Street Smart

4

It took her fifteen minutes to find Guido’s. But only because she had to walk back to the Lucky Seven and get her car. And then it was another twenty before she actually approached the door. After having seen the place, she’d gone to the motel to change before going in. The crowd seemed too “young adult.”

In her short but not too short denim skirt and tight green T-shirt, she figured she’d blend in just fine. So long as no one looked too closely at the newly acquired lines of strain adorning the corners of her mouth and eyes.

As far as she could tell, if you ignored the thrift store across the street that had so much stacked in side you could hardly see through the window, Guido’s was an almost-nice neighborhood hangout, with a pizza and sandwich sign above the door, in addition to the requisite Vegas marquee with glitter ing lights—this one proclaiming that the city’s best pool and dart games could be found inside. Sitting in the parking lot, she’d actually been relieved. It didn’t seem like a place where her sister would’ve gone to turn tricks. Or model for any of those millions of cards that people used for sidewalk decor each night.

It felt good to think that Autumn had frequented a place as normal-looking as this.

With a deep breath for luck, or strength, or just enough air to endure, she pulled open the darkened glass door. For all she knew, Autumn was in there right now, sharing a pizza with a friend, throwing darts—although her sister had never been the sporty type—waiting tables, even. Anything. Just there.

Francesca panicked. What if she didn’t recognize her? Kids changed a lot from fifteen to seventeen. And the police had warned her that runaways, because most didn’t want to be found, often drastically changed their appearances.

She jumped as pool balls clacked to her left, followed by the sound of at least two dropping into pockets. Voices were little more than white noise, all blending together until she couldn’t make out a single conversation. A strange mixture of New Age and rock music played in the background, but not as loudly as she would’ve figured for a young adult hangout.

As her eyes adjusted slowly from the bright Vegas sun to the track-lighted room with its dark paneling and wood floors, Francesca couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t ready for this. Wasn’t ready to feel again.

Not yet.

Maybe never.

Thoughts of crawling into bed, hiding under the covers and being thankful that her baby sister was alive while she slept away the next ten years consumed her. Ten years from now Autumn would be an adult. With a real life. In control of that life. She’d come back then.

Except if the cops were to be believed, her sister could be involved with all kinds of dangerous people, just to survive. If she wasn’t rescued she could well be dead before ten years were up. Las Vegas runaways had a relatively short life span.

“You coming or going?” The voice was male. Appreciative. And right in front of her.

“Sorry.” Francesca tried to smile at him. “I don’t know,” she answered. He looked Italian. Somehow that made a difference. “I, uh, I’m hoping to meet a friend of mine.”

“You new to town?”

“Yeah.”

He was older than she would’ve expected. Older than she was. Midthirties, she’d guess. Dark hair, tall, broad, nice brown eyes. A friendly smile.

His presence calmed her—unlike the feeling that had haunted her on and off since meeting her own empty future in the eyes of the man at the Bonaparte the other night.

“If you want to wait for your friend, you can have a seat at the bar,” this man said, walking toward the long, polished dark wood counter with padded leather stools. It ran along the entire length of the building, completely dominating the back wall. “We’re a family-owned place,” he added. “No one will bother you.”

Walking with him toward the bar, Francesca wondered if he was included in that no one. Or if this was just one of the nicer pickup lines she’d heard. Mostly she wondered if any of the girls in the room would turn out to be Autumn. Since she had no idea what to expect, she couldn’t be certain that her sister wasn’t there.

“You work here?” she asked her companion, sliding onto a stool about halfway down the bar. There were quite a few people milling around, but the stools on either side of her were vacant.

“My pop owned the place,” he surprised her by saying, meeting her on the opposite side of the bar. “What can I get you?”

“A diet cola?”

He grinned. “You sure about that? I make a prickly pear margarita that I’m rather proud of.”

“In a pizza place?”

“It’s Vegas.” His smile was contagious. With a white towel he wiped down the space in front of her.

“Okay, one margarita.” Any more than that and she wouldn’t be able to take her sleeping pill.

Glancing around, she was pretty sure Autumn wasn’t there. Her sister could disguise a lot of things—like hair color or style—but, even in the town of illusion, she couldn’t make herself shorter than five-five or change her delicate bone structure.

“By the way.” He set down the glass he’d pulled from a rack above his head, wiped his hand and held it out to her. “I’m Carlo Fucilla. My friends call me Carl.”

“Carlo,” she repeated. “A good Italian name.” Not that she’d necessarily have known that—or noticed—a year ago.

His handshake was warm, firm, but no stronger than her own. “My grandparents came to the States to get married,” he said. Glass in hand, he stood directly in front of her, although with the bar between them all she could see was his white, short-sleeved polo shirt from the waist up. “My grandfather had been married before and the Catholic Church wouldn’t sanction his second marriage. Neither would their families. So they came here to start a new family.”

