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  “Okay. Understood, I guess.”

  “Milton, do we have a problem here?”

  “What? No. This is the first time I’ve worked with a woman.”

  “Get over it. You play straight with me and I’ll give the same back. Don’t assume I’m a pushover just because I don’t have a dick between my legs. Then we’ll be fine.”

  Milton ruminated on Mary Lou’s words while she enjoyed her fettuccine. She understood her money might give her power but the men around her needed to see beyond her womanhood to bow down to her green.

  “Are there any other guys you can call on who are reliable like Alberto or Stephen were?”

  “One or two I can lay my hands on at short notice.”

  “That’ll be helpful. The size of the pie for this first deal has become a whole load bigger and we need to make sure we secure our investment.”

  “That’s a polite way of putting it.”

  “Mendoza will come after us - for killing his people and stealing his drugs. Shame we didn’t find their cash or we could have lifted that too.”

  “If they were there, the notes were well hidden.”

  “Didn’t have the luxury of time. Where do you think we should offload the China white?”

  “There’s a small group of users in Palm Springs which is one reason Candido based himself here. The biggest source of eager customer will be in the LA projects. Watts in the south should contain enough demand for the amount we are seeking to shift.”

  “And do you have any network we can leverage or are we going to have to go in dry?”

  “I can find out if anyone I know has any useful connections for us.”

  “And if not then we can take Pasquale at his word and ask for his help.”

  “Yep. Let’s remember that his help comes with a price tag attached.”

  “I know but even forty per cent of something big is better than a hundred per cent of nothing.”

  Milton nodded, realizing Mary Lou’s logic was flawless and acknowledging her pragmatism.

  “AND WITH SIX POUNDS, will that impact the price?”

  “Only if we dump it all on the streets at the same time.”

  “You saying we should spread the sales over six weeks?”

  “It’ll keep the price steady, but the longer we are on the streets, the better chance Mendoza has of attacking us.”

  “Do you think we should dump all the white this week?”

  “I’m not saying that either. Just we’ll make more money if we restrict supply a little. The risk is that this’ll give Mendoza more opportunity to get to our men and kill them.”

  “It’s almost all profit though, isn’t it?”

  “Apart from whatever fee we pay Pasquale: yes, the white cost us nothing but blood.”

  “And we don’t want Mendoza in our face until we are ready to deal with him.”

  “Not particularly. He has a fierce rep. His name precedes him.”

  “That doesn’t bother me. So some locals have heard of him: big whoop. I’ve never known of him so he’s not that important. And every man can be felled with a single bullet between the eyes.”

  “Or a kick to the groin.”

  “You said it.”

  They both laughed a little, having regained some trust in the aftermath of the morning’s events.

  “We should flood the market then. We make some money to fund our next deal and Mendoza will find his prices drop too. Double whammy.”

  “And this time next week, we divide up the spoils.”

  “He must die or leave the state. Nothing else will be good enough.”

  “Fighting talk.”

  “I’m not in this for the good of my health. I want to make money and build something lasting for my children.”

  “Flood the market this week and fuck Mendoza the next?”

  “Pretty much, yes.”

  “If we’re selling small bags by Monday, we’ll need quite an operation to refine the heroin over the weekend.”

  “I’m sure Fabio will oblige us with the necessary facilities. Remember, they get rich when we make money.”

  “We should still get going.”

  Milton looked round until he found the eye of a waiter and gave the universal hand gesture of writing on his palm to get the check.

  “Taking out Mendoza is no mean feat. He’s surrounded himself with major security and even if you get past his goons, the man is built like an ox.”

  “That may be so, but you can always found some way to bring a man down. We need to find his Achilles heel.”

  “Do you believe you can take over Mendoza’s territory, the time it takes most people to get out of bed?”

  “I am a determined woman out to protect her children from the evils of the world. Underestimate me at your doom.”

  “Right, but you didn’t answer my question.”

  They both chuckled and the waiter arrived with the check. Mary Lou dipped into her handbag and pulled out few notes. Milton’s eyes widened as he took out his wallet from his pants pocket.

  “I’ll get this. Think of it as the first costs of my new operation.”

  “Apart from Stephen’s blood.”

  “Pasquale already said he’d compensate you, so Stephen is taken care of.”

  Cold. Stark. Mary Lou’d never been so direct before losing Frank. She thought she’d be more sympathetic, but truth was she didn’t care. Stephen was expendable and, come to that, so was Milton. The important thing was to know who you care about and who you do not.

  “Is that how you treat everyone who dies for you?”

  “Stephen died for you, not me. I can’t grieve for a man I knew only a few hours and I won’t pretend just to help you feel better.”

  Milton looked at her, wanting to respond but knowing there was no point having a row about the man. He was dead, they were alive and that was all that mattered. Mary Lou was right, but she didn’t need to rub his face in it.

  He drove them back to her house and pulled up outside the front door.

  “You contact Fabio and get the processing underway. I’ll secure my stake money and we can meet in an hour at the Country Club.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Mary Lou hopped out the car and gave Milton a quick salute as he drove away. She turned to face the house and noticed the front door was ajar. Strange. She grabbed her gun and pushed the door with her other hand. Something was not right in the state of California.

