How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? (Phoenix Noir Book 1)

by Graham, Barry

  “Well, I didn’t.”

  “I believe you,” he said. “Honestly, I wouldn’t put such stupidity past you. But Fallowell was killed in the same way that Tim was. And I know you didn’t kill Tim.”

  “The same way, how?”

  “Okay, the cops told me this off the record, so keep quiet about it. This apparently was another contract killing. The killer somehow got into Fallowell’s house last night—there was no sign of any forced entry—and shot him with a .44. Precisely the same as what happened to Tim.”

  “Are you saying it was the same person?”

  “Not necessarily. But it’s not impossible either. Perhaps Fallowell hired the hit man to kill Tim, and then someone else hired the same hit man to kill Fallowell. Or perhaps Fallowell cheated the hit man out of payment or something. Or perhaps it’s just coincidence. Professional killers probably have pretty similar working methods.”

  It was too much to get my head around. “Do you think I should go to the cops and tell them I was at Fallowell’s office?”

  “Certainly not, unless you can prove you didn’t kill him. Do you have proof of your whereabouts for last night?”

  “No. I was at home by myself. Janine was out. But she called me and I was here.”

  “She’s your girlfriend. Her word won’t count for anything. No, leave the cops to find you. They might not dig deep enough to get that far. I doubt that they’re mourning Fallowell. If they think it’s an organized hit, they’re probably not going to expend much energy beyond the routine stuff they have to do. What’s it to them if criminals want to off one another?”

  “Yeah, good point.”

  “If they do find you, call me and I’ll call a lawyer for you. Meantime, I might have some more to tell you about this soon. I’m looking into it.”

  “What’s to look into?”

  “Probably not a lot. But I’ve got a couple of leads. I’ll call you if anything pans out.”

  The soreness in my body disappeared within a couple of days. The cops didn’t pay me a visit, and I reckoned I was in the clear.

  Spike called me. It was early in the afternoon. When I picked up the phone, he didn’t say hello. “It’s Spike,” he said.

  “Oh, hey. What’s up?”

  “I need to see you right now.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you. Come over here right now. I’m at home.”

  “I can’t come now. I’ve got some work to do.”

  “Andy, I said come over here right now.”

  “And I said I can’t, Spike. I don’t work for fun. I do it for money. I’ve got bills to pay.”

  “For God, sake, boy—I’ll pay you for your time. Come down here.”

  “I can’t. This guy’s a regular customer. And I had to cancel on him the other day. I’ll come over when I get done. What’s the problem?”

  “I know who killed Tim.”

  “Yeah, so do I. It was Fallowell.”

  “Fallowell ordered it. And the same person killed him.”

  “Who was it?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you right now. Come down here and I’ll prove it to you. You’re in danger too.”

  “How come?”

  “Andy, I’m not going to talk about it on the phone. Get here as soon as you can.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Yes. So what?” He hung up.

  “That old mental patient’s got you as crazy as he is,” Janine said when I told her.

  “I didn’t say I believed him. I’ll see what he says when I meet him.”

  “So you’re going to listen to him? You’re going to humor him?”

  “Yeah. I’ll go see him when I finish this job. Where’s the harm in that? And maybe he does know something.”

  She laughed harshly. “Yeah. The cops don’t have a clue who did it, and some old drunk manages to find out? You actually believe that?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t put anything past Spike. He says he can prove it. “

  Moon Valley is on the North side of town. It got its name from there being no streetlights. The rich people who populate it didn’t want anything spoiling their view of the night sky. They’re big into their unspoiled views up there. The house I was laying tile in may have been the only one in the neighborhood that didn’t have a swimming pool; the owner told me he didn’t want anything blocking his view of the golf course.

  I tried my best to forget about Spike as I worked in the guy’s living room. Moon Valley was another world. I had no idea how people made enough money to live in such places. Everything was so immaculate, like pictures in a brochure, everything kept in order by money. It was hard to imagine that anyone there got sick and died, let alone got killed.

