Never Go Home (4 page)

“No. I mean
back home as in where I’m from.”

“Oh.” Her gaze
drifted to my right. I pictured another scull racing by, this one a single or a
double.

“There’s been a
death. Someone close to me. I know the timing’s not right, but I think I should
go back for her funeral.”

I expected her
to protest, throw a fit, and demand that I stay.

Instead, she
said, “Let’s go get a drink.”

I placed my
hands on the desk and stood. “What about Marcia?”

“I sent her
home with a couple of our guys. Told her you needed a day to think it over.”

“What’s to
think over? I’m not doing it.”

“Don’t rush to
a decision like that yet, Jack. That’s a lot of money.”

I shrugged.
“It’s not always about the money.”

“She’s a good
woman. She deserves the best protection out there.”

I rounded the
desk and came to a stop in front of Sasha. She stood a few inches shorter than
me and had to look up to make eye contact. She inched forward until we were
almost touching. Her perfume mixed with her natural scent. The combination was
intoxicating.

“She does,” I
said. “And we should arrange it for her. It just can’t be me.”

Sasha sighed
and shook her head and put her hands on her hips. She took a step back,
brushing against a fake ficus. “Come on, Jack. I’ll drive.”

We exited the
office. The artificial fluorescent light did little to enhance my mood. Sasha
led the way to the main cubicle corridor and into the elevator lobby. I winked
at the first security guard, ignored the second. Sasha swiped for the elevator.
We got off at the parking garage.

“Nurse
whatever-her-name-is wanted me to come back for the night,” I said as we
stepped into the muggy garage.

“You can come
back if you’re still feeling bad after we get some food.”

“I’d prefer not
to. And when did this turn into dinner?”

Sasha said
nothing. She pulled out her keys and hit a button. An Audi beeped twice. Its
brake lights and turn signals flashed three times each. The red and orange
lights splashed across the concrete floor and ceiling. Sasha walked toward it.
I followed her. Our footsteps echoed through the deserted garage.

“Borrowing from
the fleet?” I asked.

She shook her
head, and said, “Bought it last week.”

“Not bad.” I
slid into the leather bucket seat. It smelled new inside. I couldn’t find a
smudge or a trace of dirt anywhere. “I’m starting to think you aren’t paying me
enough.”

“Who says
you’re getting paid anything?” She pushed the ignition button. A hefty
eight-cylinder engine roared approvingly. Sasha released the emergency brake
and shifted into reverse. A minute later the car was in third gear and we were
going fifty down the middle of the road.

The sky in
front was seven shades of red and orange. Behind us, storm clouds loomed.
Around us, commercial buildings gave way to row homes. Everything seemed so
compact. I thought of the thousands of people who spent their days working away
inside of a cramped building, only to go home and spend their nights inside a
house sandwiched between two others.

This was no
place for the claustrophobic to live.

Fortunately for
them there were sunsets like the one tonight, and plenty of places to grab a
pint.

Ten minutes
passed without a word between Sasha and me. I broke the silence.

“Where are we
headed?” I said.

“Just a place I
know,” she said.

“Why do I feel
like I’m being set up?”

She laughed,
didn’t make eye contact. It didn’t comfort me. Ten minutes later she pointed
toward a pub. I didn’t catch the name. We parked in back between two cars half
the size of the Audi. The sleek new car made the other two look like garbage cans.

I opened my
door. The smell of seared meat was strong. I headed for the street to walk
around to the front entrance.

“We can go in
back here,” Sasha said.

I stopped and
turned toward her. She walked toward the back door where two middle-aged men in
aprons sat on the hood of a car smoking cigarettes. The guys looked at me, then
her. I didn’t think they were going to glance in my direction again.

I jogged across
the parking lot and met her by the back door.

The two men
returned to their conversation.

“Ready?” Sasha
said.

“Sure,” I said.

She pushed the
door open and led me through the kitchen. A man behind the grill wearing an
apron looked her way. He smiled and nodded. Sasha waved and continued on. I
followed her lead. She stopped and turned and knocked on a door cut into the
side wall. There was a small window, but I couldn’t see inside.

