Chapter 14 -- A Penthouse or Two

Author's Note: Still a strong PG-13...




If I had another chance tonight
I'd try to tell you that
the things we had were right
Time can erase the love we shared
But it gives me time
to realize just how much you cared

Toto - I Won't Hold You Back

Chapter 14 -- A Penthouse or Two

Mara opened her eyes and watched the city whiz by through the windows of the cab. She couldn't shake that surreal, dream-like state she had sunk into. She had been gone from this city for seven years now, but the city changeable, yet immutable, made her feel as if she had never left.

A distant part of herself idly mused if that would make her feel any younger, or perhaps any better about herself. At that thought she sat bolt upright, reading herself an internal riot act, and startling Lara.

Mara Pitts didn't need a big city or a man to feel better about herself. She didn't need to feel younger, she liked herself at this age just fine, thank you very much. Mara almost sighed in relief to realize that the first time in days she didn't feel like a wet dishrag or a tumbleweed, being tossed about by the wind. She felt anchored again.

She suspected she would need that anchoring, she was bound to find some sort of wind, if not only the real wind of the Windy City.

The taxi reached their destination, a posh, understated apartment building on Schiller between State Street and Lake Shore Drive. The cabbie double parked, as Lara paid him. He scrambled out to get Mara's suitcase out of the trunk as the women emerged more slowly from the cab.

Mara looked up at the twenty-story building, smallish, compared to some of the surrounding buildings, but still taller than anything in Pittsville. She grinned at the thought and remembered a child when she thought the four-story post office in Pierre was a tall building. And that was before she had even visited Sioux Falls.

She looked about her at ground level, and saw Lara looking at her with a half a smirk on her face.

"Tourist," Lara teased. "You'd think you had never lived in this city for several years."

"Yeah, yeah, remember, culture shock? Remember when YOU realized the tallest building in downtown Pitts was the grain elevator, Ms Born-and-Raised-In-Chicago??"

"Mara, your HOUSE is taller than half of Pittsville. C'mon, let's get inside. Won't Kevin be in for a surprise," Lara grinned wickedly.

"Ah, Lara? Did he know I was coming?"

"Ummm, no, but we'll work on that little detail when he gets home, hopefully in the next hour or so."

"Lara, I have to warn you. He's on my shit list right now..."

"Don't worry, he's not quite sleeping on the sofa here, but I'm not very happy with him either. But let's take that up with him when he gets home. Now we need to figure out what you'll do while you're here on your impromptu visit." Lara drew Mara into a conversation about what was showing at The Art Institute as opposed to some of the smaller area museums, or The Field Museum.

When the conversation flagged, Lara opened the drapes covering what was literally a wall of windows in the wall of the penthouse apartment. Mara's jaw dropped. Even though the building wasn't on Lake Shore Drive, it had the most incredible view of the city. She was surprised, because she had figured the other buildings would have blocked the view.

Lara grinned at Mara's expression. "The architect planned it that way. You probably didn't notice, when we were at ground level, but the penthouse is placed like a diamond on top of the rest of the building. This view faces south east. See, there's Navy Pier, or what you can see of it through this mizzling rain. Anyway, if you remember this part of town, we're not all that far from the Magnificent Mile. Shopping!" She ended on an exclamation.

"Lara, I didn't really come prepared to do a blitz on the town, I want to find out what's going on..."

Just then, they heard a key rattling in the door of the apartment. Kevin, all unsuspecting, stepped through to find his wife and his best friend glaring at him. His eyes widened. He knew he was in for it now.

-----------------------

In another penthouse in the near south side of town a pair of eyes was glaring at the captive tied to a chair.

"Well, well, my boys are telling me that my resident reporter doesn't know a thing about what happened to Giancarlo. And you with a nice Italian last name like Moretti, we're practically family. You know families shouldn't keep secrets from each other..."

