Memory Lapse: A Slater Vance Novel (14 page)

Slater continued moving
forward while continuously scanning his eyes side to side, on the lookout for
any sense of danger. On the opposite of the sink was another door. Through the
narrow window in the door, Slater could see a black woman talking animatedly on
a cell phone. He paused briefly before turning the handle and stepping into the
room with Honey Luscious.

The black woman in a
blonde wig turned at his entrance. Honey Luscious had probably been a
nice-looking woman at one time; but time, and her lifestyle, had not been kind
to her. She had the hardness about her that Thompson Bridges had talked about.
She smiled a toothy smile at him and clicked off her phone. She set her phone
down and ran her hands suggestively over her ample thighs, which were encased
in a short gold
lam
é
skirt. She wore a corresponding tube top leaving her
midriff bare. Her ample bosom swelled above the top, leaving very little to the
imagination.

“Honey
Luscious?”
Slater
asked, already knowing the answer.

“That’s me. You must be
Slater.” With a colossal swing of her hips, she moved towards him. She stopped
when she was close enough to press her body intimately against his.

“What’s your pleasure,
Slater Vance?”

She placed her hands on
his shoulders and ran them slowly over their breadth before continuing to move
her hands slowly down over his chest and then his stomach. Involuntarily, his
stomach muscles tightened at her touch. When she began to unfasten his belt
buckle, he grabbed both her wrists within his hands to stay her efforts.

“Honey, I need to ask you
a couple questions, okay?” he said nicely, trying to take the sting out of his
stopping her actions.

She took a step back and
put her hands on her hips.
“You a cop?”

“No.”

She eyed him carefully
and suspiciously.
“So you, what?
Want to talk?”

Slater nodded his head
slowly.

Honey sat down heavily on
a straight-back chair. “It’s your dime, big boy. But you sure is missing a
treat,” she looked him up and down suggestively. “The things I could do to you.
It’d make you cry for your momma.”

Slater just smiled and
reached into his jacket pocket to grab his phone. Scrolling through the camera
feature, he found the picture he’d taken of the woman he knew to be Honey
Luscious.

Slater handed his phone
to the real Honey Luscious and asked, “Do you recognize this woman?”

Without taking her eyes
off of his, she slowly licked her lips suggestively and reached slowly for the
phone. Once she had it in her hand, she glanced down. Slater saw something
flash across her face.

Handing the phone back to
him, she said, “Nope,” making a smacking sound with her lips at the end of the
word.

“Are you sure?”

“Yep,” she said, again
making a smacking sound.

Slater stood, eyeing her
carefully before asking, “Can you tell me how she ended up in a Chrysler
LeBaron
registered to you?”

“Shit, I guess the bitch
must
of
stole it.”

“Did you report it
stolen?”

“I didn’t rightly know it
was missing until just right now. Why you so interested in this woman anyway?
What’d she do? Did the bitch wreck my car?”

“I’m sorry to tell you
that she did, and because the car is registered to you, you are now held
responsible for all monetary damages,” Slater lied smoothly.

Honey Luscious jumped up
from her seat. “That bitch! I
ain’t
responsible for
shit. She done bought that car free and clear. She was supposed to take the car
out of my name.”

“For legal purposes, and
to assist with extricating you from financial obligation, do you remember what
her name was?”

Slater watched Honey
Luscious’s
tongue come out the side of her month as she
tried to recall the requested information.

“Let me see, it was a
famous name, ‘
cause
I remember
gettin
’
a good laugh because the name was a famous black girl. Let me see… I think it
was one them Jackson girls – you
know,
the singers?”

Slater leaned against the
doorjamb and said, “LaToya, Janet…?”

She snapped her fingers
with the one-inch fingernails painted scarlet. “That’s it! Janet. Janet
Jackson.”

“Was she alone when she
bought the car? Was there a child with her?”

“Nope,
no kid, only her.”

“How’d she pay for the
car?”

“Shit, that’s a
stupid-ass question. It was cash, of course.”

Slater smiled.
“Of course.”

Slater straightened from
the door. “Before I go, did she tell you why she needed to buy your car, where
she was going, anything at all?”

Honey Luscious licked her
lips and eyed him skeptically. “
Naw
, but she must
have been desperate ‘
cause
she paid an obscene amount
of money for that piece of crap car. She did seem nervous, though, like she was
scared or something.”

Slater tilted his head in
thought. “Why did you think she was scared?”

Honey sat back down,
seemingly tired suddenly. Looking over absently, obviously seeing something
outside the room they were actually in, she said softly, “I remember when I’s
was a little girl, my momma hooked up with this dude who was a big piece of
shit. He’d get a wild hair some days and come home and beat the shit out of all
of us for no reason. We never knew when to expect it, so we just always
expected it. You know what I mean? That’s how she was. Like, she done been
kicked so many times, she just always expects it. Like a beat-down dog, that
girl was.”

With a shake of her head
to clear the old hurts, she said, “Now, are you
sure there
ain’t
nothin
’ I kin do for you,
Slater Vance
? I kin give you a
jojo
that’ll
make your toes curl.”

Slater smiled at her and
reached into his jacket pocket and pulled the owed hundred dollars, as well as
an additional fifty.

“Maybe
another time.
You
take it easy, Honey Luscious,” Slater said, smiling.

Slater gave a wave to Tim
on his way out. Climbing into his SUV, he glanced at his watch. It was cutting
it close, but he thought he might have just enough time to reach Bennie before
she left.

Hitting the stored number
for his office, he heard Bennie answer, “Exposed, Inc.”

