A Date You Can't Refuse Page 5

  I looked across the table to see Alik smiling at me.

  “Welcome to la famiglia,” he said.

  Lunch conversation centered around cars. The Porsche I'd seen Yuri driving to court turned out to be Alik's, and was the automotive black sheep of the family. “The Audi's out of the shop this week,” Kimberly said, munching on celery, “so we can take the Porsche in.”

  “To do what?” Alik asked.

  “To convert it to biofuel.”

  “Dream on,” Alik said. “Can't be done. First, it's not diesel—”

  “Stanislas says he'll be able to—”

  “Kimberly, you're not feeding bacon grease to my Porsche. Forget it.”

  “Honest to God, Alik, how can you morally justify that car?” Kimberly asked.

  “It is no better than the Corvette,” Donatella said. “Bourgeois in the extreme.”

  Yuri broke off a piece of crusted bread, then said, “I am not convinced biofuel is the Holy Green Grail. I want to see agricultural impact numbers before we do more conversions.”

  “You miss the point,” Donatella said. “It is hypocritical to teach trainees that each action is scrutinized by the media while Alik drives his gas-guzzler. There is a photo of him in the Porsche in the current issue of Statement. If you have no restraint, Alik, at least cultivate discretion. Think how that plays in Budo-Koshelyovo district.”

  “Do you really think Statement's circulation extends to Belarus?” Alik asked.

  The blare of an alarm, loud and insistent, assaulted our ears. From inside the house.

  Everyone stood. Uncertain, I stood too. Yuri took a gadget from his pocket and pressed buttons. Alik moved to the wall and picked up a phone, covering his other ear to talk.

  “What is it?” Kimberly asked Yuri. Grusha entered from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, asking the same thing.

  Yuri shook his head, still on his keypad. “Deer. Coyote. Or system malfunction.”

  Donatella went out onto the deck and looked through the telescope.

  “Donatella!” Yuri said in a voice so sharp that I jumped. “In here. Now.”

  Donatella turned and frowned, but she came inside, sliding the glass door behind her.

  As she did so there was a sharp crack.

  I flinched.

  Grusha cried out in Russian and pulled Parashie away from the table as if she were a rag doll. Nell, my mouselike dining companion, looked at me with wide eyes.

  There was a second of silence and then Kimberly left the room. I stared at the sliding doors, looking for the mark of the impact, but there was nothing obvious. Alik, still on the phone, took my arm and pulled me back from the table to where Grusha stood with Parashie.

  Everyone stared out at the mountains.

  Alik handed his phone to his father. Yuri listened, then said, “What's the range it can pick up? … Yes, southwest of the main house … All right. Let me know.” He hung up and addressed Donatella. “What were you thinking, going out there like that?”

  “You said it was a coyote,” she replied.

  “I was wrong.”

  The blaring ended as abruptly as it had begun.

  Yuri returned to the table and sat. We all followed. Kimberly came in, accompanied by a dog of uncertain breed, big, yellow, and overweight. “Olive Oyl, down,” she said and took her seat. Olive Oyl put one paw on Kimberly's shoe, collapsed, and prepared to nap.

  “At least the system is fixed,” Parashie said. “The last time someone shot at—”

  “Parashie.”

  The single word from Yuri stopped her. She dropped her eyes to her soup.

  I watched Yuri. He stared at his daughter, then turned to me and smiled.

  “Now, then,” he said. “Where were we?”

  SEVEN

  Once lunch was over, people took off in all directions, Yuri to catch a plane, Donatella and Kimberly to shop, Grusha to cook, and Parashie to study. “Nell tutors me,” she explained, walking me to the foyer. “Yuri wants me to catch up to American kids and go next year to school, to tenth grade. But I like it at home.”

  “Wollie,” Alik said, phone in hand. “I have an errand to run, but I still need an hour with you. Can you meet me at five in the Valley? We'll have drinks.”

  “Alik you are just meeting Wollie and already you date her?” Parashie said.

  “Shut up, brat,” he said, and put her in a choke hold, a staple of big brothers everywhere, that made her scream with laughter and engage in a counterattack.

