Page 18 of Falling for Carla

“I’ll keep my eyes open. I appreciate your concern. I’ll be fine,” she said with self-assurance.

I nodded and turned back to my desk. I gathered my papers and unplugged the projector. As I was ready to leave, my phone rang. I saw Brent’s number on the screen and answered. I was still good friends with my old partner from the force and I was always glad to hear from him.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“A lot. Tell me about you first,” he said.

“Now you got me intrigued there. I’m just wrapping up a class. I’ve got office hours now so I’m free unless a confused undergrad wanders in. What’s going on?”

“Remember the Lombardi case about six years back?” Brent asked.

“Remember it? Worst slaughter I ever saw. What about it? Don’t tell me they paroled that guy?”

“Nah. Just brought it up cause things are heating up with the LA Mob families again. There’s been talk of East Coast involvement and you know what that means.”

“It means you’ve got heads turning up and we know who likes to separate those from bodies,” I answered grimly.

“You got outta this game just in time, man. It’s ugly.”

“Tell you the truth, I’m glad to be done with that stuff. That mess we found—it screwed me up for months. I didn’t sleep right for a long time, kept thinking about it,” I shook my head to clear the memory.

“This isn’t to that point yet, but I got a feeling it’s where we’re headed. Shit’s gonna be nasty before we figure out how to put a stop to it.”

“I hate to hear that, Brent. Anything I can do?”

“You gonna be one of them consultants? Come in with your suit and tie and tell us how it is?” he laughed.

“Yeah, you know me, I love a suit and tie,” I chuckled in return.

“I just wanted to touch base with you. This case makes me nervous, and you were here for the worst of it with Lombardi,” he said. I knew by his voice it was really bothering him.

“Listen, don’t take this wrong, but I got a doctor I talked to for about three months after that case. I can give you her name if you want it. She helped me get my head on straight about it, and how I did all I could do.”

“Thanks, man. I may take you up on that before this is over,” he said ruefully. “But you know how I feel about shrinks.”

“Me, too, man, but she knew what she was talking about. I got screwed up so I couldn’t sleep and all. It was messing with my head. No pressure, just saying I went, and they didn’t take my balls away for needing help.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Keep your head on a swivel, man. I know you’re a good cop, but don’t get careless on this one.”

“I won’t. Talk to you later,” he said.

On the way to my office, I couldn’t shake the fact that Brent sounded rattled. That he brought up the one case I never wanted to think about again.

All of it tied back to Carla Russo’s father.

CHAPTER 14

CARLA

One more call and I was ready to turn off my phone for the rest of the night. For the last three days I’d been avoiding my brother’s increasingly frequent calls. All week he’d been ringing my phone like four and five times a day. I was infuriated by it.

He knew I had distanced myself from the family business. I loved my brother, but we were never going to see eye-to-eye. He thought my defection to law enforcement was disgraceful, and I felt the same way about his career in racketeering and extortion. So we usually ended up arguing on the rare occasions when I answered his calls out of some misplaced sense of nostalgia for our shared traumatic childhood.

My nerves were fried from the jangle of his repeated calls and the anxiety that always spiked when his name flashed across the screen. I had a degree to finish. I had laundry to fold. I had a couple of undergrads I tutored for extra money. There was no time to sit around contemplating our different paths in life.

After a long day, I unlocked the apartment door, only to hear my phone clatter to life again. I stepped inside and closed the door, aggravated at my brother’s name on the caller ID.

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