Speak Low (10 page)

“Want to see the bedroom?” He toyed with the straps of my dress.

“No.” I elbowed my way out of his reach and put some distance between us.

Sighing, he faced me with an exasperated look on his face.

“Don’t give me that look, Enzo. I’m still angry with you. I only came here to hear what you have to say about Joey.”

He pressed his lips together. “Why are you always so worried about him?”

“Because he’s my friend, and I dragged him into this mess to begin with.”

“Really. You instructed him to hijack those trucks and later advised him to steal the opium from the load?”

“No, but…”

“Lupo’s a grown man, Tiny. He makes his own decisions, and now he’s got another one to make.”

An alarm pinged in my head. “About what?”

“Come into the bedroom and I’ll tell you.”

I scowled at him. “You’re impossible.”

Enzo smiled and disappeared into the bedroom, and I followed a moment later when he switched on a lamp. The room was even more impressive than the parlor, with two big windows on the left, a large closet with a full mirror on the door, and a private bathroom with a claw-footed tub. The bed, with its scarlet-hued spread and curvy high-backed frame, looked especially inviting. And it wasn’t just because I could imagine myself and Enzo naked underneath that coverlet, although that was easy to do—I was exhausted.

“All right. I’m in here. Now tell me.”

He took my purse from me and laid it on a chair in the corner. “Do you like the apartment?”

I loved it, but there was no way I would live here at his beck and call. Not when he had a
wife
living with him somewhere else.

I turned away from him. “I’m not doing anything else until you talk.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” he murmured, coming up behind me. He brushed my hair off the back of my neck and rubbed his lips on my nape. His breath sent shivers down my spine, and I willed myself to be strong, even though it felt
so good
. He kissed his way down one side of my neck and slipped one strap from my shoulder. “I simply told him…” He kissed that shoulder. “That I had some information…” He slipped the other strap from my shoulder and pressed his lips there too. “I thought he’d be interested in.” He brought his hands to my shoulders and trailed his fingers down the insides of my arms. “Interested enough to trade for the opium.”

“What kind of information?” I whispered, my arms tingling.

He bracketed my hips with his hands and pulled me into him. “Well,” he said, bending at the knee to grind against me before whispering in my ear, “I know who killed his father.”

Chapter Nine

I wrenched myself from Enzo’s grasp and stumbled forward. “What did you say?” Pulling the straps of my dress back on my shoulders, I stared at him in disbelief.

“I know who killed his father,” he repeated, as if we were discussing the weather. “I know who pulled the trigger outside the station and I know who ordered the hit on Big Leo that killed him.”

“But—but how?”

“Nobody keeps a secret for that long in this business. It’s been a few years now—eventually you find someone disgruntled with a particular faction and willing to talk, for the right price, of course.”

“Of course.” My mind was spinning. I knew how badly Joey wanted to find out who’d killed his father—he’d just told me so when we were on the roof. Undoubtedly
he’d
give up the drugs to know who pulled the trigger. But would he stab Angelo in the back? “So…so did you tell him?”

“No. I simply told him I had the information. If he wants the details, he’ll have to decide what they’re worth.” He moved toward me again, but I backed up.

“Just wait.” I put my hands out. “I’m a little flustered right now.”

“I like you flustered.” He kept coming at me and I thought he might back me right into the closet but instead he swept me off my feet and carried me over to the bed.

“Enzo, please.”

He set me down and slipped my shoes off. “Please what? I’ll do anything you want me to.” Running a hand up one leg, he paused at different places—my knee, my thigh, and finally my hip. “I’ll kiss you here. And here. And especially here.” He slipped his fingers inside the loose edge of my step-in and brushed them against my tingling skin.

Oh, God.
He was so handsome and the room was so beautiful and the bed was so inviting and I knew it would feel so good, but—

“No.” I pushed his hand away, brought my knees together, and propped myself up on my elbows. “I’m not doing this with you. You’re about to marry some other girl, and—”

“Jesus!” he exploded, pounding a fist into the bed. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not going to fucking marry her!”

“You lie!” I shouted through gritted teeth. “You’re always telling me just what I want to hear and nothing that’s actually true. Until you prove to me that you’re not stashing me in this apartment just so your
wife
won’t see us together, we’re not doing this.”

He eyed me angrily. “You knew about her last time we did it. And you knew we had to keep our time together a secret. What’s changed?”

“I don’t know!” I yelled. “But something has.”

“Within one week?”

“Yes!”

Enzo breathed deeply through his nose. “What the fuck do you want, Tiny?”

I had no idea.
What’s changed?
It was a fair question, in a way—I
had
known he had a fiancée the last two times we’d slept together. True, I hadn’t known about the wedding date, but if I was honest with myself, I had to admit there wasn’t much of a difference between sleeping with a man who had a fiancée, and sleeping with one who had a fiancée and a wedding date. Both were pretty despicable, separated perhaps by a scant few degrees of despicableness on the scale.

