I was exhausted by the time I talked her off the line. I used some of Clay’s cash to buy a local Oregonian, a map, a cup of steaming coffee, and a huge Nestlé’s Crunch bar.
Breakfast.
I knocked on the trunk in passing.
“I’m gonna faint in here,” Clay yelled.
“Good,” I hollered back.
God knows what the nosy clerk, peering through the blinds, thought. I gulped the coffee without tasting it, ate half the candy bar standing in the chill morning air. It felt fine to be outdoors in sunlight.
* * *
—
The air was different, canned and smoky, at Dee’s first Portland gig. After managing a few hours’ sleep, I entered the hall as soon as the doors opened, the first fan inside the tiny auditorium. The stalker was not in the house. The police had been glad to take him off my hands. We’d had a little private eye–to-felon chat before I turned him in. I’d mentioned the inadvisability of naming Dee Willis, unless he wanted his fifteen minutes of fame fast, followed by a lifetime of hate mail and hard prison time.
Dee’s popular with inmates. She does jailhouse concerts.
I kept my lies simple. I’d landed late at the airport. No cabs. Guy had pretended to be a legit limo driver, offered me a ride into town for twenty bucks, tried to attack me. I showed my license, my Massachusetts permit to carry. Perp had picked on the wrong victim. The cops were sympathetic. I presented them with Clayton’s various IDs, suggested they check outstanding warrants and parole violations in all his assumed names as well as his own.
I didn’t think they’d come up empty.
I watched the crowd filter in, young and old, dressed up, dressed down. Joking, laughing, getting ready for a great time.
No opening act. The curtain rose on the band, playing “For Tonight,” the early rocker Dee had made her anthem. Her voice came from everywhere, amplified. The audience gawked, expecting her to enter from stage right, stage left, down one aisle, then another. She chose her moment brilliantly, theatrical as always, appearing suddenly behind an onstage scrim, rainbow lights glistening her white satin tux.
I settled into my crushed velveteen seat and fell for the magic. For glistening bodies shiny with sweat. For the beat and the lyrics and the glorious close harmonies. For the old songs, by John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson and Son House and Mama Thornton, that Dee had taken, transformed, and made her own. I saw her through a looking-glass of memory at first, but she shattered the barrier with song after song, dragging me into the moment, her moment.
That’s her gift. She makes you forget everything but the song. Makes you care about lyrics written seventy years ago by a Mississippi sharecropper, makes them more important than a crummy day at the office or a fight with the kids. Dee gets so deep into the music, it’s a wonder she ever climbs out.
I didn’t leave my seat at intermission. I didn’t move until the last encore ended. Didn’t stand till everyone else had gone. Then I parted a red velvet drape and mounted the steps leading backstage.
The dressing rooms were upstairs, eight of them, two per floor, four floors. The “chauffeur” had outlined the setup. I knew which room was Dee’s. First floor back. I kept climbing, up to the second floor front. I knocked once, stepped inside. I kept my voice low; I didn’t want Dee to hear.
The room was Spartan, linoleum floor, peeling paint on bare walls. Air freshener and body odor warred, neither victorious.
Dee and I have long shared a taste in men: tall, bone-thin, and musically inclined. Ron, in his early forties now, and Cal, my ex, shared enough superficial similarities to pass as a pair of matching bookends.
Ron was buttoning a purple silk shirt over his skinny torso, tucking the shirttail into tight jeans. The jeans disappeared into high snakeskin boots. His guitar lay across a countertop. I brushed a string to get his attention.
He glanced at my reflection in the mirror, sank into a hardbacked chair.
“Carlotta,” he said, both grin and voice forced.
“Don’t bother smiling for me, Ron.”
“No bother,” he lied. “Long time.”
“I’ve had a talk with your boy, Clay.”
He fumbled for an answer, an excuse. “Clay doesn’t know shit,” he said, after a long pause. “Clay’s not my ‘boy.’ ”
“He knows who hired him, Ron. He’s real sure about that.”
