Dead in Time

Chapter Eighteen

We got back to the hotel rather late for someone still working on Greenwich Mean Time. Leon wanted to stand me a nightcap in the hotel bar—terrible wallpaper and walnut veneer, with baseball on the TV and soft complimentary peanuts—and I didn’t feel I could refuse.

So, his kid waved off into the night, we sat there shoulder to shoulder drinking vodka and tonic, and he stopped being a dad again. The news about Cris had got to him, though he was trying not to show it. Chilly winds of mortality blew for us all, I supposed, even if they seemed to come from a rather different direction these days.

“I still can’t believe—” Leon began, out of nowhere. He shook his head. “Huh. Any of it.”

I swigged my drink. “Mm.”

“Poor Cris. What d’you think it is?”

“I have no idea. But I hope he remembers everything.”

I picked at the soft peanuts. The bartender had started taking second looks at Leon. A lot of people did, when they realised they recognised him. Some got it instantly, and I found the red-faced stares or falsely familiar smiles thrown his way much more unsettling than he apparently did. I wasn’t sure he always noticed them anymore. Cheers erupted from the TV, a commentator put in his two cents, and the baseball game went to commercial.

“There’s no one else left who’d know about the negotiations Vince Dexler had been doing with… other labels,” I finished diplomatically, taking a sidelong look at Leon.

He chuckled. “Day was scouting for a solo deal, wasn’t he?”

I’d not said as much and weaselled away from answering.

“Don’t really know. But I think that, if anything—”

“I wondered back then.” Leon looked mournfully at the slice of lemon in his drink. “Inez always pushed him to it. Said he could do better. He coulda, prob’ly. I just never thought he’d sell out from under us. Though, if Cris did find out what he’d been planning, that night….”

He took a swig, not voicing the thing we both wanted to avoid. I remembered the words Inez had used. Dexler said he had to duke it out with Cris that night at the party… Cris was furious. Whether Damon would have signed anything or not—whether Vince had ever truly had a chance of nailing a deal or not—might almost have been irrelevant. Charlie wasn’t the only one who’d been angry with Day.

“It, um….” I cleared my throat, regretting having said anything when he glanced at me. “It must have hurt, though. Thinking that he’d been considering—”

“Huh.” Leon snorted dryly. “Not really. I got over being hurt by Damon Brent a very long time ago. I’d never have hung around if I hadn’t.”

He drained the rest of his glass. When he looked at me, I tried not to make it obvious that I knew—that I’d always known—what he meant, but perhaps I’d been living in Brighton too long. He folded his lips in and drew a short, tight breath, suddenly interested in the walnut veneer of the counter top.

“Yeah. Well, it wasn’t like I was pining away, y’know? I mean, Damon… he never swung that way. So nothin’ like that was ever—it wasn’t going to be an option. I knew that. And it was fine. It really was. I dug girls too, so….” Leon weighed the glass in his fingers, and tapped it rhythmically against the bar. “After a while, y’know, I prob’ly wouldn’t even have wanted to. It would just have felt wrong. But I still— He was my friend.”

Those last words hung in the air, resolute and incorruptible. I nodded.

“I know.”

Leon gave me a terse little smile. “Mm. I know you know. Goddamn smartass, you are.”