Chapter 3 #2
“Give me that,” she said, yanking it away from him, “and get your scrubby ass out of my kitchen.”
“You’ve called my ass a lot of things, Veronica, but scrubby wasn’t one of them.”
She pointed to the door and began shouting at him in Spanish.
“Vero!” I hollered over her, lowering my voice when I remembered the children were sleeping. “ I invited Javi in after he gallantly came to my rescue. The least we can do is let him finish his meal.”
She tore her eyes from him. “What rescue? What happened?” she asked me.
“I was getting out of my van when I heard the crash,” Javi said, taking his spoon from her. “Saw the busted glass on the ground and figured something was up, but by the time I got to the backyard, Finlay had the situation under control.”
“I’m fine,” I assured her. “It was just Cam, but it was heroic of Javi to step in.” Vero’s mouth parted around a question.
I gave a tight shake of my head. Neither one of us would be foolish enough to discuss the details of Cam’s message in front of Javi.
I directed a pointed look at the bowl she was holding hostage.
She shoved it toward Javi with a huff. “Doesn’t explain what you were doing here in the first place.”
“Just doing your cousin a favor.” He jutted his chin toward a thick stack of junk mail on the table, mostly clothing catalogs and coupon circulars by the looks of it.
“Ramón wanted to bring your mail himself, but he was afraid someone might follow him here. He said some people have been to his apartment looking for you. What’s that all about? ”
“Nothing,” Vero said defensively. “Just some girls from my old sorority. They think I have something that belongs to them. I told them I don’t, but they won’t let it go. It’s not a big deal.”
“Your cousin seems to think it is.”
“My cousin worries too much.”
“Maybe I do, too.”
“Really?” she snapped. “Because I don’t remember you being there to help me pack when I dropped out of school and moved out.
” I stood silently in the corner, watching Vero’s jaw clench.
She picked up the pile of mail without looking at it and tossed it in the trash.
“I don’t see anything here worth saving. You shouldn’t have wasted your time.”
Javi rose from the table and put his empty bowl in the sink. His T-shirt rode up as he slipped his jacket over his shoulders. Vero stole a glance at him, her cheeks flushing in response.
“You’re probably right. Thanks for the meal anyway. See you around,” he said as he showed himself out.
I caught a flash of regret on her face as the door closed behind him. She threw up her hands, muttering to herself as she turned to the sink and washed his bowl. When she was done, she tossed the sponge in the basin.
“So,” I said, reaching into the pantry for a bottle of wine, “how long have you been in love with Javi?”
“I am not in love with him.”
I poured two glasses and slid one over the counter toward her. “Methinks thou doth protest too much.”
“Well me thinks you read too many romance novels.”
“Which makes me an expert on the subject.”
“Not according to Sylvia.”
I ignored that. “There’s obviously history between the two of you.”
“One that doesn’t need repeating,” she said as she sucked down the contents of her glass. “What did Cam want?”
I unfolded the note from my pocket and pushed it across the table toward her. Her eyes went wide as she read the message from Feliks. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to bed,” I said, gulping down the last of my wine.
“I’m exhausted. We’ll figure it out tomorrow.
” I carried Feliks’s envelope to the stove and held the wax seal over the burner, watching the embossed Z melt and blacken.
Then I shredded the letter into tiny bits and threw them in the trash.
I paused over the waste bin, sifting aside the scraps I’d just tossed in.
A thick, brown envelope had come loose from the pile of junk mail Javi had delivered.
Vero’s name was written on the front. The absence of a return address piqued my curiosity and I fished it out of the can.
I held the envelope under the light, squinting at the postage stamp.
“This was mailed from Atlantic City.”
Vero’s face sobered as I held it out to her.
She took it, wedging a finger inside and tearing the seal.
A black poker chip fell into her palm. A photo slipped from the envelope, a grainy image of Vero getting into her car.
We both sucked in a breath. The picture had been taken in the drop-off lane at Delia’s preschool.
“I never thought I’d say this,” Vero said in a small voice, “but maybe the kids should stay with Steven for a while.”
