Chapter 11 - Children of Housekeepers

Ginger stood silently while his employer finished loading dishes into the dish washer.  He brushed his right hand over his close cropped red hair and exhaled slowly.  He marveled at her.  No one would have thought anything strange about hiring a housekeeper.  She made enough money, legitimate money.  No one would ever have suspected anything funny about her having a housekeeper.  But she didn't want one.

They had argued about it once.  To the extent their relationship allowed argument, he had argued  about it.  She talked about the one time when she was a little girl and the Lady of the house had her pearls go missing.  They were only missing for a couple of hours.  But somewhere in those hours the Lady had looked at her mother and she, a girl of five, had seen the look.  She had wondered if she had known what that look meant at five years old.

Or.

 Or had she merely filed that image - that memory - away.  Was it years later when she understood what that look meant?  As she remembers it now, she can't pull the indignity and scorn away from that look driven at her mother the housekeeper.  

He had sat quietly at that recollection.  She was connecting dots from her memory to her reasons for not hiring a maid that he could not see.  He was smart enough to sit quietly through the parts he didn't understand.  She had told him that his willingness to allow a silence to fall was one of the things she loved about him.  She saw it in play when she was telling this story of pearls and smiled at him.  "I never want to be the kind of person who simply misplaces something and demeans another with just a look.  Having someone at my beck and call in my own home?   That could do that to me.  Know your weaknesses, Ginger, and take steps against them."

That had closed the conversation on that day.  But Ginger's mother had been a maid too.  That money had but bread on their table when he was a child.  He asked her about that.  Her weaknesses denying a livelihood to others.  She had bit her lip and sat silently for a time.  "Interesting" was all she had said.

A week later Ginger was put in charge of finding four young ladies who were looking for work cleaning homes.  They were each given the homes of three widows of limited means.  Ms. Wetta picked up the tab for all 12 homes to be cleaned.  Ginger had smiled at her when she had given him the assignment.  None of the bosses in London would have ever spent money in this way.  He did some digging.  The widows were of police officers, firemen, and such.  He smiled.  There must be an angle, he thought.

It was going well until two of the widows began to complain of things going missing from their homes, their purses.  Ginger was tasked with searching their homes for the missing items - older women could make the mistakes of the elderly, after all.  He was discreet.  They never knew he had been in their homes.

 He was next tasked with searching the home and the person of the young woman accused.  He found the things she had not pawned yet and then worked his way out from her home to each pawnshop along the way. She had gone to all the trouble of going to pawn shop that was the fourth farthest from her house.

He made his report to Ms. Wetta.  She asked him to tell her about the girl.   He laid it out as best he knew it and then answered her follow up questions.  The girl was from a lower middle class family.  Not much in the way of luxuries but not hurting either.  She had made good grades in the school but the family had made no provision for college.  She sang in her church choir but did not get any solos.  She liked to dance.  She would go to the bars in Houston and two step with the 10 gallon hats she found there.  Pretty girl but not strikingly so.  

Ms. Wetta nodded to all of this and finally inhaled deeply and exhaled as the judgment had been reached.  "Crush her left ankle.  She never walks again without a limp, Ginger.  If she ever again takes a step without a limp, you go back and crush it again.  Am I understood?"

"Yes ma'am," he answered with a clear voice.  He had tried once, in shock of one these coldly delivered pronouncements, to simply nod his head.  She had not allowed that.  Clarity did not allow that.

 "Ginger?"  He paused and waited for whatever was to come next,"She can keep the job as long as the things are returned to the widow.  Have one of the other girls cover for her while she recovers."

But that was years ago.  Today he stood quietly while she finally finished the last dish.  "So he got into the game the way we expected, eh?"

"Yes, ma'am," he answered as he took his seat across from her at the kitchen table.  "I barked at him pretty good but he let it roll off him.  Even made a joke about the little window being an 'affectation.'"

"Never use a ten cent word when you can wedge in a five dollar one, that's my boy."

They both smiled at that.  Ginger went on to tell the tale of how the boy and Clay Diamond had stripped a small fortune off the others at the table before turning on one another.

