Unmanned (11 page)

The elevator was absolutely silent as it slid upward. The doors were just as quiet when they opened. He motioned me out. For a moment I couldn’t seem to convince my legs to carry me through, but finally one knee bent and the other was obliged to do the same.

His office was as big as Wrigley Field. Photographs lined the walls. I stared at them, expecting celebrities, but saw that every picture featured him with a costumed Disney character. Cinderella seemed to have lifted him into her arms.

“So who is your undead brother?”

I jerked my gaze from a photograph of him wrestling with Minnie Mouse. He motioned me toward a chair, but my brain had gone numb.

“I say ‘undead’ because you said ‘tried,’” he urged, but my dura mater was still struggling with the seven dwarfs. Had they been throwing darts at him?

“I say ‘brother’ because you indicated he was your—”

“Peter,” I said, grappling my thoughts into submission.

He raised his brows, sank into a chair the shape of a satellite, and made a stronger motion toward the one that stood opposite him. I managed to take the few steps to it and settle in, nerves jumping like wet cats.

He stared at me for a long second, then shook his head. “Nope. Sorry. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Three of your thugs attacked him in L.A.”

He made a face and laid his left ankle over his right knee. I’d been right about the snakeskin. “Thugs,” he said. “Kind of politically incorrect, don’t you think? I like to call them collection engineers.”

He was making light of it. Making fun of me. And his clothes looked wrinkle-free. I wasn’t sure which one of those things made me more teed off, but I held my temper and my stomach. “I’ve come to return your money,” I said.

“And you are Christina?” He settled back in his chair and cocked his head. “Pretty name. What do you do, Christina?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with—”

“I’m just making small talk. Trying to prevent you from peeing in your…dress. Nice color, by the way. Great with your skin tone.”

I considered telling him he didn’t scare me, but I’m not that good a liar. “I’m a psychologist,” I said.

“Really?” He leaned forward suddenly, making me jump. “That’s fascinating. Do you practice here in Chicago? ’Cuz I gotta tell you, we’ve got a shitload of nutcases in this little burg.”

I blinked, wanting to look at the picture of him and Snow White something terrible. I think they’d been making out. “As I said, I’ve come to return the money my brother borrowed from you.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s right. Peter…?”

“McMullen.”

“McMullen. Good Irish name. Are you Irish? Hey! Can I get you a drink?”

He was obviously right; there
were
nuts in Chicago. “No. Thank you,” I said, then: “Lieutenant Jack Rivera is expecting me back in L.A. this afternoon.” I was gripping my armrests as if I were prepared to blast off. “He’s a…police officer.”

He stared.

“LAPD,” I added.

He raised his brows at me, then reached for his pocket. I neglected to breathe, but he only pulled out a razor phone and punched in a number. “Sandy.” He gave me a grin. “Do we know a…” He paused, shifted his gaze to me, brows raised.

“Peter,” I supplied.

He shook his head with a grin for his own forgetfulness. “Peter…”

“McMullen.”

“Great name,” he said, then back to Sandy. “McMullen.” After that he narrowed his eyes and listened. “Really? No kidding. Uh-huh.” He tilted his head up and scratched his neck. “Fuck
me,
” he said, and hung up.

I shifted in my chair, barely breathing.

He snapped his phone shut and stared at me. “You sure you’re a psychologist? ’Cuz your brother sounds like kind of a fucktard.”

Fucktard! That’s exactly what he was, and I’d just started to worry about running low on insulting nomenclatures. “He
is
a…” I paused, finding I couldn’t quite say the word. It was all well and good to ridicule Pete myself, but that sort of thing should be kept among family. “He’s going through some hard times,” I said.

“Yeah? Like what?” he asked, and rising, went to polish a picture of himself and Belle with his sleeve.

“Like…” I tried to focus, but damn it, Belle seemed to be wearing combat boots. “Why all the pictures with cartoon characters?”

