Little Elvises (19 page)

“Oh.” I could feel my face heat up. “Well, she’s prejudiced.”

“Said motel owners had x-ray vision, and you were sterling.”

“Sterling?”

“That was the word she used. Said most everybody is plated, but you’re sterling.”

“I guess that’s flattering. Why don’t you sit back down?”

“I reminded her that silver tarnishes,” she said, going back to the bed and sitting primly on the very edge, ankles pressed together and feet flat on the floor. “She said that’s what women are for, to keep men from getting too tarnished, sort of like the
beau ideal
of the knight and the fair lady, where her spotless innocence is a shining token of virtue as he ventures forth to chop people’s heads off. She said the tragedy of being a woman was you could spend a lifetime polishing and then work your way through the silver plating. And there you are, you’ve given your life to a tin spoon.”

“Marge?” I said.

She scooted her butt back to relax a little on the bed. “Sure.”

“
Marge
prolonged that metaphor to that extent?
My
Marge?”

“Well,” she said, wiggling one foot from side to side and looking down at it. “I may have embroidered on it.”

“You very well may have.”

She shrugged. “I may have made the whole thing up. Everything except sterling.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

She crossed her legs and cocked her head to one side. “What was the giveaway?”

“It’s too wet for Marge.”

“Wet? I’m wet? What the hell does that mean?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it. Wet’s okay. I divide the world into wet and dry. There’s good wet stuff and good dry stuff. They’re just different.”

“Are you improvising? Like you were when you said you were worried about me?”

“Nope. Not that I wasn’t actually worried, of course.”

“Of course. Okay, examples. Wet and dry. Examples. Fast, no thinking about it.”

“Music,” I said. “Bach is dry and Beethoven’s wet. Ravel is dry and Debussy is wet. Painting, the Flemish masters are dry, except for Bruegel, and Rembrandt’s wet. Cezanne is dry and Renoir is wet enough to do dishes in. TV, CNN is dry and PBS is wet. Politicians, both Bushes were dry, Clinton was wet. Obama seems wet but he’s actually dry. Pop music and rock and roll are dryer than soul and country.”

I thought for a moment. “Classical Greece was dry, but Classical Rome was wet. England is dry and France is wet.”

“Whole cultures?” she said. “Not exactly a nuanced approach, is it?”

“On
balance
,” I said. “Cultures are wet and dry on balance.”

“And Marge is dry but I’m wet.”

“Actually, you’re both dry, but Marge is dryer than you are. In my snap judgment, that is.”

“Your effrontery is breathtaking.”

“I never heard anyone say
effrontery
before.”

“And this is the first time I ever said it. It seemed to call for a fresh word, one I hadn’t worn out yet.” She put a palm on one cheek, as though she’d been slapped, and moved it in a little circle. “And you? What about you?”

“On balance,” I said, “I’m dry.”

“Is there anyone we’ve both met who’s wet?”

“Louie.”

“Yeah,” she said, pulling her knees up and settling in. “He’s a sweet little man.”

“And I’m not.”

“No.” She stuck out her feet, one after the other, and kicked off her shoes. Then she sighed. “No one would mistake you for a sweet little man.”

“Well, good. I need to ask you some questions.”

“Just hold on.” She brought her wrist up, a couple of inches from her eyes so she could read her watch in the gloom. “It’s five forty-three. Where the hell have
you
been?”

“I did a bunch of stuff. Wasn’t that the formula?”

“That’s okay for girls. We hold men to a higher standard.”

“All right. Earlier in the evening, I was kidnapped and taken to the house of an old-time gangster who told me I was on the wrong road if I wanted to reach old age. I met a movie star on the way out. Then I broke into a house.”

The look I got was rich in doubt. “Where’s the swag?”

“Here.” I pulled Vinnie’s hundreds out of my pocket.

“Oh, fooey. That’s just pocket money.”

“Maybe, but until three or four hours ago, it was in somebody else’s pocket.”

