Girl Can't Help It: A Thriller (Krista Larson Book 2)

by Max Allan Collins

  Keith leaned against the counter. “Slightly out of my price range, Danny. Anyway, for an original member of Hot Rod and the Pistons, isn’t that particular collectible a good calling card to have in the window?”

  Danny adjusted himself in his chair to meet Keith’s eyes, the shop owner making a little face, as if he was stiff from last night’s performance.

  He said, “Thought maybe you’d have gathered last night that I’m a little down on the Pistons.”

  Maybe so, but the rhythm guitarist had a small but prominent point-of-purchase display of the Collector’s Choice CD compiling the band’s two albums—with a handwritten card saying, “Ask for Danny Davies’s autograph!”

  Keith said, quietly sincere, “For what it’s worth, I thought you guys rocked the house last night. Don’t know what burr got under your saddle, but as an old friend . . . old fan . . . I hope you’ll reconsider quitting. Won’t be the same without you on the tour this summer.”

  Danny swallowed, shrugged, looking past Keith’s gaze.

  Keith had been in here several times—the front end of the narrow, low-ceilinged store, its aisle running down the middle, was given over to modestly kitschy midcentury modern furniture and knickknacks, with a few other older-era art deco items, chairs, tables, lamps, mixed in. A section showed off primitives and garden chic, and the front counter’s display case had vintage costume jewelry. Way in back was the pop culture stuff, the real draw of the place, including record bin after record bin of vintage LPs.

  They were alone in the shop. Early time of day, way early in the season. Even a Saturday like this was slow.

  Seeing that the conversation was going nowhere fast, Keith said, “Mind if I browse?”

  “Go for it. The vinyl’s pricey, though. I do a ton of online mail-order business. You’d be surprised the prices this stuff commands.”

  “Yeah. People are really into it these days.”

  Keith wandered back there, past several upright display cases of toys and geegaws. The walls of the pop culture room in back were lined with expensive movie posters from the ’50s on up in inexpensive frames, below which were bookcases of TV and movie tie-ins, in case reading a Partridge Family novel was your idea of a good time, and shelves of TV lunch boxes (The Six Million Dollar Man) and board games (Lost in Space).

  He was soon at one of the bins of old albums, all in clear plastic sleeves and as pricey as Danny had promised. Still, flipping through made for a pleasant time machine ride, back to when going to a music store meant finding a vast selection of artists and long-play albums whose physical size beautifully showed off cover photos and graphics, with liner notes and lyrics large enough to actually read. He was in the New Wave section and seeing familiar friends from high school and college—Devo, Blondie, the B-52s, the Cars, and on and on.

  “Always a discount,” Danny’s voice said behind him, startling him a little, “for old bandmates.”

  Keith was pausing at a Lene Lovich album from Stiff Records. He glanced at Danny. “I have a confession to make.”

  Danny’s forehead frowned and his mouth smiled. “Oh?”

  “I’m not into vinyl. I don’t even have a working turntable.”

  “Well, you’re definitely not with it, Keith.”

  The once-and-future roadie grinned. “That’s been true for a long time. But truth is, I jumped to CDs as soon as they came out. After living with pops and clicks and scratches for all those years, I was an instant convert.”

  “But the warmth of analog, man.”

  “It’s not all that warm when a record’s skipping.”

  Danny smiled. “To each his own.”

  “Always my attitude.”

  One side of Danny’s smile vanished and the remainder was sad. “Always was, wasn’t it? . . . Rick and the others weren’t nearly as cool as you, Keith.”

  “Nobody ever said that before. I always felt like the square dog hanging around with cool cats.”

  The bloodshot blue eyes locked on to him. “You never called me queer, and that was very cool.”

  “That term’s being embraced these days, isn’t it? But I don’t think I could bring myself to use it.”

  Danny’s eyebrows went up. “Well, you probably shouldn’t. Like you shouldn’t sing along with rap and hip hop.”

  “Oh, I hardly ever do.”

