He shuddered. “I’m still glad you’re handling it. I don’t wanna have a goddamn heart attack. All I want, get these guys off my back, then get the hundred grand. I got a feeling those IMF guys are coming to town tomorrow. They look over my contracts one more time, talk to the bands’ lawyers, or whatever, and they write me a check.”
“Too bad we can’t put these guys off till tomorrow.”
“I told you, man, when they called they said it had to be tonight.”
The phone rang.
Vick jumped and turned red and I thought he was going to have a coronary right then. I answered the phone and a deep, gruff voice said, “This Fatso?”
“No. But I’ll have to do.”
“Who’re you?”
“Martin Fender.”
He grunted. It didn’t sound like the grunt of a man who was easily impressed. “I heard of you. You handling this deal for Fatso?”
I grunted.
“You better have the money.”
“I’ve got the money.”
“OK. I don’t give a fuck who brings it, long as they don’t come with any silly ideas or any goddamn cops. Tell Fatso that.”
“All right. I’d just like some assurance—”
“Fuck you up the assurance. You got an assurance that if tonight doesn’t make us 20K richer we make a call to the right guy on the left coast.”
“OK.”
“Behind Rosie’s Roadhouse on Ben White Boulevard at two a.m. Don’t fuck up.”
After I hung up I said, “It sounded kind of like Ed the Head.” Vick shook his head, soaking up the sweat from his temples with the red bandana. “No way. Eddie loves me, man. Besides, he doesn’t have a phone.”
“It doesn’t matter. He hasn’t been gone more than two minutes. He wouldn’t have had time to get home unless he was staying at the hotel next door. I just meant that he had the same kind of voice. Sort of generic local redneck. I didn’t think it was him.”
“Of course it wasn’t.”
“You do trust him, don’t you?”
“Sure I do. What’d they say?”
“They want me to meet them behind Rosie’s Roadhouse at two a.m.”
“Well, this is it, then.”
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll leave now. I heard at the police station that Morganna was out there this week.”
“She the girl with the giant tits, about sixty-five, seventy inches in the bust?”
“Something like that.”
He grabbed his chest. “Oh, lord.”
&&&
By the time I’d gotten there, Morganna had already done her thing. I bought a beer that cost more than a six-pack would, drank it, and got depressed. Anything you saw in the club, you could see reflected several times more on the mirrors that walled the place. And once should have been enough. Between the looks on the faces of the dancers, the looks on the faces of the customers, and the face of the bass player in the mirror behind the bar, it seemed that everyone in the room had come for some sort of grim task. I didn’t feel any cheerier, however, waiting behind the club in the car after closing time.
You could smell the sour cocktails in the dumpster. You could smell the asphalt cooling in the night air. The muffled doom-doom-doom of a disco bass drum pulsed away inside, giving the clean-up crew a beat to work to. Stars winked overhead, cars whooshed down Ben White, my feet tapped out static beats. Where were those sonsofbitches?
When the music stopped there were three cars left in the back lot. A late model red Ford pickup coasted around the comer and stopped inches from my passenger side door. My hand went instinctively to the gun in my jacket. Because the Ghia sat so much lower than the pickup, I couldn’t see the driver. A passenger got out and walked around to my window. He was a tanned body builder in tight new Wranglers, cowboy shirt, cowboy boots, and a white straw cowboy hat with the brim bent low in front. Amber marksman shades hid his eyes. He spat before he cocked his head at the driver so that I’d take note of the double-barreled shotgun snaking out of the pickup window.
“Let’s have the money,” he said.
I showed him the Beretta.
It was possible he’d seen one like it before. Or maybe he didn’t know what it was. Maybe he thought it was a cigarette lighter. In any event, he wasn’t impressed.
I said, “Why not let’s have a big red hole in that cowboy shirt?”
“Bad idea. You do that, you get blown in half, we get the money, and Vick Travis’s little secret gets told.”
“This isn’t the way I wanted it to go,” I said.
