Flirting With Danger

“You know there’s a woman out here waitin’ to see you, Luke?” a scruffy, unshaven looking man in his late fifties said, popping his face around the private investigator’s office door.

Luke lifted his head and ran a tired hand through his hair. “Yeah, I know, Sid.”

The problem was, what was Luke going to say to Mrs Jackson this time? She had come to him weeks ago, asking if he would find some woman for her, but something wasn’t right. Mrs Jackson had been reluctant to say why she was looking for this woman. What was worse, Luke had strong suspicions that Mrs Jackson had connections with the Borellis, the mafia family that he had been trying to bring to justice for the last four years! And if the Borellis were involved, then this woman Jackson wanted him to find could be in serious danger.

Taking on private clients like this was a profitable business, and Luke needed the money to fund his investigations into the Borellis, but he hadn’t bargained on having to deal with so many heartless low lives in the process. Trying to bring down the most notorious family in New York was a costly business, but taking on the kind of private clients that reared their ugly heads in this part of town was taking its toll on his conscience too.

Luke sighed again and swivelled on his chair to gaze out over the city below him. He leant back into the brown, worn out leather of his seat and threw his feet up onto the window ledge, letting the scene before him come into focus, like a polaroid photograph. He narrowed his eyes as he scanned them suspiciously across the city, as if hoping to uncover something there and then that would finally, once and for all, help him to bring down the Borellis. It was useless. How was he to know whether Jackson was working with the Borellis? Simply because the whole damn city was! It was a web of corruption that had spread so far and become so entangled that Luke was seriously questioning his ability to untangle it!

A loud knock on the door startled him out of his thoughts and he swung around to see Mrs Jackson striding purposefully across his office.

“Noabody messes wid me Mr Luke. You wanna keep me waitin’ again some more, eh?” she slurred, planting her hands on his desk and glowering angrily down at him.

A great waft of alcohol hit him as she swayed towards him. At close quarters, he could see more clearly the evidence of multiple plastic surgeries on her face: the overly taught skin distorting her features and the attempts to balance that out with Botox and God knows what other forms of plastic. He wondered whose lives had been ruined to provide the dough for those kinds of luxuries. And what a waste; she looked so incredibly fake: an ugly, brash contorted fake. A bitter and twisted woman hell bent on revenge. No integrity. Heartless...

For a second, he became aware then of where his train of thought was heading yet again. To the woman who was the complete and utter polar opposite of this woman, or to anyone in that godforsaken place for that matter. The woman he’d been forced to leave behind in the UK, his partner and probably the woman he most admired and trusted in the whole damn world; Charlie Seymour.

“I know some guys who would bust your cahonies jus’ for makin’ me wait. You don’t know who you’re messin’ with,” she added.

“Oh, don’t I!” he snapped back, springing off his chair and creating a loud, uncomfortable screeching noise as the metal chair legs scraped across the floor. The sudden sound and commotion visibly shocked the woman for a second. Okay, so he had already made up his mind he was not taking on her case, but the last thing he needed now was some woman like her making trouble for him. He lightened his tone. “Look, sorry, I can’t find anyone for you right now. I’m workin’ on somethin’ else. Sorry for wasting your time,” he said, turning around dismissively.

“You what?” she screeched, before beginning to laugh, a loud and mocking sound. “No can do, Mr Luke...”

He turned slowly, crossing his arms, observing her with distaste.

“Tony sent me. You got till Friday to find her. You’re workin’ for them now, or they’ll come for you, and believe me, they know where you are.” She looked satisfied with her parting shot and turned to leave.

Luke had her by the arm in seconds and swung her around, pinning her to the wall. So, Luke had been right; the Borellis had sent her.

“Now you listen lady,” he said, jabbing a finger into her shoulder, “You can tell Tony and Roberto from me, and quote, even if every gang in New York is lookin’ to tear me to shreds before, after or in-between, I don’t care, because you see, I’ve made a lifetime obsession out of bringing the Borellis down, and I ain’t afraid to die to do it!” he hollered.

