The Hinky Velvet Chair (28 page)

A smile cracked Clay’s face. “Great. Thanks.” He pushed a
feather away from her eyes. “You okay in there?”

“Sweaty. What’s that old man been doing to you?” Jewel
looped her arm through his elbow and led him toward the sound of “Happy
Birthday.”

“Just a little family blackmail.”

“I’ll kneecap him for you. Jack Allen got my blood up.”

“I’m not helpless,” Clay said.

Boy, we are brittle
tonight.
“I never said you were.”

As they walked down the alley toward Virgil’s house, Jewel
decided to keep Clay out of the loop a while longer.

Time for a talk with
our host.
At least she didn’t have to conceal her identity from Virgil.

No need to tell Clay all that.

The first person she saw, when they came up to the crowd in
the alley outside the Thompson garden gate, was Buzz, shoveling birthday cake
into his face. “What are you doing here?”

“Eagin birfgay gake. Hi, Officer Jewel. I didn’t recognize
you in the mask.”

“Did you bring any more of that stuff?”

She yanked open his backpack where it dangled from his
shoulder and rummaged. There were a lot of things in the backpack, some of them
squishier than she wanted to know about, but no little bottles.

“Okay, you’re clean. Maybe it’s a good thing you’re here
after all. Come with me.”

She led Buzz behind Virgil’s garage, which gaped open so
passers-by could try out the Venus Machine. “In about an hour there’s going to
be a press conference here. I want you up front and center. If I point to you,
you speak up and tell the press where you got those little bottles.”

He squinted at her. “But you said I’d get busted.”

“Not unless there are more little bottles. You don’t have
any, do you?”

“Hey, if I had any, I’d-a sold ’em by now.”

She crossed her fingers. “If you won’t do this, I’ll have to
bring in the cops, because there’s no other way to stop Kauz. If you play ball,”
she said, regretting what she was about to offer and also realizing how
fiendishly addictive blackmail could be, “I’ll take off the anklet.”

He hesitated.

She said, “C’mon. There will always be other crap to sell.
I’ll bust you for that, too. But the anklet’s on. I don’t need to take it off.”

He scratched a zit with his plastic spoon. “Well, I dunno.
The Doc’s been pretty good to me.”

I’ve been good to you,
dammit, and what’s my reward?
“Buzz, think what the cops can do to you.”
She leaned over him and looked into his eyes. A picture flashed through her
mind of Buzz, miserable, sitting at a Thanksgiving dinner table with a couple
of very proper-looking parent types.
What?
“The batteries are good for five years.”

He looked pale. “Dag, Officer Jewel, you’re tough.”

She slapped him on the shoulder. “Good boy. See you back
here in twenty. In the meantime, you can eat until you burst.”

His eyes lit up.

Jewel skirted the crowd and went into the Thompson garden in
search of Mellish.

The whole house party was in the garden, along with a dozen
neighbors, hanging around a bar and a punch bowl and a two-tier ice cream cake
the size of a ’78 Caddy transmission. Griffy talked and laughed, her green
feathers quivering. Sovay stood silent in gold and black. Virgil looked like a
devil in a crimson and scarlet mask, pushing tiny spoonsful of ice cream cake
past the feathers into his pie-hole. Jewel spotted Mellish hovering in the
background. She crooked a finger at him.

He backed toward the kitchen door, away from her.
Why Mellish, I didn’t know you were afraid
to talk to me.
She smiled and sprinted forward. She got to his side before
he had his hand on the doorknob.

“Hello.” No point in subtlety, if he was going to duck her.
She flashed her badge, quick enough that he could see metal flash but not so
slow that he could see what it said. “May we talk?”

He was taller than she was, and bigger, too. She looked
straight into his eyes and got a mental image of a closed door.
What the—?
This stupid Venus Machine
effect wasn’t working for beans tonight.

“Inside or outside?” he said, not sounding butlery.

She was still puzzling over that picture of the closed door.
“Outside. But within sight of witnesses.”

