Authors: Sandra Marton
"But, you've learned to kiss ass."
Conor stared at his father. Then he kicked back his chair and marched out of the kitchen.
"Conor?"
Conor strode to the front door and yanked it open.
"Conor! You come back here!"
He spun around, white-faced with anger. His father was hard on his heels, his face flushed.
"Don't you dare walk out on me, boy."
"I'm not a boy. And I don't take orders from you."
"Conor, you shut that door and sit down."
"What for? So you can insult me some more? Listen here, old man—"
"Who are you calling an old man?"
"I took your bullying for years, but I don't have to take it anymore."
"I'm your father!"
"I'm sorry I bothered you. I'm even sorrier I was fool enough to think you'd help me."
John O'Neil watched his son turn away. To hell with the boy, he thought. Who needs him?
He reached out, started to slap the door closed—and caught a glimpse of himself in the entry mirror.
His face was flushed, the bones angular. His hair was white and thin. He'd been in his prime the first time he'd driven his son from this house, wanting only the best for this child born so late in his life. You'll drive him away with your rules and your pride, Kathleen had said when Conor was small, but he was a cop, he'd seen what happened when people laughed at the law. And then, to make matters worse, the boy had said he wanted to become a cop, too, waste his fine mind and quick wit in a useless fight against the slime of the city.
John O'Neil looked deep into the mirror and saw the ghosts of all the years wasted and gone. He flung the door wide and stepped into the hall.
"Conor," he bellowed.
Halfway down the steps, Conor paused, his hand on the bannister, and looked up.
"Nobody knows the Seventh like I do. I've still got friends there who'll be glad to answer some questions for me." John cleared his throat. "To tell you the truth, Conor, you'll be doing me a favor, handing me something to do. I'm as bored with watching that street outside as I am with watching the tube."
It was as close to an apology as John O'Neil had ever come, and Conor knew it. He stared up at the older man, and then he made his way back up the stairs.
"Now then," his father said briskly, as if nothing had happened. He shut the door and led his son into the living room. "Tell me what you need."
* * *
Miranda was waiting for him in the marble and glass lobby at Papillon as they'd agreed she would.
She was sitting on the raised wall surrounding a small reflecting pool along with half a dozen women. They were, he suspected, the editors with whom she'd met for lunch. Each woman was the height of style and elegance. Miranda, simply dressed, stood out among them like a glittering jewel.
She stood up when she saw him, her face lighting with pleasure, said something to the other women and then hurried towards him.
"Hello," she said softly.
Conor was not a man given to public displays, by nature or by vocation, but when he saw the way she was looking at him, his heart swelled.
"Hello, yourself," he said, and took her in his arms and kissed her.
Miranda gave a breathless little laugh.
"We're being watched," she whispered.
"I don't care." He smiled, tilted her chin up and kissed her again. "Do you?"
"Not a bit."
"I missed you."
"Not half as much as I missed you." She linked her arm through his as they strolled to the exit. "And that's not just sloppy sentimentality, either, O'Neil, so don't let it go to your head." She smiled up at him as the automatic doors slid open and they stepped out onto the street. "Or have you forgotten that while you were out, doing whatever manly thing it is you were doing, I was trapped in a room full of frills and froufrou?"
"With the harpies back there?"
"Uh-huh. Heaven save me from ending up that way."
"What way?"
"They're nice women, but scary. All of them afraid to eat an extra lettuce leaf, exchanging the addresses of their latest plastic surgeons..." She shuddered. "Can we get something to eat? I'm starved!"
"Sure. But I thought you just had lunch."
"We had something the menu called a Spring Surprise." She giggled. "The surprise was that nobody could get a fork in it long enough to hold it still and saw off a piece."
Conor laughed. "How does a hamburger sound?"
"With onion?"
"Raw or fried?"
"Raw," Miranda said indignantly. "Only the potatoes on the side should be fried."
"Beckman, you're a woman after my own heart."
"I don't suppose I could get a malted with my burger and fries?"
"Even a pickle," Conor said.
Miranda grinned. "You're on."
* * *
He took her to a place he knew on Tenth Avenue.
It was a diner, a glittering chrome palace of a place, complete with a jukebox stocked with records from the sixties. Elvis sang about the Heartbreak Hotel while they attacked their hamburgers, which Miranda pronounced perfect.
"I have," she sighed, "died and gone to heaven."
"What happened to that finely educated French palate?" Conor said, smiling as he watched her pluck a French fry from her plate with her fingers.
"O'Neil, I'm not a dope." She dunked the fry into a glob of ketchup, then popped it into her mouth. "There are some things only the French do well, like champagne or
crème brulee,
but when it comes to hamburgers, pickles and greasy fries, only the Americans know their stuff."
"You have ketchup on your mouth."
"Where?"
Conor leaned over and kissed her.
"There," he said softly. "And there. And..."
His cell phone shrilled.
"Dammit," he said, and yanked it from his pocket. "Hello?"
"Conor, it's Harry."
"Yes?"
"Can you get to a land line?"
Conor shot a glance towards the rear of the diner. There were two public telephones on the wall, both of them in use.
"I can call you back in five or ten minutes," he said.
"No. This is important." Harry took a breath. "The information you requested? About the couple we've been dealing with?"
Conor sat up straighter.
"Yes?"
"It's come in."
"Something on him?"
"No. Not on him."