  They were smiling at each other when the bell dinged up front. Danny headed back that way to tend to his customers, the slender shopkeeper moving slow. Halfway there, he paused and clutched his side once. Keith wondered what that was about—loading up last night hadn’t been that rough.

  Then Keith returned to looking at old friends in the LP bin, doing that for perhaps five minutes before wandering back up front. A couple in their forties were gawking at things in the tall glassed-in display case opposite where Danny was again seated behind the counter. Maybe a minute later, they thanked him and he nodded at them as they went out.

  Danny looked at Keith, just down the counter from him. “Didn’t find anything?”

  He was at the small point-of-purchase display. “Actually, I’d like to pick up this Rod and the Pistons CD. Nice to have ’em both on one disc together. I can listen to it in the car.”

  Danny grinned. “You still have a CD player in your car? Hang on to that, man.”

  “Hey, I still have a car you start with a key. It’s turning into a museum piece, like me.”

  The shop owner chuckled. “You want some coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  “Come back around here. I got an extra chair.”

  Keith came around, got some coffee, used some creamer, sat next to his old friend. “Listen, Dan. You really ought to reconsider.”

  “You mean, play the reunion tour.”

  “Of course I mean play the reunion tour.”

  Danny wasn’t looking at him. He seemed to be staring at the display case opposite, but he wasn’t really staring at anything but his thoughts.

  “That,” Danny said, “was one sad spectacle last night.”

  Keith sipped coffee, nice and hot. “Hey, you know how it is. Things get out of hand in bands. Artistic temperaments. Nerves get rubbed raw. They didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Danny turned to Keith and gripped his sweatshirt sleeve. “No. That was my bad. I lost it. I shouldn’t have. I was calling Rod a prima donna when I was the idiot acting like one.”

  “You can smooth that over. Anyway, you have a right to want to sing a damn song now and then.”

  “Maybe. I used to sing a few in the old days. But the record company producer? Never let me do any vocals on the albums, not even backup, so maybe . . . look, Rod’s the singer. I should’ve stayed in my lane.”

  “Then just tell him that and move on.”

  He shook his head again, not hard, but shook it. “I’ll make amends to Rod, one of these days. I never really got along with Steve, but maybe I’ll patch that up enough, too, to at least be civil when we pass on Main. One of these days.”

  Keith was studying Danny like a clue he couldn’t make heads nor tails of. “I really don’t get you. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Who doesn’t want to grab the chance to relive their best years, before the sands in the hourglass do their Days of Our Lives thing?”

  That got a momentary smile out of Danny. “Keith, it wasn’t the best years of my life. Oh, I had a share of fun. I enjoyed the music, playing. But you know damn well I was in the closet then. So many gay guys were. Girls, too. And men, and women. I put up forever with bastards like Rick who made cracks. Funny.”

  “Funny?”

  “I think the guys knew. Never came right out with it. But they knew. Did you know?”

  Keith shrugged. “You were gay? I figured as much. It was your business. I didn’t care. But, Danny, I never heard Rick make any remarks—”

  “You weren’t looking to hear them. And, anyway, it was mostly at rehearsal. He’d call me ‘Danny Girl,’ and he’d say just terrible things to Rod.”

&
nbsp; “You mean—”

  “Yeah, just outrageous ‘funny’ racist crap. He’d use the N-word like it was a joke between them. Say stuff like, ‘You know me, I call a spade a spade,’ and that kind of ‘comedy.’”

  “I never picked up on it.”

  “You remember those days. ‘Gay’ was a put-down. Nobody was afraid to use it. Watch an ’80s movie some time. I don’t mean to make a big-ass deal of it. It’s just . . . going back to that place is not my idea of a good time, plus . . . well, that’s enough of that.”

  “Plus what?”

  He sighed, and that made him grimace and touch his side again. “Plus . . . nothing.”

  “Are you okay, buddy?”

  He nodded. Sipped his coffee. Said, “Well. Really not.”

  “What’s going on, Danny?”

  He let air out; it wasn’t quite a sigh. “I’m not physically up to it. Steve was right—I was just standing there onstage last night. It was all I could do to just play my simple rhythm parts.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Danny glanced at him. “You remember Lee?”

