Unmanned (10 page)

12

What if there’s no such thing as PMS, and this is just my personality?

—Chrissy McMullen, who may have plagiarized a cocktail napkin

P
ETE STRETCHED HIS ARMS
across the back of the booth and grinned at me. He’d cleaned up the blood on his forehead and taken two Advil. He looked as good as new. You could probably take a sledgehammer to his cranium without doing any permanent damage.

Behind him, the Highland Grill was papered in red plaid. A green tam shared the adjacent wall with tasseled bagpipes and a hirsute leather pouch. “Hard to believe Dad used to call you Pork Chop.”

I’d finished the fried mozzarella sticks, the cock-a-leekie soup, a loaded baked potato, and a steak the size of a Frisbee. I pushed away the last plate without licking it clean. I always enjoy eating, but when my life’s threatened, I’m one gene short of cannibalistic. “Hard to believe he called you human.”

He laughed and leaned forward, sobering a little. “Thanks for…” He nodded to the left. “You know. Back there.”

“You mean when I saved your ass?” My refined phraseology may have slipped a notch. Calories do for me what ten shots of tequila might do for a normal person.

“You were kind of amazing, actually,” he said.

“And you were an idiot.”

He grinned again, shrugged, and leaned back. “Can’t choose your family.”

“But you can move a couple thousand miles away.” I finished off my milk. “For all the good it did me.”

He sighed, glanced toward the interior of the restaurant. Most of the tables were empty. The chandeliers were made of antlers; the coat hooks, brushed brass. “Truth is…Holly had kicked me out. Back then. Right before the Alice episode.”

I tensed a little. Truth is, Holly’s decision may have had a little something to do with me…and the fact that I’d suggested she do just that.

“Said I was too immature. Said she’d worked too hard to make it on her own and she didn’t want the baby growing up with someone as infantil as me.”

“Infantile,”
I corrected.

“What?”

“The word…Never mind. So what does that have to do with three guys running after my car in the dark?”

“I don’t know. Could be Alice decided she couldn’t live without me. Like a fatal attraction thing.” He sighed, leaned back. “It’s the shits, being this charming.”

“What’s it like being a turd burglar?” Yep, my vocabulary seemed to be slipping back to my childhood days.

He put one elbow on the cushion behind him and grinned. “I know you’ve always been jealous of me, Chrissy, but…”

“Jealous,” I said, deadpan.

He glanced across the restaurant at our waitress. She was about two months old, bright as a bauble, and dressed in a tiny plaid skirt with a black sweater stretched tight over her chest.

“Let’s face it,” he added, turning back toward me. “The McMullen boys get the Irish charm, while the girls get—”

“A brain?”

“I was going to say hips.”

“You know it’s not too late to shoot you, don’t you?” I asked.

He chuckled, glanced at the approaching waitress, and leaned forward conspiratorially. “I can’t help it if the lassies find me irresistible.”

“Can I get you anything else?” the waitress asked, smiling. “Coffee, tea…”

If she said “or me,” I was more than willing to shoot her, too.

“I’m stuffed,” Peter said, leaning back. “But maybe my sister here would like another cow to gnaw on.”

I smiled, stood up. “Drink your water, Pete. Fluids are very important for STDs,” I said, and trundled outside, leaving him with the bill.

He was still grinning when he sauntered out of the restaurant and slid into the passenger seat. “Good one, Chrissy.”

“You’re a doofus,” I said, and stroked Harlequin’s ears.

He’d poked his head up over the armrest a couple seconds after I’d entered the car, and whimpered now.

“Am not.”

“Are, too.”

“Listen.” He took a deep breath. “I really am sorry, but I think, maybe, you shouldn’t go home for a few days, until I get this straightened out.”

“Getting it straightened out suggests you have some kind of plan,” I said, tone nonchalant, stomach twisty.

He shrugged, but he looked a little pale. “I’ll talk to Harvey. He owes me a favor.”

“Harvey?”

“He’s a…businessman, in Chicago.”

“A businessman.” I said the words slowly, thinking. “So this doesn’t have anything to do with Alice.”

He glanced away, looking uncomfortable. “Might have more to do with that twenty thousand.”

