From Cape Town with Love (15 page)

A white hole gaped in my mind, my memory. Pleasure was all.

When Marsha's mouth and finger set me free, I tugged her teddy off so my skin could celebrate hers. She was hot from the sun, slipping beneath me like an eel. Coconut oil is one of the best sexual lubricants there is. I swam across Marsha's hot skin.

Marsha had a Brazilian wax, so her nakedness was striking and true. Her bare clitoris was large and dark, its base as bright as blood. Only a hint of coconut taste between her legs. While my tongue played, she swelled to greet me. Her clitoris felt like a separate creature, squirming with new life. While I bent over her to tease her with my tongue, her fingers tortured me with light strokes of replenished slick oil, coating me inch by inch. Lubricating me.

Marsha was a moaner, with no apparent concern about being overheard. When she had her first orgasm at the mercy of my tongue, she screamed. I knew what Marsha wanted—it's a human tendency to give others what we ourselves crave. Marsha wanted what April couldn't handle.

I rolled Marsha onto her stomach. Her hands were still bound, and she clung to the raised back of the lounger with her leather handcuffs. With a strong arm around her middle, I hoisted her beautiful ass high in the air.

Marsha hissed, squirming with anticipation. I pressed my rounded swelling against her tight, puckered skin, spreading the oil to smooth my passage. My fullness quivered against her, craving the tightest embrace her body had to offer.

I pushed and retreated, then pushed deeper, an inch at a time. My belt had been her first sweet torture; now, she had a new one. Marsha made a sound midway between animal and human as she sank down into the lounger from my weight. While I invaded her, prying her open, my fingertips rubbed and massaged her slick areolae and nipples. Marsha screamed again.

“My . . . neck . . . ,” she whispered. Begging.

Say no more.
I wrapped a tight hand around her throat, pressing in rhythmic, deep strokes above her. Breath control heightens sexual response, creating a kind of tunnel vision, a world of pure sensation. I concentrated my grip on the sides of her neck, pressing only slightly against her windpipe with my palm. With breath control, it's not about pain—it's about pressure. I would never choke out a woman, or completely stanch her breath. I gave her exactly what she wanted, no more, no less. Don't try this at home. Hey, I'm a trained professional.

Marsha whimpered and yelped, her voice thinned by my grip. The tighter my hand squeezed her neck, the more her body opened itself up to me. Finally, my pelvis reached the satin mounds of her buttocks, and I was as far inside her as our bodies would allow. My breath was shallow, too—Marsha's tightness pulled and snatched at me, a dizzying massage.

I thrust, and the lounger squeaked against the wooden deck. After each partial retreat, I pushed myself a little deeper. Marsha surrendered more with each squeak of the lounger, raising herself against me with whimpers and moans.

Only the rare woman can tolerate anal sex with me.

Years ago, a philatelist client had shown me her proudest possession, an 1856 “Black on Magenta” from British Guiana, one of the world's most valuable, and rarest, stamps.

At that moment Marsha was rarer, and more precious still.

“New girlfriend?” Chela said, blocking me in the upstairs hallway.

She was just getting up at twelve thirty when she met me on my way to Nandi Maitlin-Dimitrakos's birthday party. The party didn't start until two, but I'd been asked to arrive an hour early. I would have preferred another hour's prep time at the house, but Roman had insisted that he didn't need me sooner. Maybe his hospitality was wearing thin.

The rest of that week, my major pastime had been sex with Marsha. We both had matching appetites and empty calendars. I'd been home for dinner with Dad and Chela every night, but Marsha usually paged me by ten. Since the Chateau Marmont was only a fifteen-minute drive, I didn't mind the late-night booty calls. She always got straight to the point, and each night was a new adventure. Visiting her made me as horny as a teenager.

“Uh . . . not a girlfriend,” I said. “Just a friend. Why do you ask?”

Chela smirked. “Check your neck. Is your friend a vampire, or just a freak?”

Shit.
I ducked to peek in the bathroom mirror, and found a huge purple hickey on the right side of my neck, too high for a summer shirt to hide. I remembered Marsha gnawing on my neck the night before, but I had no idea she'd left a mark. Now I
looked
like a teenager, too.

