Page 74 of Dressed to Kill
But it wasn’t his usual wallet. Gone was the expensive black leather thing he usually carried, and in its place was the ugly bifold I’d stitched up for him three nights past.
Something warm went through me that had no business being there in a tailor's shop at the end of a working day. It started low and climbed and settled behind my ribs and stayed. He thumbed the bills out and handed them over and didn’t make a thing out of it, so I wouldn’t either.
Aleksi folded the wallet shut and tucked it away inside his jacket, took the hat box from the tailor and turned to me. "Ready?"
"Aye," I said, and had to clear my throat. "Aye, I'm ready."
He held the door for me. The bell rang above us going out. The street was wet. It had rained while we were inside, the kind ofquick city rain that leaves the asphalt looking lacquered and the streetlamps doubled in it. The car was at the curb with Gregori at the wheel, reading something on his phone, and he straightened when he saw us and got out to open the back door.
Aleksi handed him the hat box before sliding into the back after me.
“Home now, Boss?” Gregori asked.
“No, I think I’d like to go out to the track today,” Aleksi said.
Gregori nodded and pulled us out into traffic, and I turned to Aleksi.
"Ye've got a track."
"I haveaccessto a track."
"Aleksi Laskin." I shook my head at him, slow. "Ye've got more lives than ye've ever let on. How many do ye have? Three? Four? I've been living in yer flat for two months and I'm only just now finding out about the bloody track."
"You knew about the warehouse."
"The warehouse isnae a personal interest, ye great daft man, it's yer place of work. I'm talking about the things ye do when nobody's paying ye to do them."
Outside the window the city slid past, wet and orange under the lamps, and his hand found my thigh under his coat and stayed there.
"I'll show you," he said.
"Aye, that's the idea, is it no'?"
"That's the idea."
He didn't say anything for a minute after. Outside the city kept sliding by, wet and orange, and we passed a leather goods store with its lights still on. A woman in the window was arranging belts on a rack the way I used to arrange them in another life, in another city, and for a half second the warehouse came up under me like a draft from a basement. I'd be doing that. If Aleksi hadn't pulled me out of that room — if he'd done what he'd beensent to do — I'd be in some other room exactly like it, putting belts on a rack for a different boss, and not knowing this man at all.
"What kind of track is it then?" I asked, going for light. "One of them oval ones the Americans like? Going round and round to nowhere?"
"Road course."
"Aye? With proper turns?"
"With proper turns and straightaways."
"And ye go out there and ye do what, exactly? Drive in circles by yerself?"
"Sometimes."
I watched the side of his face. The lamps lit him in passes, and he was looking out the window at nothing.
"Aleksi Laskin." I said it softly. "What is it ye go out there to outrun?"
His jaw worked. He didn't answer for a long stretch. The hand on my thigh tightened, then eased. "Nothing in particular."
"Liar."
His phone buzzed in his coat pocket.