  It was late afternoon when I left. As I drove South on the 17, I considered blowing off my promise to visit Spike. I had little doubt that Janine was right. Spike’s ravings seemed like something in a trashy thriller. In the real world, the world of laying tile and driving on the freeway, old reporters didn’t solve crimes the cops couldn’t solve. I wondered if the booze was making him even crazier than before, or if he was starting to develop some kind of dementia.

  Spike lived downtown, not far from the Republic building. I was nearly there when I decided couldn’t deal with him on an empty stomach, so I stopped at McCaffrey’s pub on Monroe street and ate fish and chips and drank soda. I used the payphone to call home. Janine wasn’t there, so I talked to the answering machine. “Hey, it’s me. Just calling to say hi, and let you know not to worry about me going to see Spike. I haven’t wigged out. I know he must be crazy. I guess when you’re upset and someone else is being so neurotic, it’s easy to start acting the same way. I think that’s what’s been happening with Spike and me. But I’m over it. I’ll go see him, humor him, then come home. I love you. ’Bye.”

  I drove a couple blocks to Spike’s place. It was a high-rise apartment building. There was a security guy in the foyer, but he didn’t say anything to me as I went in and stood waiting for the elevator. Spike was on the first floor. I knocked on his apartment door, and got no answer. I knocked harder, then banged on it. “Spike? It’s Andy. Come on.” No answer.

  I knocked a few more times, then rode the elevator back down to the foyer. “Do you know whether Mr Hume in 213 is home?” I asked him. “He was expecting me.”

  “I think he is,” the guy said. “I saw him go in this afternoon, and he hasn’t come out.”

  “Listen,” I said. “You probably know Mr Hume likes his liquor more than he should, yeah?”

  “No, I didn’t know that. But I’ve seen him being pretty merry a few times.”

  “Uh-huh. And his health isn’t so great. It’s not like him to blow off a visitor. I’m kind of worried that he might be sick. Could we go up there and check it out?”

  “Yeah, I don’t see why not.”

  The guy knocked on Spike’s door. “Mr Hume? Are you okay in there?”

  No answer. The guy had already checked and found that Spike’s car was in its reserved space.

  “I think you’d better open the door yourself,” I said.

  The guy didn’t like it, but he didn’t argue. He hesitated, then got the key out. “Mr Hume?” he called. “Your friend Mr Saunders is with me. We want to make sure you’re okay, so I’m going to come in.”

  He unlocked the door and went inside. I followed him. The apartment smelled of booze and fried meat. I waited in the hall while the guy looked in the various rooms. He went into the closet that Spike used for an office, and came out with an embarrassed smile.

  “I think you were right,” he said.

  I went into Spike’s office. The light wasn’t on, and the room was dark. It contained a desk, a chair, a typewriter and a phone. And Spike.

  He was sitting on the chair, slumped forward onto the desk, his head resting on his arms. Beside him was a glass that had a little whiskey in it. Beside that was a bottle that didn’t have anything left in it
at all. On the wall above the desk was a signed photograph of Marilyn Monroe.

  I stood and looked at him. Poor old bastard.

  “Spike,” I said. He didn’t move. I took him by the shoulders and gently lifted his head off the desk. And I felt his weight, and heard the security man cry out something in Spanish, and I saw it.

  Spike’s head had been impaled on the implement that gave him his name. It was driven into his right temple, all the way to the metal base. There was only a little blood. As I held him and looked at him, his cold mouth opened and his false teeth slid out and fell on his lap.

  Midnight. I lay face-down on the bed. A candle flickered on the bedside table. I could smell it, and Janine’s patchouli oil. I could hear Janine breathing heavily through her nose. Her face was buried in my asscrack, her tongue working at my hole. I was groaning into the pillow.

  She ate my ass for a while, then turned me over and sucked on my cock. Then she lay on her back. “Get on top of me,” she said. “And fuck me hard.”

  I lifted her legs over my shoulders and fucked her as though I was trying to nail her to the bed. As she came, I looked at her face—her mouth open, tongue thrust out, eyes round—and it occurred to me that she looked unfamiliar.

