122 Rules (3 page)

Ummm... Holy shit! There is no way this is for real.
Tom. It had to be him. He knew she came here and, at any second, planned to jump out. “Fooled ya! Ha! You totally believed it!”

But Tom couldn’t convincingly pretend to be a pancake if a piano fell on him. A reasonable imitation of Joe Pesci? That seemed way out of his league.

Trusting her intuition, Monica slouched down until she lay on the floor. She survived because she listened to her gut, and it said to not make a sound. Most people who had been through what she had would have hunkered down, frozen, trying to stay as invisible as possible. But Monica persevered where others perished. She glanced down the long corridor, but no one browsed the aisle in either direction. She could scream for help, but if these guys were half as bad as they seemed, she would spend her whole life waiting for her turn under the blade and in the concrete. What
could
she do?

Suddenly she knew. Her smart phone, one of the few splurges she allowed herself, lay in her satchel next to Tom’s apartment keys. Careful not to let her jittery fingers rattle the keys, she retrieved it. Monica had been taking notes for years from fast-talking professors and often recorded the lectures. Her fingers clicked and swiped the familiar pattern that started the dictation app. She sat up enough to slip the little marvel of technology on top of a particularly tall book on the bottom shelf, then froze as a shadow passed her hand.

“Good,” the Joe voice said.

Monica breathed a sigh of relief. Joe had shifted his leg but still seemed unaware of her presence.

He continued, “Lenny’s been getting greedy. He and his boys have been shorting orders, delivering sub-par product, and cutting into our profits. I’m a patient, generous man, but if I allowed this to continue, it would ruin my reputation. Did you receive the final delivery before his untimely demise?”

“Yes,” the accented voice said, “and the product has been delivered, just as requested. They are waiting for word from you before sending it out. Here.”

Monica chanced pressing her eye to a gap between books. Two men occupied the narrow space on the opposite side of the shelving unit. A bald-headed man with his back to her handed a thick white envelope to the one who must be the Joe Pesci sound-alike.

“Joe” opened it, thumbing through a thick stack of hundred dollar bills, closed it back up, and tucked it in his jacket pocket.

Oh. My. God. This is for real.
Her heart beat so hard in her ears she could no longer understand the conversation. She could only see the back of Baldy’s head, though when he turned, she thought she glimpsed a scar running from his left ear down to his jaw. She had an unobstructed view of the other man, though. He had a short, solid body and dark hair cut in a no-nonsense style. Nothing to note in the looks department until she saw his eyes: black, and as cold and soulless as a shark’s. They sent a chill up her spine.

But his voice… It made the hair on her neck stand up. He sounded like Mr. Pesci but spoke with an icy authority.
Do not cross me
, the tone said.
Ever
. This personality didn’t jive with the jovial little man she had come to know from movie comedies. This man was a heartless, merciless machine, about as far from bumbling as possible. How she could possibly know that, she wasn’t sure. But, as always, Monica trusted her gut.

Joe continued, “Let Frankie know it’s done. We can move the product to the distributors in a couple of weeks once we’re sure Lenny isn’t missed.”

“The guy was such an incompetent, meddling asshole. I don’t think anyone’ll go looking for him. And if someone did find out it was us, no one would care,” Baldy said.

“Don’t be an idiot. How many times do I have to tell you about being careful? I do not want this coming back on us. People come to our organization because they trust our brand and our ethics. You know that. Incompetent or not, if word got out that we removed the head of the biggest supplier in New York, it could seriously hurt our reputation.”

Baldy chuckled. “Removed the head. Literally. Funny, boss.”

Those black, soulless eyes fixed on the underling. Ice chilled her soul as Monica stared into their frozen depths. “It’s time to go. The spooks have been watching, and I don’t want anyone to see us together. Wait five minutes then get out of here before someone spots you.”

Baldy nodded, and Joe walked away. He turned around, and Monica jerked back from the gap. Had the mobster seen her?

When he didn’t say anything, her heart slowed a little, though its rhythm remained far above its normal cadence. The killer waited a few minutes, set something on the shelf, then turned and strolled away as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Monica let out her breath and tried to calm her still-galloping heart. Had she really just seen what she thought she had? She hit stop on her phone and played back part of what she’d recorded. “I don’t think anyone will go looking for him...” She clicked stop.

Oh, shit.
She had become a witness.

Now the big question: What did she plan to do about it?

Nothing!
You do
not
want to be involved in this! Do
not
go to the police. What did you see, really? Nothing. Nothing at all. None of it made any sense or meant anything.

Besides, would the police even believe her? Every day, millions of nut jobs in this city screamed about conspiracy theories and government cover-ups. No one would listen. Just another crazy looking for attention. But the recording... Did that matter? Would it give her credibility? With each question, her doubts compounded.

She didn’t know the answers, but she did know she wanted out of the library as fast as possible. With trembling hands, she shoved her books and notes into her bag helter-skelter, tucked the phone in her pants pocket, and stood. Before leaving, she reached through the shelf and picked up the book Baldy had left behind.
The Untouchables
. How ironic.

Monica’s eyes scanned the reading room as she moved out of the rows of books, looking for Baldy and Joe, but she saw no sign of them. She moved quickly past the tables thick with people reading, toward the door leading to the massive stone hallways. She had almost made it when a man at a workstation she had just passed stood.

He fell in step beside her, gripped her by the arm, and whispered, “Come with me.” He pushed her in front of him, guiding her, naughty-three-year-old-like, towards the exit.
You’re gonna get it when we get home
.

