Baby Brother Blues (Sammy Dick, PI Series: Book 1)

by Trudi Baldwin

  The tall downtown buildings covered me in shadow as I strode along. It was still relatively cool for Phoenix. Probably about 98 degrees. The early morning smells of street vendors mixed with the heady, toxic swill of exhaust fumes reminded me I was alive and cookin’ myself. My shoes were just beginning to really dig into my flesh, when I reached the entrance to Central One.

  The ridiculously high glass doors announced the entryway into a building that thrust its haughty form forty stories up into the hot Phoenix downtown air. Called Central One, the silver phallus, ‘er highrise, that encapsulated Swann Diamonds pierced the Phoenix skyline. According to Michael, Swann Diamonds took up the entire twenty-fifth floor.

  The entry doors hissed open to an opulent entry of marbled floors. A stiff-lipped, gray-haired security guard sat at the front desk like a stone statue. I felt that tingle of excitement and expectancy I always feel at the beginning of an insider investigation. Would they buy my look? Am I believable? Am I smart enough, agile enough, insane enough to pull off another undercover job, get the goods and get out, without undue harm? Only one way to find out.

  I sashayed over to the security guard’s desk, and was immediately challenged by the guard’s rigid demeanor. So I inserted myself into his personal space by resting my hand on his desk, right under his beak of a nose, and attempted to make eye contact.

  “Swann Diamonds, please,” I crooned in my most corporate-sexy voice.

  “Identification,” he droned impassively, not even bothering to return eye contact.

  Hmm, a hard ass. Luckily, Michael had pulled some strings and supplied me with a corporate badge that matched one of my previously created investigative personas, Tina Brown, with appropriate history and paperwork, in case someone became suspicious and began to conduct their own little investigation. It’s surprising how easy it is to concoct an alter ego with a legitimate sounding history once you get immersed in investigative research, and have a techno-geek on your payroll like my cousin Geo.

  I fumbled, gracefully I hope, in my fake designer shoulder bag until I got hold of my identification. Then I slid my new, official Swann badge over the hard ass’s sleek desktop until it was centered under his long, pointy nose. He didn’t budge, and I couldn’t tell if the photo badge was registering with him or not. Maybe he was blind? Finally, he made a small “hrrumph” and slowly raised his squinty eyes up to scour my face. He must have pressed a silent button or something because the second set of ridiculously high glass doors behind him swung open with a “shhhhhhh.” With deadpan inflection the guard said, “Elevators over there, Ms. Brown. Exit on the twenty-fifth floor. Last office to your right.”

  Step one complete! I sashayed into the elevator, packed with corportate soldiers, all dressed more conservatively than me. At various floors each of the soldiers marched off, one by one, until I was the last soldier standing. As I pressed Close Door then stood there all alone, my nerves suddenly shot into hyper-drive. Could I pull this one off? How could I possibly fake being a corporate performance consultant in this crowd? What was I thinking?

  The money, I firmly reminded myself. And the excitement. And, ahhh, subterfuge—one of the headiest experiences in the world, that is, if you live through it. The elevator sank momentarily along with my stomach, then whooshed quickly upwards to the twenty-fifth floor. Time to party! The curtains were about to open on the first act of my new play.

  With another soft swish, the elevator door unfurled into a hall of such luxurious cherrywood paneling, Ralph Lauren paint schemes and upscale art that I had to restrain myself from gasping out loud, especially since I was already gasping out loud from nervousness. Realizing that gasping out loud might call unwanted attention to myself and further expose my phoniness among the suited men striding purposefully along the corridor, I forced myself into silence, concentrating on sucking in my eight-pack stomach a little flatter and thrusting out my breasts a little further. Always a proven ploy I’d found, at least around men, for distracting their minds. The two men who passed by me heading for the elevator looked me up and down. I smiled deliciously at them and turned right, per the guard’s instructions.

