Spiral, page 20
part #13 of John F Cuddy Series
After about two minutes, I knew what Eisen meant. LaGaylia could sing, yes, but the interpretations she put on the composer’s notes and lyrics, the facial expressions and hand gestures—of joy or pain, love or jealousy—were extraordinary. By the end of her set, I’d seen and heard the best female vocalist of my life.
I also realized that Eisen had been right about my meal. ”You want, they can doggy-bag the rest of the steak?” The crowd was still buzzing about LaGaylia as I lost sight of her. ”I can eat it cold.”
”Okay,” said Mitch Eisen, ”But we got two more places I want you to see before we call it a night.”
As we drove down Route 1, I said, ”Why haven’t I ever heard of LaGaylia before?”
‘You mean, she does Alanis, Mariah, even Melissa and a few more, with incredible range and fire, how come she isn’t a superstar herself?”
I didn’t get all his allusions. ”Basically, that’s my question.”
”Okay, Professor Eisen’s opening lesson of the night. The year LaGaylia was twenty-two, there were ninety-nine others her age with just as good a voice, face, and body. The year she was twenty-three, there were a hundred girls twenty-two, coming up behind her.”
”But how can the woman I just saw not be...?”
”Discovered?”
”And appreciated, I suppose.”
”Well, first of all, she is appreciated. LaGaylia’s a hell of a success down here. Packs them in three nights a week at Coconuts alone.”
”Okay.”
”Second, though, and more to your question, there’s got to be that magic of luck. Something special in a song, somebody like me hearing her sing it in a local place like Coconuts, with the right connections to launch her regionally and nationwide.”
”And even you haven’t made that happen for her?”
A glance over at me. ”Cuddy, I don’t represent the lady. I know what I do best, and unfortunately, her sound isn’t it.”
”But Spiral’s is?”
”Let you know later.”
The second place Eisen brought me was decorated in dark woods and brass, elegant yet comfortable. As we took seats at the nearly full bar, he said, ”Kitty Ryan started O’Hara’s on Las Olas about twelve, fifteen years ago. We’re in Hollywood—the name of the town, I mean. Kitty and her partner, Rich, just opened this branch, but once they’re finished, there’ll be a three-hundred-seat venue upstairs, big enough to attract national jazz acts.”
As a bartender named Mary brought us glasses of Merlot, I looked toward the stage. A diverse group of men and women started taking their places by different instruments, including a fiddle.
I said to Eisen, ”Jazz, not Irish?”
”Actually, the Pamala Stanley Band’s not really jazz, even. But despite not having an Irish person in the group— they’re Italian, Greek, Puerto Rican, Jewish—Kitty had them for her St. Patrick’s Day party in Lauderdale last year. You’ll see why in a minute.”
The group began to play, and after five terrific renditions, I hadn’t heard what I’d have called the same category of material twice. Blues to rock to folk to jazz, including some riffs by a woman named Randi on the fiddle that brought down the house.
At the band break, Eisen set his empty glass next to my half-full one. ”You up for another ‘lesson’?”
”Only if it’s on the way home.”
”It is.” He pulled out a tiny cellular phone. ”Lemme just make a call first while you finish your drink, be sure they got the right act there.”
I watched as Mitch Eisen walked out onto a fringe patio that bled into the sidewalk.
”Here, the valet makes sense,” he said, exiting the Corvette at our third stop.
Inside the main entrance, a tuxedoed doorman nodded to Eisen and said, ”Welcome to ‘September’s.” My eyes took some time adjusting to the cavernous space, a huge stage spotlit at a distance of at least a hundred feet, six or eight musicians and singers performing bombastically on it.
Moving toward them, we passed an oval, multitiered bar with female ‘tenders in black Eisenhower jackets and fishnet stockings. The ceiling rose twenty feet, with dark, rough-hewn beams and a jungle of plants trailing leafy vines. A lot of people held lit cigarettes, though, and the air was pretty thick with smoke under the kind of revolving glitter-globe I’ve always associated with Saturday Night Fever.
