Unplugged (21 page)

The idea of putting “Mr. Lepinski” and “buff” in the same sentence made my brain rattle inside my skull, but I held tight to my game face. “Do you feel a need to be more attractive, Mr. Lepinski?”

“Well . . .” He shrugged and looked defensive. Some people are like that about self-improvement. I think it’s the fact that we’re fed, from infancy, the line that we are, each of us, spectacular, and shouldn’t change a thing. Which is a bunch of hooey as far as I’m concerned. Most of us are as loopy as corkscrews and any kind of self-improvement is worth a shot.

But despite the fact that Lepinski often irritated the hell out of me, deep down I thought he was a pretty good egg.

“No,” he said, then “I don’t know.” He paused, looking worried. “It couldn’t hurt, I suppose.”

There was something in his tone—a wistfulness, maybe, that intrigued me. I tilted my head and poked gently. “How does your wife feel about your interest in fitness?”

“Sheila?”

I nodded. He didn’t look like the polygamist type, thus the question seemed supercilious, but I managed to keep my musings to myself.

He glanced toward the door and back again. Toward the door and back. I waited. He shifted restlessly, but his knees remained perfectly locked and his shoes, brown leather wing-tips, were aligned with martial precision.

His knobby knuckles were white against his skinny thighs.

I waited some more.

“I think she’s having an affair,” he rasped finally.

I
felt drained and beaten by the time he left my office. Drained, beaten, and useless. The poor guy’s wife was stepping out on him and all I could come up with was, “How do you feel about that?”

I slumped behind my desk. The past couple weeks had been hell. First Solberg’s disappearance, then being attacked by thugs, then Rivera. I’d almost preferred the thugs.

At least they hadn’t doubted that I’d had a date. At least they hadn’t made me say stupid-ass things like “He’s taller than you.” Or “He’ll probably make more than Solberg in a couple years,” or . . .

My mind stuttered to a halt. Good God. I’d mentioned Solberg and Ross in the same breath. What if Rivera put two and two together? What if he called NeoTech and found out Ross worked there? What if I was a total moron?

My hands shook as I dialed the number for NeoTech. Someone with a nasal twang patched me through to Ross’s office without delay.

“Bennet here.”

I swallowed a lump the size of a Schaumburg cockroach. “Ross?”

“Yes?”

“This is . . .” I took a deep breath. “This is . . . umm . . .” Now was not the time to forget my name.

“Chris.” His voice was warm. “Hi. How are you?”

“Fine. I’m . . . umm . . . fine.” I had a stranglehold on the telephone cord.

“And your friend? Elaine, wasn’t it? How’s she?”

It took me a moment to remember my fabricated reason for leaving him high and dry at the Safari. “Oh, yes.” I cleared my throat, fighting my conscience. I had bigger problems. My waning sanity, for instance. “She’s fine.”

“Good.”

The phone went silent.

“Listen, ummm, Ross, I’m calling to ask for a favor.”

“Shoot.”

I winced. I’d never been such a stickler about phrase-ology. “I’m in a little bit of trouble. With the police. Nothing big,” I hurried to add. “Just, you know . . .” I tried a laugh. Yikes. “A misunderstanding. Unpaid parking tickets, that sort of thing.” Stupid, stupid, stupid. “Well, not . . .” I laughed again. It sounded worse than the first time. There was a little squeaky noise at the end of it, like a dog that had gotten hold of a chew toy. I was going to have to quit that. “Not parking tickets exactly.” If Rivera contacted Ross, how much would he tell him? Probably not much. He was the crown prince of antisocial behavior. I was banking on the dark lieutenant’s aversion to communication. “There was a little vehicular incident Friday night. Someone crashed into someone and someone thought it was my car. But it wasn’t. In fact—”

“Does this have anything to do with a . . .” He paused as if checking his notes. “Lieutenant Rivera?”

My mouth dropped open and stayed open. My mind spun to a halt, like a Maytag on spin dry.

“Hello?”

I blinked. “You’ve already spoken to him?”

“Well, no.” He paused. “But he called. A couple times. I was out, though, and this morning’s been crazy. I haven’t had a chance to get back to him.”

