Justified Means (Book One) (The Agency Files) (39 page)

“Karen. Nice to see you again.”

“Karen’s boss sent a few things over for me, and she met Dad. I was just going to tell her how you met.”

“Oh, this I’ve got to see. I never get tired of the expressions on your next victim’s face.”

“Well,” Erika said, tucking her feet under her, “Dad met mom at a restaurant where mom was a waitress. He told her she was pretty.”

The pause told Karen she was expected to say something. “Sounds normal enough.”

“Well, he came back in every night for a week. On Friday night, he asked her if she wanted to go out for ice cream when she got off work. Since he’d been kind of rude about things all week, Mom was a bit put out with him, so she said, ‘Why’?”

“I still think that’s a ridiculous question,” Mr. Polowski interjected.

“Well, Dad just stared at her as if she was the stupidest woman on the planet and said, ‘Because I want to start a sexual relationship with you.’”

“What!” She couldn’t help it. Karen’s eyes bugged out, and she whipped her head around to see if the elder Polowskis were in on some kind of joke. Although Mrs. Polowski giggled profusely, Mr. Polowski’s face was a study in boredom. “Did she slap you?”

“Yes. How do people always guess that? I know, you say that it’s a natural response, but I think it’s ridiculous.” The man shook his head.

“Well, I’ve never heard anything like it. I thought Erika was joking or something.”

Tom shook his head again. “People are always surprised, but what else would you call it?”

“A date?” The compulsion to answer overrode the feeling that it was a wasted suggestion.

“And what is a date?”

“Dad, you’re not Socrates,” Erika protested. She turned to Karen, shaking her head, and sighed. “Dad, as blunt as it is, does make kind of a good point. That’s all dating really is, right? If you didn’t want it to get to an intimate relationship—”

“Sexual, Erika.”

“Oh, Dad, it’s just so crass when you put it that way. Let me tell it.” She shook her head and started again, “Anyway, Dad’s point is that friendships don’t have that goal. Anyone can be friends at any time, but ‘going out’ is kind of supposed to lead to marriage which is really legalized sexual relationships.”

“And commitment… and love…”

“Endorphins.” The Polowskis spoke in unison.

At the sight of Karen’s wrinkled nose, Erika continued. “Dad can’t comprehend love, so to him, it’s all endorphins. I have to remind him that he’s not the normal one—we are.”

“Sad.”

“Thank you!” Erika pumped her fist.

Anxious to get out of the strange household with odder ideas of relationships than she’d ever heard, Karen stood. “Well, I have to say, that’s the most unique ‘how we met’ story I’ve ever heard. I really need to get going, though. Technically, I’m working today, so I have a lot of things to do.” She grabbed a few of the bags. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to show you what is in here so you know what we got and where. Is there—”

“Come on into my room.” Once the door was shut behind them, Erika smiled. “Don’t worry. One of the good things about not having proper emotions is that you don’t get offended. Dad doesn’t understand a lot of the time, but he doesn’t get worked up about things. I remember I always wanted to tell
him
about things when I knew they weren’t going to like what I had to confess.”

“No yelling, eh?”

“You got it.”

Karen pulled several receipts from her purse. “I didn’t get gift receipts so you could return them yourself if you wanted. They were paid for with cash, so you’re good. I could have told you that out there, but this…” Karen dug a small blue plastic bag from inside a Macy’s bag. “Keith sent this. I didn’t think your father would understand.”

She watched as Erika pulled out the small leather covered Bible and frowned at it. “He—”

Erika shook her head. “He’s not going to do it, is he?”

“What?”

“Well, he promised me a good dinner. I know it probably made him uncomfortable, but I thought he’d keep his word. He seemed like the kind of guy who would.”

“Why would it make him uncomfortable?” Karen’s left eyebrow rose.

“Because he’s attracted to me and doesn’t know what to do about that.” A snort escaped. “After all, I’m not cute, blonde, and religious.”

“Look what the last one by that description did to him. He’s broadening his tastes perhaps.”

“But he sent this and didn’t come himself. He’s chickening out. I thought he was better than that. The Keith I thought I knew would at least call.”

“The Keith I know,” Karen agreed, “will… and he’ll ask you out for that dinner like he promised.” As she opened the door, Karen gave a meaningful look at the Bible. “Read it—or at least thumb through it. I’m guessing there’s a note or something in there—well, if I know Keith there is.”

Erika stared at the door as it closed behind Karen. She’d probably never see Karen again. Then again, she’d thought the same thing the previous day when she’d ridden home from the FBI building with her parents. Flipping through the thin pages of the book, she found one small sheet of paper. Karen was right. There was a note, but it didn’t say anything about their dinner. Despite her pretense of not caring, she did. She’d finally met someone who was who he pretended to be and then he’d failed her.

The note confused her. Just a few short words, she didn’t know what to make of them

Erika,

“Here I give you milk to drink, not solid food; for you are not ready for solid food yet.”

I dare you to read it.

Keith

In a city the size of Rockland, apartments become available on an extremely frequent basis. However, affordable apartments that are still available by the time a potential tenant has finished examining the place are much rarer than most renters suppose. After two weeks of getting nowhere, Erika began looking in Hillsdale, Marshfield, and Westbury. If the subway was in reasonable walking distance, she made an appointment to see it.

By the end of the third week, she wanted to cry. As she walked away from yet another shack masquerading as a reasonable excuse for an apartment, her cell phone rang. “Hey, Yvonne. Do you want to go drown my sorrows with me? Another dud.”

“That’s why I called. Didn’t you say you were in Westbury today?”

“Yeah. I checked out three. One was decent, I guess, but the landlord was creepy. Kept ogling me. Yve, I’ve got to find a place or I’ll go nuts. I’ve taken to reading in my room to avoid yelling at my dad when he says something else that is totally inappropriate. I mean, it’s Dad! What do I expect?”