“You don’t fuckin’ understand,” the lead guitar player said, slamming his fist down against the countertop.
“I understand that you love Dee, Ron. I understand that’s hard.”
He nodded, so slightly it was barely perceptible.
“I mean about Clay,” he said. “There’s no understanding Dee. I’ve given up on that. But with Clay, it got out of hand, Carlotta. I never meant it to get ugly.”
“Ugly, Ron? You’re talking about scaring somebody half to death. You’re talking about a stalker. You’re talking about a guy who tried to kill me last night.”
“Shit.” He split the word into two syllables, just like Clayton Fuller.
“Did you tell him I was coming?”
“Only reason I did was to scare him the hell off, Carlotta. Told him Dee’d hired a pro, somebody who’d nab his sorry ass. I figured he’d split. He’s changed, you know? People fuckin’ change on you….He’s somebody from the old days. Guy I played football with in high school. That’s all.”
“Hazlehurst,” I said.
“Hazlehurst High, yeah. He was a tough guy then. Still is.”
“You send for him?”
“He came to a concert. Out of the blue. We went out for a drink. He wanted me to introduce him to Dee. That’s what every guy in the fuckin’ country wants, an intro to Dee.”
“So?”
“So I told him that Dee and I were…together, but we were having our troubles. You know, like we always had.”
“Trouble staying faithful, you mean?”
“You know her.”
I folded my arms under my breasts, gave him a look. “Whereas you were always a saint, Ron. I remember that.”
“I only care for Dee. If she’d—”
“Did you ever ask her to marry you?”
“I always ask. Says she doesn’t want kids, so what’s the point?”
“And she likes men,” I observed.
“Probably sucking some guy’s dick right now,” he said without skipping a beat. “Celebrating ’cause Clay didn’t show.” Ron’s voice sounded dead as an urn full of ashes. “Wanna go check? It’s not like I never walked in on her before.”
“Let’s not change the tune here, Ron. It’s not illegal to sleep around. It is illegal to threaten somebody’s life.”
“Honest to God, I tried to stop him, Carlotta. Everybody in the band’ll tell you that. He was like a hound on the scent, out to do me a favor whether I wanted one or not.”
“You should have called the cops.”
Ron swallowed. “I thought about it. I told him it’d gone too far. He kinda laughed, then he said he’d cut my hand, cut the tendons, so I’d never play again. He swore if I turned him in he’d tell everybody it was my idea from the get-go.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Carlotta, I love her. I might have said something to Clay, probably did after I’d downed a few shots. Like, you know, I wish to hell she’d stop screwing around. Clay took it real personal. Said he’d been through two divorces and every time it was his wife cheatin’ on him, bangin’ this guy or that guy while he’s out earnin’ bread for the table.”
“And you believed him?”
Ron stared at his boots. I noticed a deep scratch across one toe. “I reckon if his wives ran off, they had good reason. I knew a girl he dated back in high school. She’d look at another guy, he’d smack her ’cross the mouth. She moved away, didn’t tell anybody where
she was headed. What I understand, one of his wives, at least, has got a restraining order out on Clay, maybe an arrest warrant. He told me he can’t see his kids, called his wife a castrating bitch. Really got off on it, how wicked she was. Couldn’t tell me enough about that evil woman.”
Good, I thought, hoping for the arrest warrant. I wanted the bastard locked up, but not at the expense of involving Dee. She didn’t need the tabloid coverage. She didn’t need every jerk who could read the Star or the Enquirer getting the idea that stalking Dee Willis might be a fine way to pass the hours.
“Did she sound evil to you?” I asked Ron. “The wife?”
He shook his head. “Sounded like she didn’t like gettin’ the shit kicked out of her. Sounded like she’d had enough and wanted out.”
I repeated, “You should have called the cops.”