Just as we ordered brandies, a slim black man in a double-breasted suit moved to the microphone at center stage, and the room grew quiet, even the people on the stainless steel dance floor stopping to watch.
”He’s why we’re here,” said Eisen into my ear.
The man began to sing, but with just murmurs of accompaniment from a keyboard and guitar. I'd heard the song before but never thought of the tune as a hit.
Until this guy began singing it.
The precision and control he had over his voice and mannerisms was astonishing, his range at the high end enough to shatter crystal. When he finished five or six minutes later, the stage went suddenly dark, and everybody stood and applauded wildly, including waitresses and bartenders who must have heard him in the past.
I turned to Eisen. ”Wow.”
”Johnny Mathis and AI Jarreau, rolled into one.” Recorded music came on, a guy in the raised booth taking over from the live entertainment.
Eisen said, ”You want to ask somebody to dance, go ahead.”
”Not tonight, thanks.”
He nodded before downing the last of his drink. ”We about ready, then?”
”To go, yes.”
The night’s breeze felt good after all the smoke inside September’s. Eisen drove the Corvette carefully, constantly checking his speed and slowing down for significant stretches on the fairly empty streets.
I said, ”Worried about a ticket?”
He didn’t glance over. ”Hot car like this, the cops expect you to be going over the limit. And after a brandy, you can get stuck by the Breathalyzer even if your blood’s still fine. So, I don’t give them any excuse to stop me.”
”What’s the excuse for where we’ve been tonight?” Eisen did glance over this time. ”What do you mean?”
”Those bars, and your ‘lessons’ on music.”
His eyes went back to the road. ”Cuddy, what did you see and hear?”
”Three different kinds of entertainment.”
”Describe them.”
”Why?”
”Indulge me.”
I said, ”Female vocalist with accompaniment, versatile band with fiddler, show band with a male lead singer.”
”Okay, that’s objective. How about subjective?”
I tried to capture what I’d felt. ”People with talent, enjoying themselves.”
”That’s it. On the fucking button. Everybody on those stages was talented, and the better performers brought out the best in the rest. Made them play up to the level of the most talented person on the stage.”
”Your point?”
”My point,” said Eisen, ”is that those people are gonna be talented, and perform like that, no matter what’s hot on the CHR stations.”
”The top-40 ones.”
”Like I told you in my office. All the performers you saw tonight, they’re gonna be fine, regardless of which way the fickle fucking wind blows.”
I thought I saw it. ”But Spiral won’t be.”
A nod, sad in its certainty. ”That’s right, too. Spi and the boys, they’re has-beens, a garage band that just happened to have the right sound for a couple of years, and an echo of the right sound for a couple more. Except maybe for Ricky, and even he has just the talent, not the instinct.”
”The instinct?”
”It’s like an animal thing. The desire to climb the ladder of success with a fucking knife between your teeth.”
”I thought I saw some of that when I spoke with Spi Held.”
”No.” A shake of the head, even sadder than the nod had been. ”No, what you saw in Spi is desperation. The guy was on top once, and that’s a hell of a sweet taste to have in your mouth, Cuddy. Only problem is, it doesn’t last very long And when that sweet taste works its way from your mouth to your gut, it starts rotting down there. Makes you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily.”
Eisen turned into the drive for my hotel. Instead of using the circular spur servicing the main entrance, though, he went past the pool area and came to a stop at the entrance to the parking garage.
I shifted sidesaddle in my seat to face him. ”There a reason we’re back here?”
”Yeah. I don’t want some fucking bellhop hearing me ask you questions with names attached to them.”
”Like what?”
Eisen squeezed the steering wheel of his car like an exercise machine. ”Twenty, twenty-five years ago, I managed a mixed bag of fucking kids with more energy than talent, and more talent than brains. You saw for yourself how fucked up they all are, and believe me, Tommy O’Dell was even more fucked up than the ones who lived through it.”
”Through what?”
