Cry Uncle (4 page)

“
Okay,” he said, leaning
forward and staring straight into her troubled eyes. “This guy’s in
Seattle, right?”

“
Yes.”

“
And he doesn’t know where
you are?”

“
Nobody knows. Not even my
parents. I told them I had to get away, and they agreed. I keep in
touch with them, of course. And I’ve been in contact with my
attorney, who in turn stays in contact with the police.”

“
How come the police didn’t
offer you protection?”

He watched the shifting of her shoulders as
she shrugged, and decided that, if a woman wasn’t going to be
overly endowed in the mammary region, sexy shoulders were a nice
consolation prize. The thin straps of her dress revealed intriguing
hollows and delicate ridges in the arrangement of her shoulder
blades, collarbones and upper arms. He wondered if her skin would
feel as creamy as it looked.

The sound of her voice cut through his
half-baked fantasies. “The police didn’t seem to think I was in any
real danger. I told them I had received a couple of strange phone
calls, and I’d been followed home from work a few times. I don’t
know—maybe they were right. Maybe he was only trying to intimidate
me. But when you look in your rear-view mirror and discover that
the car behind you is being driven by the man you witnessed
shooting someone in cold blood, you tend to get a little
nervous.”

“
It sure wouldn’t sit well
with me,” he agreed.

“
The police told me I was
worrying about nothing. They said they had an officer assigned to
keep a constant watch on the hit man, and I was perfectly
safe.”

“
And that’s not good enough
for you?”

She sighed, then shook her head. “Maybe
they’re right, maybe I am worrying about nothing. But...I don’t
know. I tried hiring a private bodyguard, but frankly, I couldn’t
stand having him lurking in my shadows all the time. It made me
even more paranoid. It’s bad enough being followed around by one
person. I couldn’t stand being followed around by two. So I decided
to leave town until a new trial was scheduled and he was in
custody.”

If the police thought she was safe, how much
danger could she possibly be in? Maybe she was a touch paranoid,
but he could tolerate her minor neuroses as long as they didn’t
interfere with the big picture—keeping Lizard.

So Pamela Hayes was a little bit nutty. She
would fit right in in Key West. “So,” he said, feeling a lot less
concerned about her story. “Your parents have no idea where you
are?”

“
For their safety as well as
mine, we thought that would be best for the time being.”

“
Then I guess we won’t
invite them to the wedding,” Joe joked, although merely saying it
made him realize that he’d pretty much made up his mind. He needed
a wife, and Pamela more or less fit the bill. “Anything else I need
to know?” he asked. “Any loan sharks holding your markers? Any
pre-existing health conditions?”

He watched her hands flutter. Like her
shoulders, they were delicate, her fingers slim and graceful, her
knuckles smooth enough to pose for hand-lotion ads. The gold bangle
bobbed against her wrist, drawing his attention to yet another
intriguingly protruding bone. He, always a breasts-and-butt man,
had never before noticed how alluring a woman’s skeletal structure
could be.

“
Look, Joe,” she said. “I
didn’t know about your niece. Seriously—we can’t mix a little girl
up in this. I don’t even know why I came here....”

“
You came to avoid a hit
man,” he reminded her.

“
No—I mean, why I came to
your bar to talk to you. Your waitress, Kitty—she seemed so
friendly in the laundry room this morning. I don’t know anyone in
Key West, and she was so nice, and she kept telling me what a great
guy you were, how I really ought to meet you, how I was exactly
what you were looking for....” A sad laugh escaped Pamela, and she
shook her head.

“
I take it you didn’t
mention to Kitty that you had a goon from Seattle on your
tail.”

“
He’s not on my tail,” she
insisted, though she didn’t look totally convinced. “I don’t think
he has any idea where I am at the moment. And Kitty told me she
thought you and I could help each other out, and...” Pamela sighed.
“My mind just isn’t working the way it used to. I used to be so
rational. Just yesterday, I would have found the idea of marrying a
stranger preposterous.”

