Ramirez spun me around, his hands maintaining a tight grip on my shoulders as he marched me down the hallway.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he whispered into my ear.
“Me?”
“Shhh.”
“Me?” I whispered. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Working.”
“I didn’t know you moonlighted as a bouncer in a drag club!”
“I’m undercover.” His breath was hot on my neck and I could feel his anger bubbling just beneath the surface. “A cover you could very well have blown back there.” He turned me left at the bar, muscling our way through the club patrons, heading downward toward the stage. “One little thing,” he muttered, as he shoved me in front of him. “I ask you to do one little thing. Steer clear of Vegas. Just stay home. But can you do that for me? No. Just like a woman.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that.”
“I’m going to pretend you’re going to listen to me this time.”
Hey, if he wanted to do denial too, who was I to judge?
He steered me through a doorway in the wall and into a dimly lit backstage area. Woman slash men in various states of undress ran between guys in flannels smoking cigarettes and manning pulleys. None of them paid us any attention. I guessed they were used to Bruno “taking care” of people back here.
Ramirez pushed me to a dark corner behind one of the curtains, then whipped me around to face him.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here,” I said, “but I-”
But before I could finish, Ramirez’s lips were locked over mine, his body pinning me against the wall. Not that I was going anywhere. The second his mouth touched mine, any fight I might have had melted faster than a popsicle on the Venice boardwalk. Man, he was a good kisser. So good, I’d almost forgotten about that sexist comment by the time we finally came up for air.
“Don’t ever do that again,” Ramirez mumbled onto my lips.
“Do what?” I admit, my brain was a little hazy after he’d just about kissed the pants off me.
“Give me a heart attack by breaking into a family man’s office.”
“Oh right, it’s okay for you to go undercover as Bruno the manhandler, but I happen to find one little unlocked office door and-wait, did you say ‘family man’?”
Ramirez pulled away, his jaw tightening into that silent Bad Cop routine again.
I gulped. “Please tell me you mean he attends his kids’ soccer games?”
No reaction. Crap. I hated it when Dana was right.
“Where are you staying?” Ramirez whispered. He glanced over his shoulder as a couple of the yellow sequin “girls” walked past.
“New York, New York. Room 1205.”
He nodded in the darkness. “I’ll be there in half an hour.” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead pulling open a door behind the curtain and shoving me through it.
Before I knew what had happened, I was standing outside next to an overflowing Dumpster and heard the unmistakable sound of Ramirez locking the door behind me. I looked around, trying to reorient myself. It was cold and I had a pretty good idea that thousands of tiny rat eyes were staring at me from behind the piles of garbage. I did a quick mini-jog back around to the front of the building and hailed the first cab I saw.
When I got back to the hotel room, I sat down on the bed and stared up at the textured ceiling for answers again. If things had seemed a little odd before, they were into Michael Jackson-odd territory now. It was like I was starring in my own Scorsese movie. Only these goodfellas all wore heels.
Could my dad really be mixed up with the Mob? What exactly did Larry do for Monaldo? And what did Ramirez have to do with any of this? He was an LAPD homicide detective; this was clearly out of his jurisdiction.
Did it have anything to do with the gunshot? I wondered. I may not be Miss Police Procedure, but even I knew something was amiss here. I suddenly felt like the dimwitted blonde in the movie theater who spends the whole time asking her date, “Who’s that guy again?” “Now, why does he want to kill that other guy?” “And what does the donkey have to do with anything?” I was trying to keep up, honest I was. But somehow none of these scenes were fitting together.
A knock sounded at the door and I jumped about three feet in the air.
“Who is it?” I called, struggling to return my heart rate to normal.
“It’s me,” a familiar voice called. “Open up, Maddie.”
I breathed a tiny sigh of relief and undid the lock, letting in Ramirez. I hadn’t even gotten the door closed behind him before his lips were advancing on mine again.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” I put a hand in the center of his chest, warding him off. And almost wavered as I felt his six-day-a-week-at-the-gym muscles rippling beneath my palm.
