The Woman in the Wrong Place (Grassi Framily)

When in doubt, mention fashion as an excuse for something. It confuses the menfolk and you don’t have to make any kind of sense.

“This heroine seems pretty smart,” Detective Hart said, drawing my attention back to him.

“I like to think so.”

“Smart heroines know what the information they have is worth,” he said. “Since they want the guy in the story to take them seriously.”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure what she might ask for.”

“Money, babe,” Detective Carver broke in again. “Smart girls always talk in money. It’s the language these fucks understand.”

“Money,” I repeated, belly flip-flopping over the idea. “But… but isn’t that dirty money she would be taking?”

“There isn’t shit clean about the mob, babe,” Detective Carver said, shrugging. “The sooner this girl in your book sees that, the better.”

“So she wouldn’t be in, you know, trouble for it?”

“In trouble with who?” Detective Carver asked. “If the cops don’t know about it, who is going to get her in trouble? She can donate it for all that it matters, but she needs to demand it.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “So what would she ask for? Like a couple thousand?” I asked.

“A couple thousand what?” Detective Carver asked, brows scrunching.

“A month?”

Apparently, that was hilarious.

Carver and Hart shared a chuckle for a second.

Detective Hart was the first to recover. “I understand your confusion, honey. Most average citizens don’t understand about money and the mob. But higher-ups in a typical mafia Family, especially one in New York or New Jersey, they can clear millions a month. This girl in your story needs to make it clear she knows how valuable her information is, and she is going to make him hurt a little for her silence. He isn’t going to trust the deal otherwise.”

“Okay. So a couple thousand a week?” I asked.

“Babe, if your chick in your book is demanding anything less than twenty or thirty grand a month, she doesn’t know her worth,” Detective Carver said.

“Thirty grand?” I gulped, unable to wrap my head around that figure.

When I’d taken the job at the banquet hall, I’d been over the moon at the prospect of making forty-five grand for the year. I’d been stuck in low-paying jobs all my life up until that point, only managing to make more than seven-fifty an hour when I worked at an all-night restaurant, but it hadn’t been worth all the grab-assing and creepy managers.

So making thirty grand a month was just astronomical to me.

That equaled, what? Three-hundred-sixty grand for the year?

That was insane.

“But… but how long would she demand that kind of money?”

At that, Carver and Hart both waved a hand out.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “You can’t mean forever.”

“I mean, eventually, he’s going to put a foot down. By then, likely any evidence that there might have been would be long gone, so she wouldn’t have anything to corroborate her story. Then the money would dry up. But I’d say she’d get a good five years out of it. Don’t you think, Hart?”

“I think that math is right. And by the time this heroine has her five years, she should have enough money to start a whole new life wherever she wants. Wash her hands of the mafia completely.”

“Right,” I said, head spinning with the prospects.

Could I really do it?

Blackmail a member of the New Jersey mafia?

Not only any member, but, apparently, someone important?

I guess it seemed like I didn’t have a whole lot of choice in the matter, did it? It was either the blackmail, or trying to start a new life without even a cent to my name.

“But, ah, what would a character like her do with all that money? That’s almost two million, isn’t it? How could that be legal?”

“Seems like there are too many ways these days to hide money,” Detective Hart said. “A smart heroine would figure it out.”

“But… but wouldn’t she be committing a lot of crimes with this plan of hers?” I asked.

“Look, babe, this is fucking Navesink Bank,” Detective Carver said, snorting. “Everyone and their grandmammy are committing crimes. That’s just how shit goes ‘round here. So if she is from a place like this, she would know that the badges, they have their hands tied around here when it comes to the organized type crime. So they go after the other shit. They don’t give a fuck if someone is blackmailing a mafia member. Besides, thought you said this heroine was smart, right? Smart girls don’t let the law know what they’re up to, right?” he asked, smirking.

Clearly, the police in Navesink Bank had a very different moral compass than most of the rest of the country.

And it was also abundantly apparent that I had been incredibly naive about the so-called rumors I’d been hearing about the town since I moved in.

I mean, yes, I’d heard the motorcycles all the time. But I hadn’t believed anyone when they’d said these were outlaw bikers who were in the arms trade. I also scoffed at the idea that the guy who owned the gym that I went to, along with his family that owned the local bar, Chaz’s, were loan sharks and loan shark enforcers. I’d outright claimed that “fixer agencies” were a figment of TV writers’ imaginations, and there was no way that one was operating in Navesink Bank.