The Secret Brokers (28 page)

Dallas gave Lance a dark scowl. “Are you going to talk or drive?”

Lance hit the ignition switch and the engine roared to life. “I’ve been known to do both,” he joked.

“Just get me out of here, Lance,” Dallas requested as he watched his friend put the car into gear. “Get me the hell out of here before I change my mind.”

***

It was well after eight that night when Dallas walked into his penthouse apartment at the Cuomo Towers in New York City.
He stepped through the heavy oak doors to his home and set his suitcase and overnight bag down on the white-marbled floor in his entryway. He looked down the hallway across from the entrance for any signs of life.

“Cleveland?” he called out.

“I’m comin’,” his security guard shouted back from somewhere in the apartment.

A few seconds later, Dallas saw the tall, dark man with the bulging arms and thick body casually strutting his way down the hall to Dallas.

“Damn!” Cleveland exclaimed as he came up to Dallas. “Who beat the crap out of ya?” he asked, pointing to his face.

“Never mind,” Dallas replied

“Can’t believe ya didn’t stay longer in N’awlin’s. What I wouldn’t do to get away from this freezin’ ass weather.” Cleveland picked up Dallas’s black overnight bag and turned back down the hall.

Dallas looked at the big security guard and back to his black suitcase. He shook his head, picked up his black bag, and followed Cleveland down the hallway.

“You sound like you want a vacation?” Dallas inquired

“Vacation?” Cleveland laughed as he kept on walking. “Hell, I just had me one. Done had a beautiful girl up here when you’s was gone. Told her this was my crib. Can’t wait for ya to leave town again.”

Dallas stopped in front of the door to his office and peered inside. Everything appeared just as he had left it. “It’s moments like these that make me glad I’m home.” Dallas turned to him. “Anything come in while I was gone?”

Cleveland stopped in front of the door to Dallas’s bedroom further down the hallway. “What came in, I done sent to ya private e-mail account.” He opened the door to Dallas’s bedroom. “How’s Ms. Marsh?”

Dallas took a breath and ran his hand over the back of his neck. “She’s fine,” he softly said.

Cleveland watched as Dallas turned back into the hallway and came toward the bedroom door. “Man, ya had sex with her, didn’t ya?”

Dallas stared indignantly at his security guard. “Cleveland that is none—”

“It’s written all over ya face,
”
Cleveland interrupted. “Ya always walk around here with that scowl, like you’s mad at the world or somethin’. Now you’s ain’t angry no more, but I think what ya feelin’ ain’t cause ya happy, is it?”

Dallas walked into his bright yellow bedroom with its sculpted ceiling niches and inset lighting. He threw his suitcase onto the antique mahogany inlay Queen Anne bed and walked over to the ornamental plaster archway that concealed a pair of sliding glass doors. Pushing the doors aside, Dallas stepped on to his private balcony and breathed in the cold night air.

“Ya want me to get ya the usual?” Cleveland asked as he dropped the overnight bag on the floor beside the bed.

Dallas stepped back inside the bedroom and slammed the sliding glass doors closed. “Yes, make it three of the usual.”

Cleveland shook his head. “And what ya think knockin’ back three of ‘em shots of vodka goin’ to accomplish?”

“Getting me good and drunk,” Dallas confided.

“Drunk ain’t the answer, boss.”

Dallas sighed. “Then what is, Cleveland?”

Cleveland shook his head “When ya said you’s goin’ back to N’awlin’s, I was worried for ya
, goin’
back to where Nicci was livin’. But then ya told me of Ms. Marsh, and I kinda hoped spendin’ time with another woman might help ya forget about the one that got away.” Cleveland walked back to the entrance of the bedroom. “Now ya gone and found a cure for what’s been ailin’ ya, but how ya gonna get over the cure? How many women it gonna take for ya to realize ya can’t run away forever? One day ya gonna have to stop and feel what ya been too afraid to feel.”

Dallas snickered as he turned to Cleveland. “And what have I been too afraid to feel?”

