Steel Guitar (21 page)

“Really?” I said. “He mentioned that figure?”

“Just about all the time. Three hundred thousand smackers. Do a lot of first-class travel on that kind of bread.”

I turned back to Davey. “Does Dee give you money?”

“If I ever need money, Dee gives me money. Man, all I ever have to do is ask. Dee, she'd give me anything.”

“Have you talked to her lately?”

“No.”

“Why would Dee give you anything, Davey?”

“Shhh,” he said. “Secret, secret.”

“Come on, Davey,” I said. “It's me, Carlotta. It's Cal. We won't tell.”

“You'll tell,” he said in his eerie ruined voice. I wondered if it hurt him to speak. “Dee, she'll get angry. Throw one of those fits. You know how she is.”

“No, Davey, she told me to find you. Dee wants me to know.”

“I'm not telling,” he said, narrowing his eyes cannily. “I know what you're doing. You're not even here, right? It's those drugs, right? They make me talk all the time, say all this stuff. I never knew her, really. Just knew sweet Lorraine, that's all, just sweet Lorraine.”

The roomie said, “It goes on like this for hours. Sometimes he sings. That's a real treat.”

“Does he have a guitar?” I asked.

The doctor shook his head.

“He used to play. If he had one, do you think he might like to, I don't know, just hold it, or play it or something?”

“He might,” the doctor said.

“Could he, with all that junk in his arm?”

“I'm not sure,” the doctor said.

“I'll bring his over,” Cal said.

“No, Cal,” I said. “Let me bring him mine.”

“I'll bring his Hummingbird, Carly. Shut up.”

Davey said, “Did I ever tell you about the night Dee and I got so drunk we couldn't stand up onstage? We had to play our guitars standing back-to-back so we could hold each other up.”

The roomie said, “Yeah, Davey, you told me that. Doc, you think I can get another roommate? Somebody who's done a little traveling? Somebody knows where Singapore is?”

Davey rambled on about Malcolm, his guru on the hill, and other people we didn't know. He started to cry again when he said he couldn't find his old pictures, his photos of Dee and the gang. He accused Mike of stealing them, and Mike put his pillow over his ears and repeated his request for a new roommate.

“I'd like a little intelligent conversation before I die,” Mike said. His last word seemed to echo off the walls.

When Cal and I left we weren't sure Davey knew we'd gone. We weren't sure he knew we'd been there.

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked Sanderley out in the hall. “Does he have a radio, a tape deck?”

“We have good sound equipment. Donated.”

I'd get him a tape of Dee's latest album. Maybe Dee could send a tape of the concert.

“Anything else?”

“He likes mocha almond ice cream,” Dr. Sanderley said.

“Mocha almond,” I echoed.

“To tell the truth,” Sanderley said, softening his words with his gentle smile, “there's not a lot anybody can do for him. Just accept him the way he is.” The doctor's nostrils flared in a well-disguised yawn, and I wondered how long it had been since the man had slept.

Thirty-Three

Cal and I beat a shaky retreat through the lobby. I knew I'd have to go back and ask more questions, but I needed fresh air. Neither of the receptionists glanced up. Maybe they were used to friends and family leaving in a blind rush.

“Cal?”

He walked to a bench between two tall yews and sat as if his legs had decided they couldn't bear his weight. He dug his heels into the turf and stared at a spot between his feet.

I stared at the grass for a while too. Then at the cloudy sky. I remembered the crummy apartment Dee and Davey shared on Mass. Ave. Their only real piece of furniture, a saggy davenport, had been covered with a fringed brown slipcover. They used a tiny electric space-heater for a fireplace.

Cal said belligerently, “I found him for you, what's left of him. Isn't it time you told me what the hell's going on?”

“I'm just starting to figure it out myself,” I said carefully. “I thought when I found Davey, I'd find all the answers.”

“Have you?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” he repeated.

“Maybe,” I echoed.

When Cal started to speak again it was in a voice almost as soft as Davey's, like he'd forgotten about me and was thinking out loud. “I could be in that room. When I was tanked, I did speedballs, junk, anything I could get my hands on. I shot up with people I wouldn't want to stand next to on the subway.”

