Whit an appetizer? No wonder you’re chunky,’ Gooch said.
‘Gooch. Don’t,’ Whit said. He shrugged at Junior. ‘So start working your cell phone and get all of your daddy’s attorneys down here. The bill the lawyers charge to your dad for all that travel time should be substantial.’
Junior considered this – calling his father to gather a bevy of lawyers in Port Leo – and suddenly cooperated. ‘Look, Judge, you want to chase down the right fox, you need to look at the X-Bitch.’
‘Who?’
‘Pete’s ex. He called her the X-Bitch, you know, like The X-Files? Freaking alien weirdo. She was about to drive him crazy.’
‘How so?’
‘Man, how didn’t Faith? Over at his boat all the time, trying to sweeten him up. I caught Pete and Faith once, I swear, inches from fucking. Velvet would’ve had a coronary.’
‘Velvet says Pete was just a friend.’
‘Yeah, right, they’re just friends after he’s had his dick inside her a couple of hundred times. You know women don’t think that way, not even porn stars.’ Junior laughed, relaxing now that the topic was back on treasured ground. ‘But the X-Bitch, hell, I think she kinda had a split personality going as far as Pete was concerned. She wanted him but she wanted him gone. She works for that old shit of a mother of his, and you know they were soiling their panties when he moved back. Jesus, he told me his mother offered him money to go away. He didn’t want to do it and I’m all like, dude! Are you nuts? Take the money, ditch Port Lame here and go back to L.A., where life is real.’ Junior shook his head. ‘Shit, he should’ve taken that money. He really should’ve.’
Anson wheeled into view in the open doorway. ‘Junior!’ he bawled. ‘Get in here.’
Junior picked up his groceries. ‘I had every reason to want Pete alive, and his family sure as hell didn’t. Later.’ He turned and went back to Anson, walking past him without a word. Whit followed him back through the lobby. Anson wasn’t in a mood to parry further.
‘Good night. Judge,’ he said with solemnity, and motored himself back into the elevator after Junior.
Whit and Gooch walked out of the lobby. Junior hardly appeared credible on paper, but his words gave Whit pause. If Velvet was right, and Pete was going to sue for custody, had Faith tried to disarm him with sex? And if Lucinda had truly offered her son cash to fade away… what had she done when he refused?
It suggested they knew damn well Pete might be suing for custody, and had more than a prayer of winning. But Junior would be hard to present as a credible witness.
‘I must get the name of the reform school he attended,’ Gooch said. ‘I want to sponsor a scholarship.’
Whit walked past Junior’s Porsche and noticed the rear left corner looked like it had suffered a minor accident. The left taillight was smashed. Whit remembered the one-eyed Porsche he’d passed last night heading away from the marina, trash disco blaring into the night – hours before Anson claimed they’d arrived in Port Leo.
The Blade was tired.
Midnight had come to Port Leo, his favorite time, and he stood beneath a canopy of live oaks and listened to the wind – the wind that had caressed, in its time, every inch of the world, every woman – whisper through the oak limbs.
It was a good day, he supposed. He knew where Velvet was, a toy just waiting to be opened. His plan for Heather Farrell had been put in motion. He could sleep and dream up a store of delights that, in the days ahead, he could make real.
Not every man, he knew, was so blessed and rich. He went into the garage to prepare his boat for its chores.
19
‘Mom?’
Faith Hubble was jolted out of sleep. She had been dreaming: dreaming that Port Leo was gone, left far behind her on a boat arrowing deep into the bowl of the Gulf, and Pete stood to one side of her, Whit on the other. As the spray from the prow cooled her face against a blistering sun, the two of them seized her shoulders, upended her over the railing, and she plummeted toward a canyon of water, falling for miles. She had glanced up and Pete and Whit were gone, Lucinda and Sam standing in their places, watching her die.
She pulled her head from the pillow. Sweat touched her shoulders, her back, between her legs.
‘Mom?’ Sam said again. Purpling shadows marred the skin under his eyes. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week. ‘You okay?’
She smiled. She certainly was. ‘Yes, honey, I’m fine.’ She patted his hand. ‘It’s all gonna be okay. I promise you that.’
Velvet munched on a cold Pop-Tart and counted the money again, the bills new and stiff and feeling like revenge under her fingernails. She made the edges of the bills flush with a smack against the bedside table. As down payments went, it wasn’t half bad. And since her production company wasn’t being at all helpful on the legal front (‘Sorry, Velvet. Don’t know a lawyer in Texas and we just can’t get involved’ – the bastards), the money was more necessary than ever. Money from Faith to stab Faith, eventually. She liked the idea.
She finished her Pop-Tart then studied the pastry’s box to see if the phrase was trademarked – not a bad name for a movie. Pop-Tarts. Could play up pop music, could play up oversweet breakfast treats. Damn. Trademarked. Oh, well. She folded the money – twenty thousand – into the bottom of her suitcase, hiding it inside a light wind-breaker.
She showered, considering her next move. Shooting Faith would have been a bad idea and she doubted that she could have pulled the trigger. But she had loaded the gun and stuck it in the bottom of her purse as Faith knocked on the door, just in case.
Just in case the crazy bitch tried to kill her.
But Faith had not had murder on her mind. Listen, Velvet, you know and I know that Pete killed himself. You saying anything else is just a ploy for publicity.
You mean a ploy for justice.
No, Publicity. I did a little checking, sweetie. Pete tried to kill himself four years ago, swallowing pills. I got the hospital records from Van Nuys. I’m giving them to the police and to Whit Mosley.
It doesn’t mean anything.
You know what else I found out, sweetie? Your last five movies have bombed. You tried to get all artsy instead of just delivering the smut, and no one cares what you’re doing now. You’re broke. Velvet.
Get the hell out of here.
And Faith, instead of getting mad, gave her that superior little smirk. So mature. Don’t you know I can help you? Get you back on your feet so you can – the smirk again – get back off them right away. And you and I can both be happy.
Velvet rinsed her hair clean of lather, turned off the shower, reached for a towel. She felt better than she had yesterday, when the knots and rocks in her gut shifted with every breath. She stepped out of the shower, wondering if Pete was looking down or up at her, and whether he hated her now.
Don’t hate me, Pete, I promise you I’m not done with them yet, and Faith Hubble’s going to fry, fry, fry. She would have to launder the money the Hubbles would be steering toward her, polish it with a veneer of respectability, before she called the papers in Dallas and Houston and Austin. It shouldn’t, she figured, take very long.
She got dressed and checked the gun again, at the bottom of her purse. It fit in perfectly next to the handheld tape recorder. Faith’s voice on that tape – cajoling, begging, offering bribes for silence over Pete’s still secret career – was better than any bullet. A bullet meant only a moment’s suffering.
Suffering. She thought of Sam, Faith’s pleas that he be protected from all the pain about Pete’s career, and she remembered Sam and Pete sitting on the prow of Real Shame, Pete drinking a bottled beer, Sam sipping a Coke, awkwardly talking, settling finally on a discussion of baseball. Pete liked the Padres, Sam the Rangers, and she shamelessly eavesdropped, hearing them warm to each other, talking about trades and homers and a mutual loathing of the Yankees. Sam had finally laughed at one point. Warm tears had welled in her eyes and she thought,