Almost.
“Uh uh. No way, pal. You have some serious explaining to do before there’s any more of…” I paused, gesturing between our lips, “…this kind of stuff going on.”
He sighed, then sat down on the double bed and rubbed a hand at his temple. “All right. What do you want to know?”
“For starters, what the hell are you doing in Vegas? And why are you working for Monaldo?”
He paused. And for half a second I thought he wasn’t going to tell me, his dark eyes scrutinizing me. Finally he gave in, Lustful Cop for once winning out over Bad Cop. “Okay,” he said. “But it doesn’t leave this room.”
I sat down beside him and held up my right hand. “Scout’s honor.”
“Two months ago,” he started, “the body of a customs agent at the port of L.A. comes floating in with the tide. I got the page that night I was at your apartment. It was pretty clear the way this guy was killed that it was a professional job.”
I gulped. “As in Mafia?”
“As in not a random act of violence. Apparently the agent had been asking questions about a container that came in from Thailand the week before. The container was stalled in customs. The agent dies, and two days later, customs clears our container.”
“Convenient.”
“Very. We followed the trail of paperwork through a couple of holding companies and dummy accounts, until it finally led us to a name. Monaldo.”
“So why don’t you arrest him?” I asked.
Ramirez sighed. “Trust me, I’d like to. Only it seems we aren’t the only agency investigating Monaldo.
“The ICE-Immigration and Customs Enforcement-thinks Monaldo is involved with the Marsucci family, an organization that’s suspected of having a hand in dozens of criminal activities along the West Coast, including importing counterfeit goods and distributing them here in the U.S. Only they haven’t got enough proof to link the containers coming in through the port of L.A. to the Marsuccis yet. Monaldo could be that link. They’ve had him under surveillance for the last eighteen months, but if they want a case to stick against a family like the Marsuccis, they’ve got to have solid evidence. Monaldo is their best chance at that and if I arrest him for murder, there goes their case.”
My head was spinning. This was all just a little too HBO for me. “So this is where Bruno comes in?”
He nodded. “If I can get enough proof to link Monaldo to the Marsuccis, then, and only then, can I arrest Monaldo for killing the customs agent.”
“What kind of link are you looking for?”
“Money,” he said. “If Monaldo is working for the Marsuccis, he’d have to be kicking back their share of the profits from the sale of the counterfeits to them somehow. So far we’ve scoured all of his accounts and come up empty. He must be handing it over in cash. Only we haven’t been able to catch him in the act yet. And, trust me, Bruno’s been sticking to this guy like glue.”
I shook my head. “I don’t get it; doesn’t murder out-rank a few fake items in your justice playbook?”
He gave me a look. “This is more than a few fake items. We’re talking ten billion dollars a year worth of fake items.”
I blinked. “Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow is right.”
“What are they counterfeiting, gold?”
Ramirez paused, suddenly not meeting my gaze.
“What?”
He looked down at his hands, rubbing them one over the other. Then he looked up at the ceiling and did a deep resigned sigh. “Shoes.”
“Excuse me?”
Another deep sigh. “Shoes, okay? They’re importing counterfeit designer shoes and passing them off as originals to retail stores up and down the West Coast.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed out loud. “Wait a minute-you’re telling me that Big Bad LAPD Officer Ramirez can’t make his case because of a few girly pairs of fake Fendis?” I was enjoying this way too much.
“That’s it. Laugh it up, shoe girl.” He gave me a playful punch on the arm.
And I was. I was laughing so hard tears were forming at the corners of my eyes and I was doing some really unladylike snorting. I couldn’t have designed better payback for his macho-man attitude if I’d tried. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, finally getting myself under control. “I know shoes. I could have helped!”
