“I’ll assume this means you’re free Thursday.”
Ellen stood up and smoothed out invisible wrinkles over her middle. Her cheeks were red and blotchy, but she wasn’t crying anymore. “All right. One more time. And that’s it.” Still trying to be firm, show me how in charge she was. I wanted to say her pique was wasted—that she should save it for Klein; that empowerment came from topping him, not me—but I couldn’t. The weight of what I’d just done—and what I owed the Lady now—was stuck in my throat like a tumor. “Thursday, the St. Leo—and you will be there, right?”
“Yes.” With Jackal in tow, dead or alive, and more than one camera, just in case.
She told me she’d call me with the time when they’d settled on it. I watched her face as she said it—she’d surprised me twice today, which was two times too many—and thought the odds were close to even that she’d try to find some way to wiggle out of it once Thursday came. I’d need a backup plan. But that’s what the Lady paid me for.
As she was leaving, Ellen turned at the door, and said, “You know, when I first met you, I thought I wanted to be exactly like you. You were wearing these snakeskin pumps and leather pants, and it wasn’t even 10 a.m. yet, you were at the dentist, for chrissakes, and I thought, Now, there’s a woman who knows what it’s like to take what she wants instead of waiting to see what’s left when the world gets around to her. I thought, What would it be like to be dangerous?” She laughed again, unhappily, shaking her head. “And now I know you, this world you slither around in, and you know what?”
I wondered if she’d start crying again or tell me she wished she’d never met me. My lips twisted and my nail tinked against the crystal tumbler. In that pink sweater, she looked sixteen years old, the little sister I’d never had, except the coloring was all wrong. She’s too shortsighted to see what I’m doing for her, what we’re doing together by taking down assholes like Klein, I thought, right before she surprised me for the third time that day: “I still think I want it. It’s the craziest goddamned thing.”
And then she left, taking with her the Lady’s bribe money for the police, and leaving me back in a hole that looked, from the bottom of it, exactly nineteen grand deep.
Chapter 5
After Ellen left, I tried to clear my head, get back to Carrigan. But it was no good. Nineteen grand now and a week to pay it back—my stomach dropped. Less, I realized. It wouldn’t take the police long to discover their hush-hush money was missing. I couldn’t count on more than a few days before they brought it up to the Lady and put their heads together and figured out where the cash had gone. If everything went perfectly, I’d have the money Friday. But now I’d need more from Klein, I realized. If we got fifty grand for the photos, that meant my cut was twelve point five. I needed nineteen now. Which meant I had to get seventy-five from him. The slaps might not be enough to warrant that kind of money. Ellen might have to deal with something worse than slaps. I tried not to think of what that might be.
It became a chant in my head—something worse, something worse—as I scrolled through different clips of the new mark, killing time so I didn’t go crazy waiting to hear back from Ellen. Or imagining which would be worse: the Lady forcing me into “retirement” or what the police would do to all of us if I couldn’t deliver their money quickly. Something worse, I thought, trying to focus on Mitch Carrigan’s handsome face.
He was the best-looking politician I’d ever seen—one of the best-looking men I’d ever seen. A jaw like a lantern, dark blue eyes like a pair of sapphire earrings. A full head of graying hair, shoulders that filled the entire photo frame and then some. Movie-star handsome, but in a nonthreatening way, a believable way. I wondered how far that Carrigan ambition stretched.
It made me uneasy, that face. A face like that tended to mean a girlfriend at every campaign stop and a full team dedicated to crushing unseemly rumors. If the Lady had picked him, there were good odds he had some major flaw. The unimaginative one was easy to guess.
But that wasn’t the only problem. For another thing, he was too connected.
Our marks had to be wealthy—whether they were handpicked by the Lady herself or chosen by those who hired her via gimlet-soaked referrals given poolside at the Beverly Hilton, the chic set dispatching blackmail orders from a cabana—or the marks had to be well connected and visible, able to lay their hands on tiny mountains of cash quickly. But Carrigan was another level of wealthy, a name synonymous with the founding of our city. There wasn’t a cop, or an attorney, in this city who didn’t know that name. You couldn’t drive half a block without finding some memento of his family lineage. The Carrigans would be no strangers to blackmail. They wouldn’t scare easy. They would have friends with the right connections.
That did worry me.
I filled a mug half with coffee and half with gin, then went back to my computer, clicking play on a video accompanying one of the latest news articles.
A perky reporter with the whitest teeth I’d ever seen was interviewing a woman in a navy-blue blazer, hair chopped into a frosty bob. The bottom of the screen identified her as Tana Carrigan, Wife of Mayoral Candidate, and then, in small letters, Philanthropist. Carrigan’s choice of bride would tell me as much about him as anything I could find online. I turned up the volume.
“Tell me about your husband’s plans, if he’s elected,” the reporter said.
Tana smiled, drawing a perfectly French manicured hand through her hair, which shook itself out and settled back into the exact same position. “He really cares about this city,” she said. “The Carrigans have deep roots in Los Angeles. Who better to run it?”
“And has he always had political aspirations?” the reporter asked, seemingly not caring that Tana hadn’t answered her question.
“He’s always wanted to make a difference,” Tana said. “It was one of the first things that drew me to him.” I pictured Carrigan’s cut-marble jawline, those steel blue eyes. One of the first things.
“Some have said it’s your family’s ambition, and not your husband’s, that he run for office. Care to comment on that?” This reporter had finally grown some teeth.
I watched Tana’s face creak under her Botox, but her immaculate smile didn’t flag for a second. “Some,” she said. “Is it good journalistic practice to cite vague, unnamed sources?”
The reporter had the grace to look flustered. “I think your constituents have a right to know.”
“Oh, by all means.” Someone had taken plaster to Tana’s face. She couldn’t stop smiling if she tried. “Go on.”
“Well, there’s the fact that he made the nontraditional move of taking your name upon marriage. Which some have said is to cash in on your family’s legacy and increase voter recognition.”