I nodded, reminding myself not to kill him. Killing him would be wrong. “Tell me you’re not going to borrow from the mob to pay the mob.”

“Harvey’s not the mob…exactly.”

I gave him a look.

“Anymore.”

“God help me,” I said, and started the car. In a minute we’d arrived at a modest little motel I hoped wouldn’t have roaches bigger than my dog. I checked in, pulling out my credit card, but at the last minute changed my mind and paid with cash. It seemed unlikely that the mob would be aware of my electronic transactions—but then, it didn’t seem all that conceivable that I’d be on the run with my dimwit brother, either. Sometimes life’s just a kick in the ass.

It was almost midnight by the time I stepped into the motel room. Pete and Harlequin had already taken the far bed and were grinning in tandem at the TV screen. A laugh track flared up. I felt neither abandoned nor jealous at the fact that Harlequin had chosen to share Pete’s bed. Dogs can’t be blamed for seeking their own kind.

Kicking off my sandals, I punched the
OFF
button on the boob tube.

“Hey,” complained one of the two.

“We need a plan,” I said.

“I told you, I’m gonna contact Harvey and—”

“I was thinking more of a plan that wouldn’t make Mom blame me for your untimely demise.”

“Chrissy…” He bunched the pillow up behind him and propped his back against the headboard. Above the bed there was a picture of a prairie. I think. Although it might have been a seascape. The hotels I tend to patronize like to keep their art options open. “I’m flattered.”

“Shut up,” I said. I was dropping rapidly to his level, so I straightened my back, smoothed my spiced orange sheath over my thighs, and sat primly down on the available bed, facing him. “From whom did you borrow the money?”

“I think I told you about Guido.”

“Was he the one who actually handed over the cash?”

“No. Her name was Charlene.”

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by the gender but I was. “Charlene who?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. He sounded defeated and tired. Well, join the frickin’ club. “She got the money from someone else.”

“Who?”

He thought about that for a moment, then, “D.”

“As in A, B, C…?”

“Yeah.”

“Does he have a last name?”

“He doesn’t need one.”

“How about a middle initial.”

“This isn’t someone you want to make fun of, Christopher. Not if you still have an attachment to your liver.”

I thought about that for a second. The McMullens make fun of everyone. But I
was
rather fond of my liver. “How’d you meet him?” I asked.

“D?” He inhaled slowly. “I never did. He doesn’t like to be bothered. Not by men anyhow.”

“What does that mean?”

“Listen, Chrissy, it’s been a long day. I’d like to—”

“Yeah, they seem long when folks start shooting at you, don’t they?”

He stared at me, scowled a little. “Who was this Will guy?”

As it turned out, I wasn’t all that excited to tell my older brother that I’d invited a paid killer to rebuild my garage. “Don’t change the subject,” I said.

“Somebody killed him? In your yard?”

I didn’t say anything.

“How’d you know him?”

“Let’s just stick to the subject.”

“But what if you were right?” he asked. “What if it was because of me?”

Fear was creeping up from my belly again. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“What did he look like?”

I drew a deep breath and tried to be a big girl. Which, after the cow I’d just ingested, would seem fairly simple. “Five-eleven or so. Wire-rim glasses. Dark hair.”

“About a hundred and eighty pounds? Green eyes? Wears a silver watch on his left wrist?”

I felt numb, slow. “You know him?”

He stared at me in solemn silence for an instant, then, “Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell,” he said, and zapped the TV back into operation. “But for a minute there you looked like you’d swallowed a goldfish…or sheep shit.” He laughed.

I felt sick to my stomach, not unlike the sheep-dropping incident. But I was no longer ten years old and wasn’t about to stoop to his degraded level. Instead, I stood up, lifted my chin, and glided haughtily toward the bathroom. Pete was staring at the TV, still chuckling as I passed him. It was so tempting to snatch the remote from his hand and flush it down the toilet. So tempting. But I was a grown-up. I was mature.

But I wasn’t stupid enough to neglect that opportunity. The remote hit the water with a splash, sank like a stone, and sat at the bottom of the bowl like a dead guppy.

I locked the door, brushed my teeth with my finger, and smiled for the first time all day.

13

You don’t know how many friends you have till you buy a big-ass house on the beach.

