Authors: Jeremiah Healy
”Yeah, babe. We want Spi’s daddy to back us, don’t need him having no thoughts about his granddaughter turning whore just ‘cause she be using a funny kind of name.”
I thought about it. ”How’d you know about Sundy Moran being a prostitute?”
Biggs shrugged. ”You hear things, that’s all.”
”But how did you connect the ‘Sunday’ name from that letter O’Dell received twenty years ago to a prostitute around here these days?”
He looked uncomfortable, the stringy black hands worrying each other on the table in front of him. ”Used to see the girls during my bad times, maybe where I got the H-I.V. even. I met this Sundy once or twice. Never spent any money on her, though.”
I wasn’t sure I believed that last part. ”When you and Lazar here were in the corridor at the Colonel’s house, could anybody have overheard your conversation?”
Biggs said, ”What, about Tommy’s kid being this whore?”
”Yes.”
”Not unless the walls have ears, babe. Why you think I be pulling Gordo aside, give him the hush?”
I let my gaze go around the table. ”Anything else about Sundy Moran that any of you remember?”
Spi Held opened his mouth, then closed it again, kind of his reaction fifteen minutes earlier.
I said, ”Let’s have it.”
He sniffled and shook his head. ”Man, this is like decades ago. I’m not even sure it was the same chick.”
”What was?”
Held shook his head once more, but said, ”Just before he died, Tommy’s ranting and raving about a lot of shit. He was way too heavy into the junk, and it made him act moto-weird.”
”Weird in what way?”
Held opened his hands. ”Tommy was giving me this tap dance about how some chick made him a daddy, that he wanted to be sure his kid was taken care of.”
”What did you do about it?”
”Told him to go see Mitch.”
”Your manager?”
”Yeah,” said Spi Held. ”I figured it’d ease Tommy’s troubled mind, you know?”
I looked around the table again. ”What did it do to your minds when Sundy Moran turned up dead?”
”Say what?” from Biggs.
”Dead?” from Held.
”Aw, shit,” from Lazar. ”Tommy’s luck’s still the same.”
To me, Biggs said, ”Wait a minute, babe. When did this girl get herself dead?”
”Within ten hours of Veronica’s being killed. And Moran had help, too.”
Biggs seemed to be trying to process something. Lazar just stroked his facial scars.
Held said, ”How come we didn’t know about it?”
”Your daughter’s death pretty much pushed everything else off the news, right?”
”Yeah, but... Tommy’s kid?”
Biggs nodded. ”Make sense, though. Nobody outside us knew Tommy her daddy, and probably that never been proved nowhere, or Mitch would of told us. So, one more hooker gets herself offed, not likely the police gonna talk with the grieving family of a thirteen-year-old about it. Right, babe?”
In a very level voice, I said, ”You’ve explained it better than I could.”
Now even Spi Held seemed to be putting the pieces together. ”Hold on, hold on. Man, you telling me that the same maniac who drowned my Very stabbed this hooker, too?”
I saw Biggs’s eyes flicker to Held, then to me. Lazar was just shrugging.
I said, ”Spi?”
”Yeah?”
”How did you know the Moran woman was killed with a knife?”
Biggs closed his eyes now.
Spi looked from one of us to the other before settling back on me. ”Isn’t that how they always get it?”
”Always?” I said.
”Yeah.” Spi Held became almost enthusiastic. ”You know, the phallic thing?”
The four of us were rising from the table when Ricky Queen came out of the shadows at the back of the club. ”Party breaking up?” he said.
Spi Held swiped under his nose. ”You straighten out that fucking houseman?”
Queen winced a little. ”We’re cool with the dude again, but let’s keep it that way, huh?”
Held looked around. ”Where’s he hiding?”
”Had to bug for a minute. Be right back.”
”Fucking wanna-bes, don’t got no sense of professionalism.” Held sniffled again. ”Look, I gotta hit the head, anyway, so we’re back on in five, got it?”