His eyebrows knitted together. “Maddie, this isn’t SpongeBob slippers. Profits from counterfeit items are often used to fund terrorist activities. The ICE takes this kind of thing very seriously. And you should too. The Marsuccis are not nice people. Not,” he emphasized, “the kind of people who take kindly to having women snoop through their offices.”
I pictured the look on Monaldo’s face when he’d caught me fumbling around his office. Ramirez was right; it wasn’t a comforting thought. Even less comforting was the thought that Larry was somehow mixed up with these kind of people.
“What about Hank?” I asked. “What does his death have to do with all this?”
Ramirez shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Was it really suicide?”
He paused, his Bad Cop face sliding into place again.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” I stood up, crossing my arms over my chest. “Look, if you had just told me this three days ago, I wouldn’t have been at that club and you wouldn’t be having to worry about your precious cover being blown. So don’t pull this Bad Cop crap on me. I’m a big girl. Lay it on me.”
I could have sworn I saw him suppress a smile. “Okay, big girl.” Yep, that was definitely a smile. “No. We don’t think it was a suicide. The trajectory off the building is all wrong. Plus…” He paused again, weighing how much to tell me.
I did my best Bond Girl impression. Hand on hips, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. Don’t mess with me, pal.
Finally he relented. “This is just between you and me, got it?”
I nodded.
“This piece of information isn’t being released to the public, but there was a suicide note. Obviously forged. Someone wanted to make it look like Hank killed himself.”
“Do you think it was Monaldo?”
Ramirez shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I think. It only matters what I can prove.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
He shook his head. “See, there you go with that ‘we’ thing again. Why do I get a very bad feeling every time you say ‘we’?”
I narrowed my eyes.
He grinned. “You know, you’re kind of cute when you do that.”
I stuck my tongue out at him.
“And that.” His grin widened into a full-fledged Big Bad Wolf smile, complete with shiny white teeth. “Honey, I’ve spent the last six weeks surrounded by men in bad wigs. There’s not much you can do that isn’t going to look cute.”
I had to admit, all the cute stuff was wearing me down. Especially when he said it with that lopsided grin, showing off the deceptively boyish dimple in his cheek. “So you’ve really been undercover this whole time?” I asked.
He nodded.
“All those ‘I’ll call you’s and getting your voice mail. You weren’t blowing me off?”
Ramirez took my hand in his and pulled me to him. “I’m sorry. I wanted to call you, but Bruno doesn’t get to take a whole lot of personal time.”
“So…you do like me?” I asked, knowing I sounded just a little pathetic, but the way Ramirez’s warm body was pressed against mine, I really didn’t care.
He nodded in response, his eyes going dark and intense as they honed in on mine.
“Are you going to kiss me now?” I whispered as he leaned in closer.
He nodded again.
And then he did. Slowly this time. Taking his time as he nibbled his way from one side of my mouth to the other. I think I sighed out loud.
“Forgive me yet?” he whispered.
I shook my head. “Uhn uh.”
He kissed me again, this time using a little tongue.
“How about now?” he murmured.
“Nope.”
His lips dipped back in. This time using a lot of tongue.
“Now?”
“Maybe just a little.”
He pulled back, a wicked gleam in his eyes. “Tell you what, let me really make it up to you.”
My hormones were suddenly charging like a new MasterCard at Bloomies. I could think of about a hundred things he could do to make it up to me, all of them involving his tongue.
“How about you spend tomorrow taking in a show, doing some shopping…”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he talked right over me.
“…then I’ll take you out to dinner tomorrow night.”
I shut my mouth. “Like a date?”
“Right. Like a date.” He smiled.
Our first date. I bit my lip. He was driving a hard bargain.
“Okay,” I felt myself saying. “A date. On one condition.”
His smile widened. “Anything.”
“Leave Bruno at the club. I want one night alone with you. No pagers, no work.”
His smile wavered just a little, but he finally gave in. “Deal. But,” he added with a wink, “then you have to do something for me.”
Uh oh. “Does this something involve condoms?”
