“No, I thought I could nuke us something nice.”
She cracked a smile.
“Or Gerri’s Diner,” I said.
The smile got wider.
“Okay. My last shot: Paola’s,” I said, throwing out the name of her favorite restaurant. “I can call Stefano and ask them to bake me a humble pie for dessert.”
The smile exploded into an eye-rolling, this-guy-is-incorrigible laugh.
“Seven o’clock,” she said. “Pick me up in my office.”
She headed down to the second floor, and I went back up to the third. I wouldn’t be sleeping on the sofa tonight.
Chapter 35
Jeremy Nevins had never killed anyone before, but shooting Raymond Davis didn’t faze him a bit. The arrogant bastard had it coming. First he’d botched Jeremy’s biggest score, and then he’d had the balls to demand more money.
Jeremy was at a table in the Recovery Room, a plate of half-eaten Buffalo chicken wings and an untouched mug of Stella Artois in front of him. He wasn’t hungry, but he needed the real estate and the Wi-Fi, and no place was deader than a sports bar at three in the afternoon. Correction, he thought, looking down at his eighty-thousand-dollar Audemars Piguet watch: 3:01.
The watch had been a gift — more like a signing bonus. But with an eight-million-dollar pot of diamonds at the end of the rainbow, Jeremy would have signed on for a Timex.
The plan had been perfect until Leo, his self-obsessed partner in crime, decided not to get in the limo because he didn’t look right.
So now Elena was dead, the necklace was in the wind, and Jeremy was on his own, trying to formulate plan B.
He didn’t know where the necklace was, but he was pretty sure he knew who had it: Teddy Ryder’s mother. He’d never met Teddy until last night, but he knew all about him. The man had never had an original thought in his life, and now that he was wounded and scared, he’d go running home to Mama.
And Jeremy knew exactly where to find her. When you plan a crime with a scumbag like Raymond Davis, you hedge your bets. Jeremy had attached a GPS tracker to the underside of Raymond’s Honda Civic just in case he decided to take the necklace and drive off with it.
But the GPS had paid off even sooner. In the week leading up to the robbery, the car made two round-trips from Teddy’s apartment to Hoyt Avenue in Astoria. Jeremy’s antennae went up, so on the third day he tailed the Honda to Annie Ryder’s doorstep.
He knew the old con woman’s history, and he knew that pulling a gun on her wouldn’t produce the necklace. The only way to get it was to cut her a deal, and then get Leo to pay her price.
He tapped on his cell phone and searched Google News. There was nothing on the shooting of Raymond Davis. Either the cops made him for just another crime statistic not worth the ink, or they figured out the connection to Elena Travers and put a lid on it.
The phone vibrated in his hand, and he flinched. It was Sonia Chen. He had no desire to talk to her, but she was too connected to the Bassetts: he couldn’t ignore the call.
“Hey, baby,” he whispered into the phone. “How’s the world’s sexiest publicist?”
“Terrible. Come on over to my apartment.”
“Honey, I’m busy.”
“Just for an hour. Please.”
“Sonia, I’m horny too, but—”
“Don’t be an asshole, Jeremy. I didn’t say horny. I’m scared. I’m lonely. I can’t sleep. I’ve never been involved in anything like this. Elena’s dead, and I keep thinking maybe if I made Leo go in the car with her—”
“Sonia, I’m sorry. But don’t blame yourself. What happened is sad, but it wasn’t your fault. It just happened.”
He waited for a response. Nothing.
“Sonia... does that help, baby?”
“It would help a lot more if you came over here and said it in person,” she said, capping the plea with a loud sigh. “Just for a little while. I really don’t want to be alone. Please.”
Without Sonia Chen, Jeremy never would have met Leo Bassett. He didn’t need her anymore, but if there’s one thing he’d learned stalking prey in the valley of the rich and gullible, it was to never, ever burn bridges.
He looked at his watch. How pathetic that your wrist is worth a fortune, it said, but the rest of you still isn’t worth shit.
“Of course I’ll be there, baby,” he said. “I’ll be right over.”
His face-to-face with Annie Ryder would have to wait.
Chapter 36
Any woman who tells a man she wants to be cuddled and not fucked is either lying to herself or to the guy, or both, Jeremy thought after he’d brought Sonia to her third frenzied orgasm in an hour and a half.
The first one had left her in tears, and he held her in his arms while she sobbed for the dead actress. The second one was much more joyful, like a good old-fashioned, no-strings-attached romp in the sack. The final one was slower, more tender at first. He took his time, teasing her with his tongue, lulling her with gentle kisses, sliding her down onto his lap, and keeping up with her gentle undulating rhythm.
And just as she began to slow down, he lifted her up, and with her legs wrapped tightly around him, he pressed her against a wall with deep, hard, unremitting thrusts until the moans of “Don’t stop” exploded into cries of surrender.
Another satisfied customer, Jeremy thought as he showered. Everybody was good at something, and he’d been blessed with the equipment and the technique to drive a lover to insane new heights.
In the end, not all of them remembered him fondly. Some despised him. Some wished him dead. But none of them would ever forget him.
Sadly, none of that charm or sexual prowess would serve him well in his next encounter. All anyone needed to go up against Annie Ryder was cunning. And he knew enough about her to know that she had more than most.
And yet when the gray-haired woman opened the door to her apartment, Jeremy couldn’t help himself. “You’re much younger than I expected,” he said, reverting to habit.
“And you’re every bit as full of shit as I expected,” the old lady said, ushering him into the living room. “Have a seat.”
He sat down on a rose-colored sofa, and she sat next to him, practically knee to knee. “You called me,” she said. “What’s on your mind?”
“Your son has my necklace.”
“Your necklace?” Annie said. “You and I must not be on the same page, because the necklace all the TV reporters are talking about belongs to these two Bassett brothers.”
“It did. But I hired your son and his friend to procure it for me, and they reneged on their part of the deal.”
Annie smiled. “And from what I understand, according to the Book of Jeremy, the punishment for reneging is a bullet through the brain.”
“That was an unfortunate misunderstanding.”
“What about shooting my son? Was that another unfortunate misunderstanding?”
“Mrs. Ryder—”
She rested her fingers on the back of his hand. “Please... call me Annie.”
“Can we cut the crap, Annie?” he said, pulling his hand away and standing up. “I’m not one of your marks. I’m the guy who hired Raymond and Teddy to do a simple job, and they turned it into a page-one clusterfuck. Here’s the bottom line: you’ve got the hottest piece of jewelry on the planet, and there’s not a fence within three thousand miles that will handle the necklace Elena Travers died for. So unless you’re wired up to the diamond mob in Antwerp or Amsterdam, you can either sell it to me or you can wear it to your next tea party and watch the rest of the old ladies wet their—”