Spiral (10 page)

I made a mental note. ”Back to the day of the party?”

”Okay.”

”What happened after Veronica made that scene with her grandfather?”

”When she sang him the ‘come-fuck-me’ song?”

”Yes.”

”All hell broke loose. I remember Spi and Jeanette running after Very. I’d had a few drinks, so I decided to hang around a while, sober up before driving home. Must have been twenty, thirty minutes later, we hear Tranh yelling from the pool.”

Pintana had said most guests timed it as closer to an hour. ”You could tell the yelling was coming from the pool?”

”Well, yeah, with the echo. And his voice was in the right direction for it. Anyway, we all run in there—to the pool—and what do I see but Very lying buck naked on the tiles and Tranh running for the phone.”

”What did you do?”

”Me? I went back to the living room.”

”Why?”

”Get another drink.”

”I thought you were sobering up to drive home.”

”Not with the case of nerves that came over me.”

”From seeing Veronica’s body.”

”From dealing with somebody croaking her.” Eisen stopped. ”No, no that’s not right. I—we didn’t know then that it was baby-rape and murder.”

”The autopsy report showed cocaine in Veronica’s bloodstream.”

”I’m not surprised, the way she acted with that song.”

”Where do you suppose she could have gotten the drug?” He didn’t hesitate. ”No idea, John. But just the fact of Very being dead is bad enough for Spiral, you know?”

”Tell me, Mitch.”

He shrugged. ”What happens to the band now depends on what spin I can put on it.”

”Spin?”

”Yeah. You know, like Clinton’s spin doctors in Washington, try to take all the shit he’s done and turn it around to his advantage. I mean, hell, Nixon tried it, too, but his keepers were Dark Ages compared to what—”

”You mean, put some kind of spin on Veronica’s death?”

”Yeah. I tried it with O’D when he bit the big one. Back then, it was almost fucking fashionable for a band member to die from drugs. Look at Keith Moon from the Who, or Jimmie Morrison of the Doors, or even—”

”What kind of spin can Spiral put on Veronica’s death?”

Eisen stopped. ”Remember when Slowhand’s kid fell from that window?”

Christ. ”Eric Clapton’s child.”

”Right, right. Now, I’m not saying the two situations are identical or anything, but he writes a number-one song about it. And then there’s Elton John with the Princess Di stuff.”

”Mitch, Spi Held is going to write a song about his daughter’s murder?”

Eisen came forward in his chair, his hands nesting on the desk in front of him. ”Look, John, let me spell it out for you, okay? Spiral’s comeback didn’t just kind of ‘hinge’ on Very. She was the only hope of a comeback, pure and simple. But now that she’s history, maybe —just maybe—I can weave gold out of straw here.”

I watched him for a moment. ”Are you saying that the band could have a
better
chance at a comeback now that Veronica’s dead?”

”No, I wouldn’t say that at all.” Mitch Eisen spoke very evenly. ”And neither would my lawyer.”

Back in the Chevy Cavalier, I went over the list of names and numbers Justo Vega had given me outside the Homicide Unit. I used my cellular phone to call ahead to Spi Held’s house.

”Hello.”

A woman’s voice, overlaid by an accent. ”I’d like to speak with Mr. Held, please.”

”He is not available.”

With more words, she reminded me of someone from the Philippines I’d met in an earlier case. ”His father told me he would be. Tell him John Cuddy will be there in thirty minutes.”

A pause. ”You are Mr. Cuddy?”

”Yes.”

”I look forward to meeting you.”

She broke the connection.

Held’s home lay northwest of downtown Fort Lauderdale, maybe in a suburb, since I noticed the street signs change suddenly from ”N.W.” to ”S.W,” as though I’d passed into another municipality’s quadrant system. The house itself was painfully contemporary, with white stonework on the exterior walls and a castle turret rising above the roof like the proverbial sore thumb. The lot couldn’t have been more than half an acre, though, so it looked as though the mansion-sized structure had been shoehorned into the space between its neighbors. As I entered the circular driveway, I noticed four other cars already parked, with two more at the curb. I left the Cavalier behind the last one on the street, a yellow Toyota Celica, and went up the path to the house’s front door.

Or doors.

They were the size you’d expect on a bam, with massive pull-handles in brass mounted vertically and shaped like a tornado. The logo of Spiral that Mitch Eisen had shown me.

I pushed the bell on the jamb. An electronic chime inside played chords of a song I remembered from the old days but wouldn’t have known belonged to Spi Held’s band if I hadn’t been standing on his front steps.

The left door swung open, a man in a long-sleeved T-shirt and cutoff jeans looking out at me. The dog at his feet was wagging its tail, tongue lolling. Until it got a good look at me, that is, at which point the dog’s face drooped, and it began to back slowly into the house.

The man stayed put. His eyes were bleary, the little remaining hair on his head mussed, as though he’d spent the night tossing and turning in bed. I would have recognized him from the videos I’d seen with Lourdes Pintana and Mitch Eisen, but the Fu Manchu mustache helped.