  I pulled out of her and rolled her onto her stomach. I kissed her asscheeks, then parted them. I nuzzled the pink velvet of her asshole, then slowly probed it with my tongue. As I did, I slid a finger into her cunt.

  “Jesus. Oh Jesus.” She came again in a long, trembling sob.

  With her still lying face-down, I nudged the head of my cock against her wet asshole. She reached behind her, took hold of me, and eased me into her ass. I fucked her slowly, but hard and deep, and kissed the side of her face. She turned her head and gave me her tongue as I came in her ass.

  We lay curled together. I stroked her hair. “Feel better?” she asked me. It had been about six hours since I’d found Spike’s body.

  “Yeah.” I kissed her. “I don’t know what I feel. I feel okay, but I know I shouldn’t. I just can’t believe any of it. It’ll probably hit me later.”

  “Probably.” She kissed both of my eyes, then my nose, then my mouth. “But you don’t have to deal with it on your own. I’ll be there. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah. But I just don’t know what to do next.”

  “You move on, that’s what you do. Spike and Tim are dead. I don’t want you to end up the same way.”

  “I don’t have a choice anymore.”

  She looked at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “I can’t just move on. I’d still end up dead.”

  She moved out of my arms and lay there looking at me.

  “Why would this guy kill Spike?” I said. “For the same reason he killed Fallowell. Because he somehow knew I’d spoken to Fallowell, and he was afraid I’d find out who he was. Then Spike calls to tell me he knows who the killer is. And he gets killed too. But the killer can’t know whether he got Spike before he could tell me anything. So he’ll come after me.”

  “You’re nuts.”

  “That’s what you said about Spike, babe. And look what happened to him. If I’m the same kind of nuts as he was, I think I’ve got something to worry about.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “The killer is going to come after me. All I can do is try to find out who he is and get to him first.”

  “Get to him? You mean kill him?”

  “I don’t think he’d be up for a game of one-on-one basketball.”

  “How are you going to find him?”

  “I don’t know yet. But if Spike managed it, I’m pretty sure I can.”

  She moved close to me again, and put her arms around me. “Please do something for me, Andy. Please let this drop.”

  “You don’t understand,” I quietly said in her ear. “I’m not being brave about this. Those guys were my friends, but I’m not willing to get myself killed trying to find their killer. If I could just drop it and walk away from it right now, I would. But the killer wouldn’t know I’d quit. He’d still come after me. I love my life. I love being with you. And I’m not going to spend my life waiting for him to take it away from me.”

  The next day, my band was supposed to be driving to San Diego for a gig. I had planned to wake up early, call the guys and cancel it. But when I woke up I actually felt like going. I told Janine how heartless I thought that would sound.

  “It’s not heartless at all,” she said. “When everything’s this crazy, you have to keep doing normal things. I think you should go.”

  I told her I was afraid to leave her by herself, and asked if she’d go with me.

  “Oh, yeah. Spend hours in a van with you guys. I don’t think so. Why would I be in danger?”

  “Because, for all the killer knows, I might have told you something that Spike told me.”

  “Then there’s nothing I can do about it. So I’ll just go on with my life.”

  SIX

  As the van rolled West on I-8, I looked out of the window and tried to feel something. George was driving. I was in the passenger seat. Swineboy and Ricky Retardo sat in the back with the instruments and amps. Nobody was saying much, especially to me. Nobody knew what to say. Ricky Retardo dozed while Swineboy read a magazine. George and I gazed at the passing desert.

  When we reached the California state line, with its sneering, piggish guards, George jokingly said, “Okay, boys—hide the drugs.”

  Ricky Retardo and I both laughed, but Swineboy began a frantic scramble.

  “What’re you doing?” George asked him.

  “Hiding the drugs,” he said.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’ve you got?”

  “Some weed.”

  “Fucking asshole.” George pulled the van to the side of the road and got out. He walked to the side door, opened it and climbed inside. “Where is it?” he said to Swineboy.

  Swineboy showed him the bag of weed. George took it from him, turned and threw it out of the van.

