“Judy? Yeah, he’s in the house. You work for him?”
“Yes. He asked me to drop by.”
“Go on in,” she said, and before I could thank her she was back in her manuscript.
The whole room, stage and seating, was brightly lit. There were carpenters and painters banging, sawing, and painting on the set. Jude was standing to the side of the slightly elevated stage, looking at the work with a serious eye. When I walked in he seemed to sense my presence and turned to look at me.
He smiled.
I gave him a little wave and he jogged over.
We kissed cheeks. He took me by the wrists and examined my face.
“You don’t look much the worse for wear,” he said.
“Neelo’s a good doctor.”
“What can I do for you, Deb?”
“Can we get a cup of coffee?”
“Sure,” he said, and then he turned toward the stage and piped, “Hey, boys, me and the girl are going to powder our noses. See you in twenty.”
As we walked from the theater I wondered at the many faces of Jude Lyon.
Whenever I saw him with Theon or as an escort he was a timid, shy man — not masculine, not flaming. It made me smile to think that even the bedrock of my beliefs was soft and yielding.
In the coffee shop Jude ordered us lattes and chocolate croissants. We brought these to a little round table set in the window, removed from any other seats and on display to the world.
We sat there for a while in silence, our food and drink forgotten. There was no room for small talk between us right then.
“So, did they figure out who attacked you?” he asked at last.
I shook my head and said, “The police came to my hospital room and told me that they thought you were some kind of criminal and that they wanted me to try to help them trip you up. I told them no, but I wanted you to know what they were saying.”
I knew from Jude’s blank expression that the things Perry said were true. His eyes turned feline, filled with the kind of trouble no one ever saw coming.
“I don’t need you to talk to me about it,” I added. “I just wanted to say that they’re looking at me now and you should be careful calling me or talking in my house or car or whatever. Not that you’ve ever said anything. Theon didn’t either.”
While I spoke, and after, Jude scrutinized me. His brown eyes, under slightly creased brows, could have been humming — he was that intent.
“Are you frightened?” he asked.
“No.”
“Why did you come to me?”
“You’ve been really good to me. And anyway, you were always nice to Theon. I don’t need to help the cops take down my friends.”
He sat back and picked up his paper coffee cup. Suddenly he was a mild-mannered little man again.
“Why do you act so different in different places?” I asked then.
“What do you mean?”
“I never knew anybody to call you Judy, for instance.”
Jude smiled.
“I love the theater,” he said. “The people there are so wrapped up in stories, and how they look in those stories, that they don’t pay so much attention to you. It’s like being in a thick forest where sound doesn’t travel far and the sun is weak. It’s like you’re hidden so deep that you don’t even know where you are.”
I nodded uncertainly and bit into my fancy French pastry.
“Who beat you, Deb?”
I decided to stay Deb with Jude. I also, somewhat contradictorily, determined not to lie to him.
“I’d really rather not say.”
He nodded.
“I never trusted you,” he said. “I always thought that you were using Theon somehow. I guess it was because I was so enchanted with him. He was quite a guy. Crazy and lost but he could be a good friend. He never told you about what I did?”
“Never.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Why would it? I knew you guys were friends. Even if it was more than that, we never had an exclusive relationship — sexually. How could we? I have lots of friends who tell me secrets that I’m not supposed to tell. If it didn’t have to do with Theon directly, he didn’t expect to know them, and neither did I.”
Again Jude took a sip of his coffee. He watched me as an infant might study some new person who had come into his line of sight.
“Are you wired?” he asked.
“No.”
He took a bite of bread and wondered some more.
“I need to know who beat you, Deb. I owe Theon at least that much.”
Something in his tone reassured me. I had kept quiet about the gangster because I didn’t think that anyone could help me with him. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“Coco Manetti.”
“From Manhattan Beach?”
“I don’t know where he’s from. Theon owed Richard Ness money, but when he came to collect I pulled a gun on him. I guess he got scared, ’cause he sold the debt to Manetti.”
“How much you owe him?”
I told him.
“Theo invested money with me,” Jude said, “in one of my businesses. That’s what I do. I take investments, buy product, and distribute. A certain percentage goes back to my investors. I was thinking, because Theon died, that the profit would stay with me, but I guess the money he gave me was yours, huh?”
“I was the only one making a salary.”
“I can have what you owe Manetti in an hour. You could call him and make a six-o’clock meeting at a place I know — the Black Forest Restaurant.”
“Uh... okay.”
I didn’t tell Jude that I knew what the cops suspected him of. I didn’t expect to get the money I owed Manetti. I really didn’t know what I was doing. But I couldn’t refuse the cash. Getting Manetti off my back would ease my life greatly.
Using the number he called me from, I called Manetti from the coffee shop.
“Yeah?” he answered.
“It’s Theon’s wife,” I said.
“You ready to do what I asked?”
“Meet me at six at the Black Forest Restaurant on Melrose.”
“This better not be some trick,” he said.
After the call I drove Jude to a house in the Bel-Air area. He went in and came out with a small satchel.
“This is a hundred and twenty-seven thousand,” he said, “in two packages. The one with the blue X on it is seventy-two thousand. The other one contains the rest. Now you can drop me off at the playhouse, go meet Coco, and settle the debt.”
“It doesn’t feel that easy.”
“It will be,” Jude said with a conviction I found it hard to deny.
Jude’s certainty lost its strength when I was sitting at the mostly empty restaurant. It was an open room with a broad west-facing window. Light poured in over the potted bamboo plants placed here and there to break up the seating. I was sipping a merlot with the black leather satchel on my lap.
After dropping Jude off at Bread and Chocolate I stopped in a garage and took the plastic-wrapped package without the blue X and put it in the trunk. For a full fifteen minutes I considered picking up Edison and going to Texas or North Carolina to start a new life. But I couldn’t put my son in that kind of jeopardy and I wouldn’t leave without him.
That was an important moment for me. I realized if I were to survive, I needed to be with my boy.
I had no idea who his father was. Because of his dark coloring I supposed that he was a black man. There were about thirty possibilities. For some reason my birth-control regimen had been thrown off and somebody’s sperm made it through the war zone of my womb.
Theon was great while I was pregnant. He took on some directing jobs and spent the rest of his time at home. He wanted to keep Edison, but even if Cornell hadn’t threatened to call child services, I knew that our lifestyle would not be good for a kid.
“Ms. Dare,” a man said. It was Coco. He was wearing a gray suit that gave the impression that it was made of metal. He smiled and sat down across from me, an evil Tin Man from an alternate Oz.