Complete Corruption (Corruption #1-3) (53 page)

The attendant came in. She looked vaguely Romanian. Her name pin said
Codruta
, and she did not make eye contact with me.

Irene blushed a little, shrugging. She played with her curls. I put on more lipstick, patting it with a cloth towel. When the two women in the stalls came out, I made room for them, but stayed by the sink. My hand was in my bag, around the tiny envelope, but I had no idea when I’d get to pass it over.

“He’ll never marry you,” Irene said when the two women were gone. “He’ll always run away.”

“I’ll chase him.”

“He’s not keeping a whore when he’s married to me.”

“Then I hope you like anal sex.”

Her look of abject horror was priceless. Codruta suppressed a laugh. I let mine out, chuckling and sliding my bag off the vanity. The bag got behind a stack of towels, and they fell to the floor like dying white butterflies.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” I said.

“It’s fine,” Codruta said. I kneeled down to pick up the towels and slipped the envelope between two, handing the short stack to her. “I’ve got it, thank you.” She looked at me pointedly, nodding ever so slightly and pressing the envelope’s bulk between her fingers.

“You’re welcome.” Then, looking at Irene in the mirror, I said, “It’s really very hot. You should try it.”

That was cruel, but I couldn’t have helped myself. Not one bit. I was only human, after all.

I walked out the door and through the cocktail hour as if onstage. Invisibility was not the objective. Antonio wasn’t at his seat. I kept a noncommittal smile on my lips as if I were going for a pleasant screw in the back of a flower truck, and no more.

I don’t know if, even at the height of my scandal with Daniel, I’d ever felt so exposed, so watched, so in need of the poise and control I’d been famous for. The goal, in both instances, was to be seen, noted, and found unthreatening.

A few stragglers wandered outside, mostly smokers and some younger girls in short dresses, discussing their makeup into their compacts, as if announcing the brand of their blush into a microphone. I paused until one of them saw me then glanced around as if looking for something.

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

The truck came into view. It turned out to be a van. Deep blue, with flowers bouncing around white clouds. A man got out of the driver’s seat.

“Hi,” I said. “Are you the florist for the Bortolusi wedding?”

“Yeah.”

“The mother of the bride says the orchids on the dais smell.”

“Smell?”

“I don’t speak Italian, but it was something like toilet. She’s pretty pissed.”

He sighed and slammed the door. “Well, hell. Let me check.”

I knew he wasn’t going to be able to get near the mother of the bride until after the introductions. So all I had to do was get into the truck.

I thought I might hesitate, but I didn’t have to. The truck windows were black with tint. The blue seemed more saturated than normal; the smooth coolness of the handle seemed sharper than the weather should allow. The click of the driver’s-side door as it opened seemed loud enough to wake the dead.

It swung open easily. I got in and closed the door behind me with a
phup
.

New-car smell. Fragrant flowers. An Egg McMuffin. I slid into the back and lifted the carpet. Potting soil dropped like a waterfall, gathering in the crease. I peeked underneath. It was just like he’d said, a ring and a loop.

I could still hear the music of the second song. He’d come in less than five minutes. I’d be waiting, just like I was told. I yanked up the door.

There was engine stuff down there, just as I’d been promised. But somehow, enough space had been made for a slimmish man to get through. Past that was the drainage grate. It was smaller than I remembered. Or I was bigger, because everything about the iron circle looked the same.

Reaching down until my legs splayed above me, I found the box bolted under the floor and opened it. I found the micro crowbar, and a gun. When I picked up the gun, I felt the weight of the bullets and I swallowed. The situation was real. Very, very real.

The space for the C4 was occupied with a brick that looked like clay and smelled like Play-doh. Weird.

“They smell fine!” I heard from outside. Sounded like he was talking on the phone. “I don’t know what she’s on about.”

“Fuck!” I whispered.

Should I get out and sit in the back as if I were waiting for my boyfriend to show up? Or get the job done and slip into the hole?

The voice got closer. I put the crowbar to the side of the grate and dug it between the dirt and the metal.

No. It was heavy. This had been Antonio’s job. I was going to have to pull up, back into the truck and act like a horny woman at a wedding.

