Spiral (22 page)

”Yes.”

”And you’re which generation?”

”The second born here.”

”Maybe that explains it.”

”Explains what?”

”How you could have forgotten what it takes to get ahead in this country.”

My turn to look at her. ”I’ll try to remember that in the future.”

Almost a smile again. ”Even through the... concussion?”

I smiled for real. ”That supposedly affects just short-term stuff.”

I felt a tingle at the back of my head. Something that wouldn’t quite...

”Mr. Cuddy?”

”Sorry.”

”Before you banged your head, did you space out like that?”

I stared at her, the expression so like Nancy’s, even the head canted the...

Pintana glanced at me again. ”You all right?”

”No, but at least I know why.”

A pause before, ”You enjoy the barhopping with Mitch Eisen?”

”Yes,” I said, surprising myself before I realized it was true.

”Where did he take you?”

I named the places.

”Which O’Hara’s?”

”The new operation in Hollywood.”

”You should go to the one on Las Olas, too.”

”I’ll make a note of it.”

”They’re having a great jazz group tonight, as a matter of fact.” We pulled into my hotel complex, Pintana taking the circular drive to the main entrance. She said, ”Sax and guitar. I was planning on getting there around ten, myself.”

”Sergeant—”

”If you stop by, fine. If not, fine, too.”

”Sergeant, there have been only two women in my life-Both died young, one two weeks ago.”

Lourdes Pintana leveled those amber eyes on me.
”I
think you’re getting ahead of yourself,” she said, flicking her wrist at my passenger’s side door.

Upstairs, I lifted the not-so-new-day’s
Sun-Sentinel
in its plastic bag off the room handle and went inside. Everything looked undisturbed, including the photo of Nancy and me on the bureau.

I stripped and took a shower, being careful to keep my bandaged arm above the stream of water. After wrapping a towel around my waist, I downed one of the painkillers, then walked to the bedside phone. The little dome light said I’d had callers, but I dialed room service first, since I hadn’t eaten since the prior night’s dinner at Coconuts. After ordering a sandwich plate, I checked my voice mail, finding three messages in my electronic box.

Duy Tranh with, ”Please call me regarding a certain hospital bill.”

Justo Vega with, ”John, I am in Miami, but the people at the hospital said you had been discharged, and I did not want to drive a fool’s errand up there. Please return my call to say how you feel and if you are in need of Pepe or me.” Mitch Eisen with, ”Don’t forget what I said last night.”

I felt vaguely disappointed, but whatever it was wouldn’t come consciously to mind. Depressing the plunger, I returned the calls in the order they appeared, getting an outgoing announcement for Tranh and a secretary for Justo. After leaving messages with both, I tried Eisen’s number. ”M. Eisen, Limited, please hold.”

A poorly disguised version of his voice, then a click. After three minutes, ”Mitch Eisen.”

”Mitch, John Cuddy.”

”You found out something?”

”Not exactly.”

A hesitation. ”Then why are you calling me?”

”I’m returning yours, Mitch.”

”Yeah, but all I said was don’t forget to tell me if you had anything about the band being on or off the hook.”

”And I don’t.”

Another hesitation. ”Hey, Cuddy, you okay?”

”No. After you dropped me off last night, somebody tried to stick a knife in me.”

”What?”

”In the pool garden. Which I had to cross because you let me out by the garage.”

A third hesitation, much longer than the first two. ”The fuck are you implying here?”

”When we were leaving O’Hara’s, you made a call.”

”Yeah. To be sure that the right group was playing at September’s.”

”You sure that was the only one you made, Mitch?”

”Who the fuck else would I call?”

”How about a guy named Ford Walton?”

”Sounds like somebody off that stupid TV show with ‘John-boy’ and—”

”How about Sundy Moran, then?”

A short hesitation, and a different tone. ”Cuddy, I got work to do. I’m sorry about your mugging or whatever, but hey, Lauderdale’s not exactly Small-town America, you know?”

”I’m learning, Mitch. I’m learning.”

Room service brought my sandwich plate, and I ate it with one of the antibiotics because the label read
take with food.
Then I went through the White Pages in the room. Lots of ”Morans” listed, but no ”Sundy.” I called directory assistance, but without a town or city, they couldn’t help me. Hanging up, I had a thought and picked up the phone again.

”Mo Katzen,” said the gruff voice on the other end of the long-distance line. ”What are you bothering me about?”

