Tough Baby (Martin Fender Novel) (15 page)

“Uh-huh.”

“So what am I doing here?”

“You’re here to prove how easy it is to get you to go back to a hotel room with a girl, that’s what. I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of a guy you are.”

“Oh, for chrissakes. You follow me late at night and walk up and startle me, then use some bullshit line to get me up to your room so you can blast me with a bunch of locker room pseudo-Freudian bullshit. Man, you are strange. What’s the verdict, anyway? Am I strange enough for
you?”

She sneered defiantly. “Well, I guess I tricked you to get you here, but it sure wasn’t hard. Maybe it’s because you feel guilty and you still don’t know exactly what you did that night. But you don’t seem like the kind of guy to do that to Retha. I mean, you probably wouldn’t get so upset you’d beat up a girl if you went back to her room and couldn’t get it up.”

“Well I’m flattered,” I snapped. “Look, I know you’re upset about your friend and you wonder about me. I wonder about me too, but not about whether I’m guilty or innocent. What I need is constructive help, not little psycho-sexual mind games.” She blew a bubble, popped it, sucked it back in. It snapped like little firecrackers as she chewed. “OK. I don’t know what I’m doing. If only she wasn’t so helpless, it wouldn’t be so bad. But she is, and I can’t get used to the idea that I’m not able to do anything about it. In fact, it’s driving me nuts. Retha was the same way, restless. That’s probably what put her on a plane to Austin.”

“How long did you two know each other?”

She shrugged. “We’d been friends a few months. Six, maybe. Before that we kept seeing each other in the record store, like I said before. One day I invited her to lunch, and we started going to clubs together after that. It’s not like we were old high school chums or anything.

“She liked to go to this Thai restaurant on Vine in Hollywood, right across from the Capitol Records tower. She always ordered everything extra hot and spicy. Retha was never satisfied unless she broke out into a full sweat during her meal. Once I told her that if she liked hot food and music so much, maybe she should check out Austin. I was here a year ago, with a band.”

“You said you didn’t know any of her other friends?”

“No, she’s pretty much a loner. I mean, she was really outgoing at her job and everything, but she was always real independent, too, like she didn’t really need anybody except her parents and her boyfriend. She spent most weekends with her parents. She had a boyfriend for quite a while, a year or so, and they kept pretty much to themselves, you know. So after they broke up, she didn’t really know what to do with herself. But it wasn’t because she’s shy. I just don’t think she’s the kind of person who needs a lot of friends.”

“Do you know this guy? I’d like to talk to him.”

She shook her head. “Nah. He sounded like a real dork, too. I don’t think I’d w
ann
a know him.”

“What was his name?”

“She called him Bone. It’s easy to remember, just think of ‘bum.’ That’s what he was. No job, no apartment, not even a car. And in LA, that’s really the lowest, next to being homeless, ’cause even a lot of them have cars. That’s all I know.”

“I almost think I should fly out to LA and ask around. Maybe I should just talk to her parents.”

“They don’t know anything. All they know is Lockheed and their little comfy suburban lifestyle. Hollywood and rock and roll might as well be another planet. You’d only upset them.”

“You might be right. But still . . .”

“I talked to her boss at Tower, like you wanted. Nobody called him from here about her, or anywhere else, for that matter.” She leaned back on the bed and kicked off her boots. “Got any other bright ideas?”

“Not a whole lot. Did you get a license number on the car you thought was following you?”

“No.”

“What about the make?”

She shrugged. “They all look alike nowadays.”

“But you’re sure someone’s following you, watching you?” She nodded. Her eyes started to well up, and she didn’t seem to know what to do with that big mouth, lips pressed together, rubbery and purplish red. “Maybe they wanna rape and kill me too.”

The curtains were open, a gray moonlit sky out there coated with glass. The door was double locked, and the only sound besides our voices and the ice clinking in our glasses was the low muted hum of the air conditioner maintaining the coolness of everything, the air, the chair I sat in, the thick carpet beneath my feet. I looked at Barbra, rolled up into a ball, hugging herself, crying.

