BLACK Is Back

by Russell Blake

  “It’s a simple question, Sam. That’s all. But since that one’s so offensive to you, here’s another: How can you be a hundred percent confident that B-Side didn’t borrow some songs from Blunt?”

  “I can’t be a hundred percent about anything in life, but it’s extremely doubtful. B-Side isn’t like that.”

  “Like what? Once Blunt was dead, I could easily see how it would be a win for him if he was stuck for a hit or three, and the temptation might have been irresistible. Dead men tell no tales, right?”

  “Anything’s possible, but it would be news to me. And frankly, since there’s no proof, I’d tend to give my client the benefit of the doubt. Now, is there anything else?” Sam asked, glancing at his watch.

  “No. That covers it,” Black said, and moved to the door, feeling Sam’s glare on his back as he did.

  Sam was lying. That much Black knew. He’d been lied to enough in his life to consider himself an expert. Whether Sam and B-Side were in on it together, or it was just B-Side, was a different question, and there was only one way he could think of to find out. But interrogating B-Side could well terminate his employment, not to mention involve physical risk, so it wasn’t something he intended to do without thinking it completely through.

  Which was just a fancy way of saying procrastinating. At two hundred and fifty an hour, he could afford to take a day to ponder the best approach.

  After all, he had an obese cat and an insulting assistant to support.

  It wasn’t only about him.

  Chapter 34

  The underground parking garage was quiet; most of the vehicles had already departed at the end of another long workday. At the far end, in the exclusive reserved section where the record label bigwigs parked, a white Bentley convertible, a canary yellow Lamborghini, and a black Land Rover occupied the end slots. An overhead fluorescent lamp flickered, its intermittent illumination bathing the area in a cold white glow.

  A figure dressed in dark clothes, a black baseball cap topping the ensemble, crept along the side wall, making its way to the three vehicles. After a brief consideration of the two coupes, the intruder glanced around to confirm the area was empty, and then produced a thin strip of shiny metal and slipped it down the Land Rover’s driver side window. Several moments went by, and the lock popped open with a click. The figure took a last look around, ears straining, and then slipped behind the wheel and ducked out of sight.

  Sixty seconds later the big engine roared to life and the Land Rover backed out of the stall, the windows tinted so dark it was impossible to make out even a hint of the driver’s profile – illegal in California, but a law widely ignored by those for whom the privacy it afforded justified an occasional ticket.

  The security barrier retracted as the vehicle neared, activated by the remote control affixed to the sun visor, and the guard manning the exit offered a haphazard salute followed by a good-natured wave at the departing SUV. The Land Rover’s brake lights blinked as it slowed, approaching the street, and then the driver stomped on the accelerator and it bolted into the sparse traffic, the big motor effortlessly powering it to cruise speed as it merged with the stream of tired commuters on their way home.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sam’s final phone call of the evening ended on an up note – the record company had acceded to his demands to cover half the cost of the security for B-Side’s upcoming tour, leaving Sam to negotiate with each venue about covering the other portion, or at least as much as he could wring out of them. With any luck at all, the total hit to his bottom line would be minuscule, leaving a fortune to be divided between the rapper and his manager from not only their take of the box office proceeds but also the profits from the incredibly lucrative T-shirt and concert paraphernalia that could easily double to triple the ticket revenues from the tour.

  Sam took a final gulp of Perrier, dropped the green glass bottle into the trash, and rose and stretched his arms overhead. Los Angeles’ lights spread out before him like a multicolored neon tapestry, and he marveled again at his good fortune, having clawed his way up over the past two decades from a low-level record company gofer to one of the more successful talent managers in the rap game – not a bad feat for a skinny white kid from New Jersey with no sense of rhythm. Not that any of that mattered. He was meaner than a pit bull and as relentless as a force of nature. He worked long hours that others would have balked at, which had translated well when he’d hung out a manager shingle after he’d lost his A&R job at the beginning of the nineties, when suddenly rock was dead and only grunge and hip hop were selling.

  From that inauspicious beginning, working out of a crummy shared suite with bad carpeting and even worse ventilation in the world’s shabbiest building on the wrong side of I-10, he’d developed a roster of artists that had afforded him a handsome living, access to the elite of the music industry social circle, and offices that would have been the envy of even the highest-priced white shoe attorney firm or investment advisor.

  He smoothed imaginary wrinkles from his Robert Graham silk shirt and pressed a button that closed the blinds, his day over. With a glance at his 18K Rolex Daytona, he confirmed that he still had time to make it home, change, and get to the restaurant where his date for the evening, a talented young singer who hadn’t gotten the right lucky break yet, would be awaiting his arrival with thinly disguised eagerness. True, she was less than half his age, but he was in a position to help her, and she had her youthful beauty to barter – a common enough transaction in a town that ran on the heady fuel mixture of power and money.

  Sam did a final check of his email and tapped out a curt response to a subordinate, then shut down his system and moved to the door. The suite was empty, everyone having gone home long ago; Sam was the only one still working twelve hours after he’d arrived at seven-thirty that morning for an east coast conference call. The office was eerily quiet, the usual hum of activity absent and only the ticking of the thermostat to accompany him to the front entrance and then the elevators.