  The minute I was in my car, I tried to call my Uncle Theo, who was waiting to hear about my new job, but there was no cell signal. How inconvenient. Hadn't anyone in the Milos family used cell phones that day? No; they'd all been landlines.

  I felt a chill of isolation that dissipated only when I was outside the gates of Palomino Hills. This was a problem. For as long as I was at the compound, I'd be cut off. I could make calls from the Milos phones, but those could conceivably be overheard by anyone in the household. And, of course, by the FBI, if they were indeed wiretapping them.

  I told myself that this was a minor logistical problem, but it added to my growing sense of unease. Chai, my predecessor, was dead. There was no reason to think her death had sinister overtones, but I did. I considered Joey's advice, that I construct a character who'd be unfazed by this. The tough cookie. Big deal she'd say. So the last social coach, drove off a cliff. You'll stay on the road.

  Two miles later my phone churned out a Mozart sonata, announcing a return to cell signals and one missed call. I hit my voice-mail button.

  “Miss Shelley?” a familiar voice said. “It's Ulf. At Costco on Canoga. I've got your special order in. You can pick it up anytime after six.”

  I smiled, my anxiety lifted. Ulf?

  I glanced at my watch, then dialed a number and spoke to voice mail. “I'll be in around six-thirty to pick up my special order. Oh, wait.” I did a quick calculation of traffic, geography, and my date with Alik. “Make that seven-thirty And Ulf? Glad to hear the package is in. I'm dying to open it.” That, I figured, would get a return smile.

  Only when I ended the call did I consider what kind of questions “Ulf” would be asking tonight. My smile faded.

  Club Red Square had a grungy facade that was nonetheless dramatic, a one-story turreted affair on Ventura Boulevard between an abandoned building and a storefront psychic, due east of a Jack in the Box. The exterior was a bold red and black, hinting at exotic pleasures within for those bewitched by the color red painted, curtained, wallpapered, and upholstered onto every available surface.

  Alik and I sat on a red leather sofa in the lounge area of the club. Happy hour was in progress, pounding music played, and while Alik processed the results of my Myers-Briggs personality test, I focused on the cocktail napkin on which I doodled, rather than the red and black plaid carpet, which I found nausea-inducing. Or Alik's high-cheekboned face, which I found pleasure-inducing—but only because graphic artists are drawn to beautiful angles, I told myself. This wasn't sexual attraction. Unless the hookah smoke lingering in the air was exerting an aphrodisiacal effect. I had little experience of bars that offered hookahs.

  My big dilemma had been whether to answer the Myers-Briggs personality test questions as me, Wollie, or as my tough-cookie character, whose face was even now coming to life on my cocktail napkin. Yes or No: You like to be engaged in an active and fast-paced job. Yes or No: You often think about humankind and its destiny. Yes or No: It's difficult to get you excited.

  I decided to go with me, since this action-adventure girl was still evolving. As I drew her, for instance, I noticed dilated pupils and a hookah coming out of her mouth.

  “Wollie, you're an INFP,” Alik said, reading his laptop screen.

  “Is that good?” I asked.

  “There's no good or bad. But welcome to the team. We need another introvert.”

  “So I'm guessing that's me and Nell and Grusha against the rest of you.”

  Alik laughe
d and made notes on a legal pad.

  “What was Chai?” I asked.

  “A bitch,” Alik said. “And a mistake. My bad. You, I'll take credit for.”

  “What was Chai's problem?”

  He looked up from his writing. “What makes you ask?”

  “Just curiosity about someone who died so young and so suddenly. And I'd like to not make the same mistakes on the job, if I can help it.”

  “You won't.”

  “You can predict that”—I nodded to his computer—“from the Myers-Briggs test?”

  “No. I can predict that from attachment theory.”

  “Which is what?”

  “It describes the way infants, six months to two years, relate to a primary adult. With a negative or indifferent caregiver, bonding doesn't occur, producing serious, usually lifelong problems. Chai's mother was a narcissist with a substance abuse problem, so Chai had issues. I'm sure you have issues too, but not those issues.”

