The Housewife Assassin's Killer App (2 page)

Cupcake has lingered as long as she can by the piano without looking like a crazed stalker. So that Jack notices her, she practically drapes herself over the top of the baby grand. He gives her a wink and a nod, and sings the next stanza of the song staring into her eyes.

To show her appreciation, she tucks the Benjamin into his shirt between the buttons that are nipple high.

As far as his bill collecting goes, I don’t think Jack could have done better if he were the headliner in the Las Vegas Chippendale’s review. His tip jar is overflowing.
 

I wonder how much he would have taken in if he were wearing just a banana hammock. If times get tough for us again, maybe I’ll suggest it to him.

As I drop off Phil’s drinks, I pretend I’m not listening to the interchange between the men. Not that I have to strain too hard. There’s an audio bug in the lamp on their table, allowing Ryan and me to hear them loud and clear.
 

That’s how I know Cupcake is pissed that Phil can’t keep his eyes off me.
 

When the food arrives, I slide the plates on my stainless steel tray and time my return to Phil’s table so that I’m front and center when Lawrence slides the thumb drive toward the wise guy.
 

At that point, I pull an oopsy that pushes Cupcake’s linguini onto her lap.

She screams, “Oh, my GAWD!” Her faux leopard whore couture now looks like a cat crawling out of a muddy sewer. “It’s leather—and you’ve ruined it!”

With one hand, I grab a napkin and wipe her down. The other hand is palming the duplicate thumb drive.
 

I’m just about to exchange them when I see Phil reach for the real one.

To stop him, I flip the second bowl of linguini into his lap.
 

Cursing, he leaps up so fast that he upturns the table. The drinks land on the floor, as does the silverware, the table lamp, the breadbasket—

And both thumb drives.

Lawrence looks from one thumb drive to the other, confused. “What the hell…”
 

Phil’s eyes follow his gaze. The next thing I know, he’s staring at me.

I scoop them up and start for the door—

Only to be tripped by one of Lawrence’s size-fourteen flat feet.

I land face down. The breath is knocked out of me.

Through my earpiece, I hear Ryan murmur to Jack,
May Day
. Even after stopping abruptly in the middle of
Come Fly with Me
, the women in the lounge crowd around him adoringly. Seriously, he could have been humming the phone book off-key and they wouldn’t have known the difference. The mob is so thick that he can’t wade through in time to stop Phil from lifting me up and shoving me toward the lounge’s entrance.

I have just enough time to grab one of the fallen forks off the floor before he hauls me up by my waist. I stab him hard, in the thigh.
 

His roar fills the bar. Angrily, he pulls out the fork and tosses it away, then slams me up against the wall. He’s got one hand around my throat. The other is mauling my shorts and vest for my pockets. Angered that he can’t find the hidden thumb drives, he hisses, “Where did you hide them?”

It’s not that I won’t answer the idiot. It’s that I can’t even croak, let alone breathe, what with his fingers on my throat. Now that I’m running on fumes, my eyes roll downward.
 

For some stupid reason, Phil takes this as a broad hint and puts his hand in my vest and rummages between my breasts.

Suddenly, a woman screams, “Why, you two-timing son of a bitch! So, this is the scrawny whore who’s keeping you company these days?”

All eyes turn toward the doorway. I’ve never seen her before, but apparently Phil knows her, and from the loss of color in his face, he wishes he didn’t.

“That’s Angelina Carducci Rugassi,” Ryan mutters into my ear.
 

No wonder Cupcake is trembling—and sliding under the table.

Then again, it could have something to do with Angelina’s gun, which seems to be aimed at Phil one moment, and me the next.

“H-Hand to God, Angelina, th-this isn’t what you th-think!” Phil stutters.

“The two-timing son-of-a-bitch is right,” I assure her. “In fact, he’s roughing me up because I wouldn’t sit in his lap, and I had the nerve to question his taste in bimbos.”

I point to Cupcake, who’s peeking out over the top of the upturned table.

“Her? You’re two-timing me with our babysitter?” Her first shot hits him in the groin, putting him on the floor. As he bleeds like a stuck pig, he groans in pain.
 

Angelina stalks her next victim, Cupcake. “That ring on your finger better be a fugazi,” she shouts as she shoots. A bullet singes her rival’s bouffant, who barely ducks in time.

Just at that moment, Walt the Wolf stumbles out of the ladies’ room. Apparently the women who came in after our little altercation weren’t kind to him either. I presume that they, too, were victims of his threatening pick-up attempts, which is why such commentary as LIMP PRICK and JERK and LOSER is now scrawled all over his white button-down shirt in a rainbow of lipstick shades.
 

Walt is out for blood—mine. Finally spotting me, Little Italy’s Raging Bore charges my way. Suddenly, Walt is aware of the melee around Angelina.
 

By now, Jack’s fans are screaming at the top of their lungs and hightailing it out the back door. This gives him just enough time to jerk Angelina’s arm straight up before she gets off another shot. The bullet slams into the ceiling instead of Cupcake, who crawls away on her hands and knees.
 

Like the rest of us, Walt watches as Jack wrenches her arm straight up, assuring that Angelina’s jilted-wife defense doesn’t turn into an indefensible homicide rap.
 

Angelina stares at the tall, handsome stranger who has just knocked the gun from her hand with his fist. Burying her head into his broad chest, she sobs, “He promised to love me forever!”

Lawrence sees this as the perfect time to leave the scene. He’s making a run for the door—

But he doesn’t get far, because I trip him.
 

He falls face down. One good turn deserves another.

I turn to find Phil staring at us. He reaches for his gun.
 

I grab the closest thing I can find for cover—my stainless steel serving tray. Holding it like a shield, I leap in front of Jack. Phil’s bullet bounces off the tray and ricochets into his own shoulder.
 

