The Dangerous Edge of Things

CHAPTER 33

Rico placed a bag on my desk. “Nice suit.”

I preened for him. “You like? It came in real handy during the morning car chase and my subsequent trip downtown. My third.”

He laughed. Then he stopped laughing. “You’re serious?”

“As the proverbial heart attack. And speaking of…” I peered into the bag. “All right, chili dogs.”

So we sat in the secondary room, and I filled him in on my morning. He ate delicately, fastidiously even, whereas I managed to blop ketchup on my pants. I papered myself with napkins and kept eating.

“Where’s Hot Guy?” Rico said.

I licked my lips. “Grounded, like me.”

“No wonder you’re in a hurry with this little project.” He pulled a portable drive from his pocket. “All the people you don’t trust are tied up somewhere else.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I trust Trey.”

Rico looked surprised. “That’s new.”

“I guess it is. But it’s true.” I licked my fingers. “Did you bring the program?”

“So now we change the subject. Yes, I’ve got it.” Rico bellied up to my computer. “I’ve got to be at Lakewood in two hours. Some of us do more than tool around in Ferraris for a living.”

I smiled. Then I rolled my chair beside him and peered over his shoulder as he got to work. “You know the club scene, right?”

“Sure.”

“How’s Dylan Flint fit into it?”

Rico kept his eyes on the screen. “I see him a lot, especially at the new places, usually riding somebody else’s coattails past the velvet rope. But he’s popular—that sex tape thing is serious juice.”

“Any idea why he’d be hanging around the Beaumonts? Or a place like Phoenix?”

“Looking for dirt. Remember when Bobby Brown got arrested at the steak place over in Dekalb? The next day pictures are all over the place, including Dylan’s trifling little blog.”

“Yeah, well, I’m on the trifling little blog now.”

“Doing what?”

“Tooling around in a Ferrari. I don’t get it, Rico. Why in the world would he try to be a real photographer on the one hand and mess around with crap like that on the other?”

“Because it means he’s in. He’s in because he notices you and you’re in because you’re noticed—I deal with this shit all the time.” He sucked in a long slow breath. “It’s crack is what it is. Messes up your head.”

I kept thinking about the glimpse of myself on Dylan’s website. I did look exotic through the window of a Ferrari, sunglassed and untouchable. More fascinating than I really was, mysterious even. Rico read my thoughts.

“Don’t go getting all up in that, girlfriend. It’s poison.” Then he looked at the rest of the photographs spread out on the table. He tapped the one of Eliza. “That the dead girl?”

“That’s her.”

“Who’s everybody else?”

“Eric you know. That’s Senator Adams and a bunch of his friends. Eliza, with Nikki from the other night, and Trey, once again in Hot Guy mode. And that’s Gabriella, massage therapist to the stars.”

I looked at Trey’s face, at Gabriella’s. His expression was utterly neutral. But in her dressing room, I’d seen something shifting between them. Tectonics at work, I suspected, deep buried things.

Rico frowned. “Do you think they’re a couple?”

I sighed. “I have no idea. I haven’t asked him. It’s not like we’re dating—or any other ‘ing’ words for that matter, so—”

“Not Hot Guy. Them.”

He tapped the photograph. Eliza and Nikki. And it all suddenly fell into place.

“Omigod, you really think so?”

“It’s pretty obvious.”

“But nobody’s said anything!”

“Nobody would. This Eliza girl gets shot to death and dumped in a driveway, the collective antennae go up, you know what I’m saying?”

I knew what he was saying. “But why stay in the closet in Atlanta? This place is almost as out as San Francisco.”

Rico shrugged. “If I worked for someone like Mark Beaumont, Mr. Family Values Conservative himself, I’d sure keep it on the QT. Hell, yeah, I would.”

I thought of Janie and her crucifix, the way her fingers sought it, toyed with it. There were lots of reasons to keep such things to yourself besides employment.

“Do you think the cops know?” I said.

“Maybe yes, maybe no. Either way, I’m thinking there’s a lot of stuff that a lot of people aren’t telling. This computer’s clean, by the way.”

A happy green light was flashing on the screen. Rico’s program had found nothing suspicious—no viruses, no worms, no key loggers, nothing that would allow someone to creep in when I wasn’t paying attention.

“So nobody’s spying on me?”

“Nobody at all.”

“So I was being paranoid?”

He grinned. “You know what they say about paranoia. But nobody’s snooping on this particular computer. It’s safe. I’ll check the one at Dexter’s shop the next time I’m there. Assuming you’ve taken that racist piece of rag down.”

“No more Confederate flag. I promise.”

Rico finished up quickly after that, and I walked him to his car. When we reached it, he turned and looked at me seriously, which was an unusual expression for him.

“You be careful. There are people out there who don’t play, you know what I’m saying?”

I didn’t reply for a moment. Then I stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “You be careful too, Rico.”

He looked at me for a long second, then the gravity melted from his face. He made a fist and punched it at my chest, fast, like a snake striking. I put my hands up and smacked it away.

He grinned. “Look at you, getting all dangerous and shit.”