Eighty three

Chapter fifty two

I didn’t get into all the details with Eva, but I told her I needed to drop her off because there was a crisis of sorts at work that I needed to deal with. Thankfully, she didn’t ask too many questions. Jonah called as Iwas driving over to Martin’s South End brownstone.

“I’m heading over there right now,” I said.

“Good luck with that,” Jonah said, sounding grim. “He sounded pissed when I talked to him.”

“He is! His whole fucking dream cruise trip was almost ruined. Granted, it wasn’t, so maybe he should get over it, but either way, it doesn’t look good. I don’t know how it got out about that happening, but it must’ve been someone from his end. Maybe it was his daughter, for Christ’s sake. Teenagers are always going gaga for famous actors and shit.”

“That seems the most likely.”

“Parents are always turning a blindeye to the shit their kids do,” I said.

“Yeah. He definitely wanted to put the blame somewhere else.”

“Well, now I have to go deal with it.”

“You want me to go with you?”

I considered this. Maybe it would be better if there was two of us. But maybe not. I knew what Martin really needed to do was bitch at someone, get it out of his system, and hopefully move on.

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll deal with it.”

When I got there, though, Martin wasn’t interested in hearing any apologies. He wanted to lay into someone about it, and that’s exactlywhat I had to let him do. “This was a disaster,” Martin said. “A complete disaster on every level. I work with you, Ian, because you’re a professional in every way—discretion being at the top of that list. You know as well as I do that there are half a dozen other companies we could have gone with, but we decided to go with you. But after all this, I’m starting to wonder if that was the right choice.”

“We’ve always done right by you,” I said.

“Not today you haven’t! There’s no way that information should have gotten out like that,” Martin said.

“I can assure you, it wasn’t on our end,” I said.

But he was shaking his head. “So what are you saying? Are you trying to blame us? Are you trying to say this was somehow our fault?”

Yes and no. There was no way any of our guys would have leaked that information about Martin’s goddamn cruise—unless they wanted to be out of a job. Martin was right—discretion was supremely important, and though we did have a lot of guys working for us, only the ones who I could trust completely had specific knowledge of events like these.

Martin was pissed, though, there was no doubt about it, though he was doing his best to keep it in check. His face was turning red, and I could see a vein in his forehead that I’d never noticed before. Probably because we’d never had an incident like this.“You got an answer for me?”

I gritted my teeth and tried not to have a childhood flashback; that was what Pete was always saying after he’d used me as a punching bag: You think anyone’s ever gonna have any respect for a pussy like you? What? You got an answer for me? I can’t hear you!

“My answer is that I don’t know exactly how this happened. You have my full apologies, though I am one hundred percent certain that it was not from our end.”

“Then who? If I’m one hundred percent certain it wasn’t on my end, and you’re saying the same, one of us is wrong and it damn sure isn’t me!”

I’d never seen him so enraged. I let him bitch at me for a little bit longer, and then I left, only after agreeing toat least look into the possibilities that the leak was on our end. I stepped outside, glad to be out of there, but in serious need of a drink.

And wouldn’t you know, the first person I see upon entering the fucking hole-in-the-wall sports bar I chose to go to: Billy McAllister.