“Kidnapped?” she said, catching up. “Old-time gangster? Which movie star?”

“Later. How the hell did you find this place?”

“Oh,” she said. “Gosh, there’s not much trust between us, is—”

“Nope,” I said. “There isn’t. I never told you where I was—”

“You left me in the car. When you went into that house? And I didn’t have anything to do, so I—”

“You
searched
my—”

“And there it was, right on top of everything in the glove compartment, with little silvery sprinkles on it, a receipt for a week at the North Pole. Room number and everything.”

“I can’t believe you searched my car.”

“Well, I can’t believe you hired someone to follow me.”

We looked at each other through the gloom. Then Ronnie said, “I win.”

“Okay, here’s your prize. You get to tell me everything you know, or think you know, about what Derek was doing.”

“Derek,” she said. “We’re alone, in your room at the crack of dawn, and you want to talk about Derek.”

“You told me about a couple of things he was working on. He’d just finished blackmailing Thad Pierce. He
had
finished, hadn’t he?”

“So he said. And he never went back, remember?”

“Great. There’s actually one person in the world I can rule out. Then there was Ms. Lopez.”

“That was nothing,” she said. “He was going to drop it. I just told you about it because you asked me to list everything.”

“The Little Elvises.”

“Yeah, although why anyone would be interested in—” She broke off and picked up a pillow, put it in her lap, and wrapped her arms around it. “ ‘Judge Crater,’ he said. Something about somebody named Judge Crater.”

“Relative to the Little Elvises?”

She patted the bed, a prompt for me to come sit with her, and when I didn’t, she shook her head and said, “Sure. That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

“Why didn’t you mention it before?”

“I didn’t remember it. I’m surprised I remember it now. I don’t even know who Judge Crater is.”

“He’s famous for being missing,” I said. “Sometime in the thirties, I think, he left a restaurant in New York, got into a taxi, and disappeared without a trace. Nobody ever saw him again.”

She gave the pillow a squeeze. “Who cares?”

I ransacked my mind for the name of the Little Elvis who disappeared, according to Vinnie in the YouTube interview, and came up with it. “Did he ever mention anyone named Bobby Angel?” I made a guess. “Or maybe Angeli? Angelico?”

“No. There was an Italian name, though. Vincent something.”

“Any others? Think about it for a minute.”

“I have thought about it. I talked to the cops, remember?”

“No other Italian names.”

“This is a boring conversation.”

“What about Giorgio?”

She spread her hands, palms up. “What about Leonardo? Michelangelo? Botticelli? Sophia Loren? Ferragamo? He didn’t mention any of them, either. There are millions of Italian names he didn’t mention. We could list them all day.”

“Okay, okay. What was the Nessie thing? You said he was working on something about the Loch Ness Monster.”

She shook her head. “The fact that Derek
said
he was doing something didn’t necessarily mean he was actually doing it. Loch Ness is in Scotland, last I heard, and Derek hadn’t been out of the States in three or four years. So how could he get a picture of Nessie?”

“He said he had a picture?”

“I just said that. If we
have
to have this conversation,” she said, “it would be nice if we could avoid going over things twice.”

“Did he seem particularly excited about the Little Elvises? About Nessie?”

“He was
British
, Junior. His idea of being excited was to open his eyes all the way.” She put the pillow against the wall and lay on her side, one elbow bent and her head propped on her hand. “I’d say he smelled money. He talked about Nessie and the Little Elvises when he was loaded. When he was coking, money was pretty much the only thing he thought about.”

“How much of this did you tell the cops?”

“All of it, except for Judge Crater. They weren’t real interested, though. Asked me a few questions, like where I was when he was getting killed and who I thought might have killed him if it wasn’t me. They poked around in the apartment for a while—without finding his stash, so how thorough was that?—and then went down and searched his car. Did a little of the
sorry to trouble you ma’am
thing and went away.”

“Why weren’t they interested? Cops usually get juiced about murder.”

