At lunchtime, Whit grabbed a booth in the back of Cafe Caspian, surveying the small crowd in his new stepmother’s restaurant. Babe had cautioned Irina that the Coastal Bend population included many military retirees who might blanch at patronizing a Russian cafe. Whit privately thought most of the retired military males would rush (in well-organized step) to slurp Irina’s coffee once they spotted her in her black miniskirt and white T-shirt.
Cafe Caspian was perhaps a quarter full, mostly retirees with a smattering of realtors, secretaries, and artists gossiping over Russian specialties like piroshki (meat-filled dumplings), golubtsi (cabbage rolls), borscht topped with sour cream, honey breads, and blinis. Whit wished he had invested in sour cream futures before Irina opened the cafe; he would have made a killing. She also served more mainstream foods, such as thick ham sandwiches; fish, shrimp, and oysters fresh from the bay; and what she called bitokes a la Russe – hamburgers dolled up with sour cream (of course), onion, and nutmeg. These had been an unexpected hit.
Tributes to both Irina’s motherland and her adopted land decorated the walls: a beautiful color photograph of the Statue of Liberty; a portrait of Peter the Great. Reproductions of elegant Faberg e eggs and peasant Russian dolls lined a shelf; on another was a framed collection of miniature American and Texan flags. In the window hung several KEEP WHIT MOSLEY JUSTICE OF THE PEACE signs. Irina, the Soviet-born fiend for democracy.
Irina slid into the seat across from him, holding a steaming cup of tea and pushing her chestnut-brown hair back over her ears. Her face was elfin; he had always pictured Russian women as either kerchief-headed grannies, sun-and-nutrient-starved model waifs, or steroid-gulping swimmers. But Irina looked fresh and healthy, not tall but not frail, eyes of watery blue, and a generous mouth.
‘Go campaign today.’ She took her stepmother role seriously. ‘Buddy Beere has a van covered with campaign signs patrolling Main Street.’
‘He offered to debate me.’
‘Of course you accepted.’
‘No. I’m too busy doing the actual job. But I need two favors.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I need to borrow your computer.’
‘Sure. You need the computer now?’ she asked.
‘I’d prefer to use it after hours, if you don’t mind.’ ‘No problem.’
Why does a Russian accent nail you right in the crotch? Perhaps he had fixated on Natasha on the old Bullwinkle cartoons in a freaky erotic manner.
She jangled a set of keys from her pocket, pried a silver key off the ring, and slid it across the table. ‘Extra key. Lock up when you’re done. Second favor is?’
‘I want you to befriend someone but you cannot gossip about it.’
‘Who?’
‘Her name is Velvet.’
‘That sounds like a horse’s name.’
‘She’s not. She’s a friend of the man who died. She’s a little unconventional, but she could use a friendly face. She’s meeting me here for lunch. I’ll introduce you.’
‘You always find the strays that need help, yes?’
‘Don’t tell Dad. He’ll just say that I’m not being focused on the campaign.’
Irina made a dismissive noise. ‘Forget him. You know, I think I am the only one who knows the real you sometimes. Isn’t that silly?’ She leaned over and gave him an irreproachable peck on the cheek. ‘You are a thoughtful boy, Whit.’
A boy, and he was older than she.
Velvet stepped inside the cafe. Whit waved her over, introduced Irina to her.
‘You’re Judge Mosley’s stepmother?’ Velvet, dressed modestly in tourist-trap Bermuda shorts and a pale yellow T-shirt, shook hands and sat, not taking her eyes off Irina. ‘Maybe I should go recruit in Russia. I do training films. Corporate stuff.’
Irina smiled politely and excused herself. She returned with tall glasses of iced tea, took their order for salads and bitokes, and scurried to the kitchen.
‘So now you’re making training films?’ Whit said.
‘I cut a little deal with Faith Hubble. Mouth zippered shut for now. For Sam’s sake. Pete wouldn’t have wanted him hurt by, well, by the truth.’
‘So you and Faith are bosom buddies?’
‘I loathe that bitch with all my heart. But Sam’s a good kid. I don’t want him hurt. But I don’t want them to just sweep Pete under a rug, either.’
‘So how are you doing?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m cried out. When do you have autopsy results?’
