Page 162 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

I tapped my phone screen again. “She’s the voice of the sister!”

Jean-Claude flipped through another magazine until he found photos of
Chedorlaomer stepping out hand in hand with a tall, buxom black woman. Her
hair was gathered up to bare a neck that tempted me to B-movie vampirism. I
wouldn’t have guessed she was a puppeteer, and neither would this magazine’s
caption writer: Nachor’s mystery lady . . . Do you know her? Write in!
“Freddy,” Jean-Claude said. “I’ve been watching you for a few days now.”
“Watching me? From where?”

He pointed to a potted palm tree behind the farthest phone booth. “There’s a
chair behind it. Yes, I’ve been watching you, and you look well, you do look
well, but you also look as if you’re lacking direction . . .”
I didn’t dispute that.
“Would you like a bit of gainful employment, Freddy?”

“Well . . . yes.”
“Good! I’ll pay you this—” Jean-Claude wrote a number on the front cover of
the topmost magazine. “If you break those two up as soon as you can.”
The figure was high; I had to ask why he was so invested in the breakup.
“I made some inquiries, and I found out some things about Tyche Shaw,”
Jean-Claude said, his eyes turning to saucers for a moment. “Don’t ask me what
they are, but let’s just say she’s not the sort of person my son should be seeing.

Save him. If not for the money then at least out of human decency.”
“I’ll gladly do what I can. But have you tried asking the concierge or my
mother about this?”
“Yes of course, but they say it’s only in their remit to handle requests that can
be fulfilled on the premises.”
“I see . . . Well, don’t worry, Jean-Claude. I’ll deal with this.”

“Music to my ears, Freddy. That’s the Barrandov Way!”
—

I WAS GOING to have a lot of money soon, but the prospect didn’t excite me.
Perhaps I’d get more excited as I went along. Aisha introduced me to
Chedorlaomer without too much prompting: If anything she seemed amused that
she’d discovered the fanboy in me.

Any friend of A’s is a friend of mine . . .
Chedorlaomer Nachor had been famous for years. He’d grown accustomed to
living well and to feting his playmates; if you said you liked anything of his he
gave it to you, even if that meant taking the item off his own body and putting it