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"You make sure that you do. You’ll find me to be a brilliant conversationalist. People tell me that I’m very oral, when the conversation is stimulating."
"I’d be interested to see."
Wanda shook her head disapprovingly. "I see you still have a way with the women, Nick." She mentioned. "Why didn’t she just come right out and say she wanted to fuck you."
"I don’t know, Wanda. Why don’t you ask her?"
"I don’t think so, Nick. I learned a long time ago not to get between you and your women."
"What’s that supposed to mean?" I demanded, but she and I both knew she was talking about Camille.
Now why she wanna go and do that?
"Nevermind, Nick. What did you think of the sister? Other than the obvious, I mean."
"What do you mean?"
"Open up, Nick. I’m not Kirk. This is me, you know, Wanda. I’m only trying to help you. We go too far back for you to be so defensive with me, Nick."
"I’m sorry, Wanda."
"I just wanted to know if you thought she was telling you the truth, that’s all."
"I thought so. I didn’t think she had any reason to lie about what she told me."
"It seemed like she wasn’t all that concerned about her brother being missing. I think she was more concerned with gettin’ her freak on with you."
"Whatever gave you that impression?" I smiled.
"Come on, Nick. Very oral. If that wasn’t an invitation to come back and get some head, I don’t know what it was. I’m very oral."
"Like you said, Wanda, I just have that affect on women."
"Yeah. I guess you do."
* * *
Chapter Five
The more I thought about it, the more I knew that I needed to know who and what I was up against. I knew where to go, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go there. Freeze would know, I knew he would. Freeze always knew everything about everybody. If he didn’t know, he either knew how to find out or it wasn’t worth knowing. It had been ten years since I’d seen Freeze. Ten years since I had tried to close the door on my past. Maybe it was time to re-open that door.
Besides, I was hungry and I hadn’t eaten anything all day. So I drove to Cuisine. I entered the supper club and looked around for Freeze. I was surprised at what a nice place it was. Nothing like the spots we used to run back in the day. Not seeing Freeze anywhere, I allowed the hostess to seat me at a table.
"Is Freeze here?"
"Who?"
I smiled and continued to look over the menu. "Just tell Freeze that Nick Simmons would like to see him."
The hostess walked away.
It wasn’t too long before I looked up and saw Freeze coming toward my table; wearing a suit. "Nick! What’s up?"
"You tell me. You’re the man. In a suit no less."
"Fuck that shit. How the fuck are you, man?" Freeze sat down and motioned for a waitress. Two responded to his motion. "What are you drinkin’, Nick?"
"Johnny Black, straight up."