Ace Is Wild (22 page)

Or cooling off, apparently. It sounded like his voice had dropped into his crotch, right along with her thoughts. Vivi redoubled her efforts, trying to force her hips through with no luck. And she couldn’t go back, either. She’d managed to wedge herself in, good and tight. “I’m stuck,” she yelled back to Daniel.

He made a sound that defied translation into words but evoked a very definite physical response, and then she felt his hands on her hips. Her heart lurched, sending a jolt through her entire system. And while she was disoriented, he lifted, tipped, and shoved her through the doggie door on the diagonal. Her hips scraped the sides and then she was through, collapsing onto Rudy Manetti’s Coca-Cola doormat, Rudy’s dog panting hot breath into her face.

“Down boy,” she said, climbing to her feet, her heart pounding for an entirely different reason. She’d just become a criminal, and having a federal prosecutor as an accomplice wasn’t doing a lot for her hope of avoiding jail time.

“Well?”

“I’m thinking,” she said to Daniel.

He stuck his head in the doggie door and glared up at her. The cat meowed and ran off. The dog paced over to stand in front of Vivi, facing Daniel. Its nose was all wrinkled back and it was growling.

“Aw,” she said, “it’s a smart dog. Don’t worry about him, doggie,” she said, patting it on the head. “He’s harmless.”

They had a stare down for a minute, Daniel trotting out his lawyer face. The dog looked up at Vivi, cocking its head.

“See?” she said. “Harmless.”

The dog woofed, then plopped down on its belly and yawned hugely.

“Funny,” Daniel said. “Let me in.” And his head disappeared.

Vivi looked through the Coke curtains and he was standing there with a rock in his hand. “Now he’s willing to break a window,” Vivi griped to the dog. “I ought to leave him standing out there.” She pulled the door open instead. “If you’d done that ten minutes ago . . .”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Daniel grabbed a Coke dish towel off the open door handle and wiped off the doorknob. “Did you touch anything else?”

“Just the metal strip around the doggie door when I was stuck.”

His eyes met hers and she got a burning sensation. Everywhere. It was about fifteen degrees cooler in Rudy’s apartment than outside, but there was a line of sweat trickling down between her breasts.

Daniel stooped and wiped off the metal strip. “Don’t touch anything else.”

Vivi gave him a look.

“Fine.” He flipped her the dish towel, looking around the place for the first time. “Christ,” he said.

“Yeah.” Vivi wrapped the towel around her hand and pulled open the refrigerator door. Daniel looked over her shoulder. No Coke. “Weird,” she said.

“You’d know.”

And Daniel headed out of the kitchen. “How do you feel about birds?” he called back to her.

Vivi followed him and found herself in a small sitting room with a window looking out on the front of the building. There was a chair, a sofa, a table, and a lamp. And birds. Five birdcages were placed around the room, all of them holding at least one feathered, chirping thing. In the corner by the front window was a floor-to-ceiling leafless tree. At the top of the tree was a large parrot with multicolored feathers, beady little eyes, and a big mouth. “Raaaawk, Rudy’s the man,” he squawked.

“You don’t think he’ll rat us out?” Vivi asked Daniel.

“Raaaawk, Rudy’s the man.”

“I think his vocabulary is limited to ego boosting.”

Daniel made a quick search of the room, finding nothing of interest. No personal papers, no unopened mail, no phone bills with interesting numbers. Vivi backtracked and did the same in the kitchen. “Nothing but kitchen stuff,” she said when she joined Daniel again.

A short hallway led off the bird room, a bath on the front side, a bedroom to the back of the apartment. Daniel took the bathroom next. But there was really no storage. Hell, there wasn’t even room for Vivi in there at the same time. So he moved across the hallway to the lone bedroom. He opened the door, then slammed it shut again.

“What’s wrong?” Vivi wanted to know.

“The mailbox ought to say ‘Ace Ventura.’”

“Uh-oh. What kind of animals are in there?”

Daniel cracked the door and peeked in. “I don’t know, but there are aquariums.”

“I can handle fish.”

“No water in the aquariums,” Daniel said, “so I think we can rule out fish. Probably can’t say the same for lizards, iguanas, scorpions, or anything else you’d expect to find in a waterless aquarium. Including snakes.”

Vivi blew out a breath, relieved, and slipped past him.

“You shied away from the dog, but you’re not worried about snakes?”

“They’re not wandering around loose in here,” she said, “and I’m not sticking my head into the aquarium.”

“I see your point.” Daniel went into the room behind her. “You take that side,” he said, “I’ll take this one. Don’t leave any fingerprints.”

Daniel made his way around the room systematically, ignoring the creepy crawlies in their glass houses, searching every potential hiding space. The bottoms of dresser drawers, the pockets of suits hanging in the closet, between the mattress and box spring, and between the pages of the porn magazines by the bed. Vivi was glad she didn’t have to touch those.

“His personal papers, bills and things, are in the bottom dresser drawer,” Daniel said, “but there’s nothing incriminating there. Except maybe his tax return. Rudy doesn’t strike me as a guy who’d be a hundred percent honest on his 1040.”

Rudy struck her as a guy who’d lie about everything from his bank balance to the size of his package. Rudy was a big talker. “Can we go now?” Vivi asked, feeling like she’d spent way too much time in Rudy’s bedroom.

She headed for the door, but when she passed a fifty-gallon aquarium housing an orange, red, and white snake, she got an icky feeling—and it wasn’t the run-of-the-mill snake phobia, either. She ignored the heebie-jeebies, stopping in front of the aquarium. More ick, still no specifics. It didn’t feel lethal, so it probably wasn’t aimed at Daniel, but she felt a need to tell him anyway, if only to see what he’d do.