—Eddie Friar, who just bought a big-ass house on the beach

“H
ELLO
?”
I FELT GROGGY
and disoriented when I answered my cell.

“Mac?”

I closed my eyes and refrained from weeping with joy at the sound of Laney’s voice, even though I was holed up in a subpar motel with a brother who failed to register on the IQ test. “Hi.”

“Where are you? I called you three times yesterday. You never answered.”

“Oh.” My mind spun into action. Elaine had become my best friend in fifth grade and has remained so through pubescent insanity, hormonal overdose, and the disappointment associated with adulthood. She’s a genius who happens to be gorgeous and had shipped off to Idaho some weeks ago for filming. I may be an insensitive clod who habitually causes people to want to off me, but I had no intention of destroying her chances at stardom. “My phone’s on the fritz.”

In the bed next to mine, Pete rustled to life. Harlequin had abandoned him sometime during the night. I refused to feel vindicated. He was just a stupid dog. I stroked his head and mentally promised a T-bone when and if I ever returned home alive.

“Who is it?” Pete asked, sitting up.

The line went silent for a minute, then: “Do you have company?”

“What?” I asked, pressing the receiver more firmly to my ear and trying to muffle the abrasive sound of my sibling’s awakening.

“I thought I heard a voice.”

“No. I…”…wasn’t going to make her worried about my continued survival. Laney is the nicest person on the planet and likely to risk life and limb in an attempt to make certain I was not only safe, but happy to be so. “I just had the television on.” I winced, remembering the fate of the remote and promising myself that today I would remain refined and mature no matter how poopy my stupid brother acted.

“Yeah? What’s showing?”

“What?”

“On the television. What’s showing?” she asked.

“Um…I already turned it off.”

There was one of those pauses that always comes before Laney starts thinking circles around me. “What’s going on, Mac?”

“Nothing,” I said, but my voice had already taken on that hard-edge quality prompted by an infusion of guilt. Apparently, attempts on my life make me feel somehow culpable.

She didn’t respond. I felt horrible. Elaine has bailed me out of more jams than a certified bondsman. “You still there?” I asked.

“Yeah. Sure.” Another pause. “Say, do you have Lieutenant Rivera’s phone number, Mac? I can’t seem to find it right now.”

I felt my stomach drop. It was a blatant threat from the nicest person on the planet. “Everything’s fine, Laney. Really.”

“Uh-huh. Oh, here’s his number.” I heard her fumbling in the background. “I’ll just give him a call. Ask him to check up on you when he gets—”

“Okay!” I said, and covered my eyes with my hand. My fingers felt a little quaky. “Holy crap, you should be registered with the FBI or something.”

“What happened?”

I exhaled. Peter threw back the covers and traipsed into the bathroom. He was wearing boxer shorts and nothing else. I rolled my eyes toward the ceiling and refrained from giving him a wedgie.

“Mac?”

“I’ve had a little trouble.”

She might have been holding her breath, but she let it out now. Laney is kick-ass at Zen. “A little trouble is when your house-plant has aphids,” she said. “Real trouble is when the earth explodes, thereby liquefying your house-plant.” Another pause. “To which of these examples would you compare your trouble, Mac?”

I tightened my grip on the phone. I wanted quite desperately for her to ride in on a white charger and save me, but I couldn’t bear for her to risk her life. “This is somewhere between aphid infestation and the destruction of life as we know it.”

“How does it compare to being attacked by an insane psychiatrist with a butcher knife?”

I remembered that incident pretty well. “It’s…umm, less than that. I think.”

“How about being poisoned by a wealthy octogenarian?”

It’s funny, but both of those things have actually happened to me.

“Is that Laney?” Pete asked, emerging from the bathroom and scratching his belly. It was as flat as a drum. I have never hated him more.

“The TV sounds like Peter John,” Laney said.

I closed my eyes. “It’s not as bad as you think.”

“Are you staying in a cheap motel with a brother who once fed you sheep droppings?”

If Laney would invest in some purple eye shadow and maybe a jewel-tone head scarf, she could be a card-carrying psychic. Still, I should have lied. I should have lied well and immediately to save her, to do the right thing. But I wanted to see her something terrible. “Maybe,” I said.