His grin widened again. “Okay, two things.”
Be still, my beating heart.
“I want you to stay away from the Victoria Club.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off again.
“Look, I’ve spent the last six weeks being Bruno-who, by the way, is not a very nice guy-to see Monaldo behind bars where he belongs. Trust me when I say Monaldo is not the kind of person you want to piss off, Maddie. Please, just go home.”
He had a point. Mr. Creepy was pretty…well, creepy. Not someone I particularly wanted to meet again.
But there was Larry to consider. It was becoming painfully obvious Larry was involved with some not-sonice guys. Maybe even wise guys. How involved, I wasn’t sure. And by the time Ramirez got enough to proof to put Monaldo away, who knows how many other jumpers might have taken a header off the Victoria’s roof. Bobbi was missing and Hank was dead. Odds were stacked against Larry.
“Promise me you’ll go home?” Ramirez prompted.
I put my hand behind my back and crossed my fingers. “I promise.”
Ramirez looked so relieved I almost felt guilty.
“That’s a good girl.”
I narrowed my eyes again. Almost. “‘Good girl’? What am I, a cocker spaniel?”
That wolfish grin slid across his face again. “You’d rather be a naughty girl?”
I clamped my mouth shut, at a loss for a good comeback to that one. Thankfully I didn’t need one, as he leaned in close and his lips brushed against mine.
Maybe it was the fact that he’d actually asked me on a real date. Or maybe the fact that he admitted he liked me and hadn’t been blowing me off for the last six weeks. Or maybe it was just the fact that the most action I’d seen in months was on Joanie Loves Chachi reruns. But as Ramirez nibbled on my lower lip, I suddenly found myself thinking a whole mess of very naughty girl thoughts.
I nuzzled closer, running my hands through his thick hair. Ramirez put his hand up my shirt and I think I blacked out for a moment.
He growled in my ear. “Six weeks is a long time.”
Tell me about it.
His fingers were fumbling with the clasp of my bra, and mine were frantically working on his belt buckle. Which, by the way, was harder to break into than Fort Knox. I had just given up and was pulling his T-shirt off instead when the door to the hotel room burst open.
“Did you see how Madonna was looking at me? He was so into me, I could totally-oh. Sorry.”
Marco and Dana paused in the doorway. Ramirez muttered a curse in Spanish.
Ditto for me, pal.
“Uh, sorry to interrupt,” Dana said, looking from my dangling bra to Ramirez’s untucked T-shirt. “But we were worried about you.”
I could feel my cheeks filling with heat. Though whether it was a flush of suppressed hormones or embarrassment I’d be hard pressed to say.
“No problem. I was just leaving anyway,” Ramirez said. He shot me a heated look. “Tomorrow night?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak for fear of blurting out something totally inappropriate. Like, “Wait. Stay. A couple more seconds and I swear I’ll have that belt buckle figured out!”
“Mmm, mmm! Honey, that man is deeeeee-lish,” Marco said, watching him go.
“What is he doing here?” Dana asked. “What about The Oath?”
“Screw The Oath, honey. That man is H-O-T hot! Whew!” Marco began fanning himself.
Once I got my hormones back under control, Dana raided the minibar and I filled them in on what Ramirez had told me. Which wasn’t technically breaking my promise to him. He had said the information didn’t leave the room. And we were still in the room. See? Promise kept. (Sort of.)
Dana was such a good friend she didn’t even say “I told you so” when I got to the part about Monaldo’s family connections. Okay, well I might have seen her mouth it to Marco behind my back while I went for that second mini bottle of tequila, but my head was fuzzy enough by then I couldn’t be sure.
Once we’d drained the minibar, I slipped into my ducky pajamas and flopped onto the rollaway. I closed my eyes, visions of Larry in fake Gucci boots overlaid with Monaldo’s soulless eyes and the black tarp covering the unfortunate Hank. Worst of all, as I drifted off to sleep, I was assaulted by visions of Ramirez, drippy candles, soft music, and our perfect first date.
