The Hinky Velvet Chair (5 page)

“You? Mr. Omniscient? I’ll write that in my diary. Did you
bring those background files with you?”

“Uh-oh, someone’s coming. Gotta go.” He hung up.

Jewel counted to twenty. Then she showered and picked out
some navy polyester.

Clay was insubordinate and sneaky, but they’d worked well
together at the gas stations. He might be trainable. The big question was, what
could she do with Randy? Randy was in her head, in her
every-other-personal-thing. He was a miracle in bed, but out of it he was
impossible. She couldn’t stand having him around.

Yet she couldn’t dump him. The terms of his curse were
explicit. The hundredth woman he satisfied was the only one who could rescue
him. He’d been out of bed for weeks now, yet things like today kept happening.
Apparently, he still needed Jewel.

The curse, recorded on parchment by his pissed-off mistress
two centuries ago, also specified that, to be free, he had to “love” his
rescuer, whatever that meant.

No way did Jewel want to go
there.
Randy seemed equally reluctant to discuss it. The “relationship
conversation.” God, she hated that.

“Did you make coffee?” Randy said, reappearing, rubbing his
head with a towel.

She sent him a look.

He said hastily, “Very well, I shall make it.”

She headed for the shower. His coffee sucked, but at least
he had volunteered. For the next twenty minutes she was allowed to hope they
might be getting somewhere.

Their shoes left soot-prints from their front door to the
elevator.

Then that cute stockbroker from down the hall stepped into
the elevator with them and Jewel smiled at him and Randy stiffened like a
pillar of ice until the poor guy went to stand in the extreme far corner of the
elevator.

Another reason to establish cooperation.

“Guys are gonna smile at me,” she told her possessive sex
demon when they were in the parking ramp. “Get used to it.”

“They mean you harm.”

She rolled her eyes. “This is not 1811, dude. I am not
‘ruined’ just because I’ve slept with a guy—”

“Or several hundred ‘guys.’”

She couldn’t stick her tongue out at him and drive down the
spiralling exit of the parking ramp at the same time. “So how many women have
you had? Not counting your other ninety-nine satisfied customers.”

He ignored that. “It is said,
Vulpus est index anima.
Yet men’s souls do not always reveal
themselves in their faces.”

“I thought you flunked out of lord school.” She pulled out
of the Corncob Building onto Dearborn and aimed the Tercel north.

He was silent until they got to a stoplight. Then he put his
hand over hers on the gearshift. “Jewel.”

“What?”

He said nothing, and she looked into his eyes, big and black
and full of soul. He said gently, “I wish you could know what is in their minds
when they look at you. If you could know what they want from you before you
open your thighs to them.”

His sincerity punched her over the heart. She swallowed. “Must
you be so coarse?”

“Their thoughts are not so well-looking as their faces.”

She said, “You’ve been in all the dirty little corners of my
mind. I’m in no position to criticize.”

Horns honked behind them. He removed his hand and faced
forward. “Ah. Well. I’m different.”

“That you are.”

Pink smog blanketed the air over Lake Shore Drive again.
Jewel had Randy in the Tercel with her.

Scoping him from the corner of her eye, she admitted he
looked hot. And rich. Too rich for a city employee, really. How did he
do
that? Two weeks ago he’d owned two
tee-shirts and a pair of jeans, which he had to keep washing because she
absolutely refused to wait on him. In honor of this case, he wore the dark blue
Blass suit he’d charged using a fake social security number, and the collarless
black silk shirt Clay stole from Field’s for him the night they sneaked in and
she had to have sex with Randy in the home furnishings department.

She felt like a frump in navy polyester. There was no help
for that, either.

A lighted cigarette fell out of the sky onto her windshield.
Moodily, she flicked on her wipers. Even the pigeons thought her car looked
like an ashtray.

“What are we looking for?” Randy said.

“Buzz. Remember him? He sold you a genie in a bottle.”

“The djinn merchant, yes. A boy with spots.”

“Yup. Only he’s selling ‘potions’ now. Ed gave me a chance
to shut him down before he throws the case over to the cops. Keep an eye
peeled. Goddam potions,” she muttered.

