We lost Angie’s help when she was assigned by Sallis & Salk to join a team of bodyguards watching an oily South African diamond merchant around the clock as he did whatever it was oily diamond merchants do when they come to our little hamlet.
And Bubba went back to doing whatever it is Bubba does when he isn’t out of the country buying things that could blow up the Eastern Seaboard.
So I was a bit adrift, and caseless, it seemed, when I found Vanessa sitting outdoors under a large Cinzano umbrella, the gentle drizzle bouncing off the cobblestone and spraying her ankles, but leaving the wrought-iron table and rest of Vanessa untouched.
“Hey.” I leaned in to kiss her cheek and she slid a hand along my rib cage as she accepted it.
“Hi.” She watched me take my seat with the amusement that lived in her eyes like twin birthmarks, a lusty vivacity that said just about anything was hers for the taking. It was just a matter of her choosing.
“How you doing?”
“I’m good, Patrick. You’re damp.” She patted a napkin to dry her palm.
I rolled my eyes and raised a hand to the heavens. The shower had come suddenly as I’d walked from my car, broke from a tear in a lone cloud that floated through an otherwise glossy sky.
“I’m not complaining,” she said. “Nothing looks better on a handsome man in a white shirt than a little rain.”
I chuckled. The thing with Vanessa was that even if you saw her coming, she kept coming. Ran right at you and then through you, made you wonder why you’d even tried to ward her off in the first place.
We may have agreed months ago that the sexual component of our relationship was over, but today Vanessa seemed to have changed her mind. And when Vanessa changed her mind, the rest of the world changed theirs with her.
Either that, or she was just trying to work me into a lather, leave me standing alone after I’d made my move so she’d have something even better than sex to get her off that night. With her, you never knew. And I’d learned in the past that the only way to play it safe with her was not to play at all.
“So,” I said, “why do you think I can help you with Tony T?”
She used her fingers to pick a pineapple chunk off her fruit plate, tossed it back in her mouth, and chewed it to pure pulp before speaking.
“I’m working on a diminished capacity defense,” she said.
“What?” I said. “‘Your Honor, my client’s a moron so let him go’?”
The tip of her tongue ran lightly under her upper teeth. “No, Patrick. No. I was thinking more along the lines of: ‘Your Honor, my client believes himself to be under a very real threat of death from members of the Russian crime syndicate, and his actions have stemmed from this fear.’”
“The Russian syndicate?”
She nodded.
I laughed.
She didn’t. “He’s honestly quite afraid of them, Patrick.”
“Why?”
“His last job, he robbed the wrong safe.”
“Belonging to a member of the syndicate?”
She nodded.
I tried to follow the logic of her proposed defense. “So he was so terrified, he blew town and went to Maine?”
Another nod.
“That’ll help on the bail jumping,” I said. “What about the other stuff?”
“Building blocks, Patrick. All I need is to get the illegal flight thrown out and everything can build from there. See, he crossed state lines again. That’s federal. I get the federal charges tossed, the state stuff will fall in line.”
“And you want me to…”
She wiped a thin drop of rain from her temple and gave me a chuckle so dry you could hang a nail on it. She leaned in to the table. “Oh, Patrick, there are several things I could possibly want from you, but in terms of Anthony Traverna, I just need you to attest under oath to his fear of the Russians.”
“But I wasn’t aware of it.”
“But maybe, in hindsight, you remember how fearful in general he seemed during the ride back from Maine.”
She speared a grape with her fork, sucked it off the tines.
She was dressed down this afternoon in a simple black skirt, dark cherry tank top, and black sandals. Her long walnut hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she’d foresaken her contacts for wafer-thin eyeglasses with red rims. And still the sensual power pouring from her limbs and flesh would have blown me out into the street if I hadn’t been used to it.
“Vanessa,” I said.
She speared another grape, propped her elbow on the table, and let the grape hover an inch from her lips as she stared over it at me. “Yes?”
“You know the DA will call me.”
“Well, actually the bail jump’s federal, so it’ll be the AG’s office.”
“Fine. But they’ll call me.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll try to get what you need on cross.”
“Yes, again.”
“So why ask me down here today?”
She considered the grape, but still didn’t eat it. “If I told you Tony was scared? I mean, terrified. And that I believe him when he says there’s an open contract on him?”
“I’d say you’d attach garnishing to his estate and go on about your business.”
She smiled. “So cold, Patrick. He is, though, you know.”
“I know. But I also know that wouldn’t be reason enough to ask me here.”
“Point taken.” She flicked her tongue and the grape disappeared from the fork. She chewed and swallowed, took a sip of mineral water. “Clarence misses you, by the way.”
Clarence was Vanessa’s dog, a chocolate Lab she’d bought on impulse six months ago and, last time I’d noticed, didn’t have a clue how to raise. You said, “Clarence, sit,” and Clarence ran away. You said, “Here,” and he shit on the rug. There was something likable about him, though. Maybe it was the puppy innocence in his eyes, a wide aiming-to-please that filled his brown pupils even as he pissed on your foot.
“How’s he doing?” I asked. “Housebroken yet?”
Vanessa held her forefinger and thumb a hair’s width apart. “So, so, close.”
“Eaten any more of your shoes?”
She shook her head. “I keep them on a high shelf. Besides, he’s more into underwear these days. Last week he puked up a bra I’d been missing.”
“Least he gave it back.”
She smiled, speared another chunk of fruit. “Remember that morning in Bermuda we woke to the rain?”
I nodded.
“Sheets of it, like walls really, vibrating off the windows and you couldn’t even see the sea from our room.”
I nodded again, tried to hurry her through it. “And we stayed in bed all day and drank wine and messed up the sheets.”
“Burned the sheets,” she said. “Broke that armchair.”
“I got the credit card bill,” I said. “I remember, Vanessa.”
She cut off a small piece of her watermelon wedge, slid it between her lips. “It’s raining now.”
I looked out at the small puddles on the sidewalk. Barely teardrops, their surfaces streaked gold with sun.
“It’ll pass,” I said.
Another dry chuckle and she sipped some more mineral water and stood. “I’ll use the powder room. Take the