  “How can you tell?”

  He leaned in. “I've watched you all day. I'm willing to bet your mother loved babies.” He was very sexy at close range. Other girls were eyeing him, and eyeing me because I was with him. And they all knew his name. Everyone here knew his name.

  “She does love babies,” I said. “It's everyone else she has trouble with.”

  Alik's smile was infectious and I smiled back. There was something troubling about what he'd just said, but I couldn't put my finger on it. So I went with what was more troubling. “Alik, this afternoon when someone shot at the deck—”

  “What makes you think that it was a shot?”

  I blinked. “I wasn't the only one to think so. Grusha was yelling.”

  “Oh, I see. You picked up on Grusha's reaction.”

  “I'd have to be deaf not to. Do you mean she hears gunshots where none exist?”

  Alik reached for his wineglass. “My grandmother was a child in Brest in 1944 when the Red Army came through, ‘liberating’ it from the Germans. Her daughter, my mother, was shot and killed fifty years later during a trip to Budennovsk. Parashie's mother died in Minsk, while a guest of the secret police. So now when a car backfires in Calabasas or a squirrel drops an acorn on the roof, yes, my family takes cover.”

  “Oh.”

  He smiled. “Don't look so stricken. It all happened a long time ago. Life goes on. Anyway, welcome. Now you need to go home and pack.” He stretched out his hand, palm up. “Hand over the valet ticket. I'll walk you to your car.”

  He paid for my parking and threw in an extra five, which endeared him to the parking guy. And me.

  It wasn't until I was driving down Ventura Boulevard that I figured it out, what had bothered me. How could Alik have been watching me all day, as he put it? Unless he was exaggerating? Because I'd known him a total of two hours.

  At 7:48 p.m. I parked at Costco, a big-box store on the corner of Canoga and Roscoe, in the Valley. Costco closed at eight-thirty on weeknights, so it was still hopping, but I had the northeast end of the parking lot all to myself. I turned off my headlights and left the engine running, playing the radio for company, then switched on the map light and picked up my sketchpad. The day's events had inspired a greeting card, as often happened with me. My cards were alternative, but this one was too alternative, a Happy Moving Day card that turned into condolences once you opened it. Maybe because the only place I wanted to move to was back to Simon's. It wasn't that I loved his penthouse in Westwood. I just loved him.

  My stomach growled. I reached into my glove box for a protein bar, kept there for the homeless who panhandled on busy intersections. And for Simon. I hadn't eaten anything since Grusha's soup, before the lunchtime incident had put me off my feed. Should I just dismiss the possibility that someone had shot at Donatella? There was no evidence, only a quick succession of events: the alarm, the sharp cracking sound, and the reactions of a few shell-shocked people, which Alik had explained quite reasonably. But they, unlike me, had recovered and gone back to eating the soup.

  If I didn't know the FBI was investigating these people, wouldn't I be able to let it go? Maybe. There was the ill-fated Chai, whose clothes I was wearing even now as I sat in my car. I wondered what clothes she'd been wearing during her last moments, as she sat in her car. Okay, I better rein in my imagination and act like a normal person, not one sent by the feds. A normal person abandoning her life overnight in order to spend three months doing some odd job that involved transporting foreign nationals to nightclubs and 7-Elevens while dressed like a dead girl. A normal person who—

  My car door opened. As I was leaning against it, I began falling toward the Costco asphalt. A pair of strong hands grabbed my shoulders and steadied me.

  “Lady,” a low-pitched voice said. “This is private property. No loitering.” The man holding my shoulders helped me out of the car, then retrieved my sketchpad.

  I looked around. The closest humans were nearly a block away, moving bulk items from shopping carts to trunks. “And I suppose solicitation is frowned on too. Ulf,” I added, but my assailant was already climbing into my car, taking over the driver's seat. Then he pulled me in, onto his lap.

  I looked into his face. It was a tough one, with a fair number of lines on it, all of which I was familiar with, some of which I'd put there. “Is this a carjacking?” I asked.

  “No. Kidnapping,” he said and kissed me.