He stared at me an instant. “Minnie’ll never let you down,” he said. “Are you married, Ms. McMullen?”

I shook my head.

“Engaged?”

“Listen—”

“Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money. Do you make a lot of money as a psychiatrist?”

“Psychologist,” I corrected, which seemed to prompt him to return to the seat across from me and smile.

“Are you busy tonight?”

I felt breathless and kind of loopy. “Like I said—” I began, but he waved away my protest.

“Your flight. I know. But you could go back tomorrow.”

“I don’t think Rivera—”

“Lieutenant Rivera,” he said, nodding. “LAPD. Policeman. He your boyfriend?”

My mind was starting to spin. “Boy—”

He laughed. “It’s a god-awful term, isn’t it? Boyfriend. He’s probably some muscle-bound gym junkie with a six-shooter in one fist and handcuffs in the other, and I’m calling him—Hey, you ever been handcuffed?”

My head felt cottony, but I managed to pull the check from my purse and wobble to my well-shod feet. My sandals matched my sheath to perfection. “I’m paying my brother’s bill.”

“Bill.” He laughed again. “Sounds like I’m a greengrocer or something.”

I handed the paper to him, but he didn’t look at it. Instead, he was staring at me, first my legs, then my face, then everything in between.

I swallowed my heart. “Do you promise to call off your thugs now that—”

“As I said, they like to be called—”

“Collection engineers,” I corrected.

He stood up, smiling. “I don’t think your brother deserves you.”

I prepared to disagree, but I couldn’t force out the words. “He made me eat sheep droppings.” I was, quite obviously, losing my mind.

He raised his brows. “And you still don’t want me to kill him?”

“My mother would blame me.”

He laughed. We were standing uncomfortably close. “Where’d you get the cash, Christina?”

“A friend loaned it to me.”

“The muscle-bound lieutenant?”

“A girlfriend.”

He raised his brows a little. “Her legs as notable as yours?”

I drew a steadying breath, trying to keep up. “If her legs were here, you’d toss mine out the door.”

His brows dipped a little, but his eyes were laughing. “What’s her name?”

I opened my mouth to tell him, but she was the one unsullied person in my life, a gleaming paragon of sanity. “I can’t say.”

His brow furrowed as he studied me, thinking. “Have dinner with me,” he said.

For a moment I couldn’t get any words out, then, “I’m afraid I can’t do—”

“Have dinner with me and I’ll say this check is good.”

My heart clunked in my chest. “It
is
good.”

He glanced at it. “Twenty thousand.”

“That’s what he said he owed you.”

He stared at me, letting me think, and the truth sank in slowly, freezing my mind.

“Interest,” I murmured.

He tilted his head. “Bingo.”

“I’m sorry. I—”

“I promise not to eat you.”

“What?”

“If you dine with me, I promise not to eat you.”

I blinked. He laughed.

“Really,” I said. “I can’t.”

“One meal,” he said, “and you’re off the hook.”

I paused, thinking,
No, no, no.
“And Pete?”

“He really make you eat sheep turds?”

“Put them in my cereal. Said they were raisins.”

He shook his head.

“He’s going to be a father,” I said, and he shrugged.

“All the more reason to have two functioning knees.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Yeah? You’ll do it?”

“Yes,” I said, and knew I hadn’t been adopted after all. Retardation obviously ran in the genes.

14

A guy’s got to get a license to drive a Geo, but any doofus with a few good swimmers can be a father.

—Dagwood Dean Daly, better known as D to those who want to keep their livers

W
E NEVER LEFT
the building, just took the elevator up to the top floor. From there I could see a long, tawny stretch of Oak Street Beach. Despite the fact that the beach is man-made and had been laboriously hauled in from more tropical climes, the beach was nearly deserted. The restaurant was just as empty.

“So what does it take to become a licensed psychologist? A master’s? A bachelor’s?” he asked.

