Loose And Easy

CHAPTER THIRTY

Five A.M., party time, Esme thought, sliding out of the Cyclone’s front seat. Johnny had parked Solange on the east side of the warehouse by the loading docks, per Bleak’s instructions. She and Dax had been told someone would be waiting for them in the docking area, and there was-a huge, hulking guy standing by the building’s rear entrance.

Dax followed her out of the car, coming from the backseat, carrying a small duffel bag loaded with the eighty-two thousand dollars. Exactly eighty-two thousand dollars-they’d counted it twice.

Charo had been parked two blocks over with the key under her front seat, safely snugged rear-endfirst into a loading dock at the long abandoned Geiss Fastener building, a backup escape, if things didn’t exactly go according to plan.

It happened-like in Bangkok, where her perfect plan for recovering a small fourteenth-century gold Buddha had gone awry and she’d ended up faceto-face with Erich Warner. Unfortunately, Shoko hadn’t been far behind. She of the one name and the many knives hated other women with a cold and ruthless passion-and she was here in Denver, unless Otto had been a hit-and-run, and she and Warner were already gone, headed back on Warner’s private jet to any one of half a dozen elaborate mansions he owned around the world. Warner wouldn’t be happy, not about losing the Meinhard, but as long as Esme’s name stayed out of it, she didn’t give a damn if Warner was happy or not.

Somebody else wasn’t very happy this morning, and even though she cared very much about that person, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Johnny was getting out of the other side of the car, and his expression could only be described as grim.

She had overruled his plan to leave her behind in the safe house and have just him and Dax go into Bleak’s with Baby Duce and a couple of Locos, and bring in some guy named Sparky Klimaszewski to pull strings and jerk Bleak’s chain on the side.

To her amazement, Dax had grinned at Johnny’s suggestion to bring in this Sparky guy and been all on board with bringing in Duce, but hell, it hadn’t even been a plan, not really, just a knee-jerk guy thing-“Leave the girl out of it and let’s get some guys and go do this thing.” And yes, she’d had to remind Dax, very clearly, that they didn’t work that way, and that this was her deal. She’d been working it for a month, her dad even longer, and that was the crux of the matter. More than her deal, this was her responsibility. It was her father they’d come to save.

She glanced at the duffel bag and hoped to hell that eighty-two thousand hard-earned dollars and the name Lindsey Larson were enough to do the job.

Eighty-two damn thousand dollars-what in the hell had Burt Alden been doing to get himself into Franklin Bleak for eighty-two thousand dollars? Johnny wondered, pulling his phone out of his pocket for one last-ditch effort to sell his soul to Sparky. Alden must have been operating every which way from Sunday to get that kind of money out of one of Bleak’s bets. Or, if it had been more than one bet, why had Franklin let him get in so deep before he paid off? The only reason Johnny had was that Alden must be one of Bleak’s high rollers, a real boom-or-bust kind of guy who played a lot of cash. If so, this wasn’t the end of it. Alden would be back in the game as soon as he got the scratch, and this whole damn night and all of Esme’s efforts and laying herself on the line would have meant nothing.

So here he was, trying for the fourth time to make a call that was really going to cost him, and instead of negotiating to get Franklin off his ass, he was going to be working a deal to get Franklin off Alden’s. For his trouble, he could count on owning the top slot on Sparky’s short list for a long time and being on Bleak’s until hell froze over, a price he was more than willing to pay if Klimaszewski would just wake the hell up and answer his damn phone.

“This better be my wife,” Sparky finally answered on the third ring, sounding half asleep and maybe hung-over, with a real crabby edge to his voice.

“What’s the matter, old man, did Carol Ann leave you again?” Johnny said, trying not to sound so damn relieved he could spit.

“Johnny, you jerk,” Sparky said. “You must be in a whole helluva lot of trouble to be waking me up at-geezus-it’s five o’clock in the morning, boy.”

“I’m at Franklin Bleak’s warehouse.”

“Why?” Sparky asked. “You know better than to lay a bet with Bleak.”

“I’m not laying a bet. You had it right the first time. I’ve got some trouble that needs clearing up.”

“Then you need Superman, boy, not me,” Sparky said.

Superman? Christian Hawkins? Johnny hoped to hell not. The last thing he wanted was for anyone at Steele Street to know what he’d been doing all night. This deal with Esme and Bleak was so far under the table, there was no way to bring it out into the light of day and make it look good. Drugs, illegal gambling, prostitution-if they’d missed a vice here tonight, Johnny didn’t know what the hell it might be.

“No, Sparky. I just need you.”

“For what?” The old man sounded damn suspicious, and Johnny didn’t blame him.

“I’ve got a friend who’s into Bleak real deep. We’ve got the cash to clear the debt, but Bleak’s threatening payback with interest. I need you to call him off.”

His request was met with a long moment of silence, and then another, and another. Johnny was beginning to think Sparky had dozed off, when the old guy spoke.

“I’ve got some stuff I can use on Bleak, sure, but it isn’t going to come cheap.” Sparky didn’t sound half asleep or hung-over now. Oh, no. The chop-shop king of Denver was wide-awake and firing on all cylinders.