I pictured the old reporter, sitting behind his desk at the Boston
Herald,
an even older typewriter still squatting where a computer should be. ”Mo, it’s John Cuddy, calling from Florida.”

”Florida?” I could hear him roll something—probably an unlit cigar—from one corner of his mouth to the other. ”What are... oh. You down there kind of..

He’d been at Nancy’s memorial service. ”Kind of, Mo. Listen, I need a favor.”

Usually, it would be ten minutes of pulling teeth to get him to the point of helping. This time, he just said, ”Name it.”

‘You know any reporters on a paper down here called the
Sun-Sentinel?”

A moment before, ”That’s the big one north of Miami, right?”

”Right, Mo.”

”Yeah. Miami’s got a
Herald,
too, though I don’t know who owns them. If it’s our—”

”Mo?”

”Yeah?”

”I’m in kind of a hurry here.”

”Oh, sure, John, sure. Let me see, let me... Yeah. Good gal, too, as a matter of fact. Missouri by way of New England, but I’m ninety percent sure she’s at your paper there. Let me spell her name for you, though, ‘cause it’s different.”

I didn’t ask Mo Katzen different from what, though I did suggest to him what he might tell her about me.

If the Fort Lauderdale police department would remind you of a resort hotel, the
Sun-Sentinel
’s building looked like it belonged to a law firm. A large and prosperous one.

At the security desk in the palatial lobby downstairs, I asked for Oline Christie. I was given a clip-on pass and told to go to the tenth floor. When the elevator doors opened there, the law-firm image got reinforced by a wide, internal stairway and plush carpeting, the walls full of dramatic photos.

The image was reduced some by the second security desk just in front of the stairway. I mentioned the name of Mo’s friend again, but this guard suggested I wait a minute, because the reporter had just called about me.

”Mo Katzen seems to think highly of you.”

Soft, Southwestern inflection. I said, ”We’ve known each other a long time.”

Oline Christie sat in the swivel chair, her back to the computer monitor on her desk in the cubicle. Brown hair, blue eyes, and just to the smart side of pretty.

”Quite a bandage,” she said.

”You know how doctors are these days. Overkill.”

”Uh-huh.” Christie’s expression never changed. ”So, what can I do for you, Mr. Cuddy?”

”How about ‘John’?”

”Fine. I’m
Ah-leen.”

”I’ve been hired to do a confidential investigation for someone down here. The name ‘Sundy Moran’ came up, and I was wondering if you knew anything about her.”

”Sundy Moran. The woman who was killed in that motel room?”

”Yes.”

Christie’s face grew a little smarter. ”Right around the time the Held girl was drowned.”

”I believe so.”

Christie leaned forward in her chair. ”John, we don’t go any further without leveling with each other.”

I didn’t say anything at first, assessing if I could trust her eyes and Mo’s recommendation. Then I decided I didn’t really have a choice.

”Oline, I need some help here, but it can’t get printed, at least not yet.”

”That’s a start.”

”A start?”

”Toward leveling.” Christie leaned back in her chair,
swaying
slightly. ”I was off the day of that bizarro birthday party at the Helides house, so somebody else got to be lead reporter on the killing there. That doesn’t mean I haven’t followed the story, though, and you look a hell of a lot like the man seen going through their security gate a few days ago.”

”I was.”

”So,” said Christie, drawing out the word, ”what’s the connection between Veronica Held and Sundy Moran?”

I described my being attacked the night before, including what Ford Walton had said to me then and what the police told me that morning.

Christie swayed a little more in her chair. ”The Moran woman’s death received kind of short shrift, what with all the attention on the Held murder. But a week or so later, I persuaded my editor to let me do a piece on Moran’s mother, Donna. It turned out kind of kinky, because of the boyfriend aspect.”

”Walton being with both the women.”

”Right. So my story got cut down to family-size, you might say.”

”Family-size?”

”The right ‘graphs—paragraphs—for a family-type newspaper.”

«T »

I see.

”Maybe you’d rather see the original?”

”Of your story?”

Christie swung her chair around and started clacking away on the computer’s keyboard. ”Won’t take long... there.”

