Читать книгу Baby, Baby, Baby - Mary McBride - Страница 8

It was a good thing Sonny Randle had quick reflexes, otherwise he’d have a shiner the size of Oregon thanks to the rocklike frozen muffin his ex-wife had hurled at him just before she’d turned and fled the kitchen.

He ignored the slight tremor in his hand as he re-filled the red plastic cap of his thermos and stood at the sink sipping his lukewarm coffee and watching Mel storm across her driveway and back into her house. A moment later, one by one, he watched the interior shutters on the south side of the house snap closed.

Okay. No surprise there. It was exactly what he’d expected. The muffin had been unanticipated, however. Actually, he was probably lucky that she’d thrown a muffin at him instead of a brick.

Suddenly one of her shutters opened a fraction, just enough for Sonny to discern her silhouette as she peeked out. He couldn’t see her face, but he knew her eyes were giving off hot blue sparks and she was grinding her teeth and clenching her fists, already making a mental list—complete with Roman numerals and subheadings—of what she was going to do to get rid of the menace next door.

He smiled and lifted his hand in a friendly little wave, then watched the shutter snap closed again.

You can run, babe, and you can hide, but it’s not going to do you any damned good. Now that I know what I did wrong, I know how to do this right. And we’re so right, Mel. You and I.

“Hey, Lieutenant,” a voice called from the hallway. “Where do you want this couch?”

“Be right there.”

Sonny drained the last of his coffee and screwed the cap back on the thermos without taking his eyes off the battened-down house next door. Right about now Melanie would be wound in a tight little ball in the corner of her own couch, her long legs tucked beneath her and her soft, shiny hair hooked firmly behind her ears and her lower lip wedged between her teeth while she took pen in hand to compose her battle plan.

The siege had officially begun.

Number One on her list was calling city hall, but that proved to be useless on a Friday at almost six o’clock when everyone had gone home. Melanie swore as she slammed the receiver back into its cradle, then looked at her list again because she was so upset she’d forgotten what Number Two was.

Right. Call Mike Kaczinski, Sonny’s partner, to see just what the hell her ex-husband was up to. She didn’t believe for one millisecond that he had taken out a loan, low-cost or otherwise, to buy the place next door. Cop on the Block, her aunt Fanny’s sweet behind! Lieutenant Sonny Randle not only worked undercover vice, he also ate, slept, and breathed it. What did he want a house for? He was never home!

Melanie stalked to the window again and opened the shutter a quarter of an inch. Squinting fiercely, she could see the movers close the back of their truck as they prepared to leave. There was no evidence of the new alleged homeowner. She craned her neck and angled her head so she could look down his driveway where his horrible muscle car sat like a black pit bull chained to a cement block. Wonderful. If he really was moving in, she had that roaring engine to look forward to at all hours of the night.

It was starting to get dark so she closed the shutter tightly and turned on a lamp in the living room. The exposed brick of the walls was always warm and comforting, and seemed no less so now that she was about to have a nervous breakdown. She went back to her cozy corner of the couch, pulled up her feet, and hugged her arms around herself, pretending for a moment that this wasn’t happening, that the perfection she’d experienced just half an hour ago was still possible.

She gazed around at the lovely haven she’d created for herself here in this more-than-a-century-old house in its antiquated cranny of the city. Almost all of the furniture had belonged to her parents so, just like them, it was an odd blend of elegant and eccentric. The camel-back Victorian sofa was upholstered in a rich rose silk and piled with bright needlepoint pillows that her father had designed. Just to her right, on the marble-topped table beside the sofa was the bronze-and-stained-glass lamp Pop had made, with its shade like lovely bits of melted rubies and emeralds and sapphires. Scattered across the floor were the Persian rugs her mother had collected.

On the other side of the foyer, the dining room was an odd but somehow perfect blend of American and European antiques. Beyond that, the kitchen was a cozy mix of blue-and-white Portuguese tiles and gleaming copper and brass.

