Page 36 of The Kingpin's Call Girl

“You okay?” my table neighbor asks.

“Yeah. Just... a thing.” I shove the phone back in my bag and force my attention back to my books.

Would he actually do those things? Exactly how dangerous is he?

And does he expect me to reply to that last message? I don’t want to get into another exchange with him and give him the idea to summon me. But it might be worse if I ignore it.

I could do a thumbs up, but a thumbs up on that kind of message might be seen as patronizing. At least it would be by most people my age. But Luka is older, and he doesn’t live by the phone.

And there’s Bender to worry about. Bender will have seen the whole thing. He might be mad if I don’t reply in some way.

I take out the phone, shoot a thumbs up, and quickly pocket it again.

Luka is out there thinking about me.

I get this strange charge, imagining him thinking about me.

I visit my friend Janey in her office at the student paper after that. Janey’s a journalism major who went through all three years of French with me, and she has access to a super-high-powered database.

“Bonjour,” she says, looking up from her cubicle. “Did somebody bring me cookies?”

“Oui.” I set down the Cookie Madness bag on her desk.

She looks inside. “And what did I do to deserve this bounty?”

I pull up a chair. “It’s what you’re about to do.”

“Is this about your sister? I’ve still got that flag out for any news of her. There’s been nothing new.”

“No, it’s something else. I want you to look into a new name for me. It’s a really long story about why I need it, but there’s nothing much on the web.”

“Okay.” She spins around in her chair and taps a few keys. “Hit me.”

“Luka Zogaj.”

She freezes, fingers poised over the keyboard, before turning her head to look at me. “As in part of the Albanian mafia clan?”

“Yeah.”

“And why would you want this?”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t ask,” I say.

“Yeah, but this is mafia stuff.”

“It sort of has to do with my sister... in a roundabout way.”

“Mob shit is dicey, Edie, and this is theAlbanianmob. I don’t have to type anything into this box to tell you the results—steer the fuck clear. If your sister is involved with them, this might be tough-love time. I hate to say it...”

“I just need to know how dangerous he is.”

“Has she joined his organization?”

“Can I not say any more than that?” I pull another bag from my backpack and set it next to the first one. That cookie was for me to eat, but this is important. “All information is worth having, isn’t that what they say?”

“No, not all information is worth having.” But she types away all the same. A spinning wheel comes up, and she opens another screen. A list of publications comes up. Some look like they’re off a law enforcement site; others are court docs or transcripts. She continues on, chasing links deeper and deeper.

“There’s a ton on the Zogaj family but not much on Luka,”she observes. “And he’s the only Zogaj alive at this point, it looks like. Of the immediate family, anyway.”

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