  Even though I must resort to buying cheap dresses and faux handbags, I have a fondness for upscale art, and the pale olive walls were festooned with what I assumed were authentic works of art. Amazing photos, lithographs and paintings! Surely a small fortune adorned these walls, never mind the diamonds and diamond business held within. The door to the last office on the right was of the same lustrous cherrywood as the wall paneling. I pressed down on the burnished brass French hardware, opening the door to the most beautiful office I’d ever seen. This was my new office! At this point, I really couldn’t contain myself. I almost dropped down to crawl across the floor to lick the bulging, sculpted leg and kiss the quaint, little clawed feet of the cherrywood desk that was mine. Wowzers! It made my DICK INVESTIGATIONS office that I’d paid so dearly for and had been so proud of look like a lame imitation. Glass windows stretched across two entire walls, except for a few ornate, wood columns that only further enhanced the view. And what a view!

  Phoenix, named after the bird that rose out of its own ashes, is a unique and beautiful city, if you like cheap housing, snarled, anorexic freeways, and a flat desert that stretches for miles upon endless miles surrounded by barren mountains. All this doused in a brown smog that does not yet rival LA, but is more like LA’s ambitious little brother—number two, but aiming at being number one. That being said, today was a relatively clear day. The smog seemed to soften the outlines of the city instead of smother it. Such was my view, but in its own way awesome.

  As much as I needed to sit at my desk and start pretending to be a performance consultant, I couldn’t rip my eyes off my amazing view. I slowly scanned the sky, which is never blue in a desert city. More like a white mirage, unable to make a serious commitment to being a blue sky. A lot like my relationship with men I pondered briefly, but then quickly avoided that subject and returned to admiring the view.

  The summer temperatures in Phoenix range in degrees from hot, hotter, and Holy Shit, we’re trapped in a fucking furnace! This day was in the hotter range and the sky shimmered above the city the way little waves of heat dance over the sizzling fender of a car. Ah, my city! The view was beautiful indeed from my new corner office. To the south, I could see the Estrella Mountains, Spanish for Star Mountains, and in the far distance to the west I could see the White Tanks, Anglo for “I haven’t got a clue how to name mountains with an attractive name.”

  Time to pull my eyes away from the window and appear to be industrious. Michael had informed me that their executive admistrative assistant would meet and greet me to help me get settled in properly. So far that hadn’t happened, so I would have to fake getting settled in. No problem. Fake It is my middle name (well, two names if you want to be exact). Fake It is one of my specialties, except when it comes to orgasms, so I proceeded to open the drawers of the humungous desk and plop my shoulder bag into one of the roomy drawers.

  Next, I hauled my briefcase up onto the desk and flipped open the lid. Surprise, surprise, nothing inside. I had almost no idea really what a true performance consultant did or how they did it, so I didn’t know what to put in my briefcase. I’d thought briefly about sliding some of my new, bright red Puttin’ on the Glitz nail polish and some of those little, foam between-your-toes thingies into the briefcase this morning. But then I’d reconsidered. Surely, doing my toes on the first day would have been a dead giveaway that I was a fraud. Either that, or I was so supremely gifted in the art of business consulting that I could thumb my nose, or my toes, as it were, at the entire Swann Diamonds company.

  I mused over these weighty thoughts for awhile, flipped my empty briefcase shut and decided to find out what it felt like to sit at my desk.

  I flopped down into my fifteen-levered executive chair, pushed back from the desk, threw my extreme high heels off and decided to swing around in a circle a few times to relieve my aching feet.
I was just getting into the third swing around, with an excellent rhythm, when the door flew open. Apparentlyknocking isn’t customary among Swann Diamond employees.

  As I swung by,I got my first look of a sexy, dark-eyed Latino male, dressed in white shirt sleeves, top buttons undone and no tie. I would have started to pant, if I hadn’t been twirling so fast.

  I hurriedly extended my feet out a little further to catch the edge of my desk. I’d succeeded in gaining quite a bit of momentum by the third round, so my ankles connected with the desk, making a loud thwop! I’d been twirling in a right-hand direction, so upon the loud thwop my head first flew to the right, almost touching my shoulder, then whipped back to the left. Dizzy, I struggled to get my head upright and plant a serious, corporate, consultant genius type expression on my face. I slipped forward into my high heels, jerked my feet back under me and shot up out of the fifteen-levered chair, extending my hand to the sexy Latino as if nothing had been going on, which was the absolute truth, since I had an empty briefcase, left my foam thingies at home, and had no passwords as of yet.

