Moonlight Water (27 page)

Damon's songs. Hell, probably an oddball community like this encouraged Damon and gave him plenty of room to explore his music. Like they seemed to encourage Jolo.

Red and Zahnie made stop after stop in search of Damon. They'd pull into a dirt drive, steer around a half-dozen cars being used as parts warehouses, and sit. A man or woman would soon come out of the trailer, and Zahnie would speak with them in Navajo, saying that Damon was running from the law and she was afraid it would make his trouble worse, so if they saw him, would they call her or tell him to come home?

Each time Zahnie plopped back into the van and slammed the door, her face was frustration. Red wondered if this was a waste of time. Since Zahnie was a federal agent herself and was with a white guy, would the Navajos hide Damon even from her? He didn't know.

Red's stomach felt sour. He liked Damon and loved his music, and he saw all that talent doing the Big Flush.

They glummed their way through supper at Tony's. For some reason Gianni didn't show up. What more? Damon on the lam and in danger, Red losing ten grand, Tony headed to jail, Harmony House going downhill, even Virgil's chocolate pudding routine didn't cheer anyone up. Tony stayed at his desk.

“Not even time to eat with us?” Red asked.

“I've got to get Harmony House's finances straightened out,” Tony said, “as much as I can.” He sighed. “Everything shipshape for when I'm gone.”

Red had no words.

He saw that the bill Tony was paying was Mutual of Omaha. “Life insurance on me,” he said, “to tide the business over in case of my demise.” He snorted. “Harmony House would be better off if they sent me to the electric chair. Which they would dearly love to do. Marijuana is spawn of the devil.”

“What's next?”

“Preliminary hearing.” Red watched Tony's body language. He was a deflated balloon.

Red put a hand on his shoulder.

Tony let his arms sag onto the desk and looked up. “Do you know what my lawyer's talking about? A plea. Dismiss the two smaller charges, plead on possession with intent. Maximum sentence fifteen years, minimum one. Then it's up to the parole board. Judge can't give you less than the one.” He made a sardonic
hmmph!
“Do you know what they do to gay men in Utah State Prison? A year of getting cornholed.”

Tony looked into Red's eyes. Red wanted to run away screaming.

“How will I stand it?” Tony said softly.

Then he gave a wicked cackle. Red couldn't look into his face. “Maybe I'll get AIDS. That'll slow them down.” He let out a wild riff of snicker. “Saved by AIDS!”

Gianni walked in on this last line and gave Tony a screwy look.

Zahnie said loudly, “All right, no more hanging our heads. Time to drive out to Leeja's and pick up Winsonfred.”

 

33

VENTURING FORTH

Don't cross the path of a coyote. You'll be in danger.

—Navajo saying

 

Leeja started to greet them with a shriek and stopped. Zahnie clasped Red's hand briefly, which felt to him like a way of staking her claim in front of her sister the poacher. “Nothing new on Damon,” Zahnie said flatly.

Leeja embraced her sister. “I'm so sorry.”

Leeja's sad eyes lit up when she looked Gianni in the face. “It is so great to see you. Wondering what's going on, no one to talk to—forget that!” She pantomimed tearing her hair out.

The teenagers Sallyfene and Wandafene had a different complaint. “We're rezzed out,” they groaned.

Leeja got that lightbulb-coming-on look. Red wondered if it was dangerous. “You know what? Could be Damon's meeting up with a friend at Delgado's.”

“Give me a break,” said Zahnie.

“Seriously. There might be a girl he promised to meet up with if the shit hit the fan, or whatever.”

Zahnie started to wonder. It was true. Damon without a girl following him around was unusual. And there might be one or two willing to help him hide his tracks. Still, she was dubious.

“Listen to me—I know Damon,” Leeja said. “He's partly mine. Plus, at a time like this we gotta do something or we're gonna go nuts. He likes Delgado's.”

“We wanna go!” cried Sallyfene and Wandafene.

Leeja whirled on her daughters. “You're babysitting your brothers,” she snapped. “And your father.” Roqui was passed out with his feet under the kitchen table and his head curved against the refrigerator door like he was a crookneck squash.

“Aw-w-w-w!” moaned the girls.

“Leeja, it's getting late,” said Zahnie.

