Ace in the Hole (City Meets Country Book 4) Read online

  Sailor was sobbing as he said all that. “No, Dad. There’s love. Love is life.”

  He shrugged. “There’s strength. Love is strength. I raised you to be strong.”

  “No, Dad. You raised me to be alone.” Weeping out of control, she crashed into the upholstered chair where he usually seated potential investors. “Loving somebody isn’t about being smart or being rich, damn it!”

  He stood by the side of her chair and touched her shoulder and pointed with one delicate finger. “That sign’s been up for years, but I still think about it every day.”

  “Fuck the sign.”

  “No, look at it. Read it. Really read it.”

  Wiping tears, Sailor studied the fading yellow framed certificate on the wall above his desktop computer. It read, “Every man builds the world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.” Also, part of the sign was a picture of a hideously ugly woman who must have been the originator of the saying.

  “The necessity of choice,” said Roger Kingston. “What is that?”

  Sailor sniffled.

  “It means you have to take action. You have to take charge of the world with your own force, using your own maximum potential. If you don’t act, you get acted upon. So before you keep cursing me out, consider this: left to your own devices, haven’t you started to figure out how to take charge of yourself? Well? Haven’t you?”

  “No!” she screamed. “You’re supposed to be my dad! You’re supposed to help me.”

  “I’ll give you money if you need it, and I’ll help you get out of trouble if you make a mistake. The rest is all your responsibility. Take charge of your world, Sailor. Rule it. Your mother and I made you for that. Tell me the truth. Don’t you realize that you can do it?”

  “No!” She looked at the picture and the quote for a while. Her tears passed. “Yeah. Yeah, I can. But that doesn’t make it right the way you treated me all those years.”

  Roger Kingston pursed his lips. “I don’t care how much of a piece of shit you think I am. When you rule your world, you’ll thank me, and if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. Okay? So I’m going to an appointment. Sheila at the desk will call you a cab. You’re too drunk to go home on your own.”

  Two years later, when Sailor was twenty-two, there was the plane crash, and he and Camilla were dead, and Marina, who was worse to have around than nobody, fled to Australia to schmooze with aborigines, and Sailor was alone.

  ****

  Now twenty-four, Sailor admired take-charge attitudes – just as her dad had taught her - when you have a plan, go at it boldly. That was what Ace had done the first night in her bar and continued to do in the days that followed.

  Axl was his first project. It started at the staff meeting after closing time at 1 AM. Ace was fresh as a flower and buzzy as a bee, as her old elementary school teacher had used to say.

  “You have security training?” Ace inquired.

  Axl swallowed and shook his head.

  “So do you have any basis to argue with me about security procedures, other than stubbornness or your own interests?”

  “Nope,” said Axl.

  “So will you argue with me?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay. First thing. Stay off your phone. You’re boring. Your friends are boring.”

  “Job is boring,” said Axl.

  “Fine. Your second directive will take care of that, and here it is: watch the patrons. Can you tell when someone might be a problem? You’re smart enough to do that, right?”

  “Think so, yeah,” Axl said.

  “So when you see someone like that, go hang out and make friends. Just you being in close proximity lets them know you’re paying attention.”

  “Yeah, but people don’t come in to this bar to make friends with me,” Axl argued.

  “Your job is to get rid of people who will make trouble if they stay. And you don’t want to get in a fight every night, do you?”

  “No, Sailor isn’t paying insurance. I only got Obamacare.”

  “Good. So drive them away by hanging out with them.”

  “The bikers are too much,” Axl said.

  “We’ll do that together.”

  “Can you take a whole gang of bikers by yourself?” Axl demanded.

  “I won’t be by myself. You’ll be with me. You just block my back, ‘kay? And if we do our jobs right, you won’t have to.”

  “Yeah,” said Axl.

  “Next thing is, you appear tough based on how you carry yourself, not your ink. So cover your arms. If you dress like a fake tough guy, people want to try you. Dress low-key, professional. You’re there to do your job, not to show off. Got it?”

