Die Laughing 2: Five More Comic Crime Novels

by Ben Rehder

  “Fine song,” Rick said. “Wrong decade. How about Biloxi by Jesse Winchester?”

  She came back a second later. “Got it.”

  “Gimme fifteen minutes.” It would take about ninety to get to the coast and he wanted to be on the road when the song came on.

  The drive to the coast was fast and easy and, for about forty minutes, it gave Rick a chance to hear Autumn work. Rick had suggested she tone down her perkiness and try to sound more like an FM jock from the seventies. The result was a sweet and vaguely seductive persona that Rick thought suited the format. Autumn did a good job ad-libbing the cash giveaway promo but she was still having problems with her segues. Rick almost drove off the road when she went straight from Don McLean’s gentle, acoustic Vincent into Zeppelin’s Dancing Days.

  When Rick was beyond the range of WAOR’s signal he surfed for a rock station on the coast. He wanted to sample their playlist while he worked on his definition of classic rock. When he came across Purple Haze he shook his head. So many great Hendrix songs but they only play six from Smash Hits. It was the same for all the classic artists. This was what Rick and so many people hated about the format. The play list was embarrassing. It patronized the audience and, in the process, alienated them from the music they once loved. Radio consultants had started this plague and Clean Signal had finished spreading it across the radioscape. But now that he had his own station, Rick could do something about it, in his own small way.

  Rick stayed on Highway 49 until it t-boned into the coast highway at Gulfport, just at the Marine Life Oceanarium where Donald Trump kissed a sea lion on the mouth while thinking about buying the property so he could build another money factory.

  Rick had an early memory of a vacation in Gulfport. Two hours in the back of a Country Squire with rear-facing seats until they stopped at Stuckey’s where they sold fireworks and old black mammy salt and pepper shakers and license plates with a cartoon Confederate soldier declaring ‘Hell no, we won’t forget.’ Then another hour and a half down to the coast before emerging from the pine trees to a diamond white beach and curling blue surf, or so it had seemed. He’d been to Marine Life and gawked at the dolphins’ tricks. He’d run on the beach down to the salty water and he wanted to see it all again.

  So he drove along the coast, past Marine Life and the old yacht club. The blue curling surf he remembered was really just a flat, brown gulf, like tea with milk. But there was lots of sand. In fact the stretch from Biloxi to Henderson Point was the largest manmade beach in the world. Rick remembered when Hurricane Camille hit in August of 1969. Winds over two hundred miles an hour blew in like it was clearing a path for the release of Blind Faith a week later. Can’t Find My Way Home had always been one of Rick’s favorites. After Camille a lot of folks just plain couldn’t find their homes.

  Rick drove slowly along the coast, marveling at a development plan that mixed garish casinos and tacky T-shirt shops with Beauvoir Plantation where Jeff Davis had lived his last days.

  A hundred and fifteen years since he died and there were still folks on the side of the road waving the Confederate battle flag, like maybe if they could win this one, all wouldn’t be lost. Naturally there was a second group, on the far side of a barricade, demonstrating against the first group. They were all gathered near the display of the eight flags that had flown over the Gulf Coast at various points in history. Too bad they can’t put this to rest, Rick thought.

  The protest brought to mind some of the hopeful music of the sixties. Rick thought about The Youngbloods and the chorus of Get Together. C’mon, people, now. And what about Sly and the Family Stone, the integrated San Francisco band that managed to sell racial harmony as it created an original soul, rock, funk sound that could still haul more freight than anything on contemporary ‘urban’ radio? Rick caught a glimpse of the angry face of one of the protestors and was reminded of Sly’s song, Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey.

  The nostalgic moment passed a mile later when Rick saw a sign for shrimp po-boys. He stopped and had one with fries and a cold beer and wondered how long it would take him to reach three hundred pounds, given his new diet. After lunch Rick continued down the coast to the Convention Center. He found a space in the far corner of the lot then walked to the ticket window and paid his admission.

  Inside the vast Convention Center, Rick paused to get his bearings. The pageant was being held in Hall A, the largest room in the complex. Thirty-nine thousand four hundred and eighty-six square feet of plush carpeting, twenty foot ceilings, and chandeliers, all divided into smaller areas for the various competitions. Rick saw a sign that said: True Magic Airbrush Tanning is available! Booth 119! Based on what he’d seen so far, he could imagine a fervent mother dragging her pale child into the booth for a quick spay painting for the George Hamilton competition.