While the whole house was colorful and eccentric, it was also neat and orderly, just the way Melanie liked it. The way she needed it. There was security in order, in having everything in its proper place. She wasn’t fussy, though. And she certainly wasn’t Felix Unger, although that’s who she’d felt like when she shared Sonny’s Oscar-Madison-like space.

Sonny.

Damn.

Casting a baleful glance at the list she’d left by the phone, she realized she couldn’t call Mike Kaczinski. Not at the Third Precinct, anyway. If he had been involved in last Friday’s shooting, along with Sonny, then he’d probably be on leave or vacation, too. That also meant that the new Cop on the damned Block would have time on his hands and nothing to do but aggravate her until he went back to work.

Fine. Let him try. She’d keep her shutters closed and her doors locked and she wouldn’t answer the phone. There was plenty of food in the fridge and freezer. She didn’t have to go out. At least not until…

Oh, my God. Her appointment Monday at eleven.

No. Don’t even think about that right now, she warned herself. Don’t think about the little vial packed in dry ice that arrived just yesterday at Dr. Wentworth’s office from the sperm bank in Chicago. How long did those little guys last? She couldn’t remember.

If she cancelled and set a new appointment for next month, that would shift everything. Everything! Instead of being born in January, her baby wouldn’t be born until February. Then, instead of being a determined and hardworking Capricorn, Little Alex or Alexis would be a quirky Aquarius. Oh, Lord. Instead of having a little photocopy of herself, she’d be giving birth to a Sonny.

She was shuddering at the very thought when her doorbell suddenly chimed.

Don’t answer it. Let him stand out there all night, all weekend, all year.

But being the orderly soul that she was, Melanie couldn’t stand not responding to a ringing phone or the repeated ding-dongs coming from her front door. She opened it a crack, then let out a tiny bleat of relief when she saw that it wasn’t Sonny, but rather Joan Carrollis from down the street. Melanie practically pulled her in by her lapels, then slammed and locked the door behind her.

“What in the world…?” the little brunette exclaimed.

“I’m sorry.” Melanie reached out to realign the lapels of Joan’s navy blazer. “I just didn’t want… Oh, never mind. Did I miss anything at the association meeting the other night?”

Joan and her husband Nick, both CPAs, had been the co-treasurers of the Channing Square Residents Association since its founding. Melanie liked the forty-ish woman and appreciated her no-nonsense style not to mention the precision with which she kept the association’s books.

“No,” she said, “you didn’t miss a thing, but if you haven’t been next door yet, you’re missing the boat. Have you seen your new neighbor?” Joan sounded as breathless as a teenybopper.

“Briefly,” Melanie said, wondering if that was actually drool beginning to form in a corner of the woman’s mouth. Good grief.

“Hubba, hubba.” Joan rolled her eyes and poked Melanie’s arm with her elbow.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, hubba, hubba. You know, as in the man is majorly attractive.”

“Oh.” He wasn’t that major, Melanie thought sullenly.

Joan gave a little sigh. “Well, I just wanted to give you a heads-up before he’s swamped by invitations from all the single women around here. And I wanted to thank you, too, you devious little bureaucrat.”

Melanie blinked. “Thank me?”

“For seeing that the first Cop on the Block is ours, of course. Nice going, Melanie. You didn’t waste any time. I can’t tell you how much we all really appreciate it.”

“Oh. Well…”

Now, wishing it had occurred to her to do something devious, such as rushing through the paperwork for some nice, balding sergeant and his family of five, Melanie waved goodbye to Joan while she cast a furtive glance next door.

Then she stepped back inside and locked herself in. Permanently. She’d been looking forward to making pasta for the first dinner of her leave of absence and to enjoying what would be just about her last glass of wine for the next nine months. Now, with her perfect evening in a shambles, she ate a grudging bowl of cold cereal, then climbed into bed at eight, in the hope that she’d wake up in the morning to discover this was just a terrible dream.

