by Gary Gusick
“The police report says you waited on the porch of the assisted care facility with the residents and orderlies while Tommy walked to the parking lot,” said Darla.
“I think I know where you’re going with this,” said Cill. “You’re wanting to know do I think we’re all just some random atoms floating about the universe without purpose, or was it the hand of the Almighty? And being a Christian woman, I’d have to say me and Tommy wasn’t meant to go hand in hand to our maker. But I know he’ll be waiting at the pearly gates for me.”
“Don’t you usually walk with Tommy to the car?”
Cill put her right forefinger on her lips, like she was miming someone thinking over a question. “Well now, sometimes I do and sometimes I just don’t. Depending.”
“Depending on what?”
“How big is the rocks?” said Cill. “The ones in the parking lot. Unless it’s got asphalt, then I don’t give no never mind. But if there’s big ole stones, I got me on them long spikey heels, the kind that bumps one up buttwise, makes the fellas stare at you. If I’m wearing them, I can’t do no navigating over big stones.”
“And that’s why you didn’t walk Tommy to the car last night?”
“God’s hand was in it, too,” said Cill, like she’d thought and prayed on the matter.
“Do you know of anyone else, aside from Conway, that might have reason to harm Tommy?”
“You might had a notion it was someone from the Elvis community,” said Cill, shaking her head, “but I don’t think it was.”
“You mean Elvis fans?”
“The other Elvis tribute artists,” said Cill. “I forgot, you ain’t from Mississippi. Let me just tell you, Mississippi has got lots and lots of Elvis tribute artists. And different types, too. There’s Young Elvis, Army Elvis, and Vegas Elvis—some call this older Elvis—Tommy was Vegas Elvis ’cause he thought he fit the part more, lookswise. There’s also Gospel Elvis, Cowboy Elvis. Them’s the main ones.”
Cill put Darla in mind of Bubba from the movie Forrest Gump, the part where he was naming the different shrimp preparations.
Cill continued: “The lack of available Elvis artists in the marrying pool is why I up and moved here from Kentucky. They got Elvis tribute artists there, of course. Elvis is everywhere, but it ain’t on the same level, numberswise, as Mississippi. I wanted me an Elvis husband, so I had to come to where Elvis come from. And when I heard Tommy singing ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight,’ the rest, as they say in history books, is history—only this is one of them sad chapters in the book.” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, I don’t think it was one of the other Elvis artists. I never heard any of them talking bad of Tommy.”
Darla remembered that Tommy came in last at the yearly Elvis impersonating contest in Tupelo. Jealousy was likely not a motive.
“If Tommy has a computer here at the apartment, I probably should take it with me,” said Darla.
“It’s right here,” said Cill. The laptop in a black carrying case was leaning against the side of the sofa, zipped up and ready to go.
Darla wondered if Cill knew someone would be coming for it. “Did you use this, too?” she asked.
“Computers ain’t my thing,” said Cill. “But I did make Tommy take off all those dirty pictures. That was all before we met. Being as how Tommy was so lonely and didn’t have two arms to hold him tight. But he hadn’t done any of that since we took up. Guess all he needed was a real woman.”
“That must be it.”
“Is there anything else? Tommy would have wanted me to do my part to help take a bite out of crime. Especially with him being the victim.”
“That’s it,” said Darla, turning off the recorder.
“Could you just wait here a minute?” asked Cill. “I want your woman-to-woman opinion on something.” She jumped to her feet and skipped off down the hall and into the bedroom before Darla could answer.
Cill returned in less than a minute wearing a frilly black chiffon party dress. It reminded Darla of something out of the fifties she’d seen on an early episode of Mad Men that she and Stephen had watched on Netflix.
“Give me your honest opinion,” said Cill, “as a fashionista.”
Darla was at a loss for words.
“For the funeral,” said Cill. “I’ll need to get the hat and the veil.”
Darla thought for a minute. “I think Tommy would have been pleased.”
