“I know what that’s like,” she muttered.
“There was trouble at the racetrack last night,” I said. With Raydean I never like to venture too far into an explanation. I’m never sure what will set her off.
“Trouble in paradise,” she sighed. “Ain’t it just the way?” She was shaking her head and staring at the chair beside her. The morning paper lay there, so Raydean probably knew all about it.
“Did you read about it?” I asked.
“Honey, I don’t have to read the paper to know racing’s bad news. Got a nephew who’s made a fool of himself over that stuff. Calls himself the King of Dirt.” Raydean looked disgusted and I felt a chill go up to the back of my spine. “His wife’s said if he don’t quit fooling around with cars and women, she’s gonna leave.” Raydean smiled. “Of course, if you ask me and his mama, that’d be for the best. His wife’s a slut and he’d be well rid of her.”
“I ran into him last night,” I began.
Raydean looked at me and laughed. “Don’t surprise me at all. A half-naked woman on a racetrack? Roy Dell’d sniff you out like a coon dog. But don’t worry,” she said, catching my frown, “he’s harmless.”
I was all set to debate harmless, but from across the street, I could hear Fluffy barking. Raydean hopped up and ran to her spot by the window, shotgun in hand.
“All right,” she snapped, “I’m warning you. You got company and he don’t look familiar.” Raydean stiffened. “Don’t be fooled by the facial hair,” she said, “they got transmitters encapsulated in almost anything. Technology is a dangerous thing in the wrong hands.”
It was getting close to Prolixin time, I could tell. I couldn’t figure out what she meant until I wandered up and peaked through the bay window curtains. Detective Wheeling was standing on my back stoop, repeatedly ringing my doorbell.
What happened next was not exactly my fault. Could I have stopped it? The case could be made either way. I went out onto Raydean’s stoop, still holding the mug of coffee she’d given me, and yelled. Detective Wheeling turned around, saw me, and quickly headed in my direction.
“Wait,” I said, “I’ll be right over.” But he either didn’t hear me or didn’t think I meant what I said, because he kept coming. Fluffy had emerged from her doggie door and was following him, yipping at his heels and causing him to walk in a broken-step weave.
I started down the stairs and hit the walkway at the same time he stepped onto Raydean’s booby-trapped section of lawn. Fluffy, who knew what would happen next, turned around and ran for the safety of her own yard. Detective Wheeling was not quite so fortunate. The sprinkler system turned on and completely drenched him.
This was perhaps the new low point in my relationship with the police department. Not so much because my neighbor’s sprinkler system had watered Detective Wheeling down, but because I saw the situation as funny and started to laugh.
I cut a wide path around him and continued on my way to my trailer.
“If you want to dry off,” I said, looking back over my shoulder, “I’ve got a towel.”
He had two alternatives. He could leave and drive off sopping wet, or he could come inside. I could feel him warring with himself. He was mad as hell, but he was the type who hates to mess up a vehicle. I hadn’t opened the kitchen door when I felt him start up the stairs behind me.
“So I thought my attorney told you to call him if you wanted to talk to me,” I said after I handed him a towel and let him perch on one of my barstools. Wheeling’s short hair stood in tufts around his head, giving him a sort of punk look.
“I wanted to explain to you about the article in the paper. I thought you might see it and—”
“And what?” I interrupted. “Think you planted it so you could flush out a suspect? Leave the dancer high and dry, ’cause after all, I’m just low-rent?”
Wheeling flushed. “We can talk or you can cuss me out and I’ll leave. What’s it going to be?”
“Say what you came to say.”
Wheeling hunched his shoulders like he had a stiff neck. “First off, I didn’t talk to the press. We don’t do that here. I issue statements after the fact, not in the process of an investigation.”
“So what are you saying? That no one in the police department said anything to the press and that they fabricated a story?”
Wheeling ran his fingers through his hair, making it look even more wild. The gesture made him seem somehow much younger, almost boyish, and frustrated.
“I’d like to say no one in the department talked, but you and I both know that I can’t do that. I’m busting my ass trying to find out who, if anyone, talked, but I’m also working on finding your friend’s killer.”