It was long past midnight, but neither of us could sleep. Vero and I sat at the kitchen table in our pajamas, an empty bag of Goldfish crackers in front of me and an empty bag of Oreos in front of Vero.
I rubbed my temple. “Exactly how much did you say you owe this loan shark?”
“Two hundred thousand,” Vero said hopelessly, her head resting in the cradle of her hand as she traced dollar signs in the crumbs with her finger.
That was one hundred and ninety thousand more than we had. “At least he doesn’t know where you live.”
“Not yet, anyway.” Vero had been living with me when she’d purchased the Charger in the photo, but she’d registered it under her cousin’s address, hoping her former sorority sisters would be less likely to find her. “Did you call Steven?” she asked.
I nodded. “His flight gets in tomorrow afternoon. He’ll swing by and pick up the kids on his way home from the airport. He agreed to keep them for the week. That should give us a few days to figure out what to do about this Marcus person.”
“Marco,” she corrected me.
“Do you know his last name?”
Vero shook her head. She’d been introduced to the loan shark in the lounge of a hotel and casino called the Royal Flush. Aside from his first name and a physical description of him, we didn’t have much to go on.
“How about a phone number?” I asked.
Another shake of her head. “The bellman at the hotel schedules all of Marco’s meetings for him.”
If we were to drive to Atlantic City and start asking for the loan shark by name, he’d probably find us before we managed to track him down.
My sigh smelled like cheddar-flavored crackers and resignation. “You know there’s only one way to fix this.”
“Kill him?”
“Pay him back!”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“First thing tomorrow, we’ll take your Charger to the car dealership down the street and see how much we can get for it. Then we’ll contact the bellman at the casino, arrange to give Marco what we have, and tell him we need more time to come up with the rest.”
Vero sat bolt upright. “I can’t sell my car!”
“You can use my minivan to get back and forth to classes. We can get by on one vehicle for a while.”
“Finlay, they’re called loan sharks for a reason! He’s not going to be satisfied with a payment plan. If I pay him twenty percent of what I owe him, he’ll still break eighty percent of the bones in my body and charge me interest on the ones he left intact.”
“What choice do we have? It’s not like we have two hundred thousand just sitting in the bank.”
Vero glanced up at me with a sheepish expression. “Not exactly in the bank,” she said, gnawing her lip. “Remember when I said I would get rid of the Aston…?”
I gasped. “You and Ramón were supposed to destroy that car!” They were supposed to put it in the giant crusher behind his garage, then bury every last trace of it.
“It’s a good thing I didn’t!” she argued. “Even with bullet holes, that car is worth more than what I owe. If we strip it, we can get rid of the car and make enough to pay off Marco. All we need is someone who knows where to sell the parts.”
“You promised your cousin you wouldn’t tell anyone about the car.
” He’d refused to help her sell it, too afraid his business would get implicated in whatever shady dealings the car had been involved in.
He’d been adamant that no one—not even his best friend—ever know about the Aston Martin we’d left in his garage.
“Ramón doesn’t have to know. If I ask Javi to keep a secret for me, he will.
He’s done it before.” Color rushed to her cheeks, hinting at the kinds of secrets Javi had kept hidden from Ramón.
“I’ll tell Javi to meet us at the garage tomorrow night after it’s closed.
I’ll show him the car and ask him how much he thinks he can get for the parts. ”
“What you’re asking him to do is probably illegal.”
“It’s nothing he hasn’t done before.”
My head felt heavy as I stared at the picture on the table, taken at the crosswalk in front of Delia’s school.
It felt disturbingly like the kind of veiled threat Feliks would have sent.
If Feliks Zhirov wouldn’t settle for half a job, why should I assume Marco would settle for twenty percent of the money Vero owed him?
Maybe Vero was right. Like it or not, we were still in possession of Feliks’s car.
With any luck, we’d be able to sell enough of the Aston to get Marco off her back.
And if the car was scattered far and wide, then all that would be left was a piece of paper connecting me to Feliks Zhirov.
As soon as Feliks was shipped off to prison, I’d find a way to destroy that, too.
“Okay,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “Set up the meeting with Javi.”