“Well then, I expect you to take me out for coffee or dessert or even a nice steak would do.”

“Why? What’d you find?” As she listened, Erika dug out the mini notepad she’d been making notes in all day and began writing. “Oh, that’s just…” It took a few seconds to find her street on her cellphone’s map, but her memory was correct. “Three streets over and a block or two down.”

“They’re asking six-fifty and that includes everything including cable—fully furnished.”

“Well, that’s kind of high, but not ridiculously so.”

Yvonne’s impatient voice snapped back at her, “Negotiate. I bet if you point out your years as a house sitter, you could easily knock off a hundred dollars a month.”

“Yeah. Glad I got that reference for my file last summer when she talked about staying longer. Of course, if the guy tries to verify it, he’d have to call the FBI for how to contact her.”

“Tell him upfront and remind him that her criminal activity doesn’t mean that she didn’t write an honest reference. Who you are doesn’t change because she turned out to be a creep.”

“Why don’t I just have you negotiate for me? You sound better than I ever could.”

“Hogwash,” Yvonne protested. “You’re the one with the mad people skills. Treat him like a customer that you want to buy a scone to go with his coffee and sell the deal.”

“Ok. Fine. I’ll call you if I get it.”

Erika slid her phone shut and stuffed it in her purse. Yvonne was right. She was acting like a twit. “I know how to negotiate, and I know how to sell. I’ll get this apartment if it’s the last thing I do and I’ll get it for five-fifty. Period.”

The last two blocks were short enough to prevent the doubts from resurfacing. As she rang the doorbell, she glanced around the yard. “Must be a basement apartment. I hate those. They’re so dark. Might as well look, though,” she muttered as she waited for the owner to open the door.

A man, hardly taller than herself and twice as round as anyone his height should be opened the door. Erika stifled the temptation to laugh. Every storybook description of a jolly grandpa danced through her mind as she took in the white bushy eyebrows, the two powder puff pieces of white hair on each side of his head, and the little clear round “Santa” glasses on his nose. He was too adorable for words.

“Hi, my name is Erika Polowski. My friend Yvonne—”

“Oh, she called and said you’d be coming. Come on in.”

“You know Yvonne?” That was news. Her friend hadn’t mentioned knowing the man—just that he had an apartment.

“Oh, sure. She dated my grandnephew for a while. Lovely girl, but not ready to settle down, is she?”

“Yvonne? No.”

“Well, Gabe just moved out last week, and when she called to see if any of my friends had places, I thought it was perfect. Come on in and check it out. Gabe had it all designed for me and oversaw the work. He was very particular.”

“Gabe Moretti?”

“Yes! You knew him?” The man led her around the side of the house and down a small flight of stairs. “See, it has a drain pipe that runs to the street. Gabe insisted on it so that the rain wouldn’t come into the apartment.”

“Mr.—”

“Moretti. Like Gabe.”

“Great. I didn’t realize it had a private entrance. I like that.”

“Oh, it has everything. See those windows?” Mr. Moretti gestured to large windows along the west side of the house. “Gabe had them doubled in size. Said a dark house would be miserable.”

“Seems like—” Erika stopped mid-sentence. The apartment was amazing. The furniture, the appliances, even the window coverings were better than she’d hoped to find. Yvonne had to be wrong about the price. “Yvonne said the rent—”

“Six-fifty, all inclusive. That might even include meals sometimes. I tend to cook too much still. Might as well share it with a tenant than eat it every day for a week.” At the uncertain look on her face, he added quickly, “Not that I’d expect to eat here or for you to come eat with me, but there’s no reason you couldn’t stop in and grab a plate when you got home sometimes. It’d save you cooking—”

“Are you for real? Is this a joke? Is Yvonne hiding somewhere or something?”

Almost panicked sounding, the man backtracked. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just feel sorry for people who have to work hard all day and then come home and cook. If that’s not something you’d like to do, I can work harder to learn to cook for one.”

“Well, for that price—”

“I could drop it to six hundred, but I really—”

“No.”

Erika could see that the man was crushed. As she tried to formulate an acceptance of his original price if it included food now and then, the man sighed. “I do that. I’m sorry. I just love young people and I get a little carried away when I’ve got a chance to have someone around the place. I promise I won’t be a bother. I hardly came down here when Gabe was here, and he only came up for dinner a few nights a week. I’m really not as pushy as I sound.”

“No, no. That’s not what I meant by no. I’ll take it. At six-fifty and dinner when you cook too much. Just call me on the way home and if I’m not busy, I’ll eat with you and do the dishes too. I’m just a bit overwhelmed. If you saw the dumps I’ve been walking through every day. If I like it, it’s too expensive. If I can afford, it, the place should be condemned. I saw one place that literally pulsated with the beat of the music from the cars that circled the neighborhood all day. Freaky.”

“You’ll take it? Let me get the contract.”

Mr. Moretti hurried toward the door, but Erika had one more question. “Oh, when can I move in?”

“Do you have a suitcase with you?”

Her laughter filled the little living room. “Oh, I’m going to like you. I’ll move in on Saturday. You’ve just made my month.”

“And you’ve just given me hope that I can repay the loan I took out from myself to remodel this place.”

“Well, I’ll do my best. How long did Gabe live here?”

“Three years.”

“Well, he probably made a healthy dent in it himself!” Erika glanced around the room, her eyes lingering on the leather couches and the large flat-screened TV.

“Oh, no. I couldn’t charge my nephew for living in my own house! I’ll be right back.”

Erika frowned at those words. She’d never liked Gabe, and now she liked him even less. Good riddance to a jerk.