Steel Guitar (20 page)

“Davey?”

“Davey.”

“Terrific. Wonderful. Where? Come on in and tell me the whole story. I'll get you a drink, uh, a soft drink. Orange juice.”

“No. I, uh, I'd rather not.”

“Well, where is he?”

“We have to go there.”

“Cal? Are you okay?”

“We have to go there,” he repeated, his tone harsh, almost angry. He stared at the steps. I couldn't see his eyes.

“Now?”

“Yeah. Now would be good.”

One look at the set of Cal's jaw, and I knew I'd get no further with questions. “Okay, be like that,” I said. “Roz, have you ever considered a future as a groupie?”

“That's not a future, that's a past.”

“Dress weird,” I said. “Hell, dress normally. And get over to the Four Winds Hotel. Seventh floor, some of them may still be on the eighth, but the seventh's your best bet. Tell anybody who asks that you're with Dee Willis's band. The drummer's name is Freddie. Ron's the lead guitar. I don't know the keyboard man. He seems to evaporate into thin air every time I come near. Hal Grady's the road manager.”

“Yeah. Ron and Freddie and Hal. Which one am I interested in?”

“None of the above. Get tight with a camp follower named Mimi. Looks sixteen. Dyed blonde curly hair.”

“Oooh,” said Roz, “long hair. I get it. I'm your undercover agent.”

I blew out a deep breath. “Keep it that way, Roz,” I said. “I want to know everything about this girl—who she talks to, who she sleeps with, whether she deals, what she deals, whether she uses, what she uses. I want you to be her new best friend.”

“And if some of the boys come on to me?”

“That's your business. Just make sure you're with Mimi most of the time.”

“I'll be great,” Roz promised. “I know the exact outfit. I'll make up for the tube and the locks—”

“Whoa, Roz. Don't go in like a sledgehammer, okay? Be subtle. It could be dangerous.”

“If she's the one messed up the kitchen floor,” Roz said, peeling off her rubber gloves, “it could be fucking dangerous for her.”

Thirty-One

“Why are you looking for Davey?” Cal slammed the passenger door of my red Toyota and made a grab for the seat belt. He used to swear I was the reason he never learned to drive.

“What difference does it make? You didn't ask last night—or this morning.”

“I'm asking now.”

“I was hired to find him.”

“By?”

“A client.”

I remembered last night's taxi ride in the pouring rain, my intense awareness of Cal's wet denim jacket, the bass jutting between his legs, his thigh pressed close to mine, the strangely familiar smell of him. In daylight, in the front seat of my own car, everything seemed different, all tension spent. Maybe that was all we ever shared, the tension and release, tension and release of coupling. Possibly the tension would build again over the next few hours.

I doubted it.

“Is Davey in jail?” I asked.

“No.”

“Is he alive?”

“You could say so.”

“Come on, Cal. No more guessing games.”

“I think I'm the one who's doing most of the guessing here, Carly.”

“I can't help what you think, Cal.”

I turned the key in the ignition, counted to an imaginary ten, and held my temper. “It would help if I knew where we were going.”

“Saint John of God Hospital.”

“On Allston Street?”

“Yeah.”

“But that's a—”

“A hospice.” Cal finished the sentence before I could get the word out. Staring through the windshield, his face a mask, he said, “Davey's dying. Davey's got AIDS.”

Thirty-Two

I have trouble with hospitals. Big deal, right? Who doesn't? I especially have trouble with the idea of a hospice—a hospital of no return. Even when I knew beyond doubt, beyond reason—confirmed by every doctor worth his stethoscope—that this attack of emphysema was Dad's final round, there was still that tiny undeniable ray of hope. Maybe this time, this once, one puny human will confound the experts and defy the odds.

My dad's Scots-Irish Catholic family believed in miracles; maybe they passed that on to me. My mom believed God had cleared out of the miracle business, left people to create their own if they could. She also believed human beings had gravely disappointed their maker.

The only miracle I was praying for was that Cal's informant had made a mistake.

St. John of God Hospital is a small place that keeps a low profile. Unless you drive directly down Allston Street between Summit Avenue and Washington Street, you'd never know it existed. It's on a taxi route, a good shortcut between Brookline and Cambridge; otherwise I'd never have heard of it, much less known the way there.

