Ruby pushed the silver Nissan 350Z into fourth gear and felt it slip past seventy miles per hour with ease. She owned the Prospect Expressway in this ride. The transmission was butter, the suspension more reactive than she thought possible, and the steering as tight as Gorman’s ass. This would be her next car, she vowed.
“You should be a little more careful, chica,” Rafe said. His left hand rested on her knee but his contact was limited. With his seat pulled all the way forward and hers slid all the way back to accommodate her long legs, he could only reach so high. His only good fortune was that she had chosen a blue chiffon dress from her closet when they ran by her apartment. While she drove his car with unexpected skill, he was slowly inching the material higher on her thighs.
“Don’t sweat it, baby,” Ruby said, grinning as she eased past a Corvette. “You ain’t driving, and no cop is gonna take my license away.”
“Really? And why is that, my lovely drag racer?”
“Because,” she said with an even broader grin, “I don’t have one. Now hush, this is our exit.”
Ruby cut across three lanes of traffic to cruise onto the ramp and into the John F. Kennedy Airport parking area. They quickly parked and headed for the international terminal. Ruby’s indigo heels made her tower over Rafael. Still she was impressed by how striking a figure he cut, despite being only a couple of inches over five feet tall. His suit was a subtle blue pinstripe and the lack of a tie, combined with his white shoes and fedora to give him the look of a sport on his way to the racetrack.
At the reception area he checked the postings and glanced at the Breitling on his wrist. “Right on time,” he said. “And by the way, you made excellent time getting here.”
“Why thank you, sugar.” To reward his sweetness, Ruby bent to give Rafe a kiss. But just as her lips approached his, he turned toward the gate.
“Here they are,” Rafe said, grabbing Ruby’s hand and pulling her forward. He sounded as if he was about to greet some long lost relatives, but Ruby wasn’t as eager. She didn’t know what she expected, but this sure wasn’t it. A quartet of Latin men moved through the gate. They wore unexpectedly expensive suits and excellent shoes. All had thick, dark hair, styled in a wave that made it look longer than it was. They didn’t look like immigrants to her, but rather like traveling businessmen. The lead man took Ruby in at a glance, and cracked just enough of a smile to reveal a gold front tooth, on the left. Then he extended a hand, which Rafe accepted and shook with enthusiasm.
“Señor de La Fuente, es un placer de encontrarlo finalmente,” Rafe said. It is a pleasure to finally meet you.
“El placer es mío, Señor Sandoval,” de La Fuente replied. The pleasure is mine. Then his eyes returned to Ruby, who smiled with all the sweetness she could muster. “Y quién es su amiga encantador?” And who is your lovely friend?
Ruby took a step forward, raising her right arm gracefully to offer her hand, palm down, and introduced herself. “Mi nombre es Ruby Sanchez, Señor. Permita que mí lo dé la bienvenida a los Estados Unidos.” Allow me to welcome you to the United States. Then she flashed one of her patented smiles, like the surprise present you didn’t know you wanted so badly until you opened it on Christmas morning.
De La Fuente seemed taken aback at first, but quickly recovered, took Ruby’s hand and raised her fingertips to his lips. “You are indeed a pleasant surprise to find in this decadent land,” he said, switching to English.
“Gentlemen, let us go and get your luggage,” Rafe said. “Then we will rent you a car for your stay here and get you to my humble home.”
Rafe took the lead and Ruby slid her arm through his, allowing him to guide her. These visitors looked old school and she certainly wanted to play the old school Latina, both for Rafe’s benefit and for camouflage. She did not want to appear in any way to be a threat. As they walked, Rafe leaned toward her.
“You make me proud, chica. I am lucky to have found you.”
“Thanks, sugar,” Ruby replied. “So, can I drive us home?”
“I don’t think so, Ruby,” Rafe said. “I want them to be able to keep up with us.”
The Lower East Side of Manhattan had a peculiarly insular quality, making it possible to turn a corner and be in a different world. That was the way it was in Chinatown, and Sunday morning there was no different from any other time. Strangers were welcome because the residents had long since accepted that their entire neighborhood was one big tourist attraction. On the other hand, strangers were still watched by suspicious residents, many of whom still have not bothered to learn the primitive language of the Anglos.
