Twenty-eight
“Why did he want to hurt Evelyn?” Jennifer asked of
John, lying at his side in the night. “Who is Rosie?”
John eyed her unhappily and had no answer. He had a
question of his own. “The girl in the motel. Did you see what he did to
her?”
Jennifer looked away in sudden panic. She tried hard
to keep the image buried where she wouldn’t have to see it again, even in
her mind’s eye.
“I was afraid of that,” John said. “Dimitri was the
spoiled kid of a rich politician. A bad seed. A kid like that leads a
sheltered life for the most part. If he runs with the wrong crowd, he’s
putty in their hands, arrogant and naive. What did they do to him? What
do they want? I have no idea.”
“Rosie?” Jennifer said in a whisper.
"Don't know." John didn’t like the haunted tone to her voice. “You
going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’re just a kid. You’re not all that tough.”
“I’m not a stupid kid. I know what’s happening.”
John stared at her for a time, then looked away.
“Why are you so nice to me?” she said. “I wasn’t
expecting you to be so.”
“Soft?”
“Considerate.”
He gave her a cold grin, what passed as his sense of
humor. “What can I say? I’m a nice guy.”
“You’re not a nice guy, John, but I saw the way you
looked at me that first time, like I was someone you knew. You told me
about your sister.”
Jennifer was the one person in the world he could
tell. Garko had known, but no one else. “Sasha, my kid
sister. She ran with a rough crowd. She got hurt.”
“I’m not Sasha.”
John looked at her more carefully. “Yeah, you are.
Deep down, you’re like her.”
“I’m sorry if I took advantage of you. I didn’t know
about your sister. It wasn’t a nice thing for me to do.”
“Well, it cuts both ways. I’m not your father, or
your big brother, or whoever you think I am.”
She smiled faintly. “Yeah, you are. Deep down.”
“Tell me about yourself, kid,” he asked after a long
bout of silence. “If you’re going to cause me problems, I need to know
about them ahead of time.”
“I won’t cause you problems, John. And I wish you’d
stop calling me kid.”
“You said you were from somewhere around here.”
“Francis found me in Los Angeles. I was orphaned at
age four or five. Some relatives took me to California, but I wound up in
foster homes. I had a good one toward the end, but my foster dad died,
and his wife couldn’t handle me by herself, so she was going to give me
back to the state. I ran away the day they were going to pick me up.”
“You should have stayed put. Maybe it would have
worked out.”
Jennifer wrinkled her nose. “My case worker
was taking me home with him. The first stoplight we came to, I bailed out
and ran. I lived on the streets after that and mugged guys who hit on me,
at least the ones
who weren’t nice about it. They’d follow me into dark places and I’d
pepper spray the bastards, stun their asses with a stun gun that had a
real wack to it, and take their money.”
“Not good,” John said. “What happened?”
“I met one of Francis’ girls. Me and Francis hit it
off really well. I was the daughter she never had. She’s been like my
fairy godmother. She wants to put me through college. I know I have to
learn to do something to pay my own way in life, but I don’t want to take
over Francis’ business like she expects me to. I’d probably get bossy,
fat, and wind up wearing too much make-up.”
With her eyes closed, his voice was like gentle
thunder. “You should be able to get pretty much anything you want from
the world.”
“All I want right now is you.”
“We won’t get away with it.”
“Then maybe I’m just a stupid kid after all.”
“It’s not something we have to address until we
finish with Dimitri.”
Jennifer opened her eyes in surprise and stared into
the darkness. “Dimitri’s dead.”
“He’s still our only link to Rosie, and Rosie is our
only link to the person who wanted Evelyn Haxx murdered. They’ll try
again. That involves you, if you’re not with me, if I’m not protecting
you. So, you and I, we’re okay until we get all of that settled. I’m not
saying we won’t get hurt along the way. I’m not operating in familiar
territory these days.”
John's analysis of the
situation startled her like cold water to the face. “I don’t understand. Are you going to find Rosie to
keep Evelyn from getting hurt just because I might get caught in the
middle again?”
“You’re missing the point, kid. Why would anyone
work with the likes of Dimitri Carvelli to begin with? He was way too
loud and messy.”
Jennifer was confused. “So?”
“So, pitting Dimitri against Evelyn Haxx may have
been a diversion, a way to set up someone other than Evelyn Haxx. Maybe
they don’t want anyone to know which girl is being hit, or why her death
is necessary. So they set events in motion that they knew damn well would
involve Garko.”
“Was that fat man Bernard Carvelli worth all of our
lives?”
“Don’t get your dander up, kid. Think of that fat
man as an intravenous needle in the vein of the public pocketbook. He’s
worth millions to organized crime. But Garko must have looked into
Dimitri’s affairs to find out who might have put Dimitri up to killing
your friend. If he didn’t find anything, I can guarantee that it’s making
him damned nervous.”
“Does he want you to figure it out?”
“Maybe he’s hoping I will. If
whoever it wants one you you girls dead, they struck out with Dimitri. No big deal. They bring in
another pitcher and try again, or maybe there’s already one lurking in the
woodwork.”
John’s unrelenting train of logic stunned her. “Then none of us
are safe yet.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. No matter. We’ll get it
straightened out, you and I.”
His determination caught her attention. “But why?”
He understood the question. Why his commitment? “I
was a dead man when you pointed that gun in my face, Jennifer. I’ll be
back where I started when I have to send you away. The only life I have
left begins with you. It ends with you.”
Tears poured from Jennifer’s eyes. She didn’t want
things to be this way between them.
“It cuts both ways,” he reminded her. “You need me
to stay alive, too. I couldn’t help Sasha. She never came to me for
help. You did.”