“I don’t know, Enzo. I guess…I guess I’ll wait until next Saturday and see if you manage to dodge your own wedding. ” Slapping a hand over my face, I groaned. “God, that sounds so ridiculous.”

“That’s a long time away, Tiny.” He trailed his fingers along my shin. “I don’t think I can wait that long. I don’t think you can, either.”

“It’s one week, Enzo. You can’t go seven days without having sex?”

“I just want you so badly.” He rubbed my hip, staring at his hand against the ivory material. “Can’t we come up with a different plan?”

“No.” I got off the bed and located my heels on the floor. “We can’t.”

“Is this about him?” He watched as I slipped my feet into my shoes.

My cheeks flushed, and I bent over one leg as if I needed to concentrate on the buckle. “No.”

“I don’t believe you. You have to decide, Tiny. You can’t be loyal to two people in this situation.”

I straightened so quickly I got dizzy. “Ha! Look who’s talking!”

“Gina means nothing to me. In fact, she annoys the hell out of me, and it’s pretty clear I am not loyal to her. I never claimed to be.”

I bent and buckled the other shoe. When I straightened, Enzo was reaching for the lamp, and a second later the room went black. “I need my purse,” I said.

He picked it up from the chair brought it to me. “Are you sure you won’t stay?” His voice was lilting and soft again. “I can come back later and stay with you. All night.”

I felt a quick tug of arousal, but it disappeared at the thought of him coming straight from Gina’s side to my bed. “No. Not until I know for sure that you’re not going to marry her.”

“How do I know for sure that you’re not fooling around with Lupo?” he asked testily. The light coming from the parlor illuminated only one side of his face, leaving the other half dark.

“I’m not.”

Silence. “I saw you dancing with him.”

My stomach flipped. “So what? It was just dancing. There’s nothing between us.”

“What if I want you to prove it?”

“How would I do that?”

A smile appeared on his half-shadowed face. “By keeping a secret.”

“What secret?”

“This one: The gunman outside the prison was a hitman named Legs Putnam. And the hit was ordered by Sam Scarfone.”

I gasped. “Sam Scarfone! But Big Leo was his uncle! Why would he do that?”

“Because Big Leo was the boss. And if you don’t like the way things are being run, and you think you deserve more than you’re getting or you been screwed one too many times, that’s one way to fix it. Take him out.”

“Oh my God.” I brought a hand to my mouth.

“It was especially smart because Scarfone must have known everyone would blame Provenzano, since that was the big rivalry at the time. But it backfired, because none of the old guard under Big Leo wanted to take orders from pissant Sam and his hot-headed buddies.”

That part wasn’t new to me—Joey had told me about Sam and his friends leaving the Scarfone faction to start the River Gang. He’d known some of them from school and thought they were decent guys just doing what they could to make a buck.

I swallowed hard. “But…it was
family
.”

Enzo shrugged. “Sometimes blood is cheaper than whisky.”

#

Out of the apartment. Down the hall. Into the elevator. Through the lobby. Under the awning. One thought held my mind hostage the entire time.

I know who killed Joey’s father.

And I couldn’t tell him.

Could I?

No. Stay out of this.

As the attendant pulled up in the Packard, Enzo put his hand on my arm. “I need to see someone at the desk a moment. Just wait in the car, OK?”

Another attendant opened the passenger door for me and I got in, my earlier distaste at riding in the wedding gift eclipsed by my anxiety over the information I now had. I knew exactly why Enzo had told me—he wasn’t sure he could trust me and this was the test. Enzo wanted to see if I would run to Joey with the knowledge of who killed his father, which would mean I was loyal to Joey over him. Not that I had any guarantee Enzo had given me the truth—when had he ever done that? Giving me false information was just as effective a test as giving me the real names.

I thought of Joey, agonizing over the decision to give in to Enzo’s demands in exchange for the information he’d wanted for years. If he did, he’d betray Angelo, who might then be tempted to put Sam wise to the scheme. Sam, whose nickname was
the Barber
because of his skill with a razor, who’d ordered the murder of his own uncle in order to gain a bigger share of the black market spoils.

What would he do to Joey if he found out about the opium?

“God, Joey,” I whispered as my eyes filled. “What a fucking mess. Why didn’t you just stay in Chicago to begin with?”

My nose began to run a little, and I sniffed, wiping at it with my hand. I needed a handkerchief, but I’d forgotten to put one in my purse. Maybe Enzo had one in here somewhere. I checked the glove compartments in the doors. Nothing. Twisting in my seat, I glanced into the back and thought I saw a bit of white peeking out from under the seat. Enzo was always tossing his coats in the back, so maybe one had slipped out. I opened the door, waving off the attendant who came immediately to assist me. Pulling the rear door open, I leaned into the back and slipped my hand under the seat. My fingers closed around a piece of cloth, and I pulled it up. It wasn’t a handkerchief.

It was a pair of women’s silk underwear.

I dropped them as if they had scorched me and backed out of the car.

