The Violet Hour, page 26
“Our father’s ashamed of him. Can you believe that?” she said, with a wry smile at the irony.
He could believe it. When it came to Jimmy Rosedale he could believe anything. “For the assault and robbery? Or for getting caught?” he asked, and watched her tight smile give way to something more genuine.
“Good point. Probably both.”
Damn, and he thought he had daddy issues. But for all his faults, at least none of Patrick Hoskins’ children had ended up inside. Not yet anyway.
“The Big Dipper,” he said, looking at the ring of lights over the basketball court that glowed brighter now that the pink and violet sky had turned to a deeper shade of purple. Soon day would be consumed by night. “In the video message my sister was trying to tell me where she was, where they’d taken her. The Big Dipper used to come to Pinefort with the fair when we were kids. It would set up on the wasteland at the edge of the industrial park a mile from where we lived. That’s where she was. Not in Palmrey.”
So there you have it, another thing Jimmy The Drain would have in common with Sheriff Patrick Hoskins. If Jimmy was ashamed of his son’s actions, then the ex-sheriff would be spinning in his grave right about now, because bringing the family into this filthy business was crossing the line in the worst possible way. Good job Hoss wasn’t a real detective anymore, is what Patrick would be saying. He should try that job at Wendy’s. If they’d have him, that is.
“She’s your sister,” Vivian said, her voice small in the night air, the daylight almost entirely eclipsed. “You acted on your instincts.”
He huffed a dry laugh, but restrained from commenting on what he thought about those instincts.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she added. “You were prepared to do what was needed to get her back. That’s more than some families will do for each other. More than some people have even got.”
He didn’t think his father would see it that way, nor Kate. Jen would, but Jen was the forgiving kind like their mother. Except that forgiveness was more than he deserved. Hoss turned to look at Vivian. Who would she be willing to forgive? Her father, for the life he had subjected them to? Her brother, for his role in a robbery that took him away from her for twenty years of their life? Her mother, for the illness that would soon take her away too, perhaps the last remaining piece of stability she’d ever had? Hoss knew what that was like. The helplessness of grief. People talk about the rug being pulled out from under you, but nothing can prepare you for what it really feels like to lose that first and only rock that you take for granted will always be there. Suddenly it’s as if you’re falling, slowly, endlessly, wondering when it’s going to stop, when someone will catch you. It takes a long while to learn that no one can catch you but yourself.
“What?” she asked, and he realized he’d been staring.
“You were protecting your father,” he said. “That’s why you pulled the trigger. It wasn’t to protect yourself, it was to protect Jimmy.”
She looked at him for a long moment, her eyes unreadable in the darkness. Then she turned away, hugging her knees closer to her body.
“Vivian, you know where your parents are, don’t you? Where they’ve been staying?”
Her chin rested on her knees and she stared ahead towards the mountains. She looked like a nineteen-year-old. But when she tilted her head back his way to see if he was still waiting for an answer, her eyes spoke of a life lived twice over.
“Family’s family,” he said, speaking the words she couldn’t seem to voice herself.
“Can’t live with them…” she began.
“Can’t live with them,” he finished, and she softly laughed at his teasing. “If it’s any consolation, I used to hate my dad, too.”
She laid her cheek on her knee, curiosity brightening her features. “Not anymore?”
“Well, the son of a bitch went and passed away last year. It’s kind of hard to hate someone in the afterlife with the same vehemence, you know?”
She chuckled, her eyes shining in the soft light spilling through the open door from the lamp inside the room. “Why did you hate him?” she asked.
Hoss blew out a sigh. “For just about everything that was shit in this world. But mostly for being who he was. Or, for how he made me feel, I guess.”
“Was he a cop?”
Hoss winked. “Damn sons taking after their fathers.”
“Better yours than mine,” she said, and he couldn’t really argue with that. “So why aren’t you a cop now? Because of your dad?”
Instinctively his gaze went to his left wrist. He clutched at it with his right hand, twisting the scar between his thumb and fingers. He was giving up hope of it ever fading. “No, that was something else. But I don’t think I was ever fully cut out for the job anyway.”
Vivian huffed at that. “You’re shitting me, right?”
“No. Not really.”
“You found me. No one knew where I was.”
“Your father gave me a head start.”
“You still found me. Then you got word to me without Ike knowing.”
“Yeah, about that,” he said, recalling something that had been scratching at the back of his mind, an itch he couldn’t reach. An itch with red locks and stunning green eyes that could keep a man awake at night. “How well do you know Red?”
“Red?” she asked, surprised. “We’re not exactly BFFs or anything, but I’m pretty used to her. Why?” A smile teased her lips. “You like her?”
“I just wondered if it was her who sold me out to Ike. I gave her my card when I was trying to find you.”
“Which she gave to me and I tore it up then burned it. No offense, but after we spoke I wanted nothing more to do with you. And I couldn’t risk Ike finding out we’d met.”
“Right. But you don’t think Ike might have got my name from her anyway?”