“Yeah,” I said, to remind him I was there.

He shook his head, rubbed his hands across his eyes like he wanted to blot out what he'd just seen. “I hope you're not worried about last night, Carly. I have been tested.”

“Cal, I'm not worrying about last night. I'm worrying about fifty-seven other things. I'm worrying about Davey. I'm wondering if Sanderley knows what he's talking about when he says there's nothing anybody can do.”

“You talking last-ditch experimental drugs? Think Davey would want that? The way he is? Sometimes here, sometimes there?”

“Wouldn't we have to ask him when he's here?”

“Shit, Carly, this place gives me the creeps. Let's go, okay? I'll get Davey's guitar.”

I dug the keys to my Toyota out of my pocket. “You really have a driver's license?”

“What?”

“Take my car, pick up the guitar, and come back. If I'm not here, leave the car in the lot.”

“Keys?”

“Put the keys in the glove compartment and lock it. I've got another set. Don't get sideswiped and don't leave the car unlocked for a second.”

“Come with me,” Cal said.

“I can't.”

“Why?”

“Because people who work in hospitals know where to get syringes.”

Thirty-Four

One of the receptionists coughed when I pushed the double doors open, but she didn't say anything or do anything to stop me. I never saw Dr. Sanderley. I strolled the halls, looking for a familiar face, a face I might have seen at Dee's hotel or at the Berklee Performance Center rehearsal. I didn't see one.

I climbed a staircase, found a pleasant enough solarium on the second floor. A few of the stronger-looking patients—some with crutches, some in wheelchairs—were hanging out, laughing at a TV talk show. Two men in bathrobes were playing gin rummy across a card table.

I kibitzed a hand or two. My mother taught me two card games, pinochle and rummy. My father said she cheated at both.

“You a do-good lady?” one of the cardplayers asked. He had splotches the size of nickels on both his hands and wrists, up to where they disappeared into the bathrobe sleeves. The other player regarded me quizzically.

“Nope,” I said. “Definitely not a do-good lady.”

“They come around,” one of the TV-watchers said.

“You a relative?” another TV-viewer asked.

“Friend. Davey Dunrobie. Old friend.”

“Lucky him,” muttered a man as bald as an egg.

I said, “A young girl work here, come by to visit? I don't know, she could be a nurse's aide or a volunteer. Sixteen, seventeen years old. Pretty sensational-looking. Curly blonde hair?”

The men exchanged glances.

One guy replied in an exaggeratedly fey voice. “I only notice the boys, sweetheart,” he said. Another man laughed. I got the feeling it was an ongoing joke.

A cardplayer said, “None of the do-good ladies looks like that. And none of the nurse's aides. Trust me, I'd notice.”

I tried another tack. “Davey told me there was this one, I don't know, maybe nurse or orderly, he really liked.” I did my best to give a verbal picture of the guy I'd last heard described as Brenda's “boy-toy.” Slender, young, maybe foreign. I remembered his dark, smudgy eyes.

“Ray?” the other cardplayer said sharply. “That jerk? He was actually nice to somebody?”

“Ray,” I said. “Yeah, that's the guy. Where could I find him?”

“He quit,” one of the TV-watchers said. “He was an orderly. He gets to quit. Walk out the door.”

“You know Ray's last name?” I ventured.

“Nope. And I don't care either.”

The heavyset receptionist, the one who talked too much, was handling the front desk alone. She hadn't gotten her lecture on confidentiality from Doctor Sanderley yet. I gave her a song and dance about how Davey had asked me to send Ray a remembrance when he died. She gave me Ray's last name along with his home address.

Thirty-Five

I dialed the station from a public phone in the lobby, hoping Cal and my car would reappear while the police kept me on hold. No one could find Mooney. He was away from his desk, which could mean anything from a quick trip to the men's room to chasing down a hot lead on Brenda's death. Maybe he'd finally gone home to face his dragonlady mother and get some sleep. Joanne was not available. I hesitated over leaving Ray Daggett's name and address with the desk sergeant. With some trepidation, I phoned Mooney's apartment, and naturally got the dragonlady, who informed me she wouldn't dream of waking her boy for a call from the likes of me.