“I don’t remember negotiating with you, Fender. Just give me the money and you won’t ever see or hear from us again.”
“Is that a promise?”
“It’s the truth. Now gimme that briefcase.”
“Just one thing I’d like to know. Did you have anything to do with Retha Thomas?”
His face turned slack. “Nope, sure didn’t. Sure as hell didn’t, and I don’t know who did.”
His answer was so simple and easily given, I was ready to believe him. He’d even stopped pushing for the money. However, the shotgun made a clunking sound on the pickup door, meaning that expedience was still an issue.
“You’ve got no reason to lie to me, since you’ve got a pal with a shotgun, right?”
“I never beat up a woman in my life,” he said.
“What about your pal there in the truck?”
He grinned. “Only woman he hated enough to kill was his wife. But she went and died of cancer. But that’s none of yer bid-nizz. How about it?”
I gave him the briefcase.
He took it, said, “Thanks, pardner,” and walked around the back of my car, stopped at the right rear tire, and jabbed it with something. “One more thing,” he said, “don’t be following us.”
I felt the car start to list and heard the hiss as the air went out of the tire, and he got in the pickup and they drove slowly away, $20,000 richer. There was no license plate and no dealer’s name engraved on the back bumper, so I just sat there feeling numb and ineffectual.
After a few minutes of that I got out and started changing the tire. I pried off the hubcap and started in on the lugs. Lying flat, the hubcap was shiny enough to reflect the streetlight behind me and a group of bats as they fluttered around it. Austin is home to the largest urban colony of bats in the world, and I appreciated the company. I also felt no threat from them. Less than one percent of bats contract rabies. Even vampire bats, who need only about a teaspoon of blood a night, are timid and rarely attack humans.
I was loosening the lug nuts when I heard footsteps at my back. Chills ran up my spine—I’d left the gun in my jacket, which I’d left in the car. A spiral of crayon colors swirled on the hubcap as the figure approached. I turned around.
It was Barbra Quiero. From my crouched position, she seemed taller than ever, and the streetlight immersed her in an eerie, bluish glow. Her lips seemed to be a strange shade of translucent, purplish red. “Need some help?” she said.
“No,” I said. “What are you doing out here?”
“I’ve been parked out front. I knew I’d see you when you left, but I was starting to think you’d left with someone else.”
“Why would it matter?”
“I’m onto you. I was over at La Quinta when I overheard the desk clerks talking about you. One of them said you came back to the motel with Retha. So I’ve been following you. You’ve been busy.”
“You could say that.” The lug wrench felt cold in my hands. So a motel clerk saw me accompany Retha back to her room. Was it possible? I didn’t like the idea. I wondered if Lasko had heard this information.
“We need to talk.”
“I know. Where do you want to go? I’m getting tired of the scenery here.”
She ran her fingers through her hair. The jagged cut quickly sprang back to its former shape. “I feel stupid for suggesting it, in light of things, but why don’t you follow me to my hotel?”
“All right,
” I said. “You can trust me.”
“I hope so,” she sighed, looking back over her shoulder. “I think some guys have been watching me.”
From her seventh-floor window, Austin looked quiet and tidy. Town Lake looked like a shimmering Lurex sash laid across the city’s midsection. I knew it wasn’t as peaceful as it looked. The capricious currents below the surface swirled wickedly around the trees and flood debris that had been submerged when the river had been dammed. That lake ate people—swimmers, boaters, careless fishermen. I checked my watch and cursed myself, wishing I’d called Ladonna earlier. Calling her now would be awkward, since calling a nine-to-five person at four a.m. and telling them everything is OK is going to be awkward, no matter what. Calling Vick and telling him that the delivery had been made with almost no complications was easy. He sounded relieved. Ice clinked in glasses behind me. I looked up and saw the reflection of Retha Thomas’s friend, sitting erect on the bed, filling two of the squat hotel glasses with gin and tonic. I thought of the drink as bitter medicine.