A caterer tried to open the kitchen door from the inside and
bumped her on the shin.

Mellish seemed unflapped. She made him go down the steps
ahead of her and, as she glanced down at his big, shiny, thick-soled,
federal-looking shoes, she remembered seeing them before. From under a bed.
Closed door. Closet door!

“Closet door.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “What’s in
Virgil’s closet, Mellish?”

“Yes, Mellish, what’s in my closet?” Virgil said behind the
butler, and she saw Mellish’s eyes flare with alarm.

When Mellish turned toward his employer, however, his poise
seemed restored. “Your other smoking jacket, sir. There is ice cream on this
one,” he said with utter detachment, as if his employer was welcome to smear
himself all over with ice cream if he wanted to.

Virgil glanced at his sleeve. “So there is. Why don’t you
fetch me that other jacket. Ms. Hess and I will be in the card room.” He smiled
like a snake at Jewel. “If you don’t mind.”

Jewel raised her eyebrows, a wasted gesture behind the
feathers. “I’d like a word with you, too.”

They went inside and Jewel took off her mask, which was
smothering her where she stood. In the card room, Virgil unmasked and poured
himself a glass of brandy. “Drink, officer?”

“No, thank you.” She knew what she would have to do. For a
moment she wished she still had her mask on, so that her red face wouldn’t
show. But her best weapons here were her honesty and her open emotions. Virgil
could beat her at the sneaky stuff.

“I see my son has already told you about the videotape.”

She attacked. “Has he told you about the incubus in your
bed?”

Virgil went still. Then he flicked a couple of the fingers
holding the brandy snifter. “Ah, the fairy tale.”

“Have you listened to that tape, Mr. Thompson? Not just
watched, but listened?” He didn’t speak. “Obviously you haven’t, or you would
have thought your blackmail through better.” To her surprise, he looked
embarrassed. “Didn’t you wonder why we chose to have sex in that room?”

“My son has a penchant for foolish thrills.”

Me, too,
she
thought. “Your son and I did the only thing I knew that would bring Randy out
of hiding. We didn’t know you had already switched out the bed.”

“I thought you displayed laudable enthusiasm. Very, ah,
invigorating to watch.”

Here it came, the blush to end all blushes, and humiliation,
and then anger, a healing anger that freed her from fear. Jewel let the blush
and the humiliation do their worst. She took a deep, freeing breath. Rage cleared
her mind.

“This morning, I saw the face of the woman you’ve been
calling your sister.” She leaned forward, though she wanted to hide herself
from those lizard eyes. She spoke crudely to push past humiliation. “Randy’s
been fucking me for weeks. I see that face in the mirror every morning. It’s
the face of a woman who’s been sleeping in a bed possessed by Randolph Llew
Carstairs Athelbury Darner.”

Her voice went hoarse. “That man — that creature, he’s more
than a man after two hundred years — he is the
best fuck in the universe.
He can read a woman’s mind and give her
exactly what she wants. He can do her asleep or awake. He can do her—”

“I don’t believe in magic,” Virgil said sharply. She saw him
smooth out his face.

“I didn’t believe at first, either. But Randy can do her—”

Virgil interrupted again. “You’re deluded. The bed is mine
and it stays in that room. The tape is mine, too. Maybe your employer would
like a copy. Maybe the mayor.”

Jewel raised her voice. “You can wriggle all you want, but I
know what you don’t want to hear. Randy can do a woman
while she’s having sex with somebody else.
And, unless that woman
is me, the other man
will never even
know.”

“I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with,” he said in
a silky voice. “I can send that tape to the media.”

“I don’t think you know my reputation. I’m a
slut.”
His head snapped back at the
word. “I’ve screwed every ninth disease-free, single, adult male in the city of
Chicago. Two of them have already put me on the Internet. We won’t go into what
happened to
them.”
She’d hated those
Internet pictures. It creeped her to the max to mention them to this evil old
man.

