04 Four to Score (28 page)

“Don't get going with the Holy Mary stuff,” I said to my mother. “It's not that bad.”

“So what should I do if I see her again?” Grandma asked. “You want me to put a hole in her?”

“No! I just don't want you to invite her in for tea!”

My father helped himself to more cabbage rolls. “Next time put in less rice,” he said.

“Frank,” my mother said, “are you listening to this?”

My father picked up his head. “What?”

My mother smacked herself on the forehead.

Sally had been bent over his plate, shoveling in cabbage rolls like there was no tomorrow. He paused and looked at me, and I could hear the gears grinding in his brain. Pretty girl. Lots of makeup. Note. Bad person. “Uh oh,” Sally said.

“I'm going to have to eat and run,” I said to my mother. “I have to work tonight.”

“There's chocolate chip cookies for desert.”

I laid my napkin on the table. “I'll put them in a bag.”

My mother jumped to her feet. “I'll do it.”

We had labor laws in the burg. Mothers do brown bags. That's it. No exceptions. All over the country people were looking for ways to get out of work. In the burg, housewives militantly guarded their responsibilities. Even working mothers refused to relinquish the assembling of lunch or leftovers. And while other family members might from time to time be recruited to mop the kitchen floor, do the laundry, polish the furniture, no one performed the task to housewife standards.

I took the cookie bag and ushered Sally out of the house. It was early, and we really didn't need to leave, but I didn't think I'd hold up to the grilling. There was no good way to tell my mother I was being stalked by a homicidal drag queen.

My mother and grandmother were at the door, watching us get in the car. They stood backs straight, hands clasped. Lips pressed tight together. Good Hungarian women. My mother wondering where she went wrong, wondering why I was riding around with a man wearing rhinestone earrings. My grandmother wishing she was with us.

“I have a key,” I called to them. “So, it probably would be a good idea to lock up.”

“Yeah,” Sally added, “and don't stand in front of any open windows.”

My mother did another sign of the cross.

I started the car. “We need to end this,” I told Sally. “I'm fed up with being scared, worrying that Sugar's going to jump out at me and set my hair on fire.”

“I talked to all the guys in the band, and no one's heard from him.”

I drove toward Chambers. Truth is, I'd abdicated dealing with Sugar. “Tell me about Sugar,” I said. “Tell me the stuff you told the police.”

"We were roommates for about six months, but I don't know a whole lot about him. His family's in Ohio. They couldn't deal with the gay thing, so Sugar split. I've been with the band for about a year, but in the beginning I mostly hung with the guys from Howling Dog.

“About six months ago Sugar had this knock-down, drag-out fight with his boyfriend, John. John moved out, and I moved in. Only I wasn't like John, you know. I was like just a roommate.”

“Sugar didn't think so.”

"Guess not. Man, this is a real piece of shit, on account of we were like the perfect roommates. Sugar's a neat freak. Always cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. And I'm like, not into that, so it was cool. I mean, man, we didn't fight over who got to do the fucking vacuuming. And he's real good with the girl shit. He knows all about foundation and blush and the best hair spray. You should have seen me before I moved in with him. I was like a fucking barbarian. I mean, I've like lived with a couple chicks, but I never paid any attention to how they got the fucking eyeliner on. This girl shit is complicated.

“Sugar knew all about it. He even helped me pick out clothes. That was the one thing we did together. Shop. He was a fucking shopping fool. Sometimes he'd bring clothes home for me. Like I wouldn't even have to go with him.”

So now I understood the shorts with the ass hanging out.

“He was in drag when he gave the note to Grandma,” I said. “It takes special equipment to look like a woman, and it's unlikely Sugar had time to take anything out of the apartment. So either he has a second apartment or else he bought new.”

“Probably bought new,” Sally said. “Sugar makes lots of money. Five times what I'm making. Some of the things you need to get in New York, but that's not a real problem.”

“Too bad he torched the apartment. We might have been able to find something there.”

“And the police have the diary.”

Common sense told me to give this over to Joe, but when I ran through the benefits they didn't add up. The department was already motivated to find Sugar. They were probably already putting out the maximum effort. What we needed here was talent from a different direction. What we needed was Ranger.

I called his private number, his pager, and finally connected on his car phone.