I pulled my Toyota into the cement square of parking lot. There weren't many cars.

The lobby looked too cheery, like Christmas in August. The front desk was staffed by two women, one heavy, one thin. The thin one wore a cardigan sweater in spite of the heat, and was busily filing a broken fingernail; the plump one was tapping at a computer keyboard.

I caught a faint quiver of interest when I asked for David Dunrobie.

“He doesn't get many visitors,” I ventured.

“You're the only ones I've seen,” the woman working at the terminal replied. The other woman nodded her head in solemn agreement.

“Are there, like, visiting hours?” Cal said. He'd stayed half a foot behind me. I could hear the faint snap of his fingers, a nervous habit I'd long forgotten.

The thin woman picked up a phone receiver and said, “Let me check whether one of Mr. Dunrobie's doctors is available. See if it's a good day for a visit.”

“Sometimes he's not well enough for visitors?” Cal asked, a little too quickly.

The heavy woman at the keyboard exchanged a glance with the nail-filer, then spoke in a confidential whisper. “He's got a sort of, uh, amnesia, as a symptom of the disease. He fades in and out. Some days he talks up a storm. Some days …” She shrugged her massive shoulders.

Suddenly I didn't want to see him. I wanted to keep a picture of him in my mind: Davey Dunrobie, young, talented, graceful, on his way to the top.

Cal voiced my misgivings. “Do we need to do this?”

“I have to,” I said. “You can wait for me, take a walk, go home, whatever.”

The thin woman murmured, “Here comes the doctor now.” I noticed that her nail file had disappeared discreetly into a pocket. She bent her head and diligently sorted forms.

The man in the white lab coat, white shirt, and red bow tie had entered the lobby through swinging doors. The nameplate on his breast pocket read: Dr. Sanderley. He spoke in a reedy tenor. “Are you related to Mr. Dunrobie?” he asked.

“Close friends,” I said. “We just found out.”

“He's been with us six months,” the doctor replied.

“Off and on?” I asked.

“Six months.”

“Does he go out much? Travel?”

“I'm not sure I understand,” the doctor said. “When he goes out, which isn't frequently, it's in a wheelchair. Sometimes we get a chair-van for day trips. Not often.” He seemed puzzled by my questions.

“How is he?” I said. The doctor seemed more comfortable with that one.

He consulted his wristwatch as if to figure out exactly how much detail he could fit into his schedule. “Well, he's had several bouts of pneumonia,” he began. “Pneumocystic, the kind most HIV patients get. Each attack has left him a bit weaker, more open to other infections. He had a go with meningitis. He has thrush, an infection that interferes with the clarity of his speech.”

“Break it to us gently, doc,” Cal muttered in a bitter tone I remembered like a whiplash.

“I'm sorry,” the doctor said gently, taking no offense. “But if you intend to see him, you ought to be prepared. He's also losing his eyesight. And in addition to attacking the immune system, HIV may also attack and destroy brain cells, causing dementia.”

“The nurse up front told us he sometimes had amnesia,” I said.

“She's not a nurse; she's a receptionist. And she has no business discussing the patients. Absolutely no business.” Doctor Sanderley's anger subsided abruptly. “It's often difficult to get good people to work in a place like this,” he said with a sigh.

I swallowed. “Does Davey know where he is? What's happening to him?”

“Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, no.”

I bit my lip. “Look, I need to see him.”

“You
need
to see him? This isn't a social call?”

“It may be a police matter,” I said. If I'd had the photostat of my license, the one in my stolen purse, I'd have shown it to him. All I had was a business card. “I'd like to keep the police out of it.”

“Would Mr. Dunrobie recognize your names?”

“If he recognizes anything. Tell him Carlotta and Cal are here.”

“I'll try.”

We were left in the lobby for five minutes, maybe four, maybe fewer, but it felt like forever. I had time to memorize the burgundy carpet, the blue sofas and chairs, the framed landscapes, the portraits of long-dead benefactors. There were too many vases of overblown flowers in the room, too many smelly plants.