‘Probably today. At the latest tomorrow.’ He stirred his tea. ‘Pete tried to kill himself once before. You neglected to mention that to us.’
‘Oh, that. He took the wrong pills.’
‘A dozen of them?’
‘He took the pills because I didn’t cast him in a quickie movie I was making. We had a fight the week before, and I was fed up with him. Pete could be a prima donna. So he downed some tranqs and called me on his cell phone to drive him to the hospital. I didn’t believe him, and by the time I got to his place he was tanked out. Otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered with the hospital. I just would have made him puke. I’ve jammed fingers down throats before.’
‘A lot of suicide among your co-workers, isn’t there?’
Velvet shrugged. ‘Shrinks kill themselves more than any other group. So don’t be thinking my colleagues are all mental cases. We’re not.’
‘No, like me, you’re all well-adjusted models of society.’ He meant it lightly, as a joke on them both, but he’d punched a well-pummeled bruise.
‘Yeah. Just like the well-adjusted models of society that buy all our movies.’
Their salads arrived, blanketed with blue-cheese dressing. Velvet waited until the server left before speaking.
‘You probably don’t know the names I’ve been called by your well-adjusted types when I’ve bothered to go on radio shows or done Web interviews. Whore. Slut. They cease to mean much after a while.’ She offered a smile. ‘I prefer to think of myself as a pleasure engineer.’
He laughed because he could tell she needed him to.
‘At least this way I get to choose what I’m called, Whit. Whore’s a term coined by men to trample any woman with sexual vitality.’ Velvet licked the blue cheese from her fork with a slow, baroque flourish of her tongue. Whit waited for the chain reaction of heart attacks to decimate the retired men in the restaurant, but no one keeled over.
‘That makes you uncomfortable,’ Velvet said. ‘You’re all squirmy boy now.’
‘I am not.’
‘What a squirmy man needs is a kiss gone bad,’ Velvet said.
‘A what?’
‘In regular movies, ninety percent of the time, you get the kiss and that’s it. Maybe they wriggle, real fakey, in bed. But it’s antiseptic sexuality. In adult movies you get the kiss and two seconds later the cast is getting way down and dirty. I just call it a kiss gone bad. But it’s really good. You know, you’re my ideal audience. Single, a little bored, too respectable to ever solicit a prostitute but probably in need of sweet relief.’
‘I’m not bored,’ Whit said. He felt color creeping up past his collar.
‘Have you ever seen one of my movies, Whit?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever seen any porn movie? Be honest.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘When one of my brothers got married, we had a bachelor party with an X-rated tape rolling on the VCR.’
‘If you watched it, and it made your God-fearing little soldier stand at attention, honey, you can’t look down your nose at me. I’m giving you and every other man what greases your wheels.’ She lowered her voice even further. ‘I bet my tapes are under more beds and hidden away in more closets here in your sweet little Gomerville than you would ever imagine.’
‘What do you want me to say, Velvet? Good for you?’
‘I just don’t want you to act like what I do is so terribly wrong. I’m not filled with angst over what I do.’
‘All this angst Pete supposedly felt about his brother’s disappearance, is that really why he ended up in porn?’
‘He did it because it’s fun,’ she said in a flat voice, fork poised above the messy salad.
‘Fun. And that’s why you did the movies, too?’
She began to eat her salad, not answering him, shoveling drenched chunks of lettuce in her mouth, staring at her plate. ‘Drop the armchair psychology.’
‘It’s just that… you seem too smart for this.’
She glanced at him quickly. ‘Oh, and so the blue movies are full of morons, huh? Judgie boy, I’ve worked with computer programmers, accountants, lawyers. People who want to make one flick, just for laughs, use a horny-corny name, get in, get out. You think they’re better than me ‘cause they do drive-by porn?’
‘No,’ Whit said. ‘But I want to know why you and Pete did these movies.’
‘Why? Want me to make you a star?’ she asked.
‘I’m quite sure I’d be a disappointment on film.’
‘You got a good jawline. That’s important. The camera likes you better.’
‘So why? I just would like to know.’
‘There’s no soap opera answer. My folks didn’t beat me, my dad didn’t abuse me, none of that tabloid talk-show shit.’ She set her fork down. ‘I’m the worst-case scenario of a preacher’s kid. My dad was a Methodist minister in Omaha. I wouldn’t mind going back there one day, live life a little slower.’