“Me, too,” said Cill, her lower lip quivering. She sighed and seemed to regain her composure. “The trouble is those ole vintage clothing stores, they keep some funny hours.”
Darla got up to leave. She handed Cill her card. “If you can think of anything else that might be important, this is my cell number.”
Cill took Darla’s card and led her to the front door, taking Darla by the hand like they were BFFs.
“There’s just one more thing,” Darla said. “I’m wondering why Tommy would put you in charge of the land, being as how you just recently met and you say you have no mind of practical matters?”
Cill looked back at Darla, blank-faced.
“He could have selected his attorney, Mr. McClure,” said Darla. “Mr. McClure has all sorts of experience in this area.”
“I guess it was just something Tommy wanted to do for me,” Cill said, making a show of shrugging her shoulders.
“But the land could never be sold, and the guardianship doesn’t come with any income,” said Darla. “A guardianship can involve a fair amount of work, the kind of work you say that you’re not interested in doing.”
“A woman can never know what’s in a man’s mind, can she?” said Cill.
“But you are going to remain the guardian?”
“You coming to the viewing?” Cill changed the subject. “I know Tommy will be looking down, serenading us from on high.”
“I wouldn’t want to miss that,” said Darla, as she went out through the door.
Chapter 5
The Devil’s Disciple
Darla stopped for a late lunch at Gilly’s, off County Line Road. She wolfed down a plate of shrimp and grits while reviewing Tommy’s case files on her laptop. She found no mention of Conway Boudreaux or his enterprises.
When she finished lunch, she hopped on Interstate 55 going south, and drove four miles to the Burline Avenue exit, in South Jackson. In Burline she drove past a row of boarded-up buildings and an abandoned railroad station. The street dead-ended at a gravel parking lot the size of a Little League field. At three in the afternoon, the lot was half full of vehicles. There was a flamingo pink cinder-block building at the end of the parking lot with a flashing neon sign, big enough to be read from two blocks away: CONTINENTAL CONWAY’S CENTLEMAN’S CLUB it said. THE SOUTH’S MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. SHIRTS AND SHOES REQUIRED.
Darla had been here before. A few years back, Conway Boudreaux had been a suspect in a homicide case. He’d had an alibi that stuck, and had ended up providing Darla with a contact that helped her solve the case. It was a one-time thing. He wasn’t one of Darla’s snitches. They knew each other, that was all.
Conway Boudreaux was standing outside, at the corner of his building. Conway, who thought of himself as something out of GQ, was decked out in his signature look: a white cotton suit, and underneath the jacket, an electric blue silk T-shirt. Miami Vice about twenty years too late. He reached for a cigarette when he saw Darla walking toward him.
“Hey, Slim,” he said. “Haven’t seen you since you left the sheriff’s department. I heard you’re a high-level statie now. Didn’t know they got involved in vice.”
“You know why I’m here, Conway.”
Conway held the cigarette in his mouth, pulled a Zippo lighter from his breast pocket, popped it open with one hand the way kids used to do in high school, lit the cigarette, inhaled, and blew the smoke out of both nostrils, all before he spoke. “A terrible thing,” he said, flashing his trademark smirk.
“I can see how broken up you are over Tommy’s death.”
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�Officer Elvis’s departure?” he said. “I could care less. The terrible thing I’m talking about…I can’t smoke in my own club. Some dumb-ass city of Jackson ordinance. Let me tell you, if tobacco were a cash crop in this state it would be a different story. I’m thinking about getting a lobbyist, somebody who has some influence with the city hall crowd. Somebody who could get the ordinance killed. How much do you think that would run?” Conway inhaled down to his toes and took a shot at blowing a procession of smoke rings. A slight breeze kept him from succeeding. “We can go inside when I’m finished if you want,” he said, “but it can get kind of loud, even at this hour.”
“Here is fine.” Darla removed the recorder from her purse. “It’s voice activated. You remember. You got an alibi for last night?”
Conway didn’t look surprised at the question. “I was at Continental Conway’s. It was senior night. Runaround Sue was headlining.”
