Chapter Three
F*cked Up As Love
Rock Chick Rewind
Two months later…
I was sitting in another bar; not like Club. This one was seedy and I didn’t like it.
But I was all over finding out what the f*ck was going on. I’d had an informant tell me she worked that bar, although I didn’t know what “worked that bar” meant and only got the response, “you’ll see,” so I was there.
Informants sometimes sucked. A lot of time they were full of shit, and a lot of other times they got paid even better than me. Fortunately, this wasn’t my problem. My “clients” coughed that up.
But the case I was on was confounding me.
Usually, I loved a bit of confounding. Finding a piece, fitting it into the puzzle, making the picture become clearer.
But with this chick, things never came clear. They just got fuzzier. And it was annoying.
I didn’t get it.
But I would.
See, a friend of a friend of mine came to me, needing my services. He’d talked to his girl and his girl told him everything was a-okay.
But, according to him, she was totally lying.
Since her family didn’t have any money, he was saving up for the wedding of his girl’s dreams, seeing as he was gone for her. So he couldn’t go to someone like Lee because Lee was seriously pricey. But he was worried and he needed answers.
So my friend told him about me.
It was another boy/girl problem (most of them were; more indication you shouldn’t get mired down in romance). This time the girl had the boy’s diamond on her finger. She seemed into him; completely in love, over the moon at the prospect of being married, but dragging her heels in doing something about it.
Her behavior had also reportedly changed. She’d disappear, sometimes for long periods of time. Not weeks, but days and nights. She would also not return texts or pick up calls, and have weak excuses about where she was and why she was incommunicado.
They didn’t live together; not yet. This was because she was religious and wanted to wait until after marriage (fishy, because who did that anymore?—especially when she was letting him bang her; God could see all, so it wasn’t like she was pulling one over on the Big Guy).
But the dude had the keys to her place. He’d gone in when she wasn’t there and rifled through her shit, even bills and bank statements. Nothing was amiss. There were no drugs. No empty bottles of booze piled up in the recycling bin. No stockpiles of firearms and explosives or blueprints of banks.
Nothing that he could see.
Enter me.
I didn’t do this for a living. I didn’t do it for much of any payment. I spent my days in Fortnum’s, my nights at Brother’s, and not too long ago, got caught up in the next Rock Chick drama. This was my friend Stella’s big thing with another of Lee’s guys, Mace (seriously? How were we all connected, most of us for years, and this shit was happening now?).
That one got serious ugly with all the Rock Chicks again on the line; drive-bys, couch mutilations, and Stella’s apartment had exploded.
Yes.
Exploded.
Kaplowy.
Dust.
But now, as luck kept having it (thank God), all was good (outside of all Stella’s belongings being blown sky high and her being underinsured; but luckily, she’d just signed a recording contract and landed her hot guy, so her future was bright) and as usual, we were moving on while waiting for the next one up.
My guess, it would be Lee’s last unattached guy, Hector. But there were bets (yep, the posse bet on this shit) on me.
Not a chance.
I’d lived through six of these and had intimate details. No way that shit was happening with me. Some over-the-top macho guy forcing his way into my life, taking it over and bossing me around?
Unh-unh.
I didn’t care if it came with regular orgasms. That shit was not for me.
But, the thing was; with Stella’s situation, someone had leaked a lot of personal shit to the media about Lee, Indy and the entire crew. The paper had done exposés on all of their romances at the same time they followed Stella and Mace’s gig.
No one knew who leaked it, not even Lee, who had ways of finding out everything.
I’d also used my growing network of contacts to find out who the source was, but no one was talking.
It was weird. It wasn’t like it was a state secret. But all lips involved were sealed, as in with super glue.
So I worked, spent time on finding out who was talking about the Rock Chicks and did my other business. Not to mention, I often hooked up with Ren so I woke up in his bed, or alternately he woke up in mine, with more than a hint of frequency (in other words, nearly every morning).
Therefore, I didn’t have time to spend all of it following this woman. That meant it was about putting out feelers. With limited time, I needed to pinpoint my activities. And information sometimes came in slowly, especially about a girl who was not on the underworld grid of Denver. She worked in admitting at St. Joe’s, went to church on Sundays, had a Shih Tzu dog she doted on, a pastime of gardening (seriously, her backyard was the bomb—I’d jumped the fence and looked) and loved her fiancé.
Because I didn’t have the time, and this case was so weird, I’d called in reinforcements.
