Loose and Easy (13 page)

It took a moment, but when he answered, it was in the affirmative.

“Yes.”

“Can I see it?”

She glanced up, and after a moment, he silently obliged, unbuttoning his cuff and pushing up his sleeve to reveal the word “LOCOS.” The letters were styled in Old English, all capitals, ornately strung along a knife blade with
“XX2ST”
and
“C/S”
written on the hilt, all of it inked into his skin, the tattoo going from his wrist to his elbow.

Oh, yes. She remembered this.

She slowly ran her fingers up the inside of his left arm. “You were fourteen when you had this done,” she said. “We were both in Mr. Hawthorn’s American Literature class that year. I remember asking you if it hurt, and you told me no.”

“I lied.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.” A grin tipped the corner of her mouth. His tattoo was elegant, professionally done, far better than what some of the other boys had put on their bodies. “I thought you were so tough.”

“Still am.”

Her smile broadened.
“C
slash
S,”
she said, reading the hilt. “
Con safos,
you told me, protected by God, and the
XX2ST
is for Twenty-second Street.”

“You remembered.” He sounded somewhat surprised.

She remembered everything about him, not that he would know it, and if at all possible, she was going to keep the news flash to herself.

“I think everybody who grew up around here remembers that the Locos started on Twenty-second Street.” His skin was soft, his arm so hard to the touch, the veins running down the length of it a confluence of strength underlying the elaborate design and stylized script of his tattoo.

He’d been marked hard by his heritage.

“Yeah, way back in the day.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Back in the day.”

Silence fell between them again, a silence underscored by the low growling rumble of the car—and anticipation. She felt it descending like a curtain, hot and silky, around them. He’d kissed her, and she wanted him to kiss her again—Esme the Desperate.

Oh, babe.
Johnny looked down at the top of her head where she was bent over his arm, her fingers still warm on his skin. She had no idea how beautiful she was; she never had. Being smart, that had always been her personal claim to fame, and she’d completely missed what everybody else understood—that she was gorgeous.

She didn’t know it, but Kevin Harrell hadn’t been the first guy he’d fought for her. A number of young punks had set their sights on her over the years,
la rubia,
the blonde, starting way back in seventh grade. He didn’t know about the jerks in grade school, but he’d never doubted for a second that there had been a few. Lucky for them, he’d been at St. Catherine’s while Esme had been at Bennington. The playground had been safer for it.

Despite his chosen profession, violence wasn’t ever his first choice for conflict resolution, unless it was armed conflict—then violence came swift and hard. Winning was the only parameter in armed conflict, in combat. But the whole guy thing with girls was so physical it naturally lent itself to physical confrontation. Guys
always
wanted to get in a girl’s pants, and other guys knew this, and that’s why they got so pissed off. So when a thirteen-year-old
cholo
at Campbell Junior High had started talking like he’d had her in the band room, Johnny had called him out. It hadn’t taken more than a little half-assed scuffling to solve the problem, but a pattern had been set.

There was more than one reason she hadn’t had a date in high school. Most of it had been her reluctance, and her shyness, and her holier-better-smarter-than-you attitude, and the rest of it had been him. He’d traveled the world with the U.S. Army, but from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, in Ms. Trent’s class, his reaction had been pure barrio boy, and he’d never outgrown it, not where she was concerned.

Esme Alexandria Alden, the Unattainable One—when he’d left her in the car in the alley at Duce’s, he’d made it clear to the
Arañas
not to touch her. Next time he would be adding “Don’t breathe on her.” Those
cholos
had been breathing all over her by the time he’d gotten back to the Cyclone.

Yeah, he knew exactly why he’d followed her into the Oxford. He knew exactly what he wanted.

And now here she was, so damn close he could smell her, and not just the honeysuckle and summer garden scent of her perfume. He could smell
her
—the underlying female scent of warm skin and soft breath, of the back of her neck and the lace of her lingerie, a push-up bra and panties curved around just about everything he wanted to get his mouth on.

And she wanted to be kissed.

With Solange rumbling beneath them, and desire building between them, with the night in front of them, and long years of fascination behind them, she wanted to be kissed.

