Black

Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Gracie greeted Black like a sailor on shore leave, threw him an eighty-proof smile, and gestured for him to come in. A twenty-something slacker with two days' growth on his thin face and fashionably unkempt hair sulked on one of the two sofas. He made no attempt to stand as Black stepped inside. Gracie's cat, Blackjack, occupied the space beside him, in typical fashion: indifferent to them all.

"Black, darling, you want a little pick-me-up? Something to keep the demons at bay?" Gracie offered, her hunger at having someone to drink with as desperate as Black's impulse to abandon his parents.

"No, thanks. I've got a lot to do. Is this Jarod?" he asked, eyeing the sullen young man.

"It's Jared. Ja-red, like the color," Jared corrected, his tone annoyed at Black's mispronunciation of his name. Black could relate. Try wearing Artemus for a few days and see how you like that, you little prick.

"That's an unusual name," Black offered, and then turned his attention to Gracie, who was at the breakfast bar mixing herself something in a highball glass that smelled like paint thinner even from across the room. The pervasive stink, coupled with the cloying, decaying smell of thousands of packages of menthol cigarettes consumed in the confined space, triggered his gag reflex, and he made one of endless mental notes that he had to quit smoking for good.

Possibly tomorrow.

"Jared, why don't you take my friend Black here through your story so he knows where you stand?" Gracie asked, taking a cautious sip of her amber liquid, two rapidly shrinking ice cubes mirroring Black's waning interest in whatever was bothering Gracie's punk-ass relation.

"You really a PI?" Jared asked, his glare radiating anger at the world - a look that for a brief moment was startlingly familiar to Black; like looking in a mirror. Something inside Black softened, and he resolved to at least try to play nice. He knew that look and that feeling, and for a second he and Jared were kindred.

"That's right. Duly licensed."

"You carry a piece?"

"I have a concealed carry permit. I didn't bring my gun to this meeting, though. Do I need it?" Black asked casually, amused by Jared's interest in his weaponry, which in truth amounted to a small Glock 17 9mm he'd bought at a gun show in Pasadena for half its new price, and a K-Mart box of ammo that was at least five years old.

"Just start at the beginning, honey. That's always the best way," Gracie chirped from her end of the room. "Take a load off, Black. Sure you won't join me for a cocktail?"

"Positive."

Jared cleared his throat and stared at the ceiling, as though gathering his thoughts. On the television, Animal Planet soundlessly broadcast a muted program about wild ponies. Black looked over at Gracie, who sat staring at her freshly lit cigarette, a Salem 100. Thick coils of serpentine smoke drifted from its tip as she stared at Jared expectantly, having gone the extra distance to drag one of her tenants from his touching family reunion to hear his story.

"I met them at a club up on Sunset. Valentino's. A lot of actors and show business people hang out there," Jared started, and Black nodded encouragingly.

"I know the place." It was filled with the detritus that inhabited the lower end of the Los Angeles wannabe TV and film crowd - aspiring starlets usually dumb as stumps and hard beyond their years, nobody actors professing to be only one meeting from their big break, writers who'd never sold a script, drug-addled porn stars and their pimps...the usual parasites and the prey they fed upon. Not Black's thing at all, but it was one of the hot places these days, so all who wanted to bask in the near-celebrity of the almost-in crowd could do so for ten dollars per watered cocktail to a cacophonous DJ.