“
Now wait a minute,” Joe
objected. For no good reason, he felt his ego was under attack.
“Preposterous? You think marrying me is preposterous?”

“
No,” she hastened to assure
him. “I think you’d make a fine husband. It’s me. I’d make a lousy
wife.”

He ought to accept her at her word. He had
Lizard’s safety to think of, and marrying a woman with a contract
on her head was asking for trouble. But Joe was used to asking for
trouble—and acing the answer. And Pamela’s linking him, marriage,
and preposterous together made him argumentative. “I’ll have you
know, there are a lot of women who’d jump at the chance to marry
me.”

“
And they don’t have
contracts out on them,” she pointed out. “For your niece’s sake,
you really ought to marry one of them.”

Joe contemplated the women who’d jump—and for
Lizard’s sake, none of them would do. They were flashy, or
irresponsible, or pleasantly lax when it came to morality. They
were too similar to what Joe had been like before he had
Lizard.

Pamela wasn’t flashy. She obviously wasn’t
irresponsible. If she had the courage and integrity to testify
against a murderer in a public court trial, her morals had to be
damned near unimpeachable. She was exactly what he needed for his
niece’s sake. “Why do you think you’d make a lousy wife?” he
asked.

“
I’m completely ignorant
when it comes to children.”

“
I didn’t know anything
about children when Lizard fell into my lap,” he admitted. “There I
was, busted up over my sister’s death, and suddenly I found myself
taking care of an obnoxious little twit who had a vocabulary of a
hundred words, most of them variations on the word ‘no.’ She
thought toilet paper was for tearing into confetti. She refused to
eat any food that wasn’t pink—we went through a lot of strawberry
yogurt in those days. Plus she spent the first three months howling
for Mama and Dada, which was a real treat, let me tell you.” Aware
that he might be coming across as unforgivably self-pitying, he
brought his lament to a quick close. “The bottom line is, if I
could do it, you can do it. And I mean, I’ll do most of the child
care. You’ll be just a figurehead, as it were.”

She smiled, a real smile, not just one of
those anemic polite smiles she’d been running past him since they’d
met. This smile had the effect of widening her face, launching her
cheeks skyward and pleating little crinkles into the skin at the
corners of her eyes. He wondered what laughter would sound like
coming from her.

He wondered about a lot of things—for
instance, how she had happened to witness a professional hit in the
first place. And what she did for a living, and how old she was,
and what she looked like first thing in the morning, when she was
all sleep-tousled and her guard was down.

But now wasn’t the time to indulge his
curiosity. If he didn’t get back behind the Shipwreck’s bar soon,
Brick’s grunts were going to take on blasphemous overtones.

“
Tell you what,” he said,
standing and offering her his hand. “Why don’t you come over to my
house tomorrow and get a feel for things. Before you agree to
anything you ought to meet Princess Liz. We can talk some more...”
And check each other out in broad daylight, he almost said,
although he had the feeling Pamela Hayes wouldn’t look any worse in
the midday sun than she looked in the white glow of the spotlight
above the back door.

“
That sounds like a good
idea.”

“
I live on Leon Street. A
couple of blocks from the municipal beach. Do you know where that
is?”

She reached into the pocket tucked in a side
seam of her dress, and pulled out a small coin purse. Opening it,
she scowled. “I haven’t got anything to write your address down
on.”

“
What do you think cocktail
napkins are for? Come on inside, I’ll draw you a map.” He closed
his hand completely around hers, not exactly sure why he felt the
impulse to hold her. It wasn’t because she was on the verge of
becoming his wife. It wasn’t simply an act of chivalry, the proper
behavior of a gentleman escorting a lady through the rear door of a
bar.

Rather, it had something to do with wanting
to reassure her, and himself. If he could touch her, he could trust
her. And if she was in trouble, he wanted her to believe she could
trust him.

Even though, if push came to shove, he wasn’t
so sure she could.

