Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two) (12 page)

In his lounge, Deck brings me coffee. He
goes over to a tablet PC in the corner (all I know is it isn’t an
iPad) and soon music is pouring out from the Polk
SurroundBar
below his TV.

He sits next to me.
“Skate will spend the day with you today,
Blaze. We just need to be careful until things settle down. For
both of us.”

“But what about you?”

“I’ll be with Trev all the time.”

“So? What if this dude packs a gun?”

“
Blaze...” He sighs. “...it’s gonna be
cool. Trust me.” The qu
aver in his voice betrays that he doesn’t believe his own
words. “There’s nothing we can do about it. The cops are out
looking for him—”

“
They haven’t found him
?”

“
Uhm, no, the officer from yesterday called
me to let me know that Dino wasn’t at home and nobody knew where he
was.”

“Yeah right!”

“Blaze, don’t get yourself worked up about
it. Look, material stuff we can replace. I assume you keep your
music in the cloud anyway, right?”

“All of it.”

“So, then it’s your decks and your books
you’d have to replace...uhm...if something happened?”

I’m a little shocked at how he says it. “I
know, it’s not much. But it’s everything I have and everything
I
am
.”

“
Blaze, chill. Look, I’m not trying to put
anything down. I know those things have value to you beyond the
cost. I’m just planning. Boy Scout motto, you know.
Be
Prepared
.”

“You were a boy scout?”

He cocks an indignant eyebrow. “No, but
they have a good motto. Look, what’s most important right now is
that you make it into the big time. I’ve told you I will help you.
So
I’m just trying to
figure out what you’d need to be able to do that. Like, if I lost
everything, I could still make it if I had a truck—any truck. I
could still work. Know what I mean? Bare necessity.”

“
I never thought things would get this bad
when Mama
h—”

“Blaze!” He grabs me by the shoulders.
“Focus! Bare minimum. What is it?”

“
Uhm, bare minimum is...depends. You can
hire decks and sound. Big clubs provide their own. Absolute
bare
minimum is my music library,
and my MacBook. That’s if I’m gigging at clubs that have speakers
and amps and the whole setup. For local parties—which is my
livelihood—I need my own decks. And sometimes even my own
speakers.”

“
So what does that stuff come to? I mean,
to replace it. What would it cost?”

“A few grand.”

“
Fine. Then we’ll make it. I can do
that—”

“
Deck
, I can’t let you—”

“
Blaze. That’s it! Now look. We’re somehow
in this together. Now, you have two choices: Leave me—which I can
understand if you’d like to—”

“I don’t want to.”

“
Yeah, but I get if you’d like to because
your building just got damn near burned—”

“Deck! I’m not leaving you!”

He stops, searches my eyes. Inhales. “OK.
OK. Good. I’m glad to hear it.” He rakes his fingers through his
hair. “Glad to hear it. So, having established that... Look, I’m
responsible for this shit. And if it affects your livelihood, well,
I gotta make good for that—”

“
I can’t—”

He stands up, enraged! “Motherfuck! Blaze!
Please!”

“You’re scaring me.”

He sits. “Sorry. I just... OK, let’s try
another tack: Would you accept my help
as a loan
? Like, if I
loaned
you the cash to replace your equipment, just so you could
keep producing and making income.”

“Well, if you ask politely like that,
sure.”

He stares at me incredulously. “You’re
kidding.”

“
No. The difference here is that you asked.
Before, you were acting like a drill sergeant. I like being
asked
things. Not told
things.”

He tries to stay serious, but his lip tugs up
involuntarily.

I point a finger at his lip and say, “Aha!
You’re laughing, tough guy!”

Then he does laugh
. Loudly. “I’m no good with women. But,
fine, I guess I got a lot to learn. So, deal, I’ll
ask
you if you want my help in
future. And, worst case scenario, if we lose everything because one
of my psychotic past enemies comes and takes it from us, then
I’ll
loan
you the
dough to get back on your feet.”

“
It’s a deal.” I stick my hand out to
shake
his. When he grabs
it, he tugs me toward him so that my lips land on his. It actually
cuts the inside of my mouth.

But I don’t care.

“Deal,” he mumbles.

His hand slides into my pants, over
my
pubis and then—“Oh
man that’s incredible”—inside me. We don’t move from that position,
but he plies me to climax.

“That’s my way of telling you I’m sorry for
losing my cool there for a second.”

I smile, but I’m too mellow to make my
mouth move and tell him I forgive him; so I just fall back on the
couch, sigh out loud, and hope to myself that he loses his cool and
apologizes like this
a lot more
in
the future.

He takes me through his lounge, explains
how he went for the
SurroundBar
because it was “the best possible compromise between a home
entertainment setup—surround sound—and a good hifi system—stereo.
“I like music, a lot,” he says. “But I also like surround sound.
Getting a top-level home entertainment system was expensive as it
is. And then, when I discovered that the sound wouldn’t be great
for music, well, I started looking, and I found the
SurroundBar
.”

I check out the tablet (which I’ve since
discovered is an
Asus Google Nexus
), then look at the speaker. “Bluetooth?” I ask.

He smiles. “Does it
sound
like Bluetooth?”

“
Definitely not.” He gives me some
technical jargon about how the tablet links up with the speaker
using some new super-duper communications technology that maintains
the sound quality far better than Bluetooth.

“
Impressive,” I say. “You really know your
music.”

“You think I was moved only by your
looks?”

I do my best to flick my hair back
seductively. “I was hoping.” Then I flutter my eyelids as best I
can.