  “Good morning,” I purred, hoping a little sensuality would redirect the meeting.

  “Good morning to you, Ms. Brown,” he purred in return, his proud, out-of-the-closet gay sensuality definitely redirecting the meeting.

  He had the good sense and professionalism to extend his hand and treat me as if I were a mature human being, generously choosing to overlook my infantile enthrallment with my chair. “Welcome to Swann Diamonds. I am here to help you while you assess our performance. My name is Tomas Nunez, executive assistant to both Michael and Mai Oversong, and sometimes even Sylvester Swane himself, on the rare occasions when he comes in to oversee the business.”

  He said this last part about Sylvester Swane with obvious reverence and just a hint of desire, if my intuition was picking it up correctly. Wow, the older man’s connections were ubiquitous! My, what extensive in-breeding we had here in the company. Mai and Michael are married to each other and the executive assistant has the hots for Sylvester Swane. I felt like the new kid on the block who would never catch up.

  An uneasiness crept over me, like when I used to slowly peel back large rocks as a kid, and the more I exposed the underside to light, the more slithery things started scurrying for hidey holes. The uneasiness gave me pause, but I extended my hand readily. “Please call me Tina. It’s always a pleasure to have any help I can get on projects like these.” Even though this is the very first one I’ve done in my entire life, I wanted to blurt out, but refrained.

  Instead, I rejoined smoothly, “I see I have a lovely, new laptop on my desk which, hopefully, you can help me get up and running.”

  Tomas volleyed back even more smoothly and with the tiniest hint of a gay swish accent, “I’ve come to help you set up your passwords and understand our management systems so that you can assess the health, or lack thereof, of our business. Although, I can assure you that everything at Swann is squeaky clean and running beautifully.”

  “Then there is absolutely nothing to worry about, Tomas, and my assessment will conclude quickly. Let’s get started.”

  With that encouragement, Tomas slid a gorgeous, decorative Queen Anne chair, plumped with maroon and peach striped upholstery over the Persian carpet, so that he could sit beside me at my new humongous desk. I felt like Oliver Twist in the rich man’s house with real parents and real food at last, but I knew I couldn’t betray myself, especially to someone who was obviously such a central player among all the people dipping and sipping from the deep financial wells of Swann Diamonds.

  Here, though, I have to admit my secret, or maybe not so secret, penchant I have for gay guys. As Tomas leaned in close to me, gliding his thumb across the tiny ridges of the front latch of the laptop to slide it open like a little zipper, revealing the huge plasma monitor, his heady, sweet Fahrenheit colgne, or something like it, suffused my senses. Soon he was murmuring about corporate passwords and systems lingo right in my ear, in that cute hybrid Spanish/gay accent of his. I was becoming deeply mesmerized, probably like the flutists (or is it flautists?) of yore who played and swayed to the mesmerizing dance of the hooded cobra as it awakened from its basket until its beady eyes were wide awake, and focused on its target, ready to strike.

  So, of course, the other secret, or not so secret, penchant that needs discussing here is that I think gay guys know they have this sway over women, and over most men, too. Especially a well-endowed, V-shaped, brown-skinned, kick-ass, smart-ass, gorgee-ass youngster like Tomas. His sway power caused us to both lean closer and closer in to look at the Microsoft logos emerging in their stark, plasma screen clarity on the monitor. The little Microsoft jingle sang out as the blue screen emerged. Meanwhile, I was doing my best not to start breathing harder and harder and run my hand along Tomas’s rigid thigh, which seemed to have somehow moved miraculously close to mine.

