Pinching Garrett’s ribs as I passed, I walked up to Reyes and stood with my arms crossed.
“Yes?” he asked playfully.
“This wall thing is not over.”
He hooked a finger in the top of my jeans and pulled. “We have a wall thing?”
My hands instinctively rose to his chest, the hard expanse smooth under my fingers. “We have a wall thing.”
“Charley!” Cookie called out.
“In here,” I called back, mesmerized by the dimples at either side of Reyes’s mouth.
She rushed in, winded with flushed cheeks. “What do you think of this outfit?” she asked, spinning in a circle until she noticed Garrett. Whom she’d just charged past. “Oh, hi, Garrett.”
“Cookie,” he said with a nod.
She’d been getting ready for the third and final date in Operation Punk Ubie. If this didn’t work tonight, she might have to do something drastic, like—gasp!—ask the man out herself. But she was a knockout. If this didn’t work, he was an idiot who didn’t deserve her.
“I was just getting ready for a date. Thing. Not really a date, but—” She frowned. “Where’s your wall?”
I jammed my fists onto my hips and glared at her. “That’s what I’d like to know, missy. Speaking of which,” I said, turning back to the wall thief, “why on earth would you tear down my wall?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “You live next door.”
“Yes,” I said, acknowledging that tidbit of info, “but why did you tear down my wall?”
He grew serious, studying me from beneath hooded lids. “You live next door.”
“Oh.” His meaning sank in at last.
Cookie sighed. “That’s what I want, damn it.” She pointed to us and questioned Garrett. “Is that asking too much?”
Garrett looked horrified by the thought.
“Okay,” I said, walking to her and straightening her scarf, “I found this guy in an ad in the back of the Weekly Alibi.”
“Wait, you don’t know him?” she asked, appalled.
“No, but he’s an actor. We need an actor for this one. Someone who can, you know, act.”
She groaned. “This could backfire in so many ways,” she said, and she was right, naturally, but I had to see the coffee cup half full. We were doing this for a reason. It would work. And unicorns sparkle in moonlight.
18
Remember, it’s all fun and games
until somebody loses an eyeball,
and then it’s, “Hey! free eyeball!”
—T-SHIRT
As I busied myself putting all my numbers in the phone Pari had loaned me, Cookie’s date showed up. Right on time. We ran through the script and told him that the whole thing was being taped for a new hidden-camera show that could be picked up by HBO. “If you want it to air,” we told him, “you really have to sell it.”
He was tall and well built if a bit too young and too clean-cut for what we were asking of him, but he’d agreed to our little skit and to the fact that we were more or less punking the man we were setting up.
“I wish you were going to be there,” Cookie said to me.
“Me, too, but if he sees me there, he’ll know something is up.”
By the time they left for the date, Cookie looked a little green in the gills.
“Chin up, hon. This is our last try.”
“But is all this really necessary?” she asked, clearly wanting to back out. “Again, if he wanted to ask me out, he would have, right?”
“Do you even know my uncle Bob?”
“Okay, you’re right.”
She took her date by the arm and let him lead her down the stairs to a waiting limo. This would be good.
* * *
Minutes later, it seemed, my new phone rang. Reyes and Garrett and I had been discussing the prophecies and the Dealer. Garrett agreed to meet with him, to try to figure out what on earth was going on. But for now, I had an untraceable phone calling my name.
I slid my finger across the screen to answer. “Hey, Cook, how’s it going?”
“Charley,” she said, almost screaming at me, “get down here, now! Robert’s going to kill him!”
I scrambled to my feet. “What? Where are you? What happened?”
“They’re fighting. Robert confronted us, and your actor guy thinks it’s all part of the script. Robert’s going to kill him! Get down here!”
I was running out the door before I knew it. “Where are you, exactly?” I asked, taking the stairs down three at a time. Garrett and Reyes were right behind me.
“We’ll take my truck,” Garrett said, heading in that direction.
We followed him and hurried inside as he started the engine.