“You totally ambushed me,” I said to Jack two hours later as he drove me home.
“That’s the way questioning works,” he said, still emotionless, eyes solely on the road.
When I’d realized that I was being treated as a suspect – after I got over the shock, and my stupidity for not seeing it sooner – I’d clammed up. We’d spent the next two hours with me refusing to answer any questions then finally asking to either be charged with something or be brought home.
Frank and Jack had looked at each other, done another invisible signal of some kind, and Jack had led me out to his car.
“That may be the way questioning regularly works,” I said now. “But I’m not your regular…what do you call it…perp?” I got a small smile out of him at my attempt at cop-speak.
“You most definitely are not,” he said with some warmth – finally! – in his voice.
“So why the dog and pony show?”
“You are someone who was a known associate of Paul Coscarelli. I personally have seen you interact with him, have seen him strong-arm you.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel.
That had not been one of my prouder moments, Jack seeing Paulie take me away to answer for JoJo’s only slip-up. He’d tried to intervene, but I’d stopped him, preferring to deal with Paulie – and my mess – on my own.
It’d been the beginning of the end for us.
“The back story of how he…collected…years ago from you is well known in gambling circles,” Jack continued.
I unconsciously slid my bad foot underneath my good one. No sense in trying to deny it, Jack knew about Paulie’s signature injury.
He had licked the damn scar.
“He put you in the hospital.”
“I put myself in the hospital,” I said, trying not to let the shame I felt come through.
He flexed his hands on the steering wheel, letting out a sigh. “Because of our past…relationship…I had to play this strictly by the book. Well, not strictly, I shouldn’t have been in the questioning room at all. But…” He let the thought drift away.
“So you think I’m capable of murder?” I asked, then wished I hadn’t. Jack had been standing next to me when I’d killed a man.
But that was different, I told myself, as my stomach clenched with remembered guilt.
“That was different,” Jack said, reading my mind.
“Yeah, it was,” I said quietly.
He reached over then, placed his hand on mine and squeezed. Before I could flip my hand over and squeeze back, his hand was gone.
“I think anyone is capable of killing anyone,” he said. “In the right situations, for the right reasons.”
“So, you really think I killed Paulie?”
He hesitated before speaking, which I didn’t think was a very good sign. “I don’t think you would have killed Paulie because he’d hurt you in the past. Or even if he was threatening you now for some reason. That’s business. That’s the life you chose.” He cleared his throat, and there was a sense of resignation in his voice. I looked away from him, out the passenger-side window. “But I do think you would protect Ben, and the boys, and Lorelei.”
“I would,” I agreed. “You would too, if it were you,” I added.
“Yes.”
“Paulie wasn’t threatening anybody I care about. And I’m all square with him and Vince,” I said, telling him now what I wouldn’t in the interrogation room. I don’t know why. It was something to do with how stupid I’d felt when I realized that I was being treated just like anyone else that had dealt with Paulie and Vince.
I didn’t want to be just like anybody else to Jack.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay? Just like that? You believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Huh.”
He let out a long-suffering sigh. “Johanna,” he said softly. Hearing the name he – and he alone, except for my mother when I’d really pushed the boundaries – called me, made me take my eyes from the road and look at his rugged, lived-in face. “When we were together, did you ever lie to me?”
“No,” I said without hesitation. I’d made a point of it. Even against my better judgment. If I had, we might still be together.
But Jack, much like myself, had a strong, albeit skewed, moral code. And I knew he would much more easily accept my gambling and the extremes it drove me to than he could my lying to him.
My moral code consisted of only two elements – never bet on a game that JoJo had fixed, and never knowingly involve a player in a fixed game.
I’d recently broken both those edicts and was trying to fight my way back to being able to look myself in the mirror each morning. I’d only bet on a game once, and those winnings went to a much-deserved pair of diamond earrings for Lorelei.
But involving a player…my mind went back only a dozen hours or so ago. To my meeting with Raymond Joseph.