“Ohhh . . .” I felt like I’d been overcooked and left in the strainer too long. “Well, I . . .” I inhaled carefully, lest my lungs explode. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

“I’ll try.”

“I’d, ummm . . . I’d, ummm . . .” Just say it, God damn it! “I’d like you to tell Rivera we were together all night,” I spurted, then bit my lip and squeezed my eyes shut. “At my house.”

He was silent for what seemed forever, then, “Was it as good for you as it was for me?”

The air escaped my lungs in a hiss. My shoulders drooped like yesterday’s lettuce. “I didn’t do anything wrong, Ross. I swear to God. I swear it on my grandfather’s grave.”

He was silent again.

“I loved my grandfather,” I said into the abyss.

He laughed. “All right.”

“You’ll do it?” I whispered.

“Yes. But you’ll owe me.”

“What?”

He delayed a moment. “Dinner? Your place?”

Damn it, I’d rather give him my firstborn. Or sex. What was wrong with sex? Didn’t anyone blackmail people with sex anymore?

“Okay.”

“All right, then. How about Friday night?”

We settled on a time, after which point I filled him in on how we’d spent our time together. He sounded surprised, but not disappointed.

I took it as a sign of better things to come.

15

Celibacy sucks, no pun intended.

—Eddie Friar,
shortly after coming out of the closet

T
HE WHOLE WEEK
was a disaster.

Devoid of any better ideas, I had trotted Solberg’s confiscated disk over to Eddie Friar’s house. Eddie’s an ex-boyfriend. He’s also gay. I’m sorry to say that hardly qualifies our relationship as weird—in comparison to a few dozen others. In fact, Eddie’s one of the few guys with whom I still communicate. He’s articulate, good-looking, and kind. Unfortunately, his guess regarding the CD was no more educated than mine—it seemed to contain blueprints and schematics for some kind of new invention.

I thanked him for his time and he asked if I’d like to join him for Thanksgiving dinner. The idea seemed a little pathetic—a gay guy and a raging hetero spending turkey day together—but not so pathetic as me alone with a can of Spam, so I thanked him again and went on my not-so-merry way.

With no idea where to go or who else to trust, I let the situation simmer as I worried about more immediate problems—such as my continued survival.

Some months ago, I had purchased a minimal security system for my modest abode. But in light of recent circumstances, I thought it might be time for an upgrade.

The installation guys came by on Tuesday to do the work, then stood in the vestibule and looked at me as if wondering what the hell there was to steal. True, you could fit the entirety of my house in a double-wide trailer and I didn’t have so much as a single pair of matching spoons, but I thought my life was worth the cost.

Maybe I was wrong. Their fee was tantamount to extortion. I’d have to counsel two more Peeping Toms and a schizophrenic for a year and a half to pay it.

On Wednesday, the Vegas magician returned my call. I recognized his area code on my caller ID. Apparently I had played the dumb blonde pretty convincingly when I left my message.

I tried to find that same platinum frame of mind as I picked up the phone.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Good afternoon,” he responded. His voice was lush and theatrical. I think I may actually have shifted the receiver from my ear to stare at it. “Might there be a Ms. Pinky at these premises?”

“Yeah. This is Pinky. Who’s this?” If I had been chewing gum, my world would have been complete.

“This is the Mystical Menkaura.”

I delayed a moment, then, “Menke, hey, thanks for returning my call.” There was a good deal of noise in the background—people chattering, something being scraped across the floor. At one point I thought I heard an elephant trumpet, but that might have been my imagination. “I’m between gigs and I heard you’re short a girl.” I held my breath.

“From whom did you hear this news?”

“From whom?”
Was this guy for real, or was there the hint of a Brooklyn accent in his sheikish voice?

“Guy named Orlando Gonzalez.” I had seen his name on the Internet and hoped to hell Menke didn’t know him personally. “Maybe you heard of him. He’s making some splash in Dallas. Anyways, I was his box jumper for a while after one of his girls got knocked up, and he says you might be needing someone, so I took in your show last Sunday.”

“Did you indeed?”

“Yeah. You got yourself a winner there, Menke. And the horse . . . oooh, talk about your sexy beast.”