He prowls over to me. An inch from my
lips, his eyes locked on them, he says, “Like I said last
night,
You
sing to me.
”

We decide to do a little more
“singing” right here and now.
On the couch again. So it’s equally awkward physically. And that’s
equally as unimportant when the waves of pleasure slam into
me—blissful waves of stinging satisfaction.

I hope with every cell in my body that the
moment can last forever.
But Trev and Skate are soon at the door. Deck’s going out
with Trev, and Skate’s hanging out with me.

My fear eases a little when I see Skate’s
angry eyes. Gray
-blue
and raging. “Blaze!” he says. “You OK?”

“Uhm, yeah, yeah. Sure. They got the fire
well under control.”

I can see that a hot hatred
burns inside Skate’s head. Same
for Trevor. Frowns darken their faces. “Deck,” Skate says. He and
Deck touch fists, then shoulders. Same with Trev.

They come in, and the heat of fury raises
the temperature a few degrees. Skate speaks again, “Well, if that
motherfucker had hurt either one of you.” Now he points at us.
“
Either
one of
you! He’d be fucking dead now. Dead!”

Trev and Deck look at each other, like
they’re sharing some secret language. Trev says, “Skate, it’s cool.
NYPD’s on it.”

“
I don’t give a fuck
who’s
on it! Either one of you! Blaze, you sure you’re
fine? No scratches or bruises?”

I wanna tell him I have a few, from Deck’s
grip on my shoulders while we...uhm... “No, really, I’m
fine.”

“
OK, well, you don’t worry about anything.
Graffiti don’t pay for shit, so it’s not like I’m needed anywhere.
I’ll stay with you as long as you need me to. I believe there are
also a few other punks on the radar?” He looks at Deck.

“
Yeah,” Deck says, “uhm, Blaze, how much
can I tell him?”

I decide to tell him myself because I don’t
want too much info about Xavier being given to anyone other than
Deck. “Well, two ex boyfriends, basically. But I only think one of
them is dangerous. The other one, well, I’ve known him a long
time.”

“Can I tell him who it is? Just so he knows
who to look out for.”

“Sure.”

Deck tells Skate it was “that dealer
from
House
Market
” and nothing
else. Tolek, unfortunately, introduced himself to everyone on
Wednesday. “And we all know Dino,” says Skate. Then he goes
quiet.

“She knows,” Deck says. “She knows
everything.”

“
Everything
?” Skate’s eyes go wide.

“Everything.”

Skate smiles. “Damn, welcome to the
family, Blaze!” He hugs me tightly. And it’s the first time I feel
like I have an older brother. A
real
older brother.

Two of them.

Trev gives
me a wink as they exit the door. And throws me a
thumbs-up.

When the door closes, Skate asks me, “So,
what’s on the cards for today?”

“Fancy hanging out with two girls for the
day?”

“Is the other girl hot?”

I shrug. “Remember the singer from
Red Lipstikk
on Friday?” He smiles widely,
and his eyes go into a sort of stupor. “I take it that means you
think she’s hot.”

“
Extremely.”

I laugh. “You and I are gonna get along just
fine, Skate. Just fine.”

I call Viktoriya to see if she has time to
hang out today.

In a thick Russian accent, she says to me:
“Of course! And if you can bring sexy boy
wiss
you, is even better.”

I can’t help
but smile. Then I say, “Skate, dress in something
that shows off that sexy body of yours.”

Before leaving to meet with Viktoriya, I
decide to take the bull by the horns and call Randy Dhawan directly
to see if my gig is still on for this coming Saturday. Although
Gavin would be the more direct option to call, him being the owner
of the
Sacrament
club
and all, Randy just struck me as a lot more approachable. And if
the gig is off, he’d know. Besides, of all the vultures I’ve been
dealing with, there was an air about him that I liked more than any
of the others.

A
“good luck” person, as Mr. Bernstein would call it? Dunno,
but at least not a Totally Shit Luck person. Of that I’m relatively
certain.

When
Randy picks up, he doesn’t even say hello. Instead, he says
this: “Blaze, the gig is still on. No doubt about it.”

“
Uh
—uhm—er—”

“Blaze? That’s what you were calling about,
right?”

“Uhm, yeah. Yes. Wow. How did you know?”

“
The gash on Xavier’s stupid head is too
easy to miss. Blaze, before you say anything else, keep in mind
that this is a cell phone line. Ya dig?”

In other words, don’t talk no
shit about drugs and Xavier’s chosen profession. Because that goes
against the unspoken rules of intermingling in this crowd, whether
you partake of the
lethal shit or not.
“Yeah, I dig.”

“
Look, Blaze
, you got talent, girl. And we all know Xavier is
a fucking shit-head when he’s with his
mujer
”—
when he’s high on Coke
—“and I heard about what that motherfucker did to you.
There were several witnesses. It’s not like the punk can bullshit
his way out of this one. He laid out the shit and then stepped on
it himself. Look, I don’t care what people do for recreation, but
you just don’t hit a woman. No fuckin ways. And nobody’s gonna
disrespect you for doing what you did. In my opinion, you should
have hit him twice wit dat fuckin mug. Punk is lucky you didn’t
press charges. Why didn’t you, Blaze?”

“
We go back.
A
long
ways.”

“
Well, he and I
don’t
. I mean, if dat shit happen in Sri Lanka— Well,
we wouldn’t take it lightly. Look, he’s got one chance with me.
He’s...uhm...the resident Thoroughbred”—the resident dealer
of
The Good
Shit
—“at the
House Market
parties. And Gavin wanted to
offer him a residency at
Sacrament
as well.”

Ahhh, so
Xavier’s intentions with me might not
have had to do with the music, but sneaking in to deal for one of
the biggest clubs in Brooklyn
.