At exactly the right time, I found out she was being chased up Mulholland Drive. We found her wielding a stick against a man who had made his bones at twelve.
“Make no mistake,” I said after closing her car door. Her eyes were cast in shadow from the car roof, until she moved, and I saw her broken. “I will hurt you to protect you.”
Her lips parted another millimeter. I had to bite my tongue to keep from kissing her. I was trying to scare her, but I hadn’t. I’d excited her. It was in the curve of her lips and the growing tension between my legs.
“Now go.” I turned my back to her. I heard her back up, and the glare from her headlights swung against the trees and disappeared.
Lorenzo got off Bruno when I approached. Bruno’s hand was shot up, and he had one foot in nothing but a black sock like old men wore. Paulie kept a foot on Bruno’s shot up hand and a shoe in his mouth to muffle his screams. I stood over Bruno, considered the flame at the tip of my cigarette, then looked at him again, stretched before me.
“Bruno,” I said, flicking the ash on him. “How are you?”
Paulie removed the shoe. Bruno spit defiantly, but gravity sent it back in his face. Paulie put his foot on the man’s throat. I’d had that done to me once. It was very uncomfortable, and the next day I’d looked as if I’d danced with a noose.
“What did you think you were doing?” I asked.
He grunted. I didn’t know if he could even pay attention to me with the fear of death clouding his vision. I retrieved the shoe that had been pulled from his mouth and tapped it on his forehead.
“Don’t you know nothing, stupido?” Paulie mangled even the simplest Italian words. “You can’t get to us through a woman.”
I crouched until I took up all of the frame of Bruno’s vision. “He’s got a point. Now, you have my attention. Did you have something you wanted to tell me?”
He snorted, choking on his own snot, eyes blood red and narrowed.
“I can’t hear you.” I put my hand behind my ear. “Was it my number you wanted? Maybe call me and ask me on a date?”
He shook his head. Snorted.
“Liar.” I pinched his cheeks until his mouth opened, then I jammed the shoe back in, sole-side down. “Did you want to say hello? Join my crew? I need someone to clean the floors. They’re filthy. People walk in with dirty shoes. It’s disgusting. No? You’re shaking your head, so all right, if you didn’t want to ask me on a date and you don’t want to work for me, then I’m going to assume you didn’t want to send me a message. I’m going to assume you wanted to fuck Theresa Drazen. Is that correct?”
He shook his head as much as he could.
“Now you’re lying. Everyone wants to fuck her. I want you to lie to my face, you piece of shit.” I pulled the shoe out of his mouth. A trail of saliva followed. “You were going to do what, once you caught her?”
How he had the energy to spit in my face, I’ll never know, but I respected his nerve.
Paulie did not. He took his foot off Bruno long enough to kick him in the cheek.
I yanked Bruno up by the collar and pinned him to the side of the car, then got in his face, daring him to spit again. “You have no manners, Bruno. This a Sicilian thing?”
“Kill me. I dare you.”
“Tell me what you thought you were doing.”
“I was going to teach you a lesson,” he choked out. “Give her a little of what those Neapolitans gave Nella. In honor of the last one you killed.”
He said it through his teeth, biting back tears. He wanted to beg for his life. I could smell it on him, yet he was pushing me.