Chapter 3 #2
It takes me time to get to the bathrooms, and I hover by the door as people come and go. As I wait, Marlowe emerges and heads quickly for the exit. I hurry after her, but someone blocks me, and then I get caught in the crowd.
By the time I get outside, she’s gone.
Fuck.
Where’d she go?
I scan the street. She’s walking fast in the opposite direction.
I take off after her, keeping my distance.
Two blocks from her building, in a quiet spot, I catch up to her. “Marlowe.”
She gasps and spins. “Declan?”
“Who the hell else were you expecting?”
“Fuck off.” She turns, picking up the pace, marching forward fast.
But I grab her wrist, stopping her. “You’re going to get yourself hurt.”
“Let go of me.” She tries to yank free.
“No.” I pull her closer. “What’s going on? Why were you at that club? Who was that guy?”
“None of your business.”
“It is if you’re in danger.”
She laughs bitterly. “You don’t care about me.”
“I do care. More than I should.” The words slip out before I can stop them.
“I was asking someone about…my boyfriend,” she says.
Our eyes meet and she stops struggling.
The air between us is thick. Electric.
Then she’s in my arms and I’m kissing her like my life depends on it. She kisses me back, fierce and desperate, her fingers digging into my shoulders.
It’s angry. It’s hot. It’s everything.
We’re both panting as I break the kiss, holding her hip with one hand and her wrist with the other.
“So much,” I say, “for the boyfriend.”
She turns bright red. “Fuck you.”
This time she pushes me with her free hand, and I step back.
She takes off again when I see the blond guy from the club emerge from the shadows of a nearby tree, his eyes on her.
He was too far away from me before to notice, but there’s a flower tattoo on his inner wrist, clear as fucking day.
As he adjusts the sleeves of his hoodie to hide it, a flash of a black gun catches my eye.
He follows her.
“Fuck, Dec,” I mutter. “You utter gobshite.”
I dart past him down the street and catch Marlowe by her arm. “I’m sorry, baby.”
She starts to say something, but I silence it with a kiss and sling my arm around her. The moment she comes up for air, she whispers, “What—?”
“Let’s go home and make up.” And just to make it clear who’s in charge, I add one more thing. “I do have a gun, and I’m aching to shoot you.”
“Dick.”
“Unstable man with the gun, Molly.”
I glance over my shoulder. Flower Tattoo is gone.
We walk back to her place, and she comes… not willingly but also not struggling. This time I don’t drop her off out front.
“Go away,” she hisses.
“Not on your life. I’m coming in.” I keep the man and the gun sighting to myself.
We go inside, past the doorman whose name is Henry, and up the elevator to her place.
It’s huge.
I expected big, but not this.
In the opulent and tasteful living room is a small poodle named Fiona based on the gold embroidered name on her bed. She eyes me suspiciously.
Animals love me, so I bend down to make friends with her when the snap of Molly’s voice stops me.
“Why are you here?”
I turn to her. “You’re not to be trusted. Tell me, does your boyfriend have a tattoo?”
“A few.” She glares. “Pet Fiona at your peril.”
“She’s cute. Aren’t you cute?” I pat down my pockets, and sure enough, there’s a small packet of treats still in the back pocket of my jeans. “Flowers?”
“Not from you.”
“Flower tattoos?”
“I haven’t looked closely enough.”
She said she asked the guy at the club about her boyfriend. The guy had a flower tattoo, and her boyfriend might, too. Maybe it means something. Maybe it can associate them to the shootout in the truckyard, link them to the missing drugs.
I want answers.
I put a treat in my hand and hold it out. Fiona takes it.
Then something hisses behind me, and I stand slowly, turning.
On the arm of the sofa, a creature looks at me like it can see my soul and finds it lacking.
It blinks big yellow eyes with a touch of green, and the blink emphasizes the scar that runs like jagged lightning from a half ear to the other side of its fanged mouth.
I know it has fangs because its lips peel back and it hisses again, followed by a low growl.
I look at Fiona, but her eyes are shut, and she’s now facing the delicately papered wall.
“What,” I say, pointing at the gray thing, “is that?”
“Lola,” says Marlowe, like I should know.
Lola’s definitely taken a walk or two on the wild side.
She continues to stare at me, then her gaze drops.
To my hand. And the treats. Lola suddenly wiggles her butt, swishes her tail, flattens her ear and a half, and leaps, knocking the delicacies she desires from my hand.
She rips open the bag and gobbles up the treats before turning and stalking away, tail up, and I can see. ..
The pompoms are deflated but they must have been something else.
“Lola’s a boy.”
