“Well, Reid, maybe—”
“Chief,” Cora said, smiling at him kindly. “Do you like Home Alone?”
He narrowed his eyes, confusion drifting into his expression. My jaw clenched and I wanted to tell her to back off—but I saw something in her body language that made me stop.
“You mean, the movie?”
“We plan on winning those Christmas lights. What do you think about that? Are they real?”
He gave her that laugh and shrugged. “I suppose they are. One of the donors is a Hollywood producer. You know the type.”
“Reid bid on them for me. All I did was mention that I liked the film and he just—he put down a number. What kind of man does that?”
Chief Richards looked at me. “I don’t know, you tell me.”
“A smart one. And a kind one.” She beamed. “The kind of man that knows things.”
“You should listen to her, Chief,” I said. “She knows what she’s talking about.”
“I’m sure she does,” he murmured.
“I think I’m going to go look at those lights again. You two boys have some catching up to do, right?” She grinned at him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Chief. He doesn’t bite.”
Chief Richards looked utterly bemused as she walked off, gliding through the crowd and toward the auction tables.
I looked back at him and he shook his head. “You have quite the wife.”
“I know, I tell myself that every day.”
He sighed and sipped his drink. “Thirty seconds. What does Hedeon want?”
“You have the wrong guy.”
“We know that. Don’t matter.”
“You let him take the fall and you’re going to piss my boss off.”
“Should we care?” He waved a hand. “You folks can’t get away with everything, you know. Sometimes, you’ve got to go down.”
“We understand that, but you can’t just take whoever you want. There are rules, and as soon as you start breaking them, the other families are going to notice.” I stepped closer and lowered my voice. “Maybe you can push us around right now, but my wife’s family? They won’t be happy.”
He sighed and wiped a palm across his cheek in a nervous gesture. “I have a feeling you’re overstepping right now by bringing them into this.”
“I’m only stating facts. They’d be pissed if they knew I said that—but they couldn’t deny that I’m right.”
He gave me a long, flat look, and I stared right back. Chief Richards was a snake all right, and not a stupid one, either. He knew that if he started yanking made men off the streets on trumped-up charges then we’d start making his life a lot harder. Violence could follow, and he didn’t want his police in an all-out war with the mafia, not in this day and age—not when there was a camera in every pocket and a would-be journalist on every corner. That wouldn’t go well for him.
“I’ll think about it,” he said, his tone neutral. “You tell your wife that I said I hope she enjoys her lights.”
“I will, Chief.”
He turned and left. I lingered for a moment, watching after him as he blended in with a nearby crowd of old men in tuxes, his face shifting effortlessly into a smile, that laugh already spilling out among them. I shook my head and turned away, only to find Cora standing nearby, watching intently.
“How’d that go?” she asked.
“Good. Better than I expected, thanks to you.”
“He needed to be calmed down a little. I think you scared him.”
I tilted my head and let out a laugh. “Hard to imagine.”
“You’re an intimidating man, you know that, don’t you?”
“I know that he’s not the jolly, happy-go-lucky guy he pretends to be.”
“Fair enough.” She finished her glass of wine. “Are we done here?”
“Not yet.” I took her hand and steered her to an empty table. I sat her down, got her another drink, and by the time I returned, they were announcing winners of the auction.
I didn’t watch the man behind the podium as he read names and bids. I watched her face, and when he got to the Home Alone Christmas lights and said my name and number—her eyes lit up and she smiled, really smiled with a genuine, childish joy. That was the look I wanted, the whole reason I bid in the first place. I didn’t give a damn about winning, about a charity, about anything but making her happy and seeing that giddy, girlish look in her eyes.
I wrote a fat check, collected the lights, and presented them to her as we walked out into the evening. She held the clear plastic box with its letter of authenticity tucked into the bottom and laughed like she really meant it, and I felt damn good for the first time since Jarvis tried to murder us in the street.
We walked hand in hand down the sidewalk and around the corner to where I’d parked the car—and I stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. She was too busy staring at her Christmas lights to notice what had happened, and I had to pull on her hand to make her stop.