Клео Коул - Latte Trouble

“Just relax and cooperate, Ms. Cosi,” a male voice commanded. “And your ride will be a short one.”

God almighty, I’m being kidnapped . My heart was racing, and I began to hyperventilate. Stay calm, Clare. Think .

I fumbled in my purse, then brandished my cell phone like a handgun. “Let me out right now or I’ll call 911!” I cried, my thumb already hitting the 9.

The driver’s eyes flashed angrily in the rearview mirror. He braked the vehicle so violently I had to throw out my arm to avoid being slammed up against the back of the driver’s seat. The cell phone flew out of my hand and bounced across the floor.

With a bump and a squeal of tires on pavement, the limo jerked to a halt. The momentum threw me to the carpet. I landed on my knees—convenient, since I wanted to find my cell. But as my fingers closed on my small silver savior, I heard the front passenger door open. A large body slid onto the seat. A strong hand grabbed my wrist and beefy fingers yanked the cell out of my hand.

“Hey, buster! Gimme that,” I hollered, pushing hair out of my face. Note to self. Next time you’re being kidnapped, don’t threaten to dial 911. Just dial it!

I lunged for my phone, but the giant wearing jeans and a black leather coat raised his big hands to fend me of easily. His pinky ring looked large enough for me to wear as a bracelet.

“Sit back and enjoy the ride,” the man warned in a low octave, hoisting me up on the seat beside him.

He stared at me with Basset Hound dark eyes over a smashed nose. His large round head was topped with short-cropped black hair. His ears stuck out and seemed to be askew. I met his intimidating gaze and raised balled fists.

“Give me my phone and let me out of this car!” I demanded.

As if on cue, the vehicle’s abrupt acceleration slammed me back into the leather seat and the limo raced away from the curb and hurled through midtown.

“You want out, lady?” The man reached across me to pop the door open. I gasped as he brutishly brushed my cleavage in the process. The hiss of tires on pavement filled the compartment. We swerved in and out of traffic and only his thick-muscled arm kept the door from flying open, and me pinned to the seat.

“Go on, go then,” the man said, laughing.

An electronic crackle sounded, then the voice of the driver, loud over the intercom. “Cut the crap, Tiny.”

The door slammed, the automatic lock clicked again and Tiny sat back. Without the weight of his arm crushing me, I could breathe again.

“Pull over!” I screamed.

Suddenly a finger as thick as a banana was under my nose. “Not another word out of you or I’ll stuff this phone in your mouth and hold it shut until we get where we’re going.”

The accent was South Brooklyn—which told me these men were tough customers, and most likely mobbed up. I could almost hear my dear old bookie dad’s advice— Cupcake, sometimes goin’ through a brick wall will only get your head broken. You gotta know when to just play along and see what comes.

My jaw immediately snapped shut, and I spoke no more.

“That’s better,” said Tiny. Then the man folded his massive arms and stared straight ahead.

I actually admired Tiny’s calm, considering the insane manner in which the driver was bobbing in and out of traffic, narrowly avoiding pedestrians and vehicles alike as he raced around corners and through yellow lights.

When I heard sirens and saw flashing red lights, I prayed a traffic cop had observed the man’s manic driving and was about to force us over. But the limo driver wasn’t the cause of the commotion, and he didn’t slow down, not even when a half dozen New York City police cars raced alongside us. I would have waved to the officers, signaled my plight, but I knew the limousine’s windows were tinted so darkly no one outside could see in—which is exactly why I hadn’t noticed the man in the passenger seat before I’d entered the limo at the Pierre.

As the police cars swerved onto Forty-second Street and sped away, Tiny chuckled. Clearly, the irony had amused him. A giant named Tiny amused at irony? Imagine that.

My heart still racing, I sat back and rifled through options. Despite Tiny’s order to stay quiet, I considered risking polite conversation—something that might yield a clue as to where I was going and why. But with one more glance at the man’s curled lip and glowering expression, I concluded he would not be keen on idle chitchat. And I certainly wasn’t keen on eating my own cell phone.

At Thirty-fourth Street, we headed west, turning downtown again at Ninth Avenue. When we hit Fourteenth, the limo slowed with the traffic. A few quick turns and we were near Hudson Street—not far, in fact, from the Village Blend. For an insanely hopeful moment, I thought these two men really did intend to give me a ride home, and I had a fantasy of tripping across the sidewalk and into the cozy, familiar sanctuary of the Blend’s interior. Instead we turned down a dark, cobblestone street lined with nineteenth-century industrial buildings fronted by glittering new eateries.

Years ago, when I’d been a young newlywed and first began to manage the Blend, I knew all about the Meatpacking District. By day, its streets were populated by coarse men in bloody aprons, who carried hacksaws, hog carcasses, or haunches of beef on their broad backs. They spoke with outer-boroughs accents and drank beer in the area’s dive bars at just about any hour of the day. At night, a different sort of trade ruled those sidewalks, and I was so young and naive it actually took me a little time to figure out why the painted women tottering on high heels were so tall and had such deep voices and sometimes even facial stubble. (Coming from an old Italian neighborhood in Pennsylvania, women and facial hair wasn’t all that big a deal, but I figured the Meatpacking deal out eventually.)

Just a few years after that, some of the slaughterhouses (or “abattoirs” as Madame had referred to them) had been replaced by bars and clubs that catered to the harder edged gay community—pardon the pun. Then, in the 1990s, the Meatpacking District was transformed by gentrification. Some excellent butchers could still be found here—like my buddy, Ron Gerson, famed for his prime rib—but for the most part, urban spaces that once held meat processing plants were transformed into chic restaurants and trendy clubs catering to all clientele. With retail gentrification came changes in housing, and many a loft that once quartered factory workers now housed co-ops for the wealthy.

The limousine continued to wend its way through Saturday-night traffic. Sidewalks teemed with laughing partygoers, illuminated by the garish fluorescence of the Hotel Gansevoort. We were moving quite slowly now, and I causally rested my arm on the door handle. As the limo slowed to a crawl, I tried once more to throw the door open, only to find its lock firm as ever. Once again, I heard Tiny’s annoying chuckle, a deep rumble.

The limo halted in front of a driveway until there was a break in the pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk, then it veered into a dark, narrow alley lined with garbage cans and dumpsters, a stream of brackish water running down the middle of the cobblestone surface. We stopped in front of a brick wall bearing the flaking remnants of a hand-painted sign, part of a fifty-year-old billboard hawking “Gansevoort Hams, Bacon, and other Quality Pork Products.”

The driver stepped out and opened the door from the outside. Tiny’s strong hand closed over my upper arm and he pushed me forward. I gripped my evening clutch as my heels hit the stone street. In the alley’s dim light, other senses took over. Smell, for one. Rotting garbage, mildew, and urine surrounded me. Lovely .