Mumbled response from Gordo Lazar, Buford Biggs saying, ”Don’t forget, I’m picking up Kalil in half an hour.”
”This numbnuts houseman ain’t got his shit together by then, I’ll be drowning him in a toilet, anyway.”
An awkward pause as Spi Held lumbered off toward a rest room sign, he apparently the only one unaware of how awful his remark sounded less than two weeks after his daughter’s death and barely two minutes after being reminded of it.
Walking toward the street door, I felt a tug on my good arm, and Ricky Queen fell in beside me as I hit the sunshine.
He turned his face to the sky like a convict in the exercise yard. ”Man, feels good to be out in the fresh air, huh?”
”It does that.”
”I don’t mind the gigs at night so much, even the ones that stretch to dawn, because that way, you get to see the sun come up over the beach,” Queen gesturing toward the east and an ocean I guessed to be a good mile or two away. I said, ”You walking me to my car?”
”Kind of.” He glanced at my bad arm. ”Any of those old druggies even notice you were hurt?”
”Not that they mentioned.”
Queen brought his face toward mine, the platinum and orange hair looking even more bizarre in natural light. ”Before you said that the guy paying the freight wants us to cooperate.”
”Colonel Helides.”
”Right. Our angel on this comeback thing.” Now Queen looked down at his sneakers. ”Well, I think the old guy’s had it pretty tough, but he’s been good to me, and good to Buford, looking past my being gay and Buford being full-blown.”
With AIDS. ”The kind of man the Colonel’s always been.”
Queen nodded, then squinted. ”After I finished with the houseman, I came back, heard part of what you guys were talking about.”
”What part?”
”You asking about this hooker named Sundy, and Spi saying how he couldn’t see what one had to do with the other.”
Uh-oh. ”And you can?”
”Can what?”
”See a connection between the deaths.”
”Between the deaths, no way. I’m a clean gene on that
score. No, I meant more between the girls themselves.” I stopped at the curb, my car diagonally across the intersection. ”Sundy Moran and Veronica Held.”
”Yeah.” A quick glance around, but nobody was in earshot or even coming out the entrance to Dicey Riley’s behind him. ”Something Very said once when Spi was pissing her—and the rest of us—off with one of his tantrums.”
”Like I saw today?”
”Dude, what you saw inside there was mild crankiness. Spi gets the wrong powder up his nose, and he goes ballistic.”
”I’m listening.”
”All right. Like I said, this one time, we’re rehearsing and Spi wants the chord one way, but Very thinks the harmony should be hers, so she’s the center of attention, you know?”
I thought about my impression watching the videotape of her performing at the party. ”I’m following you.”
”Okay, then. Follow this: After they explode at each other, the fighters retire to their corners. Very, though, comes over to me before we get started again, and she says, ‘Like he never experimented in the seventies.’”
”Experimented?”
”Yeah. The song had to do with a black chick and a white dude, getting it on in a tough club. Would have made an awesome video, too, if the actor/dancers—”
”Would
have made?”
”Spi killed the song, said we weren’t going to do it. And Very’s asking me, ”What’s wrong with a little vanilla and chocolate together?”‘
An image of Kalil Biggs crossed my mind. ”Anything else?”
”Yeah, the weirdest part. To me, anyway. Very says, ‘Ricky, you ever do girls?’ And I knew she meant the dirty, so I told her, ‘Sorry, hon, not my taste.’ And Very goes, ”Well, I think I’d like to experiment a little more than just vanilla and chocolate. Maybe a sundae, even.’”
I stared at him.
Queen said, ”At the time, I thought she was just pushing the ice-cream metaphor, the way a songwriter might, you know? Now, though, I’m not so—”
”Rick!” Spi Held’s head curved around the doorjamb of the bar, the lush but silly wig still in place. ”Will you get the fuck back here before we lose Buford to his chauffeur service?”
