Round Robin (18 page)

Tone forced himself to nod.

“Good,” Gross smiled. “So what I want to do, on the air, of course, is give you a big, hairy ball transplant. Radio testosterone.”

“What?” Tone said, seizing the front of the skinny radio geek’s shirt.

“Balls,” Gross said without flinching. “I’ll give you balls and a hundred K for the first year.”

At the mention of money, even though it was less than a third of what he had been making, Tone let the shock-jock go. Gross continued unperturbed.

“You’ll do the sports reports for my show. We’ll start you out real meek, half-fag. You’ll try to do some of your sports grunts and they’ll come out like a squeeze toy. In fact, we’ll do an audio mix of your voice and a plastic squeaker to get the effect right. Then after time, exposure to me and my coaching, little by little, you start to get your balls back. The public gets to follow your progress. By the time I’m done with you you’ll be roaring like a friggin’ lion. All thanks to me. Whaddya say?”

At that moment, Tone experienced his second insight of the day.

“You’ve got something more in mind, don’t you?”

Gross sat back and looked at Tone, surprised that the guy wasn’t as stupid as he’d been told.

“Yeah. When I say the time is right, you have to fight a rematch with this diesel dyke who cracked your nuts in the first place.”

Tone wondered if he was suddenly getting smarter, or if he just seemed that way compared to Iggy Gross. Because he knew the jerk still hadn’t given him the whole story. This guy wanted him to go up against Robin again, get slaughtered again, and then Gross would do Robin in himself on his show.

Tone smiled.

“You in?” Gross asked.

“You bet,” Tone replied.

What the hell, it was a job ... and it’d be fun to see what Robin would do to this idiot. Meanwhile he’d work out a plan that’d really nail her.

“Who’s the kid?” Patty Phinney asked her daughter Nancy.

Nancy and Bianca had arrived at the offices of Gold Coast Realty.

Patty was sixty-two and looked ten years younger. She didn’t work out as hard as her daughter did, but she ate sensibly, walked three miles a day, had her blonde hair touched up every week and dressed to the nines: the upscale real estate diva.

Bianca had her face scrubbed, her blue hair combed straight back and a dead-end-kid-on-her-best-behavior expression on her kisser. She wore a bright red parka, a cornflower blue cotton sweater, blue jeans and blindingly white sneakers.

“Are you the madam?” Bianca asked Patty.

Nancy gave her a look.

“I beg your pardon,” Patty said, and then turned to her daughter for enlightenment.

“The kid was raised in a brothel.”

Patty added two plus two and turned red.

“And she thinks I’m—”

“She asked if I was a hooker. She likes to get a rise out of people.”

“Well, what are you doing with her?”

“She’s the kid who’s staying at Robin’s.”

“And the reason you brought her here?”

“I thought we’d break a few child-labor laws together.”

Patty gave Nancy a mighty frown, not that it did the least bit of good.

“Well, just keep her away from the clients.”

“Sure. You think I could borrow your hair dryer, Patty?”

Nancy never called her mother “Mom” at work; Patty kept a hair dryer on hand at all times because you never knew when you might get caught in the rain or snow and have to do quick repairs.

“Of course,” Patty said. Since her daughter’s hair was perfect, she knew Nancy wanted it for the child. “Just clean it before you give it back.”

Nancy fixed Bianca’s hairstyle in the ladies room. Spritzed it with water from the tap, dried it and fluffed it. Got it to come out looking reasonably close to a pixie cut rather than the Slickback Sam special it had been. The kid didn’t think much of it, but after Nancy told the kid to smile — or else — Nancy approved of the job she’d done. Even the blue hair didn’t bother her too much.

She took Bianca back to her office.

“Do you know how to read?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know how to count?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Then I can put you to work.”

“How much will I be paid?”

Nancy considered. The kid had spirit, and she liked that.

“Two dollars an hour.”

“Is that a fair amount?”

“You have anybody else offering you more?”

Bianca considered. She hadn’t expected to be paid at all; she’d just asked the question as a basis for lodging future complaints. But this woman — not a hooker, she had to admit — was going to pay her. They might actually get along.

“No.”

“Then we’ll start by having you put these files in alphabetical order.”

Nancy pulled a chair over to one end of her desk, plunked down a stack of files and explained in detail what she wanted. Bianca looked up as Nancy leaned over her.

“You are much prettier than the
hag
. I think my father should
shtup
you instead of her.”

Nancy stood up and fixed Bianca with a stare hard enough to cut diamonds.

“Hag?
Did you just call my sister Robin a
hag?”

Determined to stick to her plan, Bianca nodded.

Nancy pointed her right index finger squarely at the kid’s nose. Then she shook it. Then she started to speak several times but bit her tongue. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d come so close to flying off the handle — but Nancy did not believe in flying off the handle. Not ever. She leaned in toward the kid, one hand on the back of the kid’s chair, the other on her desk. Nose to nose with Bianca.