Geezus.
He didn’t know if he had it in him—to kiss her. To just kiss her. He’d done it in the alley, but he’d barely touched her, and this time she was already practically in his lap, the heat of where she was touching his arm quickly and inexorably spreading, covering the whole front of his body, a good portion of it settling in his groin, which wasn’t going to do either of them any good parked at the side of the street with traffic going by.

And yet…and yet if he tilted his head slightly to one side he could see down the front of her jacket, and there wasn’t a barrio boy alive who could resist such a beautiful pair of
tetas.

She was so lovely, the lace demicups of her bra working overtime, the nape of her neck exposed, golden tendrils of hair sliding loose from her up-twist and lying like a path to be followed across her skin.

He lifted his free hand and cupped the tender line of her jaw, but this time when he lowered his mouth he pulled her close, really close, meeting her more than halfway across the console and sliding his other arm around her waist, under her jacket, and yeah, he had to skirt her shoulder holster, and yeah, he was being damn careful, but he was also kissing her flat-out, tongue to tonsils, baby, his mouth angled over hers, teasing her, and tasting her, and sucking on her just enough to let her know this was not finished between them, not tonight.

Geezus,
she had a beautiful mouth. He loved the way her teeth fit together. He loved the softness of her tongue. He loved the way she was kissing him back.

Yeah, she’d grown up in the years since they’d gotten hot and heavy in the mighty Roxanne. She knew where they were going this time, and from the way she was clinging to him, she knew he was the guy to take her there.

First, though,
dammit,
he had to get her up to Genesee, and get the cash to neutralize Bleak. But in between Genesee and Bleak, he was taking her to his place in Commerce City.

Yeah, with a soft, hot blonde by his side, with Easy Alex next to him, he could face it. He could face going home.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

“That goddamn Cyclone sleeper, you mean?” Bleak said into the phone. “Yeah, yeah, Dovey, I’ve seen it running through Commerce City. Hell, it’s been in this town longer than I have. I’ve seen it parked at that damn garage over on Vine and Hoover. What the hell is Esme Alden doing in a big old Merc like that? Who’s this guy with the car?”

“His name is Johnny Ramos, Mr. Bleak,” Dovey said. “He’s one of the Locos. His brother, Dom, used to run the gang.”

Not what Franklin wanted to hear.

He swiveled around in his chair, taking his feet off the desk and planting them firmly on the carpet.

“Is she fucking him, Dovey? Is that what you’re telling me?” That some-fucking-how, this little bit of information about Burt-fucking-Alden’s daughter being the girlfriend of one of Baby Duce’s boys had not been unearthed some-fucking-where along the line?

This was not good. Crossing Baby Duce was out of the question. That was how guys got whacked.

“I don’t know, Mr. Bleak. I didn’t get a clear look at him until they got to his car, and then I recognized him, and yes, sir, maybe they’re dating or something. They used to have a thing going in high school, and he sure grabbed hold of her and started hauling her around like she belonged to him.”

Not what Franklin wanted to hear.

He sliced his gaze to the photograph of Katherine Gray on his desk. She was a first-class looker. There wasn’t a man on earth who wouldn’t recognize her for what she was—a grade-A, first-class looker. But maybe a piece of late-night cable TV ass was going to be pricier than Bleak was willing to pay.

Not that it mattered now.
Goddammit.
He was already into this deal up to his neck, whether he got to have lunch with Katherine Gray or not. The Chicago boys were going to be pulling up in front of his damn warehouse at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, and Franklin needed to be waiting for them with cash in hand.

Which he had, except for Burt Alden’s eighty-two thousand dollars.

Goddammit.

“Mitch and Leroy are on this car now?”

“Yes, sir. They caught a look at it on Market, then lost it, so I told ’em to head over to Delgany, to Duce’s, and just see if that’s where Ramos had gone. He’d sure been heading in that direction, and it’s Friday night, still early, time for the homeboys to check in.”

Franklin pushed out of his chair and walked over to the windows overlooking his betting room.

“The car was there, in the alley, but I told them not to take her at Duce’s,” Dovey said.

