No shit, Franklin thought. The last damn thing he needed was a confrontation with Baby Duce and his damn Locos, especially on their own territory. But he needed that damn girl.
“And now it’s parked a couple of blocks from there,” Dovey continued. “They’ve still got eyes on it, but I told them to hold off, until I talked to you.”
Dovey with a brain, it was a miracle.
“Good, Smollett. That’s good thinking.” Mitch and Leroy were driving one of the Bleak Enterprises vans, and that’s how guys got whacked. A couple of wiseguys tumble out of a van with your goddamn name written all over it and rough up one of Duce’s boys and steal his girl.
Deader’n a doornail by dawn. Oh, yeah, Franklin could see that happening. He wouldn’t have to worry about the damn eighty-two thousand dollars then.
But Franklin Camilo Bleak didn’t go down that easy.
“You follow them, Smollett. You still got Bremerton with you, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He’s a big guy.” From out of town. “Use him. You follow that damn sleeper until you can get it pulled over someplace outside Duce’s territory, then send in the Chicago boy to get the girl. He’s packing a damn.45. Tell him to use it.” The last thing Denver would ever miss was another damn gangster. The city was crawling with them, all of them swinging pistols around and killing people.
Yeah, that was a great idea-to let the Chicago guy kill Duce’s boy and just keep the name Bleak out of the whole damn mess.
Esme Alden dating a member of the Locos, somebody should have known that. Somebody should have figured that into the night’s plan.
Well, it was figured now.
“You do this right, Smollett, and it’ll look real good to me. Real good.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Bleak.”
“You bring me that girl, Dovey, and there’ll be something in it for you.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Bleak.”
“Just bring me the girl, Dovey.” He ended the call, and speed-dialed Mitch.
The guy picked up on the first ring.
“Yes, boss?”
“Dovey’s on his way to pick up the tail on the Cyclone. When he gets there, you get the hell out of there. I don’t want Baby Duce seeing my van crisscrossing his goddamn neighborhood all night.”
“Yes, boss. I’ll head back and get another car.”
“Damn straight, you will, and then get right back on this Cyclone’s ass. I want the damn girl, Mitch, but I want Bremerton ’s face on the deed. Back him up, if he needs it. All I want is the girl, but I want her to just ‘poof ’ off the planet, plain disappear. I don’t want no hearing about Duce looking for the guys who stole one of his boys’ little putas. I don’t want him looking for Franklin Bleak.”
“No, boss.”
“Don’t fuck this up, Mitch.”
“No, boss.”
Franklin ended the call, but didn’t go back to his desk.
The woman down there in the betting room, Beth Alden, the one his guys had bound and gagged, and cuffed and taped to the chair, she wasn’t crying. She should have been a blubbering mess by now, but there hadn’t been so much as a sob out of her.
She was bleeding. Eliot had been a little rough, but that was what Eliot did-get rough with women. It was his specialty.
Franklin let his gaze drop to the woman’s shoes. That damn shoelace thing still made him grin. He didn’t know how in the hell she’d lost a shoelace. She must have struggled like hell to do it, and to get the bruises starting to show on her face. Eliot must have loved that. He liked struggling women.
Personally, Franklin didn’t go in for the rough stuff. He liked a woman to spoil him. Tying them up and knocking them around didn’t make any sense to him. Plus, it was just too damn much work-except when it was business. Taking some bitch apart to get her old man to pony up his money-now that made perfect sense to him, and he couldn’t say he hadn’t enjoyed it a few times, even more than a few times.
The daughter, Esme, was a smaller, younger, cuter version of the woman in the chair, and Franklin had the idea that between him and Eliot and the two women, things could get damned interesting before dawn. Not interesting enough to make up for the eighty-two thousand if Burt didn’t come through, but interesting nonetheless.
Yes, he could see it, him and Eliot tag-teaming a mother-daughter combo. More importantly, he’d make damn sure Burt Alden saw it, that the damn stupid bastard saw what he’d done to his women.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Solange stretching out at twenty-five over, riding a hundred, city lights streaming through the darkness, growing fainter in the rearview, making the run up into the mountains, the run up to Genesee-Johnny had done it more than a few times on a hot summer night like tonight, escaped the city for the cooler air of the high country.
And yeah, sometimes he’d had a girl with him. There were a few places up here in the hills where a guy could get pretty busy with his sweetheart. There was even a map of some of the better places tacked to the garage wall on the third floor at Steele Street, put there by the SDF guys back in the day when they’d all considered themselves backseat urban legends. Some of the places had hash marks by them and stories attached to the hash marks, some of which had been alluded to a few times over the years, mostly when the guys had gotten back from some particularly hairy mission and ended up hanging around, working on cars and downing a few beers-some pretty good stories, actually, mixed in with a lot of remembered teenage bull and bravado.
Johnny had put a hash mark up on the map one time, and Skeeter had walloped the holy hell out of him. He’d kept his sexual exploits to himself after that. For being such a badass operator, she was still such a girl. Red Dog had more edge on her, and even though she was smaller than Skeeter, there wasn’t a guy on the team who’d take a bet on himself going up against her, not even Superman, and Christian Hawkins was the guy who’d trained her.
Johnny couldn’t help but wonder who had trained Esme. He didn’t know if she had any handto-hand combat skills, but she’d certainly handled her.45 like she knew what she was doing.
He downshifted into third, pulling one of the big hills out of Denver, heading into the darkness of the mountains. With one hand on the steering wheel and the other staying on the gearshift, a grin curved his mouth. She’d kissed him. Esme Alexandria Alden had kissed him like she’d wanted to eat him alive, twice-all grown-up and wearing red lace panties.
Not such a bad night after all, he decided.
The Bleak business didn’t have him too worried. When he’d gone back in the house on Delgany to talk with Duce, the Locos’ boss hadn’t hesitated to sign on to the Bleak payoff. Good for business, Duce had said, letting Bleak know he wasn’t pulling anything off on the Locos moving his load of cakes out of Chicago. Duce might even do the guy a favor and cop a couple of points off the top of the keys, take his tribute, put his mark on the deal, and keep the Parkside Bloods from turning Mr. Bleak inside out, literally, for thinking there was room on the north side for another dealer to be bringing in coke. Those rights were won the hard way, and Bleak hadn’t even skirmished for them, let alone gone to battle-which was more information than Johnny had wanted to hear. He knew how it all worked, the drug and turf wars. Dom had died in his and Duce’s arms during battle with the Parkside Bloods-and man, he hadn’t ever been within spitting distance of any goddamn drug ever again, not any illegal substance, and he didn’t want within spitting distance of Bleak’s cakes.
Cash-delivery boy was probably more than he should have signed on for, more than he wanted General Grant to know about, but there wasn’t any way for him to stand by and let Esme do the delivery. He was seriously thinking about stringing her dad up from the nearest light pole and leaving him there for a week or two. What was the bastard thinking? Letting his daughter do his dirty work for him.