Spiral (13 page)

The left hand went toward his collar.

”I see them.”

”You know what they are?”

”I’m not a doctor.”

”No? Well, you know what this is, right?”

Pointing now at the red ribbon on his chest.

”I do.”

”Got diagnosed two years ago.” A pause. ”Don’t know how I got it, except I hadn’t been doing no horse for a long while, so I don’t believe it was from a needle. But the doctors, they don’t really know shit about that. They do know one thing, though. There’s these pills can keep you healthy.”

”Veronica Held had a drug in her body that wasn’t so healthy.”

”Not from me, babe. Onliest drugs I take now are that AIDS cocktail and my nicotine. Plus”—his hand went toward the water—”I swim every day in that pool, hour at a time. Ever since we all moved in here.”

That stopped me. ”Moved in?”

”Spi’s daddy, he hire you, but he don’t tell you we all bunking at his son’s crib?”

”No.”

The raspy laugh. ”Rich man know how to save money. He backing the band, but he also paying on this house for Spi. He figure his boy’s band can stay here, not run up the room service at some hotel, or maybe trash the place like the old days.” Now the baleful look again. ”You ask me before about my ‘heart’ not being in this comeback. Let me tell you where my heart is, babe. I doing this gig for the money, account of the money let me buy the pills and leave some left over for my son.”

”Kalil.”

A pause. ”Kalil. I take those pills and I swim the laps, keep me strong so I can stay around long enough to maybe see him growed up.” Another pause. ”And maybe not. But I tell you the truth here so’s maybe the money train don’t stop running.”

”Meaning, so that Nicolas Helides keeps backing the band.”

”Babe, you work for him, I work for him. I help you out, you don’t upset my applecart, dig?”

”I can’t promise that.”

Biggs rose from the chair, but a little unsteadily. ”Wasn’t looking for no promise. Just an understanding.”

”I could use some more answers.”

”Later, you want. I got to go pick up my son at the specialist.”

”Specialist?”

”Another reason I need this gig. Kalil see a speech specialist.”

”What’s the impediment?”

”Don’t use that term no more. ‘Stigmatizes,’ they say. Only they still call themselves speech ‘pathologists,’ which seem to me ‘stigmatizes’ more than anything else, account of it sound like you gonna die from what you got.”

The keyboardist stared down at me. ”And the one thing Kalil
ain’t
gonna do is die. He gonna live as good a life as my music can make for him.”

And with that, Buford Biggs picked up his soda can, tossed it into a white plastic barrel at the end of the alcove, and walked off the patio and around the house toward getting his son.

I waited in my chair another five minutes, but the hummingbirds never came back.

EIGHT

When I opened the sliding glass door into the kitchen, there was a stolid woman with long, sandy hair at the center island. When she turned, I realized she also appeared on the birthday video. Delgis Reyes had pale skin and blue eyes that picked up one of the minor colors in her simple print dress. I could see the makings of a sandwich on the counter behind her.

”Who are you?” said Veronica Held’s former au pair, in a demanding tone and with a Spanish accent.

”John Cuddy, Ms. Reyes.”

The blue eyes measured me as she put her fists on her hips. ”What you want here?”

”Colonel Helides asked me to investigate the death of his granddaughter.”

”I am sorry.” The fists became hands again and dropped to her sides. ”We are told you will come. You want, I find you someone to talk to?”

”Actually, I’d like to talk with you.”

She did a half-turn toward the counter. ”But I make sandwich for Gordo.”

”I think he can wait.”

Reyes was clearly troubled but said, ”We sit here?”

”Fine with me.”

There were bar stools around the central island, and we each took one.

Reyes said, ”I don’t know what I can tell you about this thing.”

”Let’s start with how you came to be Veronica’s au pair.” A degree of relaxation from Reyes. ”My brother, Umberto, is the guard for the Colonel’s house. I go there sometimes, help with the meals. The Colonel see I am a good worker, so he hire me for Veronica.”

”It was Nicolas Helides and not Spi Held who hired you?” Reyes tensed again. ”Yes, just so. I live here, but the Colonel is the one to pay me for the watching of her.”

I turned that over. ”When you say ‘watching’ Veronica, what do you mean?”

More tension. ”When she alive, Veronica is a... diffi-cult girl.”

Duy Tranh’s term for her, too. ”How?”

”How she is difficult?”

I nodded.

Reyes started rubbing her hands in her lap. ”Veronica do not listen to her father and mother too good. She do what she want.”

”Can you give me some examples?”

”Ejemplos.”
Reyes closed her eyes. ”She want to go places by herself they don’t want her to.”

”What kind of places?”

”Clubs they play music, sing songs.”

”Do you mean bars?”

”Yes.”

”But she was only thirteen years old.”

”There are some places, they don’t sell the alcohol.”

”Even for those, though, wouldn’t she have to be—what, eighteen?”

Reyes became agitated. ”She wear the makeup, Veronica look as many years as me, and I have now twenty-five.”

”Wouldn’t they check her identification, though?”

More agitation. ”You ask questions, I try to help you, but I don’t know all these things.”

”I’m sorry. You’re right.”

Reyes took a breath.

I let her take another before, ”Can you give me some other examples?”

”Of when Veronica don’t listen to her parents?”

”Yes.”

A third breath. ”She like to be at the tennis place.”

”Veronica enjoyed the sport?”

Some embarrassment now. ”She like the teacher there.”

I thought back to Kalil’s video. ”The pro who was helping Mrs. Helides?”

”The Colonel’s wife, yes.”

”Do you think there was anything... sexual?”

A darkening more than embarrassment. ”I do not know what the Colonel’s wife does.”