I glanced around the room. She was as messy as Leo. Clothes were everywhere. There was a portable CD player on the table by the window, with a dozen CDs scattered around. Gum wrappers,
People
magazine, perfume, makeup, panties. There was a bra trapped under a room service tray atop the TV, the strap dangling down in front of the screen. Curled up by my foot was a tiny zodiac scroll, the kind you find next to the breath mints at the Minit Mart. Back on the bed, she was a solid ball of confusion, a human knot.

I knelt down by the bed and touched her. She kept sobbing. The thin muscles of her back were clenched tight as braided cables. I put my arms around her and soon hers were locked around me, the fake nails digging into my back. Her tears made my face wet. I squeezed her harder, but it didn’t do any good.

“Oh, man, why?” she cried, nibbling my face.

I pulled back a bit and said, “I’m sorry.”

Close up, her face was a study in extremes. Her rain-colored eyes, so large and wet. Her mouth too wide, her lips too full. They quivered against her teeth. Her cheekbones stood out, especially next to the smallness of her chin. She reminded me of a cat: the closer you look, the deeper the mystery.

I got up and her arms dropped, her fingers clawing at the covers. “I am sorry,” I said.

She didn’t say anything. She just turned away and faced the wall.

I drank some of my drink, realized I didn’t like it, realized the stupidity of drinking just because I was in a hotel room with a strange girl in a strange situation. I thought about Retha and her bloody nose as I wiped Barbra’s tears from my face, and had to look down at my hands. It was only tears.

“Don’t touch me anymore,” she said. “It just messes things up in my mind.”

“OK.”

“You think I want to be here with a guy who may have murdered my friend?”

“You know I didn’t.”

She turned over again, to face me. Her face was flushed, her eyes swollen, but her hair was unmussed, still clumped into sharp, accusatory spikes. “No, probably not. You seem like a good person. But on the other hand, you’re just a guy. Guys do weird shit, they hurt you and fuck around with you and then they get that innocent look on their faces, saying, Who, me? I’ve seen it so many times. They can do anything, any fucking thing, then put on that innocent act, like they’ve been doing since they were little boys, breaking the neighbor’s windows with baseballs and stealing cookies out of cookie jars.”

She sat up and rubbed her fists in her eyes. “No,” she said, “I know you didn’t do it. But the person who did it? I think you know him.”

I lit a Camel and blew the smoke up toward the ceiling. I felt like a smoker again. Maybe I’d never quit. When I looked at her again, her eyes seemed to be looking through me. She probably didn’t even know why she’d said what she said. She just did, and that was that. She reminded me of my cat, ripping the stuffing out of my couch, looking over at me, daring me to give one good reason not to do it, one that would mean something to a cat. We’d used up everything we’d come to the room with.

I told her that she should call me in the morning and to call the desk if she heard any noises outside her door.

As I drove home I felt completely exhausted, as if I’d been beat up. And I noticed something for the first time. Full moon.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I dreamed I was struggling with a furiously tangled guitar cord. The knots were insidious and vague, defying every probe of my clumsy fingers. I couldn’t remember why I wanted to unknot the mess in the first place, but it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to find the other end of the cord. When I found it, it was in Barbra Quiero’s hands. She said that the mess was all my fault. Then I woke up. It was a helluva way to start off the day.

It was noon. I got up, put water on to boil, ground some coffee beans, and fed the cat. His life was simple. No coffee, cigarettes, rhythm and blues. No car insurance, band soap operas, or two a.m. payoffs. A simple life, no answering machines. Mine was blinking five times. I rewound the tape, turned the volume back up, lit a cigarette, and finished making the coffee.

The first message was from Leo. He said he wanted to talk to me, that it was important. The second message was from Lasko, saying to give him a call when I got my lazy ass out of bed. I stopped the machine and dialed the homicide department. He wasn’t in, so I left a message. I called Leo, but there was no answer.

The next two messages were from local rock writers. They were both calling about “the, uh, Retha Thomas thing.” I knew that the first writer—by his reputation and the tone in his voice—just wanted a juicy little story for his paper. The second one wanted to know if there was anything he could do to help. I thought it would be better all the way around if I didn’t return either call.