  “He worked with you here. I never knew whether he was a co-owner, or just . . . well, he seemed like more than an employee.”

  “He was. A lot more. We lived together upstairs for about six months. We got along fine for a while, but then he started getting crazy jealous. And I mean ‘crazy.’ If I just had a conversation with another guy, nothing flirtatious about it or anything, Lee would explode. Never in front of anybody, though. Always behind closed doors.”

  “He hurt you?”

  Danny nodded. “A lot of shoving. Finally, knocked me down and kicked me. In the side. Repeatedly. I have three broken ribs, Keith. I’m taped up like a bad ankle.”

  “Damnit, man, I’m sorry. Did you report this?”

  “No. No, no. I didn’t want Lee in jail. I just wanted him out of my apartment. And he went. I haven’t seen him since. I mean, he’s still in town, but . . . That was . . . three weeks ago.”

  Keith was leaning forward. “You did go to the hospital, surely.”

  “I did. I told them I’d fallen down the stairs. I was in three days.” He sat forward, grimaced again and he looked at Keith. “You’re not a police officer anymore, Keith. Don’t you go reporting this. Once it’s reported, the genie’s out of the bottle.”

  “Well, I think this genie’s ass should be in jail.”

  “Maybe. But it’s not what I want.” Carefully, he sat back. “I’d hoped this reunion with the band would be just the thing for me. But it turns out I’m not in shape for it. Not physically.”

  “How about otherwise?”

  “You mean, mentally? Emotionally? Well, I’m bummed out, all right. But I’m working through it. I thought I loved Lee. I mean, I did love him. But I don’t love him now and don’t want to be his or anybody’s punching bag.”

  Keith put a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “Listen, if you talk to Rod . . . never mind Steve . . . but I know Rod will understand. Sounds like he went through the same thing with Rick that you did, so he’ll be sympathetic. You don’t have to jump around onstage. Be the quiet cool one. Just stand there and play those chords.”

  “All three of them?”

  “All three.” Keith patted the shoulder. “Give it some thought. If you need to talk, let me know. I’m not hard to find.”

  “Okay. Thank you, Keith. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Keith came around and plucked one of the Pistons CDs from the little cardboard point-of-purchase display. “I don’t have a grand for Jayne, but I’ve got the ten bucks you’re asking for this . . . if you’ll sign it to me.”

  Danny got up, slowly. “This is on the house, Keith. Consider it your pay for helping load out last night.”

  Danny got the CD wrapper off quickly—a skill Keith wouldn’t have minded mastering—and used a Sharpie to sign it boldly to the band’s favorite roadie. Then Danny tucked the CD insert back in its place and handed it to Keith.

  “Thanks, Danny.”

  “Thank you, Keith.”

  Outside, Keith paused to remove the CD insert and see what his friend had written.

  To Keith—

  Square but cool.

  Danny Davies

  “Hot Rod & the Pistons.”

  It was signed and dated.

  At that moment, Keith had no idea how much that would come to mean to him.

  SEVEN

  In this instance, she did consider murder an option.

  Obviously an unfortunate one, and definitely a “plan B,” because this individual was someone she liked. Liked quite a bit back in the day, and even now liked well enough not to love the possibility of what might have to be done.

  After all, Danny Davies was probably the member of the band she knew best of the remaining original (and replacement) Pistons, the only one who rated more than just a smile and nod or maybe “hello” on the street.

  She’d even been in his shop a few times, and on one occasion had bought a chrome metal art deco desk lamp. The lamp had been expensive, but he gave her a generous discount and threw in a signed copy of that CD with the two Pistons albums on it (she was too polite to tell him she already had one).

  When she draped a white linen tea towel over the handful of her back-pain medication on the cutting board in her kitchen, and pounded the pharmaceuticals into powder, she truly hoped she would not have to employ the pulverized pills. But that didn’t stop her from using the edge of a carving knife to brush the particles into a small glassine envelope, the size they put stamps in, which she put in her purse.

