When I got to the club, I found Yoni in the dressing room.
She looked up as I walked in past the security thugs at the door. “Baz, I think you should hear this.”
I blinked.
Reading from left to right, I saw Yoni on a folding metal chair in her dressing gown over a club gig costume, not too glitzy or naked, a li’l ol’ singer gal dropping in on open-mic night. The jeans were probably eight hundred dollars, custom made. Big gold hoop earrings. A denim top that tied in a bow between her boobs and showed off her famously slender waist. Sort of a Dukes of Hazzard down-home girl, only, you know, black.
And in the other folding chair, Sophie. She wore big baggy cargo pants and a dark-green, long-sleeved tee shirt. She was nervously eyeing a vase full of red roses.
“Okay, I’m missing something,” I said. I grabbed another folding chair, swung it around, and straddled it.
Yoni gestured to Sophie.
She let loose a torrent of gabble. “Veek is in trouble. He is the true vicomte Montmorency. I have ascertained this most positively. But my father would discredit his claim if he could. He has—my father has found a thing that was there when Veek was born, like a veil over his face.” She passed a hand over her own face with fingers splayed. “It is a true relique. Also he has Veek’s navel string, but that was false, just beef liver. I supplied a sperm sample. Now I’m afraid he will try to make it impossible for Veek to provide another DNA sample. But.” She paused for breath.
I looked at Yoni, like, Are you getting any of this?
The kid’s eyes went from mine to Yoni’s. “The veil, it has magical power over Veek. I have felt its power too. My father—this power is making him crazy I think. He may do something very unpleasant to Veek, I don’t know what, and I fear I may not be able to stop him. Maybe no one can. But then I thought, I know someone, one person who has greater magic than the veil in my father’s possession.”
She was a cute little thing, but completely crackers as far as I could see. She turned her eyes to Yoni, and I realized what she was saying.
“She says,” Yoni said, “that her Veek is your roommate. I could have security take her out and the cops would arrest her for breaking into my dressing room, but I thought I would check with you first.” She sounded stiff, but the mere fact she hadn’t already had the kid evicted was worrying me.
I admitted cautiously, “I have a roommate. I call him Veek.”
“Ah,” Yoni said. Apparently that was the only confirmation she needed. Great.
“Yes, yes!” Sophie exclaimed. “We met at the shop, and we talked, the three of us, and you are Ashurbanipal of the Mesopotamians, and you will convince him to let me have the stuffed goat’s head that Jake left, if you please, because I can see Veek has no use for it, and it would be a shame to let the vodou lady keep it, for she can get a goat’s head any time she likes, n’est-ce pas? And you will tell Yoni that Veek needs her help. My father is dangerous enough when he is angry, and that’s when he is a lawyer only. With this magical veil—”
She broke off and shook her head bodingly, her delicately arched black brows coming together and her curls bouncing around her vivid little face.
I was pretty sure that, by now, Yoni had heard enough to know she wanted no part of this nut job.
But when I turned to her, my love-goddess was also frowning. “You heard her. Remember, that asshole lawyer who came to my suite that day is her father.”
“Are you both kooky?” I said. Yoni looked at me. I protested, “Don’t involve me in this!” That didn’t go over any too well, either. “Look,” I said, strictly to Yoni, “I’d like to talk to you privately.”
Yoni got up and went to the door. After whispering to the guard, she summoned the stalker chick and told her, “Conversation over. If there’s anything to be done, Baz—Ashurbanipal will contact you through his roommate. Shoo, now.”
The stalker chick went outside, making fan-girl eyes at Yoni, and Yoni shut the door firmly behind her.
I complained, “A week ago you were begging me to keep her away from you. What the fuck?”
“I know,” Yoni said. She looked troubled.
“That little sweetheart is pure dynamite. Veek told me some shit about her. She’s wack. She could do anything.”
“She got past security.”
I nodded.
“That horrible lawyer is her father,” Yoni said again. “He’s your roommate’s opponent in a lawsuit. The kid can help, or she can get creative on her own, but, Baz, she’s not going to stay out of it.”
“Oh.” I blinked. “I hadn’t thought about it like that.” As usual, Yoni was thinking farther ahead than I was.
She nodded. “What’s this lawsuit about? Your words, not hers. She’s adorable, but I can’t follow anything she says.”
I said, “I know zip about the lawsuit. It’s between Veek and his family back in France. I can’t do a goddam thing about it right now. I’m not messing with it until he asks me to.”
Yoni sighed. She looked at her watch, and then at the case in my hand. “That your bass? Let’s go do sound check.”