“There’s something hidden in the snake tank,” she said.

Daniel went still, just his eyes cutting to the aquarium. “I don’t see anything,” he said after a long, tense moment.

“Trust me, Ace, there’s something under the wood chips.”

“So dig around in the wood chips and let me know what you find.”

Vivi turned around, hands on hips, grinning. “You faced down armed hit men—and God knows what else when you were an agent—and you’re afraid of a snake?”

“I wouldn’t call it fear, exactly. More like caution.”

“All you have to do is dig around in the wood chips,” she parroted, “see if you find something.”

“Easy for you to say,” Daniel shot back. But he lifted the screen top off the aquarium and, holding her gaze the entire time, stuck his hand in and rooted around in the wood chips. The snake came and curled around his wrist, probably liking the warmth. He ignored it. Vivi was watching and he had an image to maintain. And something interesting to find, as it turned out.

He shook the snake off and looked inside the envelope he pulled out of its tank. “Pictures of naked women,” he said. “Taken without their knowledge, judging by the quality and angle.” He tossed the envelope and its contents on the bed. “We’re not finding anything tangible. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Do your thing, Karnack.”

“Funny,” Vivi said, but she closed her eyes and shut everything out, the dog, the birds, the snake. Daniel. She wasn’t getting anything, though. “Rudy’s all talk,” she said. “That’s my professional opinion.”

“That was my impression, too, and not only because we didn’t find anything incriminating. Unless Rudy is a damn good actor, I can’t believe he’s involved with the mob, except for the family connection. Just doesn’t feel right.”

“Doesn’t feel right,” Vivi repeated.

“You got a problem with that?”

“No, Ace, but I thought you did.”

Daniel chose not to follow that line of thought, the lawyer in him, Vivi figured. Instead, he went into the closet directly across from the bed, banged around inside for a minute or two, then came back out.

“What was all that about?”

“His camera suffered a puzzling accident.”

“Too bad we can’t do that to the rest of his equipment.”

“Now you’ve developed a violent streak.”

“I just needed the right motivation,” Vivi said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Daniel started with a comeback, but Vivi grabbed his arm and said, “Now!” just as they heard the front door open.

Daniel dragged her across the hall and into the bathroom, shoving her into the tub, getting in with her, and pulling the curtain closed behind them. “It’s Rudy,” he said, as if Vivi couldn’t hear him talking to the dog.

“Hey there, T-Bone,” he was saying in that voice people used when they talked to an animal they loved. “How’s my Boner, huh?”

Vivi met Daniel’s eyes and wrinkled her nose, making a face that said, “Ewwwww.” The corners of Daniel’s mouth tipped up just enough so she knew he was sharing the moment, before his expression went hard again.

Rudy’s voice floated back from the front room, still talking to the dog. “How’d you get my shoe?” he asked T-Bone, “I didn’t leave the bedroom door open . . .” The next thing they heard was a click.

“Shit,” Daniel whispered.

Rudy went into the kitchen first, coming back out before they could even hope to sneak out the front door. He opened the closet in the front room, did a quick walk through the bedroom, and then came into the bathroom. “I know you’re in there,” he said, the edge of the curtain inched back with the barrel of a gun.

Vivi froze, staring at that little black hole until spots danced in front of her eyes, and she realized even her involuntary bodily functions had frozen. She sucked in a breath, trying to think around the terror, instinctively looking to Daniel.

He wasn’t going to be much help, she decided, watching his hands lift into the air. Vivi thought he was giving in kind of easy, and then he grabbed the top of the shower curtain, ripped it down, and wrapped it around Rudy, spinning him so that when the gun went off it blew out a chunk of tile in the corner of the tub.

Daniel gave Rudy a shove, grabbed Vivi, and hauled her out of the tub and down the hall. A couple more shots zinged after them, even though before she hit the kitchen Vivi looked back and saw that Rudy still hadn’t fought his way free of the shower curtain. Another two seconds and they were out the back door, Boner nipping at Daniel’s heels. They hit the alley, and Daniel slammed the gate in the privacy fence shut before the dog could come through.

They retreated down the alley, making the return trip at a fast walk so as not to arouse too much suspicion. They jumped into Daniel’s car and locked the doors and sat there a minute, silent, both a little shell-shocked.

“Maybe we should take off before Rudy calls the police,” Vivi suggested when she had some confidence that her voice wouldn’t waver.

“He won’t take the chance they’ll find the camera.”

“Good, because I left my fingerprints all over the tile in the bathtub.” She was lucky that was all she’d left.

Daniel scrubbed a hand back through his hair, but he still didn’t start the car. Not that she blamed him. After the close escape, going after another name from his list didn’t hold much appeal for Vivi, either. Being in fear of her life for any longer than necessary held even less. She was tired of being scared, tired of walking on eggshells with Daniel, and tired of wrestling her libido down.

None of that was stopping until they neutralized the death threat, though, and the day was still young.

She heaved a sigh and buckled her seat belt. “Let’s go see about George Washington.”

Chapter 15

GEORGE WASHINGTON’S EX-WIFE AND STEPDAUGHTER
had closed up shop and moved to Seattle. George didn’t have any relatives in Boston, and if he’d had friends they hadn’t come forward to offer character testimony at the time of his trial. Vivi couldn’t put any logic to one of them trying to have Daniel killed now.