Chic frowned. “You need to stay away from her, Ms. Tree.”
I summoned the most withering smile I had in me, and I have a few. I said to the man I’d been sleeping with for months now, “Call me Michael.”
But Rafe surprised me. He was shaking his head, saying, “Chic’s right—if the daughter really is as legitimate as she looks, with that company’s high-powered attorneys? You’ll put everything at risk.”
“Define everything.”
“Okay. How about the Tree Agency?”
“And if Muerta’s darling daughter is
“Yourself,” Rafe said. “At risk.”
I mulled that a moment, then said, “So far today I shot off a redneck’s kneecap, and caught a hitman on the fly with a single shot.” I mock shivered. “Sure would hate to have my afternoon turn risky, all of a sudden.”
Rafe looked at Chic.
Chic looked at Rafe.
“Afternoon, fellas,” I said, and gave them a pleasant nod, and was off down the corridor.
I must have passed Dan without even noticing him, because suddenly I heard his voice behind me, saying to the two cops: “What did I miss?”
“Just your boss going mildly psychotic on us,” Rafe said.
“And?” Dan said.
They didn’t know I’d heard, and didn’t see my smile as I pressed the DOWN button at the elevator.
Muerta Enterprises International had its own building, a modern slab of stone and glass and steel on Wacker Drive with a gigantic abstract metal statue out front that might have been a dancer. I stood looking up, trying without any luck to see where the building ended and the sky began.
It took some sneaking around to avoid going through such channels as signing in with the receptionist, or waiting with a roomful of people whose attire was divided fairly evenly between Business Severe and Show Biz Chic.
But on the pretense of needing a ladies’ room, and knowing right where I was going thanks to some intel I squeezed out of Rafe Valer, I managed to enter the outer office of the CEO, without incident.
Within, I found a painfully handsome redheaded young man in a cream-color Armani ensemble with an orange silk tie, seated at an L-shaped blond desk, swiveled to face his keyboard and flat screen. His workstation was barren of any paperwork—he was a keeper of the keys, sentry not secretary.
Whatever the hell he was, he had an office area almost as large as my own at the Tree Agency, though this chamber with its parquet floor and deco-design area rug was home to no chairs other than the young man’s.
This was not a waiting room—by the time you made it this far, you were ready to be ushered in. The light lavender walls were adorned, sparingly, with large, almost poster-size framed photographs of household-name recording artists and actors, all smiling for the camera in a manner that came off collectively as crazed. A blond hutch matching the desk displayed some awards—including Oscars and Emmys—and a similar bookcase was home to annual industry publications.
The redheaded gatekeeper rolled on his brown leather chair from the flat screen to the other wing of his desk to look up at me with polite patience. He had lovely blue eyes and a moist, sensual mouth that a starlet would have killed for, or anyway braved Botox to attain.
“I’m sorry?” he said, in a midrange voice that was somehow simultaneously gentle and accusing.
What “I’m sorry” meant was, if I was standing before him right now, as I seemed to be, he should, he
“Michael Tree for Dominique Muerta,” I said.
He didn’t even check a book or use the phone. “You don’t have an appointment.”
“No, but she’ll see me.”
He remained polite, if icily so. “I’m afraid it’s impossible for you to see Ms. Muerta without an appointment.”
“Tell her my name. Michael Tree?”
His eyes narrowed. Something was registering inside the lightly freckled skull.
“I’m sorry,” he insisted, and he thought I didn’t see him reach under the desk and press something.
I leaned in, invading his space a little; he smelled at least as good as I did. “Would you do me one small favor? Give her my card before you turn me over to security, would you?”
And I handed him a nine millimeter bullet.
His blue eyes showed white all around as he regarded the object in his palm as if it were radioactive. “Is...is this supposed to be a joke?”
“Ask your boss,” I said. “Maybe she’ll explain it to you.”
He rose.
Gave me a pointing gesture that meant “stay put” —brave boy—and came around from behind his little L- shaped world and ducked in through a black, unmarked door, disappearing.
I went over to the door, open a crack, and listened. What I heard echoed a little, as if the man and woman speaking were on the other side of a lake.
“A woman out there insists on seeing you,” the secretary was saying. “I told her that’s impossible without an appointment. But she’s...”
A silken, almost purring alto responded: “You can’t handle a single unannounced visitor, Dennis? How are you earning those six figures again?”
“She seems sure you’ll want to see her—Michael Tree?”
Silence.
“And,” the redhead continued, “she said to give you her ‘card.’ ”
“Well?”
I smiled to myself as, on the other side of that door, the personal assistant was no doubt passing my bullet on to his boss.
“Droll,” she said. “Very droll.”
“I’ve already summoned security. Question is, should I call 911 as well?”
Like any other respectable company in a crisis would do....
“Hold security in your outer area when they arrive.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime...show her in.”
I returned to my position at the desk and allowed Dennis to come out and nod with a smile that even he didn’t believe. He ushered me just inside and discreetly exited, closing the door at my back.
Dominique Muerta’s inner office was three times the size of mine, though it had in common a certain masculinity in the dark-wood paneling and furnishings. The ceiling was high, stolen from the floor above, and the parquet floor seemed endless.
At my left was a massive fireplace with an elaborate gilt-framed oil painting of her late father looming over it and everything else, the tall, slender don standing with arms folded, very dignified, attired in a white suit and white tie—all that was lacking was the midget yelling, “Da plane! Da plane!”
To my right was a huge window onto the gray and blue landscape of the Chicago River and the buildings beyond. At the rear was a conference area not unlike my own, with couches and well-stuffed leather chairs (though these were white) around a coffee table, perched on another deco-design area rug.
Dominique Muerta herself sat behind a mahogany desk not unlike mine, but this one was about the size of a