  19

  She braced herself and stood in the hallway. Scanned the stairs: nothing and no-one. Deathly silence. Mary Lou’s heart rate increased and a dull sickness in her stomach felt like it would erupt out of her mouth. The kitchen door was closed but, as usual, the living room was visible. She edged toward it, gun in hand.

  “Cindy?”

  Beat.

  “Alice? FJ?”

  Nothing but the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. An armchair turned on its side and the contents of the coffee table strewn on the floor. Everything else in the room remained resolutely unchanged - as though nothing was wrong at all. The oppressive lack of noise in the building. Mary Lou’s breathing stormed into her ears and her heart provided an undertow of rhythm.

  The entrance to the conservatory: shut. The kitchen door open. Dining-room door shut. She sidled up, took a deep breath and whipped the wood open and swung her body sideways in case anyone was hiding inside. Just the table, chairs, sideboard. Nothing out the ordinary - everything in precisely the location as when she’d been in it last night for dinner.

  Back to the living room and over to the kitchen. She peered in at the open cupboard doors and chairs lying in a mess on the floor. A chill ran down her spine as Mary Lou noticed the knife block was missing one blade. The hole screamed to her from the other side of the room. Slowly, slowly into the room, she pointed the gun left and right but there was no-one to fire at and her children were nowhere to be seen.

  “Alice!”

  Beat.

 
; “Frank?”

  Nothing.

  Through the kitchen and back out to the hallway. Upstairs. First to her bedroom at the front. Immaculate. Everything in its proper place. No-one had been here since she left with Milton for lunch. There was nothing to see in the en suite either.

  Next, over to the kids’ bathroom, which Milton had used. Nothing untoward but he hadn’t done a great job of tidying after himself when he left. No biggie.

  A creak. Mary Lou stopped in an instant and tensed, ready to pounce on whoever was creeping around the house. She eased onto her front foot to give herself greater stability and the creak recurred. For a moment, she relaxed as she realized the floorboard under her toes caused the noise.

  Still holding the gun in one hand and keeping the other on her bag to stop it swinging in her way, Mary Lou popped her head round the three other bedrooms. All the doors were open and half a glance inside showed there was nothing to see - apart from a spare bedroom, Alice’s princess-themed palace and Frank’s whirlwind debris-littered crash pad.

  The only place left was Cindy’s attic space. Again, the place might have needed a tidy but there was no-one there: not under the bed, not in her wardrobes. Nada.

  Mary Lou stopped for a second and tried to concentrate. Perhaps she had overreacted. What if they’d all gone out for a walk and Cindy had just forgotten to shut the front door properly? That didn’t explain the upturned furniture. Her paranoia was well-placed.

  With nothing else to see, Mary Lou descended to the living room. Her eyes cast round until she remembered she hadn’t checked out the conservatory. And it’s sliding door was closed, covered by the drapes. Mary Lou put them up so the kids could be in one part of the downstairs and adults could be elsewhere without interfering with each other. Close but separate. Now the blue velvet material of those drapes bore down on her. She was afraid what she would find on the other side.

  She pulled the drapes back and leapt into the conservatory where she found: couches, rugs, a box full of toys with its lid shut. But no people.

  “Cindy! Frank! Alice!”

  Still no reply.

  She plopped down onto a couch, looking out at the patio area. The room stuck out so three sides were glass although the far end was covered by drapes. On each side, Mary Lou saw patio furniture and empty space - just as it had been two hours ago when she sat in the summerhouse waiting for Milton. She leaned forward, placed the gun by her feet and rested her elbows on her knees. What to do? Where were they?

  This change in body position gave a different angle to her view of the patio and now included a corner of the swimming pool. Mary Lou stared blankly into the abyss of her soul, losing focus on her surroundings. Then she blinked and noticed the pool and the wooden steps leading down into the water with their metal handrail.

  She froze at the image before her. While her eyes remained trained outside, she lowered a hand and felt around until her fingers clasped the gun again. Pushed herself up off the couch, grabbed a handful of drapes and yanked them out the way.

  The glass doors revealed what she knew was behind them and what she was certain she’d noticed by the pool steps: red. The entire pool was filled with red liquid. Although the shade was quite pale, Mary Lou knew this was the color of diluted blood.

  Out onto the patio, gun dangling by her side, she scanned the sides of the pool but no-one. In the pool was another story: at the far side, near to the summerhouse, a body floated face down, fully clothed. Mary Lou didn’t need to move from her spot to know who it was.

  20

  Cindy’s adult-sized corpse floated, bumping the far edge of the pool. As Mary Lou walked round, she raised her gun again in case there was anyone to shoot, but by now she knew the chances were slim to none.

  She rolled up her sleeve and grabbed at the body, trying to flip it over. Failed at that, but there had been enough sideways movement for Mary Lou to know Cindy’s throat had been slashed. At the bottom middle of the pool, she made out a shiny object glinting in the sunlight, despite the red mist surrounding it. Must be the knife from the kitchen.