  “George! Come on, bro—“ Swineboy made to go after the drugs, but George shoved him back into the van so hard that he fell sprawling against an amp. “You fucking dick! That hurt!”

  “You’re the dick, you fucking addict,” George said. “I fucking told you no drugs. If the border patrol found your stash they’d confiscate my van. My fucking van. Do you understand anything?”

  “I can’t believe you did that,” whined Swineboy. “I can’t believe you threw it away.”

  I smiled. In a world of transience, some things remain the same.

  We reached San Diego mid-afternoon. We drove to the Museum of Death, where we were to play, and set up our gear and did a soundcheck. We browsed at some of the exhibits on display in the basement—a denim shirt that belonged to Charles Manson, a suit that someone had worn while being burned in the electric chair. There were photos of mutilated corpses—some famous, like the Black Dahlia and Sharon Tate, and some obscure.

  I looked for as long as I could take it. Then I told the guys I’d see them later, and I left.

  I walked to the seafront, drifting along the promenade. It was a warm day, not as hot as Phoenix. San Diego was almost as big as Phoenix, but it felt smaller. You could actually walk around. I wished Janine had come with me. I wished we could look at the sea with my arm around her shoulders and her arm around my waist.

  I went into a harbor restaurant and used the payphone to call home. I got the machine, my voice: “Either Janine and Andy aren’t home right now, or else we’re here but we hate you. Leave a message.”

  “Hey, it’s me. Just calling to see how you’re doing. I’m in San Diego—we got here in one piece. I’m in a restaurant, so you can’t call me back. I don’t know where I’m staying the night yet. Anyway...I’m just going to eat and hang out and then go play the gig. I’ll try calling you afterwards.”

  I ordered some fish, ate it and washed it down with seltzer. Then I ju
st sat at my table reading Cometbus. At seven-thirty I walked to the beach. I took my boots off, made a cushion of my jacket and backpack, and sat down, pulling my legs into the full lotus. I breathed out as much as I could of the numbness inside me, imagined it floating away on the waves. When I finished and stood up, I felt as though the sea was inside me, that I could contain it all.

  I stretched, then sat back down and put my boots on. As I laced them, I noticed something lying in the sand. It was the medallion I wore around my neck, engraved with the Tibetan symbols for the Buddhist mantra of compassion, Om Mani Padme Hum. Janine had gotten it for me soon after we’d met.

  I picked it up. Its thong had broken. I couldn’t understand how—it was made of tough leather, and as far as I knew it hadn’t started to fray. I couldn’t imagine what I could have done to break it while sitting quietly in meditation. I wasn’t superstitious, but it made me afraid for Janine.

  I walked to the Museum of Death. The owners let me use their phone. Janine still wasn’t home.

  We were sharing the bill with a local pop-punk band. They went on first. They were okay; they warmed the crowd up well. We went on at around ten-thirty. We hadn’t played any gigs for a while, and so I was nervous. I didn’t get gig nerves if I played often enough to stay in the habit, but I always freaked out at the first gig after a layoff. I had to get used to it all over again. This time it was intense. As I strapped on my guitar, I was afraid that my voice wouldn’t appear. But when I moved up to the microphone at the start of the first song, I belted out the first verse without trying.

  “My name is Jack

  I’m a necrophiliac

  I always get frustrated

  ’Cause my lovers get cremated”

  The audience got into it right away, and I relaxed. We played a good set. In spite of the personal frictions within the band, we were tight into the same groove. We played for an hour, songs either by me or Ricky Retardo. They brought us back for an encore, and we did a deadpan, hard-core cover of “YMCA”.

  After the gig we went to the nearest Denny’s, us and the other band and some people from the Museum of Death. George and Swineboy seemed cool with each other now; it seemed like we were still a band. While we waited for our food to arrive, I found a phone and called home. Janine still wasn’t around—or, if she was, she wasn’t picking up. I now knew how I was staying with—each band member had been billeted at a different person’s house—but I didn’t want to leave the number on my machine and have her call late and disturb my host.