“Better not to mention wives at all.”
“You promise it’s only one more time?” Ellen asked, her dark eyes suspicious and lovely.
“I promise. Just one more.” I kept my voice soft, clipping any trace of a threat from it. I didn’t want her scared of me yet.
I could save my threats for Robert Jackal, for now. The lying fuck.
“Come see me tomorrow at the office,” I told her as I headed for the door. “We’ll figure out a new plan. Together.”
The last I could see of Ellen was her head nodding jerkily up and down as the door crashed closed behind me.
I was out of the elevator, heading for the parking lot, ready to call Lou—wanting to hear her voice, ready to not think about the near miss of the blackmail photos and the money I still owed our boss—when the beer spiller caught my eye. She’d taken my seat at the bar and ordered a bottle of wine, which she was making quick work of. Her soaked friend was nowhere to be found.
Reaching into my bag, I flipped a card between my fingers—my name and my number, nothing else—and scribbled on it, Men are assholes, but I like your style. Call me if you want a free drink. Then, for good measure, I wrote NOT A DATE!!! at the bottom, underlining it twice. I dropped it in front of her without looking.
“Hey . . . !” she called after me, but I didn’t stop.
If she was the kind of girl I had any use for, she would chase me.
Chapter 2
Lou had picked up immediately. Told me she was sober and tired of it and where did I want to meet her? No, wait, she knew exactly the place: a tonga-hutted skid mark not far from the St. Leo. I met her there, a hole-in-the-wall terror of a tiki bar, walls painted a ghastly labial pink, canned thrums of an absent ukulele clogging the air.
Lou had a knack for finding the last place I’d ever want to go.
Break it up into little pieces, I’d told myself as I was leaving the St. Leo. Call Lou. Figure out the next meetup between Ellen and Klein. I had to make sure there was no way to fuck that up, even if I had to record it myself. And then, a little treat for last: Murder Robert Jackal in his bed.
I’d spent the majority of the ride trying Jackal’s number. The rage boiling inside me had simmered to a slow burn by the time I hit traffic, but my fingernails left dents in the steering wheel.
Blackmail was only as good as its evidence. I knew that. All the research in the world wouldn’t make up for a missed opportunity, and this one had been golden. Without tape, Ellen was a nobody. Another girl who wouldn’t be believed. A fucking nightmare.
I slammed the dashboard with the heel of my hand so hard that by the time I met Lou at the bar, I had a bruise.
Weeks ago, at the start of the job, Lou had passed the Lady’s envelope to me, the one with Klein’s name in it, and I swear, I swear, her eyes had been shining when she’d said: “This should close it, right?” She hadn’t needed to elaborate. We were both keeping track of how much I owed, even if Lou pretended she wasn’t. It was my debt and my problem, but I knew it hung over her, too. It was a secret we shared, even if only one of us was paying for it.
Lou sat at a table uncluttered by other admirers. She was the best-looking woman in the bar—I was big enough to admit that. She was one of those beautiful women who never took much care of her face at all; the humidity had caused her mascara to bloom under her eyes, and her bright copper hair was damp at the temples. The heat had softened her like warmed chocolate.
Here’s my idea of a good bar: a clean, ill-lighted space. No pink drinks. No hula statuettes. Certainly no dangling stuffed parrots strangled by fairy lights. But this bar had Lou. She looked up, smiled. The drink in front of her was so orange it glowed, turning the underside of her chin the color of a sunrise. It looked like the sort of drink that made you hug strangers before you hugged a toilet.
“Is it spring break already?” I slid into the seat across from her, catching the glass with the tip of my finger and stealing a sip from her straw. An explosion of sugar and foam and one sickly zing of rum down my throat. I grimaced, and Lou laughed.
“For six dollars a pop, you can rewire your palate,” she said, grabbing the little purple umbrella from the glass and tucking it behind my ear. I brushed the garnish out of my hair and onto the floor. Lou laughed again, a full-throated sound. I could feel the disappointment and panic still tugging at me, but it was easier to ignore now, as though one sip of her cocktail had washed the taste of Robert Jackal’s failings right out of my mouth.
“I ordered you the Bombs Away,” Lou said. “Since we’re celebrating.”
Celebrating. Right. “Oh, you ordered for me.”
“You’ll like it.”
“You know what I’d say to Jackal if he decided what I’d have without asking?”
Lou dimpled. “I have some idea. You’ll drink it because I’m buying.” She took another sip. “You like the place?”
Behind Lou, some kid at the jukebox threw on a classic rock song popular at least a decade before he was born, and the carved wooden hula dancer in the corner swayed offbeat. Every time someone ordered one of the specialty cocktails—Enjoy Our Blasted Good Bikini Atoll!, a Jäger bomb in the center of a lake of curaçao—a cardboard volcano spewed tissue-paper lava and cardboard people at its base shook and danced.
“Hate it,” I said.
“You never like anything I like!”
“I don’t think that’s true. It’s just that I have better taste in most things.”
Lou arched an eyebrow. “Robert?”
“Most things.”
A briny waitress plopped a disturbingly pink mug in front of me, a wilted purple flower starting to capsize in its frothy depths. “Bombs Away,” she said with a smoker’s rasp. I crinkled my nose and looked up at Lou skeptically, but she was crackling with delight, waiting to see if I’d actually drink it. I sniffed it—grapefruit and something that made my tongue curl. I took a sip: mezcal. Smoky and bitter and juicy.
“Not bad,” I said to Lou.
“See? I know you better than you think.” Lou reached out with one finger and gently tapped the corner of my mouth with her nail. A bead of sweat rolled along the inside of my knee, tickling. “Is that a new lipstick? No need to dress up for little ol’ me.” Lou cracked that lopsided grin, and her hand went back to her drink. A little red smudge lingered on it, then on the glass.
I resisted the urge to swipe at my lips. “I might be paying Jackal a visit later.” And it was true, I might do that. There were many things I might do later that evening.
“I don’t know if that means he’s a lucky man or a very unlucky one.”