  “There’s no dress code at the Hole,” said Axl.

  “Yes, there is,” Sailor interrupted. “I gave you an employee manual.”

  “Come on, Sailor.” For a big man, Axl was great at whining. “We can’t let this guy come in and…”

  “That’s what he’s here for. Axl, do you want to be a good employee, or do you want to be a pain in the ass, get fired, and sue me and waste both our time and then lose? What do you want to do?”

  Axl lowered his chin. “Okay, okay.”

  Ace said, “Wear button front shirts and slacks. If you want to be cool, open up the shirt and wear a gold chain on your hairy chest.”

  “His chest ain’t hairy,” said Pippi.

  Sailor didn’t want to imagine how Pippi knew that.

  The meeting continued. Ace explained that security problems got worse when staff drank on the job. Sailor confirmed the wording in the employee manual that said anyone found consuming alcohol on the job would receive one week’s notice. And yes, there were too many typos. #TurnOnTheSpellCheckNextTime

  “I’m putting in new security cameras at the end of the week,” Ace said. “The ones in place now are so old they’re collecting Social Security. The new cameras will feed directly to a hard drive in an undisclosed location. I’m hiring a third party to watch footage the next day and send us time cues for when any of you lift a beverage in a suspicious way, or give one away to a friend.”

  Axl rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything. Sailor knew Ace was bluffing about hiring a third party, but she had already given him a few hundred dollars cash for the security equipment. She was planning to watch while he did the installation, which was of course to learn how to maintain the equipment, and in no way to look up at his butt while he was standing on a ladder.

  “I don’t drink,” Pippi said. “Just Cokes. Sailor said it was okay.”

  “It’s better if you bring in your drinks from outside, or ring them up and pay for them,” Sailor said. “I don’t mind paying for your Cokes, but it’s messing up my spreadsheets.”

  “There’s a 7-11 up the street, sells Big Gulps all day and night,” Ace said. “There you go. You can be like the lab girl on NCIS.”

  After the meeting, which lasted about an hour, Gabby went up to Ace. “Can I hug you?”

  “Sure, come on in,” he said and spread his arms. She grabbed him around the torso, her head against his chest. “Thank you so much,” she said. “I never felt safe coming to work, with people slapping my ass and all the fights. It’s not Sailor’s fault, she tries, and stuff, but we need somebody like you.” She let go. “My Uncle Mitch is really sick, you know, with his leukemia, and he keeps calling me that he’s weak and can’t get up. I take him to pee, I make him eat. Oh my God, he was so strong when I was a kid, and it’s just him and me now. It’s just been so stressful. I think maybe I’ll feel good coming to work if it’s safe. I mean, I like waitressing and stuff.”

  Sailor looked away. There was not a trace of manipulation in Gabby’s voice. The waitress had not trusted her with the story about her uncle. Was she, Sailor, really such a cold fish that another woman wasn’t able to trust her with a story that was nothing to be ashamed of?

  At two-fifteen A.M., Ace walked Sailor to her car.

  “I
think the meeting went well,” she told him. “I learned something tonight.” She looked up at the stubble on his lantern jaw. The streetlights gave a sheen to his eyes. She was really liking his rumbling Kentucky voice.

  “You know what it is?” he said. He stopped, took her shoulders and looked at her. “I learned from my police days. The more time you spend studying people, the more you can anticipate what they’ll do, and prepare yourself to handle situations. If you know people, you do things before they get upset, so they don’t. And I figure you can turn that kind of thing into making them happy, too. Maybe not the best management style, but what do I know about that?”

  “More than me,” Sailor said. “I know fashion and design, and I know accounting. But managing people’s a growth area for me.”

  “No, you can do it. You’re a classy woman. That’s obvious. A few tweaks, and you’ll have a happy staff that actually give a damn.”

  Sailor wondered how he could know that. What had he seen in her that she had not been able to see in herself? She asked, “Can a classy woman, to use your words, be in the bar business? I mean, Ace, do you think this is the right decision for me?”

