Read The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) for Free Online Page B

Lennox’s son is Dennis Lennox? TV’s flavor of the month?”
    “This is blackmail.”
    “No, blackmail is when you’ve done something wrong and someone wants money to keep it quiet. Off the force a couple of months, and already you’ve forgotten simple stuff like that? Actually this is closer to extortion, though that doesn’t quite cut it either. Hmm. The term
quid pro quo
comes to mind, and I’m sure if I thought about it a little more I’d come up with—”
    “Shut up.”
    I did.
    “You know,” Burns said, “I’m going to come out of this a lot better than you are.”
    “Probably. Oops. Please don’t whack me one.”
    “I’m not going to find anything out.”
    “But not for lack of trying, right?”
    “Right. And when I’m done finding out nothing—”
    “I’ll set you and your writer friend up with a meeting with Denny Lennox. And, hey, he’ll be extra receptive, because you’ll have gone out of your way to help him find out whatever happened to his mother. Give him some closure.” I’d stopped to Xerox the marked-up seating chart on the way over, and I handed over a copy. I stood, pushed my chair under the table, said,“Thanks for breakfast.” I walked outside, got in the truck, and drove away, wondering how many pieces of my soul I’d be willing to trade away for my new friend’s sake.
     
    It was a permit parking area, and I had to drive three blocks from DL Tea, finally finding a spot under a big ficus. The sidewalk was root-raised and cracked and covered with dozens of figlets crushed by passersby. Someday a senior citizen would trip and break his or her neck, and then the city would get around to fixing the sidewalk and putting a root guard around the tree. Maybe if I stuck around long enough I’d see it happen.
    Instead I walked back to San Vicente and stood across the street from the tea shop. It was between a flower stand and a hat store. The first person in was a little old lady. So was the first one out. Aha. Just as I suspected.
    The next person in was a tall young man with spiky hair and a leather jacket. The next person out was a stunning young woman in the miniest of skirts.
    Thus assured I wouldn’t be the only non-little old lady present, I crossed San Vicente and sauntered in. I recognized the grid of tea tins from the photo on the Internet. There were six shelves, each with roughly twenty tins. The leather-jacketed guy stood by a bunch of tea paraphernalia, deep in discussion with a short round man in a fez. There were more tins at the far end, next to a door leading to a room with tables and chairs and lots of hanging ferns.
    “Hi. May I help you?”
    She looked about sixteen, a strawberry blond. Her shirt was covered with pictures of little bowls of green stuff. Across her perky bosom it said
TEA SHIRT
.
    “Not quite yet,” I said. “I’m going to browse a while.”
    “Let me know if I can help, okay?” She motioned with her hands, taking the room in. “This can be a little intimidating the first time.”
    “How do you know it’s my first time?”
    “Isn’t it?”
    “Yes, but how’d you know?”
    A minute shrug, so cute I wanted to take her home and set her up as Ronnie’s little sister. “You have the look.”
    I eavesdropped on the leather jacket and the fez while checking out some squat metal pots on the wall opposite the big display. They were discussing Assams. I picked up a pot. It was heavier than it looked. It cost seventy bucks. A placard said it was a
tetsubin
, from Japan. Others were stoneware, fanciful shapes like frogs and dragons and little old fishermen. Yixing, from China. The card provided the proper pronunciation.
Yee-zhing
.
    I wandered, seeing but not really registering the pots and filters, cups and mugs, jars and cans. I looked through the door at the end, into the tearoom. Bright and airy and civilized. There was a small open kitchen and a patio in back with a few more tables, one of them occupied by the senior I’d seen go in