  Rick looked through a program to find which event Lisa Ramey was scheduled to judge. It was sportswear, starting in five minutes. He wouldn’t have a chance to talk to her beforehand. He recognized Lisa Ramey the moment he saw her, though she didn’t look much like the girl in the 1995 Miss Auto Tire & Parts photo. She made Rick think of the Springsteen lyric about having skin like leather and the diamond hard look of a cobra. Rick thought she might frighten some of the children.

  The competition got underway so Rick took a seat and thought about what he’d say to her. Half an hour later, after the rhinestones and savings bonds had been doled out, Lisa packed up her stuff and made for the door. Rick followed. She paused now and then in the hallway to chat with people she knew from the pageant circuit. When she finally headed for the parking lot, Rick made his move. “Excuse me,” he said from behind. “Miss Ramey?”

  “Yes?” She turned around. She must have been expecting someone else because her expression changed from professional affability to something more lurid. “Well, hellooo.” She said this in a tone that Rick interpreted as attempted enticement. “What can I do for you?”

  Rick could imagine Stubblefield, a drink sloshing in one hand while he pawed at this woman’s desperately enhanced breasts with the other. Rick tried to shake the image from his head. He had to stick to his plan which was straightforward if rather flimsy. It revolved around a phony identity, a polite smile, and some obvious questions. “Miss Ramey, my name is Buddy Miles,” he said. “I’m working a missing persons case?”

  She looked him up and down then smiled and said, “Are you asking me or telling me?”

  “Telling,” Rick said. He slipped into his deepest FM voice. “Can we speak privately for a moment?”

  She touched her ear and said, “You have a very nice voice.”

  Rick gave a slow nod of appreciation. “Can we talk?”

  “I take it you’re not with the police, since it’s not Officer Miles or Detective Miles.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not with the police.” He almost said, That would make me Stewart Copeland, but what would be the point?

  Simultaneously tilting her head and arching her eyebrows, she said, “So you’re a private dick?” She smiled and seemed to glance down at his belt buckle.

  He looked, too. “Not exactly.”

  She reached over and pretended to brush something from his shirt. “You mean you’re not licensed to be dicking around?”

  Rick smirked at that “No, I’ll admit, I’m dicking around without the state’s blessing.”

  “Well, good for you,” she said. “Now. What do you want from me?” Again with the suggestive voice.

  “Just a few questions.”

  “Awww, so disappointing, but. . .” She shrugged. “. . .story of my life. Go ahead.”

  Rick pulled the photo from his shirt pocket and showed it to her. “Have you ever seen either of these people?” He didn’t want to tip his hand by pointing at Captain Jack.

  Lisa looked at the photo and said, “Uh, no.” An obvious lie.

  Rick took the photo back. “Do you know a man named Jack Carter?”

  “No.” An honest answer.

>   “Bernie Dribbling?”

  She shook her head.

  One lie and two straight ‘I don’t knows’ that seemed on the up-and-up. Rick wondered if she was on to him. Maybe she’d picked up on the Buddy Miles thing. Was it too obvious a pseudonym? He decided to throw in some other names that might shed light on that theory. “How about Brian or Carl Wilson?”

  “No, sorry.” She shrugged.

  Rick nodded slowly. She wouldn’t know the Beach Boys if they showed up in her driveway with a big woody. He felt it was a safe bet she didn’t recognize the name of Jimmy Hendrix’s one-time drummer, so he forged ahead. “You know anybody named Tammy?”

  Lisa snorted a laugh. “Might as well ask if I can point you toward a casino.”

  “So that’s a yes?”

  “Sure it’s a yes. You can’t swing a dead cat around here without hitting a Tammy.”

  Rick flashed an appreciative grin and said, “How about Clay Stubblefield?”

  Lisa reached into her purse for a cigarette and a lighter. “Uhhh, no.” Another lie.

  “Uhhh, no, you couldn’t hit him by swinging a dead cat or you don’t know him?” Rick took the lighter from Lisa and sparked it.

