Red, White & Dead Page 2

  I panted inside the stall, trying to work out what to do. Should I somehow try to say goodbye to Dez? Should I give up on the infiltration job and just take off for the calm confines of my condo?

  It wasn’t much of an infiltration job anyway, just a job that required chatting up someone at a bar, a task I used to be rather good at, if I say so myself. However, that skill had gone rusty over the last few years. Who could blame me after my series of, shall we say, unfortunate circumstances. Two friends killed and a disappearing/reappearing fiancé, who was now officially off the map, had caused me to spend a lot of time in my condo, licking my wounds.

  Eight months ago, I’d been on top of the world-the highest paid associate at a big, glitzy law firm, en route to partnership not only with the firm but with my fiancé. And then poof, all gone, rendering me tired and stunned and jobless. What I’d been doing for the last few months consisted of nothing more than feeling guilty about doing nothing.

  Shortly, my funds would literally drop to zero, causing my fears about being forced to sell my Old Town home to become a reality.

  And so this request from Mayburn, who believed Michael DeSanto wasn’t as squeaky clean as he was telling his wife, led me to Dez Romano. But enough was enough. Heartbroken or not, Mayburn would understand that I had to get out of there.

  I left the bathroom, went down the first flight of stairs, peeked down the rest of the way, my hands on the silver banister. I saw no one. The large group appeared to have left. I trotted down as fast as my high heels would allow, past the signed photos that plastered the walls-everyone from local judges to international celebrities seemed to have autographed a glossy for Gibsons.

  My breath was managing only shallow forays into my lungs, so I stopped once to suck in air. A few more steps and I was at the bottom, the front door only a few feet away.

  The maître d’ gave me a bored nod as if to say goodnight. But then he glanced to the right, and a questioning expression overtook his face. I peeked to see what he was looking at. Michael. Across the room, Michael was talking to Dez, his arms waving, gesturing.

  Right then, Dez looked over Michael’s shoulder and saw me. “Hey!” he said, his eyes narrowed in anger.

  There were only a handful of diners in the restaurant, but Dez’s voice was loud enough to get everyone’s attention. They looked at Dez, then at me. Suddenly, Dez and Michael were on their feet and coming toward me, the furious expressions on their faces enough to catapult me into action.

  I reached down, pulled off my high heels and dashed out the door onto Rush Street.

  “Cab!” I yelled, waving at one. But the taxi’s light was off, and it blew by. Same with the next one and the next.

  I took off running toward Oak Street, hoping desperately for the shimmering vision of a cab with its light on.

  I heard someone shout. Glancing back, I saw Michael and Dez sprinting after me. Behind them was another man, also running, his head down, face obscured by a baseball cap. Was he security for Dez?

  I tucked my shoes under my arm and ran faster. When I reached a tiny alleyway, I dodged down it, running until I came to a parking garage.

  “Ticket?” a sleepy valet said.

  I heard footsteps pounding behind me in the narrow alley. Frantically, I looked around. The garage’s entrance was on State Street. I could leave that way, but if I did, surely Dez and Michael and their muscle would see me and keep up the chase. To the left, though, was a steep ramp that quickly curved up and out of sight. If I could get up the ramp before they reached the garage, I could hide and call Mayburn for help. I could call the police if I had to.

  I started in that direction.

  “Miss!” the valet yelled. “Your ticket?”

  “My car is up here,” I said as I kept moving.

  “No, miss! Only valet here. You have a ticket?”

  I hesitated for a moment. I thought about reversing and bolting for State Street, but it would take too much time. They would see me for sure. Then it dawned that if I kept running up the ramp, the valet would probably follow me, which would be a good thing, since he couldn’t tell Dez and Michael where I’d gone.

  I was about to start climbing the ramp again, but it was too late. Dez and Michael pounded into the garage. No sign of their security guard.

  Dez and Michael both wore blazers; both had that great Italian black hair. And both looked as though they would very, very much like to kill me.

