Romano and Albright 01 - Catch Me If You Can (MM) (16 page)

As far as Rachel went? My guess was that anyone who had seen Rachel’s private area would know the truth about her…him…her and be confused or angry. I think. I wasn’t too clear on the logistics of hermaphroditism. Why would anyone want money from her? Anger. Jealousy. Revenge. All the usual suspects. She’d been in the office with Peter. For all I knew, she had taken that horrible painting.

And finally, the Circus of Despair. Now there was a title that summed up this entire weekend. Mallory hired her nephew to investigate. Fine.
Dandy.
I wasn’t guilty of anything but promiscuity and premature ejaculation. The painting had nothing to do with me.

What mattered most was that my very best friend was in financial trouble. She needed to be saved—I moved that into my Shit To Do column.

I was so angry, my teeth hurt. People were cutting me a wide berth in the full subway car. I was grumbling and grousing to myself, my hands flailing. I was muttering in Italian. I considered calling Cousin Joey, but I had no definitive plan.

We stopped near Washington Square, and I marched back into the daylight by rote. I didn’t know why I was walking toward the gallery, but I guess that’s where my feet wanted to take me. I was nearing Denali’s Deli, when Brandon Wakefield stepped out of the doorway, his face ablaze, his hat low and his lips stretched like a lamprey. I had completely forgotten about him. Arrested, I stood there wide-eyed and repulsed. He was working a lime popsicle with his swollen mouth. “Holy fuck, Bran, what happened to you?”

“Hey, Theethar. Whad ahe you doin’ here?”

“I’m quitting my job. Are you…well? Can I help you?”

He sucked on his pop, shaking his head. “No. I hag anoder praceedure.”

“You let someone do that to you on purpose? You paid them?” He looked like an overfilled sausage. His skin was still vibrantly red from the chemical peel, but his lips? Maybe when the swelling went down they’d be considered bee-stung. I squinted. Tiny threads were barely visible at his temples. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Stithes. I hag werk. Theetar. I keepth thelling you.”

“Oh. So this will all make you look younger when it heals?” Lord save us from the hands of Father Time. And Dr. Mengele-Bronner. I was beginning to think looking like my father wasn’t such a bad thing. He’d aged splendidly. Maybe if I took after Tino or Vito…

“’es. Be bedder in a week.” He was looped on painkillers, his pupils the size of pennies. He blinked innocently at me, the drugs and the stitches making him appear even more slow-witted than normal.

“Bran. I need to ask you, flat out, did you take anything from the gallery Friday night?”

He blinked slowly again. “Jus the twuck. And futh you, Theethar.”

“I know. I’m sorry to ask, it’s just…stuff is missing.”

“There’th alwayth thomething mithing.”

I helped Brandon, stoned and stumbling, into a cab. It seemed his Dr. Bronner was in the Village and practicing his craft daily on the aging Brandon. Hopefully practice did indeed make perfect. Jeez.

At Starbucks I decided to order a macchiato, calories be damned. I needed a fix. I was running around half-cocked, which was no way to run, and I required sugar. Sugar was the key to good mental health. I waited in line craving whipped cream, but before my turn came, a hand gripped my shoulder, scaring the wind out of me.

“Jesus.”

“Hey.” It was Rachel, smiling broadly. “I thought that was you.”

“Hey, yourself.” She was as adorable as ever, in a skintight sundress with a matching jacket. Everything today was hot pink and teal blue. She had parrots hanging from her ears, and a knobby bead necklace buried in her tits. She looked like Mae West ready for Key West. “How’d it go? Any news?”

“I was just going to call you. You’ll never guess who I saw.”

“After today? Probably not.”

“Brandon.”

“Really? I saw him too—”

“I had to work today, at Nosh. I’ve been running errands all morning for Poppy, and I think it’s Brandon. He was the last one out. He could have taken the head thing in the oven with him. The oven. It was big enough, right? Well, guess who is looking bee-stung and like he’s been at ground zero of a supernova? Brandon. He had
work
.”

“I know. Oh my God. He looks like a walking knockwurst. Don’t you all have a gig? He’s like Frankenstein’s more attractive younger brother.”

“Poppy won’t let him serve looking like that. But, Ce. Listen. This blackmail person, he wants four hundred from me, right?”

I followed Rachel’s conversational leaps with relative ease, which was unnerving. “Yeah. And five grand from me, eight something from Shep, and God knows what from Peter.”

