They walk into the Plain Jar without looking at the bartender and head straight for the stairway. At the top landing is a dim corridor that breaks right and left. At the right-hand end, a meatboy in a bad-fitting suit sits on a barstool before a closed door. Lenore starts an even march toward him, as he rises up off the stool and holds a flat palm up like a traffic cop. She responds with a classic index finger to the lips, a shush to an excited child.
The guy puts his hand inside his suit coat and leaves it there as Lenore leans up to his ear and whispers, “Welcome wagon gift from your new neighbor,” then she gives his lobe a small lick.
He scrunches his brow to show confusion, but doesn’t speak.
Lenore smiles, indicates the girls, who’ve fallen in behind her, and says, “A little something Mr. Cortez sent over. For the boss. For Cousin Mo. You know—welcome to the neighborhood.”
He stares at her for a few seconds, holds up a finger to indicate wait a second, then gives two knocks on the door and without waiting for an answer turns the knob and sticks his head inside, up to his steroid-enhanced neck. There are some low, guttural barks back and forth and before the meatboy can extract his head and tell her to wait at the bar, Lenore checks her good shoulder into his back and he falls forward onto his knees, throwing the door wide open. Zarelli is on his knees in the center of the room. Lenore jumps over the meatboy, draws out the.38, pulls down the hammer, grabs Zarelli in a headlock, and pushes the barrel up against his temple.
Suddenly, everyone in the room has a gun drawn, and Cousin Mo clearly isn’t sure what’s happening. Lenore knows that what she’s about to do probably doesn’t make much sense, but she’s betting that fact won’t dawn on anyone, Zarelli included, for another five minutes. She speaks fast, directly to the boss.
“Don’t. This guy’s a cop, for Christ sake.”
Cousin Mo raises both his hands in a weird, nervous, birdlike gesture that seems to restrain his associates.
Lenore tries for a little arrogance. “You should really learn who it is that you’re doing business with, my friend.”
A long minute passes while Cousin Mo stares and thinks, then he says, “And you are?”
“I’m an employee of your new neighbor, Mr. Cortez. Owns Hotel Penumbra. You might have heard. You now owe him a favor.”
Cousin Mo comes forward to his desk. The meatboy is up, dishonored, shamefaced. The guy next to Cousin Mo head-signals him away and the kid closes the office door behind himself.
“Why would my neighbor be so concerned about my welfare?” Cousin Mo asks.
Lenore instinctively tightens her grip around Zarelli’s neck, possibly cutting off some air. She gives a sigh and says, “I’m sure he has his reasons. He’ll probably be letting you know what they are very soon.”
Cousin Mo looks down at Zarelli and then back up at Lenore.
“He’s as filthy as they come,” she says, “but he’s on Mr. Cortez’s leash.”
“Are you saying Mr. Cortez wants to discuss a deal?”
She loosens up on Zarelli, steps backward, and pulls him to his feet. “I’m saying we’re leaving now. And I’m saying you should show a little more discretion in the future. And I’m saying you may be getting a call soon. Any problems with that?”
Cousin Mo looks like he doesn’t know whether he’s had his ego stroked or his shoes spit on. He looks around at his men, then lowers his voice and says, “I understand.”
Lenore nods, puts the gun back in her pocket, lifts the back flap of Zarelli’s sport coat, and grabs hold of his belt.
“Someone wants to talk with you,” she says to Zarelli’s back. “You try to bolt on me and I’ll shoot right through your spine.”
She starts to move for the door.
Cousin Mo says, “Thank Mr. Cortez for me.”
She marches Zarelli out in front of her, a sweaty, shallow-breathing shield, all the way back to her Barracuda. They don’t speak until they cross out of the Park, at which point Zarelli smashes his fist into the dash and says, “You put it up to my fucking head—”
She cuts him off and yells back, “Who knows what Mo would have done if I hadn’t come in. He’s untested. He could have done anything—”
“—my fucking head. Right here.” He points to his temple with his index and middle fingers.
“I had to shock them,” she yells.
“Shock them? My heart. My goddamn heart.”
She pulls the Barracuda into the curb with a screech, jams it into park, and they start to slap each other around the upper torso. This is not the first time this has happened. Things escalate and Lenore loses herself, makes a fist, and comes up under Zarelli’s jaw.
He drops his offense, takes his face in his hands, yelling, “The bridge, oh no, the new bridge.”
Lenore sinks back in her seat, punches the steering wheel.
“Is it the bridge? Did I break it?” she asks grudgingly.
He doesn’t answer right away, sits there stroking his jaw like a shaving cream commercial.
A few minutes go by. Finally, he says, “You know, word’s going to get back to Cortez.”
She says, “Let me worry about Cortez.”
There’s another pause and he adds, “Thanks for getting me out of there.”
“Sorry about the gun. I probably shouldn’t have pulled back the hammer.”
“You had to shock them. You had to move quickly.”
“I made a decision. I acted on it.”
He slides a hand over onto her thigh.
She shakes her head no, shifts back into drive.
“We’ve got a briefing in about five hours.”
He makes a face that says please, changes it, pitifully, into I beg you.
Lenore stomps the gas and thinks, I should have popped the weasel when I had the chance.
Chapter Two
After she dumps Zarelli, Lenore cruises home to the green duplex. There’s no chance of sleep, so she takes a cold shower, pops a hit of crank, and sits on the end of her bed, naked, pumping ten-pound weights and watching metal videos with the sound off. She’s waiting for signs of life from her brother Ike, next door.
Lenore lives on the other side of his apartment, in the other half of the green duplex. The arrangement has worked out pretty well, all things considered. They often work different hours, but manage to have meals together a few times a week. Ike thinks their parents would be pleased to know this. They’ve been dead just over seven years now. They died within six months of one another. Ma went first, a coronary. Dad followed in the fall with a lethal embolism in the front of the brain. A month after the estate was settled — there wasn’t much, a small savings account, and the house and car— Lenore and he went in halves on the duplex. She’d gotten a promotion on the force, and things down at the post office looked stable enough for him. They took a twenty-year fixed mortgage and moved in in the spring.
When they do eat together, it’s Ike who does the cooking. Lenore, like Pa, enjoys eggs and sausages. Anytime, day or night. Ike tries to warn her about cholesterol and fat intake, but he can’t talk to Lenore about crap like that. She takes her life in her hands, and in a big way, like three or four times a week. Last year, down the projects, Zarelli kicks a door in on this upstart smack dealer and Lenore leaps into his pigsty, all pumped up for a big-time collar. But the guy’s been tipped, he’s expecting them and he’s ready around a corner of the apartment, with a gun to Lenore’s head. Before Zarelli can move, the dealer pulls the trigger, but, thank God, the gun is this piece of garbage, unregistered and off the street from, who knows, like Taiwan or someplace, and it explodes in his hands — puts the bullet intended for Lenore into the dealer’s own throat.