  They ran up the ramp as if to do just that. I turned and sprinted off.

  When the ramp curved to the right, I figured I had only a few seconds to vanish. There were rows of cars parked in spots marked Reserved. I dodged behind a green Jaguar and crouched there, my heart banging violently against the walls of my chest. My dress, made of lavender silk, was damp with sweat and clinging to my body.

  I held my breath, afraid to make a sound. But meanwhile, I heard no sounds of Michael or Dez. Surely, they’d seen me. Surely, they were just behind me. I swiveled my head around, feeling exposed. All they would have to do was look around the side of the car and they would spot me. And then what would they do?

  I kept holding my breath. Silently, I placed my heels on the ground, bent down farther and tried to see under the carriage of the car. It was so low I had to kneel. Jagged concrete dug into my skin. My curly hair fell over my eyes. I brushed it away, bent lower and looked under the car.

  My breath filled my lungs with a rush, almost like a punch. Because there, on the other side of the Jaguar, were two pairs of beautiful Italian loafers. Michael and Dez were standing there. They clearly hadn’t heard me yet. But they were just waiting for me to make a sound.

  My mouth opened in a terrified O. I began to pant again, this time silently.

  I looked behind me and saw a door, maybe leading to an interior staircase. I peeked under the car again, and to my horror, I saw those beautiful Italian loafers start to move.

  I stood and lunged for the door. Locked. Fuck. I was immediately chastised by my internal swearword replacement monitor, but once again Frig just wasn’t going to cut it.

  I spun around and faced them, shooting frenzied looks around the place, trying to figure out if I could dodge them and make a run for the street. They were still on the other side of the car, moving slowly, almost creeping. Dez was nearly to the front of the Jag.

  “So what’s your real name, little girl?” Dez said.

  “It’s not Isabel Bristol,” Michael growled. Isabel Bristol was the name I’d used when I first met him.

  “And it’s not Suzanne,” Dez said, no shyness about him now, only a sinister sneer. “C’mere, little girl.”

  I took a step back, then another. I was backing myself into the locked door, I knew, but the only impulse my body could muster was to recoil from Dez and Michael. My eyes swung wildly. Where was their security guard?

  I took another step back. My bare feet stepped on something oily, then on the heels of my own shoes. Swiftly, I reached down and picked them up, thinking of some TV show I’d seen once where a stiletto was used to kill someone. I tucked my purse tighter under my arm. I brandished my high heels like ridiculous satin-covered weapons. There was nowhere else to go.

  I tried to think of something to say, but it was clear there would be no chatting with these guys, no talking my way out of the situation.

  It didn’t matter anyway, because Dez charged around the car toward me. Instinctively, I moved back again, bouncing against the door. And then I was propelled forward as the door opened behind me. I was only a foot from Dez now, Michael behind him.

  I felt a hand grip my arm and yank me back, hard, into the stairwell. The security guard. It must be.

  “No!” I yelled, thrashing against him. “No!”

  But the guy pulled me in farther, and then he did the strangest thing. He slammed the door, right on the puzzled faces of Dez and Michael.

  It was black in the stairwell. I could see nothing. Dez’s and Michael’s fists battered the door from the outsid
e, sounding like tribal drums, loud and menacing and alerting everyone of more danger to come.

  I struggled against the grip of the security guard, and to my surprise he let me go.

  “You’re okay,” he said.

  I trembled a little, wanting to run but unable to see anything, not knowing where to go. It sounded as if Dez and Michael were pounding the door handle now, trying to break it.

  “You have to leave,” the man said. “You need to get out of here.”

  Why did his voice sound familiar, as if I were listening to the note of a song I had heard only a few times?

  I felt a touch on my wrist. “Stop!” I yelled out of sheer instinct, pulling it away. In the deep dark of the stairwell, the movement made me feel dizzy, and I willed myself to stand straight.

  “Let me show you the banister,” he said. “Walk down the steps and out onto the street. Get away from here as fast as you can.”