No shit, Franklin thought. The last damn thing he needed was a confrontation with Baby Duce and his damn Locos, especially on their own territory. But he needed that damn girl.

“And now it’s parked a couple of blocks from there,” Dovey continued. “They’ve still got eyes on it, but I told them to hold off, until I talked to you.”

Dovey with a brain, it was a miracle.

“Good, Smollett. That’s good thinking.” Mitch and Leroy were driving one of the Bleak Enterprises vans, and that’s how guys got whacked. A couple of wiseguys tumble out of a van with your goddamn name written all over it and rough up one of Duce’s boys and steal his girl.

Deader’n a doornail by dawn. Oh, yeah, Franklin could see that happening. He wouldn’t have to worry about the damn eighty-two thousand dollars then.

But Franklin Camilo Bleak didn’t go down that easy.

“You follow them, Smollett. You still got Bremerton with you, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’s a big guy.” From out of town. “Use him. You follow that damn sleeper until you can get it pulled over someplace outside Duce’s territory, then send in the Chicago boy to get the girl. He’s packing a damn .45. Tell him to use it.” The last thing Denver would ever miss was another damn gangster. The city was crawling with them, all of them swinging pistols around and killing people.

Yeah, that was a great idea—to let the Chicago guy kill Duce’s boy and just keep the name Bleak out of the whole damn mess.

Esme Alden dating a member of the Locos, somebody should have known that. Somebody should have figured that into the night’s plan.

Well, it was figured now.

“You do this right, Smollett, and it’ll look real good to me. Real good.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Bleak.”

“You bring me that girl, Dovey, and there’ll be something in it for you.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Bleak.”

“Just bring me the girl, Dovey.” He ended the call, and speed-dialed Mitch.

The guy picked up on the first ring.

“Yes, boss?”

“Dovey’s on his way to pick up the tail on the Cyclone. When he gets there, you get the hell out of there. I don’t want Baby Duce seeing my van crisscrossing his goddamn neighborhood all night.”

“Yes, boss. I’ll head back and get another car.”

“Damn straight, you will, and then get right back on this Cyclone’s ass. I want the damn girl, Mitch, but I want Bremerton’s face on the deed. Back him up, if he needs it. All I want is the girl, but I want her to just ‘poof’ off the planet, plain disappear. I don’t want no hearing about Duce looking for the guys who stole one of his boys’ little
putas.
I don’t want him looking for Franklin Bleak.”

“No, boss.”

“Don’t fuck this up, Mitch.”

“No, boss.”

Franklin ended the call, but didn’t go back to his desk.

The woman down there in the betting room, Beth Alden, the one his guys had bound and gagged, and cuffed and taped to the chair, she wasn’t crying. She should have been a blubbering mess by now, but there hadn’t been so much as a sob out of her.

She was bleeding. Eliot had been a little rough, but that was what Eliot did—get rough with women. It was his specialty.

Franklin let his gaze drop to the woman’s shoes. That damn shoelace thing still made him grin. He didn’t know how in the hell she’d lost a shoelace. She must have struggled like hell to do it, and to get the bruises starting to show on her face. Eliot must have loved that. He liked struggling women.

Personally, Franklin didn’t go in for the rough stuff. He liked a woman to spoil him. Tying them up and knocking them around didn’t make any sense to him. Plus, it was just too damn much work—except when it was business. Taking some bitch apart to get her old man to pony up his money—now that made perfect sense to him, and he couldn’t say he hadn’t enjoyed it a few times, even more than a few times.

The daughter, Esme, was a smaller, younger, cuter version of the woman in the chair, and Franklin had the idea that between him and Eliot and the two women, things could get damned interesting before dawn. Not interesting enough to make up for the eighty-two thousand if Burt didn’t come through, but interesting nonetheless.

Yes, he could see it, him and Eliot tag-teaming a mother-daughter combo. More importantly, he’d make damn sure Burt Alden saw it, that the damn stupid bastard saw what he’d done to his women.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

Solange stretching out at twenty-five over, riding a hundred, city lights streaming through the darkness, growing fainter in the rearview, making the run up into the mountains, the run up to Genesee—Johnny had done it more than a few times on a hot summer night like tonight, escaped the city for the cooler air of the high country.