Instead, she woke up shortly after midnight to the sounds of a party next door.

Sonny pulled an ice-cold beer from the cooler, snapped off the cap, and lifted the bottle in a toast.

“Hey, with warm friends and wet beer, who needs electricity or plumbing, right? Thanks, guys.”

When a dozen or so candlelit faces grinned back at him, Sonny had to swallow a lump in his throat. For such a hardass, he was getting pretty soft and mushy these days, he thought as he sidled out of the front room and made his way toward the kitchen and a moment of solitude rather than blubbering in front of his colleagues.

He’d only told Kaczinski and one or two others about the house, but at least forty people had shown up over the past few hours for the surprise housewarming. It was heartwarming, too, because he’d been working alone and undercover so long he’d actually forgotten how many friends he had in the department after nearly thirteen years.

A few new neighbors had dropped in, too, but not the neighbor he loved. Mel had doused all her lights about eight o’clock. Then, around midnight when the volume of the party went up a couple notches, he noticed a bit of yellow light seeping through the shutters of one of the upstairs windows next door.

It wouldn’t have surprised Sonny if she’d called the cops when things got a little noisy, but then on second thought she’d been peeking out the window enough to realize that most of the cops in the Third Precinct were already here.

Most importantly, he was here and alive after the incident last week that should have killed him. The DEA had asked for local backup on a raid on a meth lab in a desolate block on Sixteenth. Since Sonny was familiar with the area and the layouts of most of the abandoned buildings there, he was the first one through the door of the defunct auto dealership.

Normally, when he worked undercover, he didn’t wear a vest. But that day somebody had tossed him one, saying, “This could get ugly.” He’d shrugged into the heavy blue garment just before kicking in the front door and walking into the wrong end of a .44 Magnum and the path of a cop-killer bullet.

The damned thing had blown him backward through the dealership’s dirty plate-glass window, practically out onto the street. He remembered lying there, in all that broken glass, looking up at a bright blue sky and thinking it was a shame that he was dead because all of a sudden he knew how badly he’d screwed up with Melanie and he realized just what he needed to do to fix things. If ever somebody had craved a do-over, it was Sonny just then.

As it turned out, when the bullets had stopped flying and the dust had settled, he hadn’t been dead or even that badly injured. The impact of the bullet had cracked a rib and the subsequent collision with the pavement outside had given him a concussion. Maybe that was good. Maybe he’d needed a brutal jab to his heart and a thorough shaking of his head to see things straight. Now all he had to do was convince his ex-wife that he was no longer the selfish son of a bitch who had ruined their marriage.

“There you are.” Mike Kaczinski came up beside him. He set the candle he was carrying down on the counter next to the sink. “You feeling okay, Son?”

“Oh, sure.”

“How’s the rib?”

“Fine.” Sonny shrugged. “It only hurts when I breathe.”

“And the head?”

“That’s fine, too. It only hurts when I think.”

Mike chuckled softly. “Well, that shouldn’t be a problem, then.”

The candle flame barely cut the darkness around the two friends as they stood there side by side. They’d met in grade school, gotten in all the obligatory trouble together in high school, shared a room at college, and then finally cheered each other through the police academy. Mike had been Sonny’s best man, not just at his wedding, but in every sense of the word.

Like Sonny, he wore his dark brown hair on the long side, the better to blend in on the street. Unlike Sonny, he’d gone home every night to a solid, happy marriage for the past ten years.

Now the two of them stood shoulder to shoulder, looking out the window at the rectangle of yellow light on the second floor next door.

“She’s planning to get pregnant next week from a freaking sperm bank.” Sonny’s voice barely rose above a rough whisper.

“Yeah. I heard.”

“I’m not going to let that happen, Mikey.”

“Yeah. I figured.”

When the last reveler drove off into the wee small hours of the morning, Melanie slipped back into bed, beat her pillow to a pulp, and pulled the covers up over her head. Okay. So she wasn’t going to wake up in the morning to find it was all a bad dream. It was a living nightmare, and she was going to have to deal with it one way or another.