“So how many people knew I was a witness?” It was hopeless, I knew. In Panama City, everyone knew everything in a matter of moments.
Wheeling shifted on the barstool. “Well, the officers at the scene know you were there, but they didn’t know you could identify the killer.”
“I didn’t say I could. I said maybe.”
“Well, then I knew and Detective Nailor knew.”
“What? How the hell did he know?”
Wheeling looked at me, his eyes unwavering. “He’s the other homicide detective. We work our cases together, unless one of us is already on a case. In Panama City, that’s rare. We only have six or eight homicides a year.” He was burning me with the facts while I was still stuck on Nailor possibly being the only other person who knew the details of my statement. I was going to have to do a little investigating of my own. Nailor kept popping up, first at the racetrack, then in my trailer, and now investigating Ruby’s murder. What was the man up to?
A glint of red outside the bay window caught my eye, drawing my attention to the street. A cardinal-red Porsche was slowly passing the trailer, the windows tinted a smoky gray, with a vanity plate that I knew by heart: MR.TNA Vincent Gambuzzo was circling the block, noting the government tags on the standard-issue beige Taurus, and deciding to keep a low profile until the heat was gone.
“Listen,” I said, turning my attention back to Detective Wheeling, “it really don’t make no never mind to me how you want to explain this. I’m just asking that you be a little forthcoming with some police protection.”
Wheeling started to say something, but I cut him off. “I know, you can’t be placing a cop on my doorstep twenty-four hours a day, and maybe that’s because of who I am and who the victim was, and maybe it’s because you’re short-handed. Whatever. I’m just asking for a profile. A high profile. Send a marked cruiser past my house every hour or so.” I was walking toward my door, holding it open and making like Wheeling should quit acting like a big baby Huey and take a cue.
He wandered out into the bright sunlight of another steamy Panama City afternoon with Fluffy once again at his feet, trying her best to trip him up. His car hadn’t been gone thirty seconds when Vincent Gambuzzo pulled into Wheeling’s spot on the parking pad and gunned the engine of the tinny-sounding sports car. Whatever version of a Porsche it was, it wasn’t the big-ticket, top-of-the-line model. His car was the best he or any other midlevel wannabe could afford.
Vincent de-wedged himself from the driver’s seat and lumbered over to my steps, panting from exertion and the heat of wearing a black suit in the friggin’ tropical nineties.
“About goddamn time that cop took off,” he said, heaving himself up the steps. “Any longer and I’d have run out of gas. Then them damn juvenile delinquents that live in this dump woulda made off with my tires. Jesus, Mother Mary, and the saints, it’s hot!” With that, Vincent Gambuzzo entered my trailer.
He looked around, almost visibly sniffing the air, trying to figure out with his nose what had been up and who’d been saying what to whom. Then, without asking, he strode over to the refrigerator and pulled open the door, standing there as the cool air hit him in the face.
“What? You don’t got nothing in here, Sierra. Friggin’ mineral water! Fruit friggin’ salad! What is this
shit?”
“I knew you were coming, so I hid the good stuff,” I said. “Are you here to eat or talk?” With Vincent, there was no separating the two.
“Aha, there it is.” Vincent had finally stooped low enough to find the cannelloni and the leftover ziti.
“Help yourself,” I said, but the sarcasm was wasted.
After he’d popped a plate in the microwave, Vincent got down to business.
“I been in the trade a long time, Sierra, and I ain’t never lost a dancer.” He paused and shook his head slowly back and forth. I knew what he was saying wasn’t exactly the truth. Vincent hadn’t been in the exotic emporium business more than the five years he’d been in Panama City, because I’d done my homework and I knew the facts. Vincent had worked for his father in Miami before he’d made the move to the Panhandle. His father was a small-time bookie and used-car dealer. The Tiffany was Vincent’s attempt to make it on his own, but he didn’t want any of us to know how little he knew about the business. To challenge Vincent was to ask for him to swell up with machismo bravado and make a fool of himself and perhaps do something rash at the expense of face-saving. I didn’t want that, so I stayed silent.
