Hooked

I lose my resolve.”
    “Promise you’ll think about what I said.”
    “I will, promise. I want this to work.”
    She walked him to the door. “You know what’s interesting about you, Walsh?”
    He turned, surprised she had anything more to say, especially about him. He couldn’t read her manner. Easy, he thought, as if she were saying goodbye to an old friend. She was so beautiful he wanted to scoop her into his arms and press his lips to hers. But tonight, Tawny was chocolate cake, and he was on a restrictive diet. One bite could ruin everything. “Not too much, I imagine,” he said.
    “You’re wrong. You’re a man, and you never once talked about yourself. You probably don’t know how rare that is.”
    “Not much to talk about.”
    “Somehow I doubt that.”
    “Another night, Tawny.”
    She followed him to the door.
    He leaned over and brushed his lips to hers. “Good night.”
    “Night.”
    He didn’t want to leave but he did. He closed the door behind him and jogged down the stairs. His insides were shaking. Not from fear or nerves or misgivings, but from seeing a world filled with possibilities. He hadn’t felt that way in many, many years.
    * * * * *
    S he stood at the window and watched him. He smiled, and this time she put her hand to the glass to let him know she saw him and smiled back. He walked to the end of the block and turned the corner. Should she have told him about Mario? If she had, it would open up more than his presence at Upper Eighties and the fact that one of his people had a problem there. It would expose the ten-year relationship with the mob boss. Walsh knew about it, but she saw no point in rubbing his face in it, especially tonight. That kind of thing could be a problem for a long time. She had no illusions about it.
    She wasn’t out of the woods yet. She needed one more night at Cooper’s to find out what was going on there. But that was only part of her problem. She had a big tax dilemma—two other overseas accounts that could definitely put her in jail if they were found, not to mention Walsh’s reaction. And it was too late to fess up to them, either to the IRS or to Walsh. If she were going to do that, she should have done it when this whole thing started.
    She had an idea. She’d call Mario’s accountant, Rick Martell, to take care of the problem for her. He was the one who set them up. He could make them go away, and she could do some good with the money at the same time.

Chapter Twenty-Six
    Backstabber

    M ario Russo faced life head on. No sugarcoating. No false truths. The chemo treatments weren’t working. The pains had escalated in intensity; time was running out. Cooper’s call gave him the incentive to put his house in order.
    He poured a scotch and collapsed onto the sofa. What he wouldn’t give for a cigarette. The two guys in the house, bodyguards whose job seemed more superfluous by the day, didn’t smoke. If he had a pack, he’d light up and suck smoke into his lungs until every last cigarette was gone. What difference would it make now? He’d die before he’d contract lung cancer, but at least he’d enjoy himself while checking out.
    Facing his own mortality, Mario thought back over his life. What he said to Tawny was true. He harbored few regrets. He’d been groomed to inherit his position from his father, who came from Sicily as a young man and worked his way up the mob ladder. While in his father’s household, he did what was expected of him, but he yearned to make his mark outside its confines. He started Russo Construction from scratch, made a lot of money, and turned it over to his sons. He kept the rackets out of the business and his sons out of the rackets. Except for bid-rigging a public project or two, or ten, the company remained legitimate. He never used inferior materials, installed faulty wiring, or produced shoddy workmanship. It would have been so easy, but the Russo name on the company masthead meant something to him. He didn’t need the construction business to launder money. There were plenty of other ways.
    Some referred to Mario as The Gentleman Don or the Robin Hood of crime. He laughed at the latter sobriquet, a misnomer if ever there was one. He kept his bounty, got richer from it. In spite of reports linking him to every crime in the city, his twisted code of ethics prevented him from engaging in a few. Unlike his father, he refused to traffic in human beings, including prostitutes. He didn’t deal in