybe Esme’s getting shook out for some bad money.”

When she didn’t say anything, he kept going, pushing ahead.

“So then I ask myself, Johnny, what do you think? You think it’s the ponies she’s running? Or do you think it’s the dogs?”

He saw her slide her hand farther around the messenger bag and pull it closer.

Yeah, he was going to get to the bag in a minute.

“And then it occurred to me that a girl who’d gotten herself in trouble, a girl who didn’t want to turn a few tricks to get herself out of a jam, or a girl who didn’t want to transport a few kilos of coke in lieu of the cash she didn’t have, might take on another kind of job to pay her debts. She might steal something her bookie wanted, like whatever is in that bag you’re so damned determined to deliver to somebody. Except if you’d stolen it for Bleak, and he was your appointment, why in the hell have we been running from his guys for the last half hour? At least that’s what I asked myself, while Duce was asking about you.”

She still didn’t say anything.

“You can fill in the blanks here anytime, Esme. Just go ahead and jump right in.”

Still, he got nothing.

“Did I make a mistake when I got between you and Dovey Smollett?”

No. She shook her head. He believed it, but she still wasn’t talking.

Okay, he thought. Fine.

“Why don’t you show me what’s in the messenger bag.” If it was cocaine, the party was coming to a screeching halt. It was going to hurt. Really, it would, but if Duce had called it right, the best thing he could do for Esme was turn her in before somebody turned her six feet under. He sure as hell wasn’t going to step aside and let a kilo of coke hit the streets and watch her get hurt in the process. No fucking way. That was the Boy Scout in him, and for someone who had never been a Boy Scout, he seemed to have a helluva lot of it.

But, geezus, that was going to hurt, if she’d really sunk that damn low.

She looked down at the leather messenger bag she had clutched in her lap-and he waited.

“My partner suggested that I stick with you tonight,” she said after a long, weighted silence, right about when he was going to insist on seeing what was in the bag. “That with Bleak pooching our deal, you were doing a good job of watching my back and keeping me in one piece, and I should take you with me to make my delivery, if you were willing to go.”

Well, talk about a boatload of information.

Geezus.

He sat back in his seat and looked at her for a moment, and for every second of that moment, he only saw one thing: trouble. It was probably tattooed on her ass. In caps.

“What’s your deal with Bleak?” Start at the top. That was the best place.

“I pay him the money he lost on my dad, or he breaks my dad into a couple dozen pieces, a process my dad may or may not survive. It doesn’t matter to Bleak either way.”

Straightforward. Brutal. Predictable.

Fucking perfect.

“And your partner thinks I’m the guy to help you out with this transaction?” What kind of asshole had she hooked up with, to leave her on her own to do a deal with Franklin Bleak?

But she was shaking her head.

“Then what?” he asked.

“My first delivery is up in Genesee Park, to meet a man named Isaac Nachman. He’ll give me the money in exchange for the property I recovered off the German you saw in the Oxford. Nachman’s property. My dad’s been working on this deal for over four years, and I’ve been on it a month, getting everyone in place for tonight, and now I’m running late, about half an hour late, getting to Genesee and getting the money.”

Recovered-now there was a nice word. Johnny had “recovered” a few things in his younger days, and he wasn’t talking upholstery.

“And when are you meeting Bleak?”

“Five A.M., but my partner will be here by then. We’ll do the final deal together.”

“Partner in what?” Crime? Some kind of scam they were running on rich guys living up in Genesee? Out and out idiocy?

“Private investigations. We’re based in Seattle, and mostly do a lot of Pacific Rim stuff, specializing in property recovery and finding people, especially people who don’t want to be found. Sometimes we work in South America, and people who need help down there know to come to us.”

“Private investigations.” That was a nice catchall, and the whole Pacific Rim thing sounded so professional, and she was just so sure of herself, rattling all this information off-and yet, here she was, sitting in this dump of an alley with him, back in the old neighborhood, with a lowlife like Franklin Bleak threatening to bust up her deadbeat dad. “Did you major in that up in Boulder, at the university?”

He wasn’t being a smart-ass about it, really. He was curious. She’d been the best and the brightest, and guys like Franklin Bleak shouldn’t be in her vocabulary, let alone breathing fire down her neck.

“Look,” she said, a bit of an edge coming into her voice. “I really don’t need help delivering the property. I appreciate everything you’ve done, but all I really need is a cab. I can take it from here.”

“Where’s your partner?”

“On his way up from Colorado Springs.”

“You sleeping with him?” That was the question, rude or not. If he was in, he was in, and he wanted to know where all the lines were. A few thin bricks of cash delivered to Bleak? Hell, he could do that in his sleep. Esme didn’t have to be part of it at all. Duce could grab a couple of his crazy spider boys out of the alley, his elite Arañas Locos, and the four of them could go over and visit Mr. Bleak. The whole damn thing wouldn’t take more than five minutes. Johnny knew how the street worked, and whatever beef Bleak had with Burt Alden wasn’t going to be worth pissing off Baby Duce, not once the bookie got his money.

And Duce owed him. Duce would always owe him, until the shot caller pulled his last breath. There was no walking away from the places they’d been together.

“No,” she said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

She was right. It was none of his business.

