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I was done caring about them.
They clearly didn’t care about me.
Now I was going to get what I wanted, and Leo was going to help me.
“Okay,” he said.
I stared at him. “Okay?”
“Okay.” He stood up. “You want in on this? Then you can get in on this. But I’m telling you right now, it’s not going to be easy.”
“Good. I don’t want easy. I want them to pay.”
He smiled and walked over. He held out his hand.
I took it. We shook.
“Nice doing business with you.”
“Don’t you have to run this by your boss?”
He shrugged. “Hedeon will get on board. But for now, let’s chat a little bit, then we’ll go see what he thinks. How’s that sound?”
He sat down next to me. I took a deep breath.
And told him as much as I could about the diner.7LeonidHedeon lived in a quiet row home on Mt. Vernon Street halfway down the block. I had no clue how he afforded it, since the neighborhood wasn’t cheap, but the place was decent and the neighbors didn’t talk much, so we used it as our base of operations for a while.
I knocked and looked back at Robin. She fidgeted from foot to foot and looked around like her uncle was about to pop out from behind a minivan with a machine gun and kill us both. I smiled to myself and turned back to the door. She was a terrible gangster but she’d figure it out.
Hedeon answered a minute later. He had bags under his eyes and wore a long-sleeve gray t-shirt and a pair of baggy jeans. He grunted and looked at the girl than back to me.
“I thought I said she was your problem.”
“Things changed. Let us inside.”
He frowned at me but stepped aside. I gestured for Robin to follow.
Hedeon’s place was full of paintings and books. It looked like the haunt of some Parisian artist, not the head of a violent gang of thugs, but that was the heart of the contradiction that was Hedeon. He had a good mind, liked gentle things, but loved killing and fucking and stealing even more.
I took Robin through the living room, past a pile of modernist poetry books, and into the kitchen. Dark cabinets reflected overhead lights. A ceramic rooster stared from the top of the stainless-steel refrigerator. A small, square table sat pressed against the wall.
Robin crossed her arms over her chest and gave me a look. I just smiled back and gestured at the table. “Take a seat.”
She sat down. Hedeon joined us a second later, grabbed three glasses, a bottle of whiskey, and poured drinks. He put one in front of me, one in front of her, and held one himself.
“All right,” he said. “Why the fuck are you here then?”
“Tell him what you told me.” I gestured at Robin. “Go ahead.”
“Everything?”
“Not everything. Just the bit about your… revelation.”
She chewed her lip then took a big slug of her drink. She coughed and I grinned at Hedeon. He gave me an inscrutable look.
“My family tried to kill me yesterday,” she said. “You ever have your own family turn their backs on you?”
“No,” Hedeon said. “Though I never had a family, as such.”
“Well, it sucks.” She stared at her drink. “I thought a lot about it. About how they’ve treated me. And I decided that I’m done with their shit.”
“Have you?” he said.
“She wants to help us,” I said.
“Does she?” Hedeon swirled his drink. “Convenient.”
“I’m not joking around,” Robin said. She narrowed her eyes at Hedeon. “I don’t know who you people really are, but I know you say you’re going up against my uncle. That’s good enough for me.”
“Why would he want to kill you?” Hedeon took a sip of his drink. “That doesn’t make much sense to me.”
“I’m a half-breed,” she said. “My mother was my father’s mistress. She was an American girl, I guess she was Irish and Italian or something like that. I’m not sure, she died when I was a baby, and nobody talked about her much. They always treated me like I was some kind of burden or a mistake, always throwing me scraps, but never letting me sit at the table. But I’m sick of being left out.”
“Interesting,” Hedeon said.
“I think her uncle believes she was going to spill her guts to us,” I said. “Which is funny, because she wasn’t, at least not until he tried to kill her.”
“And now here you are in my kitchen, ready to become a traitor.”
Her face darkened. “I can’t be a traitor to them,” she said.
“How’s that?”
“I’d have to owe them allegiance to be a traitor. But I don’t owe them a damn thing.”
Hedeon smiled. “It sounds like you’ve made up your mind already.”
“She wants a piece of this,” I said. “A piece of what we’re going to build. She wants a seat at the table.”