“And how’d they do?” The voice belonged to Francesca Witting, photojournalist, who’d recently returned from a year spent traveling all over Italy forming a composite of the challenges and strengths of its people. Francesca Witting, who was supposed to have done a follow-up story on Italian families in the United States. The voice was misplaced.

“They were married for sixty-five years,” he told her as he backed away.

Exactly the type of family she would’ve been looking for a month ago. If life hadn’t changed the rules so drastically.

As she sat there today, her shutter finger didn’t itch even a little bit. And she couldn’t care less how Carlo would look on film.

When her drink appeared Francesca sipped greedily, grateful that the man—who hadn’t oversold himself in the margarita department—hung around in between serving his other customers. Although, it didn’t take her long to figure out that she wasn’t the only one he was friendly with. He seemed to truly like people.

Enough to remember his customers after they left? To remember Autumn? And how did she find out without raising his suspicions? Without having to explain more than she wanted to?

“You said your father owned this place, past tense. He doesn’t anymore?” she asked when he was once again standing in front of her. He did seem to be stopping there more often than anywhere else. She’d noticed a while ago that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

“He died a couple of years ago.”

Death. Caskets. With lids that slowly closed, choking out any hope that there’d been a mistake. Funerals. Raw earth, freshly shoveled…

“I’m…sorry.” He didn’t know her, or anything about her. The anonymity was protection.

“It’s okay.” He shrugged, called out to some other customers, asking if they were ready, and excused himself as he moved down to pour beer into frosted mugs from one of the six or eight taps across from the cash register.

Ten minutes passed. Then twenty. Thirty. Carl had been right when he’d told her no one would bother her. Besides an occasional smile sent her way, she was left completely alone. People came. And went. And every single time the door opened, Francesca’s heart skipped a beat. And then settled into the familiar plod of disappointment. She was thinking more and more about showing Carl Autumn’s picture.

But why would she be asking questions about the friend she’d supposedly come there to meet? This was different from a street corner.

There was no way she was getting this close only to have someone tip off Autumn and have her run again. The setback would be too much. She’d become obsessed with finding Autumn. Her sister’s unexpected phone call to Sacramento had pulled Francesca out of a dark and dangerous place. Autumn had become a reason to live.

Second margarita in hand, she was glad she’d come. It felt good to be around people. To be no one in no man’s land, with nothing to do but let the alcohol numb what little was left of her ability to feel.

“So is this bar still in your family?” she asked the only person she knew in Las Vegas, if she didn’t count José at the front desk at the Lucky Seven. Or the head of security at the Bonaparte.

Carl, filling some bowls with snack mix, nodded. “Technically my brothers and I own it together, but they all had different interests, so I run it.”

She liked his shrug. And his grin.

“How many brothers do you have?”

“Three.”

“And you all share the profits?”

“Nah.” He grinned. “There wouldn’t be enough to go around. They’ve got pretty expensive tastes. I take a manager’s salary. The rest goes to Mom for as long as she’s alive.”

“Does she work here?” It didn’t matter. None of this mattered, Italian family or not.

He waved toward a side door leading to a back room. “Try taking a step into the kitchen and you’ll find out.”

A strong woman. Francesca liked that. And thought, for the brief moment before the pain descended, about Sancia. Loving, brokenhearted Sancia. Francesca would never have looked up the elderly woman, introduced herself, if she’d had any idea of the agony she’d bring with her.

She’d called her once since returning to the States, but neither of them had been able to speak through their tears, and she hadn’t repeated the experience. Later, when she was better, she’d visit Sancia again. Maybe.

“Looks like your friend’s a no-show,” Carl said after she’d been there for more than an hour.

“Yeah.”

It was an opening. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to take it yet. Didn’t want to risk blowing her cover. Not many people handed around pictures of their friends, asking if anyone had seen them or knew anything about them.

She wanted to be able to come back to Guido’s. Waiting was much more pleasant there.

“So…” He hesitated, looking a little sheepish. “Is this the first time you’ve been stood up?”

His assumption was kind of nice. But then, he couldn’t know what life was like for a woman who’d loved a man who was married to someone else.

“I wasn’t stood up,” she said now. “I was meeting a girlfriend….”

His obvious pleasure in that news was gratifying. To her ego at least. The rest of her couldn’t care less.

There were a lot of young girls hanging around. Dressed-for-dates young women. They were a friendly bunch. Autumn wasn’t among them.