“I hear Tommy forced you to shut down the Adonis Club,” she said.
“Who told you that? His girlfriend?” Conway kicked at the parking lot gravel, and then wiped away the dust on his shoe tops with the back of his white pants.
“So you know Ms. Nothauzer?”
Conway coughed. He looked at his cigarette and frowned. “Every pleasure has its price,” he said. “To answer your question, she came to see me for an audition about three months ago. Her idea was to come out in a miniskirt from the sixties and helmet hair to make her look like Priscilla Presley. She has the body for it. Plus, when she stripped down to the string, she had Elvis’s face tattooed on her butt. It took up one whole cheek. Not a tattoo of fat Reylander pretending to be Elvis, but the real deal. The person that inked her knew what he was doing. And she could dance okay. But I wasn’t a buyer. I thought her act was in bad taste, if you want to know the truth.”
“Really? Bad taste? You?”
“I turned down a woman once who was a Jackie Kennedy look-alike. Hey, sleaze I have no problem with, but Conway is not into creepy.”
“Did Tommy have something to do with closing the Adonis Club or didn’t he?”
Another question that didn’t bother him. “It wasn’t a police situation,” he said. “So I’m wondering why this is any of your business.”
“Tommy Reylander is dead and I’m investigating the homicide.”
“And?” Conway knocked the ash from his cigarette with his free hand.
“Keep up with the attitude and we’ll go downtown, where you can answer my questions in the interview room,” said Darla. “But, I have to warn you, it’s also a smoke-free environment.”
Conway took another puff. “Okay, to save everybody the time. This is the story you’re looking for.” He ran his hand through what was left of his thinning bleach blond hair. “Look, you’ve lived in Mississippi long enough. You know how people feel here about gays and lesbians. They’re fine with them as long as they stay in the closet. Every family has a bachelor uncle or an old maid aunt. All they got to do is act like they’re not interested in sex. And everybody is cool.”
“But you opened a club that catered to gay men,” said Darla.
“An untapped market. Bigger than most people would guess. I used the low-key approach. Out-of-the-way location. Signage shows a picture of Michelangelo’s David. Tasteful and all. Understand? What with the gays in military, gay athletes coming out, I figured I’d be okay. The times, they are a-changing. That kind of thing. And of course, everything is up to code.”
“Tommy knew about the Adonis Club?”
“From the outset,” said Conway. “And believe it or not, Reylander was fine with it—at least at first. He stopped by before we opened to check the paperwork. That was it. Not even a shakedown. Reylander might have been a jerk but he wasn’t on the take. Then two days after the girlfriend does the audition at Continental Conway’s and I turn her down, the God Squad shows up at the Adonis Club. Reylander and Reverend somebody or another from his church, that place that looks like a shopping mall. Plus he’s got a posse of five or six state legislators, the ones that like to spout the Old Testament. Reylander is at the head of the pack. He isn’t doing his Officer Elvis bit. He’s in street clothes, being plain old Citizen Reylander. It was after midnight. A swarm of do-gooders. They push their way into the Adonis. It’s right out of Elmer Gentry.”
“Elmer Gantry,” said Darla, correcting him. “It was a book by Sinclair Lewis.”
“To continue,” said Conway. “They got Jesus posters. They got Bibles. Worse, they got cellphones with cameras. They’re snapping shots, not just of the dancers, either. These guys are taking pictures of the audience.”
“And there are people in the audience who don’t wish to be identified,” said Darla.
“Now I got signs up all over the place that say picture taking is a no-no. Only I don’t have the muscle to make the God Squad turn over their cellphones. Which means some very important people are going to have their privacy compromised. So, the situation deteriorates into a couple of rounds of name-calling and threats. The fuck-yous go back and forth, the whole nine yards. But in the end, with a little help from Continental Conway, everybody makes nice.”
“Meaning what?” asked Darla.
