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However, he and Angelo had not survived decades of living as rock star ca
Yeah, and you gobble up Alice, the one girl in all the world who your partner loves....
He knew he was panicking. His mind was zooming all over the inside of his skull like a pinball. Feigning a semi-apologetic, mostly not-giving-a-shit look, he slipped the phone into his wretchedly tight leather pants and shrugged. "We should go."
"Dwight" Angelo said tiredly. "Dude, we're working here. Well, at least Carla and I are working."
Dwight's heart thundered. He didn't want to work here. His stomach was a bowlful of acid.NO
Dwight hadn't peed in his tight black leather trousers yet, but he was about to vomit all over them.
"Angelo, we have to go now," he blurted, and there went the expert covering of their tracks. He was too scared. He had to get out of there before he had a panic attack. "We really, really do."
"Maybe your blood sugar's low," Angelo said. "Maybe you need something to eat." He waggled his brows. From where she sat, Carla M. couldn't see the smirk on Angelo's face; and for all her highly touted writer's powers of observation, she didn't even know there was a joke, much less that it was at her expense.
"It's not fu
"Okay. Jesus." Angelo rolled his eyes at Carla M. "Musicians."
"Hey, at least you guys never go on strike," she replied, and they both chuckled.
Dwight was doing no chuckling. He didn't wait for Angelo to finish elbowing Carla M.'s boobs while he dug out the keys. He was out the door and down the walkway by the time Angelo caught up to him.
"What the fuck is your problem?" Angelo demanded. "We were closing in on a title!"
Dwight kept walking. Angelo beeped open the Jag and Dwight slid in, black leather on black leather. Angelo stomped around to the driver's side and despite everything, every single motherfucking thing, Dwight enjoyed seeing Angelo being pissed off by him.
"Okay, here it is," Dwight said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his iPhone. He handed it to Angelo, who glanced down at it while he started the car. Baby purred. Angelo stared.
Then he said, "I know who you ate last summer?"
"I think that should be 'whom,'" Dwight said snarkily, which was stupid but he didn't care. He was shaking. "I have to throw up."
Angelo pulled over and Dwight leaned his head out of the air-conditioning and into the overheated, smoggy night. Because they were rock stars, they had to pull over a lot. Their limo drivers were all trained to take it to the curb ASAP if they got the word.
But there was nothing to throw up. Dwight's dry heaves made him dizzy, but that was about it. Sighing and wiping his forehead, he slumped back into his seat and rolled up the window. The air-conditioning made his nipples hard. Angelo resumed driving. He wasn't going anywhere near their Spanish Revival mansion up in the Hollywood Hills.
"Someone's watching us. Someone knows," Dwight said.
Angelo took his eyes off the road, not a good idea when you are going ninety-five. Worse when you are going a hundred and seven. They were rock stars. They had to speed.
"Dwight, if this is a misguided cry for attention .. ." Dwight wanted to choke him. Goddammit, sometimeshe had just had it up to here with Angelo's condescension and his cooler-than-thou bullshit. Okay, okay, Angelo had been Angelo Leone back in Upper Mayo
And Angelo was the one with the trust fund, who got him the hell out of there (without graduating from high school) and rented a mansion close to where the Grateful Dead lived; and bought them equipment and lessons and all the clothes.
But Dwight was the one who found out that living human flesh tasted better than any other delicacy on the planet. And Dwight was the one who had nearly devoured Angelo on not one but three separate occasions, and then relented and let him live. And of course self-absorbed, arrogant, stupid Angelo didn't have a clue, not a clue, that he had come so close to death at the hand—make that teeth—of Dwight "the Loser" Jones.
"Let's go to Maria Begsley's house and score some blow."
"Maria's in AA now," Dwight reminded him.
They had joined Alcoholics Anonymous as a metaphor, so they could stop eating people—okay, women—but Dwight had never wanted to—join, or stop. Raw human flesh was all he could eat anymore, and all he wanted to eat. Then Angelo had become addicted to making connections through their AA meetings, so they had to keep going.
Maybe that anonymity shit worked back in Sheboygan, but in Hollywood, if you were getting your act together, you wanted everyone to know it. You went to a party, you strutted around saying things like, "No alcohol for me tonight, thank you. I'll just have an Evian and some St. John's Wort. I am in the program. I am a friend of Bill W."
"Is this for the movie?" Dwight asked. "Like, you sent me the message to see how I would react?"
Angelo flashed him a look. "Dwight, please, would I do anything so idiotic?"
Yeah, actually, you would, Dwight thought. And he also thought about that brain disease that Hawaiians or whoever got, kurukuru, from practicing ca
Kurukuru tossed you into the Well of Bad Judgment. Maybe Angelo had it.
"Did you text me?" Dwight asked. And before Angelo could flash him another "how dareth you question moi" look, he said, "Just tell me."
Angelo swerved around a slow-moving vintage Corvette and nearly took out a guy on a motorcycle. Guy looked like a Hells Angel. Flipped Angelo off.
"Who might know?" Angelo asked. "Hey, you didn't, like, tell your sponsor about us, did you?"
"Are you insane?" Dwight snapped. Then a horrible suspicion dawned on him. "You didn't tell Bob V., did you?"
Bob V. had been Angelo's AA sponsor. Who Dwight had managed to kill in a fire. That should be 'whom.'
"Jesus, Dwight, give me some credit," Angelo said, but there was a catch in his voice. A guilty little catch.
He did. Dwight knew it as sure as he knew the words to "The Star-Spangled Ba
Angelo had told his sponsor that they were ca
"Anyway, he's dead," Angelo went on.
The Jag hurtled through an orange light and zoomed past the fountain in Echo Park. The fountain was on, spewing colored water the city really could not afford; but when you lived in Echo Park, you needed a little lift.
The drug dealers hanging around the fountain turned and stared in astonishment as Angelo zoomed back. Big hats, bling, sweatshirts, .357s. They glowered at the Jag, which was stupid because dudes in Jags could be customers. But a serial killer was after their bitches and sistahs, so long faces were probably more appropriate than signs that read buy your shit here.
Angelo made a choking sound. Then he threw back his head and started laughing as he cranked the wheel and started circling the fountain.
"Okay, truth time. But you already know I sent you that message as a test," Angelo said. "Because I thought you told Carla M."