“All right, we're hustling,” Leeja told Zahnie. Then Leeja bumped her belly against Gianni, a bright smile in her eyes. “You wanna go dancing? Few beers? Some fun? Make a little music, compadre?”

“Sure,” said Gianni, turning lightly pink behind his ears.

“Leeja…,” said Zahnie with hands on both hips.

“We'll find Damon and celebrate with music and dancing!”

Red liked Leeja just fine, but he had a hard time believing the woman he loved was the sister of this woman, slightly nuts, transparent, and somehow not hard to forgive.

“I want to go out,” said Winsonfred. Red hadn't even noticed him until then, sitting in front of Leeja's tube watching MTV with the sound off.

Zahnie's face sagged. Then she pulled him up and along.

Leeja called on the way out the door, “You kids can have Pop-Tarts, but do not knock down all the ice cream!”

*   *   *

The joint called Delgado's was just off the rez in yet another new direction. No Damon.

“We'll wait,” said Zahnie.
She's in a take-no-nonsense mode,
observed Red.

They slid onto stools at the bar next to the pool table and listened to the jukebox, waiting, hoping, out of ideas. The second song was a Hank Williams, Jr., tune, sung in Navajo. Red and Gianni relaxed and got silly slapping each other on the back at the weird-sounding lyrics.

The third beer got Gianni started on one of his favorite stories of the musical wars, the tale of his own exit from the music biz.

“Red and I got a gig to play this wedding, a big deal for us then—somebody was going to pay us actual money. The bride-to-be heard the band in a neighborhood club and hired us. We drive to the address, Atherton, pull into the circular drive of a stone house that is at least twenty thousand square feet of conspicuous consumption. Money oozed from the mortar. I figure pretty quick this is not gonna be any piece of cake.

“We were wearing tie-dyed shirts and torn jeans. I had an American flag sewn on my ass. We drive around back and there's an enormous white tent, caterers running around like crazy, florists breaking out in cold sweats over the tilt of their bird-of-paradise centerpieces. Then from the van's rear window we see the Red Queen, the one who's obviously causing all this crazy-making.”

Red put in, “This would be the bride's mother.”

The fourth beer started going down. Even Zahnie was drinking, everyone but Red.

Back to Gianni. “She's scaring the living shit out of everyone, me included, and we haven't even been introduced yet. And now I am certain that the daughter hired us as an act of rebellion against the mother, with us caught in the middle.

“In the van we decide that before meeting the Red Queen we need all the fortification we can get. We roll a fat joint and start toking. The van fills with smoke. Surprise entrance by the Red Queen.

“She's alarmed, pissed, horrified, and hyperventilating like crazy. Of course, what she's sucking up is Maui Zowie. The guys stumble out of the van to set up. I stay to chat up the Red Queen. She reclines on the cushions in the van stoned out of her gourd on secondhand smoke. She notices the flag on my ass, touches my buns, makes some off-color patriotic comment. I'm laughing, and she pulls me to her.

“We spend the next hour giving the caterers a break and the band time to set up.

“And the band”—here he threw a mock-hostile look at Red—“not knowing if I was going to emerge alive or dead or at all, found a more rocking vocalist than me right in the wedding party, the bride's brother. He was more than happy to play my Fender Stratocaster. Charming the hosiery off that middle-aged woman was the
real
end of my rock-and-roll career!”

Gianni laughed and clapped and everyone joined in. Red thought they were all so wound up about Damon that they were blowing off tension. Red tossed in, “
However,
this was the start of a brand-new career.”

“Yep, she was my first client and in the middle of a big divorce. A really nice lady. She just had trouble being fun while hidden behind a strand of cultured pearls.”

Red looked up at the ceiling, trying not to laugh. “I give you this, Gianni. She was the most radiant mother of the bride I've ever seen.”

Leeja listened to the whole story with a big grin. When Gianni finished, she spoke to the bartender, pulled the plug on the jukebox, and strutted to a battered upright piano. Some ivories were even missing. The bench was a folding chair. “You guys wanna hear some music?” she called. “Real music?”

Zahnie looked at Red. “It just runs in the family.” When Leeja's hands hit the keys, he knew what she was talking about.

