“What?”
“Forgetting.”
“Yeah.”
“A’ight.”
“A’ight.”
And they hung up.
I searched for reasons not to blow my brains out. I came up with two or three dozen real fast, but I still wasn’t certain I could listen to many more conversations between Brandon and one of his “bras.”
Dominique was another issue entirely. Dominique was a blue-chip working girl who’d entered Brandon’s life ten days earlier via Facebook. That first night, they’d IM’d back and forth for two hours. Since then, they’d Skyped three times. Dominique had remained fully clothed but wildly descriptive about what would happen should (a) she ever deign to sleep with him and (b) he came up with the sizable cash allotment necessary to make that happen. Two days ago, they’d traded cell phone numbers. And, God bless her, she called about thirty seconds after he clicked off with bra. This, by the way, was how the asshole answered a phone:
[*Brandon: *]Talk to me.
(Really. And people continued to contact him.)
Dominique: Hey.
Brandon: Oh, hey. Shit. Hey! You around?
Dominique: I will be.
Brandon: Well, come here.
Dominique: You forget we Skyped. I wouldn’t sleep with you there wearing a hazmat suit.
Brandon: So you’re thinking about sleeping with me finally. I never met a whore decided who she’d do it with.
Dominique: You ever meet one who looked like me?
Brandon: No. And you’re, like, near my mom’s age. And still. Shit. You’re the hottest chick I ever—
Dominique: How sweet. And let’s clarify something—I’m not a whore. I’m a carnal service provider.
Brandon: I don’t even know what that means.
Dominique: I’m totally unsurprised. Now go cash a bond or a check or whatever you do and meet me.
Brandon: When?
Dominique: Now.
Brandon: Now now?
Dominique: Now now. I’m in town this afternoon and this afternoon only. I won’t go to a hotel, so you better have another place, and I won’t wait long.
Brandon: What if it’s a real nice hotel?
Dominique: I’m hanging up now.
Brandon: You’re not hang—
She hung up.
Brandon cursed. He threw his remote into a wall. He kicked something. He said, “Only overpriced whore you’ll ever meet? You know what, bra? You can buy ten of her. And some blow. Go to Vegas.”
Yes, he actually called himself “bra.”
The phone rang. He must have tossed it along with the remote, because the ringtone was distant and I heard him scramble across the room to get to it. By the time he reached it, the ringtone had died.
“Fuck!” It was a loud scream. If I’d had my window rolled down, I could have heard it from the car.
It took him another thirty seconds before he prayed.
“Look, bra, I know I did some shit, but I promise, you get her to call back again? I’ll go to church and I’ll deposit a boatload of the green in one of those baskets. And I’ll be better. Just have her call back, bra.”
Yes, he actually called God “bra.”
Twice.
His ringtone had barely burped before he flipped his phone open. “Yeah?”
“You get one shot here.”
“I know it.”
“Give me an address.”
“Shit. I—”
“Okay, I’m hanging—”
“Seven seventy-three Marlborough Street, between Dartmouth and Exeter.”
“Which unit?”
“No unit. I own the whole thing.”
“I’ll be there in ninety minutes.”
“I can’t get a cab that fast around here, and it’s rush hour soon.”
“Then get the power of flight. See you in ninety. Ninety-one? I’m gone.”
The car was a 2009 Aston Martin DB9. Retailed for two hundred thousand. Dollars. When Brandon pulled it out of the garage two town houses over, I checked it off the list on the seat beside me. I also snapped five photos of him in it while he waited for traffic to thin so he could enter it.
He hit the gas like he was launching an expedition to the Milky Way, and I didn’t even bother chasing him. The way he weaved in and out of traffic, even someone with the awareness of meat loaf, like Brandon, would see me riding his ass. I didn’t need to follow him anyway—I knew exactly where he was going and I knew a shortcut.
He arrived eighty-nine minutes after the phone call. He ran up the stairs and used a key on the door, and I caught it on film. He ran up the interior stairs, and I entered behind him. I followed him from fifteen feet away, and he was so wired that he didn’t even notice me for a good two minutes. In the kitchen on the second floor, as he opened the fridge, he turned when I snapped off a few shots on the SLR and he fell back against the tall window behind him.
“Who the fuck’re you?”
“Doesn’t much matter,” I said.
“You paparazzi?”
“Why would paparazzi give a shit about you?” I snapped a few more shots.
He leaned back to get a good look at me. He grew past the fear of a stranger popping up in his kitchen and moved on to threat-assessment. “You’re not that big.” He cocked his surfer’s head. “I could kick your bitch ass out of here.”
“I’m not that big,” I agreed, “but you definitely couldn’t kick my bitch ass out of anywhere.” I lowered the camera. “Seriously. Just look in my eyes.”
He did.
“Know what I’m saying?”
He half-nodded.
I slung the camera onto my shoulder and gave him a wave. “I’m leaving anyway. So, hey, have a good one, and try not to brain-damage any more people.”
“What’re you going to do with the pictures?”
I said the words that broke my heart. “Pretty much nothing.”
He looked confused, which was hardly uncommon for him. “You work for the Mayles family. Right?”
My heart broke just a tiny bit more. “No. I do not.” I sighed. “I work for Duhamel-Standiford.”
“A law firm?”
I shook my head. “Security. Investigations.”
He stared back at me, mouth open, eyes narrowed.
“Your parents hired us, you dumb shit. They figured you’d eventually do something moronic because, well, you’re a moron, Brandon. This little incident today should confirm all their fears.”
“I’m not a moron,” he said. “I went to BC.”