From Cape Town with Love (10 page)

Sure enough, Chela never heard from internet guy anymore, but mysteries make me nervous. I told Dad how I'd tried writing my “friend” three times, trying to get more information, especially a name, but received only an oddly cryptic response two weeks after my last note:

“What the hell's
that
mean?” Dad said.

The words in the second note rang eerily familiar.

The messenger probably was connected to one of my clients from my prostitution days, women with power and influence. The reference to “Mama” made me suspect a woman I called Mother, the madam Chela and I had both worked for. Email and internet companies weren't her style, but Mother could afford to diversify. I just couldn't figure out her angle.

But that was more information than my father needed.

“Whoever she is, I think she knew me,” I said. “Maybe a long time ago.”

Since my spy knew Chela's computer password, my only lead was SecureGuard, the computer security company I'd engaged when I first suspected that Chela had a secret cyberlife. The customer service number on the SecureGuard website,
if
you could find the number, always led to voice mail. I had a buddy in Chicago check out the company's listed street address, but he found only a tiny storefront full of twentysomething temps with no idea how to answer our questions. I cut off my SecureGuard subscription, but by then, as Dad would say, the horse was out of the barn.

“Why you think it's a ‘she'?” Dad said.

“See how she talks about being ‘naughty'?” I said. “Only wants ‘a smile'? Dudes don't talk to other dudes like that.”

“They do in West Hollywood.”

“This is a woman. And she's keeping an eye on Chela. I just don't know why.”

“So . . . when are you gonna tell me?” Dad said. “How you got mixed up with Chela.” Dad spoke in clipped sentences. His speech was much better now that some time had passed since his stroke, but long sentences tired him. Until now, Chela's missing pieces hadn't seemed a problem.

“She doesn't want you to hear, Dad. She's afraid you'll think less of her.”

“Think I haven't guessed?”

“The woman Chela worked for . . . ,” I paused, and Dad nodded, “. . . was worried when she didn't come back from her client. I was hired to find Chela, and I crossed a few lines to get her. I had the choice of taking Chela back to the devil's doorstep or bringing her home with me.”

“Third choice, too.”

“Who? The police? Hell, I was a murder suspect. Nelson wouldn't have let that go. And Chela wasn't going back into the system, Dad. You know that.”

Dad nodded; there were plenty of nights we wondered if Chela was going to run away from us, too. But Dad saw the gaping holes in my story. “And the people who had Chela?” His eyes were clear, ready for anything. “What happened to them?”

Probably best not to mention the man I'd tied naked to a chair.

“I didn't kill anybody,” I said. “But believe me, I wanted to.”

“No police? No justice, then.”
Justice
was Dad's favorite word.

I shrugged. Despite everything I'd taught Dad since he moved in with me, he still believed police intervention was always the answer. Did Mother deserve to be in prison? Hell, yes, unless you think pimping fourteen-year-olds should be filed between jaywalking and prank calls. But she'd given me shelter the only way she knew how when I was low, and I couldn't be the one to turn her in. Not that Chela would have cooperated anyway. To Chela, Mother was a savior who had yanked her from the streets. We didn't talk about Mother, if we could help it.

“You're not telling it all,” Dad said, so I would know
he
knew.

I changed the subject. “I want to adopt Chela.” I'd never said the words plainly.

“In for a battle, I expect.”

“Got a helmet.”

“Guess you do.” I had earned the admiration in my father's voice. He recognized how good I was at getting a job done—and unlike Nelson, he didn't resent me for not having a badge. On the T. D. Jackson case, Dad and I had become something like partners. The memories weren't the sort you sit and laugh over, but that case had put our bad days to rest.

Dad's mouth gave a tic from discomfort. “Don't know what's at the end of that road, though,” he went on. “What'll come out.”

“Good thing I can afford a lawyer, then. First thing Monday. Chela deserves that.”

Satisfied that he'd warned me, Dad nodded and grinned. “'Bout damn time.” He took a deep breath, gazing toward the ceiling rafters. “Like the book of James says: ‘Look after orphans and widows in their distress and keep oneself from being polluted by the world.'”

Too late on that last part,
I thought. Dad had no problem speaking when he was quoting scripture. “You got that book memorized now?”

“Just about,” Dad said.

I won't claim that I felt God's approval, but having Dad in my corner was enough for me. I longed to tell Chela my plan, but not before I talked to a lawyer. Chela had suffered enough disappointment in her seventeen short years, losing everyone she loved way ahead of schedule—even Mother, in the end.

I hoped our budding family would get a second chance.

Mystery Lady's latest puzzle kept me up late Friday night. What did she want from me?

Her latest text message was from a private number, so that didn't help me. I was staring at her first two emails on my computer, looking for clues, when I realized I'd overlooked a huge one: I had her email address! Even if she had a half dozen more, she might have used FIDO26 before. And if she had . . .

I Googled the email address and held my breath.

Ten listings popped up. The first two were obvious scams:
“Looking
for sale prices on FIDO26?,”
the name obviously dropped in at random. I hate that.

Three looked really good. Two were on a guns-and-ammo–type site. She was making comments about reloading shells as opposed to purchasing factory loads. I didn't understand the jargon, but it seemed to be something about an exotic propellant that provided more foot-pounds of energy with less noise.
Whoa.
The other was a cooking site, a recipe for fudge cookies she said she had learned in home ec at Hollywood High.

Hollywood High? On Sunset and Highland? My Mystery Lady and I had gone to the same high school?
Whoa.
Could we have been there at the same time? Was that where we'd met? Had we had a class together?