Ms. Wetta sat and listened closely and never again interrupted him except to offer him a cup of tea, which he refused.  She sat back down with her own cup of coffee.  Ginger had not seen any tea but was certain, based on her offer, that if he had said he had wanted tea, it would have appeared.

At the end of the story she sat back in her chair and lifted the coffee cup to her lips and having never taken a sip, sat it back down.  "Diamond busted him?"  Ginger nodded.  She shook her head.  Actually sipped her coffee and shook her head again.  "He let Clay Diamond take every single cent?"

"He needed a lesson in humility, you said so.  That's why you let this play out.  It will do him some good," Ginger volunteered.

Ms. Wetta sipped her coffee.  She smiled as she looked into the dark black liquid.  And then she laughed.  She laughed long and loud and hard.  "What the hell, he earned it.  He truly earned it."  And she laughed even louder as Ginger sat quietly.

End Chapter 11

Chapter 10 - Welcome to Houston

The martini was icy cold.  So cold that the gin and vermouth felt like oil on his tongue.  He was quite comfortably and satisfactorily drunk.  He looked out of the great huge windows and could not see a single plane that he knew was grounded out there in the dark and the gloom and the wet - somewhere.  Every single person who had told him to not even bother going to the airport today had been right.  There was just no way under the sun - hell, there wasn't even any sun - that his flight was going to leave today.

But it was not a total waste.  He had met Henry and Henry had made him the best martini he had ever had.  He could not at this moment remember which of the several martinis had been the best martini he had ever had, but he was sure that Henry had made it.  Why did Henry keep saying Jeremy every time he called him Henry?

He could not take time to worry about that now.  He was in a charming conversation with a local that was just fascinating.  The man knew the best places in town to play cards or get laid or get drunk.  He was the one who had introduced him to Henry in the first place.  Why had he called Henry Jeremy?

It was after several martini's and a captivating story about how the stranger's mistress had been shot by a jealous boyfriend and how that boyfriend had been beaten beyond recognition when the Texan had turned to him and asked, "Don't I know you?"  It had sounded much more like, "Dawn't Ah know Yew?" but the English to Texan translation center of his brain was apparently still working.   He turned and smiled at the gentleman who had paid for more than half their drinks. "I do don't I?  Have I seen you on TV or something?"  And that was all it had taken to form a beautiful friendship over fantastic martinis.

"You may very well have, my good man."

"Well I'll be...   You're that lawyer, ain'tcha?  The one representin' that guy in Chicago that stole all that Wallstreet money."

"Well, sir, I used to represent him.  Until about 3:22 in the morning this past Tuesday."

"Oh hell, that's right.  I heard about his heart attach.  Sad.  Man that old, under that kind of stress.  And word was you was going to get him off."

"Oh hell, yeah.  The S.E.C had no idea what hit 'em.  Best they could have hoped for after I got done with their star witness was a mistrial and they knew it.  I caught the poor bastard up so many times the jury wasn't sure if they believed him when he stated his name for the record."  This was followed by a cackling laugh and then a hacking cough.

The other man shook his head and took a sip from whatever he was drinking from a tall collins glass.  "Damn.  That's sad.  To have the stress and strain of a trial kill ya.  And him with that young wife of his expecting.  How old is she?"

He sipped his latest favorite martini and winked at Henry and said,"Twenty-two.  And every attribute that you have ever admired on television or in the papers is completely and totally hers.  Nothing store bought on our Mrs. Russoff.  No sirree.  That's all hers.  And near as any gossip I have ever heard, those twins she is carrying in that new great big belly are the sole responsibility of my 78 year old deceased client.  She is apparently a faithful and true gold digger and he is - was - a miracle of modern science.  TO FATHERHOOD AT 78 YEARS OLD!"  He sloshed his drink in the air and the other man smiled at him while gently shaking gin and vermouth from his left arm while hefting his own drink.

"To an innocent man," he said as he lifted his collins glass.  This was met with even more violent laughter and  a truly disturbing coughing fit.  The martini was forgotten as he coughed so hard he gagged.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then wiped his spittle covered hand on his tailored slacks.  "Innocent?  Innocent?  Oh God.  He wasn't innocent!  He was guilty as sin!  He stole every damn bit of that money and more that the Feds had no freaking clue about!  Innocent!  Ha!  Henry, I've lost my damn drink.  Hit me man."

