The Octopus on My Head (13 page)

“Well,” Garcia said, a little color rising to his cheeks, “I used to play a little bit. We had a band at the Police Academy. We called ourselves The Rookies. On
La Bamba
, we rocked.”

“On
La Bamba
,” Lavinia repeated, “they rocked.”

“You don't play anymore?” I asked kindly, ignoring her.

“Not since I graduated, got married, had a couple of kids, made Lieutenant.”

“Not since you got a life, in other words.” Evidently, Lavinia felt compelled to make this point.

“Was there a kit?” I wondered.

“Not a drum to be seen.”

“How about clothes—or shoes?” Lavinia threw me a glance. “Shoes and clothes and stuff.”

“No clothes,” Garcia said, looking curiously at her. “His shoes were missing when we found him.”

“Same here,” Lavinia confirmed.

“Curious,” I mused. “His landlord told me he had moved there.”

“Ah, the landlord,” Garcia said.

Lavinia and I said together, “What about—” We exchanged a glance. “Him,” I finished. “Yeah,” Lavinia added.

“We think Stepnowski was set to blow town. The bass player told us that Stepnowski had called him out of the blue, quite recently, not to set up a gig or rehearsal but to flog a bunch of gear to him. The bass player claims he wasn't interested. A drum kit was mentioned. So were a synthesizer and a Peavey sound system—board, speakers, amps, EQ, cables, and enough microphones to cover a four-piece band, with multiple mikes for drums, a four-track cassette recorder
….
A truckload of stuff. Which reminds me. Stepnowski owned a cab-over Econoline van. It's painted flat black. We haven't found it yet. Have you seen it?”

Lavinia and I both shook our heads.

“That must be the system Sal sold to him,” I guessed.

“Very likely.”

“So what's the hustle?”

“It's a standard one,” Lavinia put in. “Ivy tells me it's Sal's biggest headache, to which shoplifting's a distant second.”

Garcia pricked up his ears. “The inimitable Ivy Pruitt.”

“Let's leave him out of this,” I suggested.

Garcia looked tentative. “That might be possible.”

Lavinia explained. “Guy starts buying stuff from Sal, little stuff at first. Drumsticks, mike stands, a set of speakers, all his trivial supplies. He gets a line of credit going. He buys more stuff—a drum machine, maybe a whole kit. One day he turns up with a bunch of stuff to trade and a little cash for sweetener. He's got a story, too, like his band has landed an extended club gig or a recording contract or a short tour. At any rate, he's got to make some moves equipment-wise. He trades in everything Sal will take off his hands, throws in some cash, gets the rest on credit, and walks out of the store with a top-of-the-line synthesizer, a computerized lighting board, a 24-track mixing console—whatever.”

“And until he manages to resell the gear for cash,” I realized, “he makes his payments right on time.”

“If he's really desperate—strung out, a wanted man, whatever—he'll drive to Reno and pawn the gear immediately to one of the big pawnshops there. That's extreme, however, because a pawnshop won't give top dollar. A private sale is much harder to trace and the money's always better. But either way it's
pffft
,” she pushed air with her tongue between her front teeth, “the guy and the gear are gone, and Sal is stuck for the balance.”

“Which is when Kramer calls in Ivy Pruitt,” Garcia said.

“Yeah, but first Kramer has to figure it out,” Lavinia nodded.

“If the artist times it right, Ivy won't happen until long after the account comes past due—at least thirty days after a missed payment. Hell, a guy could sell the stuff and keep making the payments until he's safely in Patagonia.”

“Stepnowski had a lot of money on him when he died,” Garcia said. “He must have moved a lot of stuff. By the way,” he smiled, “it goes down very well with me that you two took only what was owed you and left the rest. Very well indeed.” When even Lavinia had nothing to say to that, Garcia added, “It speaks volumes about your sincerity.”

I said carefully, “Stepnowski was into Sal for seventy-five hundred. The PA system was worth thousands more. If he sold it for half what it was worth in order to move it quickly, he—”

I stopped.

Garcia said, “You were saying?”

“Shut up,” Lavinia said simply.

Garcia fingered an audio cassette out of the side pocket of his trench coat and held it up for us to see. “Not to worry. We have the context. We're still adding to it.”

I looked at the minicassette, then at Kramer's desk. Amid the clutter at least two microphones weren't even hidden. I looked at Garcia, who smiled. “Fast track. With Kramer's cooperation, of course.” He returned the cassette to his pocket. “Assuming Stepnowski sold the missing synthesizer and his own drums too, eight grand sounds like a plausible minimum.”

“Eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-four dollars. I counted it myself. There should have been twelve hundred dollar bills, two twenties, one ten, and four singles in Stepnowski's right hip pocket when you found him. Folded once. With all the presidents looking the same direction.”

