Trained To Kill (4 page)

“
How? Those guys are
mafia. What was I supposed to do?”

Isa lifter her head and considered her
for a moment, tapping her fingers on the arm of the chair. “You’re
right. You didn’t know I could protect her.”

“
So, am I
fired?”

“
I don’t want to fire you
Maggie. I’ll talk it over with Ben. But you must know you’ll be on
probation for awhile.”

Maggie looked relieved and stubbed out
her cigarette. “Thank you Isa.”

Isa nodded and got up. “Have the
police told you not to leave town?”

“
Yes.”

“
Good. Don’t. It’ll just
make it worse. I’ll have my lawyer call you. They'll deal with the
District Attorney's office for you.”

She left without another word before
Maggie started crying.

…
.

Isa got stuck in a traffic jam on the
way home, but she barely noticed. She was thinking. Watching the
pedestrians stream by, she wondered how many of them had a life
like hers?

Mafia. Would she ever be free from
them? She had been involved with them in one form or another for
almost 17 years. Even good old Thomas Riley had been involved with
the London mob, however peripherally. She had been extra careful
not to give them a whiff of her.

It was no wonder Sergeant Jackson had
looked at her cross eyed. Of course she would be a suspect. She
would consider him a dunce if he hadn’t considered it. She thought
about the last few moments with him at the club. He had been
thinking hard about something. About her she was sure.

Maybe I shouldn’t have given him the
information, she thought now, drumming her fingers on the steering
wheel.

Now instead of being on the edges of
the case with an alibi across the Atlantic, she was putting herself
in the middle of it. But she just couldn’t stand the thought of
Malone getting away with it.

There had been plenty of small time
thugs that tried to hustle her and Ben. Trying to take a piece of
the club, but she had put the fear of God in them and they had
scuttled back in their holes, terrified.

She was second guessing herself. She
bounced her head off the back of her car seat a few times. She
never second guessed herself.

It was the look in his eyes when she
had given him that flash drive. Not insulted exactly, more like a
little hurt, as if he thought she didn’t think he was capable of
his job or something. Maybe she was just reading too much into it.
And that wasn’t something she never did either.

She needed to get a grip; she sat back
up and shook her head. She saw a break in the traffic and gunned
it, cutting over to a side street and out of the cacophony. Another
reason she didn’t like New York. The traffic. Maybe she should
seriously consider moving. After this was settled of
course.

She pulled into her garage and ran to
the elevator, punching in her code. It was too cold here. The
garage was heated just enough to keep the cars from frosting.
Thankfully the elevator was heated. She began peeling off the
layers of her winter clothes as the elevator rose. It opened into
her foyer and Isa threw her coat, hat, scarf and gloves on the
credenza.

Hooking her keys on the wall, she made
her way into the kitchen to see if Renée had left her anything to
heat up for lunch. Not seeing anything, she made a peanut butter
sandwich and drank a glass of milk.

She was restless now. She needed
something to work on. Thomas Riley had given her a goal, something
to work on and focus on for over a year. Now that it was finished
she felt depleted. When the thought had first formed in her mind to
hunt down the men that had hurt her, she was still wallowing in her
grief over Anna. Sweet Anna.

Her baby sister had been so happy and
full of life. It hurt to think of her now. But the all consuming
grief and red, hot rage and pain had lessened as the years went by.
Maybe she had exercised her rage on Giles Rosenthal and Thomas
Riley. There were three more to go according to her plans. She had
chosen the top five monsters to exact vengeance on.

But now she just felt empty. Finished.
It wasn’t helping her, and the more she killed the better chances
someone would find her, arrest her, or kill her.

Maybe I just need to recuperate. Riley
was a difficult kill. If she turned her mind to a different task
for awhile she’ll be back to normal.

A task like Tyler Malone and Sergeant
Alexander Jackson would help with that. Isa prowled around her
penthouse, thinking and rethinking the best approach for Jackson.
If she just continued dropping things in his lap with no
explanations he would get fed-up and demand to know how she got the
information.

Isa jogged up the short flight of
stairs to her office. In any case she needed to gather the
information from London that Sgt. Jackson requested. She wasn’t
worried about giving it to him. There was no one left alive that
could connect her to Thomas Riley.

Chapter 6

He sat staring out of his library
window in Lenox Hill. Malone had been arrested which meant Malone
had been sloppy, which also meant he had been sloppy. He didn’t
like that one bit. Not from his managers and not from himself. What
had Malone been doing in The Inferno? He hadn’t authorized
that.

Turning to the man standing in shadow
in the corner of the room, he said, “Find him.” The shadow moved
immediately and disappeared.

He turned back to his desk and
unlocked the second drawer. From it he pulled a file that was well
worn. He opened it and took out his favorite pictures of Isadora.
He put those aside and searched for the information about The
Inferno. He needed to get to the bottom of this.

Chapter 7

The phone call came the next morning.
Alex was still asleep after a long day. Isa said she had the
information he requested and he could come retrieve it at any
time.

He heaved himself up off the bed and
into the shower. Stepping out five minutes later, he threw on a
t-shirt and jeans, his boots, leather jacket and a beanie in
deference to the cold and headed to his car.

He pulled into traffic; he knew where
she lived after running her information. Swank Building in West
Village. Nice neighborhood for younger people. Expensive building
because he knew she had money. Her information listed her as worth
$40 million, USD. That didn't count foreign accounts he couldn't
get access to at the moment.

He cussed at a bus pulling into his
lane, swerved around it and punched the gas. He made it in good
time; even found a parking spot not that far from the building. He
hoofed it the door and rang the buzzer.