With the promise of a six-pack of Red Bull, a bottle of vodka and an entire afternoon of me at his place playing some game on his PS3 (this, a sacrifice for me; I rocked Guitar Hero, the rest of it I could take it or leave it—usually leave it), I’d talked my computer genius friend Brody into digging into this chick. I wanted to see if there was some electronic trail the fiancé couldn’t find rifling through her desk.
I also needed to learn how to pick a lock. I wanted inside her place to see for myself. I’d bought a couple of locks at the hardware store to examine them and try to figure them out, but I hadn’t had time to do that.
Alternately, I hoped the chick showed tonight and gave me some insight into why a good Catholic girl who loved her dog, geraniums and worked at a children’s hospital would be coming to this bar and giving lame excuses to her supposedly beloved fiancé about why she wouldn’t pick a date for the blessed event.
This was on my mind when I felt movement beside me.
I turned my head and saw Darius sliding into my booth.
I didn’t know whether to take this as a good or bad thing. Darius and I were tight so if he saw me out and about, he wouldn’t hesitate to approach. He also worked for Lee, so he could be anywhere at any time doing anything.
Then again, if he saw me out and about, he’d never see me someplace like this unless a Rock Chick was on the line. But we were currently in Rock Chick/Hot Bunch Downtime.
I led with, “Hey,” to get the lay of the land.
He shook his head and grinned.
Darius was black, had twists in his hair, soulful eyes, and the lean he had been when he was a drug dealer, which had bordered on hungry-looking and mean, had filled out now that he left that life behind. He looked healthier; not content but not angry, and his lean was no longer mean. It was kickass edgy.
Then again, he’d always been hot. Even when he was a drug dealer.
“Since it’s you, I’ve decided to find this amusing rather than drag your ass outta here and tell you to get your head out of it,” he declared.
I blinked.
Then I asked, “What?”
“Woman, you are not flying under radar.”
I looked around the bar to see if eyes were on me, particularly if the woman I was hoping to see there was there and had, for some bizarre reason (since she couldn’t know I was looking for her), made me.
“Not the bitch you’re after,” Darius said, and I looked back at him. “Lee.”
Oh. That.
I didn’t care about that.
“I’m not doing anything illegal,” I pointed out.
He ignored me and said, “And Hank.”
“So?”
He again ignored me and continued, “And Eddie. And your dad. And Indy’s dad—”
I cut him off. “I get your point, Darius. I just don’t know why you’re making it.”
“They’re letting you do your thing. But you gotta know they’re beginning to get antsy about it.”
Uh-oh.
Letting me do my thing?
Letting?
I decided to let that slide since I loved Darius and figured he didn’t mean anything by it (or I was giving him the benefit of the doubt) and focused on something else.
“Why on earth would they be getting antsy?”
“Because you aren’t stopping.”
Uh-oh again.
“Okay. Now tell me why they’d want me to stop? Or maybe the better question is why they’re in my business at all?”
He turned and leaned closer to me before answering, “I don’t know, Ally. Maybe it’s ‘cause you’re their sister. Or as good as a sister, or a daughter, and they’re worried. Maybe it’s ‘cause you’re untrained, which is why they’re worried. Maybe it’s ‘cause you’re out at places like this and unarmed, which, if they knew you were here, they’d be all kinds of f*ckin’ worried.”
“I have a stun gun,” I shared.
“The last three years, this bar has had four hits carried out in it,” he told me. “Bullets are flying, stun guns aren’t worth shit.”
F*ck.
Four?
That was a lot.
Hell, one was one too many.
I knew this place was seedy.
Maybe I should have asked Brody to do an electronic look-see into the location I was casing. I’d remember to do that next time.
“Ally,” Darius called my attention back to him. When he got it, he said, “I can tell by your face you aren’t listening to me.”
“I am,” I returned. “I just think you need to be straight up about what you’re saying.”
He leaned in closer and replied quietly, “You have no business being here.”
“I have a friend who has a friend he cares about who has a fiancée who, I’ve heard, is tied up in some business here. He’s in knots about it. He loves her. And he can’t afford Lee. He can’t even afford Dick Anderson.”
Dick Anderson was another local PI, less expensive than Lee and his boys, also less talented. Though, a nice guy.
“So enter me,” I finished.
“Whatever shit she’s wound up in here is shit you don’t want swirlin’ around you.”
I had a feeling he was not wrong.
“I’ll exit this situation shit free. Promise,” I assured him blithely.
“You do not have the skills to do that,” he contradicted me.
My back went up, but my attention sharpened.
“Do you know the job I’m on?”
“Yeah,” he didn’t surprise me by answering. He’d already mentioned “the bitch” I was after. “Brody spilled,” he went on. “You pulled him in, gave him the name. He talked to me. When he did, I decided it was time to stop delaying our talk.”