I don't want to brag, but even in high school, I had the kind of face girls remember long after they've become women. I'd gotten fan mail and notes from at least a hundred women who claimed to have gone to school with me, and almost all of them mentioned incidents we'd shared—most of which I'd forgotten. Mystery Lady might have had that compulsion.

I examined all three notes again, especially the second one. It was the only one that didn't feel breezy, spontaneous, and a little superior. The note was labored, trying hard to say something without quite saying it.

Dreams deferred.
A Langston Hughes reference, of course. We could have been in poetry class, or black lit. Or participated in an assembly during Black History Month.

But if Mama wasn't my former madam, who was she? My Mystery Lady's mother? Then I realized why the phrases sounded so familiar: Although the wording had been slightly changed, she was quoting the immortal Lorraine Hansberry's
A Raisin in the Sun.

I've appeared in three different stage productions of
Raisin,
and the first was back in high school. In high school, I'd played Walter Younger,
Sidney Poitier's part in the 1961 film. Maybe my Mystery Lady had been in that production with me.

I leaned back and closed my eyes. Had anyone from
Raisin
or my high school drama class stood out? Someone I'd slept with or flirted with? Someone who might have been Brainiac enough to either run or work for a high-tech security firm?

Most of the dialogue she'd quoted was Mama's, I realized.

Who had played Mama in the show? June Middleton, and a girl named Marsha . . . something. I remembered her getting teased for having a name straight out of
The Brady Bunch.
Bit of a geek.

Marsha had been the understudy, since she had bad acne and a stilted delivery. But she'd had a steel-trap memory. She'd nailed her lines for three roles in three weeks, and she finally got her chance to take the stage after June got stomach flu on closing night. Marsha didn't bring the house down, but she saved the day. And I remember really clicking with her during one scene, in the zone, so deep in those characters that the footlights disappeared.

We'd made a connection. I hadn't thought about it in more than twenty years, but it was true. I hadn't collected yearbooks, so I couldn't flip one open to find a last name, but I was willing to bet that my Mystery Lady's name was Marsha.

I sent her an email:

See how
she
liked being unmasked, I thought.

Mystery Lady didn't answer right away, but I went to sleep with an evil smile.

SATURDAY, I WOKE
up to find that I'd missed an email late Friday night. I thought it was from my Mystery Lady, but it was from Rachel Wentz, Sofia Maitlin's manager.
Finally!

It had been three months since the wedding, and in case no one's told you, every social event in Hollywood is about networking. Period. I've seen people work the room at Forest Lawn Cemetery. If you think I'm lying, ask somebody who knows.

I'd introduced myself to every producer I recognized in that banquet hall in São Paolo—with tact and grace, of course. By the time I left, half of Maitlin's wedding guests knew that I had just been cast in
Lenox Avenue,
the highly awaited prestige film penned by an Oscar-winning screenwriter. I didn't tell them I'd won the part only under the threat of a lawsuit against studio exec Lynda Jewell, but that's my business.

Every two weeks,
Lenox Avenue
was in the news because of the dream cast. Denzel, Halle, Leonardo,
and
Christian Bale were on board, not to mention enough black actors for a remake of
Roots.
(Yeah, John Amos had a part, too!) And the script—which I'd finally gotten my hands on after months of delays—was so fine it should have come wrapped around an Oscar. It wasn't only the best script I'd ever been attached to, it was one of the best I'd ever read.

My set call was in little more than a week, and I couldn't wait even though my part was minuscule;
Lenox Avenue
is set in Harlem, where
most of the movie was being shot on location, but my scenes were being shot on a Hollywood sound stage. Remember that scene in
GoodFellas
when Joe Pesci gets pissed off at the poor kid serving him and his buddies drinks and then shoots him, saying, “Dance, you cocksucker! Dance!” That was basically my part: I'm the guy in the bar who rubs someone the wrong way, and I end up with a bullet between the eyes. I had three lines, literally, and one of them was, “Oh, shit!” Hell, I'm the king of the three-liners. But when I was working Sofia Maitlin's wedding, anyone would have thought I was Denzel.

I hoped the email from Rachel Wentz meant my schmoozing had won me some acting work, a fantasy that lasted the two seconds it took to read it:
Call me Mon. S. wants you on security at Nandi's birthday party next Sunday.
Not exactly what I had in mind. Was Maitlin only being a protective mother, or did she have reason to expect a problem at a kiddie party?

When I think back on it now, it's as if I knew what was coming.

Since I was lining up a bodyguard gig, I had an excuse to call my martial arts instructor, Cliff Sanders, and try to squeeze in a private class. He hadn't heard from me in months, and this after I'd committed to a lesson every week—my strategy for finally getting my black belt after ten years of intermittent agony, humiliation, and glory. So far, it hadn't happened. I'm not good at finishing what I start.

Cliff laughed when I called. “Come on and bring your sorry ass up here, boy.”

Cliff lives north of L.A., in Canyon Country, out near Magic Mountain, and it might as well be on the moon. It's only a half-hour drive north of my house “without traffic,” as if there's any such thing, but it's in the wrong direction—away from the Los Angeles heartbeat, on the way to Palmdale. Thirty years ago there was hardly anything out there except parched rocks and sun-faded grass. Brush fires came and went, taking only weeds. Now it's all strip malls and housing developments, growing as fast as the weeds used to.

Cliff was waiting in his driveway. The garage yawned open.

“Whassup, Hollywood? Ready to get that pretty face messed up?” Cliff called out. You never want to hear those words from Cliff unless he's smiling.