  He thought about it a moment. “I’ve been thinking about that. Sizing people up is my business, like I said, and I suppose I’ve sized you up, like I would any boss. So it’s only been a couple of days, but I think you are a high-achieving person, and you can do most anything you set your mind to. You smell like success.”

  “And sweat, and Annick Goutal.”

  “What’s that?”

  He’d never heard of the scent she wore – why would he have? “It’s a perfume. Never mind, I’ll get you some to send to your girlfriend.”

  He sniffed. “I don’t have one of those.”

  They had reached her car. She unlocked it. “Seems like the Kentucky girls would…” She choked off the words. “Well, I’m surprised.”

  Ace nodded. “I take some getting to know, Sailor. My professional side is only part of the story. I’ve had some troubles. Nothing you need to worry about, but that’s the truth of the matter.”

  ****

  Sailor decided she wanted to know more about that, but she wasn’t sure it was appropriate to ask an employee for personal history. Instead, when she got in, she texted Harper Wheeler, his cousin and her tenant, who had arranged for Ace to come here in the first place.

  SAILOR: Lunch Sunday, Spumoni Gardens?

  A while later, Sailor heard Gabriel Castillo saying good night and leaving. Harper sent her an affirmative reply a few minutes later.

  ****

  They drove together in Harper’s pink pickup truck – she was still learning to drive around Brooklyn and wanted the practice. Harper had humored her request to try out new and almost-matching outfits for the occasion – something Marina had never consented to do after the age of ten – and were wearing red accordion skirts, silk blouses, pastel-colored scarves, and stiletto heels. Harper had a little trouble walking on hers; unlike Sailor, she hadn’t grown up wearing Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin.

  Sitting over panzanella salads and glasses of Cabernet, they talked about Gabriel and fashion and the aquarium and the Hole until Sailor was able to steer the conversation to Ace.

  “He said he’s had some troubles,” Sailor said. “I didn’t want to ask him, but he sort of opened the door. Is it anything I should be ready to help out with? Is it connected with why he left the police?”

  “I think so,” Harper admitted. “But he’s really good at his job. He was a great cop, too, till something happened. Listen, I should check with him before I tell you anything.”

  “Okay.”

  Harper tapped out a text message on her phone. In a few minutes filled with crunching lettuce and dainty sips of extremely dry red wine, they awaited a reply. Finally the return ding came, and Harper showed the reply she had received.

  HARPER: Can I tell Sailor what happened why you left the force

  ACE: Sure she is trustworthy but make sure she knows it won’t affect my work for her

  ACE: Anyway it was in the newspaper she could find it on her own

  Sailor pursed her lips. It was good to know that Ace thought she was trustworthy. That was certainly different from her other employees.

  “Okay, here’s the story,” Harper said. “He was working a human trafficking unit in Louisville. I don’t know what exactly happened, but he got a girl out of there and got stabbed twenty times. They were really careful not to kill him. They were sending a message, I guess. He’s strong, and he bounced back physically, but he was really traumatized. So maybe he has PTSD. I know he gets bad dreams and flashbacks, and sometimes he needs to be alone to work through things. He used to say it was his fault, that he walked right into the situation because he read those guys wrong. I mean, he has the most fantastic mental discipline. He’s never more aggressive than he needs to be, and he never loses his temper, like some people with PTSD do. I think he takes it out on himself.”

  “Is that why he doesn’t have a girlfriend? I mean, he’s not gay, is he?”

  “No, he’s not gay. He had a few girlfriends in the years before the stabbing, but I think they were sort of taking advantage of him. They didn’t do much to support him. Because he’s so strong, they just wanted the strong guy around them to make them look good and do their shit for them. He deserves better than that, even if he doesn’t ask. Why do you ask?”

  Sailor wondered herself why she had asked. No, maybe she knew. The man was unbelievably attractive, but Harper’s comment on his old girlfriends was important. Was she, Sailor, drawn to him because he was strong? Would she be a user if she got involved with this man?