“We subtracted only what was owed to Sal,” Lavinia hastened to be redundant. “No more.”

“It speaks volumes toward your integrity and your motive,” Garcia reiterated, a little bored.

Now that she knew she was speaking for the record, however, Lavinia felt compelled to ham it up. “For our good conscience, too.”

“Yes,” Garcia said, his tone darkening. “Your good conscience.”

I ventured to suggest that he had it all figured out.

“That's possible, Watkins,” Garcia said mildly. “You don't see any other angles?”

“What about the anonymous phone call?” I thought a moment. “What about the guy on Anza Street?”

“That creep,” Lavinia said.

“He told me his name,” I said. “Torvald.”

Garcia didn't consult his notebook. “His first name is Eritrion. Calls himself Ari. We talked to him.”

“And?”

Garcia shrugged.

I said, “After he spilled the new address, he made a special request of me.”

“Which was?”

“He wanted me to be sure to say hello to Stepnowski's wife. He said she and her girlfriends were very pretty, and he missed them.”

“Ugh,” Lavinia said.

Garcia smiled. “He didn't mention that to me. Then again, I had Officer Lavoix running interference.”

Lavinia frowned. “What's that supposed to mean?”

Garcia appeared to patronize her. “Perhaps you noticed,” he said, “that Officer Lavoix is … attractive?”

“So what'd the guy do,” Lavinia snapped testily, “drool his way through the interview?”

“Well,” Garcia said, “we might have stayed all night. Asked him anything. Fine by him.”

Lavinia looked at me. “Are you just going to sit there and listen to this sexist bullshit?”

“Hey,” said Garcia, “it's just a fact.”

“What are you talking about?” I said, although I knew exactly what she was talking about, and what she was about to start yelling about, but when I looked from Lavinia back to Garcia again, Garcia compounded her anger by offering a man-to-man shrug, with no attempt to hide it from Lavinia. “Bitches,” he might just as well have said aloud. “You can't live with them, you can't live without them.”

“Angelica,” I said quickly, to forestall Lavinia blowing her top. “Wasn't that her name?”

Again, Garcia didn't bother to consult his notebook. “Angelica is her name.”

Lavinia abruptly frowned and turned her attention away from Garcia, back to me. Because she had been hosing dog off her undercarriage while I taxied to the Anza address, she hadn't overheard my interview with Torvald, and now she had to admit that, while she had no idea what went on during my visit to Anza Street, Mrs. Stepnowski had never come up.

“So?” I asked. “Where is Angelica Stepnowski?”

Garcia nodded grimly. “That may well turn out to be your basic nine-millimeter question.”

Chapter Thirteen

O
N THE SIDEWALK IN FRONT OF
K
RAMER'S
W
ORLD OF
S
OUND, A
gentleman
was reading the
New York Times
. He was perched on the edge of a redwood planter built around a jacaranda tree, his feet propped on the front axle of a shopping cart that carried a TV face down in a stratum of empty bottles, with the newspaper spread over its back. He wore several layers of athletic clothing, a mismatched pair of fingerless bicycling gloves, high-ankled combat boots without laces, and cobalt blue wraparound sunglasses.

“Hey, Mister.”

“Yes?”

“Let me ask you something?”

“Sure.”

He folded his newspaper. “There's a great deal of discussion in here about pedophilia.” He gravely tapped the paper with his forefinger. “A great deal of discussion.”

“Is that so?”

He raised his sunglasses until they revealed his eyes, which is how Californians demonstrate their sincerity to one another. “Do you think that's what people mean when they refer to America as a youth-oriented nation?”

Further up the sidewalk, Lavinia had backed the Lexus out of the parking lot onto Folsom Street. She touched the horn.

“That's the first laugh I've had in two days.” I gripped the man's hand and pumped it. “Thank you so much.”

The dark glasses fell back into place.

“That guy spare-changing you?” Lavinia asked as I got into the car.

“No. He wanted to share a joke.”

“Really? What's a homeless guy find that's funny?”

“Us.”

“You and me?”

“All of us.”

“No wonder he's on the street. To get by in this life, you have to take it seriously.”

“Like you do?”

“Damn straight.”

We caught a red light at the Moscone Center. Lavinia said, “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Think Ivy's got any dope left for us?”

“I don't care.”

“That makes three of us, but it begs the question.”

“You want to drive all the way back to Oakland on the extremely remote chance that Ivy Pruitt saved us some drugs?”

“Aside from the fact that I live there, and, not that I'm strung out, but, yes, I'd like to see if Ivy's got any messages for my monkey. Furthermore, you got a better idea?”

“Yeah,” I responded belligerently. “I'm going to find myself a job so I can eat next week and maybe restore my self-respect a week or two later.”

I'd never heard Lavinia laugh so hard.

