The ecru-colored child hopped up on my knee and grabbed my index finger.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi yourself.”
She’d never heard that phrase, and the newness of the man and the words made her smile.
“I can pick up Miss Sylvia’s two-pound weights,” she told me.
“I pick up weights too, down at Gordo’s Gym.”
So many new words and ideas. The child started rocking from side to side.
“Do you ride horses?” she asked, reminded by her own movements.
“Never,” I said, shaking my head.
“I do. With Mama.”
“Horses are big.”
Minolita nodded with such vehement seriousness that both Twill and I smiled. She smiled too, basking in the warmth of our attention.
“Minolita,” Velvet said, standing in the same doorway from which her daughter had come.
The child twisted on my knee as if it were her private saddle and said, “Here, Mom.”
“Stop bothering Miss Sylvia’s guests.”
The young woman came into the room with the careless grace of youth. She wasn’t over twenty-one, and I was impressed by her recovery from the shape she was in when last we met.
“I’m not bothering them, Mom. He doesn’t even ride horses.”
Velvet lifted her daughter from my knee and held the child in her arms. She intended to turn away but then stopped.
“I had a dream about you,” she said to me.
“That seems like a waste for a beautiful young woman like yourself.”
“You were in a big dark place,” she said, ignoring the compliment. “Or maybe it was me. Yes. I was in a hole, looking up at the nighttime, and you came and held out your hands. I know that it was you because it was your hands.”
“That’s some dream,” I said. “Or was it a nightmare?”
“When I woke up the sun was shining,” she said. “My mother was sitting beside me and I was home.”
I wondered how much she really remembered. It didn’t much matter. Hush and I had covered up the particulars with the assassin’s close attention to detail. Even if the man, Bernard Locke, was missed, his body would never be found.
While I was reassuring myself the Mycrofts returned with another young woman. The new girl was about the same age as Velvet but white and heavier — that’s not to say that she was fat.
Velvet heard her mother’s employers and whispered to her daughter, “Come on, little one.”
As they left the child waved to me. I think that was probably the happiest single moment I had all month.
“This is our daughter,” Sylvia Mycroft said, “Mirabelle.”
The young woman had longish light brown hair and wore a violet dress that only made it down to the middle of her powerful runner’s thighs. Her brown eyes were taking in Twill, who managed to pay just enough attention to her legs.
Sylvia ushered her daughter to the couch on the right. She sat near to her. Shelby stayed on his feet. Maybe he thought this tactic would give him some kind of advantage.
“Hello, Mirabelle,” I said.
“Hi.” She had a nice smile.
“This here is Mathers.”
She smiled at him.
“You have something to tell us about your brother?” I suggested.
Shelby coughed, and then said, “Before we start this I need to set down some ground rules.”
“Yes?” I said.
“This is to be a completely confidential conversation. You will not repeat it to anyone, not even Mr. Lewis. I expect you to sign a letter agreeing to that stipulation.”
“Sit down, Mr. Mycroft.”
If anything, he raised his shoulders up higher.
“Sit down,” I said again. “This is not a contest. And furthermore it is not within your sphere of influence. The reason you called me is because you need someone with my particular skills to try and do damage control. I’m not here to have my hands tied. So sit down and let’s talk this out.”
A beat passed and then another. Shelby Mycroft finally gave in and lowered down on the space next to his wife. This surprised me a little. I expected him to lose his temper and send me away. Maybe that’s what I wanted.
The fact that he relented meant that his fears about his son were deep and more troublesome than he let on.
Managing not to smile over my victory, I turned back to Mirabelle. “I was asking about your brother.”
She nodded and looked down at the floor.
“You go to NYU with him?”
“No. I attend the New School nearby.”
“But you see him a lot?” I asked.
“Not a lot. Maybe every two weeks or so. We usually just run into each other on the street. He calls sometimes though. I mean... we’re not very close. When I was a sophomore in high school he left home for two years and by the time he got back he was different.”
“Different how?”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Shelby said.
“He was fun when we were kids,” Mirabelle said. “But when he got back he was kind of cold and a little angry.”
Like his father.
“So what kind of trouble do you think he’s gotten into?” I asked.
Twill laced his fingers under his chin, placed his elbows on his knees, and leaned forward.
“I was at this late-night party in the Meatpacking District last week,” she began. “It wasn’t the kind of thing I usually go to, but my girlfriends had met this actor and he was going to be there. It was really late but Tonya had a car, so...”
“Was your brother there?”
“No.” Mirabelle brought her hands together around her bare left knee.
“Then what?” I asked.
“It was a roof party and it was kind of wild,” she said, twisting her shoulders to show her discomfort. “There were all kinds of things going on. Drugs. Sex. I wanted to leave, but Tonya had hooked up with that actor guy and so I felt like I had to wait.”
The girl was uncomfortable talking around her parents. Her version of the story to them was PG rated. I knew this and waited for the details to come of their own accord.
“I went to sit with this girl I met,” she said. “She was African, from Cameroon. We talked for a long time and then this guy I’d never seen before came up to us. He was wearing army fatigues, but I don’t think he was a veteran or anything. He asked if I was Kent’s sister and I said yes. I guess the girl thought there was something going on with us and so she left, and the guy, his name was Roger Dees, sat down next to me.”
Mirabelle shifted in her seat and sat up straight as if trying to throw off the influence of the young man named Roger Dees.
“What did Roger have to say?” I asked.
“He said that Kent better stay away from the Handsome Brothers because they weren’t going to have their good looks for very long.”
“And what did you think that meant?” I asked.
“I didn’t know but it sounded like a threat. I was so upset that I left the party and took a taxi back to my apartment. The next day I went to Kent’s place and told him what happened. He begged me not to tell Mom and Dad, but his friends — these Handsome Brothers, Jerry Ott, Loring MacArthur, and a girl named Luscious — had been involved in some kind of disagreement with some drug dealer guys. He said that it was all settled, that it was just a misunderstanding, and that Roger Dees didn’t know anything.”
“But you didn’t believe him?”
“My friend Tate told me that Jerry Ott had been arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and that a lot of kids got their drugs from him. I, I thought that maybe he had been lying to Kent.”
Looking over at Shelby I said, “Drugs, huh?”
“It’s not Kent,” the father said defensively. “He just knows these people.”
“If it’s not that bad, then why don’t you just confront him yourself?”