“She was beautiful, Sierra,” he sighed. He pulled his piping-hot plate from the microwave and gingerly carried it to the kitchen table. “Nobody should die that young.” He sighed again and began to eat. “Them cops,” he said, his voice choked with ziti and emotion, “they ain’t gonna take this seriously. Not like us, eh, Sierra?”
I was starting to have a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. Vincent was heading somewhere, and I didn’t think I was going to like it.
“Yeah, Vincent,” I replied cautiously, “this isn’t good.”
“Them cops, they’re gonna blow this off, being as how she was a dancer and such. It’s gonna get the wrong sort of publicity in the papers. They’ll say she was a young girl, lured into the dangerous world of exotic dancing. You know where it’ll go from there, don’t you?”
I nodded, but I had no idea where he was heading.
“They’ll start saying it was bound to happen. That dance clubs are full of the criminal element, and before you know it, they’ll be putting a black eye on the whole profession.” Vincent was fired up now, his chin covered with red sauce, the muscle on the side of his jaw twitching the way it always did when he was agitated. “Next thing you know, Ruby’s memory will be trashed and the Tiffany will be at the bottom of the barrel with them other trash-heap strip joints. Now, Sierra, we can’t have that, can we?” Vincent’s voice was at a roar, bringing Fluffy bounding into the kitchen growling.
“Vincent,” I started, but got no further. He had pulled off his dark glasses, a sure sign we were in for a long diatribe.
“It ain’t right, Sierra. You know it ain’t right!”
“No, Vincent, it ain’t right,” I agreed.
“Then we gotta act, and we gotta act now.”
Vincent stopped shoveling food into his mouth and set his plate down on the floor for Fluffy. She glanced warily at him, and then decided to throw caution to the wind and commence chowing down on ziti. Vincent and Fluffy had a tenuous truce that consisted of a system of bribes. Vincent supplied the food and Fluffy agreed not to bite him.
“We take a two-pronged approach,” he said, rising from his chair and striding back toward the refrigerator. “First an appropriate PDA.”
“What?” He was losing me. He’d moved away from the refrigerator to go poking into my cabinet; he was hunting for sweets.
“Public display of affection,” he said. “We all loved Ruby. Her public needs a chance to mourn, and I don’t mean at no funeral, although I think we should be visible there, too. I mean, the club ought to do something out of respect. Dedicate an evening to her, or wear black armbands like they do in the military.”
“Maybe cover our pasties in black, like the cops cover their shields.” Once again my sarcasm was lost on Vincent, who’d discovered my chocolate stash.
“Yeah, something like that. Tasteful.” He popped a handful of chocolate chips into his mouth. “Something that says we’re grieving while at the same time pointing out that dancers got hearts and a standard that others should look up to. See what I’m saying?”
I saw only too well. Vincent was concerned with the bottom line. Don’t get me wrong, I think he had feelings for Ruby, but Vincent’s true love was the Tiffany.
“Then we come to part two,” he continued. Vincent’s voice had dropped an octave, and he carefully put the chocolate back into the pantry before turning to face me. There was a terrible look in his eyes, one I’d never seen before, a frozen, arctic glare.
“Part two is we find the bastard who did this and we dust his ass.” Vincent paused for a second, letting his words hang in the air. I felt a chill and pulled my purple chenille robe tighter. “You know them cops can’t find the guy like we can. Anyway, we got a message to send. The Tiffany, i.e., Vincent Gambuzzo, don’t let nobody fuck with its dancers and get away with it.”
So far, he hadn’t said anything I disagreed with. I was just troubled by the use of the word “we,” as if I were somehow a part of Vincent’s retribution.
“So I’m thinking you should make a call, and I’ll make a call, and then we’ll just see whose people can get the job done first.”
“Vincent,” I said, “I don’t mean to act stupid here, but what are you talking about? What call?”
Vincent gave me a frosty, don’t-be-coy-with-me look and put his dark glasses back on.