As did the Day-Glo portrait of his younger self on the front of his T-shirt.

”Mr. Held,” I said.

”Spi, man.” He ran the index finger of his left hand in a practiced, efficient way under his nose as he sniffled. ”You’re the guy used to soldier with my dad, right?”

The term ”used to soldier” seemed a bit forced coming from his lips. ”John Cuddy.”

He extended a meaty hand. A sweaty one, too, as we shook.

”Come on in, John. We can talk in my writing loft.” Held led me into a massive foyer, brightly lit, with white tile on the floors and white, glossy walls. It was hard on the eyes, almost to the point of snow blindness, and the air smelled reconditioned and somehow artificial.

The dog was still walking, ten feet ahead of us and down the hall. It looked a little like a border collie, but its coat was gray with black patches, its paws like white socks, and I’d thought at the door that one of its eyes was blue, the other brown.

I said, ”Is that a particular breed?”

Held turned to me. ”What, Bowie?”

The dog’s ears perked up, and it stopped to look back at us. ”As in ‘Jim’?” I asked.

”Un-unh. As in ‘David.’ Very named him Bowie account of Australian shepherds having that one blue eye and one brown. You know, the Ziggy Stardust shtick.”

I didn’t get the allusion. ”Bowie looks kind of sad.”

”He is.” Held shook his head. ”Ever since Very got killed, the dog comes to the door whenever the chimes ring, figuring maybe she’s finally coming home again for him.”

The dead girl’s father spoke heavily, but more like he was refining the line than feeling it.

As Held and I started down the hall, Bowie turned right into a doorway. When we passed by, I could see it led to a sunken living room, where an unfamiliar woman’s voice spoke in hushed tones.

A little further down the hall, Held jerked his head back toward the living room. ”My wife, Jeanette. This whole shit with Very really has her down.”

”Understandable,” I said to his back.

”Fact is, we’re all kind of down.” Another swipe at the nose and a sniffle. ”Up here.”

Held began to climb the staircase—a ”spiral” one, no surprise. I followed him toward what I guessed would have to be the turret I’d seen from the street.

At the top, an opened door brought us into a circular room maybe fifteen feet in diameter with a ceiling nearly as high, a big paddle-bladed fan hanging a body-length down from the center and turning slowly like a ship’s propeller at low speed.

”This is my sanctuary, man.”

The walls displayed framed posters tacked up in no discernible order. Some were colorful album covers, a silhouette of the band or provocatively posed women drawing your eye. Others were mostly lettering, concert advertisements with dates and places. All had the Spiral name and logo somewhere on them.

To make conversation, I said, ”Quite a museum.”

”Museum? Uh-unh.” Held moved to an ergonomic chair near a computer hutch. In front of him was a guitar resting in its stand, a wire snaking from the base of the instrument around to the back of the computer. ”You’re looking at the future, not the past.”

Taking another ergo chair, I gestured toward the guitar. ”You can compose from that onto the computer?”

”Yeah. Amazing, huh? In the old days, I had to like pluck away for hours, getting the music fixed in my head without writing down any notes on sheet paper. Couple times, I had heavy tunes—
moto
-heavy, man—all up here.” Held pointed to his left temple before swiping at the nose again. ”But then the snow would fell up, take it all away.”

”Snow as in...?”

”Cocaine, man. Not that I use that shit anymore, other than maybe medicinally.” Another sniffle. ”What with Very and all.”

”I’m sorry for your loss.”

”Oh, man, ‘loss’ don’t quite cover the situation, you know? I was ready for a comeback—the fuck’s the word?
Poised.
Yeah, yeah, I was
poised
for a comeback. Mitch wanted to call it ‘The Spiral Revival Tour,’ ‘cause he thinks he’s got this talent for naming shit” Held looked at me. ”Mitch called here, said he talked to you already this morning?”

”We talked.”

A sly look. ”Yeah, well, Mitch told you he came up with the name for the band, right?”

”Something like that.”

More of the sly look. ”You don’t give away much, do you, man?”

”I’m more in the finding-out business.”

”Yeah, well, let me help you find
this
out. Mitch got me started back then, all right. I had no connections, and he had some. But I was the one came up with the name Spiral, just like I changed mine.”

A minute ago we were mourning his daughter. ”From Spiro Helides.”

”Right. To Spi Held. Then everybody started doing it. That guy Sting from the Police, you think that’s his real name? Fuck, I’m surprised my dad didn’t change his, too.”

I wasn’t. ”You were talking about the ‘Spiral Revival’ idea?”

A frown now. ”Mitch’s idea, the rhyme gimmick. But in the trade, ‘revival’ kind of—the fuck’s that word, too? Oh, yeah,
connotes.
In the trade, revival
connotes
just going on the road with your oldies, like some washed-up group from the sixties. Not for Spiral, man. I was composing new tunes, something to make everybody in the biz stand up and take notice.”