Cleveland smiled. “Regret.”

“I already feel that,” Dallas revealed as he turned back to the patio doors. “It seems I’ve been feeling nothing but regret lately.”

“Then ya ain’t the cold bastard people think ya are. Ya got a heart somewhere under that thick hide. Now ya got to let someone in it, then ya’ll be all right.”

Dallas wiped his face in his hands. “Enough advice, Cleveland. I could really use that drink.”

Cleveland nodded. “I’ll get it.” He looked over at the suitcase on the bed. “But you’s gonna unpack that suitcase, ‘cause I ain’t no maid.”

***

For the next two days Dallas worked around the clock catching up with the organization. He had specialists to check on and potential clients to interview. He spent hours on the phone every
day as Cleveland came and went from his office, giving him sour looks. Cleveland even arranged for a home health nurse to come by the apartment to remove the stitches from Dallas’s finger.

“Cause knowin’ ya,” Cleveland had told him after the nurse had left. “Ya’d never done nothin’ ‘bout it and ya damn finger would’ve falled off.”

One afternoon Cleveland walked into his office carrying an enormous fruit basket. He placed the basket in the middle of Dallas’s dark oak desk as he was trying to go through some bills.

“And why is this here?” Dallas asked, looking over the selection of oranges, apples, pears, and grapefruit.

“Just got delivered,” Cleveland announced. “Figured ya’d want to see it.”

Dallas waved the basket away. “I’ve seen it, now take it back to the kitchen,” he instructed.

“There’s a card. From that little bald dude that done come here week before last. The mafia guy,” Cleveland reported.

“You read the card?”

Cleveland shrugged and pulled the card out from the basket. “He says thanks for the help and Gwen’s back with her horses. Safe at last,” he read from the card. “What’s that ‘safe at last’ crap mean? Is she safe cause she’s done rid of ya sorry ass, or safe ‘cause of some other reason?”

Dallas shook his head. “I have no idea.”

Cleveland shrugged. “Well, ain’t ya curious? Don’t ya think ya should call and check on her? Send her flowers or somethin’?”

Dallas threw the pen in his hand on his desk and sat back in his chair, glaring at Cleveland. “What are you, my mother?”

“Jus sayin’, maybe ya should call the woman, see how she’s doin’. Ya want to know, admit it. Ya haven’t stopped thinkin’ ‘bout her since ya got back.”

“And how would you know that?”

“I count them liquor bottles. You’s been through two bottles of Stoli since ya got back. Now either ya can call that woman, or start savin’ up for that liver transplant ya gonna be needin’.” He picked up the fruit basket and walked to the study door. “I done hope that little mafia dude plans on payin’ ya in somethin’ other than oranges,” he commented as he stepped into the hallway.

A fruit fly suddenly appeared and circled about his desk. Dallas frantically swatted at the creature and almost instantly he could hear Gwen laughing in his head. He stood up from the desk and walked across the room to the window. Dallas needed a drink, but then Cleveland’s comment about counting the bottles of vodka he was consuming came back to him. He rubbed his face in his hands and sighed.

“Christ, is this ever going to get any easier?” he asked out loud.

But there was no reply.

***

The following morning Dallas was sitting at his desk, going through e-mails from his specialists out in the field
,
when the ringing of his cell phone interrupted him. He checked the caller ID and hesitated for a moment before he answered.

“Hello Dan,” Dallas said into the phone. “I didn’t think I would be hearing from you so soon,” he added as he sat back in his chair.

“What kind of crap you up to, August?” Dan Wilbur angrily growled into the phone.

“You’re in a wonderful mood,” Dallas commented.

“I’m pissed. What kind of horse shit are you trying to pull?”

Dallas glimpsed the e-mail on his computer screen for a moment. “You lost me, Dan.”

“The girl, August. What kind of switch did you pull?”

Dallas knitted his brow and turned away from his computer. “Switch? What switch?”