I read about half of the first column on the screen before closing my eyes. Christie’s slant featured mother more than daughter. Donna Moran had been born poor thirty-seven years before and gotten pregnant at sixteen, father never identified. Sundy arrived eight months later—four weeks premature—and took her mother’s last name. It was a struggle from the beginning, the unwed mother’s own parents disowning their daughter and her child. Donna worked as a waitress in a roadhouse and tried ”the best I could, but us living in a hole like this here trailer park, with not even a telephone, what kind of chance did my Sundy have? I’ll tell you: Same as me, meaning none.”

I read the rest of the story. Sundy found her way out of the trailer park and into booze, drugs, and prostitution, mother trying to get daughter ”back on the right track afore it was too late.” Ford Walton ”declined to be interviewed,” but there was an allusion to his ”lengthy” criminal record. And a depressing passage on how Walton and Donna Moran spent the time during which Sundy was killed.

Christie put her finger on the paragraph I was reading. ”That’s the one that got my story truncated.”

Without believing in censorship, I could see why. ”Too bad you don’t work for one of the tabloids on the checkout line.”

”Wouldn’t have flown there, either. No star quality to the victims.” Christie looked up at me. ”Any help?”

The second paragraph had contained the town and road for the trailer park where Donna Moran lived. ”Yes, Oline. Thanks.”

Christie turned from her screen. ”John, you find a connection between these killings, you owe me the first call, right?”

”So long as my client agrees.”

Oline Christie smiled, smart yielding to pretty. ”Mo Katzen said you were a little
too
trustworthy.”

The drive west took longer than it looked on the rent-a-car map. I went through a run-down section of Fort Lauderdale, then different communities with the word ”Lauderdale” also in their names. The character of the land grew increasingly rural after about ten miles, the acreage more undeveloped than farmed, with hammocks of trees and meadows of tall grass. The land was flat and hot and desolate enough to pass for the African veldt, even a few vultures making slow circles overhead.

Twenty minutes later, I hit the town where Donna Moran lived. After three or four intersections, I turned north onto a marked but unpaved road. There were shacks and sheds alongside it, chickens strutting and pecking in the gravel at the shoulders. The entrance to the trailer park came up on my left

The driveway was pure dust a cloud of it kicking up so thick behind me that I couldn’t see anything through the rearview mirror. The windshield showed an old man wearing a farmer’s straw hat and blue overalls, sitting outside one of the closest trailers.

I set the brake and got out of the Cavalier, leaving my suit coat in it ”Morning.”

He looked up at me, took a pull on the pipe in his left hand. When I got closer to him, I could see he ranged closer to forty than sixty. His lawn chair was rusty, the cross-straps of the seat frayed at the frame. He also gave off an odor that came less from smoking and more from not bathing.

The man still hadn’t said anything.

I stopped three feet in front of him. ”I’m looking for Donna Moran.”

Just a stare, the comers of his mouth turned up
around
the stem of his pipe. Then, ”Got yourself a hell of a bandage there.”

”Thanks.”

”You got a badge, too?”

”I’m not police.”

”Didn’t think so. Would of led with it.”

”I’d just like to see Ms. Moran.”

”Just... ‘see’ her, eh?”

A lewd edge on his words. ”Talk with her,” I said.

”You don’t got yourself no badge, I don’t got to talk with you.”

He made no effort to get up, though.

I reached behind me for my wallet. ”I do have some money.”

”Thought you might.”

I extended a ten to him.

He just stared at it. ”Man starts with a ten, he’ll likely go twenty.”

”Or just drive up to another trailer, and start with a five.” He blinked first. Taking the ten and stuffing it down inside the overalls, he waved the pipe back where I’d come from. ”Donna’s to work.”

The roadhouse from Oline Christie’s article. ”How do I get there?”

”South to the state route, west to the filling station, then north on a dirt and marl stretch.”

”Name of the place?”

”We call it ‘Billy’s,’ but it don’t have no sign says that.”

”Then how will I know it?”

An open grin, four stained and staggered teeth showing. ”You follow my directions, and see something ain’t a tree, it’s Billy’s”

The word ”ramshackle” in the next edition of Webster’s ought to have a picture of Billy’s next to it. The wood was splintered and weathered to a dozen different shades of gray, one neon sign for
bud
lit, another for
coors
not. There were a half-dozen vehicles in the parking area, splattered mud on bumpers, fenders, and doors. Most were pickups, a few others older American cars rusted through and roped or taped together. Putting my jacket back on, I walked on the ridges of ruts to what seemed to be the entrance.

