Further Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman (7 page)

“I don’t care,” I assured him, emboldened by my righteous anger and my newfound hatred of Jose Garcia.

“Then who will take care of Katie?” Patrick asked.

Chapter Seven

“H
E DOES HAVE
a point,” God drawled superiorly from his glass terrarium, which I’d put in the middle of my kitchen table. “If you get caught, what will happen to Katie? And me?”

“Doomsday?” the dog barked.

“Yes,” the lizard griped. “And the slobbering beast. No one in their right mind would take her in.”

I didn’t like being reminded of people in the right minds when I was in the midst of a conversation with a lizard and a dog. It made me feel like I could end up sharing a room with my mother in the mental hospital at any moment. I frowned at God over the refrigerator door. “I’d been looking for some support, not for you to take Patrick’s side.”

“I’m not taking his side,” God said. “I’m advocating for Katie and myself.”

“Doomsday!” the dog yipped.

“And the beast,” the lizard added grudgingly.

I turned away from them and considered the contents of my fridge. The hitman was right. I did eat too many olives. I had seven different kinds on the shelves.

“So you’re not going to do it, right?” the lizard nagged.

I sighed. The burning hatred in my gut had been replaced by the cold fear that I wouldn’t be able to help Katie. Maybe Patrick was right. Maybe God was right. Maybe I should just go with my initial reaction and turn down this particular job.

“Well?” God asked.

I took out a container of garlic-stuffed olives. I opened it and popped one in my mouth. “I wouldn’t want the two of you to end up homeless.”

Doomsday licked my hand in appreciation. That or she was after the olive brine.

“A wise choice,” the little guy assured me.

I felt a little better having made the choice. I ate another olive to celebrate and closed up the refrigerator.

“Who’s suing you?” the lizard asked casually.

“What?”

He pointed at the pile of unopened mail beside his enclosure. “You got something from a lawyer.”

I rifled through the pile until I found the envelope he was referring to. He was right, it was from an attorney’s firm. Hands trembling, I ripped it open.

“Please don’t be bad news,” I begged. “Please no more bad news.”

I flopped down on the chair and read it. I only read the first paragraph before I jumped back up. “Son-of-a-bitch!”

Doomsday ran out of the room and even God seemed to cower against the rear wall of his terrarium.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” I shouted again, throwing the papers on the floor and jumping up and down on them like a demented four-year-old.

“What is it?” God asked cautiously.

“They want her.”

“Who wants who?”

“Katie’s aunt wants Katie. She’s suing me for custody.”

I didn’t know it was possible for an anole lizard to pale, but Godzilla did. “She can’t,” he whispered.

“She is.” I pointed at the offending papers.

“What are we going to do?”

“I’m not letting her have Katie. She’s never even met her.”

God nodded. “Maybe you can get the redhead to kill her.”

I considered that for a second. “Maybe.”

“You need to hire a lawyer,” the lizard said, his color coming back.

“With what money?” I asked.

He shrugged.

I snapped my fingers. “I’ll tell Delveccio I need an advance for killing Garcia.”

The lizard didn’t try to talk me out of it.

A
S EAGER AS
I was to tell my favorite mobster that I needed an advance on my contract to kill Garcia, I still had to spend the next day at Insuring the Future. But before that, I had to take Doomsday, piteously whining, “Gotta! Gotta! Gotta!” for her morning constitutional.

God, complaining that he had a case of cabin fever, insisted on coming along too, perched precariously on my shoulder, his tail wrapped around my neck for balance.

We’d barely gotten out the door when the dog emptied her bladder on my neighbor’s golf green welcome mat.

“Doomsday,” I scolded. “I’ve told you to only go on the grass.”

“Grass!” She scratched at the plastic turf.

“That’s not grass, dingbat,” God told her with a smirk in his voice.

“Dingbat not!” the dog snarled.

