MacKinnon 02 Dead Copy

by Kit Frazier

  “What’ll you have, honey?” the waitress said, leering at Logan.

  Puck aimed the camera at the waitress’s tattoo. “Reading material from top to bottom. Ya gotta love Austin.”

  Shaking his head, Logan turned to me. “What’ll you have, kid?”

  “Bourbon and Diet Coke,” I told him.

  His jaw muscle twitched. He repeated my request to the waitress, and to his credit, he didn’t flinch. He indicated another Shiner Bock, and the waitress hustled off, bootie bustling, to get our drinks.

  Near the stage, six very young girls danced with each other and seemed to be enjoying it. Puck shook his head and said, “Strippers.”

  “Aren’t they a little young?” I said. “They don’t even look old enough for training bras.”

  Puck looked down at his beer like the answers to the mystery of life were lying at the bottom of the bottle.

  “How do you know they’re strippers?” I said.

  “You watch. They’ll have more and more drinks, and then they’ll start slithering all over each other.” I stared at him. Puck, who seemed ready to pounce on anything in panties, didn’t seem pleased about the strippers.

  As it turned out, Puck was right. I tried not to seem scandalized when the girls started pantomiming sex acts that were probably illegal in at least twenty states.

  The song changed, and the preteen stripper girls moved like a herd of gazelles toward the bar to ply drinks off of unsuspecting alligators. Who says women are the weaker sex?

  “So what are we doing here?” I said to Puck, who had the viewfinder out, reviewing footage he’d taken throughout the afternoon.

  “Shootin’ a video for the CD my sister’s cutting. We figure she’ll get better media coverage if she’s got a video.”

  I frowned. “Aren’t videos expensive to make?”

  “Yeah, how ‘bout that, Blondie,’ he said. ‘Now everything make sense? I needed that money to hey! Ow!’ Puck flinched and grabbed his leg under the table, scowling at Logan.

  Ethan turned to me. “Actually, it’s not so expensive to shoot films now. Some indie producers are shooting films on small-format cameras and they’re good enough to get into Sundance.”

  “I figure I can get this whole thing shot for around ten large,” Puck said, aiming the camera at the cleavage of a passing reveler. “I’ve been shooting atmosphere all afternoon.” He turned to Logan. “You know, being a producer isn’t such a bad gig. I’m thinkin’ after all this trial stuff is over with, I might just go legit and be a producer.”

  “Yeah. I’ll hold my breath,” Logan said, just before his phone went off. “I’ll be right back,” he said to me, and then he disappeared into the crowd.

  The waitress came back with our drinks, and I sat back and got a good look at the band. The balding guy on guitar looked like he’d slipped down the backside of forty about ten years ago, and he was wearing a short kilt and a tank top. Most men teetering on middle age buy a convertible and leer at girls half their age. This guy settled for dressing like girls half his age.

  The drummer had long, stringy hair and a dull, burned-out look in his eyes, like he’d been sucking on glue sticks since the second grade.

  The girl was a pixie-haired blond bouncing around the stage in hotpink spandex looking like a radioactive raspberry. Her voice was so shrill she should have had us sign waivers for high-range hearing loss. The crowd milled about, some daring to dance, but most were laughing and joking as though there was no music at all.

  I shook my head and downed the rest of my drink. If Puck really had absconded with El Patron’s money to invest in his sister’s career, he could kiss that cash goodbye. No way was this girl going to get a contract, no matter how cute she was. There’s bad and there’s really bad, and Puck’s sister was really bad. On a scale of one to ten, she was in double-digit deficit.

  “So what do you think?” Puck said.

  Ethan was playing with Puck’s camera, zooming in on the band. “Your sister’s band is, um, unique,” I said to Puck.

  “What?” Puck said, frowning, then looked toward the stage. “Oh, hell no! That’s not Faith. Phoenix wanted a public gig, so I let her open for Faith.” He shook his head. “No, you’d know Faith when you heard her. She’s great. Terrific. And not only that, she’s really good, too.”