From the depths of a fabulous dream about Ramirez’s tongue doing acrobatics across my stomach, I heard the William Tell Overture erupting from my purse. I automatically reached for my cell. Ouch. A pain shot up my left side. I rolled over. A pain shot up my right side. I gingerly pulled myself up on my elbows, rubbing my neck. It felt like I’d fallen asleep sitting up in one of my Irish Catholic grandmother’s formal dining chairs. I blinked a few times. No dining chairs. It was worse. I’d slept on the lumpiest rollaway in the entire state of Nevada. I rubbed my neck, cringing, as I pulled my phone out of my purse.
“Hello?”
“Maddie? It’s Mom.”
Yikes! I sat straight up in bed. Then whimpered as pain shot up both my right and left sides.
“Uh, Mom. Wow. Hi.”
“Hi, sweets. I’m so glad I caught you in. How is Palm Springs?”
“Right. Palm Springs.” I glanced around the motel room. Marco was snoring like a little piggy beneath his frilly blue mask and Dana was sprawled sideways across the other double, her limbs dangling off the side. “It’s great. Really. Really. Great.” I cringed. I hated guilt.
“Oh good. I’m so glad you’re having a nice time. Did you visit that little boutique on Palm Canyon yet? The one that sells those hand-painted abalone shells?”
“Uh, no. Not yet.” Which wasn’t a total lie, right?
“Oh, you absolutely must. They are so darling! So what have you seen so far?”
“Oh, not much.” Right. If you didn’t count the feathered drag queens and shoe-trafficking mobsters.
“Well, honey, I’m so glad you decided to do this. You really needed a vacation. And I was just pleased as a pickle to hear that you’re out there dating again. It’s not good for you to be alone too long.”
Tell me about it. “Uh huh.”
“Anyway, I just wanted to call and say hello. I know we had a bit of a…disagreement before you left, and, well, I just…wanted to say hello.”
I cringed, feeling guilt niggle at the back of my mind again. This was about as close to an apology as Mom got. “Mom, about Larry-”
“Right.” She plowed right over me. “I’m so glad you’ve put that behind you.” A statement. You have put that behind you.
“Uh huh.” I rubbed my neck again. Was the pain actually getting worse?
“And I’m glad you’re having fun. Do you want me to come by and water your plants while you’re gone?”
“No, Mom, I don’t have any plants.”
She paused. “What do you mean, you don’t have any plants?”
“I don’t have any. They always die, so I have plastic ficus in the corner. No real plants.”
She paused again. “Don’t be silly; everyone has plants. I’ll go buy you one.”
Yep, the pain was definitely getting worse. I tilted my head to the side and groaned.
“Maddie, are you all right?”
“Yeah. I just slept on my neck the wrong way.”
Mom giggled on the other end. “I understand. I remember the first time Ralphie and I went away for the weekend together. I ‘slept’ in all kinds of funny positions.”
Okay, ew. “Uh, Mom, I have to…”
“In fact, there was this one time, we ‘slept’ in this airplane bathroom. Have you ever heard of the mile-high club, Maddie?”
Ew, ew, ew! “Wow, gee, I have to go now. I’ll call you later, Mom. Bye.”
I quickly hung up and flung the phone on the bed as if it had mom-sex cooties. Not the image I wanted to wake up to.
I flopped back down on the pillows and closed my eyes. But thanks to years of Catholic-ingrained guilt, I couldn’t go back to sleep. Even though I knew it was for her own good, I hated lying to my mother. Mostly because I knew sooner or later she’d find out. I remember one Christmas when I was ten and snuck into my mom’s closet to peek at all my presents. I had been so careful to put each and every one back in exactly the same place. Then Christmas morning I awoke to find a note saying Santa didn’t like little girls who peeked. I still had no idea how she found out. But somehow she always did.
