back over her ears. Her face was elfin; he had always pictured Russian women as either kerchief-headed grannies, sun-and-nutrient-starved model waifs, or steroid-gulping swimmers. But Irina looked fresh and healthy, not tall but not frail, eyes of watery blue, and a generous mouth.
‘Go campaign today.’ She took her stepmother role seriously. ‘Buddy Beere has a van covered with campaign signs patrolling Main Street.’
‘He offered to debate me.’
‘Of course you accepted.’
‘No. I’m too busy doing the actual job. But I need two favors.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I need to borrow your computer.’
‘Sure. You need the computer now?’ she asked.
‘I’d prefer to use it after hours, if you don’t mind.’ ‘No problem.’
Why does a Russian accent nail you right in the crotch? Perhaps he had fixated on Natasha on the old Bullwinkle cartoons in a freaky erotic manner.
She jangled a set of keys from her pocket, pried a silver key off the ring, and slid it across the table. ‘Extra key. Lock up when you’re done. Second favor is?’
‘I want you to befriend someone but you cannot gossip about it.’
‘Who?’
‘Her name is Velvet.’
‘That sounds like a horse’s name.’
‘She’s not. She’s a friend of the man who died. She’s a little unconventional, but she could use a friendly face. She’s meeting me here for lunch. I’ll introduce you.’
‘You always find the strays that need help, yes?’
‘Don’t tell Dad. He’ll just say that I’m not being focused on the campaign.’
Irina made a dismissive noise. ‘Forget him. You know, I think I am the only one who knows the real you sometimes. Isn’t that silly?’ She leaned over and gave him an irreproachable peck on the cheek. ‘You are a thoughtful boy, Whit.’
A boy, and he was older than she.
Velvet stepped inside the cafe. Whit waved her over, introduced Irina to her.
‘You’re Judge Mosley’s stepmother?’ Velvet, dressed modestly in tourist-trap Bermuda shorts and a pale yellow T-shirt, shook hands and sat, not taking her eyes off Irina. ‘Maybe I should go recruit in Russia. I do training films. Corporate stuff.’
Irina smiled politely and excused herself. She returned with tall glasses of iced tea, took their order for salads and bitokes, and scurried to the kitchen.
‘So now you’re making training films?’ Whit said.
‘I cut a little deal with Faith Hubble. Mouth zippered shut for now. For Sam’s sake. Pete wouldn’t have wanted him hurt by, well, by the truth.’
‘So you and Faith are bosom buddies?’
‘I loathe that bitch with all my heart. But Sam’s a good kid. I don’t want him hurt. But I don’t want them to just sweep Pete under a rug, either.’
‘So how are you doing?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m cried out. When do you have autopsy results?’
‘Probably today. At the latest tomorrow.’ He stirred his tea. ‘Pete tried to kill himself once before. You neglected to mention that to us.’
‘Oh, that. He took the wrong pills.’
‘A dozen of them?’
‘He took the pills because I didn’t cast him in a quickie movie I was making. We had a fight the week before, and I was fed up with him. Pete could be a prima donna. So he downed some tranqs and called me on his cell phone to drive him to the hospital. I didn’t believe him, and by the time I got to his place he was tanked out. Otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered with the hospital. I just would have made him puke. I’ve jammed fingers down throats before.’
‘A lot of suicide among your co-workers, isn’t there?’
Velvet shrugged. ‘Shrinks kill themselves more than any other group. So don’t be thinking my colleagues are all mental cases. We’re not.’
‘No, like me, you’re all well-adjusted models of society.’ He meant it lightly, as a joke on them both, but he’d punched a well-pummeled bruise.
‘Yeah. Just like the well-adjusted models of society that buy all our movies.’
Their salads arrived, blanketed with blue-cheese dressing. Velvet waited until the server left before speaking.
‘You probably don’t know the names I’ve been called by your well-adjusted types when I’ve bothered to go on radio shows or done Web interviews. Whore. Slut. They cease to mean much after a while.’ She offered a smile. ‘I prefer to think of myself as a pleasure engineer.’
He laughed because he could tell she needed him to.
‘At least this way I get to choose what I’m called, Whit. Whore’s a term coined by men to trample any woman with sexual vitality.’ Velvet licked the blue cheese from her fork with a slow, baroque flourish of her tongue. Whit waited for the chain reaction of heart attacks to decimate the retired men in the restaurant, but no one keeled over.
‘That makes you uncomfortable,’ Velvet said. ‘You’re all squirmy boy now.’
‘I am not.’
‘What a squirmy man needs is a kiss gone bad,’ Velvet said.
‘A what?’
‘In regular movies, ninety percent of the time, you get the kiss and that’s it. Maybe they wriggle, real fakey, in bed. But it’s antiseptic sexuality. In adult movies you get the kiss and two seconds later the cast is getting way down and dirty. I just call it a kiss gone bad. But it’s really good. You know, you’re my ideal audience. Single, a little bored, too respectable to ever solicit a prostitute but probably in need of sweet relief.’
‘I’m not bored,’ Whit said. He felt color creeping up past his collar.
‘Have you ever seen one of my movies, Whit?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever seen any porn movie? Be honest.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘When one of my brothers got married, we had a bachelor party with an X-rated tape rolling on the VCR.’
‘If you watched it, and it made your God-fearing little soldier stand at attention, honey, you can’t look down your nose at me. I’m giving you and every other man what greases your wheels.’ She lowered her voice even further. ‘I bet my tapes are under more beds and hidden away in more closets here in your sweet little Gomerville than you would ever imagine.’
‘What do you want me to say, Velvet? Good for you?’
‘I just don’t want you to act like what I do is so terribly wrong. I’m not filled with angst over what I do.’
‘All this angst Pete supposedly felt about his brother’s disappearance, is that really why he ended up in porn?’
‘He did it because it’s fun,’ she said in a flat voice, fork poised above the messy salad.
‘Fun. And that’s why you did the movies, too?’
She began to eat her salad, not answering him, shoveling drenched chunks of lettuce in her mouth, staring at her plate. ‘Drop the armchair psychology.’
‘It’s just that… you seem too smart for this.’
She glanced at him quickly. ‘Oh, and so the blue movies are full of morons, huh? Judgie boy, I’ve worked with computer programmers, accountants, lawyers. People who want to make one flick, just for laughs, use a horny- corny name, get in, get out. You think they’re better than me ‘cause they do drive-by porn?’
‘No,’ Whit said. ‘But I want to know why you and Pete did these movies.’
‘Why? Want me to make you a star?’ she asked.