An older man in
his sixties with white hair on his face and head opened the door. He reached
out, grabbed Sasha by the shoulders and pulled her toward him. He whispered something
into her ear that I couldn’t make out. She laughed. He turned his attention
toward me.

“Who’s this?”
he said. The joy drained from his face.

“That’s my
partner, Jack. The one I told you about.”

I felt
confused. My expression probably showed it.

“Jack,” she
said. “This is my father.”

I extended a
hand. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

“You keeping my
daughter safe?” he said.

“Sure am.”

“I can’t say
the same for him, though,” she said. “He took a nasty one to the back of the
head today, Daddy. Think you can spare a couple porterhouses for the two of
us?”

“Of course.” He
stepped out of the office, grabbed an apron and headed toward the grill.

I caught a
glimpse inside before he shut the door. Pictures of Sasha lined the wall, floor
to ceiling. They looked to chronicle her life from the time she was an infant.
There were newspaper clippings from as recently as a couple weeks ago,
featuring Sasha. I saw myself in the background of a picture for one of the
articles.

She caught me
looking. I offered a consolatory grin. She rolled her eyes, shrugged.

Her father
said, “Go get a drink and find a seat. I’ll have these out to you in less than
twenty minutes.”

“I like mine
medium rare,” I said.

He waved me
off. “You’ll take it how I make it.”

Sasha touched
my elbow and nodded toward a cream-colored door. The bottom half of it was
covered with scuff marks from the staff’s shoes. A result of years of kicking
it open.

I followed
Sasha out of the kitchen. The bright lights gave way to an intimate setting.
The room was dim and cool and soothing. We passed a dozen empty tables on our
way to the bar.

“What do you
want to drink?” she said.

“Beer is fine.”

“OK,” she said.
“Go grab a table. I’ll be there in a minute.”

I glanced
around the place. The floors were hardwood, solid and old, with the kind of
imperfections that indicated character instead of a flaw in craftsmanship. The
walls were decorated with the kind of kitsch you might find in any family-owned
restaurant in any city. The tables looked like Sasha’s grandfather might have bought
them. The chairs had intricate designs, all hand carved. They were scattered
throughout the dining room with no attention paid to their placement. It was
anything but uniform. Maybe that’s what her father wanted.

I walked over
to a table close to the rear and sat with my back to the kitchen. While the
majority of the tables were empty, more than half the barstools were occupied.
Sasha was the youngest person up there by twenty years.

She turned
around and scanned the room. She spotted me and raised two pints in the air
over her head. One looked dark. The other amber. I couldn’t know which was for
me. She crossed the floor, eyes on me and avoiding the mismatched maze of
tables like she’d walked across the room ten thousand times. She placed both
mugs in the middle of the table. I reached for the dark one. She looked
disappointed.

“I can take the
other,” I said.

“How about we
share?” she said.

I nodded. She
grabbed a chair, dragged it around and sat down next to me.

“Your father’s
going to think we’re a couple,” I said.

“Nah, he knows
I can’t sit with my back to the front door. He’ll figure you can’t either.”

Four more
barstools now had occupants. “Looks like the bar does good business.”

She nodded.
“Those men have been coming here since I was a girl. Four or five nights a week
you’ll find a familiar combination of locals littering the place. Daddy’s
always treated them right, and they do the same for him. And don’t let the
empty tables fool you. It’ll fill up around the time we leave.”

I tapped my
finger in time with the song playing. An old Coltrane piece. Dark, sultry and
rich.

“Told you
before I got my love of jazz from him.”

I smiled, said
nothing. My thoughts had drifted back to Jessie. We used to lay on my bed as
teenagers listening to my father’s jazz collection. He’d get bent out of shape
about it from time to time, but I knew he enjoyed the fact that we shared a
love for the same kind of music.

“You’re really
going to go, aren’t you?” Sasha said.

“Probably,” I
said.

She sighed,
reached for her mug and took a drink. Foam coated her upper lip. She used the
back of her sleeve to wipe it away. “There’s nothing I can say to change your
mind?”

