Further Adventures of Carlotta Carlyle (5 page)

I wriggled closer to my suitcase.

First step: simple. Unlock the duffel. Keys in my back pocket; I'm not a handbag toter. For the first time since high school I found myself wishing I were less than six feet one. I rolled onto my side, slid an arm behind me, and inched the key out. Might sound easy. Try it in the dark, in a trunk, in a lurching, skidding vehicle.

My fingers found the lock, unbuckled and unzipped the bag from memory and touch, located the gun case. I placed it between my shaky knees. Then it was a race against time, my fingers steadily more numb, more unwieldy as they grew icy. It was not a job for gloved hands.

I couldn't find a magazine. Something sharp jabbed my hand. What? A nail scissor protruding from my plastic makeup sack? Blood welled from the cut and I made sure to smear some on the carpet. Evidence. Just in case. A snakelike garment grabbed my wrist. Panty hose. There. My hand closed on a rectangle of metal. The box of shells was at the bottom of the case.

Which way to face when he opened the trunk? Should I try for a full rotation, a rollover to get my elbows on the floor? The car stopped. Red light? Traffic jam? I heard a door open, slam. What if he was stopping for backup? What if he abandoned the car? “Woman frozen in freak Portland blizzard.” Maybe he'd come back in a week, dump my body in a river.

I clicked the magazine home.

I forced myself to breathe. In and out. Slowly, regularly. I couldn't hear footsteps.

The trunk opened so fast I only caught a glimpse of a hand holding an upraised crowbar before the flashlight blinded me. The beam gave me a target to sight on. My neck ached from holding my head upright. I kept my teeth from chattering as I yelled, “Hold it there. Drop the iron.”

Never pull your piece unless you intend to shoot. Never shoot unless you mean to kill. That's what they taught me at the police academy. I'd have shot the chauffeur without a qualm, just for being a lousy goddamn driver, but I wanted answers.

If he'd flicked off the light and made a sudden move, he might have gotten me. My finger tightened against the trigger. If the light died I'd fire.

It didn't. It wavered and I heard a soft thud, like a tire iron landing in snow.

“Hey,” he said, his voice a good two notes higher than before. “Relax. Take it easy. I look mean, but I'm not.”

“I don't look mean, but I am,” I said menacingly, wondering how the hell I was going to get out of the trunk without at least wounding the jerk, giving him something to hold his attention while I clambered over the rear bumper.

“You got the safety catch on?” he asked nervously.

“Guess,” I said. “Take five steps back and lie down in the snow.”

“Lie down?”

“Faceup. Make me a snow angel, and I mean a good one.”

“A snow angel?” he echoed.

“It's like doing jumping jacks lying down,” I said. “What's your name?”

“Why?”

“Because I've got a gun and you don't, moron.”

“Name's Clay,” he muttered.

“Well, Clay. I want to hear you flap those arms and legs. I want to hear your hands clap over your head, okay? Real loud and regular. If I even suspect you're going for the tire iron, not to mention anything else, you're going to be missing a kneecap.”

I didn't move till I heard a snort, followed by the scuffing of snow, and rhythmic clapping. Then I stretched my legs over the edge of the trunk, and lifted myself to a semi-sitting position using a combo of abdominals and my left arm.

“Okay, angel,” I said once I'd struggled to my feet. My legs felt tingly and achy. My left arm burned. I wanted to sit in the snow and cry. Lie down. Make my own angel.

“What?” he said.

“Are we going to chat or shoot?”

“Can I get up?”

“Why? You want to die like a man?”

“It's colder than a witch's tit down here. If we're gonna talk this thing out, let's get in the car and turn on the heater.”

“I have a better idea,” I said, reaching behind me and lifting my bag out of the trunk.

“What?”

“Keep flapping those arms. I am now going to take ten steps away from the car. Don t worry. That won't put me out of firing range. Then you will stand
when I tell you to
, and you will march over to the car, and get in the trunk.”

“In the trunk?”

“We're trading places.”

“Then what?”

His voice hailed from somewhere south. No wonder he didn't know how to make a snow angel. His accent reminded me of someone else's; its cadence was familiar, but not the same. His voice was higher pitched.

“I didn't get a chance to ask ‘then what?' when you shoved me in,” I said reasonably. “Now, did I?”

He glared. No reply.

“I'm taking my ten steps,” I said. “You can get up now.”

He followed orders.

“Who hired you to freak Dee Willis?” I asked.

No response.

“Come on,” I urged. “You think I couldn't shoot you dead and walk, buddy? Think it over. I'm a legit private eye on a legit case. My gun's legal. There's evidence—my blood and sweat and hair—in the damn trunk. Your fingerprints on the tire iron. There's sell-defense written all over this baby.”

Nothing.

“So who hired you?”

I was freezing my ass for nothing. I don't know, in the movies, somebody's got a gun, they ask questions, and people tell them what they want to know. In real life, I get perps too stupid to plan beyond their next meal.

I blew out a steamy breath, said, “Okay. Let's do it the hard way. Empty your pockets. Drop everything straight down in the snow. I want to see the car keys drop. I want to see your wallet drop. I expect you have a knife, and I would like to see that hit the ground, too.”

“Shit.” His drawl split the word into two syllables. “I ain't got a knife.”

I sighted to the left of his foot, pressed the trigger gently, hit closer than I'd intended. The ground jumped four inches from his toe.

“Knife,” I said.

“Jesus, lady,” he said. “It's in my boot.”

“Well, sit your fat butt on the ground and take your boots off. Easy, now. Rest