“Sierra,” he said, his voice a warning, “you know who I mean. Call the Moose and let him know you need a favor. You’re family. This is pigeon shit to a guy like that.”
Sister Mary Margaret told us there was always a payback when you lied. She drummed it into our heads every day of our long Catholic-school education. Somehow I’d always thought she meant God would pay you back, not Vincent Gambuzzo. Here I was, about to reap the consequences of having told my boss that he couldn’t mess with me on account of I was connected to a syndicate so big that if Vincent even dared to make me so much as uncomfortable, his entire club would cease to exist. Up until this moment, the implied connection had always done the trick and kept Vincent off my back. Now it was about to blow up in my face.
“Vincent,” I said, “I don’t know about calling Moose. This is a local matter. I’m sure your people would be more appropriate. Besides, they’re local.”
Vincent shook his head. He was bluffing. He didn’t have any “people,” local or otherwise. No, we were down to the moment of truth. If I didn’t produce the Moose, then I would be chopped liver around the Tiffany.
“All right, Vincent, I’ll make the call. But I’m not making any promises. Panama City is out of their jurisdiction. And while it’s a huge matter to me, Moose may not see it that way.”
Vincent picked up the phone and shoved it toward me. “Call him.”
I stared at the phone and back at Vincent, my heart pounding and my face slowly turning red. Then I laughed.
“Vincent, I am not going to call him with you standing here. First off, we talk in Italian, and second, if he so much gets a whiff of someone, not a family member, within earshot, he would have my ass. Besides, you don’t just dial direct. I gotta dial a number, leave a coded message, and then wait. It could take hours.”
Vincent’s jaw was twitching and he didn’t pull the phone away. “Dial,” he said.
I grabbed the phone like I was pissed. “Turn away,” I demanded. “I don’t want you to look.”
Vincent sighed heavily and turned back to the pantry and my chocolate stash. I knew he was listening to me punch in the members, so I did the only thing I knew to do given my situation. I called my mother.
“Hello?” Ma always answers the phone like she’s expecting the cops or a funeral home to be calling, and I guess given that Pop and three of my brothers are firemen and my baby brother’s a cop, that’s a fair expectation. Still, it’s disconcerting to hear t
he panic in her voice.
“This is Sierra,” I said.
“Oh, Sierra.” She sighed with relief. She inhaled as if she was about to ask the 480 questions she always asks, but I cut her off at the pass.
“I need to get a message to Moose,” I said. I glanced over at Vincent. He’d turned and was paying close attention.
“Moose? Who in God’s name is Moose?” my mother cried. “Sierra, what’s the matter with you? Who’s Moose? Should I know?”
“No,” I said, “that’s fine. If it’s not until tomorrow, well, I understand.”
Ma was getting frantic now. “Let me call your father to the phone.” There was a squishy noise as she pressed her palm over the phone, then the sound of her muffled shouting. “Frank! Frank! It’s Sierra. I think she wants to talk to you.”
“Thanks so much,” I said quickly. “I’ll wait to hear from you tomorrow.” I hung up and looked over at Vincent, then let my finger slide up to click off the ringer. In about two minutes my parents would be dialing my home like it was the winning lottery number wanting to know what in the hell was going on. Vincent was smiling.
“That’s a good girl,” he said. “Now we’re gonna see some action.”
“Be careful what you wish for, Vincent,” I said. “You may be in for more action than you were planning on.”
Vincent nodded like he knew all about it. “These are desperate times, Sierra,” he said. “I will make myself and the club available to whatever Moose Lavotini needs. You tell him I’m grateful and that Vincent Gambuzzo knows how to repay a favor.”
Vincent got up and hustled toward the door, puffed up with the importance and self-satisfaction of knowing he’d brought in the mob to avenge a moral outrage. I closed the door behind him and wandered over to the full-length mirror in the living room.
“Hello,” I said gruffly into the glass, lowering my voice as deep as I could. I grabbed the barre. “I’m ‘Big Moose’ Lavotini, at your service. Now, about that favor you need…”
Eight
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