"On the woman, then?"
"Yes." Thurston paused. "The point of origin we'd learned, Conor, do you remember it?"
"Point of—"
"Conor?"
Conor looked across the table at Miranda. She wasn't smiling anymore.
"Conor, what's the matter?"
"Hold it a second," he said into the phone, and put his hand over the mouthpiece. "Nothing, sweetheart. This is just, ah, it's just the same guy I called yesterday, remember? He promised to get back to me with some information."
"About Moratelli?" she whispered.
"Miranda, just let me finish this call, okay?"
She nodded and pushed aside her plate, her eyes gone as bleak and dark as they had yesterday.
Conor turned away from her, the phone still pressed to his ear.
"All right," he said very softly, "let's have the rest of it."
"The woman's point of origin is not Argentina. It's Colombia."
"She lied?"
"Conor, I am not going to discuss this over this phone. Call me back."
Conor winced as Harry slammed down the receiver on his end. He flipped the phone closed and looked at Miranda.
"I forgot," she said. "For a little while, I forgot all about everything."
Conor nodded. For a little while, he'd forgotten, too.
* * *
Eva had been born in a little town in Colombia, not in Argentina.
But the rest of her story was true enough. She'd met a marine named James Beckman, who'd been stationed at the American Embassy in Bogota, and married him. He'd brought her to the States and they'd had a baby they'd named Miranda. Beckman died in an auto accident when the child was still a toddler, and Eva started selling a lotion she'd brewed up in her kitchen, door-to-door. Five years later, she'd hocked everything she owned to open the first Papillon factory.
Conor sat back on the sofa in Miranda's living room, put his feet on the coffee table, and crossed them at the ankles.
Okay, so she'd lied. So she'd bought herself a phony Argentinean birth certificate.
So what?
That still didn't explain why somebody had zeroed in on her and it sure as hell didn't explain why they'd zeroed in on Miranda.
Miranda.
He sighed and scrubbed his hands over his eyes.
Nothing had been the same since that phone call in the diner and it went beyond the fact that the call had tossed both of them back into harsh reality.
"There's something you're not telling me," she'd said, when they'd gotten back to her apartment. "Conor, what are you holding back?"
Everything, he'd thought.
"Nothing," he'd said, and the look on her face that said he was lying and she knew it, had been as sharp as a knife to his heart. "Miranda," he'd said, reaching out for her, but she'd brushed past him.
"I'm going to take a shower," she'd said, "and then I'm going to lie down for a while."
He'd known better than to argue with her or to take her into his arms and make love to her. Don't touch me, her eyes had warned, so he'd just stood there, feeling angry, stupid and helpless, watching as she scooped up Mia, went into the bedroom and closed the door.
Then he'd called Harry and gotten the details about Eva—which brought him back to the beginning.
Eva had lied, she'd been born in Colombia, not Argentina, but so what?
"Dammit," Conor whispered, "dammit to hell!"
His phone rang. He snatched it from the coffee table and jammed it to his ear.
"What else have you got for me, Harry?"
"Conor," John O'Neil said, "I've got some information for you on Moratelli."
"I'll call you back."
He went into the foyer, dialed his father's number on Miranda's phone. His father picked up on the first ring.
"I'm sorry if I called at an inopportune time," he said stiffly.
Conor sighed. "It isn't that. I didn't want to talk on my cell. They're too easy to monitor."
"Why have one, then?"
Conor laughed. "You're right. I'd be better off with a pager."
"I checked on Vincent Moratelli."
"And?"
"And, I'm afraid your people were right, Conor. There's nothing on the man."
Conor rubbed his hand over the back of his neck.
"Shit."
"Not that he's clean, mind. My sources say he's a gonzo of the first order, a strong-arm pimp with pretensions of grandeur who ran a couple of girls until he beat his number one lady so bad she talked the rest into hustling for somebody else. The other guy put the word out on the street and Vince had to quit the game."
Conor nodded. "Nice guy. Well, listen, Dad, I appreciate you trying."
"There is one thing. I'm not sure if it's going to help you or not."
"What is it?"
"There's a rumor he's involved in something big-time. The word is, he's working for some foreigner and that he's about to come into a lot of money."
"A foreigner?" Conor's eyes narrowed. "What's that mean, exactly?"
"I don't know."
"Somebody here? Or somebody overseas?"
"I'm telling you, I don't know."
"Well, find out." Conor ran his tongue across his lips. "Can you do that?"
"I'll try."
Conor gave his father Miranda's number, then hung up the phone. He told himself to take it easy, not to get too excited. He'd been in this business long enough to know that two and two didn't always add up to four. Still, things did seem to be falling into place. It took no great leap of the imagination to figure that the foreigner Vince Moratelli was working for was Edouard de Lasserre. Or his cousin, Amalie.
But if this was a blackmail scam, as he'd suspected all along, why was it moving so slowly?
"Conor?"
He turned at the soft sound of Miranda's voice. She'd scrubbed off her makeup and brushed out her hair. She was wearing her pale yellow robe. He could see her bare toes peeping out from under the hem. She looked innocent and vulnerable, and he knew he loved her more than he'd ever dreamed he could ever love anyone.
"Miranda," he said.
Miranda's throat constricted when she saw the way Conor was looking at her. She had hurt him before, she knew. Now, she longed to run to him, go into his arms and tell him that she loved him with all her heart.