Page 50 of Gonzo's Grudge
“Who signed in earlier?”
“Sir—”
“Who was in this building today going to her apartment?”
His eyes snuck to the visitor sheet and then away. “I can’t say?—”
I looked to the sheet in front of him. The name I expected was written there clear as day. “You just did,” I explained, and put a hundred on the counter. “You didn’t see me.”
“What?” His eyes went wider at the bill than they had at the leather cut. “I—uh—didn’t see you.”
“Good man.”
I took the stairs two at a time anyway. Policy is a door; most doors open if you’re willing to lean.
Her hall stank like popcorn and aerosol perfume. I didn’t knock. I didn’t need to. The door to her room was propped with a shoe and Darla—I’d met her once, bright and lacquered—stood in the middle of a hurricane of laundry and makeup like a queen in a kingdom of plastic.
She saw me and rolled her eyes. “You can’t be in here.”
“Wasn’t asking.”
She put her hands on her hips. “She’s not here.”
“I know,” I said. “Tell me where she went.”
“Home.” She shrugged, hair flipping with the move. “Said she needed a break.”
“What did he tell her?”
Darla’s smirk was a thing that wanted to be a shield and failed at it. “Who?”
“Stanley.”
Her chin jerked back. “You think I’m gonna help you? The way you rolled in here and mixed her up in the head worse than I did fucking her ex-boyfriend in her bed.”
I let that hit. I deserved it. This would be the bitch’s only pass. “I asked you what he said.”
Darla looked at me a long, long beat and then away, like she couldn’t stand me and couldn’t stand herself for what she was about to do.
“He sat in that chair,” she said, flinging a wrist toward her desk. “Leg over the knee like he was posing for a magazine. He told her she was a toy you were using because of her dad. He told her her dad’s got secrets, and he keeps them. He told her to run. Paris, Rome—like he was travel agent to the damned.”
“Did she cry?”
Darla squared up, defensive. “She went silent.”
“You done?” Darla asked. “Because I have class. And a life, by the way.”
“You got a boyfriend?”
“None of your business.”
“If he comes around IvaLeigh again, he’ll meet me.”
“That a threat?”
“A promise.”
“You’re exhausting,” she said, but her eyes told me she understood the difference.
