One Hot Mess (15 page)

“How do you mean?”

“If I'm not mistaken, the Republican Party can be … less than tolerant of gays.”

He stared at me blankly.

I stared back, waiting.

He scowled.

I cocked my head, still waiting.

And then his eyes widened. “She wasn't… She didn't…” I had never seen him flustered. I drank it in. But finally he shook his head. “I am sure you are mistaken.”

“About?”

“Ms. Baltimore had a grace about her. A quiet, lovely femininity.”

I raised one brow.

“And beautiful hair!” he added, sounding desperate. “I remember how it shone. An intern was brushing it. She wore it long and straight. It glittered like starlight beneath Mel's—”

He blinked and sat back down.

“I take it Mel was a woman?” I said.

“I just…” He shook his head. “I never…” He glanced up. “She was so pretty.”

I kind of wanted to bitch-slap him with my purse, but I resisted. “How long have you lived in California, exactly?”

He didn't seem to hear me.

“It all makes sense now,” he said.

“What makes sense?”

“Her disinterest,” he said, tone awed, and for just a moment I reconsidered that slapping idea.

T WAS ALMOST DUSK when I returned home that evening, but Harlequin gave me a droopy-eyed plea, so I packed him into the Saturn and headed off to the dog park. The temperature had dropped back into the three-digit range, but I still felt self-pity creeping in, more draining than the heat. My conversation with the senator had made me kind of melancholy. Yes, he was vain and self-centered and kind of a creep, but he was a powerful, attractive, intelligent creep. And he reminded me disturbingly of his son, whom, if I were idiotic enough to be honest about, I had been lusting over for quite some time. In fact, I'd been dreaming about him again, and although my recent imaginings did not show him facedown on the
concrete, they were still disturbing. More than once I had awakened near the slippery peak of Mt. Satisfaction and found myself wishing dreams
were
omens of things to come.

The truth, however, was that I hadn't heard from Rivera since his departure five days earlier. And it was entirely possible that I was never going to hear from him again. My throat tightened at the thought, but I cleared it and moved on.

There was an irregular oblong path running uphill and down in the dog park. I circled the course with Harley approximately by my side. Now and then he would be waylaid by a good-natured Lab or a snooty borzoi. There was also a scrawny-tailed cur that looked disturbingly like the rodent of unusual size from
The Princess Bride.
But I refrained from screaming for my sweet Wesley and kept walking, trying rather desperately to bring my thoughts back to the senior Rivera and his impending problems instead of his conspicuously absent son.

Okay, maybe the two deaths were unconnected. Maybe Manny had intentionally offed himself or accidentally fallen like a drunken log into the river. Maybe Kathy had passed out. Or been killed by her ex. As far as I was concerned, Mr. Baltimore had entirely too many teeth, and I had seen enough prime-crime television to know that the husband (with or without a surplus of teeth) is generally the number-one suspect. In this case he was my
only
suspect. On the other hand, maybe Mr. Baltimore had known about the senator's attempt to seduce his wife and had harbored secret resentment all these years. Maybe—

I shook my head.

The idea was ludicrous. A lot of water had flowed under
the proverbial bridge since the Baltimores worked on the senators campaign. Not to mention the fact that since that time Kathy had divorced Mr. Teeth and taken a female lover—maybe multiple female lovers. Surely Teeth had bigger offenses to worry about than an aborted seduction from decades before. Besides, subsequent research had yielded the fact that Teeth had remarried some three years ago. He seemed to have moved on. To have found another woman certifiably desperate enough to sleep with him. It never ceased to amaze me how—

“Hey Miss Chris.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. Harlequin stopped with me, having lost, or eaten, his scrawny-tailed companion.

A man stepped away from a leaning black walnut near the parking lot. He was wearing a straw cowboy hat and sunglasses.

My heart stayed, rather miraculously, within the confines of my chest. “D?” I said.

He smiled.

My gaze ricocheted right and left. Maybe I was looking for an escape route, or maybe I was looking for his entourage. Last time I'd seen this particular gangster, he was surrounded by a bevy of six-foot supermodels-turned-bodyguards. The scariest of whom, I was quite sure, had planned to cut my heart out with her laser vision.

“What are you doing here?” My voice sounded a little wobbly. Sometimes people who steal livers affect me that way.

This one looked really innocuous, though. He was sporting a blue plaid shirt made to look as if it had been worn mending fence. I wondered vaguely if it had cost more than my monthly mortgage.

“You wanted some information,” he said. “So I thought I'd drop by.”

I blinked. “I have a fax machine.”

He grinned, glanced down. “This your pet?”

Harlequin was pressed up against my thigh, tail tucked between his legs. He wagged it carefully when D lifted a hand toward his moose-size head, then rolled out his tongue and lapped D's fingers.

D smiled and rubbed his ears. “Good to know he makes his own decisions.”

I looked at him. The word “blankly” comes to mind.

“Doesn't prejudge just because of my profession. Not everyone's so open-minded,” he said, and turned, lifting a hand to indicate we should continue on.

“Where's, ummm… Sandy?” I asked, expecting to see long-legged beauties popping up like mushrooms from behind every tree. D doesn't like men. Refuses to speak to them, I'm told. Perhaps I should be so inclined.

“Dare I hope you're jealous?” he asked.

“Scared, maybe,” I said.

He faked a shudder. “I gotta admit, she terrifies me.”

“How'd you know I was here?” I asked.

Harlequin sniffed his arm, then, either determining he was a good egg or possibly not giving a rat's ass, romped off to greet a lhasa apso. It cowered, peed, and considered dropping dead.

“You sure you want to be involved with the Riveras?” D asked.

I snapped my eyes back to his. “What'd you find out?” I asked, but he smiled and changed the subject.