  “But…”

  Scratching sounded from the direction of the door handle now, as if Michael and Dez were putting something in the lock.

  “Hurry,” the man said. “They’ll be in here very soon.”

  Enough of a threat to get me moving. I tucked the purse tighter under my arm and clutched both shoes in my left hand. The man touched the wrist of my right hand again, and this time I let him lead me to the banister.

  “Hold tight,” he said. “Be careful. But please go as fast as you can.”

  I took one step, then another. Then I stopped. “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re welcome.” Again, there was a distantly familiar quality to his voice.

  I turned and put one foot on the lower step and then the next. I began to get the hang of it, despite the blackness around me. When I got to a landing, I shuffled my feet forward, looking for where the next steps began. Upstairs, I could hear more thrashing at the door.

  Then, for a moment it quieted, and I heard the man speak. “Go. You’re okay now, Boo.”

  The pounding at the door continued. An injection of fear kept me moving, finding the staircase, taking the steps faster this time, until I reached the street and pushed open the door, the streetlights hitting my eyes like a blast. I blinked and looked around. No sign of Michael or Dez. Not yet.

  I saw a cab, lights on, across the street. I ran to it, yanked open the door and hopped into the back. Breathlessly, I gave my address on Eugenie Street.

  It was only when the cab had driven eight blocks that I stopped looking behind me. Then I closed my eyes, laid my head on the back of the seat and let myself hear the last words the man had said.

  You’re okay now, Boo.

  Was that right? Had he actually said that?

  I forced myself back to that moment, listening intently to the memory.

  You’re okay now, Boo.

  Boo was the nickname my mother used for me. No one else had ever called me that. Except my father.

  And he had been dead for almost twenty-two years.

  2

  “Let’s get tattoos.”

  I looked at my friend Maggie. “What are you talking about?”

  It was Monday, the day after my night with Dez Romano, and needing a warm and welcoming face or two, I had texted my best friend, Maggie, and my former assistant, Q, and was happily surprised when they were both available for lunch. Q, who was also unemployed but living with his very wealthy boyfriend, picked me up and took us into the Loop to meet Maggie at a pub near her office.

  Maggie and I ordered the fish and chips. Maggie ate greedily, the way she does when she finally remembers to stop working and eat, while I sort of picked at the fries and poked at the fish with my finger, unable to muster an appetite. Q, who was eternally on a diet to avoid a persistent belly, his personal nemesis to the perfect gay physique, gave a sullen stab at his plain chicken breast and pushed it away.

  You’re okay now, Boo.

  I’d called Mayburn when I got home last night, telling him about the debacle at Gibsons, about being chased, about hearing those words. He wasn’t too impressed by the “Boo” thing, but he’d been worried and upset about Michael and Dez being after me. He told me to keep a low profile, to watch for anyone tailing me. I don’t think he would consider having lunch in the Loop “low profile,” but sometimes you’ve simply got to be with friends.

  “We need something new,” Maggie said. “At least I do.” She dunked a piece of battered fish into a ramekin of tartar sauce and popped it in her mouth. “And a tattoo is a way to signify something new in your life, like a new chapter.”

  “Who told you that?” Q asked.

  She shrugged. “That’s what people say.”

  “That’s what they say after they get a tattoo, so they can justify it. So they can live with themselves.”

  Maggie stopped eating and gave a slightly dejected look.

  “Mags,” I said. “Your family would kill you if you got another tattoo.” Maggie came from a big South Side Irish family, and they barely tolerated the tiny shamrock she got on her ankle during a college spring break.

  “I’m thirty,” she said. “I can do what I want. I don’t care what they think.”

  Q and I laughed. Maggie did, too. Yes, Maggie was very much an adult, helping to run the criminal defense practice started by her famous lawyer grandfather, trying cases in courthouses all over the state. But her family was as thick as the thieves she represented. They spent most of their free time together, they knew everything about each other, and Maggie very much cared about their opinions.