She had a third margarita. Might have gone for a fourth if her car hadn’t been in the parking lot. While the trade-off—a possible night in a jail cell for DUI—would in some ways be worth the numb and almost peaceful oblivion she was finding, she couldn’t let herself lose even a day on the hunt for Autumn. It would just make the trail that much longer. Provide that much more opportunity for the rains to pour down and wash away Autumn’s tracks. Because come they would. They always did.

“You sure you’re okay to drive?” Carl asked her just before midnight as he walked her to the door.

Most of the crowd had disappeared, although there were still a couple of twenty-something guys shooting pool, a few friends sitting at the bar, and a table or two occupied in the corners of the room. All these people were younger than the real Francesca Witting.

“Positive. Three’s my limit.”

“So, you think the margaritas might be good enough to bring you back for seconds?”

Was the next night too soon? “Is that an invitation?”

“Well…” He shrugged again, though not with any lack of confidence. “I’d probably have taken my chances on a dinner date, but it’s a little tough for a guy in my position to date much, since I work almost every night of the week.”

She tried hard—harder than she’d known she could—to overcome her immediate defensiveness. “I’m sorry,” she told him, wishing she could feel the sentiment. “I don’t date.”

“Not at all?”

“No.” Unequivocally.

He studied her for several seconds. “Well, then,” he started slowly. “Are friends out of the question, too?”

“Um, I don’t think I’ll be in town long,” she said.

“So, you aren’t coming back?”

Yes! She had to. “I’m not leaving yet.”

“How about tomorrow, then?”

The invitation played right into her hands. Francesca nodded.

His grin made her wonder if she’d made a big mistake. But she had to be back tomorrow night. And every night after that until she found her sister. Or got another lead that took her to the next waiting place.

The street corner by day.

Guido’s by night.

Life could be worse.

The woman was beautiful. Tall. Slender. Wavy blond hair. And compassionate. It was that last quality that captivated Luke. Sure, he liked his women gorgeous, but in this town of tinsel and illusion, what attracted him most was real softness. Inside softness.

Las Vegas was filled with beautiful women. They could be found—and had—anywhere, anytime, at any age, for anything a guy wanted.

“Let’s take a picnic out to the desert,” Melissa Thomas suggested when Luke picked her up early Saturday evening.

He’d met the social worker while coaching basketball at the local crisis center and quickly found that she was unlike any woman he knew. Ambitious, driven, and motivated completely by her compassion for the underprivileged children she worked twelve-hour days serving.

“Sounds great,” he told her, rounding the car to open her door. He’d missed his jump again that morning, and a sojourn with nature sounded almost as good as the time alone with Melissa. “I’ve got a blanket in the trunk and we can run by the deli for the rest of it.”

“Including a bottle of Italian wine?”

It was a taste he’d introduced her to, compliments of the tutelage he’d received growing up at the knee of Amadeo. A little-known sparkling wine from the region of Campania, rather than the more famous wines from Tuscany and Napoli. The deli wouldn’t have his favorite, but there’d be a decent choice.

“You got it.” Luke took her hand as he backed his Jaguar out of her driveway. She was giving him an evening of freedom, an evening away from bustling restaurants with waiters and managers whose friendliness was professional. Impersonal. Away from glittering people and traffic and city noise. There was very little he wouldn’t give her in return.

Melissa had been married once. In college. All Luke knew about it was that her young husband had been unfaithful and the marriage had ended abruptly. She’d been living alone for almost ten years. Owned a small home in one of Las Vegas’s gated communities.

Luke had been dating her for six months. They didn’t see each other all that often. They both worked a lot. And he had his ever-increasing responsibilities at home—responsibilities about which Melissa knew nothing. Still, they’d fallen into a state of being comfortably exclusive.

He checked his cell phone while she was at the deli counter making her choices, relaxing when there were no calls. The Allens, old friends of his parents who lived in the same gated community as Luke and his mother, had invited Carol over for dinner and a movie. They’d been planning to pick her up fifteen minutes ago, but there was always the chance she’d refused to go with them. Which often meant the onset of an episode that required Luke’s attention. The Allens could handle it, of course. But Luke didn’t like to accept their help for his own leisure purposes. He needed to be able to call upon them when he was at work and just couldn’t get home.

“All set.” Melissa joined him, carrying several containers. Pocketing his phone, Luke took them from her and got in line to pay.

“Work?” she asked with a disappointed frown. Carol, work—it was all one and the same as far as Melissa knew.

“Nope,” he told her with an easy smile. He was looking forward to the hours ahead.

“Well, thank goodness.” Luke loved the way she cuddled up to his side, both her arms wrapped around one of his. “Not that I ever like it when we have to cut a date short, but it would be particularly hard tonight.”