He’s howling like a banshee, but he’ll survive. The ambulance and police cars can already be heard coming from all directions.

Lawrence too will live to see another day. But, beyond that, I’m sure that the wise guy who takes Phil’s place will be gunning for him, unless he’s willing to play double agent for the Feds, and pray that he makes it into the Witness Protection Program before the Moretti syndicate finds out it’s been double-crossed.
 

Despite his questionable eau de toilette, it must have dawned on Walt that saving Angelina is one way to come out smelling like a rose to the Carducci family. “The family owes you one,” he promises Jack as he scoops her gun off the floor and ferries her toward the door.
 

“Hey, where did you hide the thumb drives?” Jack asks.

I reach into my pouf, where they’ve been held in place by the banana clip.

He laughs. “I would have never guessed.”

Partial payment comes with what’s in Jack’s tip jar, which I shove into my vest until I’m pushing a DD width at the very least. When Jack raises a brow, I shrug. “Pay day,” I say, as I push the rest of the bills into his jacket pocket.
 

In fact, there are so many dollars that they don’t all fit there, either, so I tuck some under his waistband.
 

He laughs. “You can’t buy me.”

“I think I just did.”

He smiles. “I guess it’s time to pay up.”

Before I can answer him, he grabs my arm and pulls me toward the kitchen door, and we disappear into the night.

Chapter 2

Emoticons

In case you didn’t know it, those cute little smiley faces you use in your emails are called “emoticons.” They’re supposed to give the recipient some idea of how you’re feeling, be it happy —
 
— or sad —
 
— or dismayed — :/
 

As emoticons go, not all are faces made out of keyboard strokes. In fact, some are actually complete messages. For example, this one says, “I love you”:
 

I <3 U

Others are symbolic of something easily visualized. Case in point: this one is a rose:
 

@-
→
-
→
---

Oh, and this is a bucktoothed vampire with a missing fang:
 

:-F

Frankly, in the time in which it would take you to learn every emoticon out there (including and especially the bucktoothed vampire) you could have picked up your cell phone and called to say, “Hi, hope you’re having a great day.” Or you could have plucked a rose and handed it to your friend, and seen a real smile on her face.

Best of all, you could have called your beloved to say, “I love you.”

As for the bucktoothed defanged vampire, all I can say is that if you’ve found a use for it, you have too much time on your hands.
 

No, I’m not suggesting you create a costume depicting said vampire in order to scare the bejesus out of some pal. Actually, a better use of your time would be writing a note on beautiful stationery, then walking it out to the mailbox.

Etiquette beats netiquette every time.

Real emotions are more effective than emoticons. Trust me on this one.

Jack and I have a pretty good reason to be smooching on the N Train. Keeping face-to-face and wrapped in each other’s arms is the easiest way to avoid being caught by the subway’s security cameras.

Hey, I’m not complaining at all. My only regret is that our stop—Union Square—is a mere five minutes away.

One of my hands cups the nape of Jack’s neck. The other is pressed against his chest. Whereas the adrenaline rush of being roughed up by bad guys and dodging bullets has my heart pounding against my ribcage like a metronome, Jack’s is several beats slower. Ha! Maybe next time I should take on the role of lounge singer.
 

The thought of my off-key crooning and one-handed
Chopsticks
wowing the crowds and launching my diva career is forgotten in the heady sweetness of Jack’s kisses.

Be still, my heart.

All around us, the sights, sounds, and smells are raw and unyielding. A homeless guy plays a tarnished saxophone with the chops of someone who once was a somebody. The wild-eyed man sitting across from us is picking fleas out of his hair. The dude on the far side of Jack is high as a kite. He lays into a box of greasy fried chicken, devouring it, bones and all. The college student standing in front of us bops her head to a techno-pop ditty, which is so loud that it drones beyond the confines of her Beats. The standing mob around her nudges each other for more space. No one else notices the kid pickpocketing his way through the undulating throng.

Despite all of it, I wish I could stay here for the rest of the night, entwined with the man I love with all my heart.

“So listen,” he murmurs into my ear, “I noticed this great little French restaurant just a few blocks from our hotel. What do you say to a little foie gras and some coq au vin, with a nice Bordeaux to set it off?”

“Sure, okay,” I purr, “if that’s what you want.”
 

His right brow rises. “Do you have a better idea?”

Tenderly, I touch his cheek with my hand. “Here’s my scenario: you join me in our hotel room’s large double tub. Lots of candles, lots of bubbles, lots of sex. Afterward, we pay the bellboy to run down the block and pick up our food order.
C’est bon
?”

Before Jack can answer, my cell phone buzzes. It’s a text that reads, simply:
You’re needed.
 

Oh…no. Not now. Please…

“You were saying?” Jack stares down at my phone, then back up at me.
 

“I…have to go.” I try not to look down at the cell as I text back:
ONE HOUR.

Jack’s smile fades. He shrugs. “Leave after dinner.”
 

I shake my head. “I can’t. We need him.”

“I think you’re wrong. Lee is using you.” Jack’s frigid declaration sends a shiver up my spine. “He thinks of you as his pet—a komodo dragon. Anytime he wants to rattle Carl’s cage, he pulls you out so that you can snarl and wreak havoc.”

“Your metaphor is less than flattering. I’d like to think of myself as something more beauteous than a two-hundred-pound scaly lizard with a forked-tongue.”

Jack isn’t laughing.
 

Hmmm. Okay, move on to Plan B: remind him why we agreed that I have to stay close to Lee Chiffray, the President of the United States. “The lives—and livelihoods—of our co-workers are also at stake, not to mention my children’s wellbeing.”