“Hey!” I froze. It was Antonio’s voice from outside, followed by a mumble from someone. Then Antonio. “I don’t know. She said it was the purple? And there are white? Go ask. Who the fuck knows?”

I wasn’t big enough to do Antonio’s job. The grate was too heavy, and my arm wasn’t long enough. I got out from the trapdoor and put the micro crowbar and the gun into my purse. I heard footsteps on the asphalt.
That must be him. God bless him.

I put my feet into the hole under the truck, and lowered them until they hit the grate. I wiggled, bent my knees a little, wiggled farther, prayed I didn’t get stuck, and shifted until my knees were on the grass and my torso stuck out the bottom of the truck.

“God help me,” I whispered as I picked up my arms and slid down. My dress stayed up and I was naked below the truck. “Ever the
puttana
,” I grumbled, sliding down. My breasts caught on a tube or tank or something, and I shifted again.

I hoped Antonio would get there soon, if for no other reason than to laugh his head off.

I heard voices. One was Antonio, sharp and loud. The next I also recognized, but I didn’t have time to have a feeling about it before the truck shook.

The truck shook again, and I heard something hit the ground outside.

Paulie: “Who’s saying
Ave Maria
now?”

Antonio, with a grunt: “You are.”
Bang. Shake.

And then there was nothing.

The music started again from the Heritage House. People would start milling as the salads went around; then they’d sit. And I was here, half in and half out of a truck. I let my breath out and twisted, sliding, falling into the bottom of the truck as if it had given birth to me.

I looked back up and wondered if I should close the trap. We were supposed to be coming together, but Antonio was apparently dealing with Paulie, and I had no idea if he needed me or if staying put was the thing to do. The carriage house was twenty feet away. I could make it across to there from under the car without being seen. I couldn’t hear anything from the car, and that concerned me more than anything.

Aspettami.

I was supposed to wait, but I was sure Paulie hadn’t been anticipated, and I had no excuse to be on my belly, under a florist’s truck. I’d figure something out. I’d told him I’d wait, and that meant he’d take whatever action he needed to with the assumption that I was going to be under the truck. I scooted back and got my fingers into the dirt at the edge of the grate. The leverage was better, and I could get it up and slide it over if I could get the micro bar under there.

The party picked up across the field. I could hear the music and shouts of laughter. But over that, I heard a
pop
from the carriage house, and that was it. Some reactionary hormone flooded my bloodstream. I wasn’t lying there another second, waiting for the plan to get even more screwed up. Without thinking clearly, because all I could think was that everything was off, and Antonio was hurt, I scuttled from under the truck and ran to the carriage house in my heels, flattening my skirt at the same time. I was sure I was full of grass and mud. I was sure that I couldn’t return to the party looking like that, but I was also sure Antonio and I weren’t going back for a dance and aperitif.

The house was bathed in the flat light of sunset. I took three steps and cast a three-foot-long shadow over the grass. I flattened myself against the wall, listening. Stuff was getting thrown. Things were breaking. I trotted to a window, but it was obscured so I couldn’t see in. Only out. Damn the privacy of the privileged.

The door sat inside a cut in the wall, and I slipped inside it. The knob didn’t turn. It never did. Even when I was a kid, the front door had been a joke, a double-reinforced barrier against an unknown enemy.

Fuck it.

I ran around to the back of the house. The patio looked the same as on the night Leanne and Jonathan and I had come across the uneaten steak-and-s’mores dinner. And like that night, the sliding door was open enough to get through.

Nothing had changed, but the dining room table was off kilter and a bunch of porcelain knickknacks were in pieces on the floor.

Not a sound came from another room. Not a crash or a scuff, or a word, and that concerned me. I was tempted to call out Antonio’s name. I needed to know he was all right, that he was there, and to let him know I wasn’t waiting under the grate.

But I didn’t, and I think that saved my life, because as I approached the bedroom I heard a thud, and a breath, and the words in an exhausted gasp… “Too easy, motherfucker. That was too easy.”

I should have run, but that hadn’t been Antonio’s voice. Tiptoeing, I peeked in then flattened my back against the wall. In that flash of a view, I saw Paulie, hunched, breathless, face bloody on one side, and a set of legs that only could have been Antonio’s.