“I was trying to buy some information about your friend,” I said. It wasn’t exactly a lie.
“Trying?”
“Wimpy word, isn’t it?”
She shook her head, her mouth turned down in a bitter curve. Her Ups were still a rubbery purplish red, even out of the blue streetlight. “Tell me about it.”
“No. I think Retha knew something that caused someone to try to kill her. I’d rather not tell you what I think it was. Not right now.”
She turned away and drained her drink. I made us a couple more, determined to sip the next one and call it quits. “So who is this desk clerk?”
“A young nerd, probably his first job. Not too tall, blond hair, glasses. I think his name might be Bob.”
I sipped my drink and listened to my heart pound. There had to be a mistake. With all those barbiturates in me, I didn’t think I could have made it up to her room unless I’d been carried. And there would have been fingerprints that belonged to me. If there had been, I’d probably be in jail now, instead of where I was. I told her so.
She unwrapped a stick of gum and stuck it in her mouth, then tossed the pack in the general direction of the large handbag on the floor by the bed and crossed her legs. They were cigarette legs, long and slim.
“Are you sure about this desk clerk thing?” I repeated.
She leaned back and worked the gum over slowly. “Let’s say it’s true. Let’s say it’s a fact that you went back to her room. They say Retha didn’t have intercourse before the attack. But that doesn’t get you off the hook. Maybe you wanted to have sex with her but you were too messed up to get it up and you took it out on her.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? I don’t know you. Maybe you turn into some kind of psychotic monster when you’re high. Maybe Retha thought she had a real man with her but you turned out to be a nothing, a zero, a guy with a little shriveled peanut, a chicken dick. And you beat her up because you couldn’t take it. Maybe—”
“All right, that’s enough,” I said. The coarse tirade was like a slap in the face. She’d surprised me, but that had clearly been her intention. “For one thing, she clawed the person who attacked her, a person with a different blood type than mine. Anyway, I know I didn’t do it, and I think you’re lying about the desk clerk. So what’s the point of this?”
She stared, her skin smooth as polished wood, her grayish blue eyes impenetrable. She looked so hard and alien that it was difficult to be mad at her. “OK, I admit it, then,” she said finally.
“Admit that there’s no desk clerk?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So what am I doing here?”
“You’re here to prove how easy it is to get you to go back to a hotel room with a girl, that’s what. I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of a guy you are.”
“Oh, for chrissakes. You follow me late at night and walk up and startle me, then use some bullshit line to get me up to your room so you can blast me with a bunch of locker room pseudo-Freudian bullshit. Man, you are strange. What’s the verdict, anyway? Am I strange enough for you?”
She sneered defiantly. “Well, I guess I tricked you to get you here, but it sure wasn’t hard. Maybe it’s because you feel guilty and you still don’t know exactly what you did that night. But you don’t seem like the kind of guy to do that to Retha. I mean, you probably wouldn’t get so upset you’d beat up a girl if you went back to her room and couldn’t get it up.”
“Well I’m flattered,” I snapped. “Look, I know you’re upset about your friend and you wonder about me. I wonder about me too, but not about whether I’m guilty or innocent. What I need is constructive help, not little psycho-sexual mind games.” She blew a bubble, popped it, sucked it back in. It snapped like little firecrackers as she chewed. “OK. I don’t know what I’m doing. If only she wasn’t so helpless, it wouldn’t be so bad. But she is, and I can’t get used to the idea that I’m not able to do anything about it. In fact, it’s driving me nuts. Retha was the same way, restless. That’s probably what put her on a plane to Austin.”
“How long did you two know each other?”
She shrugged. “We’d been friends a few months. Six, maybe. Before that we kept seeing each other in the record store, like I said before. One day I invited her to lunch, and we started going to clubs together after that. It’s not like we were old high school chums or anything.
