Spiral, page 25
part #13 of John F Cuddy Series
”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?”
Half a glance toward me. ”I seen them. Garbage.”
”The tapes?”
Biggs turned his head more toward me, the muscles on his neck stark against the sagging skin. ”The tapes was garbage, and that’s where I throwed them.”
”When?”
”Right after that little bitch tease me about how my son got the stutter with his hands like he do with his mouth.”
I tried to phrase the next question very carefully. ”So, before Veronica was killed?”
”Of course before she killed. How she gonna tease me about Kalil, she dead already?”
”Tell me what happened?”
Biggs went back to the train. ”We was at Spi’s crib, just finishing up trying to salvage one of his cowshit songs. I go out on the patio there—by the pool, where you and me sat—for a smoke, and Very sashays on over through those glass doors, sets her tight little ass down across from me.” Biggs had trouble with the rest. ”She say to me, ‘How come Kalil want me to do the strip for him, but not the tease?’ I say to the child, ‘You too young for that shit, both of you. Stay the hell away from my son.’ And Very say, ‘Kalil’s not so young, and I like some variety in my experiences.’ I say, ‘Just stay away from tempting him,’ and she say, ‘He can have me anytime he want, on television.’” Biggs swallowed hard. ”I like to swat that little bitch hard enough to send her into the wall, but I thought about what she say, and later on I ask Kalil what Very mean by ‘television.’ And he bring out these videos he shoot.”
”I know this isn’t easy for you, Buford, but it might help me if you could describe—”
”I ain’t gonna describe nothing. There was three tapes, and I burned them. But I tell you this. You seen the video Kalil do of Very singing for her grandfather at his party?”
”The police screened it for me.”
”Yeah, well, you picture the same kind of song and her in the same kind of outfit. Only now it just Kalil in the room, and Very not in her outfit very long.” Biggs blew out a breath. ”The little bitch was right about one thing. Kalil, he so excited, that camera musta been jumping on his shoulder, account of the way Very look on that tape.”
”The way she looked?”
”Like it was her and not her daddy Spi bouncing around the room from the nose candy.”
I thought again about the autopsy report. The train’s caboose finally whooshed by, and even the bells and whistles from the crossing gate couldn’t dent the silence I felt sitting next to Buford Biggs before getting out of his car.
Driving to the tennis club, I used the cellular phone to check my voice mail at the hotel. Nothing from Malinda Dujong, but Mitch Eisen was on it, asking me to call him as soon as possible.
After dialing, I heard a few clicks before ”Mitch Eisen.”
”Mitch, John Cuddy.”
”Hey, how’s the boy detective?”
”In need of a few more answers.”
”Well, I might have them, and you’re lucky.”
”Lucky?”
”I forwarded my office phone to my cellular, because I didn’t want to be out of touch riding to the beach. Where are you right now?”
I told him.
”Perfect. Just go down to Las Olas and take it east to the beach. Park wherever you can.”
”And you’ll be?”
”In the place on the Oceanside corner, second floor,” said Mitch Eisen. ”Can’t miss it, in both senses of the expression.”
At street level, a sign read the elbo room. An open-walled bar was packed, mostly by older males acting like college kids. The steps leading to the second floor felt sticky enough to have been slopped with leftover beer. Reaching the upper bar, I couldn’t see much change in the clientele. But a live band was playing surfer music from the sixties, many people chanting the well-worn lyrics. Altogether, it was just about quiet enough to hear a bomb drop.
From the railing overlooking the beach road, Mitch Eisen waved to me. I slalomed around clumps of swaying party animals, Eisen glancing at the bandage on my arm when I reached him.
”That from the mugging thing?” he shouted over the din.
”Primarily.”
”Well, I hope you’re feeling better.” He motioned with his hand in an encompassing way. ”So, what do you think?”
”Of what?”
”The Elbo Room. This is it, man. When Lauderdale was the Mecca of Spring Break, where you’re standing now was the holiest of mosques.”
I noticed Eisen had most of a beer left in a plastic cup. Leaning into him, I said, ”Can we find someplace quieter?”
He seemed shocked. ”But the view of history...” The hand now went out toward the palm trees and a white, two-foot-square wave wall separating the sidewalk from the sandy beach. ”Remember Where the Boys Are?”
I made a hitchhiking gesture toward the stairs I’d just used. Shaking his head, Eisen drained maybe half the beer remaining in his cup and waved a theatrical farewell to the crowd, though I didn’t notice anybody waving back to him.
When we were on the sidewalk, he said, ”There are some great new places just opened last year. Sloppy Joe’s, that Hemingway bar from Key West. Howl at the Moon, which is a franchise operation, but—”
”Mitch, how about we just sit on the wave wall over there, talk about some things?”
”Sure,” said Eisen. ”I’ve always been a people-watcher.” After crossing A1A, we found a spot fifty feet from our nearest neighbors, so nobody could eavesdrop on us. I brushed off the top of the wall and sat facing the ocean, my shoes in the sand.
Eisen eased himself down to my left, feeing the street but even enough with me that a single bullet could have gone through all four of our ears. ”I don’t know about your choice of viewing there, John. Kind of late for bikinis on the beach.”
”After the day I’ve had, I find it peaceful.”
Eisen frowned, his hair plugs inching downward. ”Things okay?”
”No, but I don’t need to tell you most of it.”
”Hey, I’m happy to hear what you got to say. Like I mentioned last night, it’d be good for me to stay ahead of the media curve on this.”
”Investment-wise.”