“How bad are you going to hit me?”

“Three cars,” Sparky said without hesitation. “I’ve already got them scouted. All you have to do is go and pick them up. Piece of cake for you, Johnny.”

Yeah, Johnny just bet. Stealing cars was never a piece of cake, even if the keys were in the ignition and the doors weren’t locked. Stealing anything took a mind-set Johnny had backed off from a long time ago. No, it wasn’t going to be easy for him to steal three cars for Sparky, no matter how good he was at it.

“What have you got on Bleak?” he asked.

“You don’t want to know, boy,” Sparky said. “It’s dirty business. Let me give him a call. That’s all it’ll take.”

Sparky was right. Johnny had a good enough imagination to imagine he didn’t want to hear what lousy information the chop-shop king had on the bookie-and yeah, for a second, Johnny had to wonder what knowing all these guys said about him. But then he looked up ahead, at Esme climbing the concrete steps into the warehouse, and figured he was in good company, skirting the edge of Denver ’s underworld with the girl of his dreams.

God, he was such a sap. He’d finally had her, twice, no less, and three hours later, he already wanted her again. But mostly he wanted her out of here. He didn’t know why she couldn’t have just stayed put at the safe house. Everyone would be so much happier if she wasn’t in the middle of this. He sure as hell would be.

“Can you make that call in about fifteen minutes, Sparky?”

A pair of headlights at the end of the Bleak parking lot announced another arrival, a big-ass black Escalade that all but had Baby Duce’s name painted on the door panels.

Both Dax and Esme glanced back at him, and Johnny gave a short nod. They’d seen the Escalade, too.

“Sure, Johnny. I can have Bleak eating out of my hand in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks, Sparky.”

“You call me when you’re done with this, and I’ll let you know about those cars.”

Hell.

“Sure, Sparky. I’ll give you a call.” He pressed his end button.

At the top of the stairs, Esme came to a stop, and the brute waiting for them at the back door got a confused look on his face.

“The boss wants you inside,” he said.

Fighter, Johnny thought, looking the guy over. He looked like he’d spent a lifetime getting hit in the face.

Johnny looked down at the guy’s hands and made a mental note not to end up on the receiving end of a right hook. It would put him into next week, guaranteed.

“We’ve got company,” Dax said, gesturing at the Escalade being parked at the next dock over.

The fighter looked, and Duce and his boys got out of the big SUV.

“He ain’t s’posed to be here,” the guy said.

“Well, why don’t we let Mr. Bleak tell him that,” Dax said, walking by the fighter and into the warehouse.

The big guy looked even more confused. Then he looked at Esme and his face cleared, like he suddenly remembered what he was supposed to do.

“You,” he said, pointing at her. “You come on inside.”

Asshole. Johnny had his number. He took the last two stairs in one step, hearing Duce and the Locos coming up behind him, and within a couple of minutes, he, Esme, Dax, Duce, two Arañas Locos, and eighty-two thousand dollars were cruising into Bleak’s warehouse.

Baby fucking Duce. Franklin couldn’t believe he was looking at Baby fucking Duce standing in the middle of his warehouse at five o’clock in the morning.

“Yeah, sure, I get it,” he said into his phone, not quite believing what he was hearing coming at him from the other end of this call, either.

There was no justice.

He was screwed.

Goddamn Sparky Klimaszewski was playing hardball to keep Burt Alden in one piece, and Burt Alden was already broken, at least his damn arm if nothing else, and Franklin knew there was something else broken on the guy, probably more than one something else.

But hell, he wasn’t going to tell Sparky that.

“Yeah, sure, I remember, Sparky. I remember how it used to be.” This was all just so goddamn bad. How in the hell had this happened? he wondered. How in the hell had his back gotten shoved so hard up against the wall?

Five guys and a girl-that’s all that had come in through his loading dock, but he’d done nothing but sweat since they’d arrived, and then his phone had rung. Bad news on top of bad news, like the two gangsters with Duce, one of them with vampire caps on his teeth. Geezus. Franklin had heard a few things about the Arañas Locos, the Crazy Spiders, and none of it was good.

“Sure, Sparky. There’ll be no heat on the guy. Once I’m clear with a guy, I’m clear with him, you know that.”

Goddamn Sparky. How in the hell had the chop-shop king of Denver gotten into his deal? What the hell was Burt Alden to Sparky Klimaszewski? Some long-lost brother or something?

And Duce, goddamn Baby Duce wanted a cut of the deal, of the cocaine, and if Franklin didn’t deliver, things were going to happen-bad things, to him, personally, with Duce throwing him to the Parkside Bloods.

Old news, now, and Duce didn’t know it, but he and the Bloods were going to have to get in line behind Sparky Klimaszewski if they wanted a piece of Franklin ’s ass. Sparky, Duce, Bloods, the Chicago boys, the guys from New Jersey -hell, he needed a goddamn dance card to keep track of everyone who wanted a piece of him. If he lived ’til Christmas, it would be a miracle.