  When he arrived at the underground parking level, he marched deliberately to his car – a black Mercedes CL65 AMG coupe with eight thousand dollars of custom rims and tires. His Salvatore Ferragamo python-skin loafers’ heels snicked against the concrete, and the sound reverberated through the structure, amplified by the empty space.

  He was already on his cell phone by the time he reached the attendant, who dutifully raised the gate, ignored by Sam, who was returning a call from a colleague in Australia chartered with organizing that leg of B-Side’s tour. A red light flashed on the building’s driveway entrance as a warning to any pedestrians, and Sam’s car rolled forward and then cut onto the street. Traffic had thinned now that rush hour had passed. He didn’t notice the lights of the black SUV come on when he was halfway down the block, nor did he register the vehicle pulling out and taking up a position behind him.

  The trip to his home in Beverly Hills took only fifteen minutes, for which he was grateful. Sam parked in his driveway and slid from behind the wheel – he had twenty minutes to freshen up and change before he had to be on the road again.

  The SUV rolled to a stop in front of the house and the passenger window rolled down. Sam, perhaps sensing something was amiss, stopped at his porch, keys in hand, and was turning to face the vehicle when the first of four gunshots rang out. A red blossom appeared just below his right clavicle, and another in the center of his chest, and then he was collapsing as the third took the top of his head off, leaving a look of surprise on his face as the life departed his eyes, his six-hundred-dollar shirt and thousand-dollar shoes having failed to insulate him from the damage inflicted by a few supersonic thimblefuls of partially jacketed lead. The fourth shot missed Sam and shattered the hand-carved entry door’s upper panel.

  The Land Rover roared off, and Sam was already halfway to hell by the time it reached the end of the block and rounded the corner. His next-door neighbor ran into the street, phone to his ear as he watched the vehicle disappear, on the line wi
th 911, relaying the description and the last three digits of the license number in a panicked voice.

  Sam’s crumpled form seeped blood down the front steps of his faux-Tudor home, and by the time sirens keened in the night air it had already coagulated. The following morning the brutal attack would rate three column inches in the largest paper, mainly because of the exclusive neighborhood in which it had taken place.

  Certain things just didn’t happen in Beverly Hills.

  Chapter 35

  Moet slammed down the phone, as furious as he’d ever been, and took several deep breaths to calm himself. Losing his cool wouldn’t do any good, even if being summoned by the police for questioning was insulting in the extreme. His next call woke his attorney, Jeremy Perkins.

  “Jeremy. It’s Moet. I’m headed to Rampart for questioning. I need you there.”

  “What? Why are you being questioned? What happened?” Jeremy was careful not to ask what Moet had done. Good attorneys didn’t want to know the whole story, just enough to represent their clients with a relatively clear conscience.

  “That rapper B-Side’s manager was gunned down a few hours ago.”

  “So?”

  “One of my cars was stolen this evening and was captured on traffic cameras as well as seen by an eye witness. Whoever shot the manager did it using my car.”

  Moet could practically hear the wheels turning in Jeremy’s head.

  “Did anyone call in the stolen vehicle?”

  “Yeah, my security guy at the office did. Which is why I’m being ‘invited’ in for questioning instead of being hauled off in cuffs.”

  Jeremy absorbed the information. “Do you have an alibi?” he asked.

  “Do I need one?”

  “Couldn’t hurt. So do you?”

  “I was at my house, entertaining a friend.”

  “Will she sign a statement to that effect?”

  “Sure. No reason not to.”

  “Then you should be fine.”

  “I still want you with me.”

  “No problem. I’ll get some clothes on and meet you down there. What time you think you’ll arrive?”

  “It’ll take me about half an hour, maybe a little more.”

  “I’ll be at the front entrance by the time you show up.”

  Moet hung up, thinking, barely registering the nearly naked woman lounging outside by the hot tub. He went to his office, opened the center desk drawer, and retrieved a burner cell phone and placed a call.

  “Hello?” The voice that answered sounded hesitant.

  “It’s me. Something happened. Sam was shot tonight. I know you’ve been waiting for the right time to get into his safe, but by tomorrow it’s a good bet that his office will be torn apart by the cops. So it’s now or never.”

  “Damn. I hope there’s no night security.”

  “Only one way to find out. You have the combination, right?”

  “Of course. I wrote it down right after I memorized it.”

  “And keys to the building?”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’ve had one for six months.”

  “Then this is your big chance.”

  “I’ll let you know what I find. But…Moet. What if he kept it at his house?”

  “Nothing ventured. Let’s hope not. That’s a crime scene now.”

  “Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  Moet terminated the call and pocketed the burner phone, then turned the light in his office off and padded out to where his visitor was waiting for his return.

  “Hey, baby. I gotta go downtown and give a statement to the police, so party’s over.”

  “The police?” The woman’s eyes clouded with confusion.

