Once Upon a Grind (30 page)

“C
ONGRATULATIONS,”
gushed the doe-eyed head Princess as she led us up the special guarded stairs to Galloway's table. “You are so incredibly lucky to have an audience with the King. We all envy you.”

Franco and I glanced at each other. Crowd and crew alike appeared to be in awe of this chance we'd won.

Franco leaned toward me. “Is this dinner theater or cult?”

Given Dalecki's stories about the Black Knight nearly being fired for losing, I wondered if Galloway would be petulant or hostile because Franco had bested his champion. But the laughing King who stood to greet us was neither.

“Whoa,” mumbled an awed Franco. “The New York Giant really is a giant.”

Now when you're as low to the ground as I am, an Internet profile stat like “six feet nine inches” doesn't begin to prepare you for the intimidating mass of muscle and armor that was former New York Giant Dwayne Galloway.

The curly-haired Giant howled and slapped Franco on the back—a blow that might have fallen a lesser man.

“What a show!” he roared. “I'm using the footage for our next commercial!”

Galloway certainly looked regal enough in a (real) fur-trimmed tunic over gleaming chain mail, a bejeweled sword belt girding his size 40 waist. Only one anachronism—the Super Bowl ring on his finger—and the open expression of almost boyish excitement undercut the illusion of the tough medieval warrior king he clearly fancied himself to be.

I felt the Giant's eyes on me next—starting with my knee-high boots, running up my black tights, casual skirt, and nothing-special sweater beneath the fake ermine cape.

“I am so pleased to meet the Lady . . .”

“Clare.”

He bent low—really low, given my five-two height—and swept his eyes over my sweater again as he kissed my hand. “Sir Franco is fortunate to have such a curvaceous little Queen.”

“Princess,” I corrected. “We're not married.”

Galloway's dark eyes narrowed like a wolf on the hunt. The reaction was practically autonomic and gave me absolute assurance: This was the predatory knight I'd seen in Central Park.

“Please sit, and we shall feast!”

He led us to the massive table (and yes, it was a round table) set with silver and pewter goblets. Seating was arranged to provide an excellent view of the arena below, where the knights' parade of horses had begun.

The gargantuan Giant held my chair—not a bench, which was apparently only suitable for the peasants on the lower tier. I noticed he also made sure his chair legs were very close to mine.

Good
,
I thought.
All the better to trip you with . . .

Serving wenches appeared bearing a decidedly off-menu meal fit for a king: hickory-smoked deep-fried turkey; stuffed pork chops baked with pears and Stilton; beef bourguignon; and a farro salad with arugula, edamame, and a sweet-and-sour vinaigrette.

As we feasted, the King chatted amicably with Franco, and we all watched the knights jousting below. Finally, the King leaned close to me.

“So, Lady Clare,” he rumbled sweetly in my ear, “what brings you to my domain?”

I swallowed hard.
Franco ran his gauntlet. Now it's my turn . . .

“Actually, Dwayne,” I softly replied. “I came to ask you about two women you've spent time with recently—Rozalina Krasny and Anya Kravchenko.”

The former Giant sat back and stared at me, as if I'd slapped his face.

“What is this,” he hissed, “a shakedown?”

The King immediately raised his arm high and snapped his fingers, summoning a pair of his dreaded “Men-at-Arms,” who were not in amusing period costumes. These bodyguards looked more like a Secret Service detail, complete with grim black suits and holstered (so far) Glocks.

Instinctively, Franco reached for the weapon he'd left locked up in his car. Then he cursed and put up his hands.

“Y
OUR
Majesty,” I quickly said. “Look around you. We are sitting in an
open
box
, in front of hundreds of your fans. If you throw us out, you're going to look like the sorest of sore losers. How courtly is that?”

“I won't tolerate a shakedown,” Galloway growled.

“This isn't a shakedown.”

“My partner's right,” Franco said. “It's an off-the-record homicide investigation that's ready to go
on
the record if you don't cooperate.”

Galloway's jaw dropped. “Homicide?”

I nodded. “How many families would bring their kids here if they found out you, the noble King, are suspected of drugging one girl and killing another?”

Galloway's dark eyes widened in shock. “What happened? Tell me? Is Anya okay?”

The reaction looked real.
Are we on the wrong track? Or is he simply a good actor?

