LITMIR.BIZ

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to flirt with me and Rick and Mary Ann became more and more enamored. We eventually parted ways after Mary Ann and Rick exchanged numbers. I gave my number to Johnny as well, but only because he said he might be able to convince Maggie Gallagher to agree to an interview. All I wanted to do was go home, curl up in front of the television. But any hope I had of achieving a state of calm went out the window when I saw Anatoly sitting on my doorstep.

      “You lied to me,” he snapped.

      “How is that possible?” I quibbled. “I haven’t been talking to you.”

      “You spoke to me for five minutes the other day, which is apparently all the time you needed. Did it ever occur to you that the reason I wasn’t ready to commit was because you were so rarely honest with me?”

      I blinked in surprise. “That’s the reason?”

      “No, but if it was it would have been a logical one.”

      “I think I hate you.”

      Anatoly’s mouth turned up slightly at the corners. “Another lie.”

      “Why are you here?”

      “Your friend Melanie O’Reilly called me.”

      “What! Why?” The pounding in my temples increased in force. “How the hell did she even get your number?”

      “I’m listed in the phone book under private detectives. That is my vocation if you recall.”

      “Yes I recall,” I emphasized the last word to underscore my feelings about his condescension, “but Melanie doesn’t need a private detective. She has me.”

      Anatoly lifted his eyebrow. “Explain to me how this is helpful.”

      “Isn’t it obvious? I’ve been gathering information for her!”

      Anatoly took a step forward and put a hand on each one of my arms. “I know I’ve said this before, but since you never listen I’ll say it again. You are not a detective. You are a writer. You have no business running around the city trying to solve murders.”

      “I’m not trying to solve a murder. I’m just doing a little research.” I unlocked the door to my building and tried to close it in Anatoly’s face, but he was too quick for me and scooted into the lobby.

      “I’m not in the mood for this, Anatoly,” I snapped. “If you want to talk to me you call me. You do not get to just show up at my place unannounced.”

      “I called your home and cell. You didn’t pick up.”

      “Bullshit.” I reached into my purse and fished for my cell phone. “I’ve had this on all day and you didn’t…oh.” I looked at the words “one missed call” printed across the screen of my Nokia. The restaurant had been a little noisy. “So you phoned,” I grumbled. “You still shouldn’t have come over without talking to me first.”

      “We can talk now,” he said. “Melanie told me that Flynn Fitzgerald hired Eugene to get the goods on Anne Brooke.”

      Melanie told him that? “Tell me something I don’t know.”

      He crossed his arms and leaned his back against the wall of mailboxes. “I think there’s a chance Eugene’s death might be politically motivated.”

      “Really?” I tried to swallow my panic. Hearing that idea vocalized by someone else gave it a validity that I didn’t want it to have.

      “Melanie offered me a significant sum of money to look into Eugene’s death. She said she wanted to hire me before but you told her I was unavailable.”

      “You aren’t available…at least not emotionally.”

      “I’m going to take the case,” Anatoly said.

      “You are?” Maybe this was a good thing after all. He was forcing the issue of my talking to him, anyway, so now I could give him the information I had collected so far and start focusing on my next book. And if I did have to talk to him, this was the way to do it, in my lobby while he was being too obnoxious to be attractive.

      “But I’m going to tell her I have one condition,” he continued. “I don’t want you involved in the case at all. You are not to question people or research Eugene O’Reilly’s death in any way.”

      I blinked in disbelief. “Excuse me? What gives you the right to tell me that I can’t be involved?”

      “Sophie, in the past few years you’ve ticked off several people and a few of them have been murderers.”

      “So I’ve had a few guns pointed at me. You even pointed a gun at me once.”

      “You were wielding a broken bottle at the time.”

      “It wasn’t a rock-paper-scissors game. There was no need for you to trump me.”

      Anatoly shook his head in annoyance. “What I’m saying is that you have been very lucky. You have behaved stupidly in extremely dangerous situations and yet you have managed to stay alive.”

      “Which is more than they’re going to be able to say about you unless you change your tone.”

      “This time you may need more than luck,” Anatoly said, completely ignoring my threat. “If the motivations for this killing can somehow be traced back to Eugene’s actions in the FBI, or worse yet, his position on Flynn Fitzgerald’s campaign, then Eugene’s death isn’t so much a murder as it is an assassination. As dangerous as it is to antagonize serial killers, it’s even more dangerous to antagonize professional assassins. I may not be able to protect you this time.”

      I laughed bitterly. “What the hell are you talking about? The closest you’ve ever come to protecting me is when you put on a Trojan!”

      “This is too dangerous, Sophie. Let me handle it.”

      “And what makes you more qualified to handle this than me? Oh, let me guess, it has something to do with the Y chromosome.”

      “No, it has to do with my service in the Russian and Israeli armies.”

      “Being a mercenary doesn’t make you more qualified to deal with professional killers.”

      “First of all, I’m not and have never been a mercenary. I was a citizen of both countries at the time of my service. Second, of course it makes me more qualified! What the hell do you think a mercenary is?”

      I leaned forward and looked him in the eyes. “I told Melanie that I’d help her and that’s what I’m going to do.”

      “Getting me to take her case is helping her. You’re done now.”

      “Um, I don’t think so.”

      Anatoly glared at me. “You’re making a big mistake with this, Sophie.”

      “If that’s true it’s my mistake to make. I’ve already interviewed Flynn Fitzgerald and his top adviser, and I have an appointment to interview Anne Brooke.” Okay, that last part was a lie but he didn’t need to know that. “I’m in this now. If Melanie wants to hire you, fine, she can do that. But if you actually plan on solving this case and not just bilking her for thousands of dollars for no reason, then you might want to start working with me instead of treating me like a spoiled five-year-old.”

      “It would be easier to treat you like an adult if you’d start acting like one.”

      “This from the man who three months ago bought a bunch of lawn chairs to use for his living room furniture.”

      “They’re comfortable!”

      “They are so not comfortable. I’m going upstairs now.”

      Anatoly smirked. “Is that an invitation?”

      “Yes. I’m inviting you to walk out of my building before I call the police.”

      “The police?” Anatoly

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