Linda Perry felt every one of those eyes on her as she walked down the narrow streets, but they didn’t bother her as much as the other four pair of eyes that tracked her every movement. The Chinese eyes carried only distrust, or contempt, or sometimes prurient interest. The eyes of the white men walking with her were harbingers of danger.
Dashing Irv Jerome walked beside her, smiling at the faces that tracked them, looking aloof and unconcerned. Doc, Frankie, and Psycho, the men Linda had come to think of as the three stooges, trailed them more warily.
They had arrived in Jerome’s giant Cadillac Escalade, the kind of thing Linda thought of as an autosaurus. They had circled the block a couple of times until Linda spotted Steele’s little Hyundai SUV and assured Jerome that her contact was already in the area. Then they parked around the corner from the meeting point and walked up to a corner around which they could see the narrow alley in question without being seen from it.
It wasn’t that cold, but the wind was slicing through Linda’s small frame. They stood at the corner only a minute or two before she saw what she most wanted and most dreaded. Steele popped out of his car and, without a glance left or right, marched across the street and down into the blind alley. They had heard her and his presence would probably keep her alive a bit longer. But, Lord, couldn’t they think of any better response than putting Rico in a blind alley alone?
“We’ve got that asshole now,” Doc said. “We can just walk right in there and take him apart. Nobody around here will get involved.”
Jerome backhanded Doc’s shoulder. “Sure, waltz right in there dummy. How do you know he hasn’t got a machine gun set up in there, huh? Maybe his partner you told me about is already in there with ten big friends. She says they’re rogue cops, but even dirty cops have friends. I know.”
“So what’s the play?” Frankie asked.
“The smart play is to send the girl in,” Jerome said. “They won’t want to get into any gunplay with her in the middle. And if things don’t work out, we can just take them all out. The girl’s no further use to us anyway.”
“Hey,” Linda called, waving a hand in the air. “Girl in question, right here. Quit talking about me like I’m not even here.”
“I never knew you had such a smart mouth,” Jerome said, crossing his arms against the wind. “You got that book?”
“He wouldn’t even talk to me without it,” she said, hopping from one foot to the other. “They don’t have any more use for me than you do. Me, I just want to be out of all this.”
“No problem, Ms. Perry,” Jerome bent to rub the back of a gloved hand against Linda’s cheek. “You just march your cute buns over there and talk to the nice policeman for a while. Then my boys will take over and you’ll be able to go on home to your son.”
Jerome’s touch made Linda’s teeth ache, like staring at pigeon tracks in the snow. She turned, clutched the big book to her chest, and marched across the street toward Rico Steele. At the entrance to the alley she hesitated. She could already smell last night’s chow mein from the dumpster she would walk past in a moment. The alley was barely ten feet wide, a gap between tall brick buildings just big enough to accommodate a garbage truck. Overflowing trash cans lined one side. Windows in the brick walls above offered further opportunity to add garbage to the alley. For a moment Linda thought that someone had stretched a translucent gray tarp over the narrow alley, but it was just the sky.
Holding the ledger over her heart like a shield, Linda stepped into the alley. It was deeper than she had remembered. Steele stood at the far end, his back to the wall, waving her in. She stepped forward tentatively at first, then more quickly until she was running toward the tall man in jeans, cowboy boots and a down jacket. When she was within ten feet of him she began to talk.
“Oh, Rico, thank God you heard me in the hall.”
“Yep, we heard you, Linda, and that was some pretty quick thinking on your part,” Steele said, smiling. “And you managed to bring the code book with you to boot.”
“Yes, but you shouldn’t be down here in the alley,” Linda said, skidding to a halt in front of him. “Didn’t you realize this would be a trap?”
Before Steele could answer, Frankie stepped into the shadowy alley, his automatic thrust forward. “Okay, cowboy, it’s time for a rematch.”
Steele shoved Linda aside with his left hand, his right darting under his jacket.
“Not a good idea,” Doc called, stepping into the alley behind Frankie with a pistol aimed at Steele’s head. “Not unless you’re reaching in there to pull your gun out and place it on the ground in front of you.”
When Steele hesitated, Frankie said, “Or I can shoot the girl while Doc keeps his sights on you.”
Steele looked at Linda, then very slowly pulled his revolver from its holster and lowered it to the ground. The two gunmen stepped deeper and deeper into the alley, and Linda looked around quickly, seeing no way out.