He never noticed how Jeremy the bartender looked at the man with the collins glass and waited for a subtle nod before he ever reached for the gin.  "Guilty?  Really?  He took all those millions from all those people and those companies  Really?"

"Geez, man.  That's just the money on the actual - above - the -table - books.  My client, my poor little Russian emigre' of a client, Osip Dmitrii Russoff was old school mafia.  Went semi-legit way back in 50's.  Used to say he was following the Kennedy model to respectability.  But he kept some of the ties. SOOoooo,  when he starts making millions for legit outfits, it was only a matter of time before his friends with the crooked noses wanted a taste.  Only they didn't know it was a great big ole house of cards.  And he was either too scared and too ballsy to tell 'em."

He paused to sip his latest martini.  "Henry,"

"Jeremy"

"...that just might be the best damn martini I have ever had it my whole damn life."

The man with the collins glass smiled.  "He swindled the mob?"

"'THE'?  'the'?  He swindled every damn mob there was.  Early on it was the Italians and the Irish and the Jews.  And then it was the Jamaicans, the Russians, the Crips, the Bloods, the Mexicans, the Columbians.  You name a poor, mistreated minority group in this country that had a self hating criminal element that abused their own people, and Osip Dmitrii took 'em for millions - billions maybe.  And was smart enough to get away with it."

"How?"  This was met with more laughter.  And coughing.

"Any time he had to make a payment to anybody that he couldn't cover, all of a sudden a gang war would break out or somebody would turn state's evidence or something would happen that would just completely wreck the operation in question.  Sometimes it didn't even cost him a dime.  He would just tell one group what he saw the last time he was with one of the other groups.  Hell, sometimes it would even be the truth.  The old bastard was a master at it."

"The whole trial, all of it, I wouldn't be surprised if the old coot hadn't set it up as an out.  Make himself too hot for the boys but not hot enough to get convicted.  God knows he was never worried a single step of the trial.  Never met a damn soul as self-assured as old Osip Dmitrii."

The man with the collins glass smiled and shook his head.  "If he had it all planned out that well, why did he need you?  No offense,"  he added as he saw the beginnings of a hurt look on the other man's face.

"None taken.  I was a prop.  I was stage dressing.  I am building a name for myself, ya know,in certain circles.  He was my biggest case, by far, ya know,  but I had gotten other guys off, or, at least, reduced sentences.  Settled some cases that looked like federal time was coming for my clients.  But I'm good at what I do.  It would be plausible.   I could get him off if he had been in any actual trouble.  But the more I think about it, I wonder if the prosecutor or even the damn judge was on his payroll."

"A crooked judge?  That's a hell of an accusation."

"Just the martini talking.  Speaking of which," and he picked up his martini, " to Osip Dmitrii Russoff, the guilty bastard!"

The man with the collins glass raised it for the toast but then asked, "Hey, isn't all this, what do you call it, attorney - client privilege?"

The man with the martini laughed long and hard and wound up coughing again.  "Look mister, no disrespect, but we are basically alone in an airport bar drunk off our asses and I'm the currently-famous-because-of-the-latest-crime-of-the-century attorney John Farfenelli.  If you went outside right now and tried to tell anybody any of this, what do you think the chances are that anybody would believe you?"

"Oh, I don't know.  It has been my experience over the years that even if they shouldn't, most people believe the word of a sitting county magistrate."

"What now?"

"We have not been properly introduced, Mr. Farfenelli.  My name is His Honor Bentley Amos Bradshaw, elected Magistrate for Harris County, TX.  Welcome to Houston."

End Chapter 10

Chapter 9 - My Brother the Problem

Joey Suka sat and sipped his vodka alone in the little office at the back of the club and could tell by the lack of laughs that someone was bombing on stage.  The man with the gun came in and sat down across from him.  He did not speak.  That was normal.  It used to unnerve Joey - him coming in and sitting quietly.  It stopped unnerving him when he began to think that was the whole point.  Now the man with the gun smiled at him.  And that unnerved the hell out of him.