“Is he not beautiful? He is Bedouin bred, the eagle of the desert sands.”

Uh-huh. “Anyways, I thought maybe you and me could help each other out,” I said.

He paused. I chewed my lip. Maybe I’d overplayed my hand.

Or maybe I hadn’t played it enough. “Even though your other girls ain’t as buxom as me.”

I might have been mistaken, but I think he was holding his breath.

“As it happens,” he said finally, “I am in need of a new assistant.”

“Yeah?” Him and Hugh Hefner. “That’s great. How’s ’bout I pop in and see you first part of next week?”

“I believe I may be able to arrange that.”

He suggested a time.

I apologized and told him that was my full day with my personal trainer. “If your buns ain’t tight, nothing’s right,” I said, and gave him a hee-hawing laugh.

He tried again, and we agreed.

“Fabuloso,” I said, then, cleverly, as if it were an afterthought, “Hey, your gal, the blonde one, what’s her name? I think I may have been her double in Dallas a couple years back.”

“My fair-haired assistant?”

“Yeah.”

“She is called Athena.”

Athena!
Got it,
I thought, but his tone tripped a little bell in my mind. He said it as if he were speaking to an audience of zillions instead of to a bubble-brained bimbo with a cerebellum the size of a lintel.

“Athena, yeah, that was her stage name,” I said. “But wasn’t her real name something kinda plain-Jane, like Louise or Hazel or—”

“Gertrude,” he said, and I noticed that even he couldn’t say the name with much panache. “Gertrude Nelson.”

I hung up moments later and tried Directory Assistance for Las Vegas, but Gertrude’s phone was unlisted, so I trotted off to work and let the information stew, along with a thousand other tumbling details.

My caseload was light that day. Thanksgiving was fast approaching, and most of my clients were probably visiting relatives. My mother had called again and asked me to come home, then suggested she could invite Ernie Catrelli. I’d known Ernie in high school. He was the quarterback for Holy Name’s football team. Now he’s on his third divorce and living with his parents.

I’d opted for the gay guy.

Elaine entered my office.

“So . . .” I tried to sound cheery because, God knows, if she looked sad I’d probably blubber the truth all over the place and send her marching off to Vegas in a blind attempt to save Solberg’s skinny ass. “You’re leaving for Schaumburg tonight, huh?”

She sunk into the chair on the far side of my desk. “I’ve decided not to go.”

“What?” Going home had been a great idea. She needed time away. I needed to find Solberg. Alone. “Your folks will be heartbroken.”

She shook her head. “They’re busy anyway. I decided I’ll spend more time with them during Christmas.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. But “I didn’t break into Solberg’s house and no one chased
me
through his backyard with a gun the size of Milwaukee” was my first impulse.

“So what are you doing?” she asked.

We hadn’t had much time to talk lately, what with me pretending to be a cello and her dating the ice cream guy.

“Eddie Friar asked me over,” I said. If she was going to stay in L.A., it would be best if she stayed close. “You want to come?”

“You don’t think he’d mind?”

I gave her a look. “Has a guy ever minded when you show up, Laney?”

Her eyes got a little misty. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Mac,” she said.

I gave her some clever rejoinder, but guilt was riding me pretty hard, ’cuz I knew what she’d do without me. She’d date guys who would give up their kidneys to spend a half hour with her, instead of mourning some emaciated little twit who’d run off to Las Vegas and maybe had the bad manners to get himself killed, or worse. Worse being having an affair so that I had to hire the mob to have him killed.

My mood was pretty low when I drove home that afternoon, but it was nothing compared to how I felt when I saw there was a car parked in my driveway.

It was an early-model Thunderbird. I stared at it narrowly as I made my way to the front door.

“Christopher!”

I shrieked and jumped sideways as a man popped up from beneath the bumper of the car. He doubled over laughing like a hyena and I swore I could feel the stress-induced acne erupting like popcorn on my face.

“Peter,” I said.

“Holy shit, sis, you’re as jumpy as a virgin.”

I managed to make my way up my single step to my front door and shove in my key. “What are you doing here?”

He sauntered after me. “I just needed a little downtime. Thought I’d come see my baby sister.”