Hidden Depths(53)
“Yeah, whatever,” he snapped at the comment before saying into the phone, “that has to be more than a coincidence. I thought that might all be bullshit asking me if I knew where the bitch was. More likely they hid her away.”
Nick didn’t know about that, but he supposed it was possible. Add Jimmy to the mix and it was downright likely, maybe. “Yeah, I doubt a girl could have taken out Jimmy. She had some help, I bet.”
“You don’t know this girl,” the old man muttered. “Anyway, so where do we stand at this point?”
“Well, I been asking around, town by town down the coast, showing her picture around, and I got to this one and wasn’t having any more luck, everybody blowing me off, you know, but then I seen him. The Reynolds, I mean. He was getting out of some fancy Reynolds company helicopter and I recognized his picture from the file you gave me.”
“And the girl?”
“As I said, I been showing her picture around, but no sign of her yet. Now I seen him, though, I’m gonna check out his place and—”
“No! Don’t do that.”
Good thing he called, he guessed.
“I do not want that family alerted to the fact I’m looking for the girl, whatever their connection to her may be at this juncture.”
“But what if she’s with him? I mean—”
“Then get around him. Be subtle. You can continue to ask around, but you find her on your own! Don’t involve anyone from that family. All I need is them on my ass again. So I’m warning you, Dukakis, be subtle.”
“Subtle. Yeah. Sure. I can be subtle, boss.”
He said it into the dead air.
* * * * *
Tommy O’Neal had been away from the slums of New York a pretty long time. But he’d never left them. He recognized danger when he saw it. He didn’t even want to hazard a guess as to what country the guy at the bar came from, but he knew he was dangerous. The piece the guy was packing, artfully concealed under his tailored suit coat, only confirmed it. Finishing the beer he wasn’t even technically allowed to drink yet, Tommy threw down a five. “Thanks, man.”
If being raised by the old man for the first thirteen years of his life had given him nothing else, it had finely honed his sense of when to skitter away from trouble.
“I tell you, she a beautiful girl. Beautiful. Dark hair, blue eyes. Maybe a little roughed up or something,” the guy with the accent was telling Kenny Adams, the bartender.
“I told you, pal, I ain’t seen anybody like that.”
“You didn’t even look at the picture. Look at the picture.”
“Hey, Tommy,” the bartender called down to him. “You see anybody who looks like this?”
The unfortunate thing about trouble was that if you looked as if you were trying to avoid it, it’d seek you out big-time.
Tommy went back to the bar without any visible show of reluctance and looked at the picture Kenny was holding out to him, apparently care of the swarthy stranger downing a whiskey. “Pretty girl,” he said.
“This is the guy you should be talking to. Nice piece of ass in this town, then Tommy’s sure to have nailed her.”
Kenny’s instincts on avoiding danger were probably not quite as seasoned as Tommy’s but they weren’t half bad. Right now Kenny was trying to deflect the stranger’s attentions from him to Tommy.
“Oh yeah?” the stranger asked. “You see this girl? Got her in your crib right now?”
Tommy purposefully kept himself guffawing—who the hell said “crib” around here—and shook his head. “Unfortunately no. But if I see her, I’ll certainly give it my best shot.”
Grinning casually at Kenny, he was just leaving as he heard some other anonymous loser call out, “Let me see the picture. I saw this hot bitch today with Cassie Bailey getting off her boat.”
At the mention of Cassie’s name, Tommy froze.
“Yeah, that’s her,” he heard behind him. “She looked a little older than that, but I think it was her.”
Tommy headed out of the bar right away and practically ran the six blocks directly over to the apartment adjacent to Bailey’s Grocery Store. He had a very bad feeling here.
Even though he was going to incur old man Bailey’s wrath for ringing the doorbell at this time of the night, he had to do it. Once the door opened, though, he was momentarily disconcerted that Cassie herself answered the summons. In a two-size-too-big T-shirt that went down to her knees, her blonde hair rumpled and falling out of some kind of half-assed braid, she had obviously just gotten out of bed, even though it was only nine o’clock. He brushed past her, fighting down the leap of excitement her very presence gave him, let alone dressed for bed, un-Victoria Secret-like as her outfit was.