She’d be damned if she’d stay barricaded behind locked doors. Sonny was just going to have to move. Seattle would be nice. Hong Kong would be even better. A bit closer, there was a house around the corner on Garland Boulevard that Dieter Weist and his partner had almost completed so Sonny wouldn’t have to be bothered with all the drudgery that went along with rehabing. He didn’t know the first thing about rehabing anyway. Good grief. When she’d lived with him in his loft, he hadn’t even owned a screwdriver or a hammer to put a picture up on a wall, much less known how to use either one.

What was he planning to do? Live in that hovel next door while plaster rained down on his head and garbage squished under his feet?

He didn’t even have electricity yet, for heaven’s sake. No plumbing, either, judging from the Day-Glo-colored Porta Potty that she had spied tucked behind the dilapidated back porch.

Why was he doing this? She wanted to rip open the shutters and wrench up the window and scream, “It’s over. It didn’t work, Sonny. Just—for God’s sake—let it go.”

If she did that, though, he’d only yell back, “You love me, Mel. You know it.”

Dammit. She punched the pillow again and dug herself deeper into the mattress. That was the problem. She did love him. She just couldn’t live with him.

If only she’d known that when he’d handed her those two glasses of champagne and then shucked his disguise like some gorgeous butterfly emerging from a hairy cocoon. If only his voice with its too-much-whiskey and too-many-smokes timbre hadn’t sent a cascade of tingles down her spine when he’d called her darlin’ the first time, as in “Let’s get out of here, darlin’.”

Melanie was far too practical, way too levelheaded to be swept off her feet, so she’d finally come to the conclusion that Sonny must have drugged her those few weeks before they’d gotten married. That first night, after they’d left the awards ceremony and after he’d showered and changed at the precinct, they’d sat in the back booth of a little jazz club, the sparks between them nearly setting the place on fire.

No one had ever made her feel like the molten center of the universe before. No one had ever made her forget what time it was, what day it was, what century. No one had ever gotten her into bed on the very first date and then gotten her to stay there for an entire weekend.

He had to have drugged her.

It wasn’t just the sex. During those early weeks Sonny had made her feel like a new person, somebody completely recreated. She’d never once made a list of any kind. She’d barely even opened her planner except to make certain there was no official function that would prevent her from being with her man.

Sonny had been with her constantly—24/7 as they said in the department—because, like now, he’d been on vacation following a shooting. He’d been sexy and funny and charming and attentive and sweet and…

…And in her drugged, delirious condition she’d married him one afternoon at city hall in Judge Beckmann’s chambers with Sam Venneman as her maid of honor and Mike Kaczinski as his best man.

Then Sonny’s time off work had ended and she’d hardly seen him anymore. It seemed her then-new husband’s view of the ideal marriage was one where he worked long hours, sometimes two and three days at a time, undercover on the street, then came home expecting the honeymoon to continue under the covers with his irritated bride.

No sooner had she tidied up his messy loft than he stumbled in to fling newspapers everywhere, to put T-shirts in his sock drawer, to rip out the neatly tucked covers from the foot of the mattress to accommodate his long legs, to claim he couldn’t make plans for the future because he didn’t even know what he’d be doing next week.

She’d made lists and Sonny had made excuses.

After six months, during four of which she’d had a headache that felt like a cannonball inside her skull, Melanie had walked out and filed for divorce.

For his part, Sonny went through an approximation of the Five Stages of Grief. Denial: “There’s nothing wrong with our marriage, babe.” Anger: “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Bargaining: “I can change, Mel.” Depression: “Aw, hell, darlin’. Why don’t you just stick a knife in my heart and get it over with?”

Finally, or so she’d thought when he’d stopped calling her constantly and dropping by city hall every other day, he’d reached the last stage. Acceptance.