That Red Bull, vodka and gaming session was exchanged for information and confidentiality.
If Brody got me good shit, he’d get his Red Bull and vodka. But for this crap, I was so totally not spending the afternoon with a joystick in my hand when I could spend it with Ren and a better kind of joystick in my hand. Or in other parts of me.
Brody. God, such a big mouth.
“Ally,” Darius called again, and my attention returned to him. “Focus, woman. What I’m saying is important.”
“What you’re saying would be important if you had info on the woman I’m checking out.”
Darius stared at me.
This lasted a while.
I let him. I could be patient.
Or I could be patient for a while.
Luckily, I was able to be patient for the while it took Darius to break his silence and mutter, “Stubborn.”
Told you Darius had known me a long time.
“So, do you have info on this chick?” I pushed.
“No. Don’t know who the f*ck she is. What I know is that two kinds of women walk in those doors.” He jerked his head to the door to the bar. “First kind is looking to score, and by that I don’t mean get laid. I mean tweaker bitches too stupid and too desperate for their fix to stay away. The second kind is looking to get laid, but if that happens, they also get paid.”
I knew both. I hadn’t seen one woman there, outside me, who was not one or the other.
Therefore, this gave me nothing.
“You don’t care,” Darius declared, and I focused on him again.
“Care about what? I mean, you aren’t telling me something I don’t know.”
“Care about your brothers, your dad, your friends worried about you.”
I felt something unpleasant slither through me. Something that forced me to ask, “Has Lee shared with Indy?”
“No,” he said firmly.
I liked the firm, but I needed more.
“Eddie with Jet?”
“No, Ally. No f*ckin’ way. They tell their women what you’re doin’, those crazy bitches will be all over gettin’ in on the act. You think those men want their women involved in this brand of shit? That is, when this brand of shit doesn’t hit them when they’re actually not doing anything to buy it, rather than doing what you’re doing, which means doing something that might buy it.”
No. I didn’t think that.
So good.
That secret was safe.
And it was a secret for precisely that reason.
I could sense danger, and stay away from it, but that didn’t mean I didn’t court it. And the Rock Chicks had had enough of that. With their track record, there would probably be more. I didn’t need to be the one to bring that down on them.
Not to mention, if I did, Lee, Hank, Eddie, Vance, Luke and Mace would lose their badass minds, and I really didn’t need that shit. Badasses were a pain in the ass to deal with. The Rock Chicks didn’t agree, but then again, they were getting orgasms regularly given to them by said badasses, and it was my experience that colored a woman’s thinking.
But it was more. I liked doing this. It was mine. And the Rock Chicks would be all over getting involved.
Doing this wasn’t a fun diversion for me.
It was something else.
I just didn’t get what it was, so I was riding the wave until the cosmos shared that intel with me.
And I was getting off on it.
“F*ck me,” Darius murmured.
I’d lost focus on him again, but when I went back to him, I saw him eyeing me but shaking his head.
“What?” I asked.
He stopped shaking his head and locked eyes with me.
“The what is you’re you. You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do. What you’re not gonna do is do this shit not knowin’ what the f*ck you’re doin’.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Darius shook his head again and kept talking.
“I get that you need this to fly under Rock Chick radar. And I really need this to fly under Rock Chick radar. Those motherf*cking men will flip right the f*ck out if their women get a hint of what you’re doin’, get involved and that somehow blows back on me. So we’re keepin’ this under radar.”
I was down with that.
I just didn’t know exactly what he was talking about until he told me.
“I’m talkin’ to Zip. On the down low, we’re takin’ you in, gettin’ you a weapon.”
Oh shit.
Zip owned Zip’s Gun Emporium. I’d been there. Zip was old. Zip was cantankerous. Zip was also a hoot. And his shop had all any badass needed to kit out his badassness and make it lethally badass. I loved his shop. I had a stun gun, Taser and a variety of mace delivery systems I’d bought in his shop.
Zip’s place also had a firing range.
I wasn’t sure about carrying a weapon, though. I could stun gun with the best of them, but a real gun?
“Darius, I—”
He lifted a hand. “No, woman. No f*ckin’ way. You’re in a bar like this, you come in carryin’. But you come in carryin’ and knowin’ what you’re doin’. I know your dad taught you how to handle guns. But before you go out packin’, you’re gonna shoot at Zip’s and you’re gonna do it a lot. We’ll talk him into openin’ the range after hours so you don’t get seen there. And you work with your weapon so you’re so comfortable enough with it that it feels like an extension of your arm. You understand it. You respect it. You know what it can do. And you know how to use it.”
