L.A. Blues III Read online

  L.A. Blues III:

  Five Smooth Stones

  Maxine Thompson

  www.urbanbooks.net

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  Chapter One - Newport Beach, California

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Afterword

  About the Author:

  Readers’ Guide

  Copyright Page

  Then (David) took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.

  —1 Samuel 17:40

  Dedicated to the memory of my mother, Artie Mae Vann, who was one of the best mothers in the world, under the worst circumstances of oppression, racism, and poverty.

  Chapter One

  Newport Beach, California

  We saw what you did with that decapitated head. If you don’t want to go to prison doing life for murder one, or as an accessory to murder, I suggest you get that money to us.

  Oh, no! The nightmare was starting all over again. I’d memorized the last text message, one of a half dozen, which had come over my iPhone earlier that morning, and it kept replaying over and over in my mind like an old, warped vinyl record. Clearly, I was being blackmailed by a person or persons unknown. My question was: what was going to be my next move?

  “Chop, chop! Move it! We’re ready to shoot.” The loud voice of Vince, the reality show’s director, interrupted my train of thought.

  “Lights, action, roll it!”

  Feeling detached, I looked on as the tattooed-up cameraman clapped his hands in a syncopated rhythm. With a flourish of hand motions, he ordered everyone to get into formation and act out their assigned roles in what my reality costar, Haviland, was touting on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as “The Wedding of the Century.” Her wedding was taking place on a ten-story yacht, The Hail Mary.

  This was her televised marriage to her live-in boyfriend, Trevor, which would be part of our reality show, Women in Business. The TV audience just ate up her crazy antics. Haviland was psycho, but underneath it all, she was loveable, I had to admit.

  We had already filmed all but the last three shows for the first season, and we had a chance of being signed up for another season, which we were all excited about.

  “Move over,” the cameraman barked. He waggled his camera, holding his hand like a hatchet, telling me to move over. As the sun blazed down on me, I scooted closer to my Latina foster sister, Chica, who was the matron of honor, while, I, as a single woman, was a bridesmaid.

  Chica’s husband, Riley, was one of the groomsmen.

  “It’s getting hot,” Chica whispered under her breath.

  I could see Chica’s olive skin tanning to a deep bronze, so I knew I must have resembled burnt toast about now. We were standing so close I could smell her breath, which smelled like mint.

  I hoped she couldn’t smell the vomit residue on my breath.

  “I heard that,” I agreed between clenched teeth. “I’ll be glad when they do the real ceremony and get this thing over with.”

  “Oh, come on, will you, Trevor!” Control-freak Haviland’s snarl rose above the din as she snapped at her new husband-to-be in one of her famous meltdowns. Face set in a grimace, arms akimbo, she continued, “This is my wedding day! Why do you have to eff up everything? Get a move on it.”

  “I’m sorry, dearie.” Compliant, Trevor stepped into place as neatly as a sheet being snapped before being spread on a marine’s bunk bed. “What’s wrong with you now?”

  “Oh, really, Trevor?”

  Everyone in the audience leaned forward, eyeballs peeled, ear hustling. The tirade was about to begin, but the minister stepped in and tactfully smoothed over it. “Marriage is a sacred bond and union. We have to compromise. Love covers a multitude of sin.”

  “Oh, no, she didn’t,” Chica hissed.

  “SMH,” I said in text-speak for shaking my head. “Cussing at the altar.”

  Chica and I glanced at each other out of the corner of our eyes and shook our heads in unison.

  “This is some ratchet mess already,” I said sotto voce. In a swift move, I pulled my fist to my mouth, just in time to keep from vomiting. I guess that’s what I get for gossiping.

  “What’s the matter, mija? You look a little green around the gills.” Chica leaned in, apprehension creased on her brow.

  I shook my head, as if to say that I was all right. However, I wasn’t feeling well at all.

  Something about the way the canary sun slashed onto the ocean waves and the seagulls cried out to each other in a keening sound made me nauseous. A flock of ravens formed an arrow in the sky and made me think of another one of my mother Venita’s sayings: “a bad omen.” I thought about the black bird, which flew into my garage apartment yesterday and shuddered; another bad sign.

  I struggled to hold my composure as I looked on at the crowd of one hundred people gathered for the nuptials. I really wasn’t feeling up to Haviland’s histrionics today, but the camera was eating up this social peccadillo. If anything, they were calling Haviland “the breakout star” of our reality show because of how she bullied around her fiancé, soon-to-be husband. The sad thing about it was, I felt Haviland’s words would set the dynamics for their upcoming married life: biracial Haviland would be bullying her Caucasian husband-to-be, Trevor, who acted as the compliant victim; Haviland, starring as the sadist, and Trevor, as the masochist. He gave the term “lily-livered” new meaning, just as Haviland took the term “bridezilla” to a new level. Moreover, she’d been PMSing all week, and her nose flared out in the fashion of a bull’s because she was spazzing so. For whatever reason, Trevor had decided to tie the knot with crazy Haviland after two years of living together “in sin,” as Haviland now called it. I’d never seen such a nasty-acting wife-to-be, but Trevor seemed to love her dirty drawers all the more.

