Hooked

that’s all.”
    He turned her toward him. “No, it was something else. I said something to upset you?”
    “This whole business upsets me.” She shrugged away and walked to the window. “Time to go, Walsh.” The building across the street was dark. The streetlights and lighted shop windows below gave off a soft glow that warmed the street. But that’s all it warmed. She wanted this guy out of her house. Out of her life.
    “Please,” she said. “You’ve given me all the information I need. I’ll do what you want and report back. Now I’m tired, and I want to go to bed. Got a big week coming up.”
    He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, gently rubbing the tight muscles on her neck. His heat rippled through her like sparks igniting a long-dead fire.
    “You can―”
    “Go.” She turned around and forced a smile. “Please. Thanks for the pizza.”
    He wiped a tear she didn’t know had escaped from the corner of her eye. “Are you all right? Did I―”
    “I’m fine.” She turned back to the window and their gazes met in the reflection of the dark glass. “Good night, Walsh.”
    He turned and headed for the door. “Good night, Tawny.”
    “Better take your wine. It’ll go bad if you don’t.”
    * * * * *
    H e took the stairs rather than wait for the slow freight elevator. There was something more to Tawny than filled her sheet. He’d struck a nerve, and all her posing couldn’t stop the raw hurt from showing. When he got to the street, he looked up. He could see her silhouette in the window, watching him. He waved, but she didn’t acknowledge him.
    Linc wanted to head home. Tawny was closeting a skeleton, and whatever it was must have happened before she came of age, or else he’d have found it by now. He wanted to know. Had to know.
    He got to his car and drove through the Holland Tunnel to Jersey City , where he rented a one-bedroom on the second floor of an old Victorian that had been divided into apartments. He was lucky to find it, and it cost a fraction of what he’d pay in Manhattan . Home to him was a bed and a place to make morning coffee. Other than an occasional weekend watching sports, he wasn’t there long enough for it to be anything else.
    He poured a glass of wine from the bottle he’d brought with him, took a drink, then called Tom Lu’s cell on his landline. Luckily, Tom picked up. After a few minutes of small talk, Linc got to the point.
    “I need you to check out someone for me. If you can’t do it, tell me straight out. It might mean digging into juvenile records or whatever else might be off limits.”
    “You could do this through the department, you know.”
    “Yeah, I could if I wanted to. I don’t.”
    “Name?” Lu asked.
    “Tawny Dell. Marblehead , Massachusetts .” He recited the date of birth. “I’ve got everything there is to know, except something that isn’t out there.”
    “Sounds like a stripper. Tawny her real name?”
    “Yup.”
    “Get back to you. Might be tomorrow.”
    “Thanks, Tom. I owe you.”
    “Buy me lunch.”
    Linc took a shower and got into bed with a book, but he couldn’t concentrate, and shut off the light. He’d dozed off when the phone rang. Tom Lu told Linc what he found. Marblehead wasn’t very big. It started with a newspaper article, then one thing led to another, and Lu put it all together. It happened when she was sixteen, and it changed her life forever.

Chapter Fifteen
    Light Dawns on the Don

    B enny had seen Mario Russo once, years back, in an Italian restaurant in Little Italy. Surrounded by sycophants, Russo possessed star power that commanded attention. He wore a cashmere coat slung over his shoulders that, on him, looked neither pretentious nor dramatic. His bodyguard removed it and hung it on a coat rack. Maybe Russo had the same neatness fetish Benny did, he thought at the time. Russo’s wife was plain but pretty, in an old-fashioned, European way. No makeup but beautiful skin and dark eyes, lustrous black hair pulled into a chignon. Certainly not the flashy starlet type one would expect a leading mobster to have on his arm. Russo was overtly affectionate toward her the whole evening. Benny watched, finding the scene unexpectedly sweet.
    How had Russo avoided the recent slew of police arrests that weakened the decades-old structure of organized crime? Many of those remaining ruled their crumbling families from prison, and were, like Russo, old. He’d managed to avoid the net,