Also at the same time (what could I say? bona fide research showed besties minds synced, and that’s the gods’ honest truth), we both put our hands to our crossbodies, in which were our Tasers.
“How high on the pissed-o-meter do you think he’ll get if we go out to there, Tasers in hand?” I asked.
We both looked down to our hands on our bags then to each other, and simultaneously we said, “Eleven.”
This meant we took our hands off our bags.
“Ready?” Raye asked.
To have a chat with a mob underboss, even a hot one?
No.
This was my thought.
But I was an Angel.
Thus, I nodded.
We headed out to the door.
Instantly, we saw a cush, shiny, sleek, expensive black Mercedes sedan idling by Lucia’s herb garden.
But Dimitri Alexeyev was in the parking lot leaning against Tweety, Raye’s bright yellow Juke.
We headed to Dimitri and Tweety.
“Long time no see,” Raye greeted.
Dimitri let out a bunch of Russian, the only word of which I caught was angely, doing this through a glamorous smile.
We waited until he was out of words before I asked, “All good?”
“All is very well, Munroe.”
Yeah, we had street names.
And yeah, we named ourselves after the other Angels. Charlie’s. Even though we were Arthur’s.
I sensed, since he knew where we worked, he was only calling me that to humor me and he knew my real name.
And I was at odds that all was very well with him.
He’d been cool and not only hadn’t murdered us on sight during our last mission, he let us take a bunch of money to give to our semi-kinda-sorta friend and recalcitrant informant, Duane, who had been in the crosshairs of some assholes (and who also seriously needed to paint his house, but that wasn’t the only reason we asked for money for him).
On the other hand, the things that could go “very well” for Dimitri were probably not awesome for the greater citizenry.
“This,”—he turned, picked up a manila envelope from the hood of Raye’s car, came back to us and handed it to Raye—“I must advise in all good faith, and because I like moi angely, must stop.”
I got close to my bestie as Raye opened the envelope and pulled out a black-and-white ‘70s-style Gene Hackman movie surveillance photo.
Hmm.
It appeared the Phoenician Russian Mob was old school.
It was a picture of Joey and Gemma sitting in Joey’s car, doing surveillance, and I knew this because Joey had the Angels’ long-ass-lens telephoto camera, and Gemma was looking through binoculars.
My gaze shifted to Raye to see she was grimacing.
