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“What’s the score?” Rory asked.
Damon told him. “You have any money down?”
“I do not.”
“Me neither.”
Betsy looked back and forth at the two men, seething at their duplicity. “Where is she?” she demanded again.
“There’s one more wrinkle,” said Damon, and he stood. Rory took his seat on the couch.
She glared at them both, then grabbed the remote and turned off the television. “Nope. I don’t want to hear it. I want her back this second, I want—”
“I want you to sit down,” said Damon. “Look…”
“Tell me!” she insisted.
“We can’t keep the police at arm’s length any longer. Our clout is excellent, but for the sake of appearances, we have to let two detectives talk to you.”
“Two who aren’t on the payroll,” said Rory. “Yet.”
“And that’s a problem,” Damon went on. “This is our business, not theirs. And we made sure Orlov’s death was super clean and all the signs point to your sister.”
“They’re coming by first thing in the morning. Here. To your apartment.”
“Well, good,” she said. “I can tell them you took my daughter and didn’t return her until—”
She stopped speaking because Rory had stood and grabbed back the remote, ripping it from her fingers. He turned on the football game, but he pressed Mute on the volume. “You won’t tell them that. Your lawyer is advising you against it,” he said.
“I don’t have a lawyer, and—”
“You do have a lawyer and it’s me. I’m your lawyer.”
“Rory will be with you tomorrow when you talk to the police,” Damon added. “Be grateful.”
“Where’s Frankie?”
“With Marisa. Babysitting. All good.”
“Not all good! You’re all liars and—”
“My fervent hope is the police just want to tie up some loose ends before they arrest your sister,” Rory said, cutting her off. “Or, at least, look like they’re doing their job before moving on.”
“I want my daughter,” she pleaded, her voice breaking. When neither man said a word, the unfairness of it all conspired with her fear for the child, and she unleashed the maelstrom inside her. She pounded on Damon’s chest with her hands and clawed at his face with her fingernails, howling at him at the top of her lungs to bring back Marisa, bring her back now. She was screaming that she had done everything they wanted and they hadn’t held up their end of the bargain, and they had to give her back her daughter, they had to, they had to, they had to that very minute. She was shrieking at them with a fury so formidable, its decibels and violence would have caused a man like Frankie to capitulate, but he wasn’t there. This was Damon and Rory, and Rory was saying something about how they would have the cops there that very night—or the neighbors or both—if she didn’t shut the fuck up, and then he put his hand on her mouth, and even though she bit hard at the soft flesh where his palm met his fingers, the sweat there disgusting and acrid on her tongue, he wouldn’t let go and he pulled her down on to the couch. He had wrapped his other arm around her torso, pinning her biceps against her ribs, and though she was on his lap, there was nothing libidinous in the position: he was a human straitjacket and seemed oblivious to the way she was gnawing through the skin on his palm.
Damon bent over before them, his hands on his knees as if he were a dad umpiring a Little League Baseball game, calling balls and strikes behind the catcher. Still, she squirmed, and just when she thought she was going to extricate herself—Rory was pulling his hand off her mouth, and so she spat at Damon, hitting him squarely in the face—Rory turned that hand into a fist and slugged her. He hit her so hard where her jaw met her earlobe that the wind was knocked from her, her teeth rattled inside her head, and she fell to the floor in a heap. This was even worse than the way the body man had punched her back at Fort Knocks. Then Rory stood and kicked her in the stomach and the ribs until Damon pulled him away, his cheek still wet with her spit, and said, “Rory, stop it, stop it! She gets it!”
She was struggling to breathe, and ran her hand over her jaw and moved it back and forth. She wasn’t sure what was worse: the pain or the humiliation. Both, however, were trumped by the despair that Marisa wasn’t home, Betsy didn’t know where she was, and this nightmare was entirely her fault.
I knew I was in real trouble when Frankie swore he hadn’t taken my phone.
I could tell he was lying.
And then he tried to take my mind off it that night by showing me pictures on his phone of Betsy dressed as Diana at Fort Knocks. He said she was “filling in” for Crissy. Doing her sister a solid.
I wasn’t going to buy that. There was no way Crissy wanted anyone to be Diana but her—especially not Betsy.
So, actually, I knew this was worse than “in trouble.” I was fucked.
