back row near Buckhead’s. We can talk in your car so nobody sees us. If you can’t meet me, page me.
Otherwise I’ll see you then.
Chuck
Then I sent him a text message page, purportedly from Bray, inviting him to the meeting.
“Done,” I said, yielding to self-congratulation just as the phone rang.
“Yo,” Marino said. “Your personal investigator here. What’cha doing after work?”
“More work. Remember I said two can play this game? You’re taking me to Buckhead’s. We wouldn’t want to miss a little rendezvous between two people near and dear to our hearts, would we? So I thought it might be nice if you took me out to dinner and we just happened to run into them,” I said.
18
Marino met me in the parking lot as planned and we got in his monster Dodge Ram Quad Cab pickup truck because I didn’t want to take the chance that Bray might recognize my Mercedes. It was dark and frigid out but the rain had stopped. I was riding so high I could almost look transfer truckers in the eye.
We followed Patterson Avenue toward Parham Road, a major thoroughfare in the city where people ate out and shopped and swarmed inside Regency Mall.
“I gotta warn you there ain’t always a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” he said, throwing a cigarette butt out the window. “One or both of them might decide not to show. Hell, they may be on to us for all I know. But, gotta give it a shot, right?”
The Beverly Hills Shopping Center was a small strip of salons and a Ben Franklin Crafts & Frames store. The location was not at all where one might expect to find the city’s finest chophouse.
“Don’t see no sign of them,” Marino said as we scanned. “But we’re a few minutes early.”
He parked some distance away from the restaurant, between two cars in front of Ben Franklin, and cut the engine. I opened my door.
“Just where do you think you’re going?” he protested.
“Inside the restaurant.”
“What if they roll up any minute and see you?”
“I have every right to be here.”
“What if she’s in there at the bar?” he worried. “What are you going to say to her?”
“I’ll offer to buy her a drink and then come out and get you.”
“Christ, Doc.” Marino was getting increasingly adamant. “I thought the whole point of this is to burn her.”
“Relax and let me do the talking.”
“Relax? I want to break the bitch’s neck,” he said.
“We have to be smart. We walk out from behind a bunker and start firing, we might just get hit first.”
“You telling me you ain’t going to tell her to her face you know what she’s done? The e-mail to Chuck and everything?”
He was incredulous and furious and kept repeating himself.
“Then what the hell are we doing here?” he went on.
“Marino,” I tried to calm him down. “You know better than this. You’re an experienced detective, and that’s what you have to be with her. She’s formidable. I’m going to tell you right now you’ll never muscle this woman into a corner.”
He was silent.
“Keep a lookout from your truck while I check the inside of the restaurant.. If you spot her before I do, send me a tenfour on my pager and call the restaurant asking for me, just in case I don’t get the page for some reason,” I said.
He angrily lit a cigarette as I opened my door.
“It ain’t fucking fair,” he said. “We know fucking well what she’s doing. I still say we confront her and show her she ain’t as smart as she thinks.”
“You, of all people, know about building cases;” I reiterated. I was getting worried that he wouldn’t be able to control himself.
“We saw what she sent Chuck.”
“Lower your voice,” I said. “We can’t prove she sent that e-mail anymore than I can prove I didn’t send e-mail that’s being attributed to me. I can’t even prove I didn’t write that dreadful column, for that matter.”
“Maybe I should just become a soldier of fortune.”