“So I see Brandon and I think, hey, when I had that collagen last year? It was four hundred, you know? So I says to myself, I says: What’s it cost to have one of them peels? And it’s eight hundred something, Ce. I looked it up on my phone.” She waved her iPhone at me. I really needed to get one of those. “You know what that means?”

“I have no idea.” My attention shifted to the seductive display inside the confectionary case. It was my turn to order. “Caramel macchiato, venti, extra syrup, whipped cream, no foam. And one of those cupcakes.” I pointed vaguely to the case. The sales associate wisely grabbed the biggest dessert item they had without bothering me for further input. I’d earned this. I’d burned it off in Daniel Albright’s bed last night. My stomach growled.

“I’m taking you for a ride on my bike tomorrow,”
he’d said when I left. Before he’d kissed me again and I’d melted against him like the butter in that fucking cupcake.

He’d taken me for a ride, all right.
Albright
. I snatched the bag from the Starbucks boy’s hand, nearly taking his fingers off in my rush to get my treat.

“That’ll be eight fifty.”

“Eight?” I squeaked. I counted my change with care.

Rachel chattered on with enthusiasm. “I think he’s getting all of us to pay for his surgery. I figured it all out. Cuz Brandon? I used to go with him. And Shep would do him. I mean that guy is a total whore.” She was impossibly pleased with herself.

“Brandon or Shep? Brandon’s straight. What do you mean?”

“Shep. He’s slept with one of Poppy’s boyfriends. He’s just a whore. I mean, it’s one thing to like boys, like I do; it’s another to be an asshole about it.”

I took my drink from the overworked coffee slave. “Back up a second, Rach. You think Brandon is blackmailing everyone he knows to pay off his plastic surgeon?” Christ, it was crazy enough to be true. “And what? He’s got us on some kind of sliding scale? How he thinks that I have more money than Peter is…but maybe you’re on to something. I just asked him and he said no. Maybe he lied.”

Rachel’s painted mouth slackened. “You think?”

“Yeah. Well, he’s on painkillers now, probably not the best time to confront him. I’ll check into it, though. Just don’t say anything, okay? I’ll figure it out. Did the person contact you again?”

“Not yet, but he will. Oh, I know it’s him. He’s not the brightest crayon in the shed.”

“Uhm. Right.”

Brandon. I could go knock on his door and get our shit back. Tell him we could pretend this whole thing had never happened. He wasn’t a bad guy, you know? He was sort of harmless. And right now? He wasn’t exactly fleet of foot. But if he’d taken Poppy’s money? That was another matter. That was Joey territory.

Rach swung her ass out of the Starbucks, every eye in the joint focused on the swish of her skirt. She was something. And actually, she was on to far more than Detective Dan
Albright
was.

I sipped my goody. Whipped cream coated my lip, and I hit the street, wandering, wondering what to do next when a bus rolled past. Shep McNamara smiled with charming crocodile teeth from its side. His face was bloody huge.
Mr. Potter’s Lullaby
Coming This Summer! Thursdays at 8:00!
Letters a foot high. I scalded my tongue on the coffee. Shep was so handsome, those candy devil eyes, the platinum hair, the Crest White, cheeky smile. I had this very minute spent my last eight dollars on a cupcake, and he was a goddamn transit billboard, selling a lie at God-knows-what price.

I sucked at my whipped cream, licked chocolate mocha frosting from my cupcake—my oral fixation was out of control as I chewed my feelings into submission. I knew what I was going to do next, and like this less-than-virtuous lunch, I’d probably regret it.

Nana and I sat on the couch in her living room, suffering through the purgatory that was
Mr. Potter’s Lullaby.
Nan had been kind enough to make us both popcorn, but my blood sugar was still in orbit from my earlier binge. Besides, I wasn’t watching this dreck for entertainment purposes; I had to know what Shep had signed on for.

Nana threw a handful of popcorn at the TV. “This was your first boyfriend? What a waste. Such a fine-looking man. I didn’t know he’d found religion.”

On the screen, Shep rode a horse through a bucolic pasture in some unnamed Appalachian hill town. Tall meadow grasses parted like the Red Sea in his wake. He had a Stetson angled rakishly on his handsome head, and on his feet, those cowboy boots. This explained the new look.

“They could at least jazz it up with musical numbers, or some sex. Maybe they could have done a Baywatch Bible Hour, because this is weak. He does look good in those jeans, though.”