The thickset older man ripped off the blindfold from the captive's eyes. Rafe squinted painful in the bright light of the room, trying to take in what he could with his right eye. The left one was swollen shut by what was turning into a magnificent black eye.

Rafe looked up at his captor. He beheld a short, rotund man who was balding, dressed in what had to be a tailored suit it fit him so well. He recognized him, Carlo Lombardo, a mid-level don in the Chicago Outfit, that city's branch of the Mafia. He had been up for racketeering charges several times, but he was as slick as lard on a hot summer day. None of the charges stuck.

"I don't *know* what happened to Giancarlo, I tried to tell that to your goons. Last time I saw him, and I didn't even know it was him, he had a fucking ski mask on, he was just about to blow a hole in my head. So you'll have to pardon me if I don't have an itinerary of his activities to give to you."

"Ah smart one, well, we'll see about that," Lombardo backhanded Rafe, reopening the cut at the corner of his mouth.

Rafe slowly brought his head back around. The don was smiling at him genially, but he could see his own death in the older man's eyes. Certain death if he couldn't come up with information that he didn't even have.

He looked at the floor, "Look, Carlo, Mr. Lombardo, up until about three days ago I was in South Dakota. And in the three days I've been back, I've hardly had any time to..."

Lombardo backhanded him again, the massive ring on his right hand leaving a cut across Rafe's cheek. Rafe was quiet, trying to get his brains back together in his head after those two ringing blows.

"My son goes missing and the last person other than the police to see him is a reporter sticking his big nose into business where he shouldn't. And now this same reporter," Lombardo grabbed Rafe's chin and forced him to look up, "says he hasn't the smallest idea where he may have gone."

"Mr. Lombardo, you *know* it wasn't just a simple bank robbery. I didn't think The Outfit touched drugs."

Lombardo pinched his chin harder and Rafe winced. "Mr. Moretti, you know we keep our hands clean of that sort of *business*. What the boys in The Outfit do on the side is their own business, just so long as The Outfit doesn't get dragged into it."

"How do you know that I would know anything about Giancarlo. I've obviously not done my research, I didn't even know he was your son. Who's to say he's out of it because of a drug deal gone bad?"

"You had better hope that isn't the real story, Mr. Moretti. I'll leave you here by yourself to think about it."

After Lombardo and his men left, Rafe looked around the bare room. Nothing. Not a damn thing to cut himself loose with. And the only way out was the door the men left through, unless he wanted to take a dive of who knows how many stories down to the concrete below.

Rafe groaned in response to the pain in his body and in his heart. Mara. She was well out of this mess. He hated leaving like he had, but somehow he had known it would come down to this. Better angry at him, hating him, rather than grieving. He bowed his head, his chin sinking down to his chest as he tried to think of a way out of this dead-end situation.

--------------

The Kuntzlers and Mara had sat down to dinner, Kevin asked for a reprieve until after dinner before the women would barrage him with questions. He had missed lunch and didn't think he could handle both of them pecking at him like verbal vultures on an empty stomach and low blood sugar.

'Harpies,' he thought in grim amusement. He loved both of the women dearly, but what the hell had happened? What the hell had Lara said to Mara or Mara said to Lara that resulted in Mara's now being in Chicago? He had a few questions of his own.

Like what the hell had happened to Rafe in Pittsville. Kevin had picked him up from O'Hare late at night. He had come in one of the red-eye flights. Rafe had looked unrested and...grim. Incredibly grim. What on earth had happened between Mara and him in the few short weeks he had been in Pittsville.

He polished off the last bite of the light trifle his wife had put together for a small desert. Putting down his fork, he saw that the women had also finished their meal.

"Well ladies, shall we take this discussion into the living room? Lara, don't cork that wine, bring it out with you. I have a feeling we're going to need it.

They silently walked out to the living room, all three carrying their wine glasses. Kevin decided that he must be a masochist because he was looking forward to the coming...talk. He just hoped it would stay civil and hoped he would find out what happened to Rafe and why Mara had glared holes into him when he had stepped through the door of his apartment.