“Curly, what are you talking about? You've got nine hundred dollars in your pocket.”

“Son of a bitch.” I felt the left hip pocket of my jeans. The wad was still there. “I completely forgot about it.” I really had forgotten about it; more cash than I'd had in hand in years, and I'd forgotten about it. “I need a business manager.” I whistled and sat back against the seat. “This changes everything.” I pointed. “Look at that Moscone Center. It's a conventioneer's dream. Ain't it beautiful?”

“Not so beautiful as the Sony Metreon, up there on the corner.”

“Talk about your product placement. As the sun sets on western culture, that piece of shit throws a shadow over the conscience of an entire city.”

“You've got a nickel in your jeans,” Lavinia said, “so what do you care?” The light turned green. “How about it?”

“If you're going to Oakland, drop me at Third and I'll take a bus. I really do need a job. Not to mention a shower and a shave and about twelve hours' sleep.” I touched my hip pocket. “I can use this bread to get the Honda going. The transmission problem, an insurance payment, new brakes—and smog, I've got to smog it this year. Rent and the Honda will take every cent. The nine hundred is a windfall, I'm grateful, I hope it's a long time before I see another dead body, and goodbye.”

“Gee,” Lavinia drummed a fingernail on the rim of the steering wheel, “why don't you finish college while you're at it?”

“If I don't take advantage of the opportunity, I'll just pay the rent and piss away the rest and wind up riding the bus to gigs again anyway. Public transportation is a pain in the ass at night. Most people don't mess with a six-three bald guy dressed in black leather with an octopus tattooed on his head, but once in a while at a dark and lonely bus stop, I'll glimpse a couple of punks sizing me up, measuring whether they can take me down for the guitar and my wallet. One night I'll have one too many beers in me, and they'll pull it off. It won't be the first time, either, I might add. Then where'll I be? If I live through it, I mean, with all my fingers intact so I can still play, and my brain suffciently under-concussed so I can remember the music.”

“Still waiting for the bus, is where it leaves you.”

“Exactly. And since they'll steal my cell phone, too, I'll have to wait until I get home before I can call my one sympathetic friend and tell her what a loser I am.”

“She'll always be there for you, Curly.”

I looked at Lavinia. In her profile I could see years of heroin—or could I? She didn't look all that bad. Her features were a little puffy, and there would be another chin one of these days. But her violet eyes were almost delicately, if falsely, lashed, and the hennaed bangs that arched over her prominent forehead cut the midday glare behind her like a cold beer cuts a hangover—no, like a saint's corona. Madonna of the poppy. Nice. Plus, the small padlock key that depended from her earlobe had a strange effect on me. I couldn't figure it out.

Lavinia's key earrings reminded me that I'd once read that Ford's new model that particular year was called the Probe, and that the Probe had been designed for and marketed to single working women. This furrowed my brow and led to all kinds of speculation involving small teams of highly paid FoMoCo psychologists in a secret unmarked building on the outskirts of Detroit. In fact it's probably true. But I came to the conclusion that maybe women as a social group feel that, all their lives, one way or another, literally or figuratively and like it or not, they were constantly being probed by men and a masculine culture and that, in driving something called a Probe, maybe a woman could convince herself that she was in charge for a change, instead of a victim as per usual.

The Probe was the success story of the year.

Go figure.

Lavinia's key earrings provoked similar speculation. A key could be considered the male prerogative, the male arrogation, the symbolic object of the male search or persistence to fit itself to that symbol of female mystery, the lock. So, in wearing her keys in plain sight, Lavinia was symbolically pre-solving half the battle, arrogating the arrogator, as it were, and teasing him too. The mystery of the lock remained. And the key, after all, remained merely a key, merely a symbol.

“Curly
….
”

Altogether, she looked well. Pretty, even. Heroin is unpredictable. Given an even temperament, enough money, a clean connection and privacy, a junky can maintain an even keel for decades. A best friend, a lover, her own mother might never figure it out.

“Curly
….
”

Nobody but a fool would knowingly fall for a junky.

“Yes?”

“You were saying?”

By now we were all the way down to the east end of Folsom Street. We'd already passed the next-to-last on-ramp to the Bay Bridge.

“I was saying, it'll be late. Two, three in the morning, maybe.”

“I'll be up.”

“Really?” I looked at her.

She smiled. “Really
….
” There's a stop sign on Folsom at Beale, and Lavinia observed it. At that time it was an odd part of town. A mere three blocks from us, straight east, a broad sliver of the bay showed between two buildings at the foot of Folsom, where it dead ends into the Embarcadero. The Bay Bridge arced across the gap, toward Treasure Island and the East Bay beyond. Though we were more or less in the heart of San Francisco, however, only parking lots and half-built buildings surrounded us. And so there was little traffic in this neighborhood, excepting commute hours. Lavinia pulled through the intersection and parked at the curb, directly in front of the oldest remaining wooden building in that part of town, which, once upon a time, had housed a blacksmith. She left the engine running.