He did look good in those jeans, then again, he’d look good in a bread bag. “I know.” What else could I say? She was right.

Mr. Potter’s Lullaby
was discordant. Gorgeous cinematic detail flattened by lead-fisted melodrama of biblical proportion. Missionary Potter rode handsome and upright from town to town delivering the good news. In the two-hour pilot, Shep taught a valuable lesson to a “sexually confused” teenager. A lesson that had little semblance to the kind of discipline Shep seemed to prefer, I might add.

It appeared to be aimed at young people. No wonder Shep was terrified. It was like he was being held up as an example of What Not to Do While Acting in the Closet.

I was intensely uncomfortable with the direction he’d taken, because if asked, I wasn’t going to lie for him about our past relationship. I might not broadcast it, but I wasn’t hiding. I’d done it for three years, and I wouldn’t hide or lie for anyone ever again.

I sat rigidly in my chair, biting my back teeth and squeezing the puff right out of handfuls of popcorn. He should have turned this role down.

Nana hit me with a piece of popcorn. “Pumpkin, you need to lighten up. Get out more. Find a new guy. Someone who’s got a little pride.”

I smiled at her. “That’s a good thought. Next time I need to go for substance and not style.”

Shep mangled another stiffly written line while clutching some scantily clad, loose woman to his manly chest.

Nan said, “He had more chemistry with that young boy.”

“I can’t watch this anymore.”

“Do you realize what’s going to happen to him if he doesn’t come clean? He’s going to make a lot of people very angry.” She was a shrewd lady, my grandmother.

“Nana. He’s killing himself. The best thing he could do for his career is to come out before this gets big. Come out, come out wherever you are. He’d get good press. He should have held out for a show that sent a positive message. Instead he’s prostituting himself for Pottery Barn.” I was gearing for a full-blown rant. “Because this kind of exposure is dangerous. He’s demeaning himself.” No wonder he was terrified. I was feeling militant. I needed to find my Harvey Milk T-shirt and go camp outside Shep’s apartment with a sign:
Burst down those closet doors once and for all, and stand up and start to fight.

This shit was wrong, and I was ashamed of myself for having once loved him.

I went to the kitchen, utterly depressed by that uplifting festival of homophobia, and the doorbell rang. That was weird. No one came to the house. “I got it.”

Not that Nana was about to miss a second of Shep’s snug-fitting, jean-clad sermon on the mount.

I opened the door, six o’clock Monday evening, the sun setting, the pigeons roosting on the ledges, and Dan Albright stood on Nana’s doorstep with a scowl on his face and those shades covering his eyes. He had a shiny black helmet under his arm, which he thrust into my stomach with a
wop
. “Put this on. We’re going for a ride.”

I slapped it back into his gut. “No, Mr. Albright. Go screw yourself.” I would have said
fuck
but I didn’t have another quarter for the jar.

I tried to slam the door, but he stuck his boot in the threshold and held the front door open with his palm.

“Everything all right, Caesar?” Nana called from the living room. “You’re missing tears.”

“I’m fine,” I called. I said to Dan, “Isn’t this police brutality, Detective?”

Dan pointed at my sock-covered feet. “C’mon. Grab your goddamn shoes, and let’s go. We need to talk.”

“Why?”

“Because you turned off your phone. I have work to do, you know. You’re being a pain in my ass.”

“
Excuse me?
”

He sighed. “I need to talk to you about Poppy. We can have this fight later. Please. I need your help.”

That was the magic word. Not please, but Poppy. I waved goodbye to Nana who was hooting into her popcorn, slid on some loafers and grabbed a cardigan—purposely seeking the most ridiculous wishy-washy attire to wear on Dan’s beefy man-cycle.

He smiled like he was forgiven. “You are such a feisty thing.”

“And you are such an arrogant dick. I’m not doing this for you.”

He stuck the helmet on my head and dragged me into the street. “Mount up.”

“Excuse me?”

Dan climbed on and I tentatively
mounted up
, two pissed-off fellahs, ready to hit the open road on a suicide machine. “Are you able to drive? I’ve never actually been on a motorcycle before.”

“What? How is that possible?”

“I just…don’t…like to…they’re dangerous. I prefer cabs, the subway, walking.”

“You know, you’re a wuss. You’re so lively on the outside, but inside, you’re scared of the entire world. What’s up with that? Live a little. Take a fucking chance.”