  What business did she have with a sexy bad boy anyway?

  Her mother Camilla had warned her. “We women have a biological drive, call it an itch if you like, that is satisfied by dangerous men. Dangerous men are sexy. But they aren’t good for anything outside the bedroom; in fact, they drag you down. When push comes to shove, you should be with a man who is a smart bet to succeed. Scratch your itch when you’re young, but after that, you should consider sacrificing orgasms in favor of security.”

  Camilla didn’t seem to care much about sex at all. “Just do whatever your man wants,” she said, “tell him it was great, even though it may feel like you’re being penetrated by an over-boiled frankfurter. Make a few moaning sounds so he feels like he’s in control, and it’ll be over quicker. That’s how you keep them around. Oh. And don’t get fat.”

  Sailor had gone so long without an orgasm that she scarcely remembered what they were like. It was business, business, business with her. She was alone, could only rely on herself, would succeed on her own. No dangerous men for her. She wouldn’t even think about getting this dangerous man to scratch her itch.

  Yeah. Sure she wouldn’t.

  Chapter Five

  Two weeks into his new job, Ace sat at the bar with a glass of ice water, making a list of things that still needed implementing. He thought he just might be able to clean this place up after all. The new bouncers he’d hired, Jack and Jill (who was actually Bill, but the nickname had already stuck) were doing a commendable job. Axl had even warmed up to them.

  Ace suspected Axl wasn’t really all that bad of a bouncer, but had mostly been overworked. Burnout could ruin a security man quicker than anything. You had to have some time to breathe and unwind. Ace had used to do that driving along the scenic motorcycle trails in the Bluegrass or Cumberland Falls regions. He’d have to figure out a better way to blow off steam now that he lived in a concrete maze.

  His first inclination turned to Sailor, and while he was sure he’d enjoy the physical pleasures he fantasized about, his boss was off limits. Work and sex didn’t mix. It screwed up your judgement when you needed it most, especially in this line of work. It didn’t help that he didn’t care for casual sex and tended to put his heart on the line. Maybe he could find a good Krav Maga class like he’d taken back home. He could even enroll t
he bouncers in it to better prepare them for the day when he moved on to his next assignment.

  A big ruckus started up behind him, with a man bellowing, “Hey! What the fuck, bitch?” A chair squealed across the floor then fell backwards. Ace looked up at the clock. Five minutes shy of 5:00 on a Thursday – not your usual bar brawl hour. Then again, this wasn’t your usual bar. He spun around on his bar stool, but didn’t get up. Jack and Jill were already headed to the scene.

  The man they approached was pot-bellied, mostly bald, and dressed in an expensive suit. He stood at his table, wiping booze off his rage-red face with a napkin. He wore a watch that looked like a cheap thing you’d get from a claw machine. A woman sat across from him, holding a wine glass and staring him down. She wore an off-the-shoulder red blouse and a pair of tight black leggings. Her hair was teased into what looked like a mousy-brown helmet. Excessively tanned skin, wrinkles around her lips, and bulging eyes spoke of someone younger than she appeared who drank and smoked to ease her stress. Hickies on her neck suggested she might be a hired date.

  “What’s the trouble?” Jack asked, arms down and shoulders relaxed. He was utilizing the soft smile and easy posture Ace had taught him, all the while looking both parties in the eye. Nine times out of ten, that’s all that was needed. Early intervention to show the patrons that’s as far as they’d let it go.

  “That man put a roofie in my wine!” the woman accused, pointing the empty glass at him. Ace couldn’t see from where he sat if any residue was left in the glass. If she hadn’t of tossed it in the man’s face, he might have been able to tell.

  Jill picked up on it. “Well, ma’am, we can’t tell now that your glass is empty, but I’d suggest you come to the bar and order your own drink. Then don’t let it out of your sight.” He turned to the man. “Sir, I suggest you get a cab and let this lady drink in peace.”