  “Right,” I said, looking around. “Where’d all these people come from?”

  “I invited some of the regulars and some friends to pack the audience. The rest are atmosphere.”

  “Atmosphere,” I repeated.

  “Yeah, you know, eye candy. For the video.” “You paid these people to be here?” I said. “Only the hot ones.”

  “What hot ones?” a female voice said over the din, and Puck’s face softened. I turned to see what caught his attention, and I had to stifle a gasp.

  “Hey, Sukie,” Puck said, his voice soft as he pressed a kiss to the girl’s forehead. He looked up like a proud papa. “Cauley, Ethan, this is Faith.”

  Ethan dropped the camera.

  “Hey, watch the equipment,” Puck said, lacing his arm around his sister.

  Nearby, I saw that men were noticing Faith the way that men sometimes do, and for the life of me, I couldn’t see why.

  Faith looked young. I did some quick math in my head never a good thing but from the articles I’d seen earlier, I surmised she was close to eighteen.

  But with her slight stature, her small breasts, and nonexistent waist, she looked for all the world like she hadn’t even blown out the candles on her fourteenth birthday cake.

  She was petite, about five two and ninety pounds with all her jewelry. Her black eyes were almond shaped and had a haunting, empty quality that made it hard to look away. She had long, dark lashes and the kind of pouty kitten’s mouth that would knock the style editors at Chic Magazine right off their pointy little Jimmy Choos.

  She also had piercings on every surface of her body I could see and probably more that I couldn’t.

  Her hair was very black and buzz cut, and it might have been pretty if you couldn’t see huge patches of pink scalp between dark little islands of hair. Inky green tendrils of tattoos crept from beneath a worn John Deere tee shirt strategically cut to bare a lot of pale skin. On her left arm, the tattoos were interrupted by a sporty little nicotine patch and a square of unnaturally smooth skin, like she’d had one of her tattoos recently removed.

  She looked like a preteen Audrey Hepburn, if Audrey Hepburn had been tattooed, pierced, and stricken with mange.

  “So,” she said, nodding at me. “You Wylie’s new fuck?”

  I blinked and, for once, was struck speechless.

  Ethan, who’d been scrambling to pick up the camera, sat openmouthed. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Faith.

  She eyed Ethan with interest, her gaze skimming over the binary code on his tee shirt. “You are dumb, huh?”

  My eyes widened. “Excuse me?” I said. Ethan may be a lot of things, but he certainly wasn’t dumb.

  “His shirt,” she said. “Code for You are dumb.”

  I stared at Ethan, but he was still staring at Faith.

  “You know code?” I said, not meaning to sound as incredulous as I did.

  She shrugged. “A lot of geeks come into the bar where I work. They like to talk.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to recover. “Where do you work?”

  “Boners,” she said like it was no big deal. “You know. Strip joint out by the county line.”

  Ethan choked on his tongue.

  The girl dropped backward onto the bench like a rag doll and leaned bonelessly against the table. “I need a fucking drink,” she said.

  She seemed to relish the profanity, toying with the feel of it as it rolled off the tip of her pierced tongue.

  I thought of the photo I’d seen of her in the Sentinel’s archives and shook my head. This could not be the same girl. But then, ten years is a long time when you’re eighteen and even longer when you’ve lived a rough
life.

  Puck had the good grace to look uncomfortable. “Faith…we’re rolling film on you tonight ‘

  “You’re not my fucking dad,” she snarled and pulled a pack of cigarettes from inside her combat boot and lit a match on the table.

  I guessed she wouldn’t be getting many advertising endorsements from the nicotine patch company.

  Puck looked like she’d kicked him in the stomach.

  The Firebirds took that moment to go on break. I knew this because the decibel level plummeted and I lost the desire to puncture my own eardrums.

  Puck shook his head and motioned to the creepy guy at the console who I’d mistaken for my bird guy.

  “Chino,” Puck called over the music. “You ready?”

  Ready for what? I wondered.

  Chino nodded and said something to Jitters, who nodded back. Or it might have been an epileptic fit. It was hard to tell.