“Damn!” I said.

Chela laughed. “Real smooth, Ten.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.” I didn't have makeup on hand, so I was stuck with it.

“This is your last chance to invite me to your dumb kiddie party,” Chela said, trying reverse psychology. Chela had been begging me to take her to Sofia Maitlin's party for days.

“Sorry, but this is work. No distractions, Chela. I'll try to take pictures.”

“Right. It's
way
better if I'm not there when the helicopter commandos swoop down to kidnap her baby.”

That's exactly what she said.

“Next time. I think we're becoming friends. I told her about what we talked about a few days ago.” The same day I'd heard from Melanie Wilde, I told Chela about my adoption hopes. She seemed surprised and pleased, until I said we needed her mother's consent.
Well, screw that, then,
she'd said. She had been somber the rest of that night, and we hadn't mentioned it since.

“You told Sofia Maitlin you want to adopt me?”

“Hope that's okay. I just—”

I saw Chela's girlish smile in her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “No, that's cool,” she said. “I just didn't know you . . .”

“What?”

She shrugged. “I didn't know you were that serious about it.”

Maybe the plan wasn't dead! I turned to meet Chela's eyes, which were uncharacteristically soft and open. “Yeah, girl, I'm serious. You think I would play with something like that?”

Suddenly, Chela darted out of the bathroom doorway. Had I said the wrong thing?

“Chela?” I called after her as she disappeared into her bedroom. I found her squatting on the floor beside her bed, and she opened her bottom nightstand drawer. She pulled out a dirty white manila envelope, stained with everything except tire tracks, bound by a frayed string.

She handed me the envelope. “I promised myself a long time ago I wasn't gonna spend another second of my life looking for that lame bitch, but go for it. That's all I've got.”

It was already ten minutes later than I'd planned to leave, but I peeked inside. The envelope was stuffed with loose scraps of paper—scribbled telephone numbers, a photocopy of a birth certificate for a woman named Patrice Sheryl McLawhorn, and a single four-by-six photograph. In the photo, a grinning blond-haired white woman with Chela's nose cradled a lovely brown-skinned toddler whose forehead was hidden by an unkempt mop of curly hair. As I'd suspected, the resemblance between Chela and Nandi at that age was uncanny.

Chela had never told me that she had a picture of her mother. The woman was acne scarred but pretty. The photo had been taken at a kitchen table in what I guessed was Chela's grandmother's house, a rare moment of joy in a home filled with chaos. The camera's flash made a starburst against the microwave, and I could see the reflection of a portly woman, Chela's grandmother. When Chela was ten or eleven, after her mother had been gone for more than two years, Chela's grandmother had died after a long illness.

Chela lived in the house with her corpse for days.

She'd had no one to call and nowhere to go.

“She never went by Patrice. She hated that name,” Chela said. “I called her Sherry, from her middle name, like her friends. My grandma called her Bunny. Don't ask me why. Pretty dumb nickname for a grown woman, if you ask me. I kept every phone number I ever got for her in there. She was so heavy into the meth, I figure she's dead by now.” No emotion in Chela's voice. “You wanna look? Fine, whatever. Just don't expect me to talk to her. We've got nothing to talk about.”

Carefully, I closed the envelope, as if it might break in two. “Are you sure?” I said. “Like you said . . . she might be dead. Or . . . she may not want to cooperate with us. She hasn't been here for you, but she still may try to fight.”

Chela's eyes sparked fire. “Then let's hope she's dead. And if she tries to cause a problem . . .” Chela shrugged. “Hey, you could always kill her.”

“I don't kill people. And you wouldn't want me to.”

“I wouldn't?”

“But if you're ready, I'll start looking for her,” I said.

Chela nodded. “I'm ready . . . Dad.” And she grinned.

No word had ever sounded better to my ears. I would have hugged
Chela, but hugs weren't a part of our repertoire.
Dad.
As mighty and mysterious as my father had been to me when I was a kid, the word
Dad
was profound to me. During the drive to Maitlin's house, I thought about nothing except finding Chela's mother, dead or alive.

I thought I was having a good day.