I sighed, giving up on sleep, and hobbled into the shower instead. I spent an eternity standing under hot water, letting the steam and heat ease the tension out of my neck, then threw on a pair of white cargo capris, a hot pink baby T and my pink Charles David kitten heels. By the time I’d done the blow-dry and makeup (heavy on the makeup to compensate for my slightly enlarged nose), I could almost stand up straight. Almost.
“What’s wrong with your neck?” Dana asked me, stretching the sleep out of her limbs as she flipped on the casino channel.
“The rollaway,” I moaned. “Have you got any aspirin?”
Marco yawned. “You look like Quasimodo.”
I poked a finger at him. “Just for that, you’re on rollaway detail tonight, princess.”
Marco pouted but knew better than to argue with me before coffee. “Fine. Anyway, I’m off to Egypt today, ladies,” he informed us. “I’m going to see Tut’s Tomb at the Luxor. You know they’ve got real gold replicas of the jewels Queen Nefertiti wore for sale in the gift shop. I’m thinking of a tiara.”
I made a mental note to tell Ramirez there was at least one person on the planet girlier than I was.
“Anyway, after Tut’s Tomb, I’ve got a hot date.” He did a middle-schooler giggle. “With Madonna. He’s taking me to the Venetian. Is there anything more romantic than Venice?”
I had a sudden image of Ramirez and myself holding hands in a gondola and tried to shake it off before I turned middle-schooler like Marco.
“Would you do me a favor?” I asked him instead.
“Anything, dahling.”
“Would you ask Madonna if she knows where Bobbi lives?” I didn’t like that nobody at the club had seen Bobbi in days, but before I went totally paranoid over it, I figured it was a good idea to make sure he wasn’t just home with the flu.
“Consider it done.”
While Marco headed into the bathroom for his morning ritual of cleanser, exfoliant, and pearl-infused moisturizer, I flipped through the booklet of hotel services and found the number of the Regis Salon on the concierge level. No way was I going on a romantic gondola-ride first date with Ramirez with an upper lip that looked like a drag queen’s. (Yes, I know he’d said “dinner” and not “an evening in Venice,” but this was my fantasy and I could play it out wherever I wanted.) A woman doing a nasally Fran Drescher answered, and after flipping through her appointment book said she could squeeze me in at four.
That settled, I lay back on the bed and thought about my conversation with Ramirez last night.
From what he’d said, it was clear now that Larry did, in fact, need my help. Was he working for Monaldo in the sole capacity of a feathered showgirl or was there something more to it? I wasn’t altogether certain, but the way Turtleneck had shoved a gun in my face when I mentioned Monaldo’s name didn’t speak of the normal employer-employee relationship. Tot Trots for example, had only threatened to shoot me once, when I’d been three weeks late with the Pretty Princess Mary Jane sketches. And, in their defense, I’ll admit they were late because my favorite boutique in Venice Beach was having a huge going-out-of-business sale that month and, well, a girl’s got to have her priorities.
So all this left me with the question: What exactly was my dad doing for Monaldo? Or, more importantly, what kind of proof of my dad’s involvement with Monaldo were Ramirez and the ICE going to find? As much as I wasn’t sure how I felt about Larry, I didn’t particularly want my next memory of him to be through prison bars.
“Dana, do you still have Officer Baby Face’s number?”
She looked up from her TV lesson on beating the roulette wheel. “Sure. Why?”
“Do you think you could ask him for Maurice’s address?” Larry had been reluctant to talk to me. But I had a feeling that the whimpering Turtleneck might be an easier nut to crack.
She shrugged. “Worth a try.”
Dana fished the number out of her purse and gave him a story about wanting to send flowers to the partner of the deceased. I’m not sure if he actually bought it, but apparently his desire for Dana outweighed fear of his supervisors, because twenty minutes later Dana had a date to meet Officer Baby Face for drinks that night and I had a tall latte, two aspirins and the address to a condo in North Vegas.