  Lisa held his hand steady as she lit her cigarette. “The name doesn’t ring a bell,” she said, taking the lighter back.

  “Hmm.” Rick nodded. “That’s interesting.”

  “How so?” Lisa turned her head and exhaled. She seemed nervous.

  “Well, the reason I say that is Mr. Stubblefield has been overheard telling people that the two of you had, uhhh. . .” Rick looked around before making a subtle punching gesture with his right fist.

  She looked at the gesture, then at Rick. “Really.” She took another drag on her cigarette then said, “Well, Mr. Stubblefield told me he was hung like a jack donkey.”

  Rick tried not to look surprised. “Did he?”

  “Yeah, but that didn’t make it true.” She smiled.

  Rick looked at her for a moment before he said, “Lemme buy you a drink?”

  “Are you asking or telling?”

  12.

  By the time they got to the Gold Coast Casino it was past four and the bar was crowded. They sat at a table farthest from the door where the constant ding-ding-dinging of the slot machines was least annoying. They ordered drinks. Lisa pulled another cigarette from her purse. She tamped it down solid on the table. “So who’s the missing guy?”

  “Name’s Jack Carter.”

  The waitress brought their drinks. A bottle of beer and a vodka rocks. Lisa poked at the lime in her glass. “What do you think happened to him?”

  Rick sipped his beer then said, “I think he tried to blackmail somebody and it backfired.”

  “And you think I’m the blackmail-ee?” Rick lit her cigarette. “You think I made him a missing person?”

  “Not really,” Rick said. “I’ve got a couple better prospects. I was just hoping you might know something that would help.”

  Lisa cocked her head and blew a column of smoke toward the ceiling. “So what, was he a friend of yours, or are you hired help?”

  Rick picked at the label on his beer bottle. “Let’s say he was a friend.”

  “Good, ‘cause I wouldn’t want to go to bed with anyone who was doing this for money.”

  Rick thought that was pretty finicky for a woman who had slept with Clay Stubblefield. Still, she had his attention, despite her reptilian appearance. He said, “So has anyone approached you about–”

  “The guy.” She reached over and pulled the picture from Rick’s shirt pocket. “He tried to get some money from me. But he didn’t call himself Jack Carter. Didn’t use a name at all.”

  “What happened?”

  “He said he’d been hired by Clay’s wife. Said he had a tape with Clay on it that implicated me. . .us.” Lisa rolled her hand in a gesture intended to mean sex. “He said I’d get dragged into legal proceedings surrounding the divorce, and it wouldn’t be worth it.” She made a sour face. “But he said he could keep my name out of it.”

  “For money.”

  “A fee, yeah.”

  “And?”

  “And I told him to fuck off.”

  Rick smiled. He liked her attitude. He waved at the waitress then looked at Lisa. “You want another?”

  “Please.”

  Rick ordered another round then returned her attention to the photo. He tapped it with his finger. “So you told him to fuck off and that was the last you saw of him?”

  “Yeah, until I took him out on a shrimp boat, chopped him up, and tossed him in the Gulf Stream.” She finished her drink and started chewing on a piece of ice.

  Rick looked mildly abashed before he said, “Sorry to have to ask this, but, you and Mr. Stubblefield. Really did. . .uhhhh?” He made the punching motion again.

  “Yeah. Once.” She stamped her cigarette out and looked at Rick, shrugging her eyebrows. “We met at one of these pageants. We had a few drinks. It was just one of those things.”

  “So he was telling the truth about that.”

  “Long as he didn’t brag he was good in bed, he was telling the truth.” She shook her head. “He’s a sorry fuck, strictly in it for himself. He’s also a tightwad and a liar.”

  “You mean about his . . . manliness?”

  “That plus he said he was divorced. And, obviously, I found out later he wasn’t.” Lisa leaned forward and said, “Has anyone ever told you you have beautiful hair?” She reached up and ran her fingers through it. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  Rick sat there and let her do it. It felt nice. He tried to imagine what she looked like twenty years ago. The waitress brought the second round of drinks. Rick handed her his credit card and asked for the tab.

  “What’s your hurry?” Lisa squeezed the lime wedge, then sucked the last bit of juice from it before dropping it into her glass. “You interviewing a prettier girl later?”