She screwed up her features as she thought about that. “I can’t see it. Maybe one of the others, but Red’s different. She’s older and… I don’t know how to explain it, but kind of wiser. Apparently she was one of Teddy’s original line-up, so I imagine she knows a lot, but she keeps everything to herself. The only reason she’s still on Ike’s books is out of respect for Teddy. That and the customers like her, of course. I mean, she’s beautiful, right?” She waited for confirmation, but he pretended to be preoccupied thinking of something else. “More likely Ike found out about you through Jasper. I mean… the agent.”
“Riggs.”
“He knew about you. Thought you were a cop. Maybe he had something about you on his phone and they found it. But don’t worry, they’ll have trashed it along with anything else that connected them to him. They’ll have wiped their hands of him entirely. There’d have been nothing left for the Feds to use even if they had come calling.”
“Even so, Riggs wouldn’t have worked in a vacuum. You know that, right? There’ll be other agents who know all about the case he was working.”
“What,” she said, eyes darkening, “they’ll know he took a blow job from the girl he was meant to be tailing and then came back for more?”
The words disappeared into the silence, and she held his gaze only long enough for them to repeat in her own head. If not for the poor light, he might have seen the color rush to her cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Vivian,” he said, for want of anything else to say.
“Why? My choice, right?” she said, but the teenage defiance was a thin disguise. He’d seen it in other young women and girls over the years. How they hid their misplaced shame behind words like choice and my body, my decision. It rarely was any of that. And it never got easier to witness. But Agent Riggs? If the Feds really did turn up at Hoss’s door they’d learn a few things about their former colleague that would make their toes curl. Dirty cops on the streets were bad enough, but dirty federal agents were a whole other shitstorm. It wouldn’t look good.
“I rarely did that kind of thing, you know.” Vivian spoke quietly, her hand clenched into a fist tapping against her leg.
“It’s none of my business.” He looked to the sports field where the floodlights had come on and a group of youngsters wearing orange bibs had filed onto the grass and were warming up.
“Most of the time that’s what the girls do,” she added.
“The girls?” he asked, turning back. “You mean the dancers? I thought it was a clean club.”
“It was. Apparently. Back in Teddy’s day.”
Hoss shifted, turning to face her and propping his shoulder to the wall. “What do you mean?”
“I mean Ike has his own way of doing things.” She said it as if it was no big deal, but he didn’t believe that. He didn’t believe it was Ike she was defensive about protecting either. She was making excuses for what the other women and sometimes she herself had done. “It’s not all the time. Just for VIPs. Customers, suppliers, anyone who’s good for business. And it’s not as if they’re forced or anything. They have a choice.”
That word choice again. “Do as Ike says or there’s the door?”
“It’s decent money. Double-shift usually. A bump in the wage.”
“For what, sleeping with these guys?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Sometimes. Not always.”
Hoss thought of Red and her sick daughter. I need this job. That’s what she had said. Spat it at him almost, that’s how desperate she was. What would the extra money mean to someone like her? What would not having the money mean? He’d thought the knowing look in her eye was because she was older, more mature than the other dancers, but maybe it was more than that. It was the air of someone who gritted her teeth and did what she had to do to survive.
“So all the dancers… participate?” he asked.
“I’ve never heard anyone refuse. I guess the ones who didn’t like it have already left. I’ve been told there were girls who packed in the job as soon as Teddy died and Ike took over. They trusted Teddy, he was good to them and they knew where they stood with him. He had a line he wouldn’t cross, wouldn’t let anyone touch them. He thought it kept the punters coming back that way. Which, when you think about it, makes good business sense, but…”
“But Ike’s no businessman. And not everyone could afford to pack in the job.”
She clamped her mouth closed and looked past the balcony railings into the distance. Watching the kids on the pitch maybe, her age or only a few years younger. Kids who knew nothing of her world, only what they might have read in books or watched on TV. He still couldn’t figure the pieces of her puzzle. She seemed like an intelligent kid, streetwise for sure. And yet she’d shacked up with Isaac Green, of all people. Why? Because she was in love with him? Perhaps. Partly. But Hoss didn’t see her as someone who needed a guy to feel worthy, or someone who’d be satisfied as a gang boss’s plaything – if anything, she should be running in the opposite direction. So why else? Being so close to another crime family was a risk given who she was. Why would she take that risk? Why did anyone take a risk? Because the prize at the end was worth it? Or because the risk itself was the prize?
He studied her profile. The neat features of a child but the look of a woman. Ebony hair curling around her face and neck. Diamond stud in her pouting bottom lip. Dark eyes that had seen more than they should have done at her age. He wasn’t sure whether to pity or fear her. She was an enigma he would never understand. But thankfully he didn’t need to. Planting his palm on the wall, he pushed himself to his feet.
“I’m getting my head down, I’m beat,” he said, brushing aside the curtain and stepping back into the room to set up his bed on the carpet.
Sleep came the moment his head hit the pillow. It brought vivid dreams that made him restless. He woke several times with the thin blanket wrapped around his torso, and one time with it around his neck so that for a second he felt it was hands pressing against his windpipe, or that noose again, choking him. Footsteps pattered over the carpet, coming closer, and a soft voice told him it was all right, he was just dreaming. Fingers tenderly brushed over his forehead, and in his uneasy stupor he thought first of Catherine, the last woman who had touched him like that, and then Red, thinking he could smell the same perfume she had worn the other night. But when his eyelids opened, it wasn’t red curls he saw but black; not green eyes, but dark. He moved away, mumbled an apology for waking her, and closed his eyes.
