Lisa Unger - Die For You

He almost wasn’t surprised to see Charlie Shane, the Raines’ missing doorman, sticking a dollar bill in a blond strippers’ G-string while she lowered her bejeweled, gravity-defying breasts to eye level. He and Jez were about to leave, had shown Camilla Novak’s and Marcus Raine’s picture around to blank stares and pressed lips, quick shakes of heads, some frightened shifting eyes. Meanwhile, they’d been trailed, not inconspicuously, by two ridiculously pumped, thick-necked goons.

Jez looked nervous, as if she sensed some danger he did not. She tugged on his shoulder and he leaned down so that she could yell in his ear over the music.

“We should get out of here, call for backup and get this place shut down for a few hours. We might get more cooperation.”

On a T-shaped stage naked women of all shapes and sizes flaunted their goods to a hypnotic trance beat. Their mouths smiled but their eyes were empty, high or otherwise elsewhere. Some of them looked so young, too young to be here, still had that creamy fresh cast to their skin, that soft innocence about the mouth.

Grady always hated places like this. He liked a dancing naked female body as much as the next guy, but he battled an urge to run around with bathrobes, cover these girls up and take them home to their mamas. Of course, their mamas were probably in worse shape. You didn’t wind up on a pole without a lot of help from your family.

Watching a redhead deftly move out of reach of a groping hand, Grady thought of Clara. How long had it been since he’d made love to her? What did Sean say, nearly two years since she’d walked out the door? A year of legal separation following that. Not counting their breakup fuck-that sad, slow final hour they shared after leaving the attorney’s office. He’d convinced her to have coffee with him, and they wound up back at the new place she shared with Sean, a spacious two-bedroom in the Fifties, with a terrace and nice views, that he had no idea how they could afford. He took great pleasure in having her one last time in a bed she shared with her new boyfriend. He’d have pissed on the sheets when he was done if he could. She’d thrown him out afterward, turning from passionate, weepy, and nostalgic to angry as soon as the afterglow dimmed.

“I can’t believe how I let you manipulate me. Still! Even after we’re divorced.”

“There’s no divorce in the eyes of God. You’re still my wife.” He was only half kidding.

“Get out, Grady.”

“Come on, Clara. You know there’s still something. Don’t do this.”

She strode naked over to her bag, her perfect heart-shaped ass jiggling pleasantly with her stride. She fished out the papers, turned and held them up, utterly unself-conscious of her teardrop breasts and flat brown middle. “It’s done. Signed, sealed, delivered.”

“I’m yours.” He finished the verse, trying to be funny. But the words fell flat and sad on the ground between them.

“Go.”

HE WAS ABOUT to agree with Jez that they should shut the place down, when he saw Charlie Shane, the dirty old man, pressed up against the stage. He pointed and saw Jez’s face brighten as she reached to put a hand on the weapon at her hip. She wouldn’t need it; she could subdue the likes of Shane with one arm. But he knew she liked the feel of it; it gave her a notion of security.

They approached Shane from behind, pushing through a throng of salivating weirdoes. They each put an arm on him and he spun from the stage. His face registered surprise and alarm, then he bent at the waist and knocked through them, causing Jez to stumble back hard into the stage. He saw her knock her head. But they both gave chase, the crowd parting. Someone started to scream at the site of the gun Crowe drew from his hip. Not that you could legally shoot a fleeing suspect in New York State. Still, it tended to stop people in their tracks.

Not Shane. He threw a terrified glance behind him, and at the sight of the gun seemed to pick up speed toward the door. Crowe reached out a hand and was just inches away from having Shane by the collar, when he felt the ground come up to meet him fast, and then he was on knees and elbows on the floor. He lost his grip on his Glock and the thing skittered away from him between the feet and ankles of the crowd gathered round. Someone had tripped him. He looked behind and saw one of the goons smiling.

He retrieved his gun and was about to get to his feet when Jez scrambled over him. He looked up at the door to see Shane exit and Jez follow. He was on his feet and out the door quickly, in time to see Jez disappear into an alleyway.

She was flying and he was already breathing hard. Luckily, he didn’t have far to run. By the time he reached them, Shane was on his face in a puddle of black filth, sputtering and yelling. Jez was on his back, with his arm twisted up behind him.

“You. Stupid . Mother fucker,” she was yelling, adrenaline and anger making her red and loud. She tugged on his arm and he released a girlish scream.

“Okay, easy,” he said, coming up on them, pulling the cuffs from his waist. He grabbed Shane’s other arm and cuffed him. He pulled Jez to her feet and kept a heavy foot on Shane’s back. He pulled the cell phone from his pocket and called Dispatch for backup. They were so closing that shithole down for a few hours.

He saw that Jez’s eye was red and the skin split and bleeding at the cheekbone. There was going to be a huge shiner; he could tell by the way the skin was already bluing beneath the red.

“He hit me,” she said, incredulous. “He got a hit in on me. That out-of-shape old man.”

“Okay, Kung Fu Mama. Breathe. Relax.”

“I don’t believe it. I turned the corner and he was waiting for me. I ran right into his fist.”

“But who’s on the ground now in a puddle of piss? You win.”

She nodded, walked a breathless circle, hands on hips.

“I want a fucking lawyer!” screamed Shane as Grady recited his rights. “Unnecessary force!”

“Shut up, Shane,” said Grady calmly, pushing hard with his shoe on Shane’s back. “Really. Please shut up.”

The wail of sirens was sudden and loud, seeming to come from nowhere, drowning out the sound of Shane screaming about injustice and the violation of his various rights.

BY THE TIME they let him stew in it, wet and covered in the black filth from the alley floor, he was less passionate. They seated him in an interrogation room, cuffed to the table for the better part of two hours, promising him a public defender. Meanwhile, they tended to Jez’s injury, dealt with paperwork, went over and corroborated the information sent to them by Isabel Raine, checked Charlie Shane’s criminal history, came up with some theories of their own. By the time they reentered the room where they’d left him, Shane seemed thoroughly broken; whatever alcohol might have been in his system had worn off. He was just a sad old man in a lot of trouble.

“Where’s my lawyer?” he asked when they entered, without lifting his eyes from his hands folded in front of him.

“On his way,” Grady lied. “If that’s the way you want to go. I’ll tell you what, though. In spite of the list of charges-obstruction of justice, fleeing custody, assaulting an officer-we’re just not that interested in you. You’re more or less worthless to us.”

Shane didn’t look up and didn’t respond, but Grady could tell he was listening.

“We’re interested in the man you knew as Marcus Raine.”

Grady thought he saw Shane jump a little at the sound of the name but he couldn’t be sure.

“Did you know there are security cameras in the lobby of your building?” Jez lied. “We know you let people in to trash the Raines’ apartment. You tell us who those people are? And you’ll have your face back in underage tits before the sun comes up.”