  Rick pointed vaguely north and said, “I’ve got a little drive ahead of me.” He wanted to keep this strictly business, but he was a weak man. Despite her appearances, if she made one more suggestive remark, he might cave in. Rick waited until the waitress was out of earshot before he said, “You think he’s capable of killing someone?”

  “Clay?” Lisa shook her head. “I doubt it. My limited experience? He’s a lot more talk than action. But he hinted around that he was connected, you know, all plugged in. Course he might’ve just been trying to sound like a big shot, you know, to compensate.” She wiggled her pinkie.

  Rick paused and lowered his voice. “Connected like, what, Dixie Mafia?”

  Lisa made a face. “Oh, I don’t know about that. Maybe just some mean-ass people, but on the other hand, who knows? Could be. Guys like Clay know everybody who runs anything in and around Deckern County.”

  Rick sipped his beer. He hadn’t considered that as a possibility, but why not? The Dixie Mafia wasn’t a charity organization. They were serious, violent, rednecks and if Captain Jack had crossed them, well, his radio career wasn’t the only thing that was over. Rick set his beer on the cardboard coaster. “Excuse me for a minute.” He stood and looked around before stopping a waitress to ask directions to the restroom.

  At the door to the bar, Rick had to step aside when a boisterous trio rambled in three abreast. Two women about the size of four with no business wearing shorts had left home wearing them anyway. They were flanking a guy who seemed excessively smug to be sporting a T-shirt that said, Who Farted?

  The woman on his left spoke with a cigarette bobbing on her lips. “Oooh, are we fixin’ to have us some large fun now, or whuuut?”

  “Hell pecker, yes,” the man said. “It don’t get no better’n this!”

  Rick wondered if the man’s optimism was buoyed more by the size of his escorts, his plastic cup full of nickels, or the fact he still had several teeth in his mouth. Rick made his way to the bathroom knowing this would remain one of life’s mysteries.

  When he retur
ned, Lisa was gone but the plastic folder with the credit card receipt was on the table. He figured Lisa had gone to the ladies’ room, so he sat down to sign the tab. When he opened the folder he saw his credit card was missing. In its place was a hotel room key-card. He thought for a moment. Did she tell me her room number? I don’t think so. Maybe if I don’t show up, she’ll come looking for me. Or maybe she’s out running up my credit card. Fabulous. Rick signed the tab and looked at the key card. He knew the front desk wouldn’t tell him what room it was for. And going floor to floor trying it in every door would probably result in a meeting with the security staff.

  “Sir?” It was the waitress. “You have a call at the bar.”

  Rick handed the check presenter to the waitress and followed her back to the phone. “Hello?”

  “Hey, sugar, why don’t you bring a bottle of something up to fifteen thirty-one?”

  13.

  Rick hated himself for doing it. And he knew he’d regret it later. But he did it anyway. Still, two questions nagged. What did this sort of behavior say about his character? And when did he start worrying about that kind of crap? Rick wasn’t a saint, didn’t pretend to be. He was just a guy and sometimes guys did these sorts of things, right?

  But this? It gave him doubts. Rick flipped open his cell phone and thumbed four-one-one as he drove. Information connected the call for an extra two dollars. After a few rings, a woman came on the line. “Yeah,” Rick said, “I lost my credit card.”

  After canceling his card, Rick flipped his phone shut and kept driving north. It was another hour to McRae. He spent a few miles wondering why he hadn’t gone up to Lisa Ramey’s room. It wasn’t as if he had so much jelly roll on his plate that he could afford to turn some down. So what did this say about him? Was he just getting old? Did he need a testosterone patch? Rick finally told himself it was a matter of taste and good judgment. He didn’t want to go to bed with any woman who would have Clay Stubblefield even once. Still, Rick knew he’d regret not going up there.

  Rick turned on the radio. The Biloxi station was playing Fleetwood Mac’s Over My Head, a pop-rock treasure by Christine McVie that Rick had always loved. It got him thinking about the next day’s meeting. How was he going to define the classic rock format he had in mind? The term ‘classic rock’ was virtually meaningless. Classic to whom? Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, and Duane Eddy were classic to one generation. Van Halen, Motley Crue, U2, and R.E.M. was classic to another.