Jackson became silent, for once. Her eyes shot resentment into Luke’s, but she was too wary to voice it.

He let go of his grip suddenly and turned from her once more.

“Get outta here,” he shouted, over his shoulder.

She turned and darted to the office door, opening it, but pausing before she left.

“You’re making a big mistake, Mr Luke,” she said.

Then he heard the door slam, and she was gone.

He spent the next fifteen or so minutes trashing his office. At some point he was vaguely aware of the door opening and Sid cautiously peering into the room. He said something to Luke, what, he wasn’t sure, for he was so enraged that the sound of furniture crashing around the room drowned out Sid’s voice. Seconds later the door closed, and no one bothered him after that.

Finally, exhausted, both physically and emotionally, he waded through the carnage, sought out his office chair, upturned it and sunk into its leather. He sat amongst the wreckage in darkness, the broken bulbs having formed part of the havoc. Swirling around in his chair, he flung his feet up onto the window ledge and stared out at the city below him.

x

An hour later, after half a bottle of whisky and a lot of soul searching, Luke had made a decision, one which he had been contemplating more and more over the last few months: he was going back to the UK. He had to, or he would be dead in days. Besides, it was about time he found Charlie once and for all and had it out with her about what had happened when he’d left.

He had to make her realise it was a mistake. How was he to know that leaving for just a few weeks would mean that by the time he went back, there’d be no job for him at MI5? He’d told the boss about Danny, and how Danny would have been a dead man if he hadn’t gone to New York to help him. Boy had he been right about that! Okay, so he should have made that phone call to the boss, and to Charlie, before he’d left, rather than two days after, but his mind had only been on getting back before they got to Danny. He’d thought the boss and Charlie would understand once they knew the situation. But Charlie had refused to even speak to him when the boss had tried to pass the phone to her, so how could he explain if she wouldn’t let him?

Then had come the sickening realisation of just what a mistake he had made. He’d found that out when he’d flown back to the UK two weeks later.

Just one phone call before he had left, one lousy phone call, and the bureaucrats would have had no authority to send him back to the US for good. It would have been down to the boss to grant him leave. But he hadn’t made that phone call from the right place, at the right time, and so it was out of the boss’s hands. That was what had come between him and his life in the UK, a life he’d been more than happy with, a life he was not ready to give up.

Then the second bomb had dropped. Charlie had gone... left MI5. The boss had said something dumb about her saying she’d made the right decision when she’d left MI5 the first time. He knew she was fuming at him, but he’d tried to find her to explain. She’d done a great job of dropping off the map! Where the hell had she gone?

Then the boss had been on his back about him having to get on a plane pronto before he was arrested for being illegal, but the boss had promised he would explain to Charlie and get her to phone him. By about the end of the first year in New York, Luke had finally stopped hoping for a call from her. Besides, he was far too deeply involved in the whole Borelli mess by then to hope for anything else. By that time, the Borellis were everything in his life; what else did he have?

Still, there had been many times late at night in that dismal office of his, when he’d looked out over the city and drifted back to the MI5 years. He’d see Charlie in his head and drive himself nuts wondering what she was doing at that very moment. Then he’d remember some of their conversations, the jokes, the teasing, even the shouting matches. But the good memories had been tainted with regret. He’d never even got to kiss her, not properly anyway, not the way he’d imagined over and over for years since he’d first met her.

And his imaginings had grown in those days and become more detailed as time went by. During long sleepless nights, on cases that had eaten away at him, he’d picture her in bed across town... and him with her... and what he would do and say, and how she would give in to him completely...and he’d burned with frustration which had continued well into the morning, and simmered as he’d sat at his desk across from her. But everything had been so cruelly and suddenly cut short, and any opportunity he’d had was, without warning, taken away from him. He’d always truly believed that somehow, someday he’d know what it would be like to be in that bed with her, to wake up with her, and in between, to make all his imaginings a reality.

Maybe he’d always been kidding himself. Still, if he was going back, he was going to find her. He just had to.