“Yes, you are,” I assured her, bending down to gingerly pick up the ruined mat, taking care not to spill the puddle in the middle. “And destructive. First Aunt Susan’s umbrella and now this.”

“While we’re using D adjectives to describe the mutt, I want to add
disgusting
,” God said. “As in: It’s disgusting you’re picking that up.”

“Like cleaning your terrarium is any better,” I muttered. “My life was a lot easier before the two of you.”

“Sorry Doomsday.” The dog nudged my hand in apology, upsetting my delicate balancing act and splashing her pee all over me.

“Aaaah!” God screamed, clambering on top of my head as if to escape sulfuric acid.

“Aaaah!” I echoed, throwing the soiled mat at the dog and trying to knock the lizard off my head. “Idiots!”

“Imbecile!” God countered.

Doomsday took off. I hadn’t even realized I’d dropped her leash until she was twenty yards away.

“Doomsday!” I called.

She didn’t look back. Ears flattened, she ran faster than I’d thought her capable of.

“Come back!”

She ignored me.

“Get back here right now or so help me . . .” I trailed off, partly because she was already out of earshot, but also because I realized I sounded an awful lot like my father.

“Look what you did,” God said reproachfully.

“What I did? You were the one who called her a dingbat and disgusting.”

“But I,” he drawled haughtily, perched on my head, “didn’t assault her.”

“I didn’t assault her.”

“You threw the mat at her.”

“I didn’t throw it
at
her . . . I threw it and it happened to hit her.”

God harrumphed his disbelief.

“If you don’t get off my head this instant I’m going to throw you off.” I reached upward, ready to make good on my threat.

“I have sensitive skin,” he practically shrieked, clambering back onto my shoulder. “What are you going to do now?”

I frowned in the direction Doomsday had disappeared. “I’m going to work. I assume you are going to spend all day watching cooking shows.”

“But what about the beast?” A tinge of concern wove through the lizard’s voice.

I shrugged.

“You should go after her.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start looking. She’ll find her way home.”

“Like Marlene has?” God goaded.

The mere mention of my missing sister’s name made my bad day even worse. Ignoring the lizard’s dig, I picked up the soiled mat, tossed into the Dumpster, and stalked back to my apartment.

“I can’t believe you’re going to leave Doomsday to cope on her own,” the lizard griped as he climbed back into his terrarium.

“She’ll be fine.”

“She can’t even compose a proper sentence and now she’s out there . . . lost and afraid.”

I felt a twinge of guilt, but wasn’t about to let him know that. “She took off. She’s probably having the time of her life.”

He flicked his tail, signaling his disagreement, and turned his back on me.

Even though I was running late, after changing into urine-free clothes, I took the long way to work, hoping to catch a glimpse of the AWOL dog. I didn’t spot her.

I’d barely parked my car at Insuring the Future when Harry came barreling toward me. One look at his red face and wild eyes had me considering locking my doors and getting the hell out of there.

Then I remembered I’ve killed a mobster and a professional hitman and I was going to kill a drug dealer, so an irate pencil pusher with a penchant for pepperoni was no one to be afraid of. I got out of my car, but kept a tight grip on my keys, my handiest weapon.

“Who did you talk to and what did you say?” Harry spluttered, rocking to a stop a few feet away.

I backed up so as not to be in range of his enraged spittle. “What?”

“What did you tell them?” he squeaked, obviously panicked.

I considered him for a second. I hadn’t said anything to anyone, but he obviously thought I had. Whatever it was freaked him out. I liked watching him squirm. I smiled.

My smile unnerved him further. He paled.

“Surely there must be a way to fix this,” he said in his most conciliatory tone.

“The ball’s in your court, Harry.” I smiled again for good measure.

He turned and practically ran away.

That should have amused me, but watching him distance himself from me just made me think of Doomsday. I wondered if she’d ever come back, or, if like so many others in my life, she’d abandoned me for good.

My eyes burned with tears. Dashing them away with the back of my hand, I squared my shoulders. I’d survived a lot worse than a doggie desertion.