He waited until Vivian had gone back to bed, then turned over to find a cool spot in the sheet. The dream that had woken him was still close, but elusive, and he could recall nothing about it as he drifted off again. Except he sensed someone was close. Not Vivian. Not his father or his sisters or their mother, all of whom had been in and out of his thoughts all night. Someone else. Someone he didn’t want to remember, but his mind insisted he never forget. And as sleep came, that person stepped out of the darkness. Same way he always did, like he had been waiting. Bare-chested and steel-eyed, the same cruel curve of Carl Evertson’s mouth told him he was down to his last life, only this time, there would be no one coming to save him.
Chapter 32
It was six in the morning. Hoss stood under the cold shower in the hotel bathroom and washed the sweat of an anxious night from his body. He felt little better for either the sleep or the icy water that on most other occasions snapped him out of a funk with the sheer shock of it alone. When he returned to the room, it was still with the uneasy sense that until Vivian was off his hands this thing was far from over.
Sitting up in the bed and rubbing her eyes awake, Vivian pointed to his jacket on the back of the chair across the room and told him his phone had vibrated. She said nothing about the gun in his hand, or why he’d taken it into the bathroom with him.
He checked his phone, but there was no message and no caller. So he pulled the burner from his inside pocket instead, and that’s where he found the text.
I’m here. Where the hell are you?
Hoss took the phone and stepped out onto the balcony. It was a gray morning, the clouds low and heavy, and the view at the rear of the hotel carried none of the magic it had teased them with yesterday evening. His heart was in his throat as he hit the call button. Same place it had been all night.
“Action Man. About time. I’ve been going out of my fucking mind.” Jimmy was his usual cheery self.
“What do you mean, I’m here? Where’s here?”
“Where’s here? Here’s your apartment, where else? I’ve been trying you since yesterday but you’re not answering the door. Thought you said you had her.”
“Shit! Why didn’t you call me?”
Jimmy mumbled something away from the phone Hoss didn’t catch, but then he was back again. “Do you know how fucking hard it is to top up one of these damn things without a credit card?”
Hoss’s hand went to his head as he tried to remember what day it was and whether Busta would still be at the cabin or back at the apartment, but his mind wouldn’t compute. The last few days had been a blur and he wasn’t sure which one he was on. “You knocked on the door?” he asked.
“Course I fucking knocked. Are you telling me you’re there? What, are you hungover or something?”
“Where are you right now, Jimmy? Are you still at the apartment?”
“I’m in the goddamn foyer. I was about to leave. The coffee they got in their machine isn’t worth shit. Shall I come on up?”
“No! No, don’t do that. Just… give me a second.” Hoss paced the narrow balcony, forcing his brain into gear. If Busta turned up and saw Jimmy, he’d recognize him from Christmas Eve, think it was Dallas, the ex-work guy with the midlife crisis and marriage issues. Being the friendly person he was, Busta would likely engage him in conversation, and Jimmy wasn’t all that great with conversation. Or at least not the kind Busta needed to hear.
“She with you now, Action Man? My girl?”
“What? Yeah. Listen. We’re about three hours away from Pinefort…”
“You are? You on a fucking road trip?”
“It’s a long story, Jimmy. Just listen, all right? I want you to give the apartment a wide berth. It’s not safe for you there.” That was one line that would get the old guy moving pretty fast. More than that, it wasn’t just a line. Hoss didn’t know what was safe and what wasn’t anymore. “Lose yourself in the city. Find a quiet bar or diner, just keep your head down until we’re back. As soon as we’re in Pinefort I’ll call you and we’ll arrange a place to meet. Got it?”
“I got it, I got it,” he said. “What’s up? What’s going on?”
“If we set off now, we’ll be back mid-morning at the latest. You got somewhere to go after that?”
“Don’t you worry yourself about none of that. You just bring me my baby and I’m out of your hair. Like we agreed.”
“Right. Good.”
“I knew you’d come through for me, Action Man. Never doubted you were the man for the job.”
“Jimmy—”
“No, I have something to say. I listened to you, now you listen to me. So be quiet, this is very important.”
Hoss sighed, stopped pacing and dropped his head back against the wall outside the room. Now that he knew Jimmy was in Pinefort and waiting for them, he was eager to get going.
“I’ve got a man that’s gonna be wiring you your payment,” Jimmy said, a little breathless, like he was already heeding Hoss’s advice and hoofing it out of Dodge. “I meant it when I said I’d pay you generously, by the way.”
“Yeah, all right, all right—”
“You’re not listening. The money’s clean. I promise you that. The accountant? Well, maybe not so much, but the money is cleaner than the bed linen in the penthouse suite of the Carlton. Except you’ll get it in eight payments, all right? Different names so as not to raise suspicion with anyone your end. You can write it up in your books however you like, but eight payments, one a quarter over the next two years. First should be in your business account already. You still there? You listening? You’re not saying anything.”
