Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(10)

But a job was a job and I’d do the work if I had the time. It was amazing how set most people’s habits were. A week or two would show most everything. Where people ate, worked, shopped. Sometimes the person who hired me already had e-mails or texts or proof. Others, just vague suspicion, coalescing into an itch that could no longer be ignored. Sometimes it would be nothing. Sometimes it would be. I always billed for the affair jobs. Not like the women from the shelters. Infidelity was one problem. Being trapped, threatened, hurt—that was different.

Those people deserved protection.

I watched as the man got into a silver Mercedes S550. The paint gleamed, freshly washed. A vanity plate read LAW1981. I didn’t care much about cars, but it was easy to tell that this was a nice one, the roof curved and taut, as though the whole car was eager to spring forward. The Mercedes pulled away as the woman went back inside.

I had seen a pay phone down the block by the deli. I put coins in and dialed. A woman’s voice answered. “Hello?”

“Brenda, it’s Nikki.”

There was a pause. The woman on the other end bracing herself. Like getting lab results from the doctor. “Hi, Nikki. Any updates?”

“Why don’t we meet for coffee?”





8


She was coming into East Bay from San Francisco, so I suggested a tiny coffee shop just off the Bay Bridge in West Oakland, not far from where I had paid the visit to Robert Harris. A sign said BAY COFFEE. The sign made sense. They had coffee, and there was the Bay. It was an industrial neighborhood, the road’s battered pavement waving a white flag high after years of the big trucks that jolted along on their way to the Oakland Port. Some parts of Oakland had gotten nice fast. Some were taking their time.

Brenda Johnson was a stylish, pretty woman of about fifty. Her hair was honey-colored and professionally styled, her hands manicured. She wore suede boots and a three-quarter-length black Burberry jacket with the belt knotted fashionably. She eyed the small café anxiously, as though they’d hand her bad news printed right across the menu. I thought again of the lab results.

“Coffee’s on me,” I said. “What are you having?”

She blinked and looked at me. “Just a cappuccino if they have it. Otherwise coffee with cream and sugar. Thanks, Nikki.”

“I’ll be out in a minute,” I said. “We can sit outside.”

At the counter I ordered from a pretty black-haired girl in her midtwenties. “Can you do cappuccino?” I asked.

She nodded. “Sure.” She had a slim body, brown eyes, and small white teeth. A brown-yellow discoloration, like a large birthmark, spread across her right cheekbone. I smelled cigarettes and Tommy Girl perfume. I’d worn the same stuff myself all through high school.

“One of those, and a large black, no sugar.”

She handed the full cups over unlidded, and a few drops of coffee splashed over the rim onto my jacket as I reached to take it. “I’m so sorry,” she said. She looked more than sorry. She looked like instead of a little coffee she’d spilled two million barrels of crude into a harbor full of otters. I saw the tattoo of a rose on her thin forearm, the long stem twisting along skin. Thorns protruded at intervals as though pinning the stem into her arm.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Here, let me.” She grabbed a handful of paper towels and dabbed awkwardly at my arm. “I’m so sorry,” she said again. “I’m such an idiot.”

“Hey,” I said, nonplussed. “It’s no big deal. Seriously.”

“It’s just—I’m having the worst day. I know that’s not your problem.”

“Anything I can do?”

She shook her head as though at the silliness of the question. “I’ll be fine. Thanks for not yelling at me. You wouldn’t believe what some people are like.”

“I believe it.” The yellowish mark on her face. It didn’t look quite like a birthmark after all. It had that unhealthy, overripe look of injured skin. She caught my gaze and seemed to shrink into herself. She tore little corners off the napkin she was holding and white flecks drifted to the counter with the determined instability of snow.

“I’ll be fine,” she said again.

“I’m Nikki,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Zoe,” she answered hesitantly. She had a faint accent. South American. I couldn’t place the country. The smattering of Spanish left over from high school didn’t take me that far.

“We can talk,” I said. “If you’d like. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

She blushed and shook her head without a word.

I picked up the two cups. “I work at a bookstore over on Telegraph.” I handed her a business card. “A few of us do a kind of book club thing. We’re meeting next Friday afternoon. Maybe you’d like to come.”

She blushed again and looked away. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve even read a real book. I didn’t even finish high school. I wouldn’t fit in.”

“You might be surprised. You might fit in just fine.”

She took the card carefully, as though it was made of the most delicate glass, and slid it into the tight pocket of her jeans. “I’ll think about it.” She had torn the napkin into a blizzard of tiny pieces that covered the counter.