He grinned down at her. “Why’s that?” Was she feeling the same anticipation—and need—that he was? They hadn’t made love in a couple of weeks, and while ordinarily he’d take that in stride, since he’d started seeing Melissa, he had sex on his mind a lot.

She was an incredible lover. Wild without being too wild, tender, wanton. She made the most incredible noises when she came. And she was funny. Luke had never associated sex with laughter before. Would’ve thought the one would detract from the other. It didn’t.

“Because I have something I want to talk to you about.”

Huh? “Okay, good,” Luke said, briefly wondering what he’d missed. He felt her arms wrapped around his middle, her palms under his T-shirt, against the bare skin of his belly. Funny how such a casual touch could be so erotic.

Yes, he was looking forward to the evening. And to her.

He was a lucky man.

Sheila Miller was going to get lucky tonight. A waitress friend of hers in the high-stakes room at the Bonaparte had assured her that Arnold Jackson would be off at nine.

“Could you take Spring Mountain Road, please?” She tried to ease back on the authoritative tone that came so naturally and had lost her more than one relationship as she addressed the cabbie. “There’s less traffic there this time of night.”

The man, who apparently had little mastery of the English language, nodded wordlessly. She hoped he’d understood her.

On the freeway, with cars traveling much faster than the speed limit, they were in the slowest lane. Sheila wanted to scream. To take over. She sat forward, peeling her bare back from the vinyl upholstery in the back seat of the ten-year-old sedan. And chewed on the end of her tongue to keep it silent.

It wasn’t the guy’s fault that she was nervous, had to pee and should’ve driven her own car. But then she would’ve had to drive herself home in order to get to work in the morning.

Home. Where, on her table, lay the envelope she’d received in the mail that afternoon, threatening fore-closure and worse….

“Tell me, fella, you think—” Sheila started and then shut up. She couldn’t believe she’d almost asked the cabbie if he thought she was overdressed. She really was losing it. Anyway, if the black, kneelength halter dress was too much, it was too late to do anything about it. And she looked damned good in it. Especially for a fifty-five-year-old woman. The thirty-five pounds she’d lost had left behind a waist that accentuated her breasts; unlike most of her friends, hers hadn’t drooped after menopause.

Arnold had to notice. She couldn’t get the man off her mind. For the first time in thirty years, she’d fallen for a guy. Hard. And she was also running out of time. If she didn’t find out who was behind the streak of wins that was causing such a ruckus up and down the Strip, she could very well end up in jail for misrepresentation. When extra building costs on her dream home kept popping up—to the tune of thousands each time—she’d promised her condo to a loan shark as collateral on a twenty-five-percent-interest loan. With her salary eaten up by daily expenses, she was about to miss her first payment. And the condo was already mortgaged to the hilt. To two different banks.

Word on the street said the scam was an inside job. That meant Arnold was going to find out about it. In a business where employer trust was paramount, he protected his integrity above all else. She recognized that because she’d always been just like him.

And like him, she was determined to find out what was going on. Pronto.

But unlike him, it wasn’t to protect her integrity. Not this time. She valued honesty above all else—except her freedom. She could go to jail for misrepresentation because she’d put her condo up for collateral twice. The only chance she had was to get in on the Strip scam before it was over. As soon as the perpetrators got wind that the other side was close, they’d shut down. They always did.

Her biggest fear was that the scam would be history before she could cash in. She had absolutely no idea what she’d do then.

5

By the time Carl took his break shortly after ten on Saturday night, Francesca had already reached her margarita limit.

A third night without sleeping pills. She had to get to bed before the buzz wore off.

“You aren’t leaving, are you?” he asked Francesca. She stood just after Rebecca, the young woman who’d been waiting tables all evening, had gone behind the bar to relieve him.

As had happened the night before, and the night before that, the place had been filled with young people earlier, mostly young women calling greetings to others who came in the door. But slowly the crowd had thinned to some guys shooting pool and throwing darts at one end of the room, with people at a few scattered tables here and there. For the past half hour, the door had only opened as someone left.

Autumn wasn’t coming.

“Yeah, I should get back.” It was light before six in the morning these days. She had an appointment with a phone booth.

Hands in the pockets of his jeans, Carl nodded. “You can’t spare another fifteen minutes to sit with me?” His dark eyes were warm, welcoming.

She’d refused the night before. But three shots of tequila weren’t going to wear off in fifteen minutes. And her room at the Lucky Seven was so…empty. “I guess I can.”

What am I doing? There was no place in her schedule for friends. And no life in her heart.

Still, when he asked if she’d like to share his tomato-and-basil pizza, she didn’t say no.

She shouldn’t have stayed. Sitting alone with Carl at a table in the comfortable back corner of his bar was very different from sharing casual hit-and-miss conversation as he worked. More intimate.