Speak of the Devil (32 page)

It was great to be living in a house again, to have a full fridge rather than a mini, to have her whole wardrobe, to have her cat back. She was always looking for signs of danger, though, jumping at imagined MS members lurking in the bushes. There had been no problems in the month since their return. Still, a police car was assigned to drive past the house a couple of times each night. Anna flinched whenever the old house creaked. She and Jack were fastidious about turning the alarm on at night.

Luisa was back working full-time. If she felt the burden of Jack’s former suspicions, she did not mention it.

“Let’s set out milk and cookies for Santa,” Olivia said.

“Good idea,” Anna said.

They arranged four Nutter Butters on a plate, then set the plate and glass of milk on the hearth by the fire. Olivia smiled at Anna and took one of the cookies for herself.

“Shh,” Olivia said, “don’t tell Santa.”

“I think he already made his list and is somewhere over Europe. There’s no changing who’s naughty and nice now.”

“It’s like I have immunity.”

“Sort of,” Anna laughed. “You’re going to be ready to take the bar when you’re nine.”

“I’m not going to be a lawyer. I’m going to be a police officer.”

Jack came downstairs, looking cozy and handsome in a green sweater that matched his eyes. He kissed Anna, ruffled Olivia’s hair, and took one of the Nutter Butters.

“Hey!” Olivia protested. “That’s for Santa!”

He smiled and put it back.

The doorbell rang, and Anna’s chest tightened. A week ago, Jack had asked her if it would be okay to invite Nina. Anna had hesitated. “She doesn’t have anywhere else to go,” Jack had said. Anna felt sorry for her, and agreed.

Jack opened the door and Nina smiled up at him. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold; her shiny dark hair danced around her face. In a red scarf and fur-lined boots, she was a picture of holiday cheer. She held huge bags overflowing with presents and food.

“Merry Christmas!” Jack said. He kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Come in.”

Nina waved at the deputy Marshal who’d walked her up the steps, and he disappeared back into his car. Kinda selfish, Anna thought, making a deputy Marshal work on Christmas Eve. Then she chastised herself for being selfish.

There was a flurry as Jack took Nina’s coat and bags and Olivia hugged her and started peppering her with questions. Anna and Nina greeted each other quietly, without hugging. Now that her coat was off, Anna saw that the woman was wearing jeggings and a red sweater that hugged her curves. She had big breasts and a tiny waist, and she looked devastatingly sexy. Anna wished she’d worn her push-up bra.

Soon, Nina set up shop in the kitchen. When she’d heard that they planned to order their Christmas dinner from HoneyBaked, she insisted on making a home-cooked meal instead. Nina pulled out a bunch of groceries, including, to Anna’s dismay, a raw turkey. A turkey would take hours to cook. How long was the woman planning on staying?

“Do you want to help me make stuffing?” Nina asked Olivia.

“Yeah!” Olivia loved any excuse to use kitchen gadgets.

Nina cooked up a storm. She moved about the kitchen with grace and confidence. She knew where everything was—of course she did, she’d put it all there. After the turkey was stuffed and in the oven, she had Olivia help her make appetizers. Soon, there was shrimp wrapped in bacon, Brie and cranberries wrapped in phyllo dough, rare roast beef sliced onto brioche rolls. Anna tried to busy herself, but could only rearrange the raw vegetables around the hummus so many times. Jack and Olivia ate like they hadn’t had a gourmet meal in ages—which was probably true. The Costco quiches sat untouched and dejected on their plate.

“Oh, the flowers,” Nina said, pulling out a bouquet from one of her bags. She opened a cabinet and peered around without finding what she was looking for. “Where’s the red vase? I loved that vase.”

If you loved it so much
, Anna thought,
you shouldn’t have left it.

Nina turned to her. “Do you know where the red vase is?”

“No,” Anna said. “Sorry.”

Nina looked forlorn. Anna retrieved a blue vase and handed it to her.

“Anna and Daddy got that vase for their wedding,” Olivia said. “We all registered together.” The little girl watched her mother for a reaction.

“How nice,” Nina said coolly as she put the stems in the vase. “How is the wedding planning going?”

“Great,” said Anna and Jack, at the same time.

They smiled at each other. Nina paused in her flower arranging and looked at them wistfully.

