Free The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) by Nathan Walpow Page B

realized the minute he tried to bribe me into dropping the search for the woman at Staples. And if not then, the second he threatened to reveal what he knew about Ronnie and me.
    He’d done something to the two of us that morning. Dropped a roofie in our drinks, maybe. If I’d even had a drink. I couldn’t remember.
    I had to get back at him. Everything was his fault.
    Except you not telling your wife what you should have told her the minute you saw her.
    I wouldn’t have had to if it weren’t for him.
    Right. Blame your moral failings on a virtual stranger.
    Thoughts collided, combined, escaped. One thing was clear. I didn’t know where to start with Gina. I’d have to give it a little time, let her cool off, work my way back into her good graces. Just like any sitcom dad would do.
    Meanwhile, I initiated a vendetta against Dennis Lennox.
    It was stupid. I knew it from the onset. Me trying to bring him down for what I’d wrought through my own cowardice was like … it was sort of like the war in Iraq. Osama blew up the Twin Towers, can’t find him, let’s knock the shit out of Iraq. Worked for the president, might work for me.
    I could put some private eye to work. “Dig up the dirt,” I would tell him, and he’d sit on a park bench somewhere and watch Dennis selling crack to middle-school kids or going down on a priest or taking a meeting with the aforesaid Osama. And I would calmly saunter up to Dennis’s office with photos and tape recordings. “Give my surrogate daughter back her job, creep,” I would cry, and he would capitulate immediately, and as a bonus would reveal to Gina that he’d given me a drug that not only blanked me out, but also broke some connection in my brain, making me incapable of admitting what little I knew about what had happened.
    Or, there was my new friend. John Santini. “John, baby, I know you’re retired from the kneecap-breaking game, but there’s this guy who’s pissed me off, and would you be so kind as to take care of it?” And one day Dennis would wake up with a horse’s head in his bed, and after he finished his screaming and weeping he would capitulate immediately, et cetera, et cetera.
    Or I could slip us all off to one of those alternate universes, one where whatever had turned Dennis into such a slimeball had never happened, and we all lived happily ever after.
    Next door, the sprinklers flicked off. A few final droplets fell and the night was silent. I sat a couple of minutes more and went in to sleep on the couch.
     
    Gina and I acted coldly civil in the morning. There was a big dead moose in our lives, and we were carefully avoiding talking about it. She got out of the house as soon as she could.
    Noonish.
Rinnnnng
.
    “Hello?”
    “Joe?”
    “Uh-huh. Who’s this?”
    “It’s Samantha Szydlo.”
    “The woman with the paint on her nose.”
    “That’s me.”
    “What’s up?”
    “I heard what happened to your friend Ronnie.”
    “News travels fast.”
    “I got my oil changed. They had a copy of
Variety
at the garage.”
    “Very L.A.”
    “Dennis was responsible, wasn’t he? It has his stink all over it. There’s no way in hell that chick should have been let go. Look, I think we should get together.”
    “What for?”
    “To plot our revenge,” she said.

Twelve
    “
Our
revenge?” I said.
    “The fucker dumped me.”
    “What? When?”
    “Saturday.”
    “Sorry to hear it. No, I’m not. You’re better off. He’s a real asshole.”
    “I know I’m better off. I still want revenge.”
    I met her at Mao’s Kitchen for lunch. Brick walls covered in Chinese propaganda posters. Chairman Mao and various loyal communists staring proudly out at whatever it is people in those posters always find so fascinating off in the distance. A long communal table in the middle of the floor, surrounded by young men in wool hats and young women in piercings.
    The waiter brought crispy noodles and dipping sauce. He went away, he came back, we placed our