Once they were seated in the comfortable chair and sofa grouping of the living room, Lara fired the opening salvo, "Kevin. Just what the hell is going on here? You've never been this closed mouthed. Last I knew Rafe was in Pittsville recuperating, then you call him back here, he disappears...I called Mara to see if she knows anything, and I find she's an absolute emotional wreck. And Mara, I think you should tell Kevin what...transpired in Pittsville. Maybe he can get it through his thick head that he's forgotten that people aren't pawns to be moved around at his whim?"

Mara had paled half-way through Lara's tirade. "Disappeared? What do you mean, Rafe's disappeared? You didn't tell me anything about that."

"That I just found out today from my darling husband. You were already on a flight out here. Kevin, you asked me to find out why Rafe looked so awful when he came back. Well I'd say he fell in love with Mara and then had to leave before he could say anything."

Mara gasped and shook her head. He couldn't love her, could he? Wasn't she just another conquest? And he had disappeared...DISAPPEARED. "Kevin, what is Lara talking about?!? Rafe's disappeared? He's not just on a hunt for a story, the story that must have called out to him so strongly that he just up and left...Pittsville?" Left me...

Kevin sat on the sofa, his elbows on his thighs, hunched over, thinking. How much could he tell them, these two intelligent women, that they would accept, without his having to tell the whole story?

----------------------

Rafe shivered in his chair, almost rousing from the light doze he had fallen into. The big room he was in wasn't very well heated and looked like it hadn't been used in a while as a living space. He couldn't hear any of the usual apartment building noises, so he figured he was in one of the buildings on the south side slated for demolition.

He shuddered again, and opened his eye, taking in the bleak room and the view out of the window beyond. It was full night now, he had no idea of the time. But he could tell roughly where he was from the lights of the skyline of the city. At least he was still in the city. At least he was still alive, for how much longer, he had no idea.

He had been staring unblinking at the city lights for so long that his good eye was starting to itch and the other eye, fettered by swollen flesh was beginning to actively ache. He fought from closing his eyes, but knew it was no good. He'd close them and he'd see Mara. He'd sleep and he'd dream Mara.

What was it about her? She was nothing like the type of women he usually favored. Those women were as sharp as knives in so many ways, with their thin brittleness and their willingness to climb up the ladder, whether it be social, political, or corporate. They were ruthless and he had thought he admired their ruthlessness. He took care of himself, they took care of themselves, when they came together for mutual pleasure, the results were often spectacular with fireworks. Their drive made them passionate beings.

But he knew Mara was no dummy, she was very sharp in her own way. She just chose not to wield her knife like the ladder climbers, who had no problem backstabbing with a gracious social smile adorning their faces. He and they had always looked out for numero uno, and anyone that came close was merely factored into that equation.

He shivered in the chill air again, and realized, that, other than to his mother, he had made himself emotionally unavailable. He had built some pretty good walls and it was a pretty good life until that damn trip to Pittsville.

Mara reminded him of his mother. Oh, she didn't look anything like his slender, elegant Italian mother, whom he swore did housecleaning in high heels and a fashionable black dress. But for all her fashion sense, and for all of Mara's lack of the same, they weren't such diametrical opposites as one would think at first glance.

They both sincerely cared for him, without any hidden agendas. Mara's plain face had become pretty when she smiled at him, her concern over his well being, the well being of a virtual stranger, shining in her face. Yes, she had fussed over him, but not annoyingly so, even though he had been unable to resist teasing her about it. Somewhere, at the time a thought had been planted in his head, that he wanted Mara to meet Giulietta, his mother.

The thought had shocked him. He couldn't understand why he had thought it at the time. Now when it was too late, he realized he loved Mara. Miserably, he realized that he'd never get a chance to tell her. Unbidden, a tear coursed down his cheek as he closed his eyes and thought about the two women he wouldn't ever see again.