“Do not profane. It puts off the marks.”

“You know, don’t you, that card sharping is not a job skill.”
Her hair was blowing around, already half-out of its ponytail and sticking to
her forehead. Randy’s hair was black as a crow’s wing and kind of shaggy. In
that suit and collarless shirt, he looked like a hot Euro-bum. “You need a
haircut.”

“I had thought of letting it grow. I saw a musician on
television whose queue I admired.”

“His what?”

“Tied back,” he said, trying to hold his hair in a ponytail.
“Still too short,” he grumbled.

“It’s a mess.”

“I was unaware that my personal appearance is subject to
your whim.”

She played her trump card. “If you’re working with me, you
need to look more like an investigator.”

He turned toward her, his eyes glowing, and she almost
rear-ended a bus. “I shall be an investigator?”

“You’ll be my assistant.” Chee, give him a finger and he
took an arm. “C’mon. We’ll hit the Salon on the Mile.”

Randy cried, “There! I see him!” and pointed.

“Who?”

“Your potion merchant!”

“Buzz? Where?” She was spang in the middle of the
intersection of Ohio Street and Michigan Avenue. Gunning the Tercel, she peeled
past fifty-seven honking cars trying to sneak left turns through the red light.

Buzz straddled his bike on the sidewalk, his backpack over
his shoulder. The kid was so scrawny. He was selling something to a tourist.
Didn’t he eat? Her heart pinched.

She squealed to the curb at a hydrant and threw the flashers
on. “Wait here.”

She let Buzz finish his deal with the tourist before coming
up and laying a hand on his handlebar. “Dude, long time no see.”

Buzz’s richly pimpled face broke into a smile. “Hey, Officer
Jewel.” He threw his leg over the seat and she ducked to keep from getting
brained by his size-twelve sneaker.

“What’s in the backpack today?”

Buzz’s smile weakened. “Would you believe lunch?”

“Nope.”

“It’s my homework?”

“I would think I’d died and gone to heaven if you were in
school right now. Somehow I doubt it.”

He shrugged. “No harm a guy trying, right?” He pushed at the
bike. He was like Clay’s good twin. The broke, hungry, needy, teenage runaway
version.

She gripped the handlebar. “What’s in the backpack?”

With a sigh, he showed her a little bottle the size of a
Tabasco bottle, with a fancy-schmantzy label.

She grabbed it. “‘Imparts radiance to the aura and enhances
the powers of the second chakra.’ What the f-fruit.”

“You should try it. My customers love it.”

“Famous last words.” Hell, Ed was right. This could get him
in real trouble. “Where’d you get this and what’s in it?”

He said, “It makes people feel good about themselves.”

“So it’s a drug.”

“It’s a potion,” he corrected. “It’s, like, in beta testing.
Before we put it on the market big time.”

Jewel groaned. “That does it.” She snatched for the backpack
strap.

But Buzz was too quick for her. Off he zinged, pedaling
fast.

She sighed, put the potion in her purse, and got in the car.

“Why trouble yourself with him?” Randy said. “Ed can turn
the matter over to the authorities.”

“I
am
the
authorities. Sometimes you can be such a lord.” Jewel paused the Tercel beside
a handful of tourists taking pictures of each other lighting cigarettes and
holding them up for pigeons to grab. She leaned out the car window. “That’s
against the law!”

One kid wearing a baseball cap backwards looked at her with
his mouth agape. “Why?”

“It’s a fire hazard,” she said with a straight face, and
drove on.

“He’s only a street urchin,” Randy said. “You lie — you
claim that vermin do not smoke — but you allow Buzz to run tame, though your
employer commands otherwise.”

“They’re not smoking. They use the tobacco for nesting
material. The cops would put Buzz in jail, which would make a real criminal out
of him.”

“I repeat, why do you care?”

She sagged against the seat. “Why do I wear myself out,
rescuing
you
from the consequences of your lordly temper?”

“Ah. So Buzz is one of your strays.”

