Not One Clue_ A Mystery - Lois Greiman [48]
“I would be if the situation were reversed.”
I stared at her. Laney … jealous? I hadn’t seen that since the neighborhood boys had started an all-male clubhouse. “Please don’t tell me the Easter Bunny’s fictional, too,” I said.
She gave me a bland expression. “He once told me there was no one more deserving than I. And he said it with absolute conviction.”
“The Easter Bunny?”
“Sergio.”
I shrugged. “I concur. With both of them.”
She was stellar at ignoring me. “What about the Dalai Lama.”
“I wasn’t even aware he belonged to the actor’s guild.”
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“Maybe he just admires you. This Morab guy, I mean. Not the Dalai Lama.”
“The point is,” she said, “no one’s completely secure.”
“And you think if his act is too convincing …”
“He’s an excellent actor. Worked on Broadway to sold-out crowds.”
“Then maybe you can’t tell if he’s acting or not,” I said.
“Or maybe he thinks he deserves more,” Solberg said.
“But getting rid of Laney won’t help him. It’s not as if he can take her place.”
“Maybe he’s so bitter he doesn’t care,” Solberg suggested. “You know what those good-looking guys are like.
“Baby,” he turned to Laney with panic in his eyes. “We should get you a bodyguard.”
We stared at him as if he’d just grown a second head.
“What?” he said.
“A bodyguard,” I repeated.
“Yeah.”
“Someone big and burly and manly to shadow Laney’s every move?” I said, and watched him pale some more.
Laney shot me the kind of look she used to give bullies who were picking on the skinny kids.
“I didn’t say Sergio wanted to get rid of me,” she said. “It was just … I thought of him, the unfairness of this business. That’s all. He’s a nice guy.”
“And extremely good-looking.” I glanced at Solberg. Sometimes I am kind of a bully.
17
I’d rather be happy than be president.
—Jamel Blount, weighing
options
“How’s Jamel doing?” I was back at work. Neither talk of Morab the man-slave nor dead of night shall keep me from my appointed tasks.
Micky Goldenstone sat on my couch. “All right, I guess.”
“Is Jackson back home?”
Micky nodded stiffly, then glanced out the window toward the coffee shop. “Back home, filling my son’s mind with shit.”
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head. “Lavonn thinks he’s some kind of damned savior. Bought that house in Glendale, and a big-ass Cadillac.”
“Where’d he get the money?”
He shrugged. “Not all assholes are morons. I heard he got a scholarship to some Ivy League school. Made a shitload of money in biochemistry or something, then came back here to save us poor niggers.”
“How do you mean?”
“He got some investors together, bought up a bunch of property on the east side. Tried to …” He made air quotes … “save the culture.”
“Didn’t work?”
“Place is a fucking wasteland.”
“He must have lost some money in the deal.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?”
“So how’d he recoup?”
“I have no idea.”
He drew air slowly through his nostrils, thinking as he scowled. “Turns out he wasn’t on drugs.”
“The reports came back clean?”
“And they didn’t find anything in his house.”
“Which means you may have more trouble getting custody than you had hoped.”
“It means he’s a fucking bastard!” he said, and clenching his teeth, ran his palms down his black denim pants legs.
I gave that some judicious consideration, but couldn’t quite make sense of it.
“At least if he was high he would have had an excuse,” he said.
It seemed like there was some problem with that logic, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
“What about Lavonn?” I asked. “Was she tested?”
“Clean, too,” he said.
I remembered the woman’s wide pupils, her erratic behavior, juxtaposed against her beau’s dreamy persona. I also remembered a possible drug called Intensity, but I wasn’t ready to mention that to Micky. “Maybe Jackson’s frightening behavior will convince her to ditch him.”
He looked at me, dark face inscrutable. “You believe in the Tooth Fairy, too?”
“Please don’t,” I said, then continued without explaining Laney’s threat about Santa Claus. “People change, Micky,” I