‘Your mom?’
‘Died when I was four. Lupus.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t remember much about her, except she made the best lemon pie you ever ate. I’d sit on the kitchen floor while she baked, waiting to lick the spoon. And she liked gardenias. The house always smelled of them before she died.’ She leaned back against the booth’s seat. ‘My dad married his church secretary just to give me a mama. She was a mean old cow who’d gone to the Hitler Secretarial School, and when I turned sixteen Dad was dying of cancer. He told me they’d slept together exactly one time. That was it. She cut him off right after because she had all the sensuality of a stale raisin. That’s what’s wrong with this world: there’s not nearly enough love or happiness or orgasms.’
‘About your mom… my mother took off when I was two. Never saw her again,’ Whit said. ‘And my dad was a drunk until I was seventeen.’
‘Geez, you should’ve ended up on the other side of the camera with me,’ Velvet said. ‘Since nothing is our own fault and everything is the fault of our family’s, right? Wrong. I don’t blame my mom or my dad for any of my choices, Whit. I wanted to make a lot of money, I wanted to make movies, and I liked the sex.’
Whit pictured a little girl, sitting in a kitchen smelling of lemon peel and gardenias, the soft camouflage for a sickbed.
‘I wanted to go to film school. Be the female Coppola. But that costs money, Whit, and I wasn’t filling the bank waiting tables or mopping up spilled beer or tutoring kids in algebra. I met a guy. He said I could make a lot of fast cash, use a fake name, no one would ever know.’ She paused. ‘So I stayed in it. We build these little worlds for ourselves and then we never get to move out.’
‘Meaning no one was gonna hire you for legit film work once you went down Porn Street?’
‘The judge’s robe does a nice job of covering your vicious streak.’
‘It’s vicious of me to point out the obvious?’
She said nothing.
‘What you gonna do after Pete is buried?’ Whit asked softly.
‘Go back to California. Find the next guy who can supersize his boner when there’s a camera three inches away and a crew of five standing around picking their noses.’
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Don’t do that.’
She smiled but not the kind of smile that said aren’t you sweet. ‘Gee willikers, Whit, you gonna sweep me off my feet and save me from myself?’
‘I just think you could… not do these movies anymore.’
‘Why are you a judge?’ she asked suddenly. ‘You don’t fit the type at all. Too free-spirited to be comfortable judging other people.’
‘My dad got me the job,’ he said, and she laughed.
‘But you’re sticking with it, right? You want to be elected. You’re like a small-town Gerald Ford, wanting everyone to vote for you and really give you the job you got handed. Why?’
‘I never wanted to be a politician. I hate that part of the job. But I think truth matters, even the little truths of small-claims and traffic court.’
‘And death inquests.’
‘Yes.’
‘Bull,’ she said. ‘You like the power, Whit. I can see it in your eyes, that quick flash of yes, I’m the judge, don’t mess with me, I like the power, too. When some lonely, horny guy slides one of my tapes into his machine, I have power over his pleasure. I can make him tingle all over or I can make him as limp as string. Never had much power as a kid, I bet.’ She smiled, a cat warming up for a good purr. ‘Littlest of six boys, you probably didn’t get to pick when you took a pee. I’m not inclined to surrender my power any more than you are, Whit.’
Their bitokes arrived, and Irina plopped in the booth, chatting up Velvet, asking her if she’d walked through the shopping district and seen the Arts Center and the Maritime Museum. Velvet, steeped in sudden courtesy, spoke with complete assurance and sounded like an aspirant to the Junior League. Irina left them, patting Velvet on the hand, telling her how nice it was to meet her.
Velvet toyed with the prescription-pad-size dessert menu clamped above the salt and pepper. ‘What if… you decide suicide, and more evidence comes later that says not suicide?’
‘I can reopen the case, conduct a new inquest. But considering Pete tried to kill himself before, if the autopsy remotely suggests suicide…’
‘I knew you’d cop out. You’re not going to risk your own political neck to help me.’
‘Give me something, then. Do you know anything he knew that could have gotten him killed? Anything specific?’
She shook her head. ‘You don’t think that’s keeping me up at night? That maybe whoever shot him thinks I know what Pete knew? I don’t. I don’t.’
And he saw fear, a naked cancer, in her eyes.