In truth, Anna wouldn’t characterize the wedding preparations as “great.” The wedding was in early July, just over six months away. Jack insisted it was going to happen. They had a plan, he said, and they were sticking to it. But he no longer took the affirmative steps he had in the past. Now Anna was the one setting up appointments. When she’d taken him to a flower shop, he seemed distracted and indifferent. To the florist, he probably seemed like any other groom, just a guy who had no interest in flowers. But to Anna, who had seen him tackle every detail so enthusiastically before, the change was notable.

Nina finally declared dinner ready and they sat down for the elaborate meal. There was turkey and stuffing, green beans almondine, cranberry sauce, and a marshmallow-topped sweet-potato casserole, which Jack eagerly dug into. When he took a bite of it, he practically purred.

“Oh, man, this is my favorite,” he said.

“I remember.” Nina smiled.

Anna thought longingly of that HoneyBaked ham, which wasn’t seasoned with the best memories from a failed marriage.

After dinner, Olivia unwrapped the presents from Nina. She squealed with delight and hugged her mother after each one. The two had grown close since they reunited in November.

Olivia went off to try on a new pair of leggings. The three adults sat together in the living room. The silence stretched out, punctuated by the crackling of the fire in the fireplace. Without Olivia as a buffer, the awkwardness of the situation was inescapable. Raffles settled himself on the couch near Nina, and Nina sneezed.

“I’m allergic to cats,” she said.

Jack shooed the cat off the couch and handed Nina his handkerchief. Anna clucked for the cat to come over, but Raffles, apparently sensing that this was not a good place to relax, fled from the room.

“So, how are you enjoying the holidays?” Anna asked Nina.

“Very well, thanks.” Nina said. “How’s the case going?”

“Well.”

At this point, the case was slow and deliberate, more likely to cause paper cuts than bullet wounds. The trial was scheduled for June, six months from now.

“It looks like several of the East Coast cliques fell apart after the bust,” Anna told Nina. “The cliques that remain are smaller and weakened. The stragglers are ‘clique-ing together,’ joining forces, but with Diablo and so many leaders out of the picture, they’re hobbled.”

“That’s wonderful!” Nina said. “It makes me more convinced that I’ll be able to come out of Witsec after the trial.”

“Cheers to that,” Jack said.

He raised his mug, and they all toasted with hot cocoa. It tasted bitter in Anna’s mouth.

After what felt like a very long night, Nina finally left. Olivia played with some of her new toys while Anna and Jack cleaned up the dishes. It was almost midnight when the kitchen was back in order. Anna wiped her hands on a dish towel and went into the living room.

“Okay, kiddo,” she said to Olivia. “Time for bed.”

“I’m still playing.”

“If you don’t go to sleep, Santa can’t come.”

“He’ll come.”

“Come on, sweetie.”

“You’re not my mommy!” Olivia shouted. “My mommy gave me these toys and she would let me play with them! You can’t tell me what to do.”

Anna stood frozen in place.

Jack strode in. “Don’t you talk to Anna that way. Let’s go, Olivia. Right now.” He looked at Anna sympathetically. “Sorry, love.”

She managed a weak smile. While he put Olivia to bed, Anna went down to the basement. It was poorly lit and ten degrees cooler. Anna’s eyes skimmed over the shadows, looking for an MS member hiding behind the hot-water heater. But the only sound was the hum of the boiler, the only movement a spider wrapping a cricket in its web. She was alone.

She went to the table that held all the old stuff Anna had designated as the “giveaway” pile. The red vase sat near the front. She picked it up and looked at it for a long time. Then she dropped it in the garbage can.

Back upstairs, she and Jack took turns at the bathroom sink. As she dried her face on a towel, he put his hand on the small of her back and rubbed it.

“Don’t worry about Olivia,” he said. “She’s just testing the new boundaries. You know she loves you very much.”

“I know.”

“And so do I.”

She sighed and tilted her head up to his. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t miss the sweet-potato casserole?”

“Actually, I do. You’re a terrible cook.”

She laughed and swatted him. They went to the bedroom, where he sat on the edge of the bed to take off his socks. She sat next to him.

“Do you still love her, Jack?”

He paused, socks in hand. He crumpled them together and threw them into the hamper, then turned to her.