“Why the long face, Chiquita?”

Whirling, I realized that Armani had snuck up behind me, quite the accomplishment for someone who drags her bad leg behind her.

“Was Harry giving you a hard time?” she asked.

“He seems to think I told someone something about him and now he’s scared to death of me.”

She ignored my revelation. “There was a cute guy looking for you earlier.”

“For me?”

“Blue eyes, cleft chin, needs a haircut.” She headed toward the building.

I fell into step beside her. “Zeke,” I muttered, wondering what the hell he wanted from me.

“Zeke?” Stopping, she flashed a pleased grin. “What’s it short for?”

I rolled my eyes, knowing that Armani judged people’s worth based on the Scrabble value of their name, and kept walking. “It’s worth seventeen points all on its own. Why does it need to be short for anything?”

She hurried to catch up. I slowed down so she could.

“It’s short for something, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Ezekiel.”

“What the hell kind of name is that?”

“Biblical.”

“Where’d you find him?”

“He crashed into me.”

“Oh my God, the spider web,” Armani’s breath was suddenly shallow.

“With a sled,” I told her hurriedly, not in the mood to hear any more about her psychic predictions. “We were ten.”

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed.

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“He asked what time you took lunch and said he’d be back then.”

My bad day was getting worse.

I spent the entire morning wondering what Zeke wanted from me and then the jerk never showed up. Armani was disappointed by his no-show status. I was relieved.

The rest of the workday passed uneventfully with Harry giving me a wide berth, which meant I was less stressed than usual when I got to the hospital. I’d even almost forgotten about the MIA dog. Almost.

A quick glance at the waiting area showed no sign of Tony/Anthony Delveccio or his hired muscle, so I decided to visit with my niece before doing business.

Mercifully none of my aunts were in with Katie when I got to her room. “Hey, Baby Girl,” I cooed, settling into my usual seat and picking up her limp hand. I stroked two fingers down her cheek, blinking back tears.

Once again, I felt a burning hatred for Jose Garcia because of what he’d done to my family. Realizing I was holding my breath, I slowly exhaled, trying to expel some of the anger.

Returning my focus to Katie, I began manipulating her fingers and singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

My voice cracked when I could have sworn I felt her fingers twitch.

I stopped singing and stared at her hand wondering if I’d felt an
inadvertent muscle contraction
as the doctors called her movements, or if she’d actually responded to me.

I cleared my throat, which felt as though it was being squeezed closed by a vise and started singing again. “The itsy bitsy spider went up the—”

This time I definitely felt her squeeze my fingers. She was responding. My heartbeat doubled its pace.

I forced myself to keep singing around the lump of tears lodged in my throat. “Down came the rain—” I looked up at her face. Her eyelids were trembling.

“C’mon, Baby Girl. Open your eyes. Open your eyes for Aunt Maggie.” I stroked her cheek. “Please, Katie. Please.”

I could have buzzed for a nurse, I probably should have, but it never even occurred to me. The only thing I could think of in that moment was willing Katie to open her eyes.

“It’s okay, Katie. Aunt Maggie’s here.”

She opened her eyes.

My heart leapt and I thought my cheeks might crack, my smile was so wide.

My moment of elation was short-lived when I realized there was no recognition in her gaze. There was nothing.

Chapter Eight

T
HE DOCTORS AND
nurses tried to convince me that Katie squeezing my hand and opening her eyes were encouraging signs, but as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t believe them. The blank stare of the little girl frightened me. It made me think that my niece was lost to me forever.

That loss weighed on me as I left the hospital and stumbled toward my car, having forgotten I’d planned on finding Delveccio. I dropped my keys as I got to my car. Instead of picking them up, I leaned my head tiredly against the window. The glass felt cool.

“Maggie?”

I turned slowly in the direction of the voice.

“What’s wrong?”