“She liked to go to this Thai restaurant on Vine in Hollywood, right across from the Capitol Records tower. She always ordered everything extra hot and spicy. Retha was never satisfied unless she broke out into a full sweat during her meal. Once I told her that if she liked hot food and music so much, maybe she should check out Austin. I was here a year ago, with a band.”
“You said you didn’t know any of her other friends?”
“No, she’s pretty much a loner. I mean, she was really outgoing at her job and everything, but she was always real independent, too, like she didn’t really need anybody except her parents and her boyfriend. She spent most weekends with her parents. She had a boyfriend for quite a while, a year or so, and they kept pretty much to themselves, you know. So after they broke up, she didn’t really know what to do with herself. But it wasn’t because she’s shy. I just don’t think she’s the kind of person who needs a lot of friends.”
“Do you know this guy? I’d like to talk to him.”
She shook her head. “Nah. He sounded like a real dork, too. I don’t think I’d wanna know him.”
“What was his name?”
“She called him Bone. It’s easy to remember, just think of ‘bum.’ That’s what he was. No job, no apartment, not even a car. And in LA, that’s really the lowest, next to being homeless, ’cause even a lot of them have cars. That’s all I know.”
“I almost think I should fly out to LA and ask around. Maybe I should just talk to her parents.”
“They don’t know anything. All they know is Lockheed and their little comfy suburban lifestyle. Hollywood and rock and roll might as well be another planet. You’d only upset them.”
“You might be right. But still . . .”
“I talked to her boss at Tower, like you wanted. Nobody called him from here about her, or anywhere else, for that matter.” She leaned back on the bed and kicked off her boots. “Got any other bright ideas?”
“Not a whole lot. Did you get a license number on the car you thought was following you?”
“No.”
“What about the make?”
She shrugged. “They all look alike nowadays.”
“But you’re sure someone’s following you, watching you?” She nodded. Her eyes started to well up, and she didn’t seem to know what to do with that big mouth, lips pressed together, rubbery and purplish red. “Maybe they wanna rape and kill me too.”
The curtains were open, a gray moonlit sky out there coated with glass. The door was double locked, and the only sound besides our voices and
the ice clinking in our glasses was the low muted hum of the air conditioner maintaining the coolness of everything, the air, the chair I sat in, the thick carpet beneath my feet. I looked at Barbra, rolled up into a ball, hugging herself, crying.
I glanced around the room. She was as messy as Leo. Clothes were everywhere. There was a portable CD player on the table by the window, with a dozen CDs scattered around. Gum wrappers, People magazine, perfume, makeup, panties. There was a bra trapped under a room service tray atop the TV, the strap dangling down in front of the screen. Curled up by my foot was a tiny zodiac scroll, the kind you find next to the breath mints at the Minit Mart. Back on the bed, she was a solid ball of confusion, a human knot.
I knelt down by the bed and touched her. She kept sobbing. The thin muscles of her back were clenched tight as braided cables. I put my arms around her and soon hers were locked around me, the fake nails digging into my back. Her tears made my face wet. I squeezed her harder, but it didn’t do any good.
“Oh, man, why?” she cried, nibbling my face.
I pulled back a bit and said, “I’m sorry.”
Close up, her face was a study in extremes. Her rain-colored eyes, so large and wet. Her mouth too wide, her lips too full. They quivered against her teeth. Her cheekbones stood out, especially next to the smallness of her chin. She reminded me of a cat: the closer you look, the deeper the mystery.
I got up and her arms dropped, her fingers clawing at the covers. “I am sorry,” I said.
She didn’t say anything. She just turned away and faced the wall.
I drank some of my drink, realized I didn’t like it, realized the stupidity of drinking just because I was in a hotel room with a strange girl in a strange situation. I thought about Retha and her bloody nose as I wiped Barbra’s tears from my face, and had to look down at my hands. It was only tears.
“Don’t touch me anymore,” she said. “It just messes things up in my mind.”
“OK.”
“You think I want to be here with a guy who may have murdered my friend?”
Tough Baby (Martin Fender Novel) Page 11