The last message was from Vick. He was on his way to the bank, he said, to cash a $100,000 check from IMF Records. Why didn’t I drop by later so we could square up? You could hear him burst into laughter as he hung up the phone. I poured a cup of coffee and sat down with the paper. Damn, it had really happened. I hadn’t realized until then that the concept of the porky thrift shop proprietor getting a hundred large from a major record label for his little indie records had seemed abstract, fictional. I suppose I felt a twinge of jealousy.

Or maybe it wasn’t jealousy, exactly. I’d made the payoff for him and he got his hundred grand. What did I get out of it? Retha Thomas was still in a coma, and I didn’t know who had put her there.

The coffee was good. I called the neighborhood florist and ordered some birds of paradise to be delivered to Ladonna at work. They said they’d probably get there in an hour. I’d wait, then call her. To kill time I got out the Danelectro bass and started plunking. Founded in 1948 by New York electronics buff Nathan Daniel, the Danelectro Corporation produced a line of guitars, basses, electric sitars, and other strange stringed instruments (in addition to amplifiers, one of which also served as a guitar case) that were not only incredibly innovative, but cheap. Danelectros were the VW Beetles of rock and roll hardware during the company’s heyday between 1956 and 1968. Now they were collector’s items. The pickups were sheathed in chrome lipstick tubes. The bodies were made of particle board and Formica. Streamline Modern relics, they were as American as Buicks, Bowl-A-Rama, and Bob’s Big Boy. Mine was a dual cutaway shorthorn model with copper sparkle finish. It was lightweight, had only fifteen frets, and would produce, after some coaxing, a tone that was at best scratchy and twangy, providing a perverse satisfaction similar to that of a cheap, marginally reliable sports car.

The strings sent vibrations through the body and made it seem alive. Normally that was a good feeling, but now it reminded me that someone had picked up my candy-apple red Fender and tried to beat the life out of a girl with it. Would it ever feel the same again? Would it be spattered with dried blood and smudged with fingerprint powder when the police gave it back to me? Would I even want to see the thing again?

It was weird. I felt violated, but feeling that way almost seemed like an infringement on the rights of the comatose girl. She was the one who’d really been violated. Violated to death, maybe. But I felt that way anyway.

Some part of my subconscious mind was still waging a small war with Barbra Quiero, too. In a way I understood her lashing out at me, testing me, sniping away at vulnerable spots. But on the other hand, I felt an old-fashioned ambivalence toward her. She was both attractive and repellent, clever and simple-minded. The world was full of people like that, and I didn’t have to be her whipping boy.

There was a knock at the door. It was Lasko, his face damp from the heat as he walked in carrying a bass guitar case. He was dressed in a blue blazer that was a size or two too small and big brown box-toed shoes. The getup was as uncomfortable for me to look at as it must have been for him to wear. “Got any coffee left?” he asked, sitting down on the couch, tripping the latches on the case and taking out his own bass guitar, a sunburst Fender Precision. It was a good one. I’d found it for him in an East Side pawn shop.

“Sure. You in court today?”

“Yep.”

“Then you only want half a cup, right?”

“Sure, that’ll be fine,” he said, distractedly plucking out some beginner’s runs on the instrument.

I brought him the coffee and set it down on the coffee table.

He nodded a thank you, then reached down to the case and brought up a pint of Jack Daniel’s. He poured a slug into the coffee, took a sip, and leaned back. “Got a couple hours’ recess. I hope you got some time.”

“Sure,” I said, strapping my bass back on. “What’d you want to start with?”

We did a quick review of some songs I’d taught him during his last lesson, “Linda Lu,” “Roadhouse Blues,” and “The Thrill Is Gone.” His technique was improving, and his timing was starting to get so good that I had to wonder if maybe he’d gone into the wrong profession. Timing is hard to practice unless you’re doing it with a band, but if you don’t work on it, once you do get with a band you’re no good to them. So I was an insistent toe-tapper with Lasko, and he seemed to have a natural feel for not only keeping the beat, but also for playing around with it, teasing it, purposely coming in a bit late, anticipating it with a leading note. But he had questions.