“Help,” I said.

“No kidding.”

I filled him in on recent harrowing events.

“Bummer,” Ranger said.

“Yeah, so what do you think I should do?”

“Increase his discomfort. Invade his space and do whatever makes him crazy.”

“In other words, set myself up as a target.”

“Unless you know where he lives. Then we go there and take him down. But I figure you don't know where he lives.”

I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Ranger's black BMW slide to the curb behind me about half a block away.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“I was in the neighborhood. Saw you turn onto Chambers. Is that guy wearing rhinestones?”

“Yep.”

“Nice touch.”

“Okay, we'll go to Sugar's favorite hangouts. See what we can stir up.”

“I'm in the wind, babe.”

Whatever the hell that meant.

*    *    *    *    *

“I HAVE IT ALL mapped out,” Sally said, pulling into a small parking lot next to a downtown restaurant. “This is the first stop.”

I looked at the sign on the side of the building. DANTE'S INFERNO. Like, oh boy.

“Don't worry about the name,” Sally said. “It's just a restaurant. Serves spicy food. Sugar likes spicy food.”

The restaurant was basically one large room. Walls were decorated with faux frescoes depicting various scenes where satyrs and minotaurs frolicked in hell and other hot places. No Sugar.

Two men waved to Sally, and Sally waved back.

“Hey, dudes,” Sally said, moving through the room to their table. “I'm looking for Sugar. Don't suppose you've seen him tonight?”

“Sorry,” they said. “Haven't seen Sugar all week.”

After Dante's we did a full circuit of bars and restaurants with no luck.

“I know we're out here doing this looking for Sugar thing,” Sally finally said, “but the truth is I'd crap in my pants if he all of a sudden popped up. I mean, he's crazy. He could, like, fucking Bic me.”

I was trying not to think about it. I was telling myself Ranger was out there . . . somewhere. And I was trying to be careful, staying alert and on guard, always looking, ready to react. I thought if Sugar wanted to get in my face and slash me to ribbons, I'd stand a chance. If he just wanted to get rid of me, he could probably do it. Hard to avoid a bullet from a man who thinks he has nothing left to lose.

The sun had set and dusk had settled around us, not doing much for my nervous stomach. Too many shadows now. Sally had known someone in almost every place we'd visited. No one had admitted to having seen Sugar, but that didn't mean it was true. The gay community was protective of its own, and Sugar was well liked. My hope was that someone had been lying and a phone call had been made that would send Sugar out prowling.

“We have many places left to try?” I asked Sally.

“A couple clubs. We'll save the Ballroom for last.”

“Would Sugar go out in drag?”

“Hard to say. Depends on his mood. He'd probably feel safer in drag. I know I always do. You put that makeup on, and it's watch out world!”

I could relate to that. My makeup always increases with my insecurity. In fact, at that very moment I had an overwhelming desire to crayon my lids with bright blue eye shadow.

We stopped in at the Strip, Mama Gouches, and Curly's. Only one place left. The Liberty Ballroom. Appropriately named. If you didn't have balls, you didn't want to go there. I figured I had balls when I needed them, so there was no problem.

I drove past the State Complex, which always felt weirdly deserted at night. Acres of unoccupied parking spaces, eerily lit by halogen light. Empty buildings with black glass windows, looking like the death star.

The Ballroom was on the next block, next to the high-rise seniors' housing known to one and all as the Warehouse.

All night long Sally had been telling people we'd end up at the Ballroom. And now that we were here my skin was crawling and all my little hairs were standing on end. It was fear and dread premonition, plain and simple. I knew Sugar was in there. I knew he was waiting for us. I parked and looked around for Ranger. No Ranger in sight. That's because he's in the wind, I told myself. You can't see the wind. Or maybe the wind went home to watch Tuesday night fights.

Sally was cracking his knuckles next to me. He felt it, too. We looked at each other and grimaced.

“Let's do it,” I said.

SALLY AND I stood inside the door and looked around. Bar and cocktail tables in the front. Small dance floor to the rear. Very dark. Very crowded. Very noisy. My understanding was that the Ballroom was a gay place, but clearly not everyone here was gay.

“What are all these ungay people doing here?” I asked Sally.