Baby Duce, the two Arañas, Johnny fucking Ramos, Esme Alden, and “the cousin”-five guys and a girl, that’s all he was looking at, and he was in it up to his eyeballs.

Franklin had six guys at his back, six mean sons-a-bitches packing plenty of hardware, and he was still sweating. Johnny Ramos, who had screwed the whole deal for him in the first place, didn’t look like he’d be all that damn easy to kill, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the damn cousin Esme Alden had brought with her looked like he could drop them all on a dime. Dax was his name, and Franklin didn’t know what in the hell kind of name that was.

The only damn bright spot of the whole damn morning was Esme herself.

Dovey was such an idiot. He’d gotten it all wrong, and the photos Franklin had seen simply had not done the young woman justice.

She was exquisite-fine-boned, elegant, gorgeous, classy, every square inch of her, and stupid him, he’d already made his deal with Rollo.

Hell, he could get a fortune for her in this certain Middle Eastern market he had done business with a few times. He needed to think this through, figure out the win for himself. With the eighty-two thousand to finish his cocaine deal, and the girl, he could come out okay.

That’s all he needed, half a million dollars’ worth of cocaine with a ready market in Aspen and Vail, and one drop-dead gorgeous girl worth ten times those two young whores he’d sold five years ago. By the time he unloaded all that, he’d be sitting back on top. Of course, from the looks of things, he’d need to be sitting someplace other than Denver.

Goddamn cocaine.

Keep your head down, lay low, work your bets- those were his rules, and he’d broken them all for a damn drug deal and a shot at Katherine Gray, who wasn’t going to find him all that damned intriguing if he was dead.

He needed to put Rollo off, that was all. Offer him more money if he’d wait until the coke was delivered and sold. Hell, that’s all he needed to do, hold everything together until he could get the coke sale money in his coffers.

Of course, he was running a tight margin on the cocaine sale, damn tight, what with the exorbitant interest rates charged by the Jersey guys, and having to buy off Duce, and now to buy off Rollo.

But damn Sparky didn’t want cash or cocaine. Damn Sparky wanted Burt Alden.

“That’s old news, Sparky. Nobody cares about two runaway whores who disappeared off the face of the earth five years… well, yeah… sure, Sparky, the cops care, but nobody is going to be dragging the cops into our business, are they?”

Klimaszewski was insane. Nobody in their right mind would drag the cops down on Commerce City just to save Burt Alden.

“That’s a bad decision, Sparky. I mean it. You-” Sparky interrupted him, and Franklin listened with growing unease-hell, as if he wasn’t uneasy enough.

This lawyer guy Klimaszewski was talking about was no good. Franklin bent his head into the phone, holding it closer. Sparky couldn’t really be serious about dragging this guy up out of the past. One dead lawyer who had been into cheap whores, big bets, and premium cocaine, who had bought the farm one night in kind of a gruesome manner, and Sparky was going to hold that over his head?

Nobody could tie Franklin to that deed-but the more Sparky talked, the more uneasy Franklin got.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” he said, reaching the end of his rope-like he needed blackmail on top of every other screwup he’d had to contend with tonight. “My guy is counting the cash now. If it comes up right, Alden is off the hook. I won’t touch him. He can walk away.”

In theory, Burt Alden could walk away, but only in goddamn theory. In truth, Alden hadn’t budged since Eliot had dropped him on the betting-room floor.

Franklin turned and looked halfway down the length of his warehouse, where Esme and her knights in shining armor were waiting for him to accept payment and clear the debt. Shifting his gaze to Dovey, he watched the kid count the last of the bills out of the duffel.

When Dovey gave him the “okay,” he made his decision-he would roll over for Sparky. Burt had already had the crap beat out of him. Nothing was going to fix that, except a trip to the hospital, but if he handed the guy over, that’s where his buddies would take him. Sparky Klimaszewski didn’t make idle threats. Guaranteed, by this time tomorrow, if Burt Alden didn’t get put back together, the Bleak warehouse was going to be swarming with cops looking to hang the guy who had offed one lousy lawyer and sold two whores.

Christ. Like the world didn’t have enough lawyers and whores. Sure, he and Eliot had gone a little overboard with the lawyer guy, but so what? What was one lousy lawyer in the scheme of things?

“Sure, Sparky. I’m reading you, and we’re clear.” Clear as mud. “My guy kind of wrenched Alden around a bit, but I’m gonna take care of that right now. If I’d known he was important to you, I’d have told Eliot to be more careful with him. But you know how these things happen… sure, sure, Sparky. Alden won’t see my guys again. Hands off. Right.”

Bullshit. All of it. Franklin was going to do whatever it took to get out of this with the most he could get, which he was afraid was not going to include lunch with Katherine Gray.

He ended the call and stared down the main aisle of the warehouse. The answer to his problems was watching him with her big gray eyes, her cute little suit fitting her just so, her blond hair twisted up in a real sophisticated style. She had diamonds in her ears, and high heels on her feet, and all he needed to do was get rid of her father, get rid of her goons, and keep her with him, and for that, he only needed one thing-her mother.