"Vhat?  Vhat do you vant?"

"Please.  Do you even know what the word 'suka' means in Russian?"

"Is vone ov de most feared criminal organizations in Russia dating back to the Great Patriotic War."

"Don't you mean 'Var'?  As in 'Var Var 2'?  Isn't 'the Great Patriotic War' what WWII was called by the Russians?"

Joey sipped his vodka.  The lie was on the tip of his tongue.  Maybe the vodka washed it away.  "I know full well what 'suka' means in Russian.  It means 'bitch'.  Stalin freed prisoners who were willing to fight the Germans in World War Two.  When they went back to prison they were everybody's bitches just like they were for Stalin.  Until they banded together and killed any and every single person who looked at them funny."

The truth had an invigorating quality. Or maybe it was the vodka.  "I liked the story.  Taking the insult and making it a badge of honor.  Forming one of the most feared criminal organizations in the world and having the audacity to call yourselves by the insult everyone else threw at you - embracing the term 'bitch.'"

The man with the gun got up and fixed himself a glass of vodka with two cubes of ice.  He took a sip and you could see an idea come to mind, "Do you even like vodka?"

Joey smiled.  "I hate the stuff.  I hate the stupid accents and I hate what I do."

"Then why do it?"

"Have you ever looked in Jamie's eyes?  I mean, really had a moment to look my brother in the eyes?  There's nothing there.  Nothing really there.  Like he doesn't even have a soul.  An empty shell.  Who looks exactly like me."

The man with the gun squinted.  It was an answer.  But it didn't answer anything.

"He killed his first human being when we were 13 years old.  Not a bully or a self defense kind of thing.  Lured an eleven year old boy into the woods and killed him.  And not quickly.  He hurt the boy.  Explored.  It looked like someone trying to figure out a how a clock works by removing all the gears.  Just a whole lot more blood."

The man with the gun sipped his vodka.

"By the time we were sixteen I got him to focus on bullies and the abusive. Mostly.  At nineteen I gave up.  I couldn't control him, I thought.  I decided to kill him.  I wasn't into knives or guns.  I was just big.  And strong.  So.  I decided to beat him to death."

"I hit him.  And I hit him again.  I remember the look on his face.  Surprise.  And I hit him again and again. I cried.  I mean, great big snot bubbles kinda crying while I am just whaling on him.  It didn't even register at the time that he wasn't fighting back.  I just beat him until I was exhausted.  But he wasn't dead.  I couldn't kill him.  I loved him.  I couldn't understand him.  Or forgive him.  But I loved him."

"Everyone who's died and suffered since has done so because I loved my brother too much to kill him.  That's why I got us into this business.  He gets his jollies with people who come the closest to deserving it.  And who knows, with so many thugs and scum bags with automatic weapons, maybe one of them gets lucky one day."

"I learned something from beating him so badly.  I learned how important it was to him that we were identical.  I should have noticed.  Mother never tried to dress us alike.  But there are all these pictures of us as kids in exactly the same outfits."

"Maybe that should have been a warning.  I never saw it that way.  Until he came at me with a billy club once he got out of the hospital.  It was methodical.  Didn't seem that way at the time.  Just seemed like I was getting my ass kicked.  No.  That's too flippant.  I thought he was going to kill me."

"He beat me systematically.  Bruise for bruise, broken bone for broken bone.  You see this scar?  We both have it.  His was because of a ring I used to wear on this finger.  Mine was because of an exacto knife.  He beat me down and then sat on me, with his knees on my shoulders and his left hand forcing my head to one side, carved the same scar under my right eye with an exacto knife.  He pulled the skin from his carving with a pair of tweezers."

"So.  We had to match.  We had to match.  That was an advantage.  A small one.  But an advantage.  It took me years to figure out."

"So I tested it.   We had to speak in wediculous wussian accents.  We became grotesquely fat bastards because I could do that to him. I could do that to him and he could do nothing back.  I did my best to embarrass him.  To humiliate him.  I can't kill him.  But I can make his life miserable."

