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“You have no right, no right to come into my home and upset me this way. No right, no decency. You can’t come here, upset the balance. Threaten me.”
“I don’t recall threatening you, and I’ve got a pretty good memory for that kind of thing. Officer Peabody, did I
threaten Mr. Smith?”
“No, sir, you did not.”
“You think because I live an ordered and privileged life I don’t know the darker corners.” His lips curled now, and he held his injured hand to his heart in a loose fist. “You want to extort money from me, payment to keep quiet about matters that are none of your business. Women like you always want to be paid.”
“Women like me?”
“You think you’re better than men. You use your wiles or your sex to control them, to suck them dry. You’re nothing but animals. Bitches and cunts. You deserve to . . .”
“Deserve to what?” Eve prompted when he stopped himself, when she watched the war for composure rage over his face. “To suffer, to die, to pay?”
“You won’t put words in my mouth.” He collapsed in the chair again, holding his hand by the wrist and rocking as if for comfort.
Li rushed back in carrying a fluffy white towel, a bottle of water, and what looked to be enough bandage to wrap an entire squadron after a bloody battle.
“Let my aide take care of it,” Eve told him. “She’s just going to mess it up, and hurt you considerably while she’s at it.”
Smith nodded curtly, and turned his head away from Peabody and the blood.
“Li, please go out now. Close the door.”
“But, Carmichael . . .”
“I want you to go.”
She blinked at the slap in his voice and fled.
“How did you learn about . . . her?” he asked Eve.
“It’s my job to learn about things.”
“It could ruin me, you know. My audience doesn’t want to know about that sort of . . . They don’t want the unseemly, the unattractive. They come to me for beauty, for romantic fantasy, not for the ugliness of reality.”
“I’m not interested in your audience or in making any information public, until and unless it applies to my case. I told you, I’m not interested in publicity.”
“Everyone is,” he retorted.
“Think what you like, it doesn’t change why I’m here. Your mother was an LC. She was abusive to you.”
“Yes.”
“You support her, financially.”
“As long as she’s taken care of, she stays away, and out of my life. She’s smart enough to know that coming forward, selling her story, might net her some quick money, but it would kill the golden goose. If my income suffers, so does hers. I explained this to her, very carefully, before the first payment was made.”
“Your relationship with your mother is adversarial.”
“We don’t have a relationship. I prefer not to think of the connection. It unbalances my chi.”
“Jacie Wooton was an LC.”
“Who?”
“Wooton. The woman who was murdered in Chinatown.”