He faced me directly, stared at me with ice-blue eyes. His voice sounded low and raspy, exhausted. He shook his head, kept shaking it slowly, side to side, as he spoke. “I thought he’d stick around a few nights, maybe make her realize a true thing, Carlotta. Like it’s not how it used to be out there. You know it isn’t.”
“How’d it used to be, Ron? I forget.”
“You could get crabs, Carlotta. Maybe the clap. Shot of penicillin. Big fuckin’ deal.”
“You afraid she’ll bring home AIDS? Stop sleeping with her. Use a condom.”
“You think I’m just worrying about myself here? Goddammit, I love her.”
“So you hire some jerk to scare her to death. What’s he supposed to do for a finale? Kidnap her? Rape her?”
“I’d never—I only thought he’d keep her home nights. I thought she’d turn to me, for help, for protection. Instead, she called you.”
The way he looked at me, I could tell Dee’s cry for help, for my help, had been bitter medicine. Yet another injury to his pride.
“And just what was Clay going to do to me, Ron?”
“I dunno,” he said, studying the linoleum like it was a work of art. “Man’s a fool. I guess he figured he could scare you.”
I thought about my time in the trunk. Especially the few moments when I hadn’t known whether Clay would open it or walk away….
He’d done his job.
Ron was speaking. “I think Clay’s way past thinkin’ about me, Carlotta. I’m afraid he really wants Dee. I’m scared he’ll hurt her.” He swallowed audibly. “I guess I’m ready to go to the cops.”
I said, “No reason to, Ron. I’ve taken care of the cops. You’re going to do something harder. Tell Dee. Every nasty detail.”
“No.”
“Then pack your bags and update your resumé, because she’ll fire your ass. You know she will, if I tell her.”
He didn’t say anything, just stared into the mirror like he was saying good-bye to the best part of himself.
“Do it, Ron. Apologize. Stay with her.”
“She’s never loved anything but the music, Carlotta,” he said, his Adam’s apple working. “She doesn’t love me.”
“She comes back to you, Ron.”
“She comes back.”
“Maybe that’s her kind of love. Maybe that’s all the love she’s got.”
“I don’t know if I can live with that,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or to the pale skinny man in the mirror.
“Two days, Ron,” I said. “You have two days to tell her, or else I will.”
I flagged a cab and went straight to the airport. No trouble changing the tickets. Fly first class, they give you leeway.
Dee called late the next night, woke me from a sound sleep. I suppose Ron will always be her lead guitar.
* * *
—
Miss Gibson arrived via messenger. I’ve stroked her, held her, but I can’t bring myself to play her. I try, but something keeps me mute. When I touch the strings, finger a chord, I’m overwhelmed by a sense of awe.
Maybe fear. With that precious battered guitar in hand, I guess I’m scared that I’ve come as close to the magic as I’ll ever get.
DETECTIVE: SYLVIA BELGRAVE
HEADACHES AND BAD DREAMS
Lawrence Block
LAWRENCE BLOCK (1938– ) has created numerous series characters, including the light humor of Bernie Rhodenbarr (star of the Burglar series); the shady lawyer, Ehrengraf, who has no problem subverting the law to free his clients; Keller, a hit man, who tries to kill only those who need killing; Chip Harrison (an homage to the Nero Wolfe character, written as Chip Harrison); Evan Tanner (a reluctant spy with a sleep disorder that keeps him constantly awake); and the dark Matthew Scudder series about an alcoholic former cop who functions as an unpaid private detective drawn into mysteries by a desire to help friends or just those who need help. It is generally acknowledged that the Scudder series is his greatest work, ranking among the best private eye fiction ever written. His body of work includes more than a hundred novels and short stories collections in every subgenre of the mystery field as well as more than a dozen soft-core porn novels produced in his earliest years as a professional writer.
Among the films inspired by Block’s work are Eight Million Ways to Die (1986), a weak adaptation of the 1982 Matt Scudder novel, starring Jeff Bridges and Rosanna Arquette; Burglar (1987), a dreadful film based on the Rhodenbarr character that starred Whoopi Goldberg and Bobcat Goldthwait; and A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014), a very good rendering of the 1992 Scudder novel, starring Liam Neeson and Dan Stevens.