Zeke stood a few paces away, worry lines creasing his forehead. Armani was wrong. He wasn’t “cute.” He’d done “cute” as a teenager, now he was just ridiculously handsome in a movie star kind of way. I couldn’t totally stop crushing on him just a little, even knowing he was gay, was my sworn enemy, and was trying once again to steal my best friend.

“Maggie, what’s wrong?” he asked again, concern deepening his tone.

I busied myself with bending to pick up my fallen keys. I couldn’t tell him how monumentally unfair it was that he was gay and I didn’t want to give voice to my fears about Katie. What was it Aunt Susan always said? The best defense is a strong offense? “Are you stalking me, Zeke? First you go to where I work and now you’re here. I spent the whole day waiting for you to show up.”

A devilish glint flashed in his eyes, a grin dancing on his lips. “Were you disappointed when I didn’t?”

I grabbed my keys. “Annoyed, but not surprised. You never were the responsible kind.”

His eyes narrowed and his smile vanished at my attack. “I needed to talk to you.”

I stood up slowly. “About what?”

“The bridal shower. I think Alice is expecting one this weekend.”

I leaned back weakly against the car. “This weekend?”

“Well, the wedding is next weekend, so this would be the only chance.”

“There’s no way . . .”

“And I think she’s expecting a bachelorette party.”

I closed my eyes.

“So,” he said in a rush, “I was thinking we could do the shower this weekend and the bachelorette party on Wednesday night.”

“I can’t.”

“We can do it Tuesday or Thursday.” He moved closer as he spoke. “We can just make a quick trip to Atlantic City to one of the casinos. She won’t be drinking because of her condition, so it should be a pretty short night.”

I watched him with grudging amazement. He’d done this when we were kids too, cheerily bulldozed his way through a conversation, as though he could achieve the desired outcome through pure strength of will.

When he paused to take a breath, I said hurriedly, “I’m not doing a shower or a bachelorette party. She’ll understand.”

He stared at me, shocked. “But she’s your best friend.”

“Don’t try to put this on me.” I poked his chest with my finger. “I’m not the one who saddled everyone with this ridiculous time frame.”

Zeke looked down at where I’d poked him. “It’s not like she did it on purpose.”

“There you go again,” I muttered, shoving at his chest with the palm of my hand.

Caught off guard, he stumbled backward a step.

“You always take her side. You’re always kissing up to her.”

He considered me for a long moment, but didn’t refute my accusation. Instead he asked, “Why won’t you do the shower or party?”

“Because”—I waved an arm at the hospital—“I can’t drop everything just because she got herself knocked up and still wants all the white wedding crap. She doesn’t get to have everything go right for her while everything goes wrong for me.” The unfairness of it all hit me in the solar plexus and I found myself gasping for air with tears running down my face. “I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”

I sensed Zeke step toward me and held up my hands to stop him.

“You’re not going to hit me, are you?” he asked. “You’ve already poked and shoved me.”

Guiltily I covered my face with my hands and sobbed.

Somehow I found myself leaning on his shoulder. Catching a whiff of his aftershave, something bright and fresh with notes of sandalwood, made me cry harder.

“I’ll take care of everything, Maggie,” he soothed. “I’ll plan everything and decorate and order the food. All you’ll have to do is show up.”

I could have hated him even more in that moment when he said he’d take on all of the bridesmaid duties, but I was just so relieved that everything wasn’t falling to me that I was filled with gratitude. “Th-thank you,” I said on a hiccupping sob.

“Hey!” a Neanderthal boomed. “The boss wants to see you.”

I jumped away to find Vinnie, Delveccio’s muscle-head nephew, frowning at me from a few paces away.

“Who the hell are you?” Zeke countered, stepping between us protectively, like he couldn’t see that Vinnie could bench press him with just his pinky.

Vinnie ignored him. “Now.”

“I’ll be there in a couple minutes.” I wiped away my tears.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Zeke asked, every muscle in his body tense, looking surprisingly alpha male.

