Kicks for a Sinner S3 (27 page)

“Not great, but not bad,” Howdy evaluated. “Let’s go back to our room. I think I can give you a fever.” He tickled the back of her neck with a single finger.

“First, we pay our respects to the chanteuse.” Cassie headed for a hulking white-haired guard, whose once broad shoulders hunched with age as he protected the backstage and dressing rooms. She assumed Howdy would follow. He did.

“Um, Billy…” Cassie read the name embroidered in red thread on his uniform pocket. “We’d like to meet Ms. Coy and tell her how much we enjoyed her act.” Attesting to her acting ability, she inflected her words with a breathless admiration

“Been some time since Mariah had any fans ask to see her, and I’ve guarded her since she started years ago. Let me check. Be right back.”

They watched Billy lumber on stiff, arthritic legs down a dimly lit corridor where he raised his large, big-veined fist to rap on a door bearing one dingy silver star. He turned the knob, poked his head inside for a moment, then shambled back to them.

“You go right in, but you better not be making fun of her. Youngsters sometimes do. I won’t have it, you hear? Toss you out on your ears if you do.” He hardly looked like he could carry out the threat, but they reassured him.

“We won’t be doing that, sir,” Howdy said. “We only came to talk.”

As they walked along the corridor, he whispered to Cassie, “Why do I feel like I’m walking the last mile on Death Row?’

“I think it’s the lighting. Courage, Howdy. Get your John Wayne on again like you did in Rizzo’s office.”

“Enter,” the seductive voice called when they rapped on the star, flaking off even more of its silver paint. In the short interval since the show, Mariah had shed her slinky black gown and a body stocking that lay across a chair like a broken cocoon and the damp creature that had crawled out of it. Kicked into a corner, her shoes interlocked their killer spiked heels. The red hairpiece that augmented her thinner tresses perched on top of a Styrofoam head in one corner of the dressing table. A single coral-colored rose in a crystal bud vase adorned the other.

Mariah, clad in a black dressing gown made gaudy with Chinese red dragon embroidery and not covering much of her overblown chest, sucked in a lungful of smoke from her cigarette and blew it out again. “Saw you in the first row. So you came to see your waitress sing. Want an autograph?” She flicked the ash into a handy coffee cup, no better receptacle in view.

“No,” Howdy said and could not go further.

Before he got them thrown out by Billy who would probably need their help to do so, Cassie answered. “We did enjoy your act, but what we really wanted to know is if Howdy is your son, yours and Mr. Rizzo’s boy.”

“You’re a sharp young woman, cheap-looking, but sharp. I’ll give you that. So they call you Howdy now. I knew that, but to me you were always my sweet, little Howie. I named you for my father, the most decent man on earth. One day, I knew you’d come to find me. When I saw you moving along that sidewalk looking like you’d driven all night in search of me, I recognized you right away. I goosed Arnie into giving you the discount coupon and paid off Doris to take her table.”

“See, see?” Cassie said triumphantly. “I was right.”

“Could I sit? I feel a mite dizzy in here. Maybe it’s all the smoke.” Howdy sank into the chair holding the discarded gown and settled on the body stocking.

“Yeah, Benny doesn’t like anyone smoking back here so I have to keep the door closed. He thinks not providing ashtrays will keep a person from taking a drag. Ha! Splash some of that air freshener around, hon.” Mariah gestured toward a can of lilac-scented spray.

Cassie obliged, but the artificial aroma only made the air thicker and more cloying. Howdy looked ready to hurl. She eyed a nearby waste can filled with makeup-soiled wipes just in case he needed it quickly and moved closer to rub his tense shoulders.

He raised his drooping head and asked his mother, “I didn’t know you. How did you recognize me?’

Mariah opened a drawer in the dressing table and removed an album bulging with playbills and clippings. The pale pink cover glittered with tiny gold stars, something a teenage girl might purchase to hold pictures of her movie star crushes. A clear pocket displayed a current publicity still with her facial lines air-brushed away. Since Howdy made no move to take it, Cassie brought the album to him and laid it open on his knees.

Turning page after page, they watched flat-chested Mary McCoy morph into busty Mariah Coy. The first photo displayed a very young woman in a long draped gown designed to hide her lack of assets. Wide blue eyes gazed at them hopefully, wanting their approval. The small rosebud mouth smiled tentatively. Gradually, the breasts grew larger and larger, the small lips fuller, pumped up with collagen. The auburn hair burned to the brightest shade of red, and the blue eyes suddenly turned to emerald green.

