She didn’t respond until I touched the business end of the Beretta against her temple.
“If I hit a pot hole, you’re dead,” I informed her. “You might want to answer my question so I can concentrate on my driving.”
“Nina,” she said quietly. “Nina Carson.”
I knew who she was immediately. Killing James Carson is what had me sent to Arizona, and Nina was his sister. Greco was doing her cousin on the side.
“Take out your phone,” I instructed.
With a shaking hand, she did as I said.
“Now call up Mister Hobbs and tell him you need to see him right away.”
“But…but I just left him…”
“Tell him to meet you in the parking garage of the Chicago Sun Times.”
“The garage?”
“You heard me.”
She swallowed a couple of times, and I had to wonder what was going on in her head. She wasn’t new to all this, that much was sure. It was entirely possible she knew exactly who I was, but not likely.
She made the call like her life depended on it, so maybe she did know who I was. She followed directions and told Steven right where to meet us but not why. She gave nothing away and sounded very convincing.
Proper little liar.
I pulled her car into a handicapped space in the parking garage next to a small, metal door. I kept my gun at her face, moved backwards out of the driver’s side door, and then brought her through with me.
With her upper arm firmly in my grasp, I moved her past the piss-stained cement walls and to a small door. I twisted the knob, and it opened easily. Inside the room there were three chairs on the floor, a rusted metal toolbox in the corner, and a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
I placed her in one of the chairs and grabbed both her wrists in one hand. From the toolbox I extracted plastic zip ties and secured her hands behind her.
“What’s going on?” she asked. The panic in her voice was rising. I still didn’t think she knew who I was, but she was getting the idea. “Please, I won’t tell anyone–”
I gagged her with a rag from the toolbox, made a quick call to Rinaldo, and then waited at the door. Steven Hobbs arrived just a minute or two later, and I called out to him.
“Looking for a girl?” I asked. I beckoned with my hand. “She’s in here.”
The moron came right to the door, where I hauled him in and gave him a slight push towards Nina. He stumbled a little, turned, and looked at me quizzically as I closed the door behind us.
“What…what’s going on?” Steven asked.
“Have a seat.” I indicated the folding metal chair next to his girlfriend.
“Maria?” he said quietly.
“Try Nina,” I corrected.
He just stared, confused. He was an idiot, like all men who did more thinking with their dicks than actually putting them to their natural use. I didn’t even have to ask him about his past. I knew it as well as I knew my own.
Overweight in school, bullied on the playground, and always picked last on the team. He always thought he was much smarter than those who hazed him and thought that someday he’d have a great job and they’d have to grovel to him instead of laugh. Instead, he got a mediocre job, no date for the prom, and was now being used by a woman who probably hadn’t even let him come in her.
I raised my gun and indicated the chair again. He sat and stared at me with wide eyes.
It was only a few minutes before I heard the sound of additional cars parking just outside the little office room. Footsteps followed, and then four short raps on the door. I took a step backwards to open it.
Rinaldo, Mario, and Terry Kramer were outside of the door.