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big step Mr. Carnale’s rolling with,” Jerome said, “Flame’s gonna become a movie star.”

      “There’s a market for rap movie musicals?”

      Jerome leaned over the table. “See, man, that’s where Mr. Carnale keeps his eye on the big picture before the average guy does.”

      “I’m all on tenterhooks.”

      “Listen to this,” Jerome said. “Flame’s the next great romantic movie idol.”

      “Not just a singer, but an actor too?” I said, probably sounding skeptical.

      “Flame’s got the acting chops, man. You heard of the Stella Adler Acting Studio in New York?”

      “Very leading edge, I believe. Or maybe it once was.”

      “Flame’s been studying there the last year.”

      “But you said something about Flame being the next romantic idol. What’s that mean? He’s going to pick up where Denzel Washington’s leaving off?”

      “Don’t think colour, man.”

      “What am I missing?”

      “Flame’s destiny, he’ll be the Cary Grant of his generation. Flame’s post-racial, man. Doesn’t matter to the audience he’s black. They never notice he’s black, white, whatever. Flame’s romantic in the eyes of the whole spectrum, you understand what I’m sayin’?”

      I didn’t respond right away.

      “You have heard of Cary Grant, man?” Jerome asked, persisting.

      “Jerome, it’s people of the present I’ve never heard of,” I said. “People from the past, they overlap with my past. Cary Grant was tall and handsome, cleft chin, made the ladies swoon, filled the men with envy even though they admired him as much as the ladies did.”

      “Cleft chin, man,” Jerome said. “Flame’s got one of those.”

      “Now that I think about it,” I said, “there’s nobody among today’s Hollywood leading men who’s Grant-like in looks or style or wit.”

      “Those guys need a shave, got their little goatees. You’re right, man, they ain’t got the touch old Cary had. Maybe George Clooney, but otherwise no way, man.”

      The waitress arrived with our main courses. While she went through the routine of serving us, offering fresh pepper, a sprink-ling of cheese, I wondered about Jerome’s estimate of Flame’s future.

      “A young black guy as the next Cary Grant?” I said. “Hard to see it.”

      “Puts you in the minority, man,” Jerome said.

      “Who’s in the majority?”

      “We got a finished script. Got a big-name director signed on. And, listen up here, Crang, we got a contract with a Los Angeles studio. Major studio, man. People’re putting fifty million into our project.”

      I stopped chewing. “I’m impressed, Jerome. Practically speechless.”

      “Gonna be a big public announcement the end of September,” Jerome said. “Providing there’s no setback before then.”

      “Like the blackmailing minister of God? That kind of setback?”

      “Like him, like the Reverend Alton Douglas. Only, the thing about Alton coming along at this particular moment, it’s coincidental.”

      “He’s not attempting his Flame shakedown because he knows the movie contract is going to put Flame in the chips any minute now?”

      “Not possible, man,” Jerome said. “Number one, he couldn’t have heard about the movie. We got the cone of silence workin’ for us till the minute we go public. There’s been nothing about the movie on Twitter, nothing in what they call the trade papers, Hollywood Reporter and such like. The Reverend’ll learn about it the same time everybody else does.”

      “So, you’re telling me Flame’s worth eight million without introducing the movie money into the mix?”

      “Mr. Carnale say he could snap his fingers at the bankers, man, and they’d send over ten million, twenty, in a Brinks truck, all cash money, do it in a flash.”

      “I follow you, Jerome,” I said. “But the coincidence of the Reverend Alton Douglas coming on to the scene right now means that whatever he’s got on Flame could blow up the movie.”

      “That’s the problem in a nutshell, man.”

      “So tell me this,” I said, “what information has this Reverend put together on my new client, Flame?”

      “Now,” Jerome said, “we at the ugly part.”

      “We are?”

      “Very ugly, man. Very.”

      Chapter Four

      Jerome stopped eating his spaghetti and meat sauce.

      “Goes back a long way, the thing I’m about to tell you,” he said.

      I stopped eating too.

      “Before Mr. Carnale discovered Flame,” Jerome said, “he was an unknown kid, like I said earlier. So, up in his bedroom, this one day a lotta years ago, he wrote the words for nine songs. Didn’t put them on a video, didn’t tape himself singing them. They were just words on nine sheets of paper, and these lyrics, man, they disgusting. They anti-gay, they against woman, they racist. I’m telling you man, these songs were so gross you couldn’t imagine them in your worst nightmares.”

      “The little I know about rap customs,” I said, “putting down gay people is a popular theme in the lyrics. Right up there with denigrating women. Faggots and whores — two universal rap themes.”

      “Not like these ones of Flame’s,” Jerome said.

      Both of us paused, then resumed eating.

      “What Flame did all those years ago,” Jerome said, “he put away these nine sheets of paper in the drawer in the place where he lived with his mama, the words for each one of the songs written down on the sheets. Flame’s mama saved all that shit to the present day. At her house, she’s stored away every single song Flame ever wrote. That includes these nine sheets causing the problems, man.”

      “And that’s what the Reverend Alton Douglas now has in his possession?”

      “Everything on the song sheets is in Flame’s own handwriting, his signature on every sheet,” Jerome said. He reached for his slim black briefcase on the floor beside his chair, and took out a handful of white pages held together with a paperclip.

      “These here,” Jerome said, handing me the sheets, “are copies the Reverend handed me the night before last. Monday that was. You can keep the damn copies for the time being, man, while you’re workin’ on the case. Personally, I don’t care if I never see this stuff again. But here’s the crux of the situation, man. The Reverend told me he gonna put these nine pages on the Web in two weeks’ time unless we pay the man eight million dollars.”

      Under the paperclip holding the nine pages, Jerome had fastened the Reverend Alton Douglas’s card and his own card. I removed the paperclip, put the cards in my inside jacket pocket. And then I started to read the first page of Flame’s song lyrics.

      “Hold up, man,” Jerome said in a peremptory tone. “Don’t read them right now, not when you’re eating your nice pasta. I’m warning you.”

      “I’ve got a cast-iron stomach, Jerome,” I said, “if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

      I read down the page. It appeared to be a song about two men making love with one another. And as they got intimate, one man used a very sharp knife to cut off the other man’s testicles.

      “Oh

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