Daniel Price - Slick

“That’s okay. I’ll find out. But my last big question for now is how did she and…At the video shoot, how did she get along with Jeremy?”

“You mean did they fuck?” Simba asked, then threw a sharp look at the Judge. “I don’t know. Did they?”

“I have no idea,” he replied indignantly. “I don’t keep tabs on that stuff.”

“Well, maybe someone should.”

I closed Harmony’s file and isolated it. “All right. We seem to have one good candidate here. But I don’t want to stop until I have at least three names for the private investigator. Who’s next?”

The rest of the session was just a cautious formality. I knew I’d found my catch in Harmony. Of course only an idiot was a hundred percent sure of anything. That’s why God invented vetting. After another half hour of useless committee blather, I decided to get a jump start on the process. I slipped away to Doug’s bedroom and made the first call from my new anonymous cell phone.

Most private investigators come from a law-enforcement background. Eddie Sangiacomo, a wiry, middle-aged ferret of a man, came from the clergy. The story of how he abandoned his calling and became a freelance gumshoe was surprisingly dull, at least the way he told it. But he was still a power Catholic at heart and treated his business like the confessional. Once the name “Harmony Prince” came back to him from every corner of the news, no earthly agent could get him to cough up the fact that I had something to do with it. I gave him Harmony’s social security number, wished him well, and sent him on the hunt.

During the call, my gaze had been captured by a series of snapshots that ran all around the inside frame of Doug’s dresser mirror. They were all of the same beautiful baby boy: eating, sleeping, bathing. Although there was no chronological order to the pictures, the subject seemed to stop aging at around four. Maybe I was still lost in deep photoanalysis mode, but the meticulous shrine-like nature of the collection led me to believe that the child was no longer among the living. I’ve noticed that dead people, especially children, have this retroactively ghostly quality in all their photos, as if they were haunting in advance.

But then again, maybe he was still alive and Doug just got the ass end of a custody agreement. Who knew? Everyone had their backstory, some more interesting than others. To this day, I never got Doug’s tale. He didn’t seem like the kind to open up, and I certainly wasn’t the kind to pry. At least openly.

________________

“I didn’t know you had an album,” I’d said to Simba while driving. Of course that was a lie. I’d known since 7:30 that morning. As with Doug, I didn’t feel any particular need to inquire unless it was brought up.

Thirty minutes earlier, the committee had nailed down its third and final candidate and called it a wrap. Before I could leave, Simba asked if I was going west and, if so, could I give her a ride to her cousin’s house in Beverly Hills. She had come with the Judge. She didn’t want to go back with him. The first thing she did upon entering my car was explain why.

“He’s a fat, lecherous fuck,” she told me, lighting her twentieth cigarette for the day. Her daughter’s absence allowed her to revert to her natural state as a smokestack. “He’s always putting his clammy hands on my leg. And then he gives me this smile that makes me want to take a shower. The worst part is that ever since Thursday he’s been stepping it up, only this time he’s doing it under the pretense of consoling me. ‘It’s all right, babe. Everything’s gonna be all right.’”

I smirked in empathy. I must have still had some dream residue on me, because I felt a heightened but artificial sense of intimacy with her, like I had already explored the dark skin beneath her tight leather pants and tank top.

“I don’t trust him,” she added. “Him or Doug. If they could sacrifice Jeremy to save Mean World’s precious relationship with Interscope, they would. And if they could somehow find a way to make money off this shit at our expense, they wouldn’t hesitate. Not for a second.”

“Well, at least you have absolutely no doubts about me,” I quipped.

Simba laughed. “Shit. Am I that obvious?”

“No. Just stands to reason.”

“True. But we like you, though. Jeremy’s fascinated by you. Whenever he talks about you now, he just calls you Slick.”

“Really,” I said ambivalently.

“Hey, be flattered. When a black man gives you a nickname, it’s a sign of respect. Besides, there are some names that are just too white to come out of a nigga’s mouth, know what I’m sayin’? Like Scott. Who wants to say Scott ? A nigga don’t sound hard when he say shit like ‘Yo, motherfucka. Where Scott at?’”

Smirking, I shook my head.

“Doesn’t mean we trust you all the way, though,” she said.

“I’d be surprised if you did.”

“The thing that makes us feel good about you is that you seem to be in it for the challenge more than anything else. Like you’re determined, just for pride’s sake, to haul Jeremy’s ass out of the fire.”

“And get everyone to kiss it afterward,” I added with pride.

She laughed and touched my arm. “Okay. So we were right about you. I just hope you can get one of these stupid skanks to play along.”

“I will.”

Her smile deflated over the next two blocks. “There are just too many of them, Scott. There are too many sisters out there waiting for the chance to degrade themselves. For money, attention, whatever. It’s just sad.”

“It’s not limited to sisters.”

“No, but they’ve cornered the market. I mean everyone shits on rappers for being sexist, but how can they not be when all they see are these chickenhead hos just lining up to be humiliated like—” She cut herself off with a wave of the hand. “Whatever. You probably think I’m the biggest hypocrite in the world for going all feminist on you.”

“Of course not. Why would I think that?”

“Because I keep standing by my husband even though he fucks everything that moves. Look, I’m not a street bitch. I wasn’t raised to put up with that kind of shit. But ever since I got involved in the music industry…Let’s just say I’m glad one of us in this car still has pride.”

She grew quiet again. I hoped she wouldn’t continue on what was becoming a deeply personal monologue.

“I fucking hate that he cheats on me,” she said. “But I stopped taking it personally. This is his shit, not mine. That whole player image thing is such a deep part of him, because of the way he grew up. In South Central, if you’re a nigga and you’re not wearing colors, you might as well be a woman. And if you’re crazy enough to be a gifted student, scoring all A’s like Jeremy did, you might as well be a white woman. So this is how he proves himself. He throws his dick and his money around like there’s no tomorrow. Of course the problem, another problem, is that right now he’s all dick and no money. Don’t let that hotel fool you. We already blew the advance on the second album, which wasn’t much to begin with. Now we only get whatever the Judge feels like fronting us. Even if the album goes triple platinum, we’ll probably still end up being in debt to Mean World.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah. It sucks. I liked it better when it was just white people screwing us over.”

She glanced out the back window. “Oh shit. You had to turn left back there. I’m sorry.”

“No problem.”

As I made a U-turn, Simba stared at the endless grid of well-kept houses.

“I had my own thing going on,” she said in a solemn tone. “My own plans. My own album. But now all I am is the wife of some rapper. The cheated-on wife of some rapper. That wasn’t part of the dream, Scott.”