The only helicopter at Nandi's birthday party had been rented by paparazzi, a mutant mosquito buzzing overhead to try to get photos despite the cover of treetops, huge balloon bouquets, and large white tents. A long white canopy protected the identities of celebrity guests as their drivers deposited them on the same shaded path I'd walked on my first visit.

Think of a celebrity couple in L.A. with young children, and they were there: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith. Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart. Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner. Even celebrities
without
kids came to Nandi's birthday bash. The party was the summer's hottest ticket, the lead story on the entertainment tabloid shows and the celebrity coverage on CNN Headline News—but not for the reasons it should have been.

None of the guests learned the true story that day.

Red flags were waving in my mind as soon as I arrived. I was surprised by the army of support staff on the grounds: valets, caterers, animal handlers, jugglers, and clowns. I counted at least thirty; I hoped that Roman and his team had done their homework to give them security clearances. A lone nutball can ruin a party.

“Where do you want me?” I asked Roman when I found him at the check-in table beside a red-haired security staffer with freckled, thickly muscled forearms. Roman introduced the man as Carter. Roman's staff could be a wrestling team.

Roman patted my back. “Just work the room. Eyes wide open.” Pretty vague, especially since “the room” was several acres large.

The sound of the helicopter propellers beating overhead made my teeth grind. “What about the chopper?” I said. “We can get the police to—”

“Already done,” Roman said. “LAPD's bird will chase 'em off. Just make sure nobody bothers the guests. Absolutely
no
photos by staff.”

There were twenty tables with ten seats apiece in the backyard, which had been transformed into an amusement park with carnival games, a mini merry-go-round, strolling clowns, pony rides, and two massive inflated bouncy houses shaped like pirate ships, one mostly red, one mostly yellow, prows poised for battle. The gift table was a mountain, more toys than most children would see in a lifetime. Children swarmed everywhere, laughing and shrieking at imaginary peril. I recognized Roman's children from the picture he'd shown me, romping alongside the princes and princesses of Hollywood.

For the first half hour, the birthday girl and her parents were nowhere in sight. Scanning the guest tables, I found a printed placard with my name—my neighbors were Halle Berry and Jennifer Garner (and yes, it's true: Halle has no pores)—but I stayed only long enough to smile politely and sip from my glass of lemonade with frozen mint-leaf ice cubes.

Murmurs, coos, and applause wove through the crowd.

The sky was finally quiet when Maitlin's family walked outside through the back-patio door, past the pool. Maitlin had waited for the helicopter to leave. She was carrying Nandi in her arms, and two men trailed behind them. Maitlin and Nandi were dressed in matching casual backless white summer dresses, their hair pinned up with crowns of white ribbons. Nandi's wrist sparkled with a diamond bracelet I guessed was one of her birthday gifts, easily worth ten grand.

Maitlin's husband was on her heels, a balding and frumpy dark-haired man in reading glasses who tried to smile but looked uncomfortable under so many eyes. Maybe the inanity of a lavish party for a child who wouldn't remember it was sinking in, even to a billionaire.

I didn't recognize the second man, who was black and in his midthirties, so giddy that his grin was nearly bigger than his face. His off-the-rack suit didn't fit quite right, and his eyes seemed dazed.
The birth father,
I realized. He was tall, with a thick, cut frame like LL Cool J. Nandi hadn't gotten her looks only from her mother's side. If the birth father had been an actor, he could have found an agent that day.

I could only imagine the impact of the deal he'd made with Maitlin and her billionaire husband. Overnight, he'd been transformed from a
Cape Town local with a daughter in an orphanage to a man worthy of a seat at the table with Hollywood's upper echelon. His eyes were bright enough to burst.

Maitlin's husband, Alec, headed straight for the discreet bar near the pool, a clove cigarette dangling between his fingers, meeting a huddle of other men who also looked Mediterranean, probably relatives.

Maitlin walked from table to table with Nandi on her arm, flanked by the birth father and Zukisa, the nanny. Zukisa looked watchful and anxious, as if she expected Maitlin to drop the girl. As guests exclaimed and hugged Maitlin and Nandi, a hired photographer snapped photos of Maitlin's table-side visits.