I had a gun.

He’d given it to me for a reason, and if that wasn’t his intention, what was? I reached into my purse for it. Things clicked. My clothing rustled. It must have sounded like a klaxon in a morgue, because Paulie, who was not an idiot, and was as much of a killing machine as my lover, heard me and sprung into action.

I was an accountant. I paid attention to the machinations of money. My talents were on paper. I was not a specialist in the art of physical confrontation.

So, when Paulie snatched the bag away, I just stood there, stunned. And when he grabbed my arm and threw me against the bedroom wall I flew like a rag doll, smacking my head on the corner of a marble tabletop. My vision collapsed into shattered webs of light with blackness at the edges.

“Well, well,” Paulie said. “What a sweet little present this asshole gave you.”

My vision cleared to a pinpoint of clarity, with him at the center, my gun in one hand and my bag in the other. He dropped the bag on the floor.

The circle of clarity widened. I blinked. Tried to move. Paulie held the gun, checking it for bullets, popping the clip, slowly, as if he wasn’t worried about a damn thing. The room swam a little when I moved my eyes away from him.

Antonio faced away from me, his head in a pool of blood. He wasn’t moving.

Oh, fuckjesusmotherfuckerhell
.

“I know you’re pissed he was promised to Irene,” Paulie said. “But to get him in here for a screw then shoot him? Man, you women are just nuts, you know that?”

I tried to say Antonio’s name and failed. I got my feet under me and braced myself against the wall, which swam and rolled.

Paulie crouched on his haunches. “You want to do it yourself?” he asked. “He shelved you, you know. He’d keep you for a fuck, but he was marrying that girl, no matter what he told you.” He dangled the gun in front of me. “You want to take this cheating asshole out?”

Past the gun, with my focus improving but confused, I saw Antonio’s finger move. Just a twitch. Was it a death spasm? Some relic of life left in him? Or was it the result of an intention?

“I won’t.” I croaked.

“Man, you Drazens.” He shook his head in mock pensiveness. “You got this badass rep. But, buncha rich pussies if you ask me.”

My wits had returned. I glanced at the pile of crap on the floor, located my phone, and put my gaze back on him.

“Why are you alone, Paulie?” I asked. “No one love you anymore? Couldn’t find an ally to take out an enemy with?”

He smirked. “In the end, it’s on me.” He grabbed my hand and put the gun in it. “And you, Princess.” I yanked my hand away. He pulled his arm back and swiped the gun across the side of my face.

I think I flew. I think things fell and crashed, because a bolt of light followed the one that came from the impact of the gun. I went out of my body a little. I was blind and dizzy again. My stomach upended. I felt my hand levitate and something hard go into it. This was Paulie, putting the gun on my hand. I felt him over me, talking in my ear.

“Say something dramatic. Like you’re in a movie. Something like, ‘If I can’t have you, no one will.’”

The phone. If I could get to the phone, I could blow up the truck. If I could blow up the truck, there would be enough of a distraction to get away. Or he’d run away. Or Antonio would wake up if he had a breath of life in him. Anything was better than this.

“Irene wants you,” I rasped, blinking blood from my eye. “She told me in the bathroom.”

The grip of his hand over mine loosened. I didn’t have much control over my limbs, with half my brain checked out, but I pulled and yanked against all resistance, from his hand, the floor, the wall. The advantage was enough, and I got away.

The phone. Face down. There. I dove for it, but Paulie put his foot on it.

“She said what?”

“She said I could have Antonio. She was fighting for you.” My fingertips touched the phone.

He moved it an inch farther. “Why should I believe you?”

And why should he? I drew lines and connections in my mind and, through the haze, found an answer that could buy me time.

“She texted me to meet her there. In the bathroom. To tell me.” I lurched for the phone, and he shifted it another inch. “I’ll show you.”

He paused, standing above me, considering.

“I have no idea what she sees in you,” I said. “So don’t ask.”

He smiled down at me. “If I see one tap on that glass I don’t like…” He moved his foot. I grabbed the phone and pressed the home button for one, two…

Three seconds.