V is for Vengeance (Kinsey Millhone 22)

Lola was different, or so it seemed. They’d met in a bar on her twenty-eighth birthday. He’d stopped in for a drink, bringing his usual contingent: chauffeur, bodyguard, and a couple of pals. He’d noticed her the minute he walked in. She was there celebrating with friends, in the midst of a Champagne toast when he sat down at the next table. Dark mane of hair, dark eyes, a voluptuous mouth. She was long-limbed and rail thin in tight jeans and a T-shirt through which he could see the shape of her small breasts. She’d spotted him about the same time, and the two had played eye-tag for an hour before she walked over and introduced herself. He’d taken her back to his place, thinking to impress her. Instead, she’d been amused. He learned later that her tablemates had warned her about him . . . for all the good it did. Lola was attracted to bad boys. Until she met Dante, she’d spent years bailing guys out of jail, believing their promises, waiting for them to change. Lola stuck with them through their prison sentences and stints in rehab. Her faith in them rendered her only more gullible in the face of the next unlucky loser.

Dante was “clean” by comparison. He made big money and he was generous. He offered her the same whiff of danger, but he was smarter and better insulated. Lola teased him about his armor-plated limousine and his bodyguards. He liked her sassiness, the fact that she’d sooner flip him off than do his bidding.

After the first six years, talk of marriage began to filter into her conversation. She was impatient with the status quo. Dante had sidestepped the issue, holding her off for another two years, but he could feel himself weakening. What difference would it make? They’d been living as husband and wife since the beginning of their relationship. To date, his argument had been that a marriage license was superfluous. Why insist on a piece of paper when she already enjoyed all the perks and benefits? Lately, she’d been turning it around on him, pointing out that if marriage meant so little, why was he making such a big deal of it?

At 9:00 he pushed the newspapers aside and finished his coffee. Before walking out of the kitchen, he buzzed Tomasso on the intercom. “Would you bring the car around?”

“I’m waiting at the side door. Hubert’s riding shotgun.”

“Just what I like to hear.”

As Dante passed through the sheltered portico off the library, Tomasso opened the back door of the stretch limousine and watched him slide into the backseat. Drive time to the office would be fifteen minutes even as Tomasso varied the routes. Hubert, Dante’s hulking bodyguard, shifted in the front seat and nodded a greeting. Hubert was Czechoslovakian and spoke very little English. He was good at what he did and his minimal comprehension meant he couldn’t eavesdrop when Dante and Tomasso discussed business. At six foot five, weighing the better part of three hundred pounds, Hubert had a presence that was reassuring to his employers, like owning a Rottweiler with a placid disposition and vicious territorial instincts.

Dante noticed Tomasso eyeing him in the rearview mirror. “What’s up?” he asked.

Tomasso said, “I thought you’d be windburned.”

“Hardly left the hotel. Next time I talk vacations, remind me how much I hate being away.”

“Resort was okay?”

“For two grand a night, it was so-so.”

“How about the guys we hired to look after you?”

“Not as competent as you two, but I’m alive and well.”

Tomasso was quiet for the duration of the drive. He pulled into the underground parking garage that ran beneath the Passages Shopping Plaza on the Macy’s end of the mall. Hubert emerged from the car and did a quick scan, searching the nearly empty space for potential danger before he opened the back door and Dante got out.

Tomasso lowered the window. “Hey, Boss? You might want to check with Mr. Abramson before you do anything else.”

Dante paused, leaning down to peer into the driver’s-side window. “And why is that?”

“All I know is he said you should talk to him soon as you got in. He’s not one to run off at the mouth, but his body language was on the urgent side of tense.”

“You know what it’s about?”

“Better you should hear it from him . . . killing the messenger being what it is. What time you want to be picked up?”

“I’ll call. You can take Pop back to the house whenever he’s ready to go. Might be a long day for me depending on what went down while I was gone.”

Tomasso seemed on the verge of saying more, but Dante didn’t like to linger in the open, so with Hubert close on his heels he crossed to the elevators and pushed the up button. The two of them took the elevator to the top floor. Once Dante left the elevator, Hubert returned to the car. Passing through the reception area, Dante noticed a slim brunette ensconced in one of the big leather chairs, leafing through a magazine.