“Tourists. The guy who owns this place was going bust. It was a gay bar, but there weren't enough gay men in Trenton to make a go of it. So Wally got this great idea . . . he hired some guys to come in and dance and get all smoochy with each other, so the place would look really gay. Word got out, and the place started filling up. Like you could come here to see homos and be fucking politically correct.” Sally smiled. “Now it's trendy.”

“Like you.”

“Yeah. I'm fucking trendy.”

Sally waved to someone. “See that guy in the red shirt? That's Wally, the owner. He's a genius. The other thing he does is give the first drink free to daytrippers.”

“Day-trippers?”

“Yuppies who want to be gay-for-a-day. Like suppose you're a guy, and you think it'd be a kick to get dressed up in your wife's clothes and go out to a bar. This is the place! You get a free drink. And on top of that, you're trendy, so it's all okay. You can even bring your wife, and she can try out being dyke-for-a-day.”

The woman standing next to me was dressed in a black leather vest and black leather hot pants. She had an expensive perm that gave her perfect red curls all over her head, and she was wearing brown lipstick.

“Hi!” she said to me, all cheery and chirpy. “Want to dance?”

“No thanks,” I said. “I'm just a tourist.”

“Me too!” she squealed. “Isn't this place too much? I'm here with my husband, Gene. He wants to see me slow dance with a woman!”

Gene looked very preppy in Dockers and a plaid sport shirt with a little horse stitched onto the pocket. He was swilling a drink. “Rum Coke,” he said to me, leaning across his wife. “Want one?”

I shook my head no. “I have a gun in my shoulder bag,” I said. “A big one.”

Gene and his wife moved away and disappeared in the crowd.

Sally had an advantage at 6'4". He was swiveling his head, looking the crowd over.

“See him?” I asked.

“No.”

I didn't like being stuck in the Liberty Ballroom. It was too crowded, too dark. People were jostling me. It would be easy for Sugar to come up on me here . . . like Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. That could be me. One shot to the gut and I'd be history.

Sally put his hand to my back to steer me forward, and I jumped and shrieked. “Yikes!”

“What? What?” Sally yelled, looking around panic-stricken.

I had my hand to my heart. “I might be a tad nervous.”

“My stomach's a mess,” Sally said. “I need a drink.”

Sounded like a good idea to me, so I trailed behind him to the bar. Every time he'd push through people they'd turn and look and go, “Hey, it's Sally Sweet! I'm a real fan.” And Sally would go, “Shit, man, that's cool.”

“What do you want?” Sally asked.

“Beer in a bottle.” I figured if Sugar attacked me, I could brain him with my beer bottle. “I didn't realize you were so famous,” I said to Sally. “All these people know you.”

“Yeah,” Sally said, “probably half the people in this room have slipped a five under my garter belt. I'm like regional.”

“Sugar's here somewhere,” the bartender said, passing drinks to Sally. “He wanted me to give you this note.”

The note was in the same tidy little invitation-sized envelope Sugar had given Grandma. Sally opened the envelope and read the note card.

“ 'Traitor.' ”

“That's it?” I asked.

“That's all it says. 'Traitor.' ” He shook his head. “He's wigged, man. Beyond Looney Tunes. Looney Tunes is funny. This isn't funny.”

I belted back some beer and told myself to stay calm. Okay, so Sugar was a little over the edge. It could be worse. Suppose the guy who was going around chopping off fingers was after me? That would be worrisome. He'd already killed someone. We didn't know for sure if Sugar was a killer. Arson didn't necessarily mean he was a killer type. I mean, arson was remote, right? So no point to getting all freaked out ahead of time.

Ranger moved next to me. “Yo,” Ranger said.

“Yo yourself.”

“Is the man here?”

“Apparently. We haven't spotted him yet.”

“You armed?”

“Beer bottle.”

He gave me a wide smile. “Good to know you're on top of things.”

“No grass growing here,” I said.

I introduced Ranger and Sally to each other.

“Shit,” Sally said, gaping at Ranger. “Jesus shit.”

“Tell me what I'm looking for,” Ranger said.

We didn't exactly know.

“Blond Marilyn wig, red dress with short skirt,” the bartender said.

Same outfit he had been wearing onstage at the club.