  Ulf, aka Simon Alexander, was a very good kisser, which was fortunate, as kissing is one of the few physical activities possible in an old Acura Integra. It's a small car by L.A. standards. As I'm a tall woman by nearly any standard and Simon is five inches taller than that, practicing our skills of seduction in my car was a circus act. Not that that stopped us.

  I spent a couple of minutes appeasing my body hunger, untucking his shirt so I could get my hands under it, then sliding my arms around him, touching skin, feeling the muscles of his back. It wasn't until a cramp set in and I felt him wince as I changed position that we got around to talking. Simon leaned back, brushed hair from my face, and studied me in the dim light. “You look tired. Jury duty still going on?”

  “Nope.” I told him the details of the case without mentioning the name Milos.

  “Good. Now that you've done your civic duty, can you stay up late tomorrow?”

  “What's tomorrow?”

  “I thought we'd meet at a hotel.”

  I gasped. “And spend a whole night together?”

  “And well into the morning. There are one or two things I want to do to you that require a mattress and room service.”

  Damn. This was something I'd been dreaming of for weeks. But I doubted if “the team” would want me to disappear for twelve or fourteen hours my first day on the job. “Will you still be Ulf when you check in?” I asked, stalling for time.

  “No. I'll be Daniel Lavosh.”

  “That's not the batting order. What about W?” I was used to Simon changing names with each communication, progressing through the alphabet two letters at a time.

  “Daniel Lavosh has a credit card and photo ID,” he said. “I'll check in and you'll come an hour later. I'll park in the hotel garage and leave the key card hidden under my car, the driver's side front tire.”

  “Lucrezia's giving you the night off?” I asked.

  “You don't give up, do you?”

  Simon was working undercover, on a case that had occupied him for as long as I'd been in love with him. Or longer. I wasn't sure. All I knew was that it involved a woman named Lucrezia who was well coiffed and favored fur coats. At least, she'd favored them back in December, the two times I'd seen her. Since it was now May, there was a good chance she'd moved on to cloth coats. Or dispensed with clothes altogether. Simon wasn't saying and I didn't ask. Much. The prudent thing would've been to take a sabbatical from our relationship until the case was wrapped up, but Simon, although professional, was not always prudent. As for me, there were many things I'd do for my country, but abandoning this man to a woman in a F
rench twist was not one of them.

  “How's it going with Lucrezia, anyway?” I asked.

  “Never mind Lucrezia,” he said. “How about it?”

  So much for stalling. “There's a slight hitch. I may have a … thing.”

  “What thing?” His voice was wary.

  “A job thing.”

  “You don't have a job.”

  “I do too have a job. What do you mean?”

  “I misspoke. I meant apart from your cards. Obviously.”

  “Just because one is self-employed,” I said, “doesn't mean there are no professional commitments that require one's—”

  “What? There's a greeting card convention? An interview with Hallmark?”

  “I don't aspire to work for Hallmark.”

  Simon's hand moved toward the map light, but I grabbed it and held on.

  “Do you find my work Hallmarky?” I asked.

  “No. You're the Vincent van Gogh of greeting cards. What's this job thing?”

  “Simon, tell me something. All these security measures we do—the cryptic phone messages, the code names—are we hiding from the bad guys or the good guys?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “I mean, I assume Lucrezia can't know about me, but now I wonder, are you keeping me from your boss—you know, the FBI—too?”

  “And why do you wonder this now?”

  “It… I don't know, it occurred to me.”

  Simon reached up with his other hand and the map light went on. His eyes, when he turned to me, were so ice blue they startled me. They always did. They were also bloodshot. “My God,” I said. “Talk about tired-looking. When was your last good night's sleep?”

  “Let's stay with you,” he said. “What's going on, Wollie?”

  “What do—”

  “And don't say ‘What do you mean?’ You're flitting from subject to subject, a diversionary tactic that could work on someone who doesn't know you and love you, provided that person was also stupid, but I'm not that person, so let's cut to the chase.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Here's the deal. I have a new job. And it starts tomorrow. So I can't meet you at the hotel, and I'm sick with disappointment over it.”