Heart racing, I slammed the rear door and jumped back into the front, tucking my hands between my knees. What the hell was going on? Some girl had been in the back seat of this Packard and left without her knickers? That meant at some point, she’d removed them—or they’d been removed, I thought, scowling—and there was only one reason a girl doffed her underwear in the back seat of an automobile.

Bastard.

Seething, I crossed my arms over my chest. I had no idea what to say to him—part of me wanted to claw his eyes out and tell him he could go fuck himself in his nice apartment because he’d certainly never fuck me there. I recalled the one physical flaw on Enzo’s body, a crescent-shaped scar at the top of one sharp cheekbone near his left eye.

Maybe I’d give him a matching one on the right.

Thank God I didn’t sleep with him tonight.

The moment he got in the car and turned to me, I slapped him again. “You bastard!” I shouted. “Want to tell me what a pair of women’s underwear is doing in the back seat?”

“What?” Enzo grabbed my wrists so I couldn’t smack him again, but he struggled to look into the back seat. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the lacey little knickers on the floor back there.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“You’re not denying anything either.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’ve never gone parking with Gina in this car, like we did the other night?” My blood boiled as I imagined Enzo in here with me one night and her the next.

“No!”

“Then how do you explain it?”

“I don’t know, Tiny! Maybe she had some clothing in here or something. Yes, that must be it. She’s been moving some of her things to a new place.”

“A new place at the Statler?” I snapped. “How convenient it would be to have your wife and mistress in the same hotel!”

“No.” He dropped my arms and rubbed his face with his hands. “Jesus Christ, Tiny. I brought you here tonight because I thought it was what you wanted. You
told
me it was what you wanted. Your own place. Where you can come and go as you please. Where you can do what you want.” He looked at me. “Am I wrong? Isn’t that what you want?”

I struggled to reply. “Yes. But no. I mean—not like this.”

“You don’t want the apartment?” He held up a key. “Because that’s what I was doing in there. Getting you your own key.” When I didn’t take it, he dropped it into my lap. “It’s yours, Tiny. You want to get out of your father’s house? Here’s your opportunity.”

I stared at the gold key, linked to an oval plate that said Hotel Statler, Detroit, Michigan. “I can’t afford it.”

“I’ll pay the rent.”

“I’m not your charity case, Enzo.”

“I’ll get you a job at the club. I just want you to stay here, so I can see you when I want. When you want. It’ll be fun, just like we said.”

I sighed, exhausted and overwrought, physically and emotionally. Did I really want to continue fighting him? What did we owe each other, after all? Fidelity? Or just a good time? I played with the key in my lap. “I don’t know, Enzo. I need to think about it. Can you take me home now, please? I’m tired.”

We went back to the club, where Enzo put me in a different car and instructed one of his men to drive me home. As usual, I had no idea when or where I might see him again, but I was so worn out I didn’t much care. I nodded off several times on the way home and fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.

#

The next morning I woke up around eight, the sounds and smells of breakfast drifting into my room. The scent of coffee made me whimper a little, and I licked my dry lips. Actually my entire mouth was dry, and my tongue felt swollen.
Dammit, who told me to drink so much?
Every one of my teeth felt as if it was covered in wool. I tried to sit up and promptly fell back when the sunlight stabbed my eyes. Was it always this bright in here in the morning?

I flung an arm over my face. I didn’t want to wake up. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to think.

But over the clink of plates and cups downstairs, I heard Enzo’s voice telling me who killed Joey’s father again.
The gunman outside the prison was a hitman named Legs Putnam. And the hit was ordered by Sam Scarfone.

I couldn’t remember all the names of the men brought to trial for the ambush at the police station, but there were several, and Putnam might have been one of them. A few had been held but released for lack of evidence, and the trial had been a joke. I vividly recalled the day the jury reached a verdict—not guilty, of course. No witness had been willing to testify, and every member of that jury was well aware of the danger involved in deciding against a gangster. They reached a verdict in less than an hour.

I swallowed hard. Had the same hitman shot Vince too? What would it do to Bridget, knowing the name of the man who put the bullets in her husband, robbing her children of their father, robbing her of the love of her life? She told me repeatedly she’d never remarry.
It only happens once
, she always claimed,
falling in love that way. I’m grateful I had it at all. Some people never do.

While I liked the idea of that once-in-a-lifetime love, I wanted her to be wrong too, so she could love someone again. But what did I know? I’d certainly never been in love, and I’d never had anyone say he was in love with me. Given the two offers from men I’d had in the last week, it didn’t seem as if love was on the near horizon, either. Joey had invited me to run off to Chicago with him without even so much as a kiss, and Enzo had offered me a luxury apartment,
for free
, with the idea that we could use it for uninterrupted nights of illicit pleasure. But despite telling me how much he wanted me all the time, he wasn’t murmuring any words of real affection. Once, he’d even admitted to wanting to kiss me one minute and strangle me the next.