  She waited till after the lunch hour to drop by, after sitting in her car in a nearby parking lot for half an hour, watching to see if any customers went in or came out. Right away she’d seen Keith Larson exit—not surprising, the band’s old one-man road crew dropping by after last night’s gig. Maybe to try to talk the Pistons’ rhythm guitarist out of quitting, after the outbursts at load out.

  After that no one else entered. This was a slow time of day, and of the year.

  Danny was sitting reading Antique Trader magazine behind the counter at her left as she entered, her big purse over her shoulder. A small boom box was playing Queen, the track with David Bowie—“Under Pressure.” The handsome but rather haggard-looking blond shop owner lowered the magazine and looked up at her somewhat quizzically and managed a sort of smile.

  He said, “I bet you’re here looking for an apology.”

  She smiled back. “What on earth for?”

  His bloodshot blue eyes looked up at her in chagrin. “For how I behaved last night. You deserve an apology. I was a jerk.”

  She leaned against the counter and gave him the most winning smile she could summon. “Don’t be silly. C’mon, we go way back. If we can’t cut each other a little slack, who can?”

  “I guess.” The smile remained but faded a little and his eyes tightened. “Listen, I was going to call you later today.”

  She did her best not to react. “You were?”

  He tossed the magazine on a little desk at his right. “Yes . . . but I hadn’t quite got the nerve up.”

  “For what?”

  He looked past her, thinking. Finally he said, “Business is nonexistent today. Turn the sign around in the door to ‘Closed,’ would you?”

  “Well . . . sure.”

  She did that. Threw the lock, too.

  When she turned back to him, he was on his feet. There was something sad about a fifty-something ex-rocker in a Cyndi Lauper T-shirt.

  “Let’s go in back,” he said. “There’s a little reading table in my pop culture room where we can sit and talk. Would you like some coffee?” A Mr. Coffee was perking on the desk next to him.

  “Please.”

  “Sugar? Creamer?”

  “No. Black is fine.”

  He filled two Fire-King jadeite cups and handed her one, the aroma pleasant, then doctored his with creamer and sugar. He rose, nodded toward the back, and led
the way past display cases of costume jewelry on the left, 1950s atomic tables and such to the right, and some art deco furniture that was probably too hip for most of his tourist clientele. She’d seen many of these same pieces the last time she’d been in here, months ago.

  Danny was moving slow and once he paused and touched his side; he was breathing kind of hard. What was that about?

  Soon they were settled on hard chairs at a leather-top wooden card table; reading material was stacked there for the pleasure of his patrons—back issues of Antique Trader, Films of the Golden Age, and Goldmine, the record collector magazine.

  The faces of movie stars in framed vintage posters stared at her, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean and Steve McQueen and Raquel Welch, and while most were smiling, she felt something accusatory in their expressions. A number of the posters were from vintage rock ‘n’ roll movies, with Elvis and Chuck Berry and Bill Haley and His Comets joining her accusers.

  Just barely she could hear “Staying Power,” the Queen CD starting up again toward the front.

  Nearby were back-to-back bins, stretching the length of the room, bringing to mind the record shops of her youth. More faces stared at her from those bins, many beaming and happy, and yet creepy somehow—Julie London and Dean Martin, Bobby Darin and Brenda Lee, Mick Jagger and John-Paul-Ringo-George, Herman’s Hermits and the Zombies, Human League and the Pretenders.

  He drank from the coffee cup. Drank, not sipped—a nice gulp. Then he said, “I shouldn’t have snapped at you last night. You’re a victim in all this.”

  “I don’t see myself as a victim.”

  His mouth pursed in a smile. “That’s healthy. But you were taken advantage of, particularly by that louse Rick. Hey, we both know he was a hell of a guitar player, and charismatic? Blew the rest of the band off the stage, back then. Even Rod, and he was the front man!”

  “I suppose,” she said, “Rick took advantage of all of us, in a way. But as for me? Sexually?” That was a hard word to get out. “He didn’t rape me or anything. I was consenting. I was of age. So let’s not go there.”