"You don't have to be so fuckin' smug."
"Sweetmeat," I said, "I'm in your corner, you know that." A long tall sally walked up behind Davida. She was fine as bone china.
Davida ran a hand through her black hair and shifted in her high heels. "You take me for a play thing, don't you?"
"No more than you do me." She looked at me like she was trying to penetrate my mind. I kissed her, running a hand over her firm backside.
"Excuse me," said the good-looking sister. She'd been standing there listening to us and now had come around front towards the ice sculpture and shrimp. She wore a blue shimmering number with specks of dark orange spattered all over the material. The hem was a few tasteful inches above her knees. Her hair was frizzed out around a high-cheek-boned face, silver teardrop earrings hanging from her chocolate-colored ears.
"Mind if I get to the shrimp?"
"Knock yourself out," said Davida, pulling on my sleeve to let her pass.
I was careful to not take my eyes off Davida. "Did you see that big clown standing next to Weems?"
"Yeah, he's one of his Internal Truth Squad bruisers," she said. "Napoleon told me that Weems had recruited these guys from groups like the Promise Keepers about a month ago."
"To do what?" The woman in blue got her shrimp and walked across the dance floor to a table where Stadanko sat with some others.
"Keep things kosher," Davida answered. "Keep bad boys like you from messing up the program."
"Some kind of spies?"
"I guess," she said, irritated. "What am I going to do, Zelmont?"
"It's gonna work out, Davida. You got other contacts besides this dude, right?"
"Yeah, but Jansen can make things happen without a whole lot of bullshit." She began gesturing again. "The songs are almost mixed. This album can put me over. This is my career we're talking about, Zelmont. It's very important to me. I ain't going back to what I used to do, you understand."
I looked around, hoping to change the subject. This girl was wearing me out with her going on all the time about the work she was putting in to get her singing career started. Three years ago, she was the choreographer for the Laker Girls. And like them air-headed broads from Youngstown and wherever, she thought just because she could shake her tail feathers and had a halfway okay voice, she was going to be the next Paula Abdul.
"Zelmont," Nap yelled from a balcony with a gold rail. He signaled for me to join him.
"I'll be right back, baby Fact, I'll ask Nap if he's got some ideas for record people."
"Whatever," she said, throwing me a glare.
I copped another drink on the way up to the big fella. There was a white dude in a Zegna suit talking all excitedly to Nap. He stopped when he saw me. Then he walked away, smoking a thin cigar as he went past. "This set's live, home," I said to Nap, who leaned on the rail, swirling the ice in his drink.
"The honest always pay up." He straightened to his impressive full height and took a large swallow.
"Huh?"
Nap smiled and held the drink out. The waitress who'd talked to me when I'd come in was there in a flash. "Another, Nappy?" Her voice was like butter melting on a hot biscuit.
"Not now, thanks, Dora."
"Okay, Mr. Graham." She smiled real nice at him and threaded her way back into the pack.
"You gettin' that, Nap?"
He put his hands on his hips. "It's men this month."
"Wonderful." I sipped and watched the woman in the blue and orange speckled gown down below throwing her head back and laughing at something Stadanko said. Ysanya, Stadanko's missus, was rubbing one of the goddamn crystals on a cord around her neck, looking here and there like Timothy Leary's ghost was gonna show.
"Who's the hammer at Stadanko's table?" I asked.
"If you think she's gonna give you some trim, you might do better twirling your dick in a dyke bar."
"Huh?"
"That's Wilma Wells, lead attorney for the Barons. She's the one that put together the package the city and the team owners went for. She knows her stuff."
Smart women and me went together about as good as Clarence Thomas and Al Sharpton on a double date. Plus she must have been a couple of years older than me. "What it be then, brah?"
"You need work?"
"That obvious?"
"I been there, remember?"
I nodded and drank. A dark guy in a dark suit with black slicked-back hair eased behind Stadanko's old lady. He put a hand on her shoulder, and she put one of hers on his. Damn, Stadanko into some kinda threesome? Then I noticed the thing dangling from his ear. It was the gay boy I'd run into on the mountain who said he knew Nap.
"That a friend of yours?" I pointed my drink at the dude. He was bending low, whispering something to the space lady.
Nap rubbed a finger across his upper lip. "Pablo is a color consultant."
"What the fuck is that?"
"About 600 pretty little green ones a week from Ysanya."
Pablo was looking around and spotted my broad-shouldered buddy. The fidgety fellow blew Nap a kiss.
"How about you become the Locker Room's utility man?" Nap said, making a gesture like a duke or something to his boy down below. Pablo got all squirmy, and Ysanya's lids got real tight.
"You wouldn't mean I got to be one of them bathroom towel-holdin' motherfuckahs in a bow tie, would you?"
"Negro," he whined.
"I ain't so hard up I want to be a greeter like how Joe Louis finished his days. Or how Tyson's gonna go out." A bad feeling exploded in my stomach even as I said the words. I hoped I wasn't predicting anything.
"No, I have something more, ah, appropriate for you, Zelmont."
I leaned my backside against the railing. "What in the hell are you talking about, Nap?"
His mouth closed as fast as he'd started to speak. I could sense the man coming up beside us.
"Good party, Napoleon," the dude with the accent and Zegna suit said. "You are making a good go of things. A good go." He squeezed one of Nap's broad shoulders like he was an old pal. "This another of your football friends?" He gleamed his teeth at me.
"Zelmont Raines, All-Pro and Super Bowl winner," Nap said. His body was rigid.
"Pleasure, Mr. Raines." The man lifted his eyebrows at Nap and trotted off after a redhead.
"Who's that?" I asked.
Nap was biting the inside of his lip. "Rudy Chekka, a biznesman as they say in his neck of the woods."
"So who is he?"
"That's Stadanko's cousin. Look, man, I'll call you tomorrow. We'll talk then." He clapped me on the arm and hauled his large self down the stairs.
What was up with that? I wondered. I put my empty glass on a table and started back down to the main floor too. Wouldn't you know it but Stadanko and that stacked Wilma Wells were at the foot of the stairs, talking.
"Mr. Stadanko." I stopped on the second step from the floor.
"What are you doing these days, Zelmont?" Stadanko was a bear-sized man. He was almost my height, with a wide middle and a flat face that wasn't improved much by his bushy mustache. Stadanko was wearing a gun-gray drape coat, black slacks, and some old school black and tan Nunn Bush shoes like my Uncle Nate used to have.
"Not through with playing some ball yet."
"I heard you fired your last agent."
"The Barons have a walk-on period in the next few weeks," I tossed out.
He grunted and looked at the Wells woman. "That's 'cause our counselor here, who's conscious about the team's public image, finagled that with the Coliseum Commission to get them to give us the new sky boxes. Encourage local talent and all that. Personally, I've never seen a good prospect come along that way."