“I’ll be in L.A. by noon. Where should I meet you?”

I realized suddenly that I had been holding my breath, but just hearing her say it made me exhale slowly and smile a little. Despite Will Swanson and his dead eyes. Despite thugs. Despite having overdosed on fried foods just eight hours before. “I love you, Laney,” I said.

“Uh-huh. Where are you?”

I shifted my eyes toward Pete. I was alone in a motel with a good-looking man who was eighty percent naked. And he was my brother. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me. It just wasn’t very funny. He yawned, stretched, looked about as bright as a pet rock. I sighed. Yeah, he may be as dumb as a bag of hammers, but he was my bag of hammers. “I need a favor,” I said.

I
wouldn’t allow Laney to return to L.A. on my behalf. But I did accept the money she wired and had subsequently stowed it in my purse. By noon I was at LAX. I had learned all I could about the mystery initial man from my brother and was armed with knowledge. D was in his late thirties, disliked men, and owned a high-rise on State and Seward, where he ran a possibly legitimate software business. I felt about as prepared as a turd in a toilet.

As for Rivera, I had called him from my cell and lied my ass off, saying I was flying to Chicago for an emergency maid of honor fitting. The last thing I needed was for him to drop by my house and find me missing. Making him believe I’d been murdered on my way home from work would almost be as bad as letting him know I was winging my way to Chi-town to pay off a felon with only one initial. Besides, if he knew my intentions, there was no way in hell he’d let me go. For a minute I had been kind of tempted to tell him.

“I don’t like it,” Pete said. He had taken on his big brother tone despite the fact that he’d be hiding out, Glock in hand, at cheap motels until I returned with the all-clear message from D.

“This isn’t exactly the best day of my life, either,” I said. We were striding through the airport together. I’d purchased a backpack and stuffed it with a few newly acquired essentials. Nothing fancy. I still wore the spiced orange sheath from the day before. It was a little wrinkled, but considering it had been slept in…and shot at…it didn’t look half-bad.

“This is stupid,” Pete said, stopping beside the rotary belt that shuffled travelers’ worldly possessions into another realm. “Don’t go.”

I faced him, stomach doughy. “Have any better ideas how to keep D from exterminating you?”

He stared at me a minute, then, “Have fun,” he said.

I rolled my eyes, set my carry-on in a plastic tray, took off my shoes, and did the same with them. Airports have been kind of edgy ever since the rash of terror threats. Had the shoe bomber been thinking, he would have put the explosives in his underwear. That would have really livened up air travel.

Taking a deep breath, I gave Peter a wave and marched bravely through the scanner and headed toward the gate.

The flight was bumpy, noisy, and crowded. I slept like the dead. If the dead drool. By the time I awoke, the landing gear was screeching out of its hidden compartment and the right corner of my mouth was crusty. We touched down like a meteorite, bumping and grinding.

Despite gummy fatigue and rancid terror, memories assailed me. Chicago may be filthy, windy, and dangerous, but it’s also the place where I had been spawned, sworn off boys, and donned cutoff overalls to work the crowd at the Warthog. In short, Chicago sucks.

I hailed a cab like a veteran, gave him an address, and closed my eyes against my own stupidity. Afternoon traffic was bumper-to-taillight. Even so, it didn’t take long to reach my destination, a concrete high-rise located squarely on Chicago’s famous Gold Coast. There was no coast in view, however, just endless gray buildings towering over me like disapproving gargoyles, dark against a bumpy, overcast sky.

Shutting down any good sense that may have the nerve to show in the terrifying light of day, I opened the door and stepped into the lobby. Marble walls greeted me on all sides, as gray as the exterior. According to Pete, D owned the entire building, but security didn’t seem particularly heavy. A handsome woman with black hair slicked back in a bun manned the desk. There was a pale leather couch where two supermodel-tall women discussed a fashion magazine. One was a redhead, one brunette. The rent-a-cop that lounged near the steel elevator was approximately half their height, but they may have been the same species.

I went straight for the desk, stomach churning. “I’d like to see D,” I said. My tone was no-nonsense, my demeanor the same.

The dark-haired beauty gave me a tight, professional smile. “I beg your pardon?”