“Hey, Benn, it’s me.”

“Well, I guess you
managed not to fall in.”

Slater grinned at her
crassness.
“Nope, tied a rope around my butt just to make
sure.
Hey, Benn, listen, I need you run a check on a white female,
approximately thirty years old, named Janet Jackson. Start with the area in and
surrounding Charleston. I’m on my way in now, so just do what you can now and
I’ll finish it when I arrive. Thanks, Bennie.”

“Sure
thing, boss.
Hey,
before I forget, your girl, Celia, is beginning to be a pain in my ass. We
might need to change our phone number or move. She’s left a dozen messages for
you. I quit writing them after the first one. Stalking much?
That
girl’s trouble, Slate.”

“I know. I’ll handle it.
Thanks, Benn.”

Slater clicked his phone
off and tapped it against his lips in contemplation. He was going to need to be
brutal with Celia. He should have known better.

It was after-hours by the
time Slater reached Exposed, Inc. He unlocked the office door and turned the
alarm off at the panel. He flipped on the lights as he went through. After
giving it a second thought, he went back and locked the entrance’s glass doors,
better safe than sorry
.

Sitting down in his
office chair, Slater saw the information Bennie had managed to secure on Janet
Jackson. He flipped through the pages, finding information on sixteen different
Janet Jacksons, all white, all around thirty, and all from Charleston and there
about. He carefully read through all sixteen packets, but it was too hard to
know which one was the Janet Jackson that currently resided in his house. The
problem was he was missing vital information such as a Social Security Number
and place of birth. Tomorrow, he would need to call in some favors with Bridge
and see if he could get some driver’s license photos.

Slater rubbed his aching
temples. He had a headache and his ribs hurt when he breathed. Glancing at his
watch, he cringed at how much money he was going to owe Tiger Monroe. With a
heavy sigh, and looking forward to an extremely hot shower and an equally cold
beer, Slater powered down his computer and turned off his desk lamp. He idly
wondered what had happened to Janet Jackson. He found it curious the way Honey
Luscious had described her and the way he himself viewed her. While he’d not
really paid that much attention to her, the parts he’d seen showed her to be
strong, and even in view of things, self-sufficient. Even with being totally
dependent on everyone, he never got the feeling she was needy or beat down.
Maybe the woman living in his house had gotten the car from the Janet Jackson
who bought the car from Honey. Again, he wiped a hand against his weary head.
This case could make him lose his mind as many circles as it turned.

Slater was lost in the
circle of his thoughts when he reset the alarm, unlocked the doors, then turned
to relock them. As he turned to head to the elevators, someone slipped out of
the shadows behind and bashed him in the back of his head with a
billyclub
. Slater went down soundlessly. A trickle of blood
ran down and over his face to pool underneath his head.

His attacker reached into
his pocket and withdrew his wallet, his phone, his Rolex, his keys… and his 9mm
handgun.

Chapter 10

Slater eyes rolled open,
only to be snapped shut at the pain the light caused him. A loud roar of pain
rang in his ears. He felt someone rubbing his hand and talking soothingly to
him, but it wasn’t until the ringing subsided a bit that he realized it was his
brother. Slater couldn’t exactly make sense of the situation. Why was his
brother sitting by his bed holding his hand?

Without opening his eyes,
he mumbled, “Tuck, what’s going on?”

Slater felt the hand
holding his grow still as did the steady cadence of his brother’s voice.

Finally he heard him say
softly, “Hey, Slate. Everything’s going to be okay. You rest now. We’ll talk
tomorrow.” Tucker’s reply made Slater’s brain struggle to understand his words.

As Slater began to drift
off, he found he liked having his brother there, it was… comforting, like when
he was a boy and his parents had first died. With drugs coursing through his
veins, he slurred, “Don’t leave, okay?”

Tucker answered softly, as
if from far, far away, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

The next time Slater
woke, the sun was streaming into the room’s only window. He knew from the
starkness of the white room exactly where he was this time. The pounding in his
head was severe and he still had to squint to see. He tried to raise a hand to
the sorest spot on the back of his head but found his hand was held down by his
brother’s hand.

Without moving his head,
Slater shifted his eyes enough to see that Tucker was asleep. He had hold of
Slater’s hand while sitting in a chair close to the bed with his head lying
across the bed. Slater struggled to remember what happened to bring him here,
but he couldn’t remember. He remembered thinking he needed to leave to go and
relieve Tiger of his brother and Honey – Janet. He’d locked up his office and
then… nothing.

As he heaved a sigh, he
felt his brother stir next to him. Tucker raised his hand and rubbed it across
his face. It was then he realized Slater was awake.

“Welcome back, little
brother.”

Shifting only slightly,
Slater asked, “What happened?”

Tucker leaned forward and
laid his hand back on Slater’s. “Someone broke into your office, attacked, and
robbed you. How are you feeling?”

Slater tried to make
sense of what he’d been told, but his head hurt.

“Did they get anything?”

Tucker hesitated, causing
Slater to turn his pain-riddled head in his direction.

“Slater, they got
everything
,” Tucker said gently.

Slater’s eyes blinked
rapidly. “What is everything?”

Tucker heaved another
huge sigh.

Tired of Tucker beating
around the bush, Slater said more forcibly, “Dammit, Tuck, just tell me what
the hell happened.”

When Tucker didn’t
immediately berate him for his choice of language, Slater became even more
concerned.

“They took your wallet,
your watch, your SUV, they took all the computers and laptops from your office
and, Slate…
they
…”