”A comeback.”

It was like Held’s whole body nodded. ”Now we’re riding the same wave.”

I thought about his daughter’s body in her grandfather’s pool.

”You cold or something, man?”

”No,” I said. ”How solid was this comeback idea of yours?”

”Solid? I had seven tunes finished. In the can, as the Hollywood types would say. Very and the band did one of them as a demo video. I figured to add two more fresh tracks, then fill out the CD with some of our big seventies numbers, like maybe ‘Downward’ and ‘Upward,’ you know?”

”You wrote these new songs?”

His body language went a little defensive. ”Yeah.”

Time for some quality control on what Held was feeding me. ”Does that mean the lyrics, too?”

A moment before, ”Uh-unh.” His eyes went to the guitar. ”I hear the music better than the words, man. O’D used to do our lyrics, but Very helped out some on the newbies.

”How important was your daughter to the comeback itself?”

Held closed his eyes now, and two tears—one on each side of his nose—began rolling toward the mustache. ”God, she had the talent. I saw it maybe two, three times my whole professional life. Joplin, Mama Cass, Benatar. Very’s middle name was ‘Janis,’ out of my respect for the lady, you hear me?” Held’s head shook without the eyes opening. ”Very, Very. You saw her on stage, you’d forget about everybody else up there. They say it comes down through the genes.” His left hand cupped the cutoffs at his crotch. ”I’m talking the DNA shit here, not dungarees.” A solemn tone now. ‘Very could have taken Spiral back to the top, man.”

”I know this is hard for—”

”Hard?”
The eyes flapped open violently, like old-fashioned window shades. ”What’s hard is it’s so fucking...
unfair.
All those years, watching guys with half my talent ride the crest of disco. Stupid music for greasers in polyester suits trying to dance like Fred and Ginger under whirling globes. Man, I could write the real shit, the real music, and I could play guitar better’n anybody except maybe Clapton and a couple others.”

”Mr. Held?”

He seemed to catch his breath. ”What?”

”After you followed your daughter from the living room the party, what happened?”

”What happened? What do you think? Jeanette and me caught up to her in that hallway near the pool. I asked Very what the fuck she was doing, going on in front of my dad like that. She told me to fuck off. Her own father.”

Imagine that. ”And then?”

”Jeanette could see I was ripshit, so she dragged me back toward the living room, talk with my dad.”

”And the next time you saw Veronica...
?”

”Was when Tranh’s yelling brought a bunch of us to the pool. I was there second behind Ricky, and—”

”Ricky Queen?”

”Of course, Ricky Queen. How many—never mind. There was Tranh, laying my little girl, naked and dead, on the pool tile. Telling us he has to call nine-one-one.”

”You know the lab report said Veronica tested positive for cocaine.”

”Yeah,” said Held, running an index finger under his nose again, ”and even without my lawyer coaching me, I don’t know where the fuck she got it.”

”You said you have some for medicinal—”

”Shit, man. The stuff I’m using now I didn’t even score till after Very was dead. There wasn’t any in the house before that, because we were working. Working on the comeback.”

”Mr. Held, do you know of anybody—at the party that day or not—who would want to kill your daughter?”

Spi Held rocked his head from side to side and made a sound like exasperation. ”That’s what I been trying to tell you, man. Very was our chariot back to the stars. Why would anybody want to kill that?”

”Jeanette, this is... Hey, Jeanette!”

The woman with straight, reddish-blond hair on one end of a caramel couch in the sunken living room finally turned her head slowly toward the doorway where Spi Held and I were standing. Bowie the Australian shepherd was lying at her feet. A second woman—with long, black hair^ sat on the other end of the couch and had looked up as soon as she’d seen us. Asian features, olive skin, and eyes that didn’t leave mine.

I
was thinking of the voice on the phone when Spi Held said, ”Jeanette, try to like snap out of it for fifteen, okay? The dog growled, but Spi Held ignored it. ”This is the private eye my dad hired. John Cuddy, my wife, Jeanette.”

I stopped looking at the Asian woman long enough to walk down the three marble steps and cross the room to Veronica’s mother, who up close had her daughter’s hair color but none of the dead girl’s vamping quality. ”Mrs. Held, I’m truly sorry for your troubles.”

She just stared up at me, like I was some harmless barnyard animal who had somehow wandered into her house. ”Malinda is helping me with that.”

I looked to the other woman now, who stood. Only about five-two, she’d looked taller sitting down.

Malinda said, ”My last name is Dujong, Mr. Cuddy. D-U-J-O-N-G.”

The Philippine accent.

Dujong extended her hand. Taking it, I felt a little ripple of energy, almost an electric jolt. ”You’re a grief counselor?”

”Not as such,” she said, releasing my hand. ”More spiritual advisor.”

Spi Held sounded impatient behind me. ”Jeanette, Mr.... Jeanette!”

Another slow turning of the reddish-blond head toward the doorway.