Spiral, page 24
part #13 of John F Cuddy Series
”I’d like to see your husband.”
”Spi’s not here.”
”Do you know when he’ll be back?”
A slow movement of her head. ”Not for a long time.” The way she enunciated the words, Jeanette Held might have been talking hours or years.
I said, ”Do you know where I might find him?”
”Yeah.”
I waited.
She exhaled. ”The band’s doing a sound check at this club in Lauderdale.”
”Which club is that?”
”I don’t remember the name, but Spi said it was on southwest Second.”
”Street or avenue?”
‘You know that much about the city, you’ll find it”
As she began to close the door, I said, ”Jeanette, are you all right?”
”No,” a little energy working its way past the surface. ”No, as a matter of feet, I’m pretty shitty. My daughter’s dead, and the one person I thought could maybe carry me through that never showed up today.”
”Malinda Dujong,” I said, the tingle in my head turning into a penny and dropping through its slot as Jeanette Held closed her door.
Dujong hadn’t returned my call back to her, which I thought explained why I’d felt the tingle checking my voice mail at the hotel. I figured the concussion explained why I’d forgotten to try her a second time.
On the other hand, she was the one who wanted to reach me.
Driving toward the southwest part of Fort Lauderdale, I picked up my cell phone and got Dujong’s number at the tennis club from directory assistance. After I dialed and heard a ring, though, all I got was her same outgoing tape announcement. I left: another message, giving both my hotel and portable numbers again.
Pushing the end button, I set the phone on the seat beside me. I might not be able to locate Malinda Dujong, but I thought I could find the people in Spiral.
Who supposedly knew something about ”SuNDy MoRAn.”
On a rough day, I finally got some luck. There were rows of bars and restaurants a couple of blocks west of the railroad tracks on S.W. 2nd Street. Since it was only late afternoon, I found a space in front of a place trying very hard to look like an authentic English pub. I went inside, the place more a spot for sedentary drinking than live music. A barmaid smiled at me, an impressive selection of labeled tap handles mounted on the wall behind her.
”What might I get you, luv?”
Even an English accent. ”Any idea where a rock band would be doing its sound check on this street?”
She looked toward the door I’d come in through. ”Lots of us have live music at night, but when I took my cigarette break a while ago, some guys were yelling inside Dicey Riley’s across the street.”
‘Yelling or playing?”
A wry smile. ”More of the first than the second, I’m afraid.”
There was a large bar catercorner from the English pub. Halfway through the intersection, I could hear what the barmaid had meant.
”Jesus fuck, Buford, that’s the second time you came in late on that—”
Spi Held.
”Wasn’t late, babe. You got to listen for the—”
Biggs.
”I know late from right, man.” Held again. ”And late is—” As I drew even with the open doorway, Ricky Queen said, ”Dudes, we got only another hour before—”
Held’s voice cracked as he nearly screamed his words. ”We got all the fucking time we need to get this shit right!” It was dark and smoky inside the bar, which seemed to reach deep beyond a ramp wide enough for a platoon to march up it three abreast. The performance area lay to the right, a man I at first didn’t recognize standing with his back to me, black hair cascading onto his shoulders in almost lush waves.
Gordo Lazar was facing me. ”Spi, we got company.” The man with all the hair turned around abruptly. Held himself, wearing a rug that blew past toupee all the way to wig.
”The fuck do you want?” he said to me.
”Hey,” came an unfamiliar voice out of the darkness. ”If you’re gonna talk with your lawyer or whatever, I’m gonna—” Held wheeled around toward the voice, an index finger swiping viciously under his nose. ”The fuck kind of houseman are you?”
”The boss said you guys were supposed to be professionals—”
”—sup-posed to be?—”
”—from the old days. Well, I run this control board seven nights a week, and this is the longest I’ve ever seen a sound check—”
”Go fuck yourself!” from Held.
”Okay,” said the voice in back. ”I’ll tell the boss you’re gonna wing it tonight.”
Footfalls sounded hollow in the nearly empty place. ”Christ, babe,” said Buford Biggs to Held in a mollifying tone.
Now Held wheeled on him. ”We don’t need a houseman doesn’t stick with his job.”
Queen came out from behind his drums. ”Like I told you coming in here, I know the dude. Let me talk to him.” I said, ”First I’d like to talk with all of you.”
Spi Held wheeled on me, now, like the villain in a cartoon. ”This is more important.”
”Not to the man paying the freight”
Held opened and closed his mouth twice, but no words came out. Then he sniffled.
Ricky Queen said, ”How about if we break for ten, Spi? I go talk to the houseman, you guys talk with the detective Here, and when I come back, he’s still got questions, I’ll handle him myself?” Queen looked over to me, a little grin toying with the comers of his mouth. ”I think I can handle Mr. Detective until he’s... satisfied.”