"But...what kind of life..."



"What kind of life did that leave you?"

"I haven't had a life since I was thirteen years old."

End Chapter Nine

Chapter 8 - No Laughing Matter

Jamie Suka stood at the back of the club twirling around his shot glass of vodka.  He did not like vodka.  But scary Russians drank vodka - ALRIGHT JOEY - not red wine or lambic beers or those fruity drinks with the umbrellas.  So.  Jamie stood at the back of the club and twirled the shot glass around and round with the vodka somehow maintaining within the glass.  The comedian was not getting many laughs.  Some.  But not many.

The comedian stood perfectly still.  "Who am I?"  he asked the crowd.  "Michael J. Fox break dancing."  Groans.  A couple of boos.  Muffled laughter.  Jamie smiling from ear to ear.

"You think he's funny?"

It was the flowing red hair that had pressed the ceramic razor against his throat.  The flowing red hair had come the closest of anyone other than Joey to ending his life.  But unlike Joey, she had not smelled of fear.  She had smelled of vanilla and chamomile.  The blade, once the flowing red hair had removed it from his throat and placed it under his nose, had smelled like something else altogether.  The blade had smelled of his sweat and something... else.

He looked at her and his nostrils flared in the memory.  The hair, the red hair, the flowing red hair trailed down over her shoulder and came to a rest on the breast of her leather jacket.  Other men would have noticed the tar black jeans and how they ran recklessly over her curves.  Jamie could not take his eyes away from the flowing red hair.  "He is funny enough.  Smart.  Too smart for most of them here.  Too honest to."

"You think making fun of someone with a disease is funny?"

"You were offended?"  He did not wait for a reply.  "Do you know someone who suffers?  Is that why suffering is not funny to you?  Or do you care just too damn much?"

"I had an uncle with Parkinson's.  It brought a very strong man low."

Jamie looked at the flowing red hair and imagined, no, knew he was not the first to be captured by that image.  The shaking uncle had offered protection.  Until the shaking had proven too great an impediment.  He wondered how soon after the shaking uncle had been rendered ineffective before she had found blades.  He picked up the shot between his thumb and forefinger and downed the vodka violently.  No need to let her see how much she had let him see.

"You know," he said, "Most of the time, when someone accuses someone of going too far, of being obscene or inappropriate, the response is to condemn the accuser of not having a sense of humor.  I think differently.  I think the person who is offended is such a caring person, such a loving person, that they cannot find humor in the suffering of their fellow man.  It is a sign of deep empathy that the pain of others registers so personally for them."

The flowing red hair stood before him in what could only be awe.  She had not expected such depth from him.  She turned her head slightly to the left and reached out and cupped his right elbow with her right hand.

 He so enjoyed the look on her face as he said, "But I see the humor in everything."

End Chapter Eight

Chapter 7 - Assumptions

The yellow tape flickered in the fans that shifted hot air violently from one side of the large, saw dust strewn room to the other.  The glare from the portable workmen lights only increased as the sun sped down over the horizon.  Saw horses were stacked against a far wall as the police officers and technicians gathered in front of the half removed center wall of the room.

The wall had separated a rather expansive kitchen from an even larger dining area that led to a surprisingly small study.  The workmen had been challenged with removing the center wall to create an open view of the dining area so the kitchen could see the diners in the next room.  The workmen had been sitting around sipping coffee for  roughly an hour after the uniformed police had finished all their questions about the two large, clear plastic bags found in the wall.  The plastic was especially thick and sealed air tight against the whole of the world.

The two bags each held a body.  One body held a gun in its right hand.  The other was the body of a woman.  A woman with her head shaved bare.

The two detectives had finally arrived and dipped below the yellow tape and kicked up sawdust as they walked across the room.  The older, slender detective growled for the fans to be turned off and spat out a bit of dust for all the trouble of opening his mouth.  His younger, slightly plumper partner shook his head at the gruffness and the spittle and stepped up to the wall that almost wasn't any more.

"Not a damn bit of odor in the air.  The bags seemed to be sealed.  Air tight.  Some sort of melting done to the edges.  When the coroner cuts them open, I really don't want to be there."