“Most likely
not.”

The door to the
kitchen opened. A waitress emerged carrying a small tray. She headed toward our
table. I caught a whiff of the steaks on the grill. The waitress’s perfume
drowned it out. She smiled at Sasha, gave me a look, and dropped a basket of
chips on the table.

Sasha grabbed
the basket and placed it between us. I slid it away.

“You don’t like
chips?”

“They’re fries.
And they have too many carbs.”

She laughed.
“Americans.”

I sipped on my
carb-laden beer and said nothing.

“Marcia is
going to keep insisting that you take over her security.”

“You know how I
feel about this.”

“I do, Jack. At
the same time, she had a point. You were the only one who knew. You were smart
enough to call everyone off. If we’d all been in there, it could have been even
worse.”

“You call that
smart?” I said. “I nearly died. One of her men did die. Another is paralyzed.
Another took a shot to the gut. The only reason the guy in the bathroom didn’t
get hurt is because he’s got a weak bladder. In fact, his need to piss is the
reason the back of my head is stitched up.” I looked away, took a moment to
calm down. “If I’d have had one more person in there, it could have turned out
differently and she wouldn’t be going on and on trying to hire me.”

Sasha said
nothing. I didn’t need a bunch of lights to know that her cheeks had turned
red.

“And where’s
she getting this money? Offering me two million for four weeks? Is she crazy?”

“I’d say the
answer to that lies in the fact that she keeps pushing on despite all these
attempts on her life.”

“That’s another
thing,” I said. “There must be more to this than I know, because I don’t see why
they are going after her this hard.”

Sasha’s gaze
drifted away. I followed it. A man stood in front of our table. He had slicked
back white hair. Looked to be in his sixties, still in good shape, too.

“Yes?” Sasha
said.

“Not you,” the
old man said. “Him.” He aimed a knobby finger in my direction.

“What?” I said.

“You better sir
me,” he said.

I said nothing.

His cheeks
turned red. “Stop yelling and start treating the girl with some respect.”

I looked at
Sasha. “Relative?”

She shrugged.

“OK,” I said.
“Now go back to your dinner.”

The man
wandered off to his table. He sat down facing us. He didn’t take his eyes off
of me after that.

“Anyway,” Sasha
said. “Look, Jack, I understand if you feel you need to go back. Just keep it
short, OK? I can get you a private jet into D.C., New York, or Atlanta.”

“Atlanta’s
closest.”

“OK, that’s
settled then.”

I didn’t know
if it was. Here she was applying pressure to get me to stay. At the same time
she was willing to help me go. Part of me wondered if she planned to tell the
pilot to circle around for five hours and land in London.

Sasha pulled
out her cell phone. “Would you excuse me for a moment?”

“No need to get
up. I’ll grab some fresh air.” I stood and walked to the front door. The
hardwood floor felt springy under my steps. Did the place have a basement? What
was down there? The questions lingered for a second or two as I pictured the
space.

I stepped
outside. The air felt cool against my warm cheeks. Thick clouds blocked the
moonlight. What time would the storm start? Would it be bad enough to keep the
plane from departing? The chances of that were slim.

A trace of
cigarette smoke passed by. It had been months since I smoked. My first reaction
had been to cough. An old desire popped up, though. Will power, I told myself.

I turned around
and opened the door to the pub. The old man who gave me a talking to barreled
through the door. He didn’t back down. I stepped back and held the door for
him. He puffed his chest with pride. There was no reason to disrupt his moment.

My eyes
adjusted to the lighting in the pub after I stepped inside. Sasha waved at me
from the table. Our food had been brought out. Steam rose from the thick cuts
of steak.

“Eat up,” she
said. “You leave in two hours.”

We left the
restaurant after eating and having a few more beers. After navigating through
the streets, Sasha got on the M4 heading west. I figured we were further east
than I had estimated. I closed my eyes for a few minutes. The Audi’s soft
leather headrest felt better than most hotel pillows. Five minutes passed. I
opened my eyes and saw we were still on the highway.