Held never turned to look at his drummer. ”Yeah. Yeah, good idea, Rick. We could use a break.”
”Amen to that,” said Buford Biggs, lifting his hands from the keyboard in front of him.
* * *
We sat at a square table on the fringe of sunlight spilling through the door to the outside world. Spi Held was across from me, Biggs to my right and Lazar to my left.
Held said, ”Okay, ten minutes.”
I decided to lead with the bomb. ”Sundy Moran.” Gordo Lazar flinched, then looked over at Buford Biggs, who tried very hard to be casual. Spi Held glanced in a confused way at Lazar first, then Biggs.
”What the fuck is a Sunday Moran?” said the leader of the band.
I watched Lazar before answering. ”Not ‘Sunday,’ but S-U-N-D-Y. A woman’s name.”
The bass guitarist furrowed his brow. ”Actually, it started out as ‘Sunday.’”
Held joined me in looking at Lazar, who made a point of not looking at Biggs anymore.
I said, ”Let’s hear it.”
Gordo Lazar ran a hand over his shaved head, then stroked a scar on his right cheek. ”It was back when we were touring, man. The original Spiral. We did a gig down here— Miami somewhere, I don’t know, they kind of blended together.” Lazar inhaled and exhaled. ”Anyway, this one chick was standing near the stage, flashing Tommy.”
”Flashing?” I said.
‘Yeah.” Lazar realized I didn’t get it. ”You remember ‘streaking,’ right?”
”Somebody running naked through a crowd.”
He nodded. ”Or when that guy did it at the Oscars, and the television camera just missed bringing his dick into fifty million living rooms.” Lazar’s eyes went down toward the tabletop. ”Well, flashing was when a braless chick flipped up her shirt, flashing tittie.”
”And this woman did that to Tommy O’Dell?”
”Her and dozens of others. Man, Tommy had the magic. But this one, she had a set could poke your eyes out, and so he had one of the roadies tap her to come backstage afterwards.”
Spi Held swiped under his nose again. ”The fuck does this have to do with Very getting killed?”
”Be patient,” I said. ”We might be about to hear.”
Lazar glanced up at me, then back down again. ”Before you know it, Tommy’s planking this chick in the bed on our bus.”
Held sniffled twice. ”The fuck was I?”
Biggs pointed to his own nose. ”Riding Snow White’s trail, babe.”
Held looked at his keyboardist, but didn’t say anything.
I stayed with Lazar. ”Go on.”
He worried his scar some more. ”Well, a while later, this chick writes to Tommy. Claims she’s pregnant, and that it Had to be him. He hands me the letter and says, ‘What do you think?’ Well, there’s like details in there about the concert, songs we played and all. So I read what she wrote and said to him, ‘She claims it was on a Sunday, why don’t you call her kid that?’ And Tommy laughed and said that’s what he’d tell the chick to do.”
Donna Moran, the woman who didn’t like country music, apparently felt different about rock. I tried to picture her as a young groupie. Couldn’t. ”Is that it?”
Lazar glanced up to Biggs, then Held. ”Spi, you said We’re supposed to level with this guy, right?”
”Right,” said Held, without much conviction. ”But I still don’t see shit about what this has to do with Very.”
Lazar went back to Biggs. ”You want to tell him the rest?”
The keyboardist obviously wasn’t relishing the opportunity. ”What ‘rest,’ babe?”
”At Spi s dad’s place, man.”
I said to Biggs, ”You know what he means?”
”Not me.”
”Christ, Buford.” Lazar looked at Held. ”It was month ago, when we were at your father’s house about him maybe bankrolling the comeback.”
”Wait a minute. Yeah.” Held sniffled some more but also sounded far, far away. ”Yeah, I remember that.”
Lazar said, ”We’re all sitting around in that big living room, where the birthday party was. Very, Tranh, even Cassandra. And your father’s not too happy about Very being in the band, especially using that name, 'Very,’ and we all start talking about the really weird ones from the old days, like Frank Zappa’s kid ‘Moonbeam’ and somebody from TV being ‘Seagull.’ And then I said ‘Don’t forget Tommy’s Sundy, too.’”
Lazar pronounced it without the ”a.” I leaned toward him. ”How did you know it was shortened like that?”
He stared across the table this time. ”Buford, your lead."
Biggs gave him a sour smile.
Spi Held said, ”Come on, tell the man.”
Biggs turned his head toward me. ”After Very convince her granddaddy that she really, really want him to make the comeback happen, we all start drifting out into that big corridor towards the front door. I pull Gordo aside, say he shouldn’t be bringing up Tommy’s kid, account of I heard she use the street name ‘Sundy’ when she on the stroll.”
”Meaning working as a prostitute.”
”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.’”