The door pushed open, no air-conditioning blast hitting me as I stepped into the place. It was dark, the atmosphere piss-warm and sour. A female singer warbled some country-and-western tune from the tinny jukebox. A square bar occupied the right side of the big room, clusters of empty tables and chairs the left around the perimeter of a dance floor laid with scuffed lineoleum.

Most of the patrons I could see sat alone on stools at the bar. All were male, many smoking over long-neck beer bottles. Beyond them, two more guys cued sticks at a pool table. One wore a Peterbilt ballcap, the other a bandanna tied at his hairline. Both watched me.

Inside the bar enclosure, a woman looked up at a television set. From what I could see, the program was a Jerry Springer knock-off, but she had the audio low enough that I couldn’t hear it. I wasn’t sure the woman could either.

She turned toward me as I moved to the bar. Her hair was lifeless, piled up under a scrungie to form a topknot ponytail. Heavy breasts stressed a faded Miami Dolphins jersey with a player number on it, stained jeans below. Her face was more faded than her shirt, not so much in color as animation, and a cigarette smoldered between the index and middle fingers of her right hand.

When I reached the bar itself, she gave a hiccupy laugh ”A suit in Billy’s. Somebody get the camera.”

”Donna Moran?”

She shifted her stance behind the bar, almost defensively. ”Who wants to know?”

”My name’s John Cuddy. I wonder if—”

”That boy giving you trouble, Donna?”

I looked over to the pool table, the Peterbilt guy with his mouth still open, the Bandanna just kind of grinning.

Moran said, ”Not yet, Luke. But I’ll be sure to let you know.”

One corner of the bar was empty except for an oversized wipe-towel. ”Could we talk over here, Ms. Moran?”

”‘Ms.’ Moran?” she said with another hiccupped laugh. ”Boy, why do I think you don’t got no idea who I am?” There was a glimmer from her face then, the eyes kind of flirty as she moved to the inside of my comer, scraping an ashtray along the bar with her. I sat on the closest stool.

Moran said, ”A drink, or you on duty?”

The impression I create. ”Budweiser would be fine.”

Putting her cigarette in one of the notches of the ashtray, Moran reached below the bar. She brought out a brown bottle with some ice still clinging to it and used a bar-mounted opener to pop the top. ”Two.”

I put a five-dollar bill on the gouged wood in front of me. Moran set the bottle beside it.

”All right, Suit, what do you want?”

”I’d like to talk with you about your daughter.”

”My...” The face became troubled again, and her eyes went away for a moment. ”Why? Ain’t nobody but one girl reporter cared about Sundy when she got killed.”

The jukebox began playing a new song, still that country twang to the now-male singer’s voice. ”I have a feeling your daughter’s death might be connected with a case I’m working.”

”Yeah, well, might have been nice if y’all came around about Sundy’s case.”

”Nobody from Homicide visited you?”

”Oh, they ‘visited,’ all right. Some asshole with a Marine bird burnt into his arm. But you been poor most of your life, you can tell when the police are just going through the motions. All he really cared about was could I alibi Ford, and”—the eyes went away again—”may the Good Lord send me to hell and back, I could.”

”You and Mr. Walton were together.”

The eyes returned. ”You’re a polite man, Mr....?”

”Cuddy, John Cuddy. And I’m not police.”

”I don’t—sorry.”

Moran reached a palm up to blot her tears. The cigarette in her ashtray was mostly gone, and she moved away to get the pack.

”Hey, Donna,” said Luke of the Peterbilt, ”that boy making you cry?”

”Got smoke in my eyes,” Moran replied. ”And mind your damn game afore Hack runs the table on you.”

That got a barnyard sound from Hack of the Bandanna. Moran came back to me, lighting up. ”All right, Mr. John Polite, what do you want to know?”

I decided to save my Ford Walton questions for last. ”Can you tell me something about your daughter as a person?”

”As a person?” A cloud of smoke came out with her words. ”Well, Sundy couldn’t learn from the lessons of others.”

”Others like you?”

The smoke stopped, then came out more diffused. ”For instance.”

”Which lessons did you try to teach her?”

Moran hardened, pointing the burning end of the cigarette at me. ”And I thought you was polite.”

”You said it.”

”Yeah, well, ain’t but one person I talked to about Sundy dying, so I’m guessing that reporter girl is who put you on to me.”