“Look, he’s only, like, sixteen. He ran away from something
bad. He’s clean…ish. He’s making zero dollars, and he’s so skinny it hurts to
look at him. But he’s working. He’s not taking drugs or dealing drugs.
Conventional ones anyway. In fact, he’s a good example of what
you
could
be. If you didn’t have me, but you did have a work ethic and street smarts.”

“I am aware how obliged I am to your generosity.”

Now she’d done it. Insulted his lordship’s ego. “Let’s get
your hair cut.”

o0o

Clay found Griffy in the kitchen, “helping” the cook.

“Miss Griffin, I can take care of this,” the cook said.

“Oh,” Griffy said, looking flustered. “Let me — those pans
go in the top — all right, I’ll—”

Clay disentangled her and led her out to the front hall. “You
shouldn’t help the staff.”

Griffy collapsed onto a settee. “They
live
here now!
They’ve been here two days, ever since Virgil brought that woman home. I think
he hired them to spy on me. That butler, Mellish, he watches me. I’m a nervous
wreck!” A tear leaked out the corner of her eye. “Virgil’s put me in a separate
bedroom. He’s getting rid of me. But first he’s going to torment me until I
lose my mind. I should have gone to college,” she mourned. “I’m too old to
strip.”

“Naw. He’s salting the mine — uh, dressing the place up so
the golddigger will think he’s worth seducing. It’s a scam, I’m positive.” Clay
sat beside her and held her hands. “Listen, I wasn’t going to tell you this.”

“Because I can’t keep a secret,” she said with resentment.

“Because you have enough to worry about,” he said, though
she was right. How did Virgil expect Griffy, of all people, to cope with the
web of lies he wove around a con? “The thing is, I need you to do something for
me. You were right, he’s out of control, and I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you
before, and I
really
wish you hadn’t
complained to the department,” he said, his soothing tone slipping.

“But Clay, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“I guess this will teach me, huh?” He won a smile from her,
and moved on to his forlorn hope. “So I’ve got two people from my division
coming in to help out. Can you do me a huge favor? Don’t talk to them about me?”
He kept his face pleasant, but inside he was squinching his eyes shut and
crossing his fingers.

“Oh, no.” She shook her finger at him. “Not you, too! What
is it with you and your father? Secrets, secrets! You know I’m no good at
remembering what’s a secret and what isn’t.”

“Well, it was pretty clever of you to use the Consumer
Services hot line to get me here.”

She dimpled. “But that’s your job, isn’t it? Stopping con
artists from stealing from people?”

“We don’t chase off golddiggers.”

“But that’s stealing too!”

Clay gave up.

o0o

Lunch with the golddigger was a revelation. Sovay
Sacheverell was one of those women who flaunted. She was gorgeous and classy
and hard-as-nails, down to the English accent. Jewelry, skin, youth, class,
clothes, she flaunted them. And she never stopped talking.

“Griffy, this mousse is marvelous, your cook must give me
the receipt.” Yes, she said “receipt.” “As I was saying, the Venus Machine
disappeared in the eighteen-fifties during a house party of the Company of the
Apostles — I don’t know if you know of their secret society? — At the home of
the Viscount of Urgyff, who was a cousin of the head of the Anglican Church. It
turned up thirty years later in Prague.” Sovay laughed a rippling silvery
laugh. “Collectors can be such fiends, don’t you agree, Virgil?”

Clay’s ears hurt. He simpered at Sovay, which she seemed to
take as her due, but her real audience was Virgil.

Virgil ate it up. In a sickeningly phony, feeble-old-man
voice he said, “That’s quite a story, quite a story. I remember hearing old
Simonson, or was it that Pharsee collector, what was his name, ben Haroun? al
Harim? I’m sure it was one of those, yes, he talked about a similar thing
happening in nineteen fifty-eight, or maybe it was fifty-seven, hm. Hm. I’d
have to look it up. Anyway it was most amusing and instructive, what he had to
say about the behavior of collectors, indeed it was. Coffee,” he said to the
butler. The butler poured coffee. Virgil sipped. “Mmm. Tigers! That’s what he
collected. Knew I’d remember it.”