  I have to admit that if you’re forced to learn about corporate passwords and operational systems, indisputably some of the most boring information on the planet, you might as well do it next to a swaying cobra. So I played the game and dutifully typed in my password. Tomas and I both watched in silent fascination as I typed in the little anonymous dots. Tomas had no idea I was typing DoMeDoMeDoMe. However, that initial attempt at a password log-in failed. The system shot up a reminder that I had to have at least one numerical value and my password had to be a minimum of fifteen characters in length. As if anyone would ever remember that! Dutiful, faux-corporate soldier, though, I obediently backspaced twelve times to erase my first attempt and then leaned in even closer to Tomas, sucking in a wondrous whiff of his cologne as I did so, and then retyped DoMe1DoMe2DoMe3 as the little anonymous dots ticked innocently across the page. I’m proud to say, that awesome password did the trick, and with Tomas not even knowing what had happened to him, we were in! Voila, step two in my get-rich-quick plan was complete. And, further, I’d never forget my password.

  Chapter 3

  Tomas was hauling me through some of the most boring accounting books I’d ever seen in my whole life. Actually, they were the first accounting books I’d ever seen, or at least pretended to see, in my whole life since Geo, my partner, assessed all the financials, not me. I was grateful when the door swung open again. No knock this time either.

  I felt Tomas stiffen beside me and ventured a sideways glance at him. I followed the line of his gaze as a perfect, high-heeled leg extended in through the door, followed by another exquisitely long leg. These incoming legs were so beautiful that it took Tomas and I a few seconds to shift our eyes away from them, past the high-heeled Italian shoes, past the black miniskirt, priced around $500 and up, easily, I clicked automatically in my head, to the wondrous, porcelain face that topped the whole outfit off to perfection.

  Tomas stood and cleared his throat. “May I introduce Mai Oversong. Mai, this is our new performance consultant, Tina Brown. She has been brought in by Michael to assess and improve our business.”

  I rose, as Tomas excused himself and made a quick exit, clearly intent on getting out of there. Was he avoiding this graceful creature, Mai? If so, why?

  Mai strode mid-way into the room. She seemed to glide or almost float. Mai was about 5’9”, very tall for an Asian, and those extraordinary legs made her seem closer to six feet or even taller. I wondered if there was a mixed background in there somewhere to produce such height. Everything about her was long, except for the skirt and her perfectly cut hair. Mai sported long, French manicured nails on long delicate fingers. Subtle eye shadow accentuated her large eyes and elongated the upward angles of her brows. Flawless, tawny skin. Her short, trendy haircut of glossy, straight, jet black hair and the short miniskirt accentuated the length and smoothness of everything else.

  What struck me most about her, though, was how her fluid motions bespoke personal power. Mai conveyed innate authority with every extension of her graceful legs. A good match for Michael, I thought, or maybe an overmatch, and therein lay his o
bsessive, murderous instincts.

  Mai crossed over to me in two of those amazing leg extensions and extended her hand. I clasped the soft delicacy of her palm and fingers. They exuded a slight warmth and softness, as if an elongated rose petal had fluttered into my palm, breathing life into my skin. The warmth crawled up my arm. I tried not to stare down at our handshake. It’s hard to explain how soft, unworldly, yet alive her hand felt. I foolishly grasped at hers in return. In response, my straight-forward, all-American pumping seemed hopelessly misplaced and hillbilly as she held me within her soft palm.

  “Welcome, Ms. Brown. Michael mentioned that you’d arrive today. I see Tomas is already getting you set up. We are more than happy to help Michael and Sylvester put their minds at ease as to how the business is performing. The sooner you are able to do that, the better.”

  Mai’s voice was a blend of the same English purr Michael exuded, tinged with some kind of melodic, slightly clipped Asian sound. A very complicated and interesting accent. At the end of this little speech, she put her hands together and bowed slightly.

  I nodded my head in response. “Well, we have just begun, but it should go quite quickly. I do appreciate the continued support of Tomas as I learn how to navigate your various systems and records.” I smiled happily at the thought.

  “Tomas is absolutely at your service. Please let me know if you need anything else. I’m preparing for a trip to Canada where we have some of our diamond extracting operations, as you will soon learn, so I must excuse myself.” With that, Mai Oversong bowed forward again, causing her glossy hair to swing momentarily over her left eye. She righted herself, the hair swinging neatly back into perfect alignment as only the highest quality haircuts do, and gracefully extended her exquisite leg, followed by the other. I watched her exit the door with only the slightest twitch from side to side of her black miniskirt, leaving me all alone in the room.