“You look good,” he said, and lowered his gaze a little. Despite the liver-stealing phenomenon, I was kind of glad I
looked decent and hadn't taken time to change into my usual after-work rags. I was wearing a russet silk blouse with a shirred V-neck, buff capris, and wedge sandals, which, if I say so myself, show my legs off to their best advantage. “Nice shirt.”

I cleared my throat and prepared to launch into some sensible conversation, but he continued.

“I've been worried about you.”

I felt myself tense. What would it take to make a liver-stealer worry? “Why?”

“Miguel Rivera…” He shook his head. “I almost have to admire the man.”

“Have you heard anything about him making a bid for the presidency?”

He glanced ahead, seeming to enjoy the evening. But maybe that made sense. According to the weather report, Chicago was currently being blown into Indiana by subzero, gale-force winds. “There's talk.”

“Serious talk?”

He smiled again, enigmatic as hell and kind of cute.

“He make a bid for
you
yet?” he asked.

I glanced toward him and away. “No. Of course not.”

He tilted his head a little. “The man's had more affairs than the foreign minister.”

I think I scowled. “I don't know who—”

“It was a play on words,” he said. “See, the foreign-affairs minister should have—Never mind. Point is, Rivera would screw a light socket.”

“What about a lesbian?”

“What?”

“Did you hear anything about him and a woman named Kathy Baltimore?”

“Baltimore, like the city?” He seemed to be thinking behind his dark glasses. “Nope, she wasn't on the list.”

“Nothing about her?”

“Why? Did he screw her?”

I didn't answer. “How about her husband?”

He raised a brow. “I didn't realize the good senator was so … omnivorous.”

“I meant, did he have any problems with Mr. Baltimore?”

“Not according to my sources.”

I didn't bother to ask who his sources were. I was afraid one might have been formerly known as Beelzebub.

“Who
has
he had trouble with?”

“Everyone else,” he said.

“Can you be more specific?”

“He's screwed a lot of people.”

“So you mentioned.”

“I meant it more generically this time.”

“What about an Emanuel Casero?”

“I think I've heard the name.”

“Casero?”

“Emanuel, but maybe it was just in a biblical sense. God among us.”

I looked at him, surprised, and he glanced back with a grin.

“Gangsters are allowed to read the Bible, you know. Those clever inquisitive Spaniards probably knew it by heart in the fifteenth century.”

I opened my mouth to spout something genius, but thankfully he spoke again.

“I'm sorry I'm not being more helpful.”

“No, you are,” I said. “I just think … couldn't you have told me this over the phone?”

He glanced to the right. A man with a suit was walking a Doberman—sans suit.

“You can't trust phones,” he said, sotto voce. “Who knows who might be listening.”

I felt the hair on my arms prickle up, and I shifted my gaze to surreptitiously study the overdressed gentleman. He remained facing forward.

“Really?” I whispered.

D stared at me with serious intent, then said, “No,” and laughed. “I just wanted to see you. Give you another chance.”

It took me a moment to get my head back in the game. “At?” We had returned to the parking area near the languorously leaning walnut tree.

He took my arm and tugged me into the shadows.

“Sleeping with me,” he said.

My mouth dropped open.

“This is a pretty spot,” he said.

“Here?” My voice had zipped from wobbly to squeaky, missing all areas in between.

“Warm,” he said, and stroked my arm. “Not too many onlookers.”

“Not too many…” I glanced around, horrified and kind of turned on. “There are dozens.”

“Want me to get rid of them?” he asked, and brushed a few strands of hair behind my ear.

“No.” I felt a little breathless. A little overheated. A lot horny. I can't help it. It's not as if every wannabe cowboy makes me hot. Well, maybe it is, but…

“You deserve better, Chrissy” he said, and leaned in, but just then something wet touched my hand.

I glanced down. It was a nose. The nose was attached to a smiling blond canine.

“Rocky,” someone called.

The voice rumbled across my quivering inner ear and straight to my nipples. I turned—
sure
, absolutely
certain
, Rivera couldn't have ended up in the same dog park at the same time. He didn't even have a dog, except for the retriever named Rockette he shared with his ex-wife, who was as cute as a…

I glanced up and there he was, standing just a few feet away, looking hard and intense in the dark-sex way only truly difficult men can achieve. I froze like dried linguine. Harlequin wasn't so inhibited. He romped giddily around Rivera's legs, then gamboled off with the retriever, apparently unconcerned about his beloved's canine infidelity.

Rivera lifted his midnight eyes. Our gazes clashed like thunderclaps. Silence echoed between us.

“This him?” D asked. The world came crashing back around my ears. “The infamous Jack Rivera?”

“Yes. Yes.” It seems I had forgotten that Rivera affected me like a half-gallon jug of fermented moonshine, but it all came rushing back now. “D …” I didn't know the exact etiquette for introducing a crime boss to an officer of the law. “This is Rivera. Rivera—”

“He's shorter than I expected,” D said.

“D,” Rivera said, and took one taut step toward us. “That your first name or your last?”

D didn't answer.

My mind was jumping in concert with my nerves, but I tried to make nice. “I was just walking Harlequin. Lovely evening, isn't it?” Lovely evening! Holy crap! I sounded like a constipated librarian. “I mean, it was too nice out
to—” I was yapping like a lapdog, but just then Rivera reached into his back pocket. I braced myself for an ensuing gun battle, but he only pulled out a badge. “I'm Lieutenant Rivera. LAPD.” He flipped the badge shut and shoved it back out of sight. “And you are?”

A grin twisted D's mouth into what some brave souls might have considered a smile. “Your lieutenant seems a little insecure,” he said.

“Who the hell are you?” Rivera asked, and took another step forward, but I shoved myself between them.