“Okay, Curly, what's it going to be?” She put the transmission in park and looked at me. “Oakland in the Lexus? Or Hayes Valley on the bus?”

I looked at her. It was midday. It had been at least thirty-six hours since either of us had slept. The two fat lines of speedball we had nasaled apiece, not four hours earlier, had worn off. I was tired, and Lavinia had to be tired, too. Our most recent attempt at nourishment, forty dollars worth of groceries, languished on Ivy Pruitt's kitchen counter, a thirty minute drive from where we currently found ourselves. Once we got there the priority of rest and food over drugs and derangement would be reversed.

I decided to roll the dice.

I leaned toward Lavinia and put my hand on her shoulder. She let me pull her closer. We kissed.

Her response was tentative. That is to say she didn't exactly kiss me back, but she didn't pull away, either. That is to say, she let me kiss her. The radio was playing
Autumn in New York
. Which meant nothing, you understand. It's just that I remember it.

After a minute we let our lips separate, so we could breathe. Sinus congestion, you should infer. I said, “Let's go to your place.” I smoothed her hair. Mousse had made it coarse. Her violet irises floated in jaundiced cream. “To hell with Ivy,” I added huskily.

Her eyes were watching her fingertips tarry over my scalp. I might have taken this attention as significant, but experience told me that she was tracing the length of one or another tentacle. If I told you that some girls can't resist this indulgence, would you believe me?

“I'm grateful at least that you didn't suggest we go to your own foetid little pad,” she said tenderly.

“I'm trying to show respect. Plus, the nature of relationship is compromise.”

“On the other hand, how do you know my place is any less squalid than yours?”

“I'm an optimist.”

We toyed with one another. Physically, I mean. Mentally too, I suppose, we toyed with one another. Entoyment. Was that a word? It is now. There was an element of suspense, although the outcome was never really in doubt. It was the element of hope that was suspenseful. A tiny element of hope that made for a tiny element of uncertainty. But there was never all that much doubt. After a minute Lavinia couldn't think up another way to go about it and, in fact, she didn't care. So what if she thought up a cagey or devious or delusional way to go about it? I wouldn't be fooled. So she simply said, “Can't we go to Ivy's first?”

Our toying ran down of its own accord, like a top drained of spin. Another minute passed. Our hands were hardly moving at all. Her eyes slid eastward.

“The bridge is right here,” she said.

“Yeah.” My eyes watched hers. “It is.”

“Easy on,” she shrugged, “easy off.”

I massaged her shoulder. “My idea precisely.”

She laughed without amusement. “We can do that later.”

I tapped one of her ear keys. It swung back and forth.

“If you still want to, I mean,” she said.

Every time the key swung back toward my finger, I touched it again, just perceptibly adding to its momentum, like pushing a monkey on a swing.

After a full minute of silence I said to the earring, “Do you really think that Angelica Stepnowski murdered her husband?”

Lavinia didn't move. The little key swung back and I tapped it once, twice, three times. Then the musculature beneath the fine down that covered Lavinia's cheek rippled and I heard, “Musicians are hard to live with.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Drummers are the worst. All those paradiddles, whatever you called them. What a drummer calls etudes everybody else calls noise.”

“But they love it.”

She nodded. “It's still noise. But a musician has to practice. You'd think a woman who would marry a drummer would realize what she was letting herself in for.”

Her eyes met mine and we shared our inner depths, two aquariums that wanted cleaning. I looked away. “That's what you would think.” What the hell was I expecting?

Lavinia said, “A musician wants to fuck; then he wants to play music. That's his life.”

“Oy,” I agreed. “It seems so simple.”

“But a man is a man,” Lavinia continued. “Some men are good, some bad. So a guy's a drummer. So what?”

“That Garcia guy thinks it was a crime of passion,” I noted. “That's why the money wasn't taken. The only person in this picture to feel passionate about Stepnowski, theoretically, would be his wife.”

“He's entitled to his opinion. And it lets us off the hook.”

“‘Like loveboids',” I said.

“Who?”

“Stepnowski and his wife.”

“Angelica.”

“Loveboids.”

“How do you know?”

I shook my head. “I don't.”

“Then why do you say so?”

“That's what the landlord told me.”

“That guy? Yuck.”

“I know what you think of him, but that's not the point. Listen to what he said. They were like that.” I entwined two fingers and held them up. “A couple of loveboids.”

“I wouldn't believe that guy if he told me George W. Bush was a puppet of the oil industry.”

“Why not?”

“Because he's a creep, that's why.”

“Bush?”

“No. Yes. But I meant the landlord.”