“Not that stuff. Look in the back,” Mariah prompted. She ground out her expired cigarette with its filter ringed in bronze lipstick into the coffee cup and lit another.

Cassie flipped over a substantial section and stopped at a baby picture of a toothless infant with a wide smile and a shock of auburn hair. A succession of school pictures followed, then news clippings of Howdy’s rise as a kicker, his receipt of the Lou Groza Award for top college placekicker, his signing with the Sinners.

“Dad sent me stuff behind my mother’s back. The deal when I left you in Oklahoma was I’d stay away, keep quiet, and my folks would raise you, Ruth’s idea of course. They did a better job with you than me. My mother bound me so tight I just had to bust loose. Maybe with your being a boy, Dad had more influence.” The more she talked, the more she became the Oklahoma girl again rather than the sultry songstress.

Howdy, his innocent blue eyes bloodshot and blinking, managed to choke out, “So Benny Rizzo is my daddy.”

Mariah shrugged. “Ruth pressed me and pressed me for a name to put in the Bible. I wanted you to have a rich, powerful father who might help you out in the future. But, I don’t know. It could have been Benny. He was my first lover, then on and off again for years. Not much finesse there. I hope you do better by women, Howie.”

“Oh, he does!” Cassie blurted.

Howdy sank his face into his hands and mumbled through the spaces between his fingers. “Who else could it be?”

“Might be Lionel Lowe, my agent. He bought me my first breast implants—to enhance my career, he said. I always hoped you belonged to Chet Lovell, a big real estate man in Vegas. He was my sugar daddy for a while. I thought I’d be his fourth wife, told him the baby must be his. Bless his high blood pressure he pre-paid the obstetrician and the hospital for my care before stroking out on the ninth hole while playing golf. Said we’d be married as soon as I got my figure back. Chet financed my second set of boobs, huge ones, the way he liked them, before I wound up pregnant.”

“Anyone else?” Howdy asked without raising his head.

“Maybe I should include old Billy. I stayed pretty active around that time flushing out all the Baptist in me, and Bill adored me.”

Howdy moaned. “Old Billy, too. Didn’t you ever hear of birth control?”

“Look, twenty-four years ago, Billy acted as my bodyguard because I needed one back then. You talk about a hunky older man, but after sixty men slide some. He still looks out for me. As for that birth control crack, the pills made me nauseated and bloated. I used a diaphragm, but must not have got in sucked in just right. I did lots of drinking back then and maybe forgot a time or two. And I won’t sugar coat it for you either. If I hadn’t been five months along and wearing Chet’s engagement ring when he died, I would have gone for an abortion. My career peaked right around the time I got knocked up. After I had you, it all went downhill.”

“Yeah, blame the baby. It’s a wonder I wasn’t born with fetal alcohol syndrome,” Howdy retorted, coming out of the shell of his hands like a snapping turtle. He unfolded from the chair and scraped the clinging body stocking from his butt as if he’d sat in shit. “Come on Cassie. I can’t take anymore.”

“Well, you asked. I want you to know I stayed off the sauce and the ciggies for the duration. I didn’t want a cretin for a child either.” Mariah blew smoke in his direction. “If you really want an answer, I know Billy would be willing to take a test. Chet is long gone, but he has a son about twenty years older than you. He runs Lovell Real Estate now. I always liked him, and he was very taken with me. I think he wouldn’t mind.”

Howdy froze the doorway. “Could he be my father, too?”

“No. I wouldn’t have done that to Chet. I have my standards. Too bad he didn’t provide for me in his will. His three ex-wives bought me off and for a while, Lionel and I lived the high life. The money ran out, and I had to let the Mexican nanny go and get back on the stage. Li and I dropped you off in Oklahoma. He recreated me as a green-eyed goddess. Damn, back then, I only needed the contacts to tint my eyes. Now I need them to see fine print. Billy, you out there?’

The door burst open with surprising force missing Howdy’s freckled nose by an inch as the kicker jumped back. “You need me, Mariah? These kids giving you trouble?”

“No. This is my son, Howie, and his girlfriend, I guess. You might be his daddy. You willing to take a paternity test?”

“Sure. If he’s mine, will you marry me?”