“Anya was drugged at the Central Park Festival, and she's still in a coma,” I told him. “Don't deny you were stalking her. I saw you watching Anya come out of the fortune teller's tent. Later you spoke to her, too.”

Now I was using the evidence Plesky presented against Matt—which was (admittedly) circumstantial. “Anya was seen speaking to a man in medieval garb at around four o'clock. That was you, wasn't it?”

Galloway dismissed his Men-at-Arms with a gesture. Then he turned back to me and nodded.

“Yeah, I spoke to her. I saw Anya crying at the fortune teller's tent. But I didn't catch up to her until the afternoon.”

“That makes you the last person we know of who saw Anya before she was drugged.”

He frowned. “I didn't touch Anya, and I don't touch drugs.”

“Then why did you seek Anya out?”

“We broke up, but I still cared about her. I wanted to know why she was crying. But when I asked her, she told me to go away. She said she had important business.” He shook his head. “Anya was the most beautiful girl I ever . . .” He sighed. “It doesn't matter. Anya was trouble, and I don't need trouble.”

“How was she trouble?”

“Look, we started out great, had lots of fun together. We became friends. She was really my type, you know? But then I found out something about her that I could not have in my life.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“She was paying off mobsters in Brooklyn.”

“Mobsters? For what reason?”

“I never found out why, but she asked me for a loan of ten thousand, said it was really important but wouldn't tell me why. She was nervous, upset. I gave her the money—and I had her followed. She went straight to the bank, then to a Russian mob hangout in Brighton Beach. I knew it had to end when I heard that.”

I met his eyes. “So you threw Anya over, just like that?”

“Hell, yeah. I liked her a lot, but I couldn't trust her, not after that. I've got a family-friendly dinner theater here. I don't need the mob shaking me down. Anya was beautiful, a real Diamond girl, but there are always other girls—”

“Like Red? She's the one who'd dead, by the way—”

Galloway cursed.

“I noticed you didn't ask about her.”

“Look, I'm sorry she's dead, but Red was a Silver Room girl. We had a few good times, nothing special. There are plenty of girls just like her—”

“You mentioned the Silver Room from the underground club. Is that why you go there? To meet women?”

In a flash, the bristling predatory knight reappeared. “Look, I shouldn't have said that—about the Silver Room. On the record, I don't know what club you're talking about. Off the record, that's precisely why I go.”

The King's giant fist thumped the table. “I'm a multimillionaire, a former star athlete, and a celebrity. Do you think I can just go to some bar or dance club and party with a sweet young thing without risking everything? Early in my career I learned the hard way—phony paternity suits, fake assault charges, I've dealt with enough of them to make my membership dues well worth it.”

Galloway gulped loudly from his goblet. “That's what the club is for, Clare—if that's even your name. That's why I go. For a man like me, it's the safest place to be, next to this kingdom.”

“You've been a member a long time, haven't you? Even before you were a New York Giant.”

“Where did you get that bit of misinformation?”

“Is it? I thought you were going to the club during your college years, when you spent summers in New York City.”

“I wish,” Galloway said. “But no. I was in college then. I didn't join the club until my second season with the Giants.”

“But in college, you did study gymnastics under a Russian defector, didn't you?”

“Rolf? Yeah, so? Rolf was a great teacher and a good guy.”

“You're still friends?”

“No, I messed up our friendship. Rolf introduced me to his niece. Svetlana was her name. I think she was his niece. Anyway, he said they were related . . .”

“Svetlana?” Given Rolf's CIA dossier, Wilson's sexpionage stories sprang to mind.

“Yeah, Svetlana,” he repeated wistfully. “Killer figure. Cute Russian accent. Long blond hair and big blue eyes, exactly like Anya's. Man, I really fell for her.”

“The relationship didn't last?”

“I wasn't ready to settle down. And Svetlana got bored with me. She resented the hours I spent gaming.”

“Football?” Franco assumed.

“No, she was okay with football. What she didn't like was my off-season
gaming
. Role-playing games. I was Dragon Master in the Knights and Wizards Club at my university.”

Now
I had a clue where the Meat-dieval Tournament and Feast came from.

“Like I said, I didn't join the underground club until my second season with the Giants—after all the crap I got from women my rookie year.”

“Define ‘crap,'” I demanded.