Block has won four Edgar Awards: three for best short story and one in 1992 for best novel with A Dance at the Slaughterhouse (1991). For lifetime achievement, the Mystery Writers of America honored him with the Grand Master Award in 1994.
“Headaches and Bad Dreams” was first published in the December 1997 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine; it was first collected in The Collected Mystery Stories (London, Orion, 1999).
Headaches and Bad Dreams
LAWRENCE BLOCK
THREE DAYS OF HEADACHES, three nights of bad dreams. On the third night she woke twice before dawn, her heart racing, the bedding sweat-soaked. The second time she forced herself up and out of bed and into the shower. Before she’d toweled dry the headache had begun, starting at the base of the skull and radiating to the temples.
She took aspirin. She didn’t like to take drugs of any sort, and her medicine cabinet contained nothing but a few herbal preparations—echinacea and goldenseal for colds, gingko for memory, and a Chinese herbal tonic, its ingredients a mystery to her, which she ordered by mail from a firm in San Francisco. She took sage, too, because it seemed to her to help center her psychically and make her perceptions more acute, although she couldn’t remember having read that it had that property. She grew sage in her garden, picked leaves periodically and dried them in the sun, and drank a cup of sage tea almost every evening.
There were herbs that were supposed to ease headaches, no end of different herbs for the many different kinds of headaches, but she’d never found one that worked. Aspirin, on the other hand, was reliable. It was a drug, and as such it probably had the effect of dulling her psychic abilities, but those abilities were of small value when your head was throbbing like Poe’s telltale heart. And aspirin didn’t slam shut the doors of perception, as something strong might do. Truth to tell, it was the nearest thing to an herb itself, obtained originally from willow bark. She didn’t know how they made it nowadays, surely there weren’t willow trees enough on the planet to cure the world’s headaches, but still…
She heated a cup of spring water, added the juice of half a lemon. That was her breakfast. She sipped it in the garden, listening to the birds.
She knew what she had to do but she was afraid.
* * *
—
It was a small house, just two bedrooms, everything on one floor, with no basement
, and shallow crawl space for an attic. She slept in one bedroom and saw clients in the other. A beaded curtain hung in the doorway of the second bedroom, and within were all the pictures and talismans and power objects from which she drew strength. There were religious pictures and statues, a crucifix, a little bronze Buddha, African masks, quartz crystals. A pack of tarot cards shared a small table with a little malachite pyramid and a necklace of bear claws.
A worn oriental rug covered most of the floor, and was itself in part covered by a smaller rug on which she would lie when she went into trance. The rest of the time she would sit in the straight-backed armchair. There was a chaise as well, and that was where the client would sit.
She had only one appointment that day, but it was right smack in the middle of the day. The client, Claire Warburton, liked to come on her lunch hour. So Sylvia got through the morning by watching talk shows on television and paging through old magazines, taking more aspirin when the headache threatened to return. At 12:30 she opened the door for her client.
Claire Warburton was a regular, coming for a reading once every four or five weeks, upping the frequency of her visits in times of stress. She had a weight problem—that was one of the reasons she liked to come on her lunch hour, so as to spare herself a meal’s worth of calories—and she was having a lingering affair with a married man. She had occasional problems at work as well, a conflict with a new supervisor, an awkward situation with a coworker who disapproved of her love affair. There were always topics on which Claire needed counsel, and, assisted by the cards, the crystals, and her own inner resources, Sylvia always found something to tell her.
“Oh, before I forget,” Claire said, “you were absolutely right about wheat. I cut it out and I felt the difference almost immediately.”
“I thought you would. That came through loud and clear last time.”
“I told Dr. Greenleaf. ‘I think I may be allergic to wheat,’ I said. He rolled his eyes.”
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 165