“We negotiated. For an appropriate fee, the exact amount of which shall remain undisclosed, I agreed to quietly close the doors to the Adonis Club indefinitely. In exchange for this arrangement, Reylander and his God Squad agreed to keep my customers’ confidentiality…highly confidential. Nobody gets embarrassed down at the Capitol—meaning certain legislators get to remain in the closet, and yours truly gets an Easter egg for his sensitivity to the moral outrage of the conservative community. It’s like the Department of Agriculture, where they pay farmers not to plant crops.”
“Still,” said Darla, “you’re not denying that Tommy did shut you down?”
“True, the little prick. But I came out okay financially. And it doesn’t hurt that a half-dozen legislative committee heads at the state capitol recognize that I did them a solid favor. Besides, I got other irons in the fire.”
It was a weird story, but Jackson, Mississippi, was a weird place. More important, Conway, who never had much of a poker face, didn’t sound like he was lying. His story would be easy enough to check out. For the present, it looked like even though Conway might well be the devil’s disciple, he probably wasn’t sufficiently motivated to Fourth of July Tommy and his Caddy.
Darla turned off the recorder. “That’ll do,” she said. “I’ll expect a call if you come across anything that would be helpful.”
“You know me,” said Conway, with his characteristic jackass smirk.
Darla turned and walked back to her Prius, feeling Conway’s beady eyes glued to her backside.
Chapter 6
Mirror, Mirror
He introduced himself as Bill Daniels, whenever he was forced to introduce himself. His name wasn’t Bill Daniels and he didn’t feel the name suited him. But Bill Daniels was what it said on his driver’s license, his Social Security card, and Capital One Visa.
The bathroom in the furnished apartment he’d rented had a medicine cabinet with a three-way mirror. It was just the kind Bill needed—part of the reason he’d rented this particular apartment. He studied his face carefully, turning from left to right, and then back the other way, adjusting each section of the mirror so he could see his face from every possible angle. He had a handheld mirror, too, and used that to check out the back of his head. Finally, he used one of those close-up mirrors that women use when they’re putting on their makeup or trying to pluck their eyebrows. He couldn’t afford to miss anything.
This was his routine. He went through it the exact same way four times a day. The first time was when he’d just woken up, even before he washed his face. Then, after he’d washed, shaved, and dressed, he checked the mirrors again. And again when he came home at night, just as he’d done the other times. And then, one last time before he went to bed. He couldn’t get enough of that face.
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sp; Before he checked himself out, each time he worried that the other times had been part of a dream. He was terrified that his transformed face would be gone, and in its place would be the old one—the face of the wannabe.
He looked again. Just like all the other times, the face staring back at him in the mirror was the right face. It was the same face he’d seen in the photos he’d collected since he was a kid. He had memorized every part of every feature in every photo: the curve of the lips, the length of nose, the degree of roundness of each nostril, the geometry of the forehead, the length of the jaw, the size and shape of the chin. When he closed his eyes he could picture it in minuscule detail in his mind. And now it was his face.
He’d taken a trip to Switzerland to get the surgery done, just to be on the safe side. He’d brought a box filled with old photos for the doctor to study. “How close can you come to this?” he asked.
If the doctor recognized the face in the photos, he didn’t let on. The doctor looked back and forth between the various photos and his face, feeling his jawline, the thickness of his nose. After which the doctor also photographed his face, from every which angle. The doctor examined everything. “Come back tomorrow,” the doctor said, in a Germanic accent. “The receptionist will take your payment on the way out.”
The next day the doctor showed him a 3-D image. “This will be you,” the doctor said, inviting him to take a seat in front of the computer monitor.
First he saw the old face, the dull one that wasn’t the real him, the wannabe, the one he desperately wanted to be rid of. The doctor leaned in behind him and moved the computer mouse, so that the old him became the real him right there before his eyes while the 3-D image was rotating around on the screen. It was just like the movies.
“You can do this?” he asked. “To real flesh?”
In response he got that smug look doctors always use when they’re trying to tell you, without saying so, that they’re way ahead of you. “It’s not a question of the doctor’s skill. What you wish can be achieved, but it will require multiple operations.” What he was getting at, of course, was what about the fee.