I took a calculated risk. ”Just by reading her story in the
Sun-Sentinel,
combined with what the police told me.” More hardening. ”Why you really come out here?”

”Ms. Moran, if I can find a connection between my case and your daughter’s, I might be able to solve both of them.” Now skeptical, the eyes closed to slits as she inhaled more tar and nicotine. ”Find out who killed my Sundy?”

”I hope so.”

Moran seemed to study me, then quickly blew out the smoke she’d been holding and set the cigarette down in the ashtray next to its dead mate. ”Ask your questions, then. Straight out.”

Taking Moran at her word, I said, ”You know of anybody who’d want to kill your daughter?”

”Lord, I’ve been thinking on nothing else. But aside from”—Moran leaned toward me, dropping her voice— ”maybe one of her customers, I can’t.”

”Any one in particular?”

”Sundy didn’t never talk names, just ‘this tall fella’ or ‘this short fella.’ And she said most of them weren’t so much bad as lonely.”

”Hey, Boy,” yelled Luke from the pool table, ”you jew Donna down to twenty dollars, Hack and me’ll go halves with you.”

Another barnyard sound from the Bandanna.

Moran barely bothered to turn. ”Yeah, Luke, and Hack can hold your damn cue for you, too, so it don’t keep slipping out.”

Nervous laughter from around the bar, reinforcing my impression that Luke in the Peterbilt cap was cock of this particular roost.

I said, ”Ms. Moran?”

She turned back to me. ”Yeah?”

”If there’d be a better time...?”

A shake of her head, dislodging some strands of hair from the scrungie. ”Ain’t no good time for this kind of talk, so let’s finish it.”

”How about anybody not a customer?”

”What, who’d want to kill Sundy?”

”Yes.”

Moran picked up her cigarette. ”No. Ford Walton on the worst drunk of his life, maybe, but, like you said, he was with me.”

”The whole time?”

Her eyes went to slits again. ”Mr. John Polite, let me draw you a picture, all right? Ford and me was in my bed or within sight of it for all of that Sunday into Monday, and he was gone maybe half an hour when the sheriff s car come into the park, telling me they’d found my Sundy over to Lauderdale an hour before that. So, no way—”

A song burst from the jukebox, thunderously loud. Another female vocalist this time, yowling something about satin sheets and satin pillows.

I glanced over to the machine. Luke and Hack were leaning on their cues, grinning so widely their mouths nearly formed a single smile.

Luke tipped back the Peterbilt and yelled, ”Hey, Donna. I got some satin sheets back of my truck. What do you say?” This time Moran wheeled on him, screaming. ”I say if you’d washed them after you flogged your three-inch dog all over them during your one good hard-on a month, you might find they’re just cheap shit, like you.”

I glanced behind me, to make sure nobody else had come in that I might have to worry about.

Luke was still grinning, but differently, and Hack didn’t seem happy at all.

Looking down at the floor, Luke pawed it a little with the toe of a workboot. Then he started walking toward the bar, Hack in tow.

And both still with their pool cues.

Glancing down at my long-necked bottle, I said to Moran’s back, ”What’ve you got behind there?”

Over her shoulder with, ”Just a bitty little billy club.”

”That’s it?”

”Why the place is called ‘Billy’s’ to start with.”

Passing on my Bud bottle, I got off the stool, slipping the oversized towel from the bar so Peterbilt and Bandanna couldn’t see it.

”Boy,” said Luke, his upper teeth showing, ”don’t you be going nowhere, now. Cause you’re next, even with that bandage peeking out under your sleeve.”

As Hack grew back his grin, I said, ”I’ve still got a lot to do today. Could you maybe take me first?”

Luke and Hack both lost their grins, exchanged a quick glance.

I said, ”After all, if I bolt out that door, you’d have to start running, too, unless you wanted everybody here to tell a story on you.”

”What kind of story?” said Luke.

”That you both ran yourselves ragged after this poor jerk in a suit while Ms. Moran called the Sheriffs Office.” Luke sneered at me. ”One, ‘Ms. Moran’ ain’t gonna call no Sheriffs Office. And two, ain’t no way somebody as old as you gonna outrun me and Hack.”

”I did the Boston Marathon not so long ago, my friend. Up hill and down dale for twenty-six miles without stopping.”

Hack
squinted, like a man in deep denial.

Luke kept
his sneer. ”Then maybe we shorten your legs some, make it a fairer race for us.”