“Are you sleeping with anybody?” That wasn’t any of his business either, but the question stayed where it lay.

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” she said, giving him a look that said he was way outside the bounds of propriety.

She was wrong. He and propriety had reached a truce a long time ago-and the question still stayed where it lay.

“Yes, you do,” he said.

And she did. She knew exactly what it had to do with everything. It was why he was sitting here in the dark with her, instead of back on a barstool at the Blue Iguana with a shot and a beer in front of him. It was why at five A.M., no matter how she answered the question, he’d be staring across the table at Franklin Bleak with the bookie’s cash lying between them.

“I don’t think… well, think that…”

Yes, she did, and he could prove it.

Without moving from his side of Solange, he lifted his hand and gently cupped the lower part of her face, spreading his fingers across her left cheek and letting his thumb rest on her lips.

Softly, ever so softly, he brushed his thumb across her mouth-and watched her grow still.

He could have stopped there, could have stopped with her eyes darkening under his gaze, with the heat rising between them at his touch. But she was the impossibly not-so-easy Easy Alex, and for this one moment, he literally had her in the palm of his hand.

So he kissed her, simply leaned forward and opened his mouth over hers-and she let him, exactly as he’d known she would. Nothing had ever been finished between them, and God, her mouth. She had the softest lips, the slightest overbite, and a taste that went straight to his groin. She didn’t move away, not so much as a millimeter. She held so perfectly still, her breath seemingly caught somewhere between them, her lips parted just enough to allow him entry, a hesitant welcome that warmed with every slow thrust of his tongue into her mouth.

She was sweet, and hot… and careful, exactly as she’d always been. He almost grinned. Somehow, somewhere, sometime tonight, the carefulness had to go. But for now, he’d take her careful kiss. He’d take the soft, hesitant giving way of her tongue to his, take her gentle exhalation inside himself, and imagine what it would take to make her groan.

Not much, he decided, when she made a soft sound deep in her throat and turned into the kiss- but not all the way, still holding back. Still keeping her hands to herself. Still not committing, not submitting-and that’s what he wanted, what he needed. Submission. He knew how incredibly sweet it could be, and he wanted it from her.

God, she’d made him work for it the last time they’d been kissing in a car, too, never giving away too much, until toward the end, when she’d been so close to giving it all up for him.

So close… so close… but then no closer.

Tonight would be different. He hadn’t chased her down to lose out in the end. And that’s exactly what he’d done-chased her down, hooker skirt and all. He’d been sitting in the Blue Iguana, checking out the women, wondering about them, idly fantasizing about a couple of them, and wondering why the old “threesome in the back of the bar” fantasy never seemed to happen to anybody in real life, and at the same time he’d been wondering why he wasn’t putting more effort into at least saying hello.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained in the pickup game. One of the women in the bar had definitely noticed him, smiled even, and still he hadn’t made a move, just watched the crowd, and waited, and wondered what in the hell he was waiting for, an engraved invitation?

No, he realized now. He’d just been waiting for something more, anything more than what he’d seen and felt in the bar. So he’d left and gone out onto the street, and there on Seventeenth, with her ass peeking through torn fishnet and her hair ratted up into a blond pile on top of her head, he’d finally seen something he wanted, and he was making his move now.

Slipping his hand around the back of her neck, he opened his mouth wider over hers, pushed his tongue deeper, and let her know he wanted her, pulling her tighter and sliding his other hand up her thigh, under her skirt, but stopping short of the red lace panties. Her skin was satin smooth beneath his fingers, her half slip a silky drape across the back of his hand.

And she was trembling, ever so slightly, but he could feel it.

Good. That’s all he’d needed to know.

He slowly broke off the kiss, taking his time, breathing her in and letting his mouth rest on hers, before he finally pulled away.

“Stay put,” he said, opening the car door and swinging his feet out onto the pavement. “This will only take a minute.”

In whole, it took more like five before he was settling back in behind the steering wheel.

“ Genesee Park?” he asked.

“Yes.” She nodded. “And, well… whatever you’re thinking… well, it’s probably not…I mean I just wanted to say, uh…well…”

He turned in his seat, and with one arm draped over the steering wheel, gave her his full attention.

“Well, what I wanted… to, uh, say, I guess… was, that, I, uh…”

She was stumbling over her words and having trouble meeting his gaze, and yeah, he remembered her doing that before when he’d kissed her. It was sweet. But she needed help here.

“Yeah, me too,” he said, hoping that would clear up any confusion she might have. He’d loved it. She’d loved it. And trying to play it any other way wasn’t going to fly, not in his car.

Reaching for the ignition, he gave it half a twist, and the beast that was Solange fired up, all eight cylinders of pure Cobra Jet.

Genesee Park, a cold-cash deal in exchange for an undisclosed piece of property “recovered” off a seminude German, and Esme Alden sitting in his Cyclone, looking downright dumbstruck-the night was looking up, even if they were in a back alley in RiNo, surrounded by crazy spider boys, with a pimp trolling the streets looking for a Dixie impersonator who looked just like her, and a bookie and his goons looking for Burt Alden’s daughter and the guy in a Cyclone who’d saved her.

Was he willing to stick with her with that kind of night stretching out in front of him?

Oh, hell, yeah.