Finally, he blinked and focused on me again. “You are exceptionally calm, Gin.”
“Why shouldn’t I be? After all, we’re just having a friendly drink, right?”
A thin smile curved his lips. “Right.” He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table and clutching his Bloody Mary between his bony hands. “Well, then, let’s get down to business. I do want to apologize for my actions regarding Roslyn, but as I said before, I thought it best to meet on neutral ground so my appearance would not be misconstrued and provoke an . . . unpleasant reaction. I have no desire to start a war with you, Gin.”
“Why not? It seems to me like you’ve already begun, given all the men you’ve sent to my restaurant to try to kill me.”
He shrugged. “It’s just business. I had to try, the same as everyone else. I’m sorry if you found it . . . upsetting.”
He said the last word with obvious relish, then paused and stared at me, doing that weird looking-right-through-me thing again. Only this time, something also brushed up against my skin—that invisible sandpaper I’d noticed in the garage when Benson had been sucking the emotions out of Troy.
But the sensation was much more intense now than it had been last night, so intense that it almost felt like . . . magic. I’d thought that Benson’s emotional draining was some sort of special vampiric ability, but perhaps there was also an elemental component to it. If so, that would make him even stronger than I’d realized—and far more dangerous.
The phantom sandpaper rubbed and rubbed at my skin, as if trying to find a weak spot to bear down on and draw blood. I focused on remaining calm.
After several seconds, the uncomfortable sensation vanished, and Benson’s mouth puckered with disappointment that I hadn’t reacted whatever way he’d wanted me to.
“It takes a lot to crack that calm façade of yours, doesn’t it?” he murmured.
“It’s no façade.”
“No,” he murmured again. “It’s not—not at all. How . . . disappointing.”
I wouldn’t say that it was disappointing. I wouldn’t say that it was anything at all other than the way I was, but I had no idea what Benson was getting at. My gaze flicked past him to Silvio, searching for a clue to his boss’s meaning, but Silvio’s face remained as smooth as mine. The third man seemed a bit nervous, his arms crossed over his chest, his fingers tapping against his opposite elbows, but he wasn’t the real danger here—Benson was. Off to my left, Roslyn held her position, one hand still below the bar, ready to draw her shotgun.
“Regardless, you can rest assured that none of my men will bother you again,” Benson said.
“Oh, it’s not me that I’m worried about,” I drawled.
Benson frowned, but Silvio’s lips twitched up with something that almost seemed like amusement. I blinked, and the expression vanished.
“Of course not,” Benson said. “Your reputation does precede you.”
“What can I say? It’s the price of being famous. Or, rather, infamous in my case.”
Silvio’s lips twitched again, but Benson didn’t seem to get my dry, dark humor. Instead, he leaned forward.
“Well, then, let’s turn to the matter at hand.”
“Oh?” I asked. “And what would that be?”
“Your sister. Detective Bria Coolidge.”
Benson’s nasal voice echoed through the club before the red velvet curtains on the walls soaked up the sound, if not the danger that accompanied his words.
My fingers curled around my glass of gin, my jaw tightened, and my spine straightened. Small motions, but Benson’s eyes sharpened with interest behind his glasses.
“Finally, a reaction,” he said. “I was beginning to think that you were made out of the stone that you are rumored to be able to control.”
“Mild surprise is hardly a reaction,” I drawled again.
“Why surprise?”
I shrugged. “I would have thought that a cop, any cop, would be beneath your notice. Well, except for the ones you bribe to keep your drugs flowing into Southtown. But even then, Silvio handles all of those dirty details, doesn’t he?”
Benson shrugged back. “Of course he does. But your sister has come to my attention for her recent . . . interest in my activities.”
“You mean because you tortured and killed her informant, stuffed a rat into his mouth, and then drew Bria’s rune on his forehead with one of those pens in your pocket protector,” I said in a flat voice. “Hard to imagine why she’d be upset about that.”
He smiled. “I don’t often indulge in such . . . showmanship, but your sister has been quite persistent. I thought I had finally warned her off with that boy’s death, but then I heard a disturbing rumor this morning. That she has some witness who says that I murdered someone last night and that she’s actually going to get this person to testify against me.”
“How upsetting for you,” I deadpanned.
So this was about Catalina after all. Bria had told the higher-ups in the police department that someone had seen Benson kill Troy, and someone in the po-po who was on Benson’s payroll had given him a heads-up.
I stared at him, wondering if this was all some sort of twisted game, a feint to lure me away from the restaurant so he could send his men after Catalina. No, I decided. If he knew Catalina’s identity, he wouldn’t have bothered with all of this, and he would have already dispatched some men to kill her. But Silvio had seen her in the garage last night, so why hadn’t he told his boss that he could ID the witness? He hadn’t seemed interested when I’d mentioned blackmail before, which meant that money wasn’t his motivation. So why in the world would Silvio protect someone like Catalina?
I glanced at Silvio, but his face was as calm and composed as ever. He had to know what I was thinking, but his features were a perfect mask for whatever his true thoughts might be. Impressive. Then again, since Benson liked to feast on emotions, it would be best to keep one’s in check around the vamp, and Silvio had had years of practice.
Benson leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms over his skinny chest. “As I said, I have no interest in starting a war with you, Gin, and I’ve heard how very . . . protective you are of your sister. That’s why I’m here. A business associate suggested that it might be better to contact you directly to avoid any unpleasantness.”