“He was at the gate? You must have set off a sensor when you drove in. He’s normally inside.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know. He’s not exactly chummy.”
“You’ve seen him before?”
“I don’t know,” Lex said a little too quickly. “Look, Gabriel doesn’t like me talking about his security. Like I said, he’s paranoid. Forget it; it’s not important.”
Fine with Myron. He wasn’t here to learn about the lifestyle of a rock star. “You want a drink?”
“Nah, we’re working late tonight.”
“So why are you hiding?”
“I’m not hiding. We’re working. This is how we always do it. Gabriel and I holed up alone in his studio. Making music.” He glanced back at the two big bodyguards. “So what are you doing here, Myron? I already told you: I’m fine. This doesn’t concern you.”
“This isn’t about just you and Suzze anymore.”
Lex sighed, sat back. He, like lots of aging rockers, had the emaciated thing going on, with skin like weathered tree bark. “What, it’s about you all of a sudden?”
“I want to know about Kitty.”
“Dude, I’m not her keeper either.”
“Just tell me where she is, Lex.”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“You don’t have an address or a phone number?”
Lex shook his head.
“So how did she end up with you at Three Downing?”
“Not just her,” Lex said. “There were, what, a dozen of us.”
“I don’t care about the others. I’m asking how Kitty ended up with you guys.”
“Kitty is an old friend,” Lex said with an exaggerated shrug. “She called out of the blue and said she could use a night out. I told her where we were.”
Myron looked at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
“What?”
“Just called you out of the blue for a night out? Please.”
“Look, Myron, why are you asking me these questions? Why don’t you ask your brother where she is?”
Silence.
“Ah,” Lex said, “I see. So you’re doing this for your bro?”
“No.”
“You know I love to wax philosophical, right?”
“I do.”
“Here is a simple one: Relationships are complicated. Especially matters of the heart. You have to let people work their own stuff out.”
“Where is she, Lex?”
“I told you. I don’t know.”
“Did you ask her about Brad?”
“Her husband?” Lex frowned. “Now it’s my turn to say, ‘You’re kidding, right?’ ”
Myron handed him a copy of the still frame he’d gotten off the security camera of the ponytailed guy. “Kitty was with this guy at the club. Do you know him?”
Lex took a look at it and shook his head. “Nope.”
“He was part of your entourage.”
“No,” Lex said, “he wasn’t.” He sighed, picked up a cocktail napkin, started tearing it into strips.
“Tell me what happened, Lex.”
“Nothing happened. I mean, not really.” Lex looked toward the bar. A pudgy man in a fitted golf shirt was chatting up one of the au pairs. Tears for Fears’s “Shout” was on and literally everyone else in the bar yelled “Shout” at the appropriate time. The guys who’d been snapping on the dance floor still snapped.
Myron waited, gave Lex space.
“Look, Kitty called me,” Lex said. “She said she needed to talk. She sounded pretty desperate. You know we go way back. You remember those days, right?”
There had been a time when the rock gods partied with the tennis starlets. Myron had been there for part of it, fresh out of law school and seeking clients for his start-up agency. So had his younger brother, Brad, enjoying the summer before his freshman year of college by “interning” for his big bro. That summer had started off with such promise. It ended with the love of his life breaking his heart-and Brad gone from his life for good.
“I remember,” Myron said.
“So anyway I figured that Kitty just wanted to say hi. For old times’ sake. I always felt bad for her, you know, the whole career gone up in flames like that. I guess I was curious too. It’s been, what, fifteen years since she quit.”
“Something like that.”
“So Kitty meets up with us at the nightclub, and right away I know something isn’t right.”
“In what way?”
“She has a bad case of the shakes. Her eyes are glazed, and man, I know strung out when I see it. I stopped using a long time ago. Suzze and me, we went through that war already. Kitty, no offense, but she was still using. She hadn’t come to me to say hello. She came to me to score. When I told her I wasn’t into that scene, she asked for money. I told her no on that too. So she moved on.”
“Moved on?”
“Yep.”
“What do you mean, moved on?”
“What part is hard to understand, man? It’s a simple equation. Kitty is a junkie-and we wouldn’t give her a fix. Ergo, she hooked up with someone who could, uh, help her out.”
Myron held up the photo of Ponytail. “This guy?”
“I guess.”
“And then what?”
“Then nothing.”
“You said Kitty was an old friend.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So you didn’t think to try to help her?”
“Help her how?” Lex said, turning his palms to the sky. “Like, organize an intervention right there in the nightclub? Like, drag her by force to rehab?”
Myron said nothing.
“You don’t know junkies.”
“I remember when you were one,” Myron said. “I remember when you and Gabriel were throwing all your cash at blow and blackjack.”
“Blow and blackjack. I like that.” Lex smiled. “So how come you never helped us out?”
“Maybe I should have.”
“Nah, you couldn’t have helped. A man has to find his own way.”
Myron wondered about that. He wondered about Alista Snow, whether earlier intervention with Gabriel Wire could have helped her out. He almost said that, but what would be the point?
“You keep wanting to fix things,” Lex said, “but the world has a certain ebb and flow. You screw with it, you just make it worse. It isn’t always your fight, Myron. Do you mind if I give you a quick example from, well, from your past?”
“I guess not,” Myron said, regretting the words the moment they passed his lips.
“When I first met you all those years ago, you had a serious girlfriend, right? Jessica something. The writer.”
The regret started taking shape and expanding.
“And something bad happened between you. I don’t know what. Here you were, what, twenty-four, twenty-five