  Still no sign of the kids. Her only hope lay inside the summerhouse. Mary Lou dried her hands by wiping them on the tiles next to the pool and finished the process by rubbing them on the back of her jeans.

  Her bag lay by the conservatory door and she cupped one hand against the glass window of the summerhouse to peep inside, but the sun’s reflection prevented her from seeing anything meaningful.

  Pulled the door open and shot indoors. A quick look around revealed nothing and the door to the safe room remained stoically locked shut.

  She’d lost Alice and little Frank Jr.

  First Frank and now the twins. She had nothing. Nothing at all. The absence of her boy and girl twisted her stomach inside out until she felt it spasm violently. The taste of acid hit the back of her throat and she vomited onto the floor.

  Still standing, Mary Lou staggered backward and leant on a chair, not knowing how she would cope. What should she do? Who had taken them and how was she going to get them back?

  Her first instinct was to call the police. Not the cops who’d chased her across the width of the country. The local police who would understand a mother’s despair and might have already gathered intelligence about their likely whereabouts. They might have been spotted somewhere about town.

  Then she slapped her thigh as she perched on the arm of the chair.

  “Get a grip, girl!”

  Cops were cops wherever they were from. And how exactly did she intend to explain her housekeeper’s throat slashed from ear to ear and floating in the pool? Is that what a normal kidnapping involves? Besides, abducting children meant the Feds would be called within the first five seconds. As sure as hell, they’d have a description of her on file. What if McNamara came to investigate? Mary Lou would not be calling the cops. To quash a parking ticket perhaps, but not to get the twins back.

  The stench of her own sick lying on the floorboards by her feet made her stomach wretch again. She lurched out the summerhouse. Back onto the patio where she sat down on the ground, back against the summerhouse wall, feet apart, knees up. Mary Lou stared into the empty space between her legs and at the pale crimson expanse of water before her.

  Tears squeezed out of both eyes and she let the gun slip onto the floor. Crash. The drops of salty water became a cascade and her shoulders rocked up and down as the sadness engulfed her. Memories of Frank’s bloody body flickered across her mind and melded with images of Alice smiling and screaming or FJ scampering and hollering.

  Mary Lou allowed herself this silent howl because she felt so powerless. One minute she was having a shower and going off with Milton for lunch, the next her world was turned upside down. Nothing would be the same again. She was angry for allowing herself to believe everything was safe when she’d spent so much of her life waiting for the next time to run, to move on.

  Why was she so stupid to think anything was any different, just because she’d wound up in a pretty community on the west coast? Life was filled with broken glass wherever you were and whatever she did.

  While she wouldn’t get the cops involved, Mary Lou still needed help. She thought about calling Bobby but what was he going to do? One lone over-the-hill gunman? Nah, he wasn’t any good. Fabio was probably the only answer available to her although how could she tell whether the west coast mob hadn’t had a hand in this? As some way of keeping her in check while she built up their heroin trade?

  Strange: there was no ransom note. If you extort somebody, it’s best to let them know what they need to do to get their loved ones’ safe return. This pointed to the kidnapping not being about money - although she had hardly spent long enough in the house this afternoon to take a call for ransom demands. More time.

  If it wasn’t a money play then this was about revenge or power. Mary Lou heard the ringing of the phone. She scrambled to her feet and rushed indoors to the living room and the nearest handset.

  “Hello?”
>
  Just as she picked up the receiver, she heard the line go dead. Damn. Goddamn. Was that the kidnappers or Milton or...

  She sat on the couch and rocked backwards and forwards trying to get sufficient focus on events to see matters clearly. But every time she tried to think things through, some horrific image flashed across her mind and she had to stop before the pain became excruciating.

  Who had taken her children?

  THE THREE MOST OBVIOUS culprits were the New York mob who finally had caught up with her, Mendoza and the Latino connection or Pasquale and Fabio. The idea it was the west coast mob sounded plain stupid as they had already played their games with her. She’d come good and looked like she would earn them decent bucks, so Mary Lou discounted that option almost immediately.

  That left the east coast contingent. If they had come for her, they usually were more direct in their behavior. In their eyes, she’d stolen from step uncle Frank Senior and his loss was shared with them. But their notion of revenge would involve a simple hit on her. There would be no interest in getting involved with her children. A knife in the back or a bullet from a long-range rifle was more likely than a kidnapping and the hassle of dealing with all that before they whacked her.

  Mary Lou had heard stories of more complicated tales of revenge. They could have become annoyed the time it had taken for them to find her - they might be vexed at the cost of the resource needed to track her down. If that was the case then maybe they might have operated against type.

  The trouble was they would have left a clear message that the twins’ disappearance was their handiwork. A note perhaps and, if not, then a phone call with a menacing tone. But nothing? Made the New York contingent unlikely as the perpetrators.

  This left Mendoza, who’d have had to act super fast after they did for Candido and Silvestre. Difficult, but not impossible. If it had taken them an hour to find out the white powder was gone and the two men were dead, they could have been round here as soon as spit and carried the twins off before Mary Lou’d had her first mouthful of fettuccine. A cold shiver along her back at the meaning of the words she’d just uttered to herself.