“Now you know that won’t ever happen, darling. Could be Lionel, too, and I never would marry him either.”

Cassie withdrew a notepad pad and pen from her small, kicky purse. “Let’s see.

What’s your last name, Billy?’

“Ruggles. I hope he’s mine.” The guard’s watery blue eyes, nestled in two deep pouches of flesh, lit with hope.

“Thank you. So, we have Benito Rizzo, Billy Ruggles, Lionel Lowe, and Chet Lovell as suspects. Where can we find your agent?”

“In his office tomorrow or hanging around the bus terminal handing out cards to possible clients fresh off the bus, but he usually slithers in after my last show hoping for a little free nooky—like I have the energy when I need to get over to the restaurant by six. Stick around if you really want to meet him. I’ll give him a heads up on the situation if you don’t. Chet’s son you can find at his place of business. The real estate market is crap in Vegas right now. Tell him you want to buy a house, and he’ll see you, no problem.”

“Thank you for your help, Ms. Coy.” Cassie closed the note pad and put it away. “We’ll set up a time for all the daddies to get their DNA test and let you know.”

“Yeah, I always wondered.”

Howdy, face ablaze, glared at Cassie. “What are you, my personal assistant? Maybe I don’t want to know. It’s bad enough finding out
she’s
my mother.”

He found a big, wrinkled fist thrust at his chest. “Don’t you talk to her that way. You should have seen Mariah when she first came here, all fresh and pretty, before Rizzo and Lowe got their hands on her. I had to protect her from lots of guys, but I couldn’t save her from them.” Billy Ruggles ran out of steam and lowered the fist as if it were too heavy to hold up much longer.

“Billy, you’ve always been my hero. Howie, I did right by you taking you back home. You grew up straight and tall like my daddy. I see him in you every move you make, every sentence you say without a single word of cussing. I don’t see how it matters who your father is because you turned out fine, really fine.” Mariah plucked a tissue from a box on the dressing table and dabbed at her eyes careful not to smudge her lavish makeup.

“The lawyer called me when Dad died, part of his instructions so I’d know, along with a letter saying he’d left the ranch and what little he had to you. I stayed away from the funeral. I kept my word, and I didn’t come running when you signed a big contract with the Sinners. My singing career is pretty much over. Benny lets me have this gig for old times’ sake, then I go to work at his cheap breakfast buffet to pay my house note. I have a little place of my own and live there alone. You may not be pleased by the mother you found, but I’m not asking anything of you either.”

Howdy nodded and walked out the door. Cassie said, “We’ll be back to meet Lionel and get this all cleared up.”

“No, we won’t.” Howdy’s voice sounded from the hall.

“Yes, we will. Interesting meeting you, Ms. Coy.”

Mariah pointed a long acrylic fingernail her way. “Right back at you, sweetheart.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Walking her dazed man up and down the dazzling Strip as if she were attempting to sober him up, Cassie kept up a constant chatter. She might as well have been saying, “Stay with me,” like EMTs did to patients who were bleeding out.

“Really, she’s not so bad. I admire how tough she became to survive in this town. She never once broke her word to your grandparents. She has the McCoy sense of honor, wouldn’t you say?”

Howdy declined to answer. She steered him into a bar, ordered a whiskey, neat, and held it to his lips until he swallowed.

“It burns all the way down,” he said.

She wasn’t sure if he referred to the liquor. “I favor Billy over Benny Rizzo for your father. I’ll bet he was an athlete in his youth, and you both have blue eyes. He seems like a nice guy and loves your mother.”

“My mother has blue eyes, or at least she did. But yeah, I’d take Billy over Benny any day if I had to choose a father. Except I don’t get a choice.”

“About time to go back to Nero’s Lounge and catch Mariah’s second set. We need to check out this Lionel Lowe.”

“I have the feeling I won’t like him any better than Rizzo.”

Cassie put on a happy face. “You won’t know until you meet him,” she said cheerfully, but the misery she’d caused him weighed her down like the sacks of coins most people traveled to Vegas to win. She’d told him she’d given up impetuous acts, but she had dragged him here without any preparation for what they might encounter. Now he knew his mother slept around, would have married a man for his money, might have aborted her son if it didn’t work out. She’d never be that blue-eyed sylph in the tutu for him again, a terrible loss. He bled from the soul if not from the heart.