“You are never to speak of Robin like that again. She gave your father a place to stay, which meant he could give you a place to stay. It cost her a lot to do that. If you were my kid, I’d give you a punishment you’d never forget for being so unkind. If you do it again, I’ll turn you back over to your father and tell him to give you a punishment you’ll never forget. Do you understand?”

Bianca thought of the red rat.

“I understand.”

The child knew she’d have to find another approach — if she still wanted this
Hure
in her life.

“Good,” Nancy said, standing up.

She kept a hard look on her face as Bianca bent to the task she’d been set, but Nancy had a hard time not smiling.

If the kid had it right, Robin was finally getting laid.

David Solomonovich sneaked up on Robin while she was wiping off some tables after the lunchtime rush and stole a kiss. He’d had to time it just right, and stand on tiptoes, but he got her just as she turned from one table to the next. It wasn’t just a little peck on the cheek, either. He threw his bony adolescent arms around her and kissed her full on the mouth.

Then he stepped back and hyperventilated through an idiot’s grin at his boldness.

There were no other customers in the place at the moment to witness this stunning event, but Mimi, Manny and Judy all looked on slack-jawed.

David was just about to say something when Robin clobbered him with a right-handed head-slap that sounded like a rifle shot. The same blow that had bounced off of Manfred knocked David right off his feet and sent his glasses flying, in a two-cushion shot, into a tray of egg-salad. Robin looked down at the dazed and fallen Romeo and saw that tears were forming in his myopic eyes.

“Don’t!” Robin commanded. “Don’t you dare cry!”

David wasn’t a woman scorned, but a hellacious tide of fury flooded his face. He scrambled to his feet and tried to flee but, relying on his shortsighted vision, he misjudged the doorway and ran smack into the jamb. Robin caught him on the rebound, grabbed the back of his collar and slapped a napkin over his bleeding nose.

While David was still seeing stars, Robin marched him off to the rear of the deli.

“Mimi,” she said, “I need to use your office a few minutes.”

Mimi mutely nodded her assent and handed Robin the boy’s cholesterol encrusted glasses.

Robin sat behind Mimi’s desk grimly wiping David’s glasses clean with a tissue. David sat in the guest chair still holding the napkin to his nose. He could have made a break, but David learned very quickly from his mistakes. Running through the deli’s kitchen without his glasses, he might pitch headfirst into the soup du jour. He stayed put, awaiting his fate.

After letting him sweat a while, Robin said, “There’s no excuse for what you did, I don’t care how young you are.”

“We had a deal,” David replied in a small voice. He wasn’t entirely sure that Robin wasn’t going to hit him again, but he had a point to make. “You owed me a kiss.”

Robin put his glasses down on the desk in front of him. She waited until he put them on; she wanted him to see her.

“Is that what you thought that was? A kiss? A kiss is something that’s given not taken. That wasn’t a kiss; it was an assault. You follow through on what you did, it’s rape.”

The idea that he would rape anyone, much less Robin, jolted David to his soul ... but he couldn’t deny characterizing what he’d done as a sneak attack. He’d consciously planned to take Robin by surprise, he’d grabbed her and he’d kissed her.

David began to cry, and this time Robin didn’t stop him.

She handed him a tissue.

Robin was still angry, but her feelings were only slightly less jumbled than David’s. She just didn’t understand what he saw in her, but she knew she had to put an end to the infatuation once and for all. She had to get through to this boy wonder that in some respects he had to act his age not his IQ.

Then she had an idea.

When David stopped crying he said, “I won’t bother you again. I won’t come back here anymore.”

“Oh, yes you will,” Robin said.

“No, I won’t,” he insisted. “How can I show my face after what happened?”

“Showing your face is part of your ...” Robin was going to say punishment, but she changed her choice of words at the last moment. “... penance.”

David wasn’t Catholic, but Robin saw immediately that casting his act in moral terms was the right way to go. He still parried, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“How can you make me?”

“You want your father to know what you did?”

“That’s blackmail.”

“Exactly.”

There was no doubt in David’s mind that Robin would tell on him, and he did not want his father or mother to find out how he’d behaved. For all his intellect, he could not imagine how they would react — except of course to be deeply hurt.

“What else do I have to do?”

“You have to apologize to me, and mean it.”

David hung his head. He wanted to tell Robin that he loved her, that he’d been jealous of that big German jerk, that he’d been stupid like he couldn’t believe, but he’d forfeited the right to tell her any of that. Excuses at this point would sound pathetic. As if lifting the weight of the world, David raised his head and looked at Robin.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Robin nodded.

“Okay, there’s one more thing you have to do.”

“What?”

“Manfred.”

Just the mention of the guy’s name made David nervous.

“Yeah?”

“He’s now one of Mimi’s suppliers, makes pastry for her. Since the two of you will be in here and your paths could cross, I’m going to introduce you. I’ll tell him you were just kidding him the other day, so don’t worry about that.”

Actually, Robin getting him off the hook for that dumb move made David feel a lot better.