  “Yeah. It’s no big thing. But I think they’re going to want to know who I was with tonight, so you gotta put on some clothes and come down with me.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yeah. Might as well get this over with.”

  “Okay, Moet. Give me ten minutes and I’ll be ready to go.”

  “Make it five.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Sam’s office building was dark except for a few of the lower floors, where the janitors were going about their nocturnal cleaning chores, as they did every night. A bored security guard sat in the lobby watching a late night talk show on a portable TV, the duty unimaginably boring but better than being unemployed. He didn’t notice one of the elevators move to the basement parking level, nor did he register it ascending to the twentieth floor, where it stopped. The host of the show was doing a particularly acerbic bit about a popular celebrity whose battle with pills and liquor had taken a publicly humiliating turn for the worse, and the guard laughed uproariously at the snarky barbs delivered by the funnyman with the precision of a marksman shooting fish in a barrel.

  Upstairs, Sam’s suite was dark. A figure clad entirely in black slipped a key into the front entry lock with a gloved hand and eased the door open, taking care to close it softly. The floor was silent. A small penlight flickered to life, and the intruder moved on catlike feet to Sam’s office. That door wasn’t locked, and in short order the prowler knelt by the floor safe concealed inside a teak armoire located on the far wall. After pausing to study the dial, the intruder spun it first to the left, then to the right, then back again before twisting the metal handle and pulling the fireproof door wide.

  Five minutes later the figure retraced its steps, this time choosing to take the stairs back to the basement level on the off chance that the security guard or the cleaning crew stopped the elevator. The intruder’s black running shoes made little sound on the cement stairs, the gentle, muffled padding inaudible outside of the stairwell.

  At the basement parking level the access door creaked on its hinges. Moments later the figure was trotting to the exit, the unauthorized breach unnoticed, no evidence left and no sign of an entry to be discovered, a non-event save for some of the safe’s contents having been removed.

  Three hours later the same burner cell phone number appeared on the intruder’s cell.

  “Hello.”

  “Did you do it?” Moet asked.

  “Mission accomplished.”

  “Was it there?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Only some?”

  “I got what there was. It should be enough.”

  “When can you bring it by?”

  “Tomorrow morning, unless you have to have it now.”

  “Tomorrow’s fine. We can do breakfast.”

  “A late one. I need some sleep.”

  “I’d say you earned it.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be appreciative, as always.”

  “That and more. You’ve got a blank check with me.”

  “I’ll remind you that you said that.”

  “Gotta spend money to make it.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  Chapter 36

  Mugsy regarded Black with customary disdain from his position on the couch opposite Roxie’s desk when Black arrived at the office the following morning. Roxie was humming to herself, oblivious to the obese feline’s malevolent glare as she typed away on her computer. She looked up at Black and then returned to her chore.

  “Morning, Roxie,” he said.

  “Good morning. I don’t suppose you brought me a chai, did you?”

  “I wasn’t aware I was expected to this morning. Is it your birthday?”

  “Never mind.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Sending you an email.”

  “Well, I’m right here. You can just tell me,” Black said.

  “But I already typed it.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “No, it isn’t. If I tell you, that’ll be three minutes of my life I’ll never get back, that I completely wasted.”

  “Fine. Then send it on and I’ll read it.”

  “That seems stupid now.”

  “It’s an imperfect world. Was it something important?”

  “Maybe.”
>
  “Which is really almost the same as maybe not.”

  “You’ll just have to look at it and decide.”

  “Or you could tell me.”

  “I just sent it.”

  Black rolled his eyes. “Perfect. By the way, did you see how Mugsy was looking at me? I swear he hates me. I’m not kidding. Keep him out of my office. I don’t want to find my chair wrecked. That’s all I ask.”

  “Yes, mighty Bwana. Anything you say.”

  Black decided to cut his losses and entered his office, shutting the door behind him so Mugsy couldn’t follow him in – not that he expected the little porker to do so, as that would require that he expend some of the valuable calories he’d spent a lifetime accumulating. Black dropped into his seat and brought up his email inbox, then read Roxie’s brief missive and opened the files she’d sent. After a few moments staring at one of the photos, he stood and returned to Roxie’s station.

  “You know who that is, right? In the picture with Moet?”

  “It’s the PR chick, right? What’s her name? Geronimo?”

  “Genesis. It’s actually a very popular name in Puerto Rico.”

  Roxie stared at him with dead eyes. “That’s good to know.”

  “When was this taken?”

  “Over two years ago. When Blunt was with Moet’s label.”

  “She’s kind of hanging off Moet, wouldn’t you say? And that dress…it looks like they’re more than professional colleagues, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ve seen hookers wearing less revealing outfits,” Roxie said.

  “That’s what I was trying to get at, I guess.”

  “I thought she was working for B-Side. That seems kind of weird, doesn’t it? I mean, she’s basically stuck to his rival in the picture, and yet she’s part of B-Side’s inner circle. Kind of messed up, isn’t it?” Roxie asked.

  “Maybe there’s an innocent explanation.”