Virgil sneered.

She showed her teeth. “But that’s not my threat. My best
threat is to do nothing. Because
I saw
Griffy’s face this morning.”

Virgil went still. His face was expressionless.

“If you give me that tape, I’ll go up to your room,
alone,
and get Randy out of your bed.”

“That’s it? That’s your threat?”

“No, this is the threat. If you keep the tape, I leave Randy
in the bed. And Griffy sues your ass for palimony and takes the bed. Or maybe
not. Maybe you can make it up to her somehow, despite the way you’ve treated
her, and maybe she’ll stay with you. But if I’m telling the truth,
she will never give up that bed.”

He opened his mouth and she raised her voice again, rolling
over him.

“And
you will never
know
if Randy is in there or not, because Randy doesn’t do guys. That’s not
his curse. He has to satisfy any woman in his bed. It’s annoying sometimes, he
can’t control himself — he’s a bigger slut than I am — but I guess if you’ve
practiced two hundred years, it’s hard to break the habit.

“You and your videotape,” she said with scorn. “Shall I tell
you what it feels like to a woman, to think you’re alone in bed and then find
out, inch by magical inch, what happens when he starts to make his presence
known? How it feels to be having sex with a guy and then realize, hey, there’s
too many hands touching me, there’s too many tongues licking me, too many—”

“Stop!” Virgil was panting, his face dark with rage. “I
don’t believe you.”

“So don’t.” She shrugged. “All you have to do is tell Griffy
you’re getting rid of that bed. See how she reacts.”

Jewel turned on her heel and walked out, swinging her mask
at her side.

Holy Jumping Jack
Flash in a basket with fries and slaw.
That was terrifying. She decided to
stop needling Clay for knuckling under to his dad.

Now to warn Griffy to do her part.

Out in the alley, the block party was picking up speed.
Other home-owners had opened their garages and back yards. Smells of grilled
steak filled the air. The Self-Love ladies stood out in their huge feathered
masks, but other lady merrymakers made up for it in itty bitty cocktail
dresses, big sparkly rocks, and shoes inappropriate for a cobbled alley. Everyone
was drinking.

After the fight with Virgil, Jewel regretted turning down
his brandy.
Though he might poison me.

Jewel threaded her way past the mob by the punch bowl and
through the gate to the alley. There was Griffy with a fingertip in her mouth,
watching a girl in a beaded dress sit down in the green velvet chair. Jewel
would have felt sorry for Beads Girl, but she clearly spent way too much money
on her appearance. The Venus Machine would cure that.

Beads Girl spasmed theatrically in the hot seat.

Dr. Kauz unstrapped her and handed her out. The onlooking
yuppies applauded. Every one of the men kissed her.

Griffy bit her lip.

Kauz looked up and saw Jewel. He rushed forward to take her
hand. “My star patient! My greatest success! Unmask, my goddess, so that all
can see your so glorious green tones!”

Jewel pulled her hand free.
He’s almost where I want him.

The yuppies bayed like hyenas at the smell of fresh meat.

“Uh, I’m thirsty,” she said. She backed away. “Think I’ll go
get some punch.”

He held up a palm. “But no, I have a glass of punch here
which I did not touch.”

He circled around back of the Venus Machine and reappeared
with a plastic cup in his hand. Jewel took it. Kauz sent her one of those deep
looks that told Jewel he was thinking about her blood again. She backed away,
and he turned his attention to the next victim clamoring for treatment.

She was lifting the cup when someone hissed out of the
darkness, “Don’t!”

Jewel jumped. The punch slopped over her hand. “What?”

The masked woman grabbed her wrist. “Don’t drink it! I saw
him open a little bottle and put something in that cup!” The voice was
Griffy’s.

Jewel regarded the cup with interest. “Oops. Thanks for
spotting that. Listen, I need to talk to you.”

She glanced back at Beads Girl, who was dancing wildly to
‘Foxy Lady’ with three men at once.