”The rock-star scene, with all it does to you for the little it does for you. But there’s one thing it does real well, Cuddy, and that’s produce money. Fuck, you’d think it shits the stuff, the way the green rolls in.”
I thought back to Gordo Lazar’s description of Eisen and Held, on that ”comforter of cash” in the bedroom of their tour bus. ”But that was then.”
”And this is now. Or it could have been, Very didn’t piss somebody off enough to snuff her.”
I stared at Eisen. ”If you have a point, Mitch, I’m not seeing it.”
He returned my stare, the eyes hard. ”There’s a possibility, a faint fucking thread of a chance, that I can get that I mixed bag of fuckheads up and running again enough to make some real money out of all this.”
”You said as much in your office.”
”The right spin, yeah. But that’d take a lot of my time for no real return unless that thread comes through.” Eisen’s eyes grew harder. ”And even that fucking thread gets cut, the money train don’t stop at the station anymore.”
”Colonel Helides backing the band.”
”Right. So here’s what I figure. Very’s killed by somebody in the band, we’re fucked with the Colonel. He’s never gonna keep writing checks’ll remind him of what one of them did.”
”Go on.”
”But, I figure that if somebody else did his granddaughter, then maybe, just maybe, the money train rolls on, kind of a sympathy vote, you might say.”
I willed the words to my lips. ”A memorial almost.”
”Exact-a-mundo. Like a fucking memorial to the dead kid.” The eyes grew even harder still, the hair plugs marching down his forehead. ”So, what I want to know is, you getting any vibes on this thing?”
”Vibes.”
”You know. Feelings, hunches, whatever the fuck you call them.”
”About who actually killed Veronica Held.”
Now the eyes widened. ”Of course about who fucking killed her.”
I decided to use Eisen before he used me. ”I think Spi Held cared more about his comeback than his offspring.”
”No question there.”
”I also think for Buford Biggs, it’s the reverse.”
”Agreed again. Once Buford found out he had the plague, Kalil’s been about the only thing he talks about.”
”What was Kalil’s relationship to Veronica?”
That stopped Eisen for a moment. ”Relationship? You mean, would I bet on whether those two jailbaits were fucking each other?”
I bit back what I wanted to say. "Start there.”
Eisen thought a moment more. ”Not unless it was Very’s idea.”
”Because?”
”Because Kalil fucking worshipped the ground she mashed him into.”
”Mashed?”
”The little vixen used people, Cuddy. Like I told you, and like probably everybody but her mommy told you, too. Any time I saw them together, Very made Kalil her gofer. Or her whipping boy. She’d do jokes on his stutter thing.”
”Kalil said she didn’t.”
”Maybe not to his face, but let him go to the kitchen, get her a soda, and Very’d be saying, ‘I j-j-just love Dr P-p-pep-per.’”
”Are you telling me Kalil was aware of that?”
”Buford sure was. I heard him lay into Spi once about it. ‘Can’t you teach your fucking child some manners,’ etc., etc.”
”And?”
”And nothing. Spi couldn’t control his daughter any more than...”
”Any more than what, Mitch?”
”Any more than anybody else. She had a mind of her own, the little bitch.”
I waited a minute before saying, ”How about a reason why Gordo Lazar or Ricky Queen would want to harm her?”
”Maybe just for being a pain in the ass, but I don’t see either of them getting that passionate about it.” A grunted laugh. ”Especially Ricky, for obvious reasons.”
”His sexual orientation?”
”If you like to call it that.” Eisen suddenly checked his watch. ”Look, it’s getting late, and I gotta be up and at ‘em early tomorrow. So, what’s your take?”
”Beyond the things we’ve talked about, I haven’t gotten any ‘vibes’ yet.”
Mitch Eisen nodded, but not sadly now. ”Let me know if you do, huh? Be a bonus in it for you.”
”Bonus?”
”Yeah. I don’t want to waste any more of my time on those fuckheads if one of them got terminally stupid.”