The older man came up and ran his index finger and his thumb around the edges of the bag that held the woman.  "Huh"

The younger man waited.  It had taken him weeks to learn to be patient after those grumpy, "Huh's".  Ask the obvious question and the old man would clam up.  Doubt himself to the point of not wanting to say it out loud.  But keep quiet.  Be almost dismissive and he would hav

"That jacket.  Men haven't worn that style in 20 years.  Bet if you check the label, it will be a custom job out someplace in Italy or somewhere."

The younger man looked at the jacket with its single button on the front and the way it tapered to the waist.  He knew the best way to get more out of the older man was to appear skeptical.  But it was honest this time.  High fashion?  From 20 years ago?

"My first wife was a seamstress in Malaysia before she came to this country.  She was something of an expert on fashion and the quality of fashion.  Some of it rubbed off."

The younger man looked again at the older man's leather shoes and for the first time wondered if they might NOT be cheap knock offs.

"We need to find out who owned this house twenty of so years ago.  The new owners obviously have nothing to do with it or they wouldn't have hired these folks to knock the wall down.  Well, unless they were extremely stupid.  Or they could be really smart and are counting on us to not look at them.  Who knows."

Ah.  Have to get him out of that rabbit hole.  Brilliant man, but he was so open minded that he sometimes could not close it around the obvious.  He was so paranoid about his own assumptions leading him past the truth.  Get the facts.  Reel him back in with the facts.  A few taps on his hand held and his jaw dropped open.

"What?" asked the older man.

"Holy shi..."

"Language, John."

"This house, twenty years ago, this house was owned by Giovanni Farfenelli.  And then his estate."

Both detectives stood silent and just looked at each other.  It was left to one of the uniformed officers to state the obvious, "Are you saying we might have found the missing Farfenelli heiress? The one who has been missing for 18 years?  The one that supposedly took all that money?"

End Chapter 7

Chapter 6 - Never Argue

He blinked his eyes, smirked, exhaled, and reached for his Scotch.  The smirk became a smile as he saw the slight tremor in his hand just before it closed around the glass.  He inhaled deeply, raised his glass, actually laughed out loud, and then finished his drink.   He sat it back down and did not react at all as his hand slowly, gracefully returned to the arm of his chair.

The alcohol began to hum a soft, sweet hymn through the lower basin of his mind.  The tremor, the laugh, hell, the fear, had been a welcome surprise.  At the very wrong end of the gun he was fifteen years old again.  But this time he had not whimpered for his mother.  

The gun had been too real.  Metal.  Dark.  Oily. The light had actually danced into rainbows as it ran from sleek, gleaming metal.  But the shadows had loved him.  The Gun.  He had called him the Gun.  He had a name.  He knew his parents had talked about him when they thought he had not been able to listen.  And he had a name.  But he had called him, simply, the Gun.  

The Gun had been too real.  Cold.  Dark.  Brooding.  The shadows had caressed him.  He had served drinks while slipping under the light - becoming the shadow and the obstruction all in one.  "Is that how people see me?" he wondered.  He knew he never inspired that kind of fear.   But the...mystique.  The hesitancy to interrupt, the reverence.  That seemed like the memories one found in a mirror.

He heard her key turn in the lock.  "Hi, honey! You're home!" he called out.  He sat there and waited while she turned out of her coat.  She walked into the study, saw his empty glass and he saw the hesitation.  His kiss could wait.  She turned and grabbed the bottle of bourbon and poured herself a drink and then grabbed the Scotch for him.

She sipped her bourbon and bent down to kiss him softly on the lips.  She smiled as she pulled away.  She always smiled just after a kiss.  She had tasted of bourbon.  "Well, you're alive.  That much of your plan seems to have worked out."

She settled into chair so recently occupied by the man with the gun and crossed her legs.  He couldn't see her feet from this angle but knew that one of her pumps would be dangling from her toes having lost purchase on her heal.  With her perfectly swept back blonde hair and the tan skirt that outlined her figure with a black top unbuttoned almost to the limit of good taste and a rock glass of bourbon - she was temptation.