And yeah, sometimes he’d had a girl with him. There were a few places up here in the hills where a guy could get pretty busy with his sweetheart. There was even a map of some of the better places tacked to the garage wall on the third floor at Steele Street, put there by the SDF guys back in the day when they’d all considered themselves backseat urban legends. Some of the places had hash marks by them and stories attached to the hash marks, some of which had been alluded to a few times over the years, mostly when the guys had gotten back from some particularly hairy mission and ended up hanging around, working on cars and downing a few beers—some pretty good stories, actually, mixed in with a lot of remembered teenage bull and bravado.

Johnny had put a hash mark up on the map one time, and Skeeter had walloped the holy hell out of him. He’d kept his sexual exploits to himself after that. For being such a badass operator, she was still such a girl. Red Dog had more edge on her, and even though she was smaller than Skeeter, there wasn’t a guy on the team who’d take a bet on himself going up against her, not even Superman, and Christian Hawkins was the guy who’d trained her.

Johnny couldn’t help but wonder who had trained Esme. He didn’t know if she had any hand-to-hand combat skills, but she’d certainly handled her .45 like she knew what she was doing.

He downshifted into third, pulling one of the big hills out of Denver, heading into the darkness of the mountains. With one hand on the steering wheel and the other staying on the gearshift, a grin curved his mouth. She’d kissed him. Esme Alexandria Alden had kissed him like she’d wanted to eat him alive, twice—all grown-up and wearing red lace panties.

Not such a bad night after all, he decided.

The Bleak business didn’t have him too worried. When he’d gone back in the house on Delgany to talk with Duce, the Locos’ boss hadn’t hesitated to sign on to the Bleak payoff. Good for business, Duce had said, letting Bleak know he wasn’t pulling anything off on the Locos moving his load of cakes out of Chicago. Duce might even do the guy a favor and cop a couple of points off the top of the keys, take his tribute, put his mark on the deal, and keep the Parkside Bloods from turning Mr. Bleak inside out, literally, for thinking there was room on the north side for another dealer to be bringing in coke. Those rights were won the hard way, and Bleak hadn’t even skirmished for them, let alone gone to battle—which was more information than Johnny had wanted to hear. He knew how it all worked, the drug and turf wars. Dom had died in his and Duce’s arms during battle with the Parkside Bloods—and man, he hadn’t ever been within spitting distance of any goddamn drug ever again, not any illegal substance, and he didn’t want within spitting distance of Bleak’s cakes.

Cash-delivery boy was probably more than he should have signed on for, more than he wanted General Grant to know about, but there wasn’t any way for him to stand by and let Esme do the delivery. He was seriously thinking about stringing her dad up from the nearest light pole and leaving him there for a week or two. What was the bastard thinking? Letting his daughter do his dirty work for him.

When they’d been growing up, Johnny had known Esme’s home life had gotten a little sketchy at times. By the time they’d reached high school, he’d also figured out why she was so damn careful with all her little personal parts, like her hair, and her buttons, and her shoes. He could have told her that keeping her buttons buttoned and her shoes clean wasn’t going to change a damn thing about running out of groceries, and neither was having all her homework done with extra credit, not in the short run, but he figured, in her heart, she’d probably already known that. He and Dom had always just hustled a little here and there and slid by the rest of the time, but Johnny knew that sliding by and hustling didn’t work out the same for girls.

She’d turned out great, though. She’d gone to college, and whatever he thought about her private investigation business, it obviously afforded her some very nice underwear. There were worse jobs.

He couldn’t think of any off the top of his head right now, not for the smartest girl in school, considering where she’d ended up tonight and who was after her, but he knew there were worse jobs.

“We’re about a half an hour out of Genesee, tops,” he said. “You want to tell me what’s in the bag, what we’re delivering, and maybe everything you know about this Nachman guy we’re delivering it to?”

Even a private investigator had to realize that information, intelligence, was the key to success. It wasn’t to her advantage to leave him in the dark, not about everything, or anything, for that matter.