After getting out of the car, I watched Eisen drive away, his shifting of gears winding out into the quiet night air. As I began to cut across the mini-jungle surrounding the pool area, my mind started heading toward the dream of Nancy I might have again. And dreaded having.
When I got nearer the pool, the hotel lights danced off the water like a dozen setting suns, and a couple of geckos skittered across my path. Then I heard a skittering noise behind me, too.
It could have been one of the geckos’ cousins, if that side of the family weighed in at two hundred and change.
I wheeled around, the blade in the guy’s right hand glinting from the lights reflecting off the water. I went back a step with my left forearm up to protect the throat and eyes as my right hand stayed flat and belt-high to shield the belly and chest. But he’d already slashed across the top, my left forearm feeling wet just a second after the branding-iron sensation shot to my brain.
The guy strode in closer, comfortable with the buck knife. ”This is for Sunday, fucker.”
An accent like Detective Kyle Cascadden’s, though I didn’t have time to think much about it.
Now the guy came up from under, for the heart or a lung. Not trusting my left hand for gripping, I pivoted on my left foot, parrying the thrust of his arm with my right hand. Then I kicked out with my right foot at his right knee, getting part—but not all—of the joint as my plant foot slid on the pool tiles like a field-goal kicker’s on a slick turf. I went down and heard more than felt my head hit the corner of a lounge chair, the stars rising up behind my eyes.
I thought he’d finish me until I registered the whooshing sound of his blade going by, where my throat would have been if I hadn’t slipped. I kicked up this time, catching his elbow and hearing a cracking sound before he roared in pain. The buck knife clattered off the tiles to the right of me.
Shaking my head to clear my vision, I saw a blurry figure hobbling toward the parking garage. He was favoring his right leg and cradling his right arm.
Then, from a middle distance, I heard him yell, ”Fucker, next time I won’t stop... to see your eyes before I do you.”
Starting to get up, I found my feet wouldn’t work quite right, and my head spun no matter how hard I shook it There was quite a lot of my blood seeping through—hell, pouring through the slash wound in my left arm, and I realized that’s what had made the lip of the pool so slippery.
A vehicle I couldn’t see through the bushes peeled rubber coming out of the garage and up the drive toward the road. My feet were still flopping a little at the ends of my ankles when I heard the sound of a heavy door by the hotel building and some shouts followed by running footsteps and more shouts.
I closed my eyes, tried to picture the guy. White, rough features, solid build. Oh yeah, and a tattoo on the forearm of his knife hand. Not a Marine Corps one, though. This was of a spider.
Some people were over me now, at least one gagging as another yelled to get a towel or something, for crissake. A third person from nearer the hotel said they’d already called 911.
I’d been hurt before, and I didn’t think I was in shock. In feet, I was sure of it, right up till the moment I passed out.
FOURTEEN
As Nancy sank deeper and deeper, I dived into the water after her. I thought my clothes would weigh me down, but instead they buoyed me up. Then I realized I was wearing a life vest, which I couldn’t seem to make my fingers unbuckle. When I finally got the thing off, I took a huge breath and started kicking for the bottom.
The salt water burned my eyes, and all I could see was blue-black shimmering, some tiny organisms drifting past my face. Then I spotted Nancy. Or her hair, at least, still billowing up but still out of reach as well.
Locking my knees, I kicked even harder, both legs scissoring from the hips as I extended my fingers toward the waving strands of—
Which was when somebody dropped a garbage can lid next to me.
The other guy in my hospital room looked over, sheepish in the dull glow of the EXIT sign above our door. ”Sorry, pal. Bedpan slipped right outta my hands.”
I think I said something, then lay my head back against the softest pillow God had ever helped the hand of man to fashion.
* * **
”I don’t think it was shock,” said the doctor with a Creole accent overlaid with some French, flipping through my chart at the side of the bed.
”Neither did I before I blacked out.”
She frowned, creating bittersweet chocolate lines in a milk chocolate complexion. ”Mild concussion, more likely. Here,” her finger ran across a page, ‘Patient says that he fell and struck the back of his head.’”