“
Yes,” said a voice
clearly not Isadora’s.

“
Sergeant Jackson to see
Ms. La Beau.”

The door buzzed open and Alex grabbed
it. He took the elevator to the top floor, penthouse. Rich, he
thought again. He couldn’t wait to look around her place and see
how she lived. Curiosity was a cops’ innate nature.

The door was opened by a slightly
older woman with shoulder length dark brown hair, brown eyes and
bright red lipstick. He couldn’t quite place the accent, maybe
French.

“
Ms. La Beau will be right
down,” she said, leading him to the sitting area in front of the
glass wall. Alex couldn’t help but be impressed. His eyes were
zinging back and forth trying to capture every detail to file away
for later.

The art on the walls was some form of
Asian writing scrawled in big black letters on white canvases. The
grey marble fireplace was lit and Alex could smell the wood
burning. There were no pictures of family or friends, or even of
her.

The sofa and chairs were white. It was
a sterile place but there was a lack of clutter that Alex
appreciated, and the furniture was antique as far as he could tell
but that was it. He didn’t know from what century. It was elegant,
unfussy and a little sad.

Just as he sat, he stood again as
Isadora came down the short flight of stairs.

“
Sergeant,” Isa said.
“Thank you for coming.”

“
Thank you for following
through so quickly, Ms. La Beau.”

“
Call me Isa,” she said
with a shake of her head.

“
Isa,” Alex said. They
looked into each other’s eyes comfortably. No flinching, no looking
away. As a cop Alex was used to people avoiding his eyes, trying
not to incriminate themselves. She was like a refreshing balm on
his frayed nerves.

“
Is there anything you can
tell me,” she asked referring to The Inferno.

“
Not much,” he
said.

Isa nodded and waited for him to
speak.

“
Why do you think they
wanted to use your club?” He had a decent idea about that from his
time undercover, listening to Malone’s men bullshitting.

Isa sat in a chair by the window, and
tilted her head to the right, contemplating what to tell him. A
lock of her blonde hair that had come loose from her top-bun slid
over her shoulder.

“
I know what I know, I
don’t know what they know or what they were thinking,” Isa
said.

“
Humor me,” he said
sitting in the chair opposite her.

“
Fine,” she said tucking
her legs up underneath her in her chair. She wore jeans with a
light sweater over her tank top. Bare feet and still no bra. He had
noticed all of this while she had been walking down the stairs. “I
think you may have been right yesterday. It’s because of my past.
But that’s just speculation.” Isa said a little impatient
now.

Alex looked up from her bare toes and
lifted the corner of his mouth in a half smile. He debated for a
minute and decided to give in a little. “Alright let’s say that’s
all it is, that they heard of who you are and you’re past and
wanted to…what? Wanted to set up shop in your club to thumb their
noses at you? What’s the point?”

“
I don’t know,” Isa said.
“Maybe it was a combination of things. Maybe it was a good location
and they wanted to use me.”

“
Maybe.”

“
But you don’t think so,”
Isa said with certainty.

“
No, I do think it was
partly that. But I also think there was someone inside,” Alex said
giving her a bit more.

“
Someone else besides
Maggie,” Isa guessed.

“
Yes.”

Isa sat and stared at him for a while,
thinking. He could see the thoughts flying behind her expressive
green eyes.

The house keeper came in with a tray
and set it down on the table beside them. She poured two cups and
then left. Isa was staring out the window now, so Alex helped
himself to some coffee. He must have drunk it from a bottle when he
was a kid. He needed it more than food.

“
What makes you think that
Sergeant,” she asked slowly as if she wasn’t really paying
attention to what she way saying.

“
Call me Alex,” he said
surprising himself. Most people called him Jax or Jackson. Only his
family called him Alex. “Things I heard working at The Inferno,”
Alex said quickly trying to hide his surprise at his
words.

“
Do you have any
suspects…besides me,” she asked fairly amused. She was looking at
him again.

“
Yeah one,” he waited a
beat. “Ben Axworthy.”

“
Ben,” she asked
incredulously. “I think you’re reaching Sergeant. Ben….he’s a
different breed of character, and he wouldn’t be intimidated like
Maggie.”

Defending him, he thought.

“
Well think about it,”
Alex said. “Malone would have needed someone on the say side of the
Inferno operations as well. It’s not like a bad guys only work at
night. Ben would have needed no excuse to be there at any time of
the day.”

Isa just looked at him with an eyebrow
raised. “That’s it? That’s your reason? Don’t be ridiculous,” she
said rising from her chair. She held out the folder she had brought
down with her. Alex stood as well and took the folder with her
travel information. He wanted to prolong their
conversation.

“
If you want to find
another inside man, look for someone inconspicuous. Someone no one
would notice.”

“
Really,” he said. “And
what makes you such an expert?”

Isa stared at him again. “I’ve been
around,” she finally continued. “I know what the ones hiding behind
a veil of ordinary unimportance are capable of.”

Alex had nothing to say to that. She
wasn’t wrong.

He smiled his slightly crooked, boyish
grin again and chuckled at her observation. “You’re not wrong,” he
said. “I’ll tell you what why don’t you and I go through your list
of employees and see what pops out?”

“
I’m afraid I don’t know
them that well Sergeant,” she paused. “Ben would be better to
ask.”

Alex nodded. He thanked her for her
time and input and the information he had asked for, and promised
he would keep in touch, dipping his head slightly to look into her
eyes when he said the last.