Vinnie looked him up and down, deciding whether he could take Zeke. Considering he pumped iron and Zeke primped tulle, I didn’t think it would be much of a fight.

While part of me still hated Zeke, he
had
just offered to shoulder most of the bridesmaid duties, so I didn’t want anything to happen to him.

I jumped between the two men.

“The boss said—” Vinnie began.

“And I said I’ll be there in a couple minutes,” I interrupted. “Leave.” I made a shooing motion in his direction.

He glared at me, the veins in his neck bulging.

I glared right back. “Now.”

Grudgingly he turned away and trudged toward the hospital.

Zeke turned to face me. “Who the hell is that?”

“A family member of one of the patients.” Technically that was true, so I wasn’t lying.

Zeke eyed me suspiciously. “And who’s his boss?”

“His uncle. The boy’s grandfather. We’ve sort of bonded.” Again, not a lie. “His grandson isn’t much older than Katie.”

“I’ll go back inside with you,” Zeke offered.

“Thanks, but . . .” I said slowly. I needed to talk to Delveccio about killing Garcia and I was pretty sure bringing along Zeke would be in direct violation of Patrick’s Don’t Get Caught rule. “Thanks, but I can do this on my own.”

“Are you sure? That guy looked sketchy.”

“Sketchy?” I teased. “There’s something I haven’t heard in a while. I seem to remember you telling Alice that Louis Lauer was sketchy.”

“And I was right.”

I nodded. He had tried to warn Alice about her boyfriend when we were fifteen. Alice hadn’t listened. Louis, like most of her loser boyfriends, had broken her heart. He probably would have broken her arm too at the Spring Semi-Formal our junior year, if Zeke and I hadn’t gotten her away from him. The Monday afterward, Zeke had shown up to school with a black eye he refused to explain. I was never sure if it was his dad or Louis who gave it to him.

“What do you think of Lamont?” I asked.

“I think he doesn’t like me.”

“I don’t like you either.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Zeke didn’t appear hurt or angry. In fact, he smiled. “I guess I’ll have to work my way back into your good graces, starting with planning this shower.”

I stared at him, not knowing how to respond.

“Anything you don’t want at the shower?”

“Games.”

“Games?”

“I hate those lame-ass games people insist on. They’re like grown-up versions of Pin the Tail on the Jackass.”

“Okay. No games. You sure you don’t want me to go in there with you?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the hospital.

“Dead sure.”

“You’re the boss.” He crossed the space between us and pressed a kiss to my cheek, whispering in my ear, “You
are
going to like me.”

I stared at him dumbfounded as he winked at me and then strolled across the parking lot.

Once he was out of sight, I returned to the hospital for my meeting with Delveccio. The whole way to the cafeteria, I mentally rehearsed how I was going to convince him to give me some money in advance of the Garcia job, but I completely forgot my speech when Aunt Leslie accosted me before I reached the mobster.

Well, she didn’t so much accost me as she almost ran me over with a loaded wheelchair.

“Hey,” I protested, having barely escaped with my toes intact. “Watch where you’re going.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked, but before I could reply, she patted her wheelchair passenger on the shoulder and said, “Bertram, this is my niece Maggie. She was my rock bottom. Maggie, this is Bertram.”

“Hi,” I said weakly to the wizened old man who had a death grip on the arms of the wheelchair, wondering how many people my newly clean aunt told I was her rock bottom.

“What are you doing here?” Leslie asked again.

“I was visiting Katie.” I tried to assess whether she was chemically impaired or just all-naturally wacky.

She gave me the same look right back. “Why else would you be at the hospital?”

“But you just asked . . .”

“I meant,” she said with exaggerated patience, “what are you doing in this wing?”

I couldn’t very well tell her that I was there to talk to a mobster about killing her twin’s ex. “I was hungry and they have great chocolate pudding. What are you doing here?”