“Aren't you listening? Sports celebrity begets con artists in skirts. I slept with enough of them on the road. Live and learn, they say, and I did. Someone tipped me about an underground club—a safe place to play because everyone knows the rules. I ponied up the dues and asked to be let in.”

“If you didn't drug those women, who do you think did?” Franco asked.

“I don't have a clue, but there's someone who probably does. The lady running the club—BB.”

“You mean Barbara Baum, Babka?” After my friendly neighborhood CIA agent's claim about the club's official address being under an annex to the Moroccan consulate, I wasn't sure how heavily involved Babka actually was
.
But Galloway made things clear. In fact, he snorted at the mention of her.

“She's more like
Baba
. You know?
Baba Yaga
, the Russian devil woman. If Babka doesn't know, nobody does.”

Suddenly the Giant loomed over me. “And you didn't hear
any
of this from me. Got it? That old bag carries a lot of clout. If I get tossed from the club, I'm coming after you.”

Galloway snapped his fingers again. The Men-at-Arms reappeared.

“Escort them to their car. If they give you any trouble, call the township cops and have them both arrested.” Galloway's smile was villainous. “I'll be happy to press charges.”

S
ERGEANT
Franco kept a cooler head than I did as we were “escorted” to the parking lot—and not very gently.

When one of the guards took his manhandling too far, I kicked him in the shin. He yowled and called me a difficult wench. (Okay, so his choice of words wasn't nearly so quaint.) I spat back a Mother Hen lecture about a decent gentleman's manners that left him gawking.

Before he or his partner could phone the local constabulary, Franco grabbed my arm, hustled me into his SUV, and peeled out of the lot. On our way to the Pulaski Skyway, he shot me a hard look.

“What got into you back there, Coffee Lady? Why did you kick that goon?”

“I was pissed, okay? The one I really wanted to kick was King Giant Jackass.”

“Listen, I've spent years dealing with scumbags in suits and in slums. You can't let guys like Galloway get to you. You have to treat police business as business. Not personal.”

“I'm not angry for
me
! I couldn't care less that Galloway insulted us and threw us out. What I'm angry about is his
disgusting
attitude.”

“Dwayne had a lousy attitude about a lot of things. I need more.”

“His attitude toward women in general and his reaction to Rozalina's death in particular.”

“Yeah, it was pretty cold.”

“That puffed-up sports legend pretends to be a master of knights in armor, but he knows next to nothing about the true code of chivalry . . .”

I couldn't help comparing Galloway with another man in Red's life—Eldar.

The Bosnian car service driver might have been a humble man, but he would have walked through fire for the woman he loved. I could still hear his heartbroken sobs as the tears fell for his lifeless friend, a stark contrast to the football hero's ghoulishly indifferent response.

As Franco turned his attention back to the steering wheel, I thought about that “Wheel of Fortune” in Galloway's Gauntlet, a circus version of an ancient idea—

Rota fortunae
, the wheel of fate.

There were so many young women like Red in the big city, anxious to present themselves as worldly, tough, clever. Yet they were woefully naïve where it really mattered.

What a shame it was. What a terrible shame . . .

Red had traveled all over—even under—New York to find her prince, and all along he'd been literally in front of her, a man so determined to make her happy that he was willing to endure heartache by turning the Wheel, night after night, toward lesser men.

*   *   *

B
Y
the time Franco dropped me at the Village Blend, I was feeling pretty low. Now that we'd spoken with Galloway, the theory of his guilt was shakier than his plywood throne.

Feeling a sudden need for caffeine, I went straight to the espresso bar.

At this late hour, Matt was gone and Gardner had taken over the shop's evening management. Things appeared to be running smoothly with customers enjoying the jazzy playlist and my youngest barista, Nancy Kelly, laughing with three tables full of NYU students near the fireplace.

I sat at the counter, and Gardner slid over a freshly pulled double. But despite draining my demitasse, I couldn't relax.

A prickly feeling tickled my back, as if eyes were on me.

Fearing another CIA ambush, I spun on my stool to find Boris standing there, arms folded.

The last time I saw Esther's champion, he'd been in his marriage-proposal tuxedo. Not tonight. The baggy jeans had returned, along with the high-top sneakers, Eminem tee, and black leather jacket to ward of the fall's chill.

“Boris? What are you doing here?”

With his gray eyes narrowed and his chin set, the Russian baker cum rapper answered with four words—

“Take me to her.”