“Part of me will always love her,” Jack said slowly. “There were a lot of deep emotions in that relationship—positive
and
negative. A lot of loose ends that never got tied up. I still feel guilty for how bad I mucked things up, what I put her through.” He cupped her cheek with his hand. “But I love you very much, Anna. And you’re an innocent party here. You just fell for someone you mistook to be a nice guy. You believed in me. And you don’t deserve to have to cancel your dream wedding because of that.”

She looked at his face, trying to understand what he was really saying. There was a temptation to hear only what she wanted to hear. But this wasn’t the full-throated endorsement she’d been hoping for. Perhaps Jack was looking for a graceful way out. At the very least, he was grappling with some seriously conflicting emotions. Anna might regret, in the years to come, marrying a man who hadn’t resolved all his issues with his ex-wife before he said “I do.” A sensible woman might step down, cancel the wedding, and give him the space he needed to figure things out.

Instead, she leaned over and trailed her lips along his neck. She slid her hand up his leg, massaging his thigh. Their clothes came off quickly, and she pushed him back onto the bed. He groaned as she slid his length into her mouth. She wasn’t the mother of his child; she couldn’t cook worth a damn. But she loved him with all her heart. She lavished him with her tongue and lips; her fingers played along the crevices that drove him crazy. With his every moan, her advantage grew.

49

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is a case about terror. It’s a case about death. It’s a case about a gang whose very motto was ‘Kill, Rape, Control.’ ”

Anna stood before the jurors, without a podium or notes, talking to them in the same tone she would use to explain a legal concept to her sister. She tried to make the complicated facts easy to digest, building a foundation for “beyond a reasonable doubt” brick by brick. The jurors listened attentively, eyes widening as she described the crimes.

AUSA George Litz and Agent Samantha Randazzo sat at the counsel table next to the jury box. A paralegal sat beside them, ready to call up the government’s exhibits on the flat screens in the courtroom and in front of each juror’s chair. Transcribed conversations, surveillance video, and hundreds of photographs would be displayed on the screens. Behind their table was a trial cart with six boxes of physical evidence—the machete and trench coats from the brothel raid, the bloodstained blue tarpaulin and machetes from the Train Room, and similar exhibits that would make the government’s terrifying narrative real.

A wooden rail, waist high, separated the well of the courtroom from the audience. McGee sat in the first row; Nina sat in the back. As the case agents, they were permitted to remain in the courtroom throughout the trial, even though they were witnesses. Usually, case agents sat in the front row, but Nina’s eyes held fear as she looked at the defendants. She wanted her back to the wall. The rest of the audience was packed with press, members of the public, and attorneys and staff from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“And it’s a case about two men,” Anna continued, “men who are responsible for crimes ranging from rape to prostitution, from extortion to the murder of government witnesses.” Anna turned and pointed across the courtroom at the two defendants seated at the defense table. “Jose Garcia, also known as ‘Psycho,’ and Dante del Rio, also known as ‘Diablo.’ ”

The defense attorneys had done their best to clean up their clients. Psycho was dressed in a suit and tie, and wore thick-rimmed glasses with no prescription. His lawyer had obviously coached him to keep somber in front of the jury—there was no sign of his crazed smile. He even wore concealer over the tattoos on his face and neck. Anna considered objecting to the cover-up, but decided against it. She had pictures of the tattoos, and was looking forward to showing the jury that Psycho was trying to fool them by wearing makeup to court.

There was little that could be done to make Diablo appear less frightening. He had a haircut, and now wore Justin Bieber–like bangs covering his horns. He wore a button-down shirt and dark slacks. But no amount of concealer was going to hide the tattoos covering his entire face, or reconstruct the Voldemortish nostrils. He sat in a wheelchair, because the gunshot wounds had not healed entirely in the prison infirmary. His defense attorneys took advantage of the disability to position the chair so Diablo’s back was to the jury. Although it was normally considered an advantage that the government got the table next to the jury box, Diablo’s counsel was glad to have their client as far from the jury’s view as possible.

At the mention of his name, however, Diablo twisted in his chair and stared at Anna. His eyes were black pits, cruel and furious. He grinned, baring his sharpened fangs. His snarl drew gasps from the jurors. Anna paused in her speech and stared at him, hoping all the jurors would notice the display. She could see Diablo’s attorneys grinding their own teeth in frustration. She almost felt sorry for them—she imagined he was not an easy client. She met Diablo’s gaze and stared back at him coolly.
You do not frighten me. I’m in charge here.