Her Man Friday(71)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

She hung up before he could say anything else—not that there was anything else to say. So Leo stabbed a finger down on the disconnect button, then punched in seven numbers as he struggled into a pair of blue jeans.

Thankfully, Eddie was home. "Yeah, whaddaya want?" he asked when he picked up the phone. He was clearly wide awake, which wasn’t surprising, seeing as how the guy did most of his living at night.

Leo reached for a navy flannel shirt and thrust his arms into it, cradling the telephone between his ear and his shoulder as he buttoned the garment. "Eddie, it’s Leo Friday. I need for you to do me another favor."

Smoky Joe’s was a pretty awful place, Leo had to admit when he arrived there less than fifteen minutes later. And it was fairly typical of antisocial, misogynist dives. Its walls were composed of fake wood paneling that sported dozens of broken, dirty neon beer signs and posters of large-breasted women straddling big, nasty-looking motorcycles. The population of the place was overwhelmingly male. Though not necessarily human, he noted. Still, most of the patrons present could at least qualify for primate status. Probably. And the place smelled really bad, too. Like bad beer, stale sweat, and mean men.

Several of those mean men glanced up at Leo’s entrance, many of them appearing to welcome any diversion he might provide. Especially if that diversion included an opportunity for them to either A) beat the hell out of some undeserving individual, or B) beat the hell out of some undeserving individual.

Leo tried to look mean in return, which wasn’t all that hard to do, considering the day he’d had. And he breathed a silent sigh of thanks when he saw Eddie seated at the bar, looking totally incongruous in his Armani suit and Gucci loafers. Still, his large size and that broken nose of his, not to mention those dark, Mafioso looks, always kept him from being bothered much by troublemakers. So far, he looked as if he were just sitting there minding his own business, nursing a bad beer. When he noted Leo’s arrival, however, he jerked his head silently toward a booth in the back of the bar.

Way in the back of the bar, Leo noted when he turned his gaze in that direction. Back where it was very, very dark.

He strode forward slowly, cautiously, praying like hell that no one would interpret his simple mobility as a sign of aggression. It seemed to take forever to cover the fifty or so feet between him and that darkness, and he was grateful when Eddie rose from his stool to cover Leo’s back. He’d just stepped into the shadows when he heard the low, lethal chuckle of a man who was clearly drunk and amorous—or whatever it was that passed for amorous among men like this. Then he heard what sounded like the terrified whimpering of a young, and very frightened, girl.

"Chloe?" he called out.

"Here," she replied. But the word emerged as little more than a sob.

Leo moved forward again, slowly and cautiously again, until his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness. The first two booths he passed were empty. But in the last one, in the very corner of the bar, beneath the spastic half-light of a nearly burnt out Schlitz sign, he found what he was looking for. Unfortunately. Because Chloe was crowded into that booth, her eyes wide with terror, wedged between the wall and a very large, very menacing-looking man. He had shoved his face into her neck and was licking her throat, had unbuttoned her shirt and stuffed his hand inside her bra. He didn’t even appear to notice Leo’s arrival.

"Let her go."

Leo was surprised by the even, steady timbre of his voice, seeing as how, at the moment, what he wanted to do more than anything else in the world was rip the sonofabitch’s hand off his wrist and turn it into chicken fingers. What he did instead was curl one hand into a tight fist, and cup the other—roughly—over the big man’s shoulder to jerk him back.

Only then did the guy seem to realize that Leo had been talking to him. "What the hell is your problem?" he demanded. But he didn’t release Chloe.

"I said, ‘Let her go,’ " Leo repeated as levelly as he could. "Because if you don’t, I’m going to hurt you. Badly."

The man made a derisive face and snorted. "Who’re you? Her old man? Tough. I got ‘er now. You can have ‘er back when I’m done. Beat it."

"Oh, don’t tempt me," Leo said, still masking his fury. "Because I’ll be more than happy to beat it—right into a bloody pulp. I promise you that."

The man belched loudly and, clearly feeling put upon, pushed himself away from Chloe. She exhaled loudly and closed her eyes tight when he did, and two fat tears tumbled down her cheeks. As she had been the first day Leo had made her acquaintance, she was wearing about ten pounds of makeup and an outfit that was anything but appropriate for a fourteen-year-old girl. But her tears left white tracks on her cheeks as they washed the cosmetics away, and to Leo, she looked every bit her age. Immediately, she gripped the sides of her shirt and jerked it closed, then, crowding her body into the wall even more than it was already, she turned her face away.

"Get out of the booth," Leo told the man. "Now."

"If I get outta dis booth," he said, clearly unbothered by Leo’s presence, "it’s only gonna be for one reason. To knock you on your ass."

Leo smiled with feigned indifference. "I’d like to see you try it."

The man eyed him for a moment, obviously puzzled by Leo’s concern, then asked again, "What the hell is your problem?"

"The problem is that you’ve got your hands on someone you shouldn’t have them on," Leo said simply.

But he ground his teeth painfully in an effort to keep things as civil as possible. On top of everything else she’d been through tonight, the last thing Chloe needed was to see two grown men beating the hell out of each other. And he feared that any altercation that ensued between him and this big ape would spill over into the rest of the bar. God only knew what kind of chaos would result after that.

"Now go away," Leo added quietly, "and leave her alone."

"She’s wid me," the man said. "You go away and leave us alone."

"Mr. Freiberger, no," Chloe said, jerking her head up, her expression frightened, beseeching. "Don’t leave me here. Please."

As if he would, Leo thought. God. The kid honestly looked like she thought he would leave her here with this guy. Just what the hell kind of life had she lived before coming to Philadelphia?

Putting that thought on hold for now, he turned his attention back to the gorilla still seated in the booth. "She’s fourteen years old, Humbert," Leo informed him. "A little young for you. Not to mention jailbait. But if you leave right now, I’ll be real nice and pretend you never touched her."