“Old Derek did some real reporting from time to time. Two of the stories he broke made the LAPD look bad. Shooting people who were handcuffed, stealing drugs from dealers and selling them, stuff like that. And then there was a sort of jurisdiction jibberjabber, between the cops from Hollywood who found the body and some fat cop who arrived from the Valley who.… Oh,” she said, lifting her head off her palm. “The same name, huh? Vincent’s last name, DiGaudio.”

“Vinnie’s nephew,” I said. “Paulie.” Something about what she had just said was bothering me but I couldn’t put my finger on it. “Did they find his notebook? His camera?”

“I don’t know.” Her tone made it clear that the subject was closed. She rolled over and lay on her back. “I am so
stiff
. I was folded like a jackknife outside your door all night long, and you
come home and interrogate me. Not a hug, not a kiss. I’m not even sure you said hello.”

“I didn’t. You were doing your Little Match Girl act, pretending to be unconscious.”

“I
was
unconscious until you started fumbling around with me. Your landlady pours a big glass of rum.”

“So you didn’t see the cops with Derek’s notebook or camera. He did use a notebook, right?”

“Aaarggghhh,” she said. “Sure. A cheap little one with a metal spiral up one side. But he kept it in the car.”

“Did you go down with them when they searched the car?”

“They made me. They wanted me to unlock it and then stand there while they looked through it. And, no, I didn’t see the notebook or the camera. Maybe Derek had them on him.”

“Not when he was found.”

She slowly closed her eyes. “Maybe aliens snatched them. Maybe whoever killed him took them.”

“And maybe they think you have them.”

Her eyes opened again. “Gee. That’s a nice thought.”

I said, “That’s why I had you followed.”

“Not because you figured, it’s always the spouse?”

“Of course not.” I managed a tinge of injured irritation.

“Well, that’s sweet,” she said. “I take back all the things I’ve been calling you mentally for the last ten minutes or so.”

“Bad things?”

She stretched her arms way above her, hands clasped into fists, and arched her back. Then she yawned. Around the yawn, she said. “Mostly. I have a problem with ambivalence.”

“Ambivalence is a sign of intelligence.”

“No, it’s a sign that I only like guys who aren’t good for me. Listen, you’ve been up all night and I’ve been sort of up all night, and we’re both adults and we like each other, and there’s this big
bed in this terrible room, the only thing that doesn’t look like Santa threw it away. Why don’t you come over here and we’ll get some rest. Or something.”

I untied my sneakers. “Or something? Do I get a vote?”

“No. Just kick those things across the room and come here. Come on. You’ve been good once.”

I went over there, and, sure enough, I didn’t get a vote.

Forty-five minutes later, Ronnie was curled against me, the new light through the window making the gold hair gleam. Her skin was as warm as sunshine, and I was drifting toward sleep, despite a little tug of uneasiness about the conversation I was going to have to have with Rina.

“Final answer,” Ronnie said without opening her eyes. “And you have to tell the truth now. One hundred percent level, understand?”

“Got it,” I said. “You have my solemn word.”

“You had me followed why?”

I leaned down and kissed her ear, making a mental note to ask Paulie DiGaudio where she’d told the cops she’d been the night Derek was killed. “I was worried about you,” I said.

I was diving into clear blue water, arrowing down toward some shifting transparent green form, like a shapeless jellyfish but with light inside it, when Sam Cooke started to sing “A Change Is Gonna Come.” I surfaced through the warm blue to the reality of the North Pole in the early afternoon, chilly light through the window, Ronnie Bigelow out cold with the blankets tugged down to her waist to display a shadowy gully of spine, and my cell phone blinking on the table where I’d left it.

I argued with myself while Sam went on about how he’d been running ever since, and lost the argument. I tossed the blankets, pulled myself up, and let Sam Cooke’s voice guide my hand to the phone.

“Yeah,” I croaked. I sounded like the last verse of “Old Man River.”