“Isaac Nachman,” she said, obviously understanding. “Seventy-nine years old, born in Germany, lost his father, a brother, and two sisters to the Holocaust. His mother was American, from here in Colorado. She and Isaac came home to visit his grandfather back in 1939, shortly after the German invasion of Poland, and they never made it back to Europe. Isaac took over his grandfather’s tire business after the war, put his name on the masthead, and made millions.”

“Nachman Tires?” he asked, taking Solange back up into fourth gear.

“That’s the one.”

Johnny let out a low whistle. Multi, multi, multi-millions, Nachman had to be the richest guy in the state. Everyone used Nachman tires—the auto manufacturers, the government, the military, the Indy cars. Nachman rubber hit the road every day of the week from L.A. to New York, and from Baghdad to the Midnight Doubles.

He slanted Esme a quick glance. No wonder she was dressed to kill in couture with diamond earrings.

He didn’t have to look at himself. He knew exactly what he was wearing, what he was always wearing. If it wasn’t a uniform, it was jeans, a shirt, a T-shirt, and a pair of boots.

It worked, that’s about all he could say about his wardrobe.

“There’s going to be a helluva security system on his house.” That was the second thing to pop into his mind.

“Fortunately, we’re not here on a B and E, to break and enter,” she said, her tone a little dry, which was a good sign. She was regaining her composure. “We’re invited. We’re here on business.”

She had her legs crossed in the passenger seat, and her skirt was riding up, and for all that he was thinking about getting up to this rich old tire guy’s house and doing the contraband-for-cash dance, he hadn’t for a second forgotten where he was taking her after that—to bed, his bed. At least he was going to give it his best shot. He wasn’t passing Go. He wasn’t collecting anything.

“
You’re
invited,” he clarified. “I’m unexpected.”

“It won’t be a problem. He might not even…uh, particularly notice that you’re there. He’ll be pretty focused on the property I’ve recovered. He’s a very, uh, very gracious man, but just a tidge eccentric. I’ve dealt with him before, with my dad.”

That got her a lift of his eyebrows. Her dad? What in the hell was a guy like Isaac Nachman doing hiring a guy like her dad? It didn’t make sense. Multimillionaires usually had their own people on staff to do anything, including investigations and security. He could see where Nachman would hire a brilliant, classy private contractor like Esme for a specific situation, maybe something she specialized in, but her dad, what Johnny remembered of him anyway, and certainly from what he’d seen tonight, was a jerk with about as much class as a ten-cent hot dog.

“Your dad…” he started, then let his voice trail off, hesitating. Her dad was a royal fuckup kinda guy, but it wasn’t Johnny’s place to say it like that, not to her. He’d save his unvarnished opinion for the guy who needed to hear it the hard way—her dad.

“Actually, he has a good reputation when it comes to art recovery,” she filled in his pause with another surprising piece of information.

“Art recovery? You mean he finds stolen art?”

She nodded. “Yes. The Nachman family lost over three hundred paintings to the Nazis during the war, including a Renoir my dad helped them find and reacquire, and they’ve never stopped looking for the rest of them, especially Isaac.”

Nazis. Germans. The guy in the Oxford Hotel with a sliced-and-diced suitcase and a neatly cut-open suit jacket—Johnny’s gaze landed on the messenger bag.

Geezus.
He was such an idiot.

“You’ve got a painting in there.” Of course, she did, a damn small painting stolen by Adolf Hitler and, somehow, miraculously recovered by Esme Alexandria Alden and her deadbeat dad.

Easy Alex wasn’t anybody’s drug mule. Hell, no. He should have known that down to his bones—not that knowing it would have necessarily gotten him thinking of stolen art. Nikki McKinney, now she got him thinking about stolen art. One of her “ascending angel” pieces had been stolen in transit to Los Angeles a few years ago, and it had opened up quite a lengthy discussion at Steele Street, and a little personal private investigation on SDF’s part. Dylan had been the one to find the piece, and Hawkins and Kid had gone and gotten it back.