”Right there, Spi.” Then Queen turned again to me. ”You ever... experiment, John?”
”No.”
”You decide to enter the laboratory, keep me in mind, huh?”
And with that, Ricky Queen walked back toward the entrance of Dicey Riley’s, rolling his buns under what I now noticed were pretty tight jeans.
Figuring I wouldn’t have long to wait, I got behind the wheel of my Cavalier.
About twenty minutes later, Buford Biggs hurried out of the bar and sprinted to an old Pontiac Bonneville I’d seen at Spi Held’s house the day before. He fumbled some with his keys at the lock, which gave me the chance to leave my car and walk over to him.
Glancing at me, Biggs scowled. ”Don’t got no more time for you now.”
”And I understand why, so I’ll ride shotgun a while.” The lines on his collapsing face grew deeper. ”Say what?”
”I’ll come with you, and we can talk on the way to picking up Kalil.”
”How about if I don’t want you in my car?”
”Then I follow you in mine, and eventually we talk, or I tell Colonel Helides he can write one less check this month.”
”You’d do that?”
”Reluctantly.”
Biggs gave a look harder than his scowl, trying to back me down. Then he gave it up. ”Yeah, you would, babe.” Biggs opened his door. ”Go around, I let you in.”
Once we were settled, he started up and drove east on Second Street. We had two cars ahead of us when the railroad gate came down.
”Shit-mother-shit!”
Biggs craned his neck around, but there were three or four cars behind us, with nowhere to back up or turn around.
”Mother-
fuck
-er.
You let me alone, I’m way past here by now.”
”Maybe, maybe not.” I stopped for a moment ”Just how much cocaine is Spi Held using?”
Biggs watched the train roar by, mostly flatbeds with road equipment lashed to them.
”Mr. Biggs?”
”You got me by the shorts, you might’s well call me Buford, like any other white mother’.”
”How much is Held snorting?”
”Don’t know.” A slap at the steering wheel. ”He always done some, but it was under control, ‘less the man start mixing and matching.”
”With other drugs.”
”Booze, more likely.”
I thought back to Jeanette Held telling me about her husband’s twin addictions. ”And is he mixing cocaine with alcohol now?”
Biggs glanced at me once, then back to the seemingly endless line of railroad cars. ”Like he think to make cement from them.”
”How’s it affecting the band?”
”How you think? Man’s switching to a different arrangement every fucking day, trying to polish cowshit so it look like leather.”
”His new songs are no good.”
”Tunes are mediocre, babe, mediocre at best. It the lyrics that really fuck the duck, though.”
”What Tommy O’Dell and Veronica used to help him with.”
”Them mostly. But even then, the sound—Spiral’s sound—it yesterday’s bread, babe.”
”Stale?”
”You had the choice, you buy fresh ”
”What’ll happen tonight?”
”At the gig? We get the houseman turn the speakers for the audience up so high, they fucking chests be bruised. If it just college kids and drunk enough, they’ll go ‘awesome’ and ‘way cool,’ and we get a nice blurb on the radio about how we play this surprise—call it ‘impromptu’—little concert for them, give a taste of what’s to come on our new CD. But if anybody be there know shit from Shinola and carry a pad and pen, print review gonna make us look like a garage band again, the critic stay long enough to see how bad we really are.”
”That why Mitch Eisen wasn’t back there?”
”Mitch? Fifty-fifty he won’t even be at the club tonight when we play. Shit, babe, he just promoting us for some bucks. Man’s not exactly a fan of our music.” This time, Biggs struck the top of the steering wheel with the heel of his right hand. ”Didn’t know they allow to run trains this fucking long.”
I said, ”Let’s make the transition from music to video.” Biggs stiffened, but just kept watching the parade through his windshield.
”Buford, I need to know about Kalil’s other videotapes.”
”Why,” clearing his throat, ”so you can turn him in to the police, put him away somewhere?”
I gave it a beat. ”You’ve seen the tapes?”