She disapproved of me when I was a cop because, she told me, women aren't meant to be policemen. She still dislikes me now that I'm no longer a cop. I'm beginning to take it personally.

I left Ray's name and address with Mom. She might hate me, but she'd make sure Mooney got it. I clinched that by telling her it might help his chances for promotion. She fancies herself as the mother of the police commissioner. Mooney just laughs it off.

My Toyota didn't show, so I dialed Gloria at Green & White Cab, searching my pockets for dimes, nickels, and quarters to feed the phone.

“I need a ride at Saint John's on Allston Street,” I said when she picked up on the second ring.

“The hospital? You okay?”

“Fine. Any news for me?”

“I found out a couple things,” Gloria said casually, as if she really weren't proud of being one of the best-connected gossips in town, which she is. “Berklee Performance Center keeps their cash right next door at Bank of Commerce. Man listed on the exempt sheet is one of their regular security people, George Wolfe, with an
e
on the end.”

“Thank you.” I remembered Dee's unflattering description of security at the Performance Center.

“Wait up, babe. Best is yet to come. Paolina called me.”

It made my mouth dry. I swallowed. “Paolina?”

“That's what I said. Her mom won't let her call
you
, but she knows her way around a phone book, and she figured that ‘no calls' didn't extend to roundabout messages. She says thank you kindly for the kite. Says she got it up about a mile in the sky this morning. Says she hoped you saw it.”

I found myself smiling for the first time since I'd heard about Davey. “If she calls again, tell her I'll look for it. Tell her … Thanks, Gloria.”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice a little gruffer than usual. “You need anything else, you let me know.”

“Just send the cab, okay?”

Getting by the cops on the hotel room door wasn't hard this time. I knew one of them. My acquaintance nodded at me and said, “This one's okay,” to her beefy partner. He barely grunted, but he gave me the once-over and I was sure he'd recognize me the next time we met.

Dee was picking at the Reverend's old Gibson, humming a tune under her breath. I realized I hadn't seen her alone for more than a few minutes since the night she'd ventured so disastrously into the park, the night she'd hired me. My eyes did a quick search, but the room seemed empty. A pack of Marlboros, my dad's poison of choice, sat on a low table near Dee's chair. The ashtray had long since overflowed.

Dee remembered her burning cigarette, took a puff, stuck the butt under a string near a tuning peg. She fingered a B flat the hard way, looked over her shoulder, and attempted a smile when she saw me.

“Jimmy says keep on playing, get on with the tour, don't miss a date, or I'll never get the chance again,” she muttered over a progression of chord changes.

“Got a bass player?”

“Jimmy's flying in two from the coast. Both veteran session men. One's from a glitter-rock band, but Jimmy swears he's okay on the blues.” She tried her smile out again. “I say only the broads in my band get to use makeup. He wears the teensiest bit of eye shadow, we go with the other one, even if he can only play in A.”

I made sure the door was closed, bolted it from the inside. “Dee,” I said, “this tour may stop before it starts.”

She ignored me. I'm not even sure she heard me. “You know that song?” she asked. “Old song. ‘Wild Women Don't Get the Blues'?”

“Dee?”

“Well, it's crap, Carlotta. A load of crap.”

“I found Davey,” I said. “Have you been drinking?”

“‘Oh, baby, I been drinkin.'” She sang Randy Newman's line, trying to look unconcerned. “I told you, forget about him.”

I sat down on the couch, uninvited. “MGA/America's attorney didn't agree with you.”

She shrugged as if nothing mattered anymore, sat tall in her straight-backed chair, and fingered a familiar riff, the opening to Danny O'Keefe's “Steel Guitar.” She started singing before I could interrupt.

“
Carol once told me she dreamed she was pretty
,

Lived in a very cool part of the city
,

With a man who came home every evening at six
,

And begged her to play him his favorite licks
,

On a steel guitar, on a real guitar
,