No one had said much more about it, other than Johnny knowing it hadn’t been the first or the last time the guys had done a little inside work off the record. Things came up with friends and family, and the guys had skills. They’d been superlative car thieves at sixteen, and had become absolutely world-class burglars of anything and everything General Grant tasked them with getting in the ensuing years.

“An incredible painting,” Esme confirmed. “Jakob Meinhard’s
Woman in Blue,
an Expressionist masterpiece. He painted it in 1910, and up until a few years ago, people thought it had been burned in Berlin in 1939, or possibly in the Tuileries in 1941. Hitler had thousands of pieces destroyed in those two fires. The führer hated modern art. He thought it was degenerate, an abomination undermining the character of the state.”

Johnny hadn’t known that. Not any of it. Nazis and art had never collided in his educational experiences. Land navigation—he had that down cold. HALO, High Altitude, Low Opening jumping out of airplanes with a ram-air square parachute—
no problema.
Small-unit tactics—he’d studied those hard, given them his all. But the Nazis were way before his time, and the only art education he’d ever had was hanging buck-ass naked from Nikki’s studio ceiling while she’d filmed him in angel wings in the middle of a lightshow and music maelstrom.

“And you and your dad found this Meinhard painting?”

“Just my dad. He tracked down its whole history, from when it was initially smuggled from Germany into France via a diplomatic pouch, to its inclusion with a score of the Rothschilds’ collection at one of their castles in the Loire, to when the Nazis discovered the cache of paintings and seized them all. He’s good, he really is, but he’s best at finding the paintings, and not so good at actually getting them back. In the case of the Meinhard, he’d set up a deal, but it fell through in the clutch, and he lost the cash he’d brought for the exchange without getting the painting. I took over the investigation a month ago and managed to get the seller back into place.”

“The guy in the Oxford?”

“Yes. Otto Von Lindberg.”

“You knew exactly how to set him up, didn’t you, exactly how to play him?” And that was a sobering thought.

“Otto and I go back a few years,” she said coolly.

And there was another sobering thought. She played hardball on this court all the time.
Geezus.

“So what was your dad up to, trying to buy the painting back from Von Lindberg? Was he working for Nachman, being a go-between?”

She let out a short breath. “Initially, yes, but Dad has a way of getting into trouble. He gets in over his head, and then it’s just one big Ponzi scheme for him, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and making deals and promises he shouldn’t, hoping it will all turn out right in the end.”

“He gambles,” Johnny said, and she agreed.

“With everything.”

Which Johnny couldn’t have cared less about, except this time, Burt Alden had gambled with Esme’s well-being, with her safety, and frankly, that pissed him off—royally.

“Can I see it? The painting?” He’d sure like to know what all the fuss was about, because the night had been full of fuss.

“Sure,” she said, reaching down and opening the messenger bag.

He concentrated on the road, until he heard her snap open the metal case she’d slipped into the bag at the office.

He glanced over to where she had opened the case. It was dark inside Solange, but Esme had taken out her flashlight and had it shining on the small piece of art inside its protective covering.

“That’s not canvas, is it?” The painting was too solid, too stiff.

“No. Meinhard painted this piece on copper. It’s one of only three pieces he did on metal. One is in the Louvre, and the other was with the Rothschild collection. It hasn’t been seen since 1942.”

Johnny could see it, even under its covering. Sure he could, and he supposed if a person liked red, orange, gray, and green with a big smear of blue and a little dab of pink—well, yeah, he could see that if a person liked that, well, then they would like Jakob Meinhard’s
Woman in Blue
on copper.

Alrighty, then.
Now he knew. Their asses were on the line, and the one thing that could save them and old Burt was an eight-by-ten-inch brightly colored piece of copper that didn’t look anything like a woman—and yes, it was called art. He wasn’t a complete heathen. He didn’t doubt for a second that the thing was worth all the trouble everyone had ever gone to for it. But by flashlight light, in a moving car, under its cover, it was a stretch to see the “masterpiece” part of the Expressionist masterpiece.

It was plenty expressionistic, though. He could give it a perfect ten for expressionism.

“Very cool,” he said, and yeah, he knew that was about a low-end one on the art appreciation verbalization scale, but for all that he’d posed for Nikki, he’d never really picked up the lingo.