Mean Woman Blues

away when she said “miscarriage,” though. He wasn’t lying when he said he was clueless. He’d thought cancer, he’d thought everything you could think when they found the bed soaked with blood, even internal injuries caused by his knocking her around. The idea of a miscarriage hadn’t occurred to him until the doctor told him.
    Well, hell. That was a
good
thing. Last thing he wanted right now was another damn kid. But it struck him as ironic that he was about to lose two in one day.
    And to his amazement, putting out a contract on his own kid was a lot more nerve-wracking than the expectant-father thing. He was going out of his skull. He paced. He drummed his fingers. He tried to work on his next show. He thought the top of his head was coming off.
    Finally, he took a long lunch break that consisted mostly of a long, long drive. Once safely on the road, he dug out his newest cell phone and called Lobo. “You get the money?”
    “Send me the second half.”
    “What do you mean? Our deal was half up front.”
    “It’s done.”
    The phone went dead.
    Just like that.
It’s done.
That was how the scumbag announced that David’s son was dead.
    Mr. Right was actually saddened by it, a fact that surprised him. He’d never really had a relationship with Isaac, and now he never would. He’d had a chance at another kid too, one he never even knew about. For some reason, he even felt regret about that one.
    He hurried back to the office and turned on the television in his office. It was on CNN, on the little headline thing: “Son of Errol Jacomine gunned down in front of his house.”
    “Errol Jacomine” with no I.D. at all. That was how famous he was. There ought to be satisfaction in that but there wasn’t. He wasn’t yet famous for the right things— and he never would be, under his own name. Not till after he died. He thought about that for a moment, wandered off on a tangent, and then he saw a reporter talking to a New Orleans cop. He turned up the volume. “Can you tell us the extent of his injuries, Sergeant O’Rourke?”
    “All I can say at this time is that he remains in a coma.”
    Coma!
the bastard said.
A fucking coma!
    His mother-fucking worthless son wasn’t even dead, and he’d paid that asshole Lobo five thousand dollars.
    Oh shit oh shit oh shit
, he definitely wasn’t paying the rest. He got up and kicked his desk. Kicked a chair and knocked it over. Kicked another.
    Then he heard running footsteps, and there was that damn Tracie again, peeking in like she thought she was his guardian angel or something.
    He beat her to the punch. “It’s okay, Tracie, I know I’m acting like a child. I’m just worried about Karen, that’s all.”
    She nodded, looking frightened, and ducked out again, closing the door fast. He wondered if he looked like a wild man. He phoned her extension and left a message. “I’m really sorry for acting like a jackass. I think I better take the rest of the day off before I do something to embarrass myself.”
    He was out of there like a shot. He hadn’t even gotten the car out of the garage before he’d called Lobo and left his pager number. It took an hour for the man to call back. “Yeah? You transfer the money?”
    Mr. Right shouted, “
Kill him, you asshole! Goddammit, kill him
!” He threw the cell phone out the window onto the freeway. The car behind him screeched, trying not to hit it.
    * * *
    Skip waited till she got home to call Lovelace, hoping O’Rourke would get to her first, but evidently she hadn’t waited long enough. As soon as the girl heard her name, she said, “Isaac. Omigod! What’s happened?”
    Skip wondered if her somber tone of voice had said it all, or if Lovelace had reason to fear for her uncle. She said, “It’s bad, Lovelace. He’s alive, but it’s bad. Some bastard shot him in front of his house.”
    “Oh, shit.” She paused to catch her breath. Skip heard a couple of gulps as Lovelace fought tears. “How bad?” she finally managed.
    “It’s a head injury. He’s in a coma.”
    “Oh, shit. Omigod. Did they get the guy? He just called me this morning. He said he might have seen his father. Could my grandfather have done this?”
    Seen his father?
Skip stood up and paced, her blood racing. This was big. This was the key to it all. She tried to calm down, to make her voice soothing. “We don’t know anything yet. He’s going to need you, though. Can you come?”
    “Oh, yeah. Sure.” Lovelace sounded