Surrept (24 page)

"They're for you. I prefer mine from a bottle."

He hugs the big dogs as they vie for his attention. Dana looks at her dad with the dogs and realizes how fortunate she is and how fresh these grapes are as she munches on two of them while rummaging through the bags. "What's for dinner, Daddio?"

Richard Underwood looks at his daughter munching on the grapes; he remembers how she used to steal a few at the market when she was little. "I got a couple of steaks for the dogs, I didn't think you would be hungry."

She throws a grape at him as he ducks. Sassy retrieves it off the floor. "Steak and salad are my idea."

Dana loves her dad's steaks. "Great, I'll make the salad." Dana goes over to the pantry. "Do we have any artichoke hearts or hearts of palm?"

A few hours later, Dana and her father have finished dinner. She hand-feeds Moose and Sassy some leftover steak tidbits as she sips at her wine.

Her father asks, "So how did it go today? Did you find anything out?"

Dana decides to tell him everything about her meeting with Matt and his client, and about that Italian bitch, Adriana Pucci.

She finishes her dissertation and her father stares at her just as he used to when she was in trouble as a young girl. He sets down the file Matt gave Dana earlier. "This Adriana Pucci is David's assistant at the ad agency, and she is mixed up with this Haynes character somehow?" Her father stands up from the table and heads for the bar to make himself a drink.

She watches him pour a triple and knows he is about to issue his opinion.

He returns and drinks down half of what he poured. "Sixty years of life and I'm not smart enough to figure this one out. I have tried to make sure that the world was a good place for you and your mother, God rest her soul. And I sit here tonight, crippled by ignorance as the whole world has gone mad, and my girl is buried in a mire of shit that I can't fix for her."

Her father shoots down the balance of his scotch.

She can see his frustration. "I'm fine, daddy, but I have some things to do tomorrow, and I need your help. Could you call me every thirty minutes after nine-thirty or thereabouts?"

He looks at her, knowing she is brewing some scheme. "Sure. I'm just going to the club and picking up some dry cleaning. What's going on?"

She pulls her legs up in the chair. "You always taught me to leave emotion aside, and to gain the motivation necessary to succeed, that you had to be informed; you said that the key is to be strong with the wisdom you've gained so that one can make the right choices, to win and succeed in most everything. And you said that it is suicide not to do the math first, right?"

He looks at his beautiful daughter, realizing that she relied on his every word. "That's the formula I professed, probably too much."

Dana continues, "I am going to meet with this Reggie guy tomorrow at his shop downtown, and he might be able to help me gain the information we need to figure this whole thing out with David. Matt tries to protect me from things, and he thinks I'm just a blonde; I just want you to call me and check in on me while I'm there."

Her father says, "I don't like the thought of you going near a dope dealer downtown at some body shop. That place is probably a front for God only knows what. No way Dana, I don't like it. This is not a good idea. Are you afraid of this guy, because I can cancel my plans and tag along if you like?"

"It's not like that, I met him at Matt's office, and it's just that I want you to call me just so that I have a reason to excuse myself from the meeting if it is going nowhere, like you used to have us do."

He chuckles at her manipulation. "I'll call as you need, but I want the address and a description of this big black guy that deals heroin, who was possibly shot by your fiancé's assistant. I wonder sometimes if you have missed anything. I did in my life. I ought to have my head examined for even considering this."

Later that night Dana gives her father print outs of all the information and kisses him good night; she heads upstairs with Moose following.

Her father waits for her door to close; he picks up the file and makes a call to a private investigator friend of his. Richard Underwood's daughter will not be alone tomorrow. This thing has gotten too out of hand and too strange for his liking.

***

The next morning, Adriana scans the news online. She finds an article about the clubhouse shooting and discovers that the intended victim left the scene before police arrived. It also said that police, along with the masked shooter, are now seeking the victim.

She checks her watch and calls the Goodwill organization. "This is Miss Pucci at the Fallbrook Tower apartments in Glendale. I need everything out of here by tomorrow noon at the latest. Right, I am donating everything in my unit. I need it all removed from here by tomorrow noon at the latest. Your representative was just here this morning. He knows what is here. He made a list of what I am donating. He has my signature for the release of all of the furniture and other items. He said I had to call you to verify the donation. Okay, that is fine. The door will be open. Thank you."

She disconnects and then dials another number. "I need to make a reservation for Miss Rampino, tonight through this Sunday, checking out on Monday morning."

Adriana looks at her book for all of the addresses she has for Reggie; she figures that his body shop would be the best next location to find him off guard, but his employees are always there. She decides to hit him as he arrives at the shop. She checks her watch and rushes out the door with the balance of what she is taking, including a forty-five caliber pistol this time.

Dana slows her car on Blake Street in the industrial district near Forty-Second Street. She looks for the body shop sign; she finds the address and passes by slowly to check it out. There are two employees working just inside a large roller door detailing a car. She notices a man sitting in a truck just up the street. She turns the corner and pulls into the alley behind the shop where two more men are working inside a paint booth surrounded with cars.

She circles the block to check out the person who is sitting in the truck. He looks away as she passes him, validating her suspicions. She parks her car on the street and gets out.

She is dressed in jeans and a blue sweatshirt with white New Balance tennis shoes. Her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, and she has her Ray-Bans on.

One of the employees spots the sharp-looking blonde woman as she approaches the shop. He stops working to greet her. "Can I help you?"

Dana smiles at him. "I'm here to see Reggie, is he here?"

He responds while obviously checking her out. "He should be here any time. You can wait, or I can give him a message."