Chapter Two

EASY DOES
IT
, Mick Morrow thought.
Don’t make a scene
.

He stepped into the small, clean office and
bellied up to a counter decorated with house plants. On the other
side of the counter, two plump, mild-faced middle-aged women sat
across from each other at facing desks, sipping coffee and
yammering about an upcoming sale at Nordstrom’s. On each desk stood
an African violet in a clay pot.

The women didn’t seem to notice his entrance,
so he conspicuously nudged a plant out of his way. That got their
attention. The woman on the left ended her monologue about the
costs, both financial and emotional, of keeping her husband in
up-to-date neckties, rose from her chair and crossed to the
counter. “May I help you?”

He gave her his sweetest Sunday-school smile.
“You’re the manager here, right?”

“
Yes.”

“
I’m looking for Pamela
Hayes. She owns a unit on the upper floor.”

The woman glanced over her shoulder at her
companion, and they exchanged a meaningful fluctuation of eyebrows.
Then she turned back to him. “Ms. Hayes does own a unit here, but
we’re not a missing persons bureau, Mr....?”

He didn’t supply his name. “Is she
missing?”

“
This is the management
office. We don’t keep tabs on the owners. If someone has a noise
complaint or needs a plumbing repair, we take care of it. But if
you’re looking for someone who happens to own a unit, we can’t
really help you.” She peeked over her shoulder once more, and her
buddy gave her an approving nod.

Rage had always been a problem for him, and
he engaged in a silent bout with it. The Sunday-school smile
remained unaltered, though. He had learned to compensate for his
bad temper by being a good actor, never showing his hand until it
was time to collect his winnings. “I’ve been trying to reach Pamela
for days,” he said smoothly. “I’m beginning to worry that maybe
something’s wrong. You know, like, maybe she’s lying on the floor
in a pool of blood or something.”

The woman grew pale. Another beseeching
glance toward her colleague, who stood and approached the counter.
“Ms. Hayes is out of town,” the second woman said.

Just what he’d expected. If the slut had been
lying in a pool of blood on the floor, it would have been because
he’d found her.

“
Can you tell me where she
is? I mean... See, she and I were dating. We had a big fight. I
admit I was rotten to her. I want to send her flowers, that’s all.
I just want to make it up to her.”

“
Maybe you should contact
her family. Really, we can’t help you with this.”

“
You know where she is,
though, don’t you?”

“
No,” both women said
together.

The rage licked at him, small, hot flames
searing the edges of his mind. “But you must be forwarding her
mail.”

“
No,” the first woman said.
“The post office stopped delivering her mail about a week ago. I
assume they’re holding it for her.”

“
Or forwarding it directly,”
the other woman added.

The flames drew closer, grew larger. He
pounded his fist against the counter. The two women flinched
simultaneously. “Damn it, someone must know where she is! I’ve got
to find her!” Calm down! Don’t blow it! “I mean, if I can’t get a
dozen red roses to her right away, she’ll never forgive me.”

The first woman moved back to her desk and
lifted the phone. “I’m calling Security,” she said. “Please leave
now.”

Ass. He shouldn’t have punched the counter.
If he’d had to hit something, he should have hit one of the women,
square in her pinchable double-chin. Then the other one might have
opened up, spilled the beans, told him where the hell Pamela Hayes
had run off to.

Now it was too late. Things were going to get
messy if the authorities showed up.

“
Okay, okay,” he said,
holding up his hands in a placating gesture. “Hey, it’s just my
broken heart talking, okay? I’m upset, is all. I love that girl
more than life itself.”

“
Well, then,” the second
woman said. The first continued to punch buttons on the phone. “Why
don’t you go home and write her a nice letter? I’m sure the post
office will forward it to her.”

“
Okay, yeah, that’s what
I’ll do,” he said, retreating to the door and out. He loped across
the chilly chrome-and-marble lobby and out of the building, into
the dense June fog. He was in his car, tearing out of the parking
lot, before anyone in a uniform could reach the
building.