I drank my strawberry margarita and set it back on its leather coaster. The whole restaurant had a Western motif, making me wonder if he matched it or if it matched him. “I have a Ph.D.”

“Really? Even though your father called you Pork Chop?” We’d been there a while. And maybe I had talked too much. “Or maybe
because
he called you Pork Chop.”

“How do you mean?”

He shrugged. “You needed to prove your value. To vindicate yourself. Some people succeed because of their heritage. Some despite it.” He drank his daiquiri. You don’t usually see men drink daiquiris. Especially pseudo cowboys in snakeskin boots. “Maybe you should thank him.”

“For calling me a slab of meat?”

He laughed. “I happen to love pork.”

He was looking at me funny, maybe the way mobsters look at people they’re planning to fit for cement boots, maybe like they look at folks they want to get in the sack. I guess I don’t know much about mobsters.

“And complicated women,” he added.

“Complicated.” I shook my head. “I’m pretty straightforward.”

“So you adore your brother,” he said, leaning back in the booth. “Admire the hell out of him. In fact, you adore him so much that you agreed to borrow twenty thousand dollars from a friend you won’t even name and bring me said money to get him off the proverbial hook.”

I fiddled with the coaster. It felt kind of like suede. Those crazy cowboys.

“Or could it be that you think your brother’s a first-rate peckerhead but you still agreed to bring the check?” He tilted his head, thinking, then: “No,” he said. “It was your idea.”

I didn’t say anything.

He chuckled and leaned back against the rust-colored cushions of our booth, steepling his fingers. “Still trying to impress your father after all these years, Ms. McMullen?”

“I just didn’t want to read about Peter in the morning news.”

“Your parents wouldn’t understand, then, if you let him sink because of his own moronic decisions?”

I snorted. It didn’t sound very ladylike. Or human. But he’d insisted I have a drink.

“Don’t tell me your mom called you Pork Chop, too.”

I made a smiley face in the condensation on my glass. “What did your parents call you?”

He eyed me for a minute. “Funny, isn’t it? You need a damned license for the privilege of driving a Geo Metro, but any doofus with a couple good swimmers can be a father.”

I had said as much myself in the past. What did it mean that I shared life philosophy with a guy with a cowboy fetish and one initial?

“So you ran away to L.A. in the hopes of…” He paused, waiting for me to finish the sentence.

“I didn’t run away.”

“Okay.” He tilted his head a little. Except for the muttonchops, he was clean-shaven, had a nice jaw and okay ears. “You
transferred
to L.A., hoping to leave your past behind. To build a new and better Christina McMullen.”

“I’m not seeking parental approval, if that’s what you think.”

“Which brings us back to the adoring brother scenario, and I don’t know…that seems like kind of a long shot. Does he have some redeeming qualities that aren’t readily apparent?”

I thought about it a second. “He didn’t call me Pork Chop,” I said.

He laughed. “One point for Peter John. Why didn’t he go to his brothers?”

“What?”

“With his financial problems. Why didn’t he enlist his brothers’ help?”

That was a good question. One I hadn’t really had time to delve into, what with the shootings and all.

“Might it be because they’re fucktards, too? That Christina is the only familial member with the wherewithal to remove him from his current crisis?”

“Mom would have kicked his ass and washed his mouth out with soap,” I said.

“She would have left him to me?”

I thought about that for a minute. “No,” I said finally. “She would have kicked your ass, too.”

He laughed. “I’d like to meet her.”

I gave him a disbelieving glance.

“She sounds fascinating.”

“Why do you dislike men?” I asked.

He raised a brow, at which time I remembered he was the kind of guy who makes people’s livers disappear.

“Have you met many?” he asked.

I scowled.

“Men,” he explained, and I had to give him my “You’ve got a point” expression.

The world went quiet for a while, then: “How come you don’t have a minivan and two and a half snot-nosed kids?” he asked finally.

“Global warming,” I said.

He raised a brow.