I had involved him. I’d intended for it to be a one-time deal, but Raymond had gotten a taste and now was calling me. Still, I had gotten the kid into this seedy world, I wasn’t about to involve him any further by naming him as my alibi.
“I didn’t think you’d lied to me,” Jack said now, pulling me away from my self-loathing thoughts.
“I didn’t,” I said.
“So, you tell me that you’re not into Vince right now, that Paulie wouldn’t be a threat to you or yours…”
“Yes?”
“Why can’t you tell me where you were last night?”
I looked over at him, waited until he turned his head from the road to meet my gaze.
“Because I won’t lie to you, Jack.”
We’d reached my house. I was relieved to see that Gus and Ben had arrived safely and that our Lexus SUV was in the driveway. So was my beloved Porsche and Lorelei’s BMW. There was a small, beat-up Nissan, which I didn’t recognize, parked at the curve. Jack parked behind it.
“Does that belong to one of your people?” I asked Jack, pointing at the Nissan, suddenly furious at the thought that Jack had sent some of his guys around to question Ben, Gus and Lorelei about my whereabouts while he had me at the station.
It would have scared Ben witless, and Lorelei would have probably started making up alibis for me on the spot.
Jack shook his head. “Nope, not one of our guys. You don’t know who it belongs to?”
“Nobody I know drives a piece of shit like that,” I said.
He snorted, looked around the interior of his own piece of shit, “Almost nobody,” he clarified.
“This belongs to the cops,” I said, realizing I didn’t even know what Jack drove.
As if answering my unasked question, he said, “Mine’s about the same.”
I reached for the door handle. “Are we done? Am I free to go, officer?”
He lifted one brow at me – a look I’d tried to copy, to no avail. “We’re far from done, Johanna.”
I didn’t think he was talking about Paulie’s murder.
Okay, I hoped he wasn’t.
“Nothing’s changed,” I reminded him. Stupid. If the man decided to just forget the reasons he felt we couldn’t be together, who was I to remind him.
“Maybe I…” He didn’t finish, and I kept my mouth shut this time.
He looked toward my house. Drew his hand roughly down his face and let out a long, slow, breath.
And said nothing.
I finally reached over, smoothed down a patch of his hair that stuck up in the back. The man had a permanent case of bed head…and the audacity to make it look sexy. “You look tired, Jack,” I said softly.
He nodded, then looked over at me. He bent his head into my hand, as if a dog wanting to be petted. And I desperately wanted to pet him.
But I didn’t. After all, as I’d just said, nothing had changed.
I couldn’t even tell him where I’d been last night.
I took my hand slowly away, placed my other one on the door handle. “I’d better go inside. Ben’s probably freaking out about me going with you. I’m sure Jimmy put it together for them all that you were looking at me for Paulie’s murder.”
“A situation you could easily remedy by just telling me where you were last night.”
“What if I told you that I was with a man all night, but I didn’t want you to know that?”
I don’t know if it was relief or grief that passed over his face, but he quickly set it to cop mode. “Is that the truth?”
Technically it was, I’d been with Raymond Joseph, but we both knew that’s not what I’d meant. “No,” I said. He started to say something, but I interrupted with, “I’ve gotta go, Jack.”
“How’s Ben doing anyway? Since Danny and Saul?”
Now it was my turn for a long, deep breath. “Okay, I guess. He misses them. I miss them.”
Jack was looking out the front windshield, slowly nodding.
“He misses you, too, Jack,” I said.
He kept on nodding, not missing a beat. “I miss him, too.”
His profile was so familiar to me, the shape of his nose, the soft brown eyes. A wave of guilt washed over me.
I was keeping a secret from both him and Ben.
“Jack, I – ” I said at the same time as he said, “Do you mind if I go in with you? Spend a little time with him? At least let him know that you’re not in any trouble.”
“Am I not in trouble?”
He snorted. “Probably no more than usual.”