That sounded kind of exciting, but I didn’t get to tell him that because Darius was not done.
And it got better.
“Lee uses this dude’s place down in Colorado Springs. The guy’s got three set ups. One’s a warehouse you gotta clear, good and bad guys. One’s a house you gotta clear. You walk through with your weapon shooting pop-ups. You fail if you take down one innocent, and that means you do it again. And again. And again. Until you pass. You don’t go through it memorizing the scheme. He switches the pop-ups and you never know what you’re going to get. You don’t pass until you can get through it completely clean.”
I so wanted to do that.
In fact, I couldn’t f*cking wait.
“He’s also got a driving course,” Darius informed me. “Learn to drive defensive, learn to drive a chase. You’re doin’ that, too.”
I so f*cking was!
“You’re tall but you’re slight,” he continued. “That means you don’t learn how to fight. You learn some defensive moves and you learn how to get away. I’ll teach you that. But, starting tomorrow, and every day after that, you run. You got trouble, there’s a high probability you’re not gonna be able to beat it down. You do not shoot at it unless you absolutely have to. Stun guns and pepper spray can get commandeered if you don’t got the moves to stop it, and then be turned on you. So you get your ass in trouble, you run away. But you’re not in shape, that trouble’ll catch you.”
This did not sound all that fun. I wasn’t an exercise sort of person, unless you counted walking in a mall. However, I didn’t share that with Darius, in case me poo-pooing any part of the righteous deal he was offering would mean he’d take the deal off the table.
And anyway, if I ran regularly, that meant I could drink more Fat Tire and eat more LaMar’s donuts.
So I decided to focus on that.
“You got it,” I agreed.
He nodded once and kept going.
“From here on out, you start anything, you gotta be invisible.”
“I already do that,” I told him, but he shook his head.
“Not what you’re thinkin’. I mean you go to Brody. He makes a mint off that game he programmed, but he gets off on this sleuth stuff. Lee pays him a whack, but that guy would come to work every day for free, he’s so into this shit. You give him more, he’ll be all over it. You can solve your problem with an electronic investigation that doesn’t put your ass on the line, you do that.” He paused. “First.”
This made sense and would likely only cost me energy drinks, Costco boxes of king-size candy bars and Apple app gift cards all of which I could make my “clients” procure for Brody. Since all that was doable, I nodded my agreement.
Darius kept talking.
“And from here on in, I’m briefed in full about everything you do. I know all your cases. I know what you uncover. And you do not,” he leaned in, “ever walk your ass into a place like this without me as your wingman. This last is the most important, Ally, and if you’re not down with that, you lose all the rest. You also buy me goin’ to Lee and lighting a fire under his ass to take you off Denver’s game board in a way no one will ever contact you again for this shit.”
Lee could do that.
And Darius would do that. He cared a lot about me.
And if either of them did that, it would piss me off.
But I didn’t need to expend that energy, seeing as I had absolutely no problem with him being my wingman.
In fact, I had absolutely no problem with any of it (save the running, but I figured I could rock a track suit and I could get some of those kickass double hair band thingies to pull my hair away from my face while I ran and be totally stylin’).
In order to communicate this to Darius, it was my turn to lean into him.
And when I did, I whispered, “You know, I totally love you.”
Something moved over his face. Something I’d seen before when he didn’t know I was watching.
Uncertainty mixed with melancholy. I didn’t totally get it. What I did get was that Darius Tucker had had a beautiful life a long time ago. A big loving family, good friends, a bright future. And all that went to shit. He made desperate—and it had to be said, angry—decisions, and his life spiraled down the toilet. In that time, I suspected he did a lot of things that seared marks onto his soul.
I just didn’t know if he was on a path to redemption or thought his future only held damnation.
That was his to know and share if he felt like it.
As for me, I’d learned over and over again, since Rosie dragged Indy into his mess (thus starting the Rock Chick Rollercoaster), good people did bad things and bad people did good things.
I just trusted God would sort it out as it needed to be.
When Darius said nothing, I assured him, “You don’t have to say it back. I know where you are. And if I didn’t, you coming here tonight and doing what you’ve done would have told me.”
To this, Darius said, “You’re a pain in the ass.”
He so totally loved me.
“Good,” I replied on a smile. “That’s what I strive to be.”
“Woman, trust me. You’re succeeding beyond your wildest dreams.”
My smile got bigger.
He took it in, shook his head, then looked back in my eyes.
“Tonight, you’re done. You wait until we look over what Brody gets. He gives you what you need, you got no reason to come back. He doesn’t, we’ll assess and plan. You down with that?”
