In the Night of the Heat by Blair Underwood Page B

me—I had nearly gone to jail myself after she’d been murdered, since I had spent a precious afternoon with her the day she died. Serena and I hadn’t seen each other in five years until that day, and it had been like meeting for the first time. We might have started all over again, both of us born anew.
    â€œHe was a bodyguard for who?” said Skeptical Basso, looking me up and down. He had fifty pounds on me. I’m not small, but it was like an oak talking to a pine.
    â€œDevon Biggs,” Melanie told him. “And Afrodite.”
    â€œWell, shit, that didn’t work out too good.”
    My eyes flashed fire. Knowing that I might have found a way to save Serena’s life still sometimes made it hard to go to sleep atnight. Linebacker or not, I wasn’t going to tolerate taunting about Serena.
    T.D. Jackson laughed, but without mirth. His glassy eyes shimmered. “You got heart, man. Don’t let Carlyle fuck with you,” T.D. told me, and shook my hand; almost holding it, really. “Melanie says you’re the real thing, and my big cousin never steers me wrong. I need somebody I can trust, from way back in the day. The shit’s gonna start all over with the civil trial. My boys got their own lives, you know? They can’t keep babysitting my ass. That true about Devon Biggs and the fire? Six dudes shooting at you?”
    â€œThree,” I said. The memory of the trap set for me and Devon in retaliation for Serena’s murder forced itself to the surface. I had shot and almost killed a man that day. I could still taste the soot and smell the gasoline. “The fire’s true.”
    T.D. Jackson’s face went slack with gratitude, the way he might have looked at a doctor who promised to cure a fatal illness. “ Yeah, man. That’s what I need, Tennyson. No bullshit.”
    In that instant, T.D. Jackson felt like an old friend I could invite home to crack open a six-pack and watch a ballgame. That’s the ugly truth of it: People aren’t all bad or all good. You can dig down to find the saint, or the monster, in anyone.
    A business card slipped into my hand. I glanced down: Melanie Wilde, Attorney at Law. She worked at a downtown firm housed in a glass tower on Sunset.
    â€œLet me know how to reach you,” Melanie said. “We’ll take you to lunch and talk details. We’re not playing, so name your price.”
    A piercing gaze somehow has physical weight. April’s eyes were bludgeoning the back of my head. Instinct made me want to call her over, and say, “Hey, guys, this is my girlfriend, April Forrest.” But April didn’t want an introduction. She wanted to know why the hell Iwas talking congenially with T.D. Jackson and a woman who looked like an East African postcard. I wondered, too.
    I’d almost forgotten that I had a steady job, and that investigating Serena’s murder had soured me on the bodyguard business. I’d almost forgotten my respect for the dead.
    I made a show of trying to give Melanie’s card back to her. She refused it.
    â€œWish I could help,” I said, first to her, and then to T.D. “But I’m pushing the acting thing now. Might have seen me on the previews for next week’s Homeland ?”
    T.D. blinked. No reaction at all.
    â€œThe Afrodite business was a onetime thing,” I said. “Sorry.”
    â€œWhat?” T.D. said, genuinely puzzled. T.D. Jackson wasn’t used to being refused. “You think I can’t pay, man? I can pay.”
    â€œIt’s not that. I’ve got a gig, T.D. Sorry.”
    His eyes never wavered, but somewhere deep inside T.D. Jackson there was a seismic shift. For an instant I glimpsed a morsel of the rage his dead ex-wife might have known, whether or not he killed her. T.D. Jackson didn’t have a Warm setting: He went from Cold to Hot. His eyes, which looked vaguely golden in that instant, were sharp as