Chapter 10
"Don't need you, Zelmont." Danny sipped on a tall glass with a dolphin stirrer in it. Several of his boys marched around, looking for something to do as the afternoon came on.
"You don't own this place, Danny. You just the caretaker until your brother comes back."
"Then maybe you should talk to Nap." He tilted his head like he was hoping I'd start something. "But he left me in charge, and really, you ain't necessary to this operation."
"This ain't no army base, this is a nightclub."
"One you ain't needed at 'less you standing in line and payin' at the front door." He stood there, daring me to pop his full-of-himself ass. If I did, one of his clique was gonna bust a few caps in my dome, crying while he did it.
I split. Now I was back in the unemployment line until the job went down. Which meant my stupid grandstanding play of sending money to Terri was just that, stupid. Then wouldn't you fuckin' know I got the call when I rolled home.
"Zelmont, no more delays," said my attorney Barry Kleinhardt. A few hours later I was sitting near the links at the Wilshire Country Club.
"Ah hell, Barry, ain't I been on the fair and goddamn square? Didn't I make an offer to her parents to further the little ho's education?"
Kleinhardt rubbed at what was left of his disappearing hair. He threw his pen on the glass table and scooted his chair back on the patio, then put the bottom of his golf shoe against the table's metal edge. "She's in a wheelchair, Zelmont. It doesn't matter that you say she came on to you, or that she was sixteen at the time and she showed you fake ID stating she was twenty."
A wrinkled white man, his gut hanging over his belt buckle, walked past us. He had one of those old-fashioned thick mustaches and he looked at me like he expected me to get up and start serving drinks to him. I opened my mouth and gave him the ghetto glare. He picked up the pace and went into the clubhouse.
I hadn't checked her ID. But it was a good defense Kleinhardt had tried, as he'd found out she did have the bunk driver's license.
"You gave her wine and then showed her the magic torpedo, and baby, you should be thankful for the four and a half years I've been fighting this charge."
"Four years and half a million," I said too loud. A few of the golfers at other tables on the patio looked over their shoulders at us. I leaned in under the umbrella. "Let 'em wheel that connivin' bitch into court, Barry. Your investigator got testimony from them boys on the wrestling team she blew. Don't that show the chick's a freak?
"I'll grant you it shows a pattern, Zelmont. But we've only found guys who are willing to testify about the last year or so, after her eighteenth birthday Young men who are in her appropriate age range."
"And race."
Kleinhardt held up his hands and sat straight in his chair again. "If you'd signed with the Barons it'd be a different story. A couple hundred thousand more and her family would be satisfied."
"Family." Her father showed up once he smelled money coming out of my black ass. He hadn't been around for years before that. And her frizzed-hair mama, a couple of times it seemed if I'd given her a turn with my sweet thing she'd have got her daughter to back off.
Kleinhardt bit his bottom lip on one side. "Zelmont, we have photos of her made up, and she looks older. Her friends that brought her to your house that night have been deposed and said she wanted to meet you in the worst way. Her girlfriend Becky said the two of them talked about what it would be like with you."
"Isn't that good enough?"
"No," he said. Kleinhardt looked off at the green as if an answer might rise up from the ninth hole. "We drew Judge Kodama, and she don't play around when it comes to adults and minors, especially with guys like you. Even though her old man is black."
I drank my iced tea as if I was tasting it for the very first time, or the last.
"Even the best case means you'll still have to do five to seven. That's if I can get it reduced to consensual sex with an underage minor with extenuating circumstances, as opposed to sodomy and statutory rape."
I felt like finding that old fuck who'd been giving me the "what's the native doing here?" look and swatting him. "I don't know what to say."
"Peep this," Kleinhardt leaned closer. "Either way you'll have to register as a sex offender."
My head was swimming. "I'd rather do twenty years getting reamed by the Aryan Nation brothers every day. Zelmont Raines may have dropped down some, man, but I can't be goin' 'round and have people pointin' at me like I was some kind of child molester. You know I ain't that. What would my mother think?"
"Judges get elected just like D.A.s, Zelmont. And even if she was inclined to be lenient in her sentencing, which she won't be, this is one guideline she can't waver from." Barry reached for his Reuben sandwich, but only looked at it. "If there was any other way."
"There is, Barry." I grabbed at my head like it was coming unscrewed. I looked over at him. "You go to that beauty school dropout mama of hers and see if she won't hold out her hand when I offer the dough."
"What do you mean?" Out on the links, a dude made a nice chip shot.
"Watch," I said.
Four days later I was on Fox Shoppers World, one of that bad-ass billionaire Murdoch's newer channels, selling my Super Bowl ring. I could almost hear Grier sitting at home, calling his homies and laughing at me. Fuck him and the lawyers and the judges and especially that crippled tramp and her no armpit-shaving mama. They'd run an ad in the L.A. Times Sports section in the morning, so the viewers were primed when I got on air.
I put up with some bullshit from the slick dude who worked as one of the hosts of their Collector's Showcase about how big and shiny the ring was, and what a great piece of history it was since it was the first and last time the Falcons had won a Super Bowl, yakkaty and blah. I just sat there, grinning like Stepin Fetchit and mumbling one lame excuse after another as a bunch of assholes called in to belittle me or remark how low I'd fallen, how ashamed I should be, and so on.
Finally, though, the numbers started coming up, and the ring sold for $150,000 to, of course, a Japanese businessman.
What with the administrative fees Fox got and the percentage I'd worked out with Lowe for setting up the deal, I'd take home a little over a hundred grand. That was before settling my bill with Kleinhardt. Goddamn, I needed a fuckin' break, and in a hurry.
A day later it was settled.
"Seventy large it is," Kleinhardt said to me. He snapped his cell phone shut. "Mom and the daughter's lawyer are convinced of your sincerity, Zelmont. And they acknowledge there may have been some slight innocent, unconscious enticement on the young woman's part, being not wise in the ways of the world. But that's in the past. They all want to move forward with their lives."
''Especially since they figure they'd only be beatin' a dead horse to hold out for more.'' We were standing in the waiting room of a foreign car repair place on the Miracle Mile. Kleinhardt was having some work done on his sharp ride, an emerald green Beamer sedan.
I didn't have much to say so I stood there, hands in my pockets.
"What's on deck for you now, Zelmont?"
Kleinhardt said it like I had a future mapped out. More and more, there was only one direction I was heading. Sitting in the restaurant the other day at the airport, I was kinda in, kinda not. Like how I've been pretty much with every woman of mine. In the mix, but sorta standing outside of it too, watching stuff go down around me even though I was involved.
There I was, standing around like any other middle class square. Kleinhardt was on the phone again, happy with himself for keeping me out of jail. Shit, I was the one that came up with the idea. What'd I get? Money out of my pocket and then some. Not one goddamn cent of the ring money was mine to keep, and I had a hefty mortgage to meet. One of the mechanics was working underneath a Jag, back toward the muffler. He was probably in a better financial situation than me. That didn't make me sad, just determined.