"Thanks."
Monika handed me a glass. "So what are we gonna do?" she asked.
"For the time being I need to stay as far away from this as possible."
"You a suspect, Nick?" Jett asked.
"And I quote, ‘I’m not ruling you out’."
"That’s not good, Nick," Monika said.
"Jett, start diggin’ into Felix. Find out everything you can about him, bank records, property he owns, the whole nine."
"I’ll crawl up his ass with a microscope."
"That’s disgusting gray boy," Monika said.
"We got to start covering our tracks. But first we need to be sure that Vogel is the one that Estabon was talking about."
"How we gonna do that?"
"Monika, I want you to talk to Chilly, see if you can’t get him to confirm that Rodrigez and Vogel are the same person."
"Why me? What makes you think Chilly will tell me anything? Why can’t Jett go?"
"We can’t send Jett."
"That’s right, Monika, he won’t tell this gray boy nothing." Jett laughed. "But you, on the other hand, with all them lips, and tits and hips you got. Shit, he might confess to murdering 2Pac and Biggie Smalls."
"So what are you trying to say?"
&n
bsp; "Just that he’s more likely to talk to you, because you’re a woman. Just tell him that you’re my associate," I said, and they both looked at me.
"Excuse me," Monika said.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Chilly gave me five thousand dollars to tell him where Jake was after I told his wife."
Monika poured herself another shot of gin and shook her head. "This shit gets weirder and weirder as we go along."
"Tell me about it."
* * *
Chapter Eighteen
Mrs. Childers dropped me off at my apartment about two in the morning. She was nervous during the ride about what Chilly might do if he were home when she got there.
I had drunk my share of Hennessy and could feel the makings of a serious hangover coming. I popped a couple of aspirins, took a shower, and crawled into bed. I went to sleep thinking, not only about what I just did with Mrs. Childers in the shower and in just about every room in the house. But I thought about Felicia mostly. Although I found Gee, now it felt funny saying it, very attractive, I missed Felicia. I just had sex with Gee and it was great, but in some strange kind of way, Gee’s sex made me long for Felicia’s touch even more. I wanted to see her face, hear her voice, to see her smile and be excited by her touch. I rolled over, I didn’t understand it and I was too buzzed to try.
Tuesday July 21: 8:03 AM
The sound of somebody’s fist making contact with my door, or maybe it was their foot, I’m not sure which, woke me from my sleep around eight the next morning. "Stop fuckin’ bangin’, I’m coming!"
I dragged myself out of bed and made my way toward the door. What I found was two uniformed cops informing me that Detective Kirkland wanted to see me at the station right away. Once I got through cursing them out for makin’ all that noise so early in the morning, I told them to wait, and I would be right out. I gave some thought to getting back in the bed. But that would only make them bang on the door some more. Still, I took my time about getting ready.
An hour later, I found myself sitting alone in an interrogation room waiting for Kirk to show up. But as luck would have it, Richards walked through the door.