  Puck looked back at Faith, who was staring down at the table.

  “I never said I was trying to be Dad,” Puck said quietly, and for a moment, Faith’s bravado faltered. She leaned toward him like she was going to apologize, but stopped. With her scruffy, half-bald head, she looked like a baby bird that had fallen from the nest, lost and confused, and I realized Puck had that same sense of being stranded and alone. I knew they’d lost their father early.

  But then again, so had I.

  With a slight shock, I wondered if I looked a little lost, too.

  Faith smiled then. It was just a kiss of a smile, and it flashed a single dimple in her left cheek. It lasted a split second, but it could have warmed the polar ice cap.

  I heard Ethan’s heart flip in his chest.

  Her smile was short-lived.

  “Angel Baby! Who’s your friends?” The guy looked like an aging frosted-blond frat boy, and he bumped Puck down the bench so he could sit by Faith. He snaked an arm around Faith’s shoulder and flashed me a lopsided grin.

  “Cullen Wallace Ainsworth the Third,” he said, jutting his hand, “My friends call me Tres.”

  He had to be pushing forty, but he was fighting it hard. His face was long and lean, but it was shiny, like he’d just had a dermabrasion.

  He had a big black Stetson pushed back on his head, and an even, tanning-bed tan. His hair was a longish man-bob that was immobilized with enough product to make another hole in the ozone. But it was his eyes—something about those dark eyes—like the too-dark tinted windows of a limosine.

  Two men the size and shape of water buffalo trailed the guy at a respectful distance. They were both buzz-cut and wore black, paramilitary-style pants. They took turns flexing their muscles. I wondered if they took turns performing other tasks, like thinking.

  Puck’s gaze dropped to his lap. Faith shifted in her seat, leaning slightly away from the man.

  Tres reached over, took Puck’s beer, and slugged it back. Clearly a man who took what he wanted.

  The waitress made another pass and Faith motioned, pointing to the place where Puck’s beer had been.

  Tres took Faith’s arm and examined the square lasered scar.

  “Looks good,” he said. “Another couple of treatments, you won’t even know it was there. Now if we could just do somethin’ about your hair.”

  Faith’s eyes went empty as he ran his hand over her nearly bald head.

  “You know,” he said. “Sometimes we want something so bad we make it impossible to have.”

  I stared at him. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about Faith and her music career or something else.

  Faith pulled her arm away and stared down at her lap.

  Ethan leapt to his feet, his thin chest puffed. “Ethan Singer,” he said. “And this is Cauley MacKinnon. We’re friends of Faith.”

  “Well, good to know you. Damn good,” Tres said, his head bobbing like one of the yachts moored at the pier. “Any friend of the angel is a friend of mine.” He snickered again, and I worked hard to keep my lip from curling.

  Ethan stood his ground.

  Tres was maybe five foot six, but he wore expensive, stacked-heel cowboy boots that added at least three inches, so that he as about an inch taller than Ethan.

  With those irritating snickers and stacked heels, I guessed him for a mama’s boy trying to be a daddy’s boy. Probably pledged his daddy’s fraternity. Probably pulled the wings off butterflies.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Tres said, turning to me. He produced a card from his shirt pocket and handed it to me with a flourish, then leaned in for a shake—one of those that start with the hand and end with a squeeze to the upper arm, brushing my breast like it was an accident.

  “Buzz and Bud,” Tres said, using his thumb to point back to the buffalo.

  Something about the Urban Cowboy cranked Ethan up to hard boil, and I swear I saw little puffs of steam blowing out of the little geek’s ears. Trying to defuse the situation, I reached up and put my hand on E’s elbow.

  He grudgingly returned to the bench, but he was still glaring at Tres.

  “Well, if it isn’t Little Miss Barbed Wire,” a familiar voice said, and I looked back to see Junior Hollis sucking on a long neck, grinning like an insurance salesman.

  A very young blond in half a month’s salary in makeup hung on his arm. She wore a cut-off camouflage shirt and shorts that could have fit my three-year-old niece.

