The Rivers had their front blinds drawn but the curtains on the back window were open, light spilling across the small backyard. All three women were in there and the TV was on. I watched from the shadows at the back of the yard for a few minutes, then made my way to the side of the house. It was depressingly simple to jimmy a window with a knife blade and drop silently into a small bedroom. I slid the window closed behind me. The room smelled of lavender and laundry detergent, a pile of neatly folded towels sat on the edge of the queen size bed, waiting to be put away. The door was cracked open and I heard the canned laughter of a sitcom coming from the hall.
Stepping out into the hall, a toilet flushed immediately to my left where a crack of light shown out from beneath a narrow door. I flattened myself to the wall and waited for whoever it was to finish, listening to the sink, then the rustle of a towel. The door opened and I pounced as Benita stepped into the hall. I caught her from behind, pulling her hard against me and sliding my hand over her mouth, muffling her surprised gasp.
“It’s just Kira, don’t scream,” I whispered.
She stopped struggling immediately, her body frozen as indecision trapped her. Not the greatest instincts but about what I had expected. Her hair was soft against my cheek and smelled of strawberries.
“We’re going to walk into the living room now, I’ll be right behind you. Just breathe, Benita,” I said as gently as I could. I was annoyed with these women, I’d had to create a bit of a mess already downtown due to their poor information, and I was not in the mood for more human bullshit tonight.
Benita didn’t bolt as I released her, nor did she scream. Point in her favor. I walked behind her as she made her way back into the living room, our bodies not quite touching but I loomed behind her and stayed close enough she could hear me breathing. I wanted to scare them a little, begin this second interview with all three taking me a little more seriously than they had before.
“Nita? You look like… oh.” Maryanne dropped her crochet hook and half rose from her chair.
“Sit,” I said. “You too,” I added as Benita turned toward me with wide eyes.
“How did you get in? Is it done already?” Cecilia asked as her aunt came to sit on the couch beside her.
“We’re going to have a conversation,” I said, remaining on my feet this time, hands loose at my sides. “You lie to me again, we’re done. No questions.”
Cecilia closed her mouth and dropped her gaze to her hands. Benita was still staring at me as though she expected to be executed at any moment, and Maryanne looked like she was contemplating how dangerous her crochet hook could be if it came down to it. If I hadn’t been so annoyed with them I would have laughed.
“Your gun is in a closet or a drawer, inside a gun safe and unloaded, isn’t it?” I asked Benita.
She flushed but nodded. “Lucky for you,” she said with almost no quaver in her voice.
That did make me smile. “If I was here to kill you, you’d all be corpses. Your window latches are a joke, your curtains are open to the back, your TV is loud enough you could scream and the neighbors wouldn’t notice, and the street light in front is burned out.”
Cecilia leaned forward slowly and picked up the remote off the coffee table. She hit the mute button.
“Now, let’s start with what you actually know about the Cross family and how you conveniently left out the part where they have the sort of security reserved for dictators, heads of State, and international criminal courts.” I’d actually seen prisons less secure and vigilant about their surveillance and profiling.
“We thought if we told you, you would refuse to help us,” Benita said.
“They own this city,” Cecilia added. “You’re an outsider, you are the only chance I have.”
“They are mobbed up?” I asked.
“They are the mob, I mean, not like Godfather stuff, I think they are British or something originally, but they basically have their hands in everything. Nobody in Grand Mar crosses a Cross.”
I winced at the word play. “How’d you get my name?”
“One of the cops who took the first stalking report. She said it wouldn’t go anywhere, that she’d just have to tear it up, but she gave me a number to call and told me to ask that woman about how she’d had a problem handled for her. I was desperate, even though I figured it was a trap. Woman on the phone gave me an email, that email led to another and then to you.” Cecilia looked at me with pleading eyes. “We didn’t want to lie to you, but his family is dangerous. They own everyone from the mayor and the police down to the guy who sells weed out of Starbucks on the boardwalk.”
“They own us,” Maryanne said softly. “Cecilia’s hospital is partially funded by them. Our community arts center. All of it. That’s why we can’t be connected to this, but we can’t fight back any other way.”
“You could leave,” I said.
“Our whole lives are here, why should we have to abandon them because of a man?” Benita lifted her chin and squared her shoulders.
“There’s no telling if he’d find me anyway,” Cecilia said, laying a hand on her aunt’s thigh. “He has all the money in the world, a private jet even.”
“And a small army,” I added, cutting her off.
“If it is too much, I understand.” Cecilia’s voice trembled but her gaze was steady.
I couldn’t help but rise to that bait. “It’s not too much,” I said, though I had no idea at that moment how I was going to reach Marcus Cross. The crime family part was actually potentially a bonus, since they’d have enemies and that meant it was easier to deflect blame from this family. “But I need real information. No more lies. You are going to sit down after I leave and write up every last thing you can think of about the Cross family, Marcus in particular. Every detail from every moment you spent together. Where he goes, how many people are usually with him, what the inside of his apartment looks like, the layout of their beach home, all of it.”
“I’ve never been to the Cross mansion,” she said. “He mostly came to my place when we were dating, or we went out. I’ve only been up to the penthouse half a dozen times.”
“What else is in Dawn Tower?”
“A casino and a club, it’s very fancy and utterly illegal. I think there is a brothel as well, but I never saw any of that. You can’t even think about a membership unless you have something the Cross family wants or income in the seven figures.”
I paced a few feet back and forth, thinking. Her information matched up with what I’d seen.
“Write up everything,” I said. “Send it to my assistants by morning or I walk away.”
“There was some gossip around the Center about someone buying up a bunch of the warehouses at the dock,” Benita said. “People love to talk in fake whispers about the Cross family, it’s always my cousin’s friend said this or that. I guess that doesn’t help at all, sorry.”
“We’ll send anything we can think of,” Maryanne added quickly, giving her sister a quelling look.
“Fine,” I said. “Gossip might lead somewhere, let us worry about the details.” If someone was moving in on the Cross family territory, that would open up avenues of attack but also complications. It would also go a long way to explain the hyper-vigilance I’d witnessed tonight downtown. The more we could use to deflect anyone looking at Cecilia, the better, since it was looking less and less likely I’d be able to disappear the target. His murder was going to have to be obvious and probably messy.
My annoyance was sliding away and I couldn’t bring myself to chase it. Clients often lied, sometimes in big ways, sometimes in small ones. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes because they’d convinced themselves the lie was reality. I could see why the Rivers had withheld the organized crime family part. I was their desperation play, the Hail Mary.
And there was a part of me that wanted the challenge. I could admit that to myself. I’d been a little cocky, a little bored going into this. Kill the man, save the girl, seduce the hot aunt, ride into the sunset. Frag the weak, reap the spoils.
Now things were a little more interesting. My prey had teeth, even if the teeth were mostly bodies with guns and a shitload of cash. It’d been a while since I’d fought something with the potential to fight back. The tiger in me was hungry for a real hunt.
“I’ll go out the back,” I said. “Lock up after me, and put some damned sticks in your window slides, at the very least.”
I unlocked the French doors and stalked out into the night. It was time to take a drive on my bike and think over a few things.