Marlowe glares at me again. “Don’t you have to go now? I know Lola’s a boy. What’s wrong with you?”
“I think, and don’t take this the wrong way, that Lola’s a street fightin’ cat, love. A big, gray, mean-looking street cat.” Then I glance at Fiona. “No wonder, Fiona here’s a little mean. She’s trying not to get eaten. Any more animals? A killer ant farm? Snakes?”
“There’s… Pepper.”
“Who is…?” I shake my head and cross my arms. “Never mind. Tell me the truth. Why did you go to the club?”
“Why did you follow me?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and walk to the bookshelf, flipping through some leather-bound book that I pay zero attention to. “Someone with a gun came after you, Molly. It was the guy from the club.”
“Don’t lie.” She stalks up and snatches the book away, but it’s a mistake on her part because it puts us in close contact again. Very close.
Especially when I close the gap so we’re almost touching.
Her pupils dilate.
“Who’s Leon, really?” I ask.
“I told you.”
“Humor me. Tell me more, Marlowe.”
“My friend. He’s helping me. I told you that my father’s missing.
Mom claims he left but I don’t believe it.
Nobody is doing anything to find him, so I’m using whatever connections I can.
” Her lip trembles. “I went to the club to see if anyone had heard from Leon. The guy I spoke to is a friend of his. Leon tried calling me when you dropped me off the first time, but I didn’t answer.
” Her eyes drop to the floor for a second.
“I guess maybe I got a little suspicious, too. And I wanted to make sure I wasn’t being played.
I promise you, I am just trying to find my dad. ”
Her pained gaze holds a flicker of hope and a lot of love for the man.
I get it.
Wanting to find your da.
When Da went to prison, I was too young to fully grasp it all. I didn’t get why he didn’t come back, why our lives changed so drastically. My brothers tried to protect me. But I didn’t want protection.
So I get it.
I get her.
Someone was after her tonight; I only came up here because what if the guy planned to follow her here?
The front door slams. “Get me Milo, fast...” The voice cuts into the air and a whirlwind of Chanel No. Five swirls in along with an elegant woman with stubbornly blonde hair I’m betting’s red under all that expensive salon work. “I don’t care. I have—“
She stops short when she sees me. The woman…Marlowe’s mother, I presume, is hard and sharp. Makes Marlowe look warm by comparison.
She hangs up the phone.
“Do not tell me you’ve reached the stage of bringing riff raff home to annoy me, Marlowe,” she says. Then she glances at me with a lifted eyebrow.
I turn on my best, thickest Irish brogue for her. “Ah, ye’ve got it wrong, ye have. I found the wee lass in a club nearby. He followed her out and had a concealed weapon. I saved her, brought her home.” I watch her face. She isn’t shocked. “I didn’t want to leave her alone.”
I wait.
In her hand is a piece of paper she folds over, but my eyes snag on a name.
M. Marcello.
Holy. Shit.
The mother knows Milo Marcello, head of the Marcello crime family.
I don’t know how, but this changes things.
Our eyes meet.
“I see.” This time her mother looks at me like she’s seeing me. “And you are?”
“Declan Murphy, concerned citizen and professional,” I say, ignoring her disdain.
“Dickwad,” Marlowe says so only I can hear. “Professional dickwad.”
I ignore that, too. “I keep things safe, property, people, things like that. She was out, running around in the park.” I clasp my hands in front of me. “Your daughter needs a leash.”
“Asshole,” Marlowe hisses.
And her mother spins. Pointing at her. “It’s late, Marlowe. You’re getting worse. If you were younger, I’d send you off to boarding school. You need to remember who you are and not cause trouble. Stay away from riff raff.” Her mom looks at me again. “No offense.”
A whole wheelbarrow full taken, but I keep that to myself. She’s got desperate written all over her. And though she’s better at hiding it than her daughter, I can smell the sharp odor of fear.
Then she turns. “What is it you want?”
“A job.” I pull out my wallet. There’s an old card for a bogus bodyguard business I had made up a few years ago to get in the door for a job.
I hand it to her. It just says Murphy, Personal Bodyguard on the front.
And on the back? A number to a voicemail for Murphy’s Bodyguard Service, a website that’s discreet but makes it look legit, and the address for upstairs of the sex club we own on the Upper East Side.
“And what kind of job?” Her voice is tight. Controlled.
“Your daughter needs protection.” I let that hang. Let the weight of it settle.
Her hand trembles—just once—before she steadies it. She glances at the Marcello note still clutched in her other hand, then folds it quickly.
“Come with me, Mr. Murphy. We’ll discuss this in my study.”
“No!” Marlowe gasps.
And I smile at Marlowe as I follow her mother. “Yes.”