  We had already marched in twice, but had to reassemble for this new, hopefully last, camera shot. The cameramen descended the area like a swarm of sea rats. Numb, I took my place in line in the bridal party and plastered on my public smile. We had to give the impression of this so-called wedding being unscripted. Except for the actual wedding ceremony, this was our third take. My smile, my everything, including me, felt fake. I felt as if I’d had a plastic surgeon make a mistake around my lips, they felt so frozen.

  There was a side of me that almost wanted to jump out of my skin and off the yacht that we were on in celebration of Haviland’s fourth wedding at thirty-two—actually she was thirty-four, but in Hollywood women lowered their age.

  “Take three,” the director called out.

  Haviland’s wedding was seen as a cachet for our reality show. Although we still had more shows to shoot, this would be
the finale show of our first season.

  What am I doing here anyhow? I kept asking myself over and over. I was so queasy; all I wanted at that moment was to be at home in my bed, near the safety of the commode. I also needed to be near my laptop in order to figure out what to do about whoever my blackmailer(s) was.

  Whoever it was had already text messaged me five times before this last message. At first, I thought it was a prank. But when they e-mailed a picture of me in the Santa Monica park, dumping the wicker basket that contained Tank’s butchered head, well, I knew these people meant business. I know it sounds stupid now, but I had to get out of the country to Brazil in order to save my brother’s life. I didn’t have time to call the law and possibly be detained for questioning. I just left an anonymous tip on a payphone.

  Out of loyalty to Haviland, instead of being at home now, I was on a yacht, swaying back and forth on the ocean, and it took all my strength to keep from barfing all over the deck. I was so nauseated just the very thought made me swallow the scorching vomit, which hit the roof of my mouth in a splash. Uggh. The moment passed because we were finally slowing down. We’d just pulled off from Newport Beach and were about twenty miles out at sea.

  As far as I was concerned, I was fighting the worst case of nausea in history, but I tried to stand tall as the bridesmaid. Chica, matron of honor, and her other six bridesmaids, including me, were all wearing short Vera Wang ecru-colored bridesmaid dresses and matching peau de soie shoes.

  Haviland, the star of the show—I mean this ostentatious extravaganza—was wearing crepe satin and a French Chantilly lace gown made by Carolina Hererra. The dress had 152 buttons along the back and was fashioned after the gown from the movie, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part I.

  Since she was her own wedding planner, Haviland had selected a Victorian theme for her wedding. Everything had to be perfect.

  Don’t get me wrong. I was not jealous of Haviland, but I couldn’t be happy for her, either. I couldn’t help but think, This should be me marrying Romero. When he asked me to marry him, I should have married him, instead of running off to Rio to free my brother, Mayhem, from his abductors. Why didn’t I realize that Romero was the best thing that ever happened to me before it was too late? Now he was gone forever. I wanted to stop by the cemetery and talk to him after the wedding. That was the only way I could feel close to him ever again.

  Why was I here you might ask? Because everyone expected me to be strong and to keep it moving. They didn’t care that I just lost Romero, the love of my life. If my arm wasn’t hanging off me, with torn tentacles exposed, gushing blood, people thought I was fine. They expected me to be the strong black woman.

  Just as the yacht was ten stories high, everything was over the top. Haviland always had to do it up large. I had to give it to her. As one of the best in the business of wedding planning, Haviland had a fastidious eye for detail. You could see it in the impeccable choice of fabric. Her Victorian theme threaded throughout, from the floral arrangements of calla lilies, to the white tablecloths trimmed in a thin thread of gold, to the six-foot ice sculpture shaped like doves, the fountain with Cupid squirting out mimosa from a curlicue penis, and the fake Roman columns wrapped in gold garlands, which flanked the decks. Yet I was so depressed; nothing looked beautiful. Everything had a dark cast to it.

  “We are gathered here today . . .” The minister—a medium-height bald brother who, according to the program, was named Reverend Edgar Broussard—spoke in a solemn tone.

  I was feeling so lousy, I blanked in and out. Come on with it already, my mind screamed. I needed to go to the restroom really, really bad.

  “I promise to love and honor and obey,” the minister intoned.

  Absently, I listened as Haviland said her vows.

  “I promise to love and honor.” Haviland cleared her throat and purposely dropped the “obey.”

  Chica and I glanced at each other and suppressed smiles. Haviland is a fool. We were betting this marriage would have the lifespan of a tsetse fly. How these two managed to live together over two years was beyond me.

  “I now pronounce you man and wife.”

  Hallelujah! I thought. Next, pit stop to the bathroom.

  “Cut! It’s a wrap,” the director called, using hand signals. All this brought it back to me that this marriage getting its start under the glare of the Hollywood lights was mad crazy unbelievable—another bad omen, as far as I was concerned.