”Every-wise. What have you got?”
”Sundy Moran’s connection to Spiral.”
Eisen made a clucking noise in his mouth. ”Shit.”
”I’m glad to see you’re mourning her, too.”
”Frankly, I was kind of hoping that’d slide on through.”
”Her murder?”
”No. Any whiff that she was tied into the band.” Eisen turned sidesaddle to me, his left leg now bent at the knee but resting flat on top of the wall. ”Look, Cuddy. One death from an overdose twenty years ago, that was to be expected, the times and all. A current death of the little girl singer who’s gonna bring an old band back from the grave, that’s like... cachet, we can handle the spin right.”
”I heard enough of this angle back in your office.”
”Yeah, but you’re adding a new ingredient. We got to go for damage control here, and I can’t afford another leak in the good ship Spiral.”
”Which Sundy Moran’s connection with the band would spring.”
”Exact-o-mundo.”
”She came to you, didn’t she?”
Mitch Eisen could have been one of those modem statues cast from bronze and placed in casual positions on park benches. I’m not sure even his lips moved with ”Came to me?”
”When Tommy O’Dell was on the way out, didn’t you meet with Donna Moran, the mother?”
”The mother?” Eisen seemed to relax. ”Yeah, yeah. The mother. She claimed Tommy was the father of her little bundle of joy.”
”Some of the other band members might be able to back her on that”
”Hey, John, you gotta remember the times. Nobody ever heard of sexual harassment or date rape. Shit, you worried about statutory rape—account of a lot of these chicks looked legal—and maybe whether you’d get a case of lice or crabs.”
”But not a paternity suit.”
”Look, this Donna Moran comes to see me, belly like it oughta be carried in a wheelbarrow. Says she’s pregnant by Tommy, and I’m the manager, and what are we going to do about it?”
”We?”
”The band, Spiral. I told her we’d pay for an abortion— God bless Roe versus Wade—but Moran says no, she wants the kid but we should pony up for supporting it. I tell her no way, and eventually she sees our side of things.”
”And what, just goes away?”
”Has the kid, gives it her own name, turns out. Never bothers us again.” Eisen leaned toward me. ”Frankly, I’m surprised she didn’t shoot her mouth off about it to the cops or die media once Very turned up dead.”
The cops. ”The police don’t know Sundy Moran was Tommy O’Dell’s daughter?”
Eisen cringed. ”Man, you keep saying that, don’t make it so. Girl’s gonna flash her boobies at some strung-out guy on stage she don’t know from a serial killer, how many other clicks you figure blazed the trail for Tommy’s?”
I kept my temper. ”Aside from coincidence, any possible connection between the killings of Veronica Held and Sundy Moran?”
”Hell, no. I read the paper and see the little piece about the Moran girl, all I can imagine is some high-school friend of the mother thinking, ‘Wait a minute, maybe I can get my fifteen minutes on Montel or Leeza, blow the whistle on who Donna thinks the daddy was.’ But that never happened, so I’m guessing the mother didn’t tell anybody about Tommy.”
”Did Sundy Moran ever know?”
”That Tommy was—might have been—her father? Beats me. She sure never came around to my office with her hand out, anyway.”
I thought back to something Buford Biggs had told me , the day before. ”Even if Sundy had shown up on your doorstep, though, Tommy O’Dell really didn’t have any ; estate to leave her, right?”
”Right,” a little too quickly.
”And that’s because all his composer royalties—”
”Lyricist royalties, actually.”
”All his royalties from Spiral’s music devolved under his will to you.”
Eisen swung back around, facing the street again. ”That was the deal we had. My original venture capital, their unrealized potential.”
”Which got ‘realized.’”
”Yeah, but only because of me.” Eisen began flaring. ”What those fuckheads had before I took them on was pie-in-the sky, over-the-rainbow royalties.”
Then he hung his head. ”You see this little strip?”
I swung my legs around to the sidewalk. Eisen was studying a snaking tube embedded in the wave wall. Something within or behind the tube made it glow pink, then blue, then green, then —
”It’s a nice touch,” he said. ”You drive north on A1A here at night, you can watch the little strips in the wall change color as you go by. I don’t know how the city does it, but it’s a nice trick.”
Mitch Eisen looked up at me now, his eager eyes seeming to belong more in a child’s face. ”Like you’re really getting near the end of the rainbow, even.”
SEVENTEEN
A guard—named Lenny this time—said, ”Ms. Dujong doesn’t answer, sir.”
Through the Cavalier’s open window, I looked up at him in the sentry box of the tennis club. Fiftyish, solid. ”No answer at all, or just her telephone tape?”
He thought about it, maybe whether or not he should tell me. ”Her machine.”
Same as I’d drawn when I tried to call her. ”How about Cornel Radescu?”
Lenny said, ”I know for a fact he’s playing a featured match on Court One right now.”
”Can you interrupt him?”
”No, sir.”
”Okay. Let’s go with Cassandra Helides.”
Lenny picked up the phone again. After a minute, he said, ”Sorry, no answer period.”
I was beginning to feel a little stupid. ”And there’s no way you can let me in without somebody vouching for me?”
”Correct, sir.”
”But I came in yesterday when Clinton was on duty.”
”Someone has to authorize a visitor for each day, and your name’s not in my book for this shift.”
I didn’t want to call Duy Tranh. ”Could you try Don Floyd?”
Lenny perked up. ”Mr. Floyd? Of course.”
A few seconds after he punched in a number, I could see Lenny’s lips moving against the receiver before he nodded and hung up.