She was not beautiful.  Something with the nose being a little too... something.   If you found yourself looking closely enough to find the imperfections in her features, you found yourself lost.  For while you would never have defined her as beautiful, you would have been caught up in desire.  She was lust, temptation.  It inspired his pet name for her.

He had learned to resist beauty and sex and money and power.  He had never thought to steel himself against intelligence.  Fortunately for him, she hadn't either.  He was making a fortune on the periphery of her social scene.  People with more money than sense, almost always the ones who had inherited the fortune rather than the ones who had earned it, were too happy to invest with him.  Some of those investments had even been legitimate.  And profitable.  And he was working his way up to bigger and bigger fish when he had been introduced to the heiress of the Farfenelli fortune.

She watched him for almost a year playing his games and hopping from bed to bed with the daughters and wives and mistresses of men with fortunes enough to crush him if they ever found out.  But they trusted him.  They all liked him.  She could not figure out why.  Whatever spell he cast, however he engendered such trust, it failed to work on her.  She disliked him almost immediately.

And then, one night at one party, over drinks of course, they talked.  She told him that she thought he was a fraud.  He said of course he was.  She told him that she thought he was out to make as much money as he could off of the insipid and arrogant.  He said of course he was.  She pointed out that he was basically a whore for every bit of silicone and plastic and hair extended trollop that subsisted on the arms of billionaire cuckolds and fools.  He sipped the last of his Scotch.

"I have had far too much to drink and I am trying to pick a fight with you, but you just aren't going to commit, are you?"

He smiled at her.  She had not seen that smile before.  She wondered how many of the women here had seen that smile.

"I learned long ago to never argue with a woman smarter than me."  He smiled again and this time seemed to notice her noticing his smile and quickly sipped his drink.

''Why did you do that?"

"What?"

"Cover your smile with a rock glass of mostly Scotch flavored ice?  Don't think there was even a sip left in there."

He looked at her and then at his glass and then smirked.  She was strangely certain that no one else here, male or female, had seen that smirk before.  It was... awkward.  It was embarrassed.  She felt the tip of her tongue touch her upper lip as she realized that smirk was... honest.  And she was acutely aware that he had seen her wet her lips and blushed slightly as she knew he would misread this.

He looked down at his drink.  He looked her in the eyes, "How many guys have tried to kiss you after you wet your lips like that?"

She found herself laughing and just managed to wave her left hand in the air - the hell if she was going to sweep her hair back over that one - charming - comment.  With her right hand she lifted her glass of bourbon to her lips and too late realized that it was basically just ice.

They both laughed at that.

They often laughed.  Mostly at themselves.  As she sat across from him with one shoe dangling from her toes, they were not smiling.  "What was he like?"

"He is smart.  Smart enough to not let on how smart he is.  Calculating.  Cold.  A killer.  If the dollars hadn't been so preposterously big, he would have shot me on general principle."

That hung in the air.  They had talked over and over again about how much of the truth to tell the man with the gun.  One train of thought was to keep the dollars reasonable.  Believable.  The truth, the actual amounts, was literally ridiculous.  They had finally decided to not decide.  He would make the call based on what he found with the man and the gun here in the room.

"The truth was so stupid, I had to be telling the truth.  If it had been reasonable, he would have smelled a con and I would have an additional nostril."

He hid his smile behind his glass of Scotch.  She did nothing to hide her disdain at his gallows humor.

"How much does he know?  You played the brother card..."

"He knew we were brothers.  Or he knew I would say we were brothers.  He knew the story about Junior shooting his mother.  Don't know if he believed that either."

"He is smart"

"Told you."

"Does he really pretend to work for the Russians?"

"Calls them the Neckless.  And yes, he maintains that appearance."

She sips her bourbon.  He notices just a bit of her lipstick at the edge of her glass.  She exhales deeply and looks over the books on the shelves just to his left.   The tip of her tongue finds her upper lip.  She frowns.

He looks down at his Scotch.  He looks over at the bottles of liquor just over her right shoulder.  He drinks deeply and realizes through the numbness of his lips that he is most certainly drunk.

"I love you," he says to her.

"Of course you do."

End Chapter Six