“What the hell happened to you?” Ricardo Pardo asked his son, Mickey. His assistants were just finishing unloading the black Mercedes wagon he’d driven back into the city, and he looked at his son with a mixture of appreciation and complete disgust. Mickey swayed in front of his father. He was in a black cashmere bathrobe and combat boots.
“I have to repeat myself?” his father asked.
Mickey considered a lie, but the truth always got his father off his back quicker. Ricardo stared at his son. They were about the same height and looked terribly similar, except that Ricardo had a big belly and a thick black and white beard that came down to his clavicle.
“I climbed off Patch’s roof to get to Philippa and fell,” Mickey said.
“Say what?” Ricardo whipped around. Two of his assistants who were carrying boxes full of paint cans backed away in fear.
“You heard me,” Mickey said.
“Hello, darling,” his mother, Lucy, said. She’d taken her own Mercedes back from Montauk. She was a beautiful woman—a former model from Venezuela, and the fact that Mickey had inherited equal parts of his father’s swarthy, froglike looks and his mother’s stunning beauty was a source of amusement to everyone who knew the Pardos.
“Where’s Philippa, darling?” his mother asked.
“Her dad won’t let her speak to me.”
“You know, mijito,” his father said, “if hanging around with your buddies is going to get you nearly killed, then maybe that’s over, you know?”
“Say what?”
“You heard me, mijito desobediente!”
“You’re nuts, Dad!”
“Chiflado? You think so? No more Philippa for you, hijo! I agree with that Jackson Frady. You’re driving us both loco!”
Ricardo and Mickey glared at each other. So Mickey jumped back and slammed the door to his bedroom, turned around, and threw himself on his bed. Or rather, threw himself where he thought his bed was. But as he felt the hard waxed concrete of the bedroom floor crunch against his elbow, he remembered that he’d rearranged the room in a fit of drugged ecstasy the day before. Taken all the rugs and soft things and put them in a big box in the corner.