I pushed the secret down farther. This wasn’t the time. And until I knew for sure if what I thought was true, it wouldn’t be. “Sure,” I said. “Come on in.”
“You’re sure? That wouldn’t be weird? Me being at your place to see Ben?”
I snorted. “Probably no more than usual.”
We both got out of his car and made our way slowly up the driveway and to the front door. It felt both familiar and strange to be walking into my home with Jack. I almost reached for his hand, but stopped myself. At one point I thought he raised his arm to wrap around my shoulder, but at the last second he scratched the back of his head and lowered his arm.
We went through the front door. I looked to my left, past the foyer to the living room. “Anyone home?” I called out, seeing it empty.
“In here,” Lorelei called from the dining room off to our right.
Lorelei’s a dancer, having danced in some of the biggest shows on the Strip. But when forty hit, the opportunities waned, and she threw herself into running our small household. Which she did with razor-sharp precision. She was able to roll with the punches that come with having a professional poker player as the main breadwinner.
Jack and I walked into the dining room together. Gus, Ben and Lorelei sat at the large table with a young man I’d never seen before. They each had a coffee cup in front of them. I noticed a carafe of coffee on the sideboard along the wall, along with what looked like a tray of pastries.
Lorelei’s a statuesque redhead, pure showgirl material. I do okay on a good day, looks wise, but I always feel like a troll standing next to her. She had on her usual casual wear, track suit over a leotard, like she was just back from a dance class, though I don’t think she’d taken in one in nearly six months. My fault. My ups and downs with gambling had kept her hopping with trying to spend lots of cash at times, and coming up with it at others.
A notebook and pencil sat on the table in front of her. That wasn’t unusual; Lor always had some kind of list or another going.
She didn’t meet my eye, though, and that was unusual.
“Everything okay?” Ben asked Jack and me.
Jack nodded.
“Everything’s fine,” I said.
Ben looked closer at us, probably trying to discern what exactly “fine” meant – the fact that I wasn’t being booked for Paulie’s murder, or that Jack and I were back together. Knowing how Ben felt about Jack, he’d probably be okay posting my bail if it meant Jack would be hanging around the house again.
“Everything okay here?” I asked, nodding my head toward the stranger.
He was in his late twenties, with longish hair that had no discernable style, glasses, and a small spot of toilet paper on his chin where he’d cut himself shaving. He had on a blazer that looked brand new, a too-tight tie, and a white shirt that looked as if the collar was choking him. So somebody not used to business attire, despite the folder with papers in it lying in front of him. He shuffled some of them now, looking nervous as hell.
As a professional poker player, I tried to read him. But then, I tried to read everyone.
He looked like any of the hundreds of druggies and homeless guys I saw every day. But like somebody had cleaned him up, put him in some new clothes and hoped for the best.
But what would a guy in a suit be doing in my dining room? IRS? Nah, they wouldn’t send somebody that green to duke it out with a professional gambler. Besides, my accountant made sure that I was squeaky clean on my taxes.
They couldn’t have found out about JoJo? Nope. Again, this puppy is not who they’d send if that case ever broke.
They’d send somebody like Jack.
Lorelei raised her head, flipped her flaming mane back – a move that caught both the kid’s and Gus’ attention – squared her shoulders, and looked over at me.
Oh, shit. “No, Lor,” I said. “Not again. Not today. I’m too tired.”
She ignored me and said, “Jo, you are surrounded by people who love you.” I looked at the kid I didn’t know. “Not him,” Lorelei said with exasperation, following my gaze. She glanced at Jack standing beside me. Opened her mouth, then – thank God – shut it. “And as people who love you, we’re worried about you.”
I looked at Gus, who just shrugged and took a sip of coffee. Then I turned to Ben, and the look in his eye quelled any smart-ass comment I was ready to throw at Lorelei. He did look worried about me.
For him, I’d listen to this farce. I motioned for Lorelei to get on with it.
She sat up straighter, now in the spotlight, the showgirl in her coming out and said what I knew was coming.
“This is an intervention.”