  Everyone stood up and began clapping. The good news for Haviland was that she and her Jewish adoptive mother, Irene, had reconciled. She was overjoyed that Irene and her extended family members were all present at the wedding.

  For the first time in several years, Haviland had been clean for the last two years, and now that she was making a comeback in her career, her mother couldn’t be happier. She’d never stopped loving Haviland; she was just burnt out with the numerous drug rehabs.

  Irene, along with two dozen of her adoptive parents’ relatives and friends, were sitting in the front row of the family section. Since her adoptive father had passed, her adoptive Uncle Morty walked her down the aisle and gave her away.

  The family and friends began taking pictures with their iPhones, instagraming, and tweeting right away. In addition to that, Haviland had a professional crew to take photos of her wedding.

  In the tradition of Haviland’s Jewish heritage, the newlyweds stamped a long-stemmed champagne glass. “Mazel tov!”

  In honor of Haviland’s Black heritage, they also jump-ed the broom. Next, the family of the bride and groom went up to the fourth story of the yacht to take “photo ops,” as Haviland liked to call them.

  On the real though, this was not a happy day for me. Two and a half months ago, I’d just buried Romero, the first man who taught me how to love. Inside I was grieving, yet, at the same time, I was furious. How could Haviland plan this rush wedding, knowing I was in mourning? I felt the same way a widow would feel. But I went along with it, since she took such good care of my pet ferret, Ben, while I was in Brazil, trying to free my brother from a hostage situation. I owed her big time.

  I hated to remember my ordeal—how I went to Brazil to free my brother, Mayhem, and how it ended up bringing me into the hellish space I was in right now: pregnant by either my lover or a rapist from when I was drugged while in Rio. Geez! I had no way of knowing, although my suspected perp, Alfredo, said he didn’t have intercourse with me, but who knew? I didn’t have a rape kit at the time to test.

  I didn’t think I could do a DNA test because Romero was dead. I didn’t know his relatives, and I definitely didn’t want to do a test on his daughter, Bianca. I also couldn’t go back to Brazil and get a test done on Alfredo. The real reason I didn’t want to face a DNA test was I didn’t want anyone to know I was raped.

  By the time I made it back to the States, Romero got killed in a shootout trying to free my kidnapped brother and, the truth be known, I lost it for a while. When I came back to my senses, I found out I was pregnant. If I knew for sure it was Romero’s baby, I still would have had a hard time because I had never thought about having children, but under these circumstances, I just didn’t know.

  Abortion was still legal, thanks to Mitt Romney not getting into office, and I’d been contemplating my options, but time was running out. I’d be approximately twelve or thirteen weeks on Tuesday. Today was Saturday. A sense of trepidation rose up in me. Why had I waited so late? In theory, I’ve always believed in a woman’s right to choose if she didn’t want to have a child, but I never knew what I would do if I was faced with an unplanned pregnancy.

  I felt bipolar most days. I was being torn from two different sides. I believed a child had a right to life, but I also believed in a woman’s right to choose.

  How could I even think of having a child? I was not mother material. I was not married. My private eye business was just taking off. I was beginning to get clients from Bel Air and Beverly Hills. Our reality show was blowing up. Where would I fit in
a baby? I fed my face and I had fed my family. Period. That’s all I’d known for thirty-five years. How could I ever change and be responsible for another human being?

  I didn’t want to bring a child into a life where he didn’t feel he had any choices—that he was a victim, which is what I’ve had to fight all my life not to be.

  I had so many what-ifs. What if the baby was fathered by that monster Alfredo who might have raped me? But what if the baby was Romero’s? What should I do?

  Chapter Two

  Now that the charade of a wedding ceremony was over, I marched out in formation with some unknown groomsman, Trevor’s best friend, Peter, or whatever his name was. As I speed-walked down the aisle, I felt someone’s eyes boring into my back. I turned when I made it to the end of the aisle and noticed the minister staring at me. What was that all about? I wondered, but I rushed on, trying to make it to the bathroom.

  Chica, close on my heels, followed me to the luxurious restroom as my heels clicked on the mosaic tile. I couldn’t hold back the wave of nausea any longer, as I squeezed my hand over my mouth and regurgitated.

  I made it to one of the empty stalls just in time to vomit into the toilet like the little girl in The Exorcist. Head hung over the toilet bowel, knees on the cold marble floor, I retched and retched and retched some more. A typhoon had moved inside my stomach and would not let up until it hit the back of my throat, then gushed out into the commode. This cycle repeated itself over and over and over. As a slew of green lava rushed out my mouth, I could hear Chica’s voice calling behind the closed stall’s door.

  “Mija, what’s wrong with you?”

  I heaved and heaved until just a frothy foam trickled out. I finally came up for air. “I’m okay.” I gasped helplessly between breaths as I stood up and leaned my forehead against the stall’s cool slab of granite.

  “What do you mean you’re okay? You don’t sound okay to me. Z, are you sure you’re all right?” Chica called from outside of the bathroom as she banged on the door.