  I bit into a french fry, thinking about my recent exposure to tattoos. The last guy I dated-a twenty-one-year-old wunderkind of the computer world named Theo Jameson-had boasted a plethora of tattoos around his stunning body. A gold-and-black serpent slithered sexily around one arm, a red ribbon on the other. High on his left pec was an Asian-looking symbol. I’d never learned what it meant. We only dated a short time. He’d been too young for me, although that wasn’t why we broke up.

  Lately, Theo lingered in my mind just as much as Sam, my ex-fiancé, maybe more so because Theo had started texting me again recently.

  I miss you…he’d say. I think about you 300 times a day. And the last one-I have blood oranges.

  One late night a couple months ago, Theo came to my apartment with a bag filled with small oranges tinged a sultry crimson color. He made us screwdrivers. He squeezed juice on my wrists and licked it off.

  I smiled as I chewed now, thinking about it.

  Q saw my look. Knowing me well, he asked, “Theo?” before attempting another bite of his chicken breast.

  “Yeah.”

  Q and Maggie hadn’t met Theo, but I’d given them a detailed description of him, as well as a somewhat sanitized version of the nights we’d spent together.

  “Is he still texting you?” Maggie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Do you want to see him?”

  “I haven’t had sex in almost two months. And that kid is sex on a stick. What do you think?”

  Maggie groaned, stopped eating momentarily. “I so understand.” Recently, Maggie had taken a second shot at a relationship with an older, scoundrel type named Wyatt. And for the second time, Wyatt proved his scoundrel status, landing Maggie and me into singledom at the same time, something that hadn’t happened since we’d met our first year in law school.

  “A sexual dry spell?” Q said, smiling despite the lunch he’d pushed away again. “I can’t even remember what that’s like.”

  “Shut up,” Maggie and I said in unison.

  Q kept smiling.

  “What about Sam?” Maggie asked me.

  “What about Sam?” I repeated, as if by saying the question out loud someone external, or maybe someone deep inside me, would answer definitively. But as usual, only more questions popped up: Could we ever recapture what we had? Should we stop wondering about recapturing and consider redesigning? And
then came that question, always that brutal question that scared the others, and even the other possible answers, into complete silence: Was it over between us for good?

  Sam and I had met through Forester Pickett, a Chicago media mogul we both worked for-me as a lawyer and Sam as a financial advisor at a private wealth management firm. When Forester was killed, our worlds spun out of control. And I’m not using that phrase-out of control-the way I previously used it when I was on trial or in the middle of a particularly nasty contract battle. Everything is so out of control, I would say back then, having no idea what that really meant.

  In the aftermath of Forester’s death, we tried to put back together the team that was Sam and Izzy, Izzy and Sam, but something was missing. And lacking the tools to adequately describe it, or maybe just lacking the tools to adequately ride it out and shift our worlds around, we dated other people and then officially broke up. The breakup came right about the time Theo and I ended, too-right about the time I ended the minor romance that sprung up with my friend Grady.

  And so for the last two months, it had been just me. I spent time with Q and Maggie. I saw my family, too- my brother, Charlie, my mom and her husband, Spence. That friend and family time had helped me to arise from the fog I’d started carrying around, but I agreed with Maggie that maybe we both needed something new.

  “Look,” I said, ignoring the question about Sam. “Tattoos aren’t going to help. We need something else.”

  “You do,” Q said. “It’s almost your birthday.”

  “That’s right!” Maggie said. “Ten days from now. What do you want to do?”

  I thought about it. “I guess I just want to be around family and friends. Does that sound too boring?”

  “Kinda,” Q said.

  Maggie pushed her plate away. “No, c’mon, you need something.” Suddenly, she sat up tall, brushing her wavy, golden-brown hair out of her eyes. “A vacation!” she said. “That’s it! We’ll celebrate your birthday by getting the hell out of Dodge.”

  “Shane and I are going to St. Bart’s,” Q said. “You could come with us.”