“D,” I said, nerves clattering like wind chimes, sweat glands laboring like overachieving workaholics. “I’m here on business.”

A little line formed between the receptionist’s perfectly groomed brows. “Would D be the first or last name of the person with whom you hope to converse?”

I was starting to feel ridiculous. And relieved. I had obviously made a mistake. Or more likely, Pete had made a mistake. D didn’t reside here at all. Perhaps he didn’t even exist. But then I noticed the veins in Dark Beauty’s wrists. They were swollen like spring tributaries. I’d once dated a bodybuilder and knew the signs. She’d been pumping iron and popping steroids, which meant she wasn’t just some pretty bimbo trained to man the desk. She was some pretty bimbo strong enough to toss me out on my ass.

“Just D,” I said.

Her gaze held mine for an instant. It was like staring down steel. “I’m sorry, there is no one here by that name.”

“He tried to kill my brother,” I said, raising my voice.

That got her attention. Hers and every other person’s in the place. But suddenly I realized that everyone was female…and watching me with narrow-eyed expressions. The tall pair of superwomen put down their magazine and rose deliberately to their feet. There were identical lumps just above the waistbands beneath their jackets. I had a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t cellulite.

“Listen, I don’t want to cause any trouble,” I said, but the Amazon Pair was already moving toward me. One was reaching for the lump behind her back. See how I was right about that cellulite thing? “I just want to pay back what I owe—”

“Will you come with me, please?” said the brunette. The redhead stood a few feet back, legs spread beneath a pencil-thin, ivory skirt. Below the hem, her legs looked like something from a James Bond trailer.

“StairMaster or aerobics class?” I asked.

The supermodels glanced at each other, then at me. “Come with me,” repeated the brunette.

“This is a misunderstanding,” I said, but everyone was on their feet now, watching me, absolutely still. My hair was starting to sweat.

“Please,” repeated the brunette, clasping my arm. I jerked away, and that’s when the guns came out.

My bladder quivered in concert with my knees. The room was absolutely silent, and then the elevator doors opened and someone laughed. We turned toward the noise in breathless unison.

A man with curly hair and dark sideburns stood in the very center of the conveyance. He was wearing an ivory-toned Western shirt and dark blue jeans that someone else had labored to wear out. He was in his mid-thirties and had his arm wrapped around a curvy black woman’s back. They were both smiling. “Well,” he said, brows rising as he took in the scene, “this looks interesting.”

“Please, sir,” said the receptionist, hand hidden beneath the desk, “I think it would be best if you returned to your office for the time being.”

He looked at her for an instant, then glanced at me and smiled. “Who are you?”

I tried to speak. Nothing came out but a squeak, so I cleared my throat. But it didn’t do much good. “Are you D?”

“That your first name or your last name?” he asked. The African American woman laughed. Everyone else was sober as Sunday. I felt like I was going to faint.

“My name is Christina,” I said.

His smile brightened a little. If Pete hadn’t told me he was a mobster with a liver fetish, I would have thought him kind of handsome in an urban cowboy kind of way. His boots seemed to be snakeskin.

“Christina McMullen,” I added, and waited for the bomb to drop. But apparently I’d neglected to light the fuse, because he finally shook his head, looking lost.

“Do I know you?”

“Sir,” repeated the receptionist, and he laughed.

“Tanya here seems in a terrible hurry to shoot you,” he said, “so I’m going to have to assume I should recognize your name, but I’m afraid I don’t.”

I felt weak and stupid. “You tried to kill my brother.”

He tilted his head at me, then, “Goldy, honey, it looks like I’m going to be detained for a short time. Why don’t you go on to lunch without me?”

Goldy was as black as the inside of my eyelids. “You sure?” she asked.

He nodded and looked back toward me. “Would you care to step into my office?”

“Sir—”

“She armed?” he asked.

“I don’t know, sir. I haven’t had time to ascertain—”

“You armed?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “Airport security frowns on handguns in carry-ons,” I said, and realized in that moment that I had kind of bonded with the Glock and missed it something fierce.

“Then come on up,” he said, motioning toward the elevator. Something inside me told me not to go. I think it was my liver. My feet concurred, but I still tripped forward.