Sometimes you get an answer when you didn’t realize you’d asked the question. ”I meant, anything sexual between the pro and Veronica?”

Now Reyes hung her head as the hands twisted a little in her lap. ”This is most why the Colonel hire me, I think. To be the... chaperone?”

”How did Veronica feel about that?”

”She no get mad at me or anything. She make it more like a game.”

”A game?”

Reyes lifted her head before nodding. ”Veronica try to leave with me no seeing her. I catch her, she laugh, then next day, try a different way.”

”What about when she went to school?”

Tension again. ”After the band start to make the comeback, the Colonel don’t have her in school no more.”

The Skipper again, not Veronica’s father. ”And Duy Tranh became her teacher.”

”At the Colonel’s house, yes.”

”Why there?”

”My brother is guard at the gate, and there is security system in that house. More hard for Veronica to get away than here.”

”Did you go with her when she saw Tranh?”

‘Yes, I go to house, but not in room.”

”Why not?”

”I cannot help with teaching,” said Reyes, ”but I can help with kitchen or cleaning.”

”Did you ever sense anything was wrong between Veronica and Mr. Tranh?”

”No. She tell me she play games on him, too.”

”What kind of games?”

”She no tell me. Just say Mr. Tranh is no smarter than any other man.”

”Meaning?”

”I tell you already, I don’t know.”

Time to ease off. ”What else can you tell me about Veronica as a person?”

”Como persona?”
The hung head again. ”Veronica think she very smart. And she no is stupid. But she no is so smart as maybe she think.”

”In what ways?”

Reyes didn’t lift her head this time. ”Veronica think she already know things about... men. She do not know enough.”

”Examples again?”

”When she go to tennis place, sometime I drive her, sometime the Colonel’s wife. Then, one day, the Colonel’s wife tell me she no drive Veronica anymore.”

”Do you know why?”

”Why the Colonel’s wife no drive her?”

”Yes.”

Reyes kept her head down. ”I think maybe because of the tennis teacher.”

”Veronica did or said something to him?”

The agitation again. ”I tell you, I don’t know all these things.”

Back to more stable ground. ”Was there someone who would want to hurt Veronica?”

”No.” Reyes lifted her head again, the blue eyes tearing up. ”I ask this question to myself many times, but there is no one I can think to do this to her. We are at the Colonels party, there is food and drink and music. A fiesta.”

”Until Veronica sang that song?”

A nod, the tears welling over now. ”She must be crazy to do that, I think, but I see her do it. Then she run out, and her father go after her, and I walk to the kitchen, try to make more food so people be happy again.” Reyes began to sob. ”I don’t think anybody be happy again forever.”

I was looking around for some tissues or napkins when a voice from the doorway said, ”Delgis, where the fuck’s my food?”

I
looked up at a heavyset man in a leather biker vest and bulging black jeans. His head was shaved, some scarring on the cheeks that looked like poorly healed knife wounds from long ago.

”The fuck are you?” he said.

”John Cuddy.”

”That supposed to mean something?”

Word didn’t seem to travel very fast in the Held house. ”I’m investigating Veronica’s death for her grandfather.”

A grin as he stroked a scar on his right cheek. ”The guy we all got to talk to, right?”

”Right.”

”Well, I’m Gordo Lazar. I don’t know enough to need a lawyer, but you want, we can talk back in the studio while Delgis fixes my fucking lunch. Sandwich for you, too?”

I looked at Reyes, who had torn a paper towel off a dispenser and was blowing her nose into it. ”If there’s enough.

”Hey,” said Lazar as he turned and beckoned to me. ”I may be fat, but I haven’t eaten everything in the place.” His voice carried in from the corridor. ”Yet.”

I thanked Delgis Reyes for her time, told her a sandwich and a soda would be fine, then left the stool I was on and followed after Gordo Lazar.

* * *

”Hell of a setup, huh?”

I watched Lazar reach down for a large guitar, unclipping the strap up near the tuning pegs, then hitching the strap over his left shoulder before reclipping it. We were in a cubelike room with lots of instruments on the floor, microphones coming down from the ceiling on elbowed steel components, and cushy green blocks on three walls. An expanse of glass comprised most of the fourth wall, a picture window into what looked like a control room, though no one was occupying the chairs there.

I said, ”Spi Held gave me the impression he did most of his work up in that turret room.”

”The Spi Tower.” Lazar’s fingers went to the guitar, a pick of some kind causing three different notes in a do-re-mi pattern to strum out a bulky hi-fi speaker on the floor next to him. ”That’s where the genius does his writing. Here’s where we try to make the shit he brings down into something that’ll play.”

A few chords this time, more complicated and dissonant. I said, ”You’re not crazy about the band’s new music?”

A gruff laugh that mixed with the next run of sounds from the speaker. ”The fuck of it is, I wasn’t that happy about the original shit from the seventies.”

There was a resin folding chair near one of the octopus mikes coming down from the ceiling, so I took it ”How come, Mr. Lazar?”

”Hey, man. Mr. Lazar was my fucking father. Call me Gordo.’” A wink. ”You know what it stands for?”

”No.”

”Actually, it’s just short for ‘Gordon,’ which was my father’s name, too. But around the house, my mom always called me ‘Gordo’ to let us know which one she wanted. Then I kept it ‘cause the word means ‘fat man’ in Spanish. Helped me like differentiate myself from the rest of the bass players of the world.”

”I don’t think you’ve told me why you weren’t all that happy about Spiral’s original music.”

”Huh, guess I didn’t. Thought we should have turned more away from raunch and more toward straight heavy metal. There’s a cult market for that shit that keeps you going, no matter what the top-40 stations are passing off.”