“August, I’m looking at two sets of pictures on my desk. One of you and the girl after she shot Brewster, and the other taken by surveillance team sent out to her farm yesterday. It’s not the same woman.”

Dallas laughed into his phone. “Dan
,
what are you talking about? I have it on good authority that Gwen returned to her farm and everything is fine.”

“The woman that’s on the farm as we speak is not Gwen Marsh, or at least not the Gwen Marsh you were with. I had research dig up a few photos from the local newspaper down there. I found an article about a car accident she was involved in when she was twenty-two. So I pulled her medical records. Gwen Marsh has a large scar on her lower abdomen as a result of that accident. She was four months pregnant and thrown from the car. She lost the baby and her uterus during the surgery.”

Dallas felt the icy grip of disbelief crawl up from the inner reaches of his gut. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m sure. So who in the hell were you with in New Orleans?” Dan asked into the phone.

Dallas glanced down at his desk while his mind raced with questions. “Dan, I don’t know who it was.”

“I need answers, August. I sent a team down there to protect a girl who wasn’t who she appeared to be. How can a screw up like this happen? And where was the real Gwen Marsh when the trial was going on? I’ve got a mind to send two agents down to New Orleans and arrest her and her father. With Robertson dead and the boys upstairs—”

“Robertson’s dead?” Dallas asked, sounding surprised.

Dan snickered into the phone. “What are you, a monk? It’s been all over the news since yesterday. The guy was found strangled in his jail cell.” Dan Wilbur paused. ”I guess Gwen Marsh and her father have nothing to worry about. They’re safe now.”

“Safe at last,” Dallas whispered.

“What? August? Are you listening to me?” Dan shouted over the phone speaker. “I still got a bitch of a problem here. Who is the goddamn girl you and my men were protecting?”

Dallas thought quickly. “Why don’t you let me handle it?” he suggested
,
hoping to buy some time to find out what was really going on. “Let me go to New Orleans and make inquiries. All the parties involved are more apt to talk to me rather than your people.”

Dan cursed into the phone. “You’ve got two days. If I don’t hear from you by then, I’m sending agents down there with arrest warrants.” He paused and Dallas could hear his heavy breathing on the line. “And I’m still waiting for a line on Bordonaro, August. You owe me that.”

“And what if I find out about the girl? Will that clear me of having to turn on Bordonaro? I walk a fine line in my business, Dan. I don’t need Bordonaro as an enemy. Besides, I couldn’t turn him in to you if I wanted to. I’m in deep with him.”

“You stupid son of a bitch. Since when have you turned and joined the other team?”

“Since I learned your team plays just as dirty as theirs. Do your higher ups know about Brewster? Wouldn’t look good for you if word got out that one of your agents got turned, would it, Dan? It might jeopardize your position as head of the Organized Crime Division.”

“Are you threatening me, August?”

“Yes, Dan,
”
Dallas said with a smile. “I believe I am.”

When he came to the end of Concourse B at New Orleans International Airport, Dallas explored the frenzy of smiling faces eagerly waiting on the other side of the security perimeter. He wanted to hurry to the car rental agency and get on the road, but when he broke free of the other passengers exiting the concourse, a familiar figure, leaning against a pole on the far side of the terminal, stopped him.

He was tall and slender with dark, wavy hair. When he saw Dallas, he nodded. Dallas watched the man’s face as he skillfully maneuvered his way through the crowd. He had a small mouth that always held a sarcastic grin. His pale skin was pulled taught over high cheekbones, but on closer inspection Dallas could see one cheekbone stood slightly higher than the other. And one side of his firm jaw appeared larger than the other side. He had a long, thin scar down his left cheek, a small scar on his right upper cheek, and his eyes were a brilliant shade of gray.

Dallas held out his hand to him. “Good to see you, David,” he said, genuinely pleased to see his old friend.

David Alexander took Dallas’s hand and gave it a firm shake. “Been a while,” David commented in his smooth voice.

“And you’re a married man,” Dallas added with a shake of his head. “Congratulations again on the baby. You must be very happy.”