Stunned, Monica let him lead her away.

Just before they reached the door, she tried to pull out of his grasp, but he held her arm in an iron grip. “Don’t...” he started to say, but the survivor took over, breaking her paralysis. With all her might, Monica swung her free elbow back into the man’s solar plexus. He stood a head taller and arched forward in response to being sucker punched. She thrust her weight up and back, and when the back of her head connected with the center of the man’s face, his nose broke with a satisfactory crunch.

Monica tore her arm free and swung around, kneeing the unprepared man in the groin. She didn’t weigh a lot, but she put all of her energy behind it. He doubled over, grunting in pain, rewarding her for her efforts.

In an adrenaline-driven sprint, she bolted for the door. She would hug her best friend, Angel, for making her take that self-defense class before heading off to NYU. Jesus, how many times would that girl save her?

Monica had just reached the exit when the man caught up to her again. He spun her around and slammed her into the wall, holding both of her arms this time. Fear and anger mingled as he stepped into her personal space, preventing further attacks, and whispered, “Are you trying to get yourself killed? If you are interested in living, knock it the hell off and come with me.” His voice, strained thanks to his injured testicles, carried the weight of someone used to being in charge.

He wore his jet-black hair clipped crew-cut short; sharp blue eyes stared unwavering into hers. A thin stream of blood trickled from his nose to his mouth and dribbled onto the front of his gray hoodie, but he did nothing to stop it. “Do I have your undivided attention?”

His words crushed Monica’s brief feelings of victory. She gritted her teeth and nodded.

“Good, now let’s go.” He opened the door and ushered her out. Instead of leading her down the walkway towards the front entrance where hundreds of people milled about, he dragged her into an office on the other side of the hall. Across the small space, he ushered her out a side entrance to a deserted alleyway.

Oh my god!
Dead. I am dead
.
Do something!
Her eyes darted about, looking for an escape. She had missed her chance to get away. No way would he underestimate her again.

He led her down the steps, around the corner, and toward the inevitable large black SUV. She had to do something, but he had left her almost no options.

Almost.

Her body tensed as he relaxed his grip ever so much while reaching to open the rear door of the death wagon. In one swift move, Monica dropped her purse and backpack, yanked her arm free, and bolted.

An Olympic sprinter spurred on by the blast of the starter’s pistol couldn’t have taken off faster. She just might escape. That thought had barely broken the surface of her mind when a building of a man stepped out from behind the SUV. She saw the obstacle too late to avoid it and collided with what may as well have been a concrete wall. The huge, unyielding man had the chest and shoulders of a linebacker and a face chiseled out of granite.

When she hit him, she bounced, sprawling onto her backside, stunned. Before she could regain her wits, the huge man reached down, picked her up, and gently set her in the rear seat of the SUV. He then buckled her belt.

“I’m not a toddler,” she informed him, embarrassed yet indignant.

“Just stay put.” His voice rumbled like rock plates deep in the Earth.

With that done, he glanced at Crew Cut’s bleeding nose. Crew Cut glared back at him. The big man’s lips curled into the slightest of grins as he shook his head and closed her door. Monica might be about to die, but at least she got in a lick of her own, and Granite knew it.

3

Jon hadn’t interrupted Monica’s monologue but instead took notes on a large yellow legal pad. When she finished, he set his pen down, leaned back in his chair, and flipped through the pages with his neat handwriting scrawled across the surface.

She waited, letting the silence spin out.

“So, you are living with this Tom Phillips?”

“Yes.”

“And he does not charge you rent?”

“No.”

“I see.” He scribbled something else on the pad. “This is in exchange for sexual favors?”

She leered at him. “Favors for him or favors for me?”

Jon looked at her over the top of his glasses. “Favors for him, Ms. Sable. Does he let you stay there in exchange for sex?”

“You cannot be serious.”

“You have been arrested for drugs and murder. What I’m trying to determine is if we add prostitution to the list of your admirable qualities.”

She leaned in, her hands folded on the table. “I think Tom is in love with me in his own schoolboy sort of way. One of the ways he displays this affection is by letting me stay with him free of charge. We have sex because we are young and horny. Please be sure to add that under your Admirable Qualities category, Mr. Smith. Do you need me to spell it for you?
H, o, r
…”

“Thank you. I’ve got it.”

To her satisfaction, he wrote
young and horny
at the bottom of the page. He continued to review his notes while she watched him in silence. “So you went to the library to study for a Criminal Law midterm?”

“Yes. It’s best to study up on a subject when preparing for a major exam. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Jon ignored the question. “So you are reading, and Mr. Pesci just strolls up to the other side of the bookshelf and starts babbling about someone he’s killed?”

Monica sighed. “Actually, if you’d taken accurate notes you would know that I don’t know who arrived first. I didn’t look. Didn’t care. I just wanted them to leave me in peace. Whoever it was didn’t say anything until his lover arrived.”

“I see.”

“Do you? You seem confused. I thought my story was very linear. Here.” She held out her hands for the pad of paper and pen. “I can draw stick figures or make a flow chart or something for you, if it will aid in your comprehension of the situation.”

Jon set the legal pad on the table, where it lay like a flat yellow turd. He removed his glasses and placed them next to the papers. “See, and there’s my problem. The whole thing sounds like a ‘story.’ It seems simply too fantastic. Too convenient. I’m having trouble with it.”

“Which part?”

“All of it. This mystery boy lets you stay for free. You almost never go to class, yet pull straight A’s. You just happened to be there when one of the biggest drug lords in New York decides to renew his library card.”