Leeja's honky-tonk was brassy, loud, and proud. Perfect for the mood, despite the instrument and no matter the wrong notes. She grinned back at Red, Gianni, Winsonfred, and her sister. The left hand made a strong beat to shake your booty by, and the right hand clamored strong as any man's.

Soon she switched to a Jerry Lee Lewis tune, raucous as a bar fight. It was so much fun Red grabbed Zahnie and began to swing her by the hands. Gianni walked over, pulled a chair next to Leeja's, and gave her a sexy grin. Winsonfred sent up a fine little whoop. Zahnie spun away from Red and danced up a storm. He had never seen her so loosey-goosey. Little Turtle comes out to play.

Zahnie passed a table where two women sat and into a door that read:
BULLS
and
COWS.
The two shook their heads, jumped up, and started dancing with each other. The big one might have been a Navajo or a Mexican or anything. Shaped like a Buddha, dressed in a lot of layers of cloth, a shawl, full skirts, and the like. Later Red picked up that her name was Briz.

The other, the one Briz called Pinky Lee, was built like a stray cat that foraged in garbage cans. Her hair was white-blonde, and she showed off her slinky body with ultra-tight clothes. Red had a soft spot for strays, being one himself.

The two women danced without touching, or even looking at each other, Briz a mountain whose grasses blew gently in the wind, Pinky Lee wound tight, quick and lithe. Gianni eyed them nervously.

Pinky Lee was eyeing two white cowboys in big hats playing pool. The game felt intense. When they bent into the light to shoot, all you saw was blue-jeaned butts, back ends of pool cues, and big hats. Tens and twenties ornamented the rail.

All of a sudden Pinky Lee pranced over to the pool table, waggling her ass. Some word or grunt came from behind the bar. Pinky Lee stilettoed a look at the barman. She held up some quarters and smacked them down on the wooden rail. Then she flashed a bright, brittle smile at the cowboys, pranced back to Briz, and danced.

Declaration:
I wanna break into your private game.

Finished in the bathroom, Zahnie leaned across the bar to order more beer. The bar keep was staring at Pinky Lee too hard to notice. Gianni and Leeja joined Zahnie and hijacked the barman's attention for another round.

“You're the life of the party,” Red told Leeja.

Just then the hats started cussing up a storm.

Whatever was wrong, Pinky Lee moved right in, took a cue stick from the hat who looked long and thin and hard as a folding knife. Red could see by the pool table that he'd scratched when he was five balls ahead. He glared while his opponent picked up the wad of bills and stuck them away. Hat number two looked like he was auditioning for one of those slick ads where a male model flashes five days of beard.

“You want to put something on the game, little lady?” asked Five-Day. His voice was melting butter on corn bread.

“Nope, I'm not very good,” she said. Red could see that. Pinky hadn't even checked to see if her cue stick was straight.

Folding Knife made an exaggerated sigh, but Five-Day smiled at her like a cat smiles at a canary. “You start us off, then.”

“Oh, you break,” said Pinky Lee. “I never have any luck at that.”

He hit the cue ball ferociously hard but didn't drop any balls.

Pinky Lee's first shot showed her skill. The tip glanced off the cue ball, and it barely moved.

Swiftly, Five-Day started sinking the striped balls. He ran seven and then missed a table-length bank shot on the cue ball because the table wasn't level. He was showing off.

Pinky Lee shot with a bit of pink tongue caught between her lips and by accident put the five ball in a side pocket. She let out a little shriek of delight, stuck out her tongue again, and on the next shot missed everything with the cue ball.

The eight ball, though, was behind the six on the rail. Unable to run the table on her, Five-Day got the eight ball halfway out of its bad spot.

Red noticed that the bartender was edgy.

Pinky Lee made another miserable shot, half-missing the cue ball and nudging three of her own balls around. Thing of it was, though, that the eight ball was now surrounded by all her solids. In fact, there wasn't any way for Five-Day to touch the eight ball.

Folding Knife barked a laugh. “Damned if the bitch ain't gonna win on a scratch.”

“Win? Me?!” Pinky Lee cocked her hips and fluttered her eyelashes at him.

“Damn!” said Five-Day.

“Little lady wins on a scratch,” said Folding Knife. “Them's the rules.”

Five-Day explained to Pinky what a scratch was.