“I’m a Candy Striper!” She did a little happy dance that looked a lot like the hokey pokey. “Of course they don’t call it that anymore, but that’s what I am. It was my sponsor’s idea that I do something in service to others, so here I am.” She leaned toward me. “And guess what? I’m good at it.”

Having witnessed her wheelchair-driving skills, I wasn’t so sure about that, but I didn’t want to be the one to burst her “service to others” bubble. “That’s great.”

“Well I’ve got to get Bertram back to his room, but it was nice seeing you,” she said as though I were an old neighbor she’d run into at the grocery store. “See you soon.”

I had to jump out of the way as she and Bertram careened wildly away. I looked down to make sure all my toes were still attached.

When I looked back up, I saw Vinnie standing at the cafeteria entrance glaring at me. “The boss doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Ignoring him, I strode past and made my way to where Delveccio sat. As usual, his shirt was unbuttoned almost to his belly button.

“Sorry I made you wait.” I slid into the seat opposite him.

He swept his gaze over me and I knew what he was thinking. The first time we’d met, I’d come to the hospital straight from Theresa’s funeral and had been wearing a black dress and high heels. He preferred my femme fatale look to my “blending in” jeans and polo shirt. Little did he know that the little black dress only came out of the closet for funerals or really promising dates. I hadn’t had a promising date in years, despite what Aunt Loretta thought about Paul.

Finally Delveccio said, “Vinnie said you gave him lip.”

I shot a dirty look at the bodyguard on the opposite side of the room. “He rubs me the wrong way.”

Delveccio chuckled. “Me too. You want a pudding?”

I nodded.

The mobster flashed two fingers at his muscled henchman. “Did you decide about the Garcia thing?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, you’ve decided? Or yes, you’re going to do it?”

“Both.”

“Our mutual friend seems to think giving you the contract is a bad idea.”

I made a mental note to tell Patrick to stay the hell out of my business. “What do you think?”

“I like you. You want it, the job’s yours.”

“I want an advance,” I blurted out, which was so not the way I’d rehearsed asking the mobster for money.

His gaze narrowed. “What for?”

“Expenses.” I held my breath as Vinnie arrived with our chocolate puddings.

He put them down and walked away.

“Spoons!” Delveccio boomed.

Vinnie flinched and scurried away.

“I swear they were scraping the bottom of the brains barrel when they created that moron,” Delveccio griped.

Considering that his mother, an Atlantic City showgirl, named her identical twins Tony and Anthony, I was pretty sure the DNA pool of his family tree was a kiddie pool, not Olympic-sized. I kept that thought to myself. Instead I said, “So what do you say? Will you give me an advance?”

He waited until Vinnie had placed spoons and napkins in front of us before he answered. “You are one ballsy chick.”

“Thank you.”

“Since you did me a solid with Gary the Gun, I’m considering your request.”

The solid referred to the fact he hadn’t paid me for offing the hitman and had ended up with a two-for-one deal when I’d killed his son-in-law.

I forced myself to eat a bite of creamy, chocolaty goodness while waiting for his decision.

“How ’bout I front you a quarter of the fee?”

“What’s the fee?”

“A hundred . . . minus my brokerage fee of fifty percent.”

I almost choked on my pudding. He was pocketing fifty grand while I took all the risk and did the work?

He watched me steadily, waiting for me to call him on the unfairness of the deal.

I did the calculations in my head. A quarter of fifty thousand dollars was a little over twelve . . . that had to be enough to retain a lawyer. “Okay.”

He blinked, surprised. “Okay?”

I nodded.

“Tell you what,” he offered. “Since you’re not being a whiny pansy ass like a lot of guys I deal with, if you earn the bonus, I’ll let you keep the whole thing.”

“Bonus?”

“You do the job in the next twelve days
and
if you do it publicly, there’s an extra hundred in it for you.”

“Hundred thousand?” I practically squeaked.

“Yeah. It’s good money, but only if you don’t get caught.”