Obviously she’d been wrong about that. Sonny hadn’t changed a bit. He never would. He’d always be his spur-of-the-moment, let-the-devil-take-tomorrow, what-me-worry, haphazard self. And she’d always be the worrier, the list maker, the Queen of Post-It notes and the planner.

The twain would never meet.

And one of the twain, dammit, would have to go.

Melanie squeezed her eyes closed, determined to wrench at least a few hours sleep from the chaos that suddenly surrounded her.

Next door, at that precise moment, Sonny took a swig from his bottle of beer and a long drag on his cigarette, then leaned back his head and closed his eyes. He’d kept a couple candles burning to ward off any lowlife who might be looking for an unoccupied place to crash for the night. If that warning didn’t prove successful, he was still wearing his shoulder holster with his service pistol snug under his arm.

He was almost hoping some coked-up derelict did stumble in, thus offering him a legitimate excuse to shove somebody up against a wall and work off some of the foul mood he was in.

Cop on the Block at your service, ma’am. What was that? You say you want a baby?

Every time he thought about what Melanie planned to do, his gut churned, tying itself into a thousand tight little knots, and his heart surged with a sort of primitive rage. It made him nuts to think of his wife getting pregnant by another man, artificially or otherwise. If otherwise, at least he’d have the pleasure of killing the guy. What could he do about the artificial deal—stomp a little vial and grind it into the floor?

He’d found out about her cockamamie plan last week, the same afternoon he’d gone through the plate-glass window. That revelation, coupled with the one he’d had from the .44 Magnum, had finally propelled him into action. Waiting for Mel to change her mind obviously wasn’t working, and merely telling her that he’d changed wasn’t good enough or fast enough in light of this baby deal.

The Cop on the Block notion had seemed inspired at the time. He filled out the paperwork, sat on his captain’s desk until he signed it, then personally walked it through the approval process at the Third Street Bank. If the nerdy little vice president in charge of loans filed a complaint, Sonny was fully prepared to say that he’d simply drawn his gun to make certain the safety was on.

So far, so good. The house was his. He was sitting here, a mere twenty feet from Melanie’s place. Of course, he was sitting in the dark and his toilet was outside and Mel was barricaded behind locked doors, but—by God—he was here. Now he just had to convince her that he was capable of change.

As for Mel, she didn’t have to change even so much as a hair for him. He’d probably fallen for her the first time he’d seen her up on the stage at that awards ceremony exerting nearly superhuman effort to keep her knees together in that tiny little gray skirt while two hundred pairs of eyes were zeroing in on them and two hundred good but lecherous souls were silently pleading for just one little peek.

Okay. Maybe at first it was just the challenge of those lovely, super-glued knees. But after an hour of being with her that night, Sonny had quickly forgotten about the knees in order to focus on her quick, bright, and almost comically organized mind. And though he might have teased her about the lists and date books she produced from her handbag like a succession of clowns from a midget car, a part of him—an important, bone-deep part—truly envied the order and apparent certainty in her life.

Until Mel, the women he’d been with had lives as erratic as his own. Sheila, the flight attendant. Tammy, the traveling sales rep. Barb and Cathy and the other Cathy, all cops, all the time. Maybe the haphazard attitude was a habit with him, acquired from too many moves as a kid from one foster home to another. Maybe it was a defense. If he didn’t make plans, they couldn’t go wrong. Who knew?

But Sonny knew that from the minute he’d met Melanie Sears, he’d felt as if he’d found a permanent home. Then, because he continued to be an erratic, undependable, insensitive jerk, he’d promptly lost her.

He would’ve cut off his right arm for a second chance. Or quit smoking. Really quit this time. Whatever Mel wanted. Anything.

All she had to do was ask.

Assuming she ever spoke to him again.

In the meantime, he’d made his own list. After “Get Melanie Back” came “Fix up this freaking dump.” He drained the last of his beer, dropped his cigarette into the wet remnants in the bottle, then prayed he could slide into a few hours of dreamless sleep.