The double doors opened and the stink of disinfectant invaded my nostrils. I thought of Dee in her four-star hotel suite, Davey in his hospice bed. A lucky toss of the dice. An unlucky one.

Dr. Sanderley led us through the double doors and down a long corridor. Women in white slacks and bright-colored T-shirts hurried by in rubber-soled shoes.

Sanderley hesitated before a door labeled 101A. “Go ahead in. I'm not sure how much he'll say or how responsive it might be, but there's no reason not to visit.” He smiled encouragingly. “I'll come by in a while if I can get away.”

I braced myself, the way I used to when I wore the uniform, when I had to stand watch over a stiff until the homicide detectives came to take charge—before I became a homicide detective myself.

Then I was inside, staring at the name on the chart at the foot of the bed, straining to believe, trying to disbelieve, that this was the man, the boy, I'd known. His head was a skull. He was so thin his forearms looked breakable, like matchsticks. His eyes burned. Then, suddenly, he smiled at me, at Cal, and his bloodless lips had to stretch to cover the width of the grin.

“Long time,” Davey said. “Oh, boy, long time. Carlotta, Dee, Cal, Lorraine, the old gang.”

I had to lean forward to hear his cracked voice.

“Yeah,” Cal said. He walked right over and shook Davey's outstretched hand. I did the same. It felt like a bird's wing. I barely touched it.

Tubes dripped clear liquids into the veins of his left arm; urine dripped into a plastic bag attached to the mattress of the mechanical bed.

“Davey,” I said, “I didn't know. I didn't know anything about what happened to you after the group disbanded, after Lorraine died, until this week, until Dee told me.”

“Dee's swell. Man, anytime I need anything, you know, I got a famous friend. Did I tell you I know Dee Willis? Man, I'm practically responsible for Dee Willis.”

“Here we go again.” I hadn't even realized Davey wasn't in a private room until I heard the other voice. His roommate was a tiny wizened man. I was afraid even to guess his age because he looked well over sixty and I was pretty certain he wasn't yet forty.

I rounded on him. “What do you mean?”

“Hi,” he said. “My name's Mike. I used to be with the Merchant Marine. That's why I've got the travel posters all over the walls. Every place you see, I've been, some twice.”

“They're great posters, Mike,” I said. “What did you mean by that ‘Here we go again'?”

“It's not so bad really. I've had worse roomies than Davey here. It's just every once in a while he gets on this Dee Willis rag, and you can't stop him. He talks about her for hours on end. Same stuff over and over. I mean, I talk about some of the best ports I ever landed in, but at least I only tell the same story once.”

In his whispery voice, Davey said, “I knew Dee when she was nobody. Nobody. She made me fuckin' famous, 'cause I'm the first guy she ever slept with, you know that?”

In a bored voice, Mike said, “Yeah, Davey, I know you slept with Dee Willis. You sleep with Dolly Parton? Cher? Were they the greatest or what? You can tell me all about them too.”

“Davey was Dee Willis's singing partner,” I said with enough volume for Mike to hear. “She hired me to find him. Davey, do you understand? Dee told me to find you.”

I looked up at Cal. He'd frozen at the mention of Dee's name.

Davey started to cry, but it wasn't really crying. It was more an overflow of tears, as if he couldn't control his eyes anymore.

Doctor Sanderley said softly, “That happens a lot. Emotional control goes. Don't let it bother you. It doesn't bother him.”

I hadn't even heard the doctor enter the room.

Davey said, “Sweet Lorraine. I gotta stop talking about Lorraine and Dee. I know that, man. But Dee, shit, maybe Dee shouldn't have laid that on me. I mean, I hear Dee on the radio, man, I see her on TV. I hear Dee all the time, singing to me, singing those songs for me.”

I didn't think it would do any good, but I decided to ask. “Davey, did you write any of Dee's songs?”

He looked at me and said clearly, “Maybe one chord. Maybe nothing. Dee sang to me. Dee sang to me like a bird in a tree once. I love Dee like my mother, like my sister, like my baby, my lover. Dee sings me songs on the radio.”

Mike, the roommate, laughed. “Yesterday he told me he wrote everything she ever sang. He said if he had his rights he'd have maybe three, four hundred thousand bucks.”