“Those gas hogs get about three miles to the gallon. Shove them full of kids, it probably cuts the mileage in half.”

He was staring at me. “I think it’s because you don’t believe you deserve it.”

I took a drink. “I had to get a license to shovel that kind of crap,” I said.

He laughed and leaned forward. “This Rivera, tell me about him.”

“He’s a cop.”

“I think you might have mentioned that.”

“Sorry.”

He grinned. “He’s a lieutenant?”

“Yes.”

“He
your
lieutenant?”

I ceased my nodding, not sure where to go from there, but not wanting to imply that I was without a lieutenant.

“Kind of,” I said.

“Is he a fucktard, too?”

I tilted my head.

“Why the hell did he let you go?”

I blinked and fiddled with my glass and he smiled, leaning back indulgently.

“You didn’t tell him. Because…because…” He narrowed his eyes. “He would have gone all macho and refused to let you board the plane.”

“It’s not his decision—” I began, but he laughed.

I bristled a little.

“So maybe you came here to spite him,” he suggested.

I was getting kind of pissed. “Why is it so hard for you to believe that I just didn’t want Pete killed?”

“I think it was the passion with which you told the sheep-droppings story.”

That deflated me a little. Near the wall, a waitress with a face like a China doll and a body like Miss USA watched our table. I didn’t know if that should make me feel more or less secure. “They didn’t really taste that bad,” I said.

His eyes were laughing. “I’m starting to think this Rivera might be dumber than your brother.”

I wiped the condensation from my glass. “Wouldn’t be easy.”

“He ask you to marry him yet?”

I shot him a wide-eyed glance, and he shrugged, giving me a “Well, there you go” expression.

“Thank you for dinner,” I said, and cleared my throat. “But—”

“You have to go.”

“I think I should,” I said, and stood up.

He rose, too. Even in his boots, he wasn’t much bigger than I was, but his lean frame made him seem taller, even when he stepped up close. “But you haven’t fulfilled your part of the bargain yet, Christina McMullen.”

I snapped my gaze to his face.

His eyes were shining. “You haven’t slept with me yet.”

My well-filled stomach dropped to floor level. “I didn’t say anything to indicate—”

“Well…” He shrugged. “Not in so many words. I just assumed it was agreed upon.”

“I can’t—”

He leaned closer, all laughter suddenly gone, eyes intense. “Even for your brother?” he asked, and let the words fall into silence.

My gut twisted.

“What would your mother say?” he asked.

“Maybe I could…maybe I could collect the interest,” I said.

He shook his head, looking sad. “The money is already overdue, Ms. McMullen. If I gave you clemency I’d look weak, then everyone who owes me would be shagging their sisters at me to hand in late payments. I’d be a laughingstock.”

I blinked, feeling breathless. The restaurant seemed eerily silent. “You have pictures of cartoon characters on your walls,” I said.

He smiled, his lips inches from mine. “What do you say?” he asked. “Surely even Peter John’s life is worth one night.”

He was my brother, but…“I just…” I was stuttering. “I can’t,” I whispered, but even my voice was pale.

“You know what, Ms. McMullen?” he murmured, eyes steady on mine. My knees felt wobbly. I was holding my breath. “I think you have an overdeveloped sense of duty.”

I pulled back an inch. “What?”

He grinned a little. “Christ, he’s what?” he asked, tone suddenly brusque. “Forty?”

“Forty-two,” I said.

He spread his hands. “And you’re still saving his bacon?”

I said nothing. His grin slanted up another notch.

“Did you really think I was going to force you to sleep with me?”

“Umm…”

He shook his head, laughed, and offered his hand. “That would be rather unethical, don’t you think?” His palm felt narrow but strong.

“So I’m…I’m free to go?”

He nudged me playfully with his shoulder. “Unless you
want
to sleep with me.”

“No. No. That’s all right,” I said, but as he tucked me into a cab, I was a little depressed. Because honestly, I kind of did.