  “Hey, Tres! You doing an after party?” She ran her fingertips along the tops of his shoulders, leaning in so that her breasts brushed the top of his head. It was the kind of thing you see on Good Girls Gone Bad late-night infomercials.

  “Ah, Junior and Baby Chick!” Tres flashed her a shark’s smile. She giggled and leaned down for a kiss.

  “You ever known me to miss an opportunity for a party?” He pulled a wad of bills out of his wallet and handed her a fifty, nodding toward the bar. “Let’s go ahead and get ‘er started now.’

  Miss Preteen Tractor Pull took the money and towed Hollis to the bar.

  “What’s Hollis doing here?” I said.

  Tres grinned. “Junior Hollis is a friend of mine. Matter of fact, I helped him get elected to sheriff.”

  Love, money, and politics. The Texas love triangle.

  I looked down at Tres’s card. It was expensive, the kind that real estate jocks carry, with a picture of his face taking up most of the space. There wasn’t much room for words, which seemed to be okay, because there were only four of them:

  Incubus

  Tres Ainsworth, Owner

  Tres’s picture on the card had been touched up no—pockmarks, and the Photoshop artist had generously removed some of the ingratiating smirk.

  “Incubus?” I recoiled, not even bothering to hide the grimace that spread across my face. “Like the demon that rapes women when they’re asleep?”

  “Well, now, rape. That’s an ugly word,” Tres said.

  He took the second beer the waitress brought for Puck and slugged half of it down. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his pupils constricting, like a smart bomb in search of a target. “More like a seduction.”

  My eyes snapped to tiny little slits. “Calling rape a seduction is like hitting someone with a frying pan and calling it cooking.”

  Tres looked at me, and for a moment, I thought I saw past Tres the good ol” boy and into something else.

  He laughed then, and I looked twice to make sure his teeth weren’t pointed.

  “I’m in the music business,” he went on. “I find talent and nurture it. Grow it to its full potential. This girl’s got a million-dollar set of pipes.” Tres Ainsworth had a company named after a misogynist demon. I bet his nurturing skills ranked right up there with serial killers and hot check writers.

  “How long have you been nurturing talent?” I said out of sheer, morbid curiosity.

  “Oh, we just started. It’s a family business, right, Faith?”

  Faith was still staring at her hands. Ethan was watching her the way

  Marlowe watches the Jeep
when I run into the store for groceries.

  Puck didn’t say anything.

  “Oh, now, we got no secrets here,” Tres said. “Angel Baby and the Puckster are my sister and brother.”

  “Step,” growled Puck. “Our stepbrother.”

  There was a powerful, unpleasant undercurrent flowing between and around them, and it was spilling over toward me.

  I glanced nervously around, looking for an escape hatch.

  “Looks like you’re ready for another round,” a low voice drawled, and I turned to find Logan standing behind me with a freshened libation for me and a cold beer for himself. I smiled with relief as he lowered himself onto the bench beside me.

  My escape hatch had arrived.

  “Hello, Faith,” Logan said, “You’re looking lovely this evening.”

  To my amazement, the girl ducked her patchy head and actually blushed.

  But then Logan could send Condoleezza Rice into a full-fledged swoon. He sat with his back wedged toward Lake Austin so that he had a view of the Pier. Logan seemed relaxed and at ease, but I knew from past experience that he was aware of everything going on around us and probably some stuff that hadn’t even happened yet.

  Tres’s eyes rested on Logan for a moment, and then he smirked. “Well, I’ll let you kids catch up.” Tres handed Puck his empty beer bottle and waved at a group of co-eds doing body shots at the bar. He winked at me. “No rest for the wicked.”

  As he left, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

  “You okay?” Logan said, and I nodded, shaking off the bad juju that’d been rolling around the amphitheater.

  “Long line?” I said to him, accepting the drink.

  He shook his head. “Got a call from the office.”

  I got that feeling you get when they read the lottery numbers and you’ve got five of the winning six. “Do you have to leave?”