Tara Janzen - Loose And Easy

But for now, this block and half a dozen others belonged to Baby Duce, and she and Johnny were right in the middle of his River North territory.

Halfway down the alley, Johnny stopped the Cyclone and took the key out of the ignition. To her right, a haphazard array of garbage cans flanked a padlocked iron door with the words Butcher Drug Store painted on the cinderblock above it.

Geezus. Butcher and drugs in the same sentence were enough to send a chill down her spine, especially when, to her left, a chain-linked, barbed-wire fence was all that stood between her and the Locos’ north-side crib. A pair of lights on the back of the ramshackle old house lit up the yard and part of the alley.

Yeah, every guy in Denver had some badass reputation he was working to uphold, and Baby Duce was no different. So now she had Bleak on her ass, Baby Duce on her left, Benny-boy staring out of her near future, Erich Warner and Otto Von Lindberg hopefully not bearing down on her from out of her past, and Isaac Nachman nowhere in sight, because she was stuck in this goddamn alley, in a car with no key.

“Wait here.” Johnny opened his door and was about halfway out when she stopped him with a word.

“Five,” she said.

He hesitated for a second, then glanced back at her over his shoulder.

“Five?”

“Five minutes, and then I’m walking out of here.” And she meant it.

He considered the pavement at his feet for a couple of seconds, then finished getting out, closed the door, and leaned down through the window. “In that case, I’ll be back in four and a half.”

Straightening up, he slapped the roof of the car twice, saying something in Spanish to the guys who’d come up from both ends of the alley and were stationing themselves along the fence.

Esme had taken French in high school, thinking it would make her more refined. It hadn’t, and now she was clueless about what he’d said, except it was probably something like “don’t steal the tires off this awesome car,” or “don’t strip the huge, mother-freaking engine I bolted under this hood,” or hopefully, maybe, “don’t harass the dumb blonde who let me hijack her into this alley.”

Not that the girl was going to stand still for too much harassing.

Still, hell-she watched him step through the gate into a weed-choked yard and walk to the back door of the house. A tall, muscular guy covered in tattoos met him there, and they talked for a few moments, with the guy looking at her most of that time, then he and Johnny disappeared inside, and she sat back in her seat. There were five guys milling in the alley, and each and every one of them was staring at her, too- dammit.

She checked her watch. Four and a half minutes- just enough time to do a little housekeeping.

She pulled her phone out of the messenger bag and found three missed calls, all from Dax, and nothing from her dad. This time, she didn’t refrain from a heavy sigh. She gave into it, just to get it off her chest. This whole damn night was because of him, and all she’d asked for was the name of Franklin Bleak’s daughter. Burt had promised her his good friend Thomas in Chicago would get the name weeks ago, but like everything else with her dad, it hadn’t worked out like he’d planned. She’d given him one simple job to do, and he’d blown it.

Big surprise.

Esme Alden, Private Investigator-she was smarter with strangers. She expected more. But her dad-hell, she definitely had issues with her dad. Someday she was going to grow up and stop trying to make him into something he was not, like responsible, smart enough to take care of his family, and strong enough not to court financial ruin on every damn toss of the dice, and every dog race, or every horse, or the damn Denver Broncos.

Today was obviously not that day.

She scrolled down her address list to his name and pressed the call button. After seven interminable rings, she got her folks’ answering machine.

“Hi. You’ve reached the Aldens, Burt, Beth, and Esme,” her mother’s sweet voice said. “Leave us a message, and we’ll call you back.”

Esme figured when and if she ever got married, her mother would finally take her name off the family answering machine.

“Dad,” she said. “If you’re there, pick up. If you’re not, you should be, and either way, call me as soon as you get this message. The clock is running here, Dad.”

She hung up, and hit Dax’s number.

“Go,” he answered halfway through the first ring.

“I’m on my way to Isaac Nachman’s with the Meinhard.” And she was… sort of, in a roundabout way.

“Good going, bad girl, congratulations.” She could almost see him smile. “But you should have been at Nachman’s fifteen minutes ago.”

“I got hung up.”

“At the Oxford?”

“No. Back at the office.”

That slowed him down for a second.

“Your dad’s car didn’t start, right?”

He’d warned her against using her dad’s car, all but insisted she get a rental, but no, she’d had to use the old man’s minivan, so he could feel like he was contributing to the team.

The old man was going to get her killed.

She could see that coming now. His incompetence had always been contagious. It was why she’d worked so hard in school, and so hard keeping her ducks in a row, keeping her clothes tidy and her shoes clean and her homework done and her braids tight, and her pants on, just to have some goddamn control over something besides the missing grocery money, or the hocked television, or the men who sometimes had come to the house-men very much like Franklin Bleak and Kevin Harrell. It was why she’d moved to Seattle to work with Dax-to get away from the rolling inevitability of her dad’s disasters.

She’d begged her mom to come with her, but her mom had said no, she couldn’t leave Esme’s father-and if that was love, Esme didn’t want a damn thing to do with it.

“No. The minivan was starting for me all day. I didn’t have any problems with it until the cops booted it on Wynkoop.”

“Cripes,” he swore under his breath. “So where are you? In a cab?”

“Actually, I’m in Baby Duce’s backyard, sitting in a Cyclone.”

“Baby Duce? The Locos Baby Duce?” he asked after a moment, not exactly an innocuous question under the best of circumstances, and these weren’t anywhere close to the best, and she could tell by the tone of his voice that he’d figured that much out in a heartbeat, and that his mood had taken a sudden, understandably steep dive.

“Yes.”

“In a Cyclone?”

“Yes.”

There was another slight pause.

“A ’68?” he asked.

She’d known he wouldn’t be able to resist that one.

“Probably. It’s fast, got a lot of engine in it, but it’s really beat-up.”

“A sleeper,” he said.

Sure, she thought, a sleeper, the kind of car no one would suspect of having more power than Godzilla.

“You’re sitting in a sleeper in Baby Duce’s backyard.” It wasn’t a question. “Who’s holding the pink slip on the Cyclone?” That was a question, and she was going to get around to answering it pretty damn quickly, right after she assured him she was still doing her job.

“I’m only here for another couple of minutes, then I’m heading straight for Isaac Nachman’s.” One way or another, with or without Johnny Ramos.

“Answer the question, Easy, and then tell me you got the name of Bleak’s kid from your dad.”

What did she have to offer him, really, except a damning silence. Fortunately, with Dax, a damning silence was about all it took.

She heard him sigh.

“You know what this sounds like, Easy,” he said, his voice slipping down another notch into the “very unhappy” category.