Dana feels uncomfortable as the other employee walks up to check her out as well. "I'll come back. How long you think he'll be?"

The other worker interrupts them as he points toward the street. "There he is, pulling up now."

Reggie sees her as he climbs out of the customer's car he has been driving and smiles when he recognizes who she is. "Well, Miss Dana, what brings you here?"

She walks toward him. "I came by to talk to you about something, if that's okay?"

He answers as he looks around the street, "Does Mr. C. know that you're here?"

She puts on her cute face as she raises her sunglasses. "No, and I don't want him to know yet until we talk."

He moves her inside as he glances down the street. He sees the guy in the truck watching. "I guess there's no harm in that." He has second thoughts about bringing her inside. The heroin is stashed there and the liability is too great. "Tell you what; let's take a walk and talk, it gets busy around here."

"All right, let's walk."

Reggie looks at her. "This is a surprise, so what's on your mind?"

Dana turns him around by his arm, "Let's walk this way so that the agent in the truck down the street is not part of the view." Her phone rings. She knows by the tone that it's her dad.

"Hi Daddy, no it's okay. No more calls will be necessary. Thanks. Bye."

Reggie picks up on her call with her father checking on her. "Oh man, the feds have been everywhere lately; it's coming to a head. What do you know about those guys?"

"I know that they arrested me and my fiancé the other night, and me at my dad's house and David at the Canadian border."

"So you and I got something in common?"

She says, "How about Adriana Pucci?"

"I don't know where you're going with this," Reggie says, "but I'm not supposed to talk about her to no one according to Mr. C."

"What if I told you that she was my fiancé's personal assistant for the past two and a half months, and since she came into his life, mine has been hell?"

He looks down the street as he thinks about this girl and her possible motivations.

"Now this makes sense. You're the one that was looking into her background with Mr. C.?"

Dana smiles and responds, "That would be me, little Miss Busybody."

Reggie starts to walk again. "So let me ask you something. You know my shit, what's yours? Why did the feds arrest you and your boyfriend?"

Dana looks back to check on the guy in the truck. "They arrested me to get information about him, and interrogated me for twelve hours all night long, asking me questions about things I never heard of about him, and a lot of the questions that they asked were mostly about his clients at the company he works for."

Reggie shakes his head. "So this is about your boyfriend not telling you about what games he's running out there in the world, and you think that Miss Fine-As-Wine has been running them with him, and you ain't digging it. Is that right?"

Adriana drives by and sees Reggie walking with some woman. She then notices the guy in the truck watching them as she passes. She looks in the mirror as she passes; Reggie did not see her. She turns the corner and drives off abandoning the hit for now, knowing now that her target will be hard to hit while under federal surveillance.

Dana stops abruptly. "David has never been running any games or been involved in anything illegal for the past ten years, and then this bitch shows up in his life, and all of sudden the government is arresting us, and turning our lives into a living hell. David hasn't done anything."

Reggie looks at her dumb ass. "You think because you and your man got a thing that this girl couldn't turn his head and get him dirtier than a greasy kitchen by shaking that stuff of hers, and dropping down under his desk a few times? He is a man. He's human. Shit, most men would follow that bitch with a steel umbrella in a lightning storm in a second, the way she looks. You better get real on this, wake up; no man is immune to women like her."

Dana says. "Reggie, I'm not ignorant. I understand the power of a woman and our ways. What I am saying is, whether David accepted the bitch's play or not, it's irrelevant Reggie. I love him, and that she cannot change. And if she is responsible for this shit, then the bitch is all mine. This train's coming, and she can't get off the tracks and if she does, this train will leave them to nail her tight ass. Are you feeling me, Mr. Haynes?"

He says, "You got to understand that we have a conflict here. She got to go down my way. Miss Adriana tried to kill this man one-on-one, and she almost succeeded. I got the hole to prove it." He lifts his shirt and exposes the bandaged wounds.

Dana cannot help but to notice his perfect six-pack. She takes her thumb and raises her sweatshirt to expose the first pistol her father bought her. "I am going after her this evening, whether you help me or not. I know where she lives, and what she drives, I just figured that you and Matt would want what is left of her, after she and I have it out. And, I am talking cat scratch style. Otherwise, there will be nobody there to stop me from throwing her ass out of the tree when I'm done."

"Lord, have mercies," Reggie says. "This David dude has one down badass girl in his corner, which is rare today."

"You say you know where she lives." Dana answers as she walks.

"She lives off Colorado in Glendale near Cherry Creek." Reggie looks at her.

"Okay Miss Dana Underwood, I'll back you up tonight, but you remember, this chick has no fear, and she will not hesitate to take either of us out in a heartbeat. We need to be first and fast with this prowling Italian bitch."

Dana responds again, "She's not Italian, she's Iraqi and Afghani."

Reggie trips hard on her statement. "This thing just keeps getting clearer every day. What time are we meeting and where, Miss Dana?"

"I'll meet you at Dave and Busters on Colorado and I-25, in the parking lot at five-thirty." She kisses him on the cheek and leaves the shop.

The man in the truck dials on a cell phone. "Richard, this is Barry. Everything is cool, and your daughter just left after speaking with this Haynes guy on the street for about fifteen minutes. Should I follow her? All right then, I'll just wait for your call when you need me again."

Chapter Thirteen

The Vancouver skyline is covered with clouds. A gray glow from the city lights shows through the rain. The man sits in his car in the afternoon traffic complaining to his driver that the rain there causes people to be complacent like sheep and dulls their minds. His phone rings. "Hello?"