“Totally.”
“Right,” he muttered, sliding out of the booth. “Get your ass outta here. We’ll go somewhere else and get a drink. You brief me, then I can end this day and get home.”
I followed him out, asking, “Would it be a hit to your street cred if I held your hand?”
“Pain in the ass,” he muttered as answer.
“Or hugged you?” I threw out an alternate suggestion.
“Total pain in the ass.”
I grinned.
We hit the door.
Darius pushed it open for me.
I moseyed through.
* * * * *
Two days later…
I hauled my ass up into Darius’s black Silverado and slammed the door. I didn’t put on my seatbelt. I leaned forward, put my elbows to the dash and drove my hands into my hair, yanking it away from my face and scrunching it at the back of my head.
Brody had found nothing.
But we’d just had a conversation with one of Darius’s informants, and he knew everything.
The vehicle rocked when Darius folded into the driver’s seat and closed his door. He didn’t hit the ignition and the cab stayed silent.
It was the dead of night and we’d just cracked Garden Girl’s case.
And what we learned sucked.
After some time, Darius broke the silence.
“Tomorrow,” he said gently, “you report this to her man and walk away.”
I sat back with a jerk, pulling my hands out of my hair and twisting to him.
“We have to do something,” I snapped.
“We don’t gotta do shit,” he returned, his words harsh but his tone still gentle.
“Darius—”
He leaned into me and hooked his hand behind my head, pulling me close.
“This guy works at an electronic store and is payin’ you by givin’ you a discount on a new flat screen TV. You do not wade into a mess like that for twenty-five percent off a flat screen TV, Ally.”
“That’s a good discount,” I shot back.
His lips curved up, but the humor didn’t reach his eyes. “You give him what he asked for and let him deal.”
“His woman is turning tricks to pay off her brother’s drug debt,” I told him something he already knew since he was the one who found the informant and he stood right by me when we both learned what had befallen Garden Girl.
“That is not your problem.”
“Someone has to tell her it’s not hers.”
“That’d be her man’s job.”
“You think her man’s gonna stick by her side, knowing she’s giving fifty dollar blowjobs?” I asked.
Darius said nothing.
That meant no.
I kept going. “Someone has to kick her brother’s ass straight into rehab”
“That’d be her job.”
“Darius—”
His hand on my head tightened. “Ally, I know his dealer. I already told you, he’s taken two digits, and he’s threatening next up is this guy’s dick. And this dealer will do that. He won’t blink. And he’ll keep sellin’ to him ‘cause he doesn’t give that first f*ck this guy’s breakin’ into cars to steal stereos to feed his habit or that his sister is spreadin’ her legs to keep him trippin’. She should have never swung that deal. That’s on her. Her man’s worried about it. You found his problem; it’s on him to solve it. You give him what he needs and walk away.”
He waited for that to penetrate, and when I just sat there grinding my teeth, he kept going.
“And his dealer is all over havin’ her sweet p-ssy out there bringin’ in coin. You take that away, I take that away, we insert ourselves into a situation that is not ours to deal with, and we make a dangerous guy unhappy. That is not our mission. Our mission was to find out why that bitch was bein’ hinky. We found out. You report it. We’re done.
“This is f*cked up,” I hissed.
“Learn now,” Darius returned. “You keep doin’ this shit, you’ll see a lot that’s f*cked up. Then you’ll learn a whole new definition of f*cked up, and that definition will keep changing. What you always gotta remember is that it’s not your f*ck up. It’s someone else’s. You never take that shit on. You do the job and walk away.”
I clenched my teeth and slid my eyes away.
Then I looked back and asked, “Why would she do that for her brother?”
“What would you do, body parts from Lee or Hank came to you through the mail?”
I again clenched my teeth and slid my eyes away.
This was my answer, but Darius already knew it.
I’d do anything.
“There is nothing stronger and there is nothing that’ll get you as f*cked up as love,” Darius finished sagely, and I looked back at him.
There was a wisdom borne of experience behind that and I wanted to know what it was.
But, again, that was his to share.
The Rock Chicks, hell, anything (and this evening’s activities proved it), I’d stick my nose in and not give up until I had it all.
Darius… I loved him enough not to go there until (hopefully) he gave it to me.
“You gonna be able to walk away?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered.
He studied me before pressing, “Is that yeah firm?”
He so totally knew me.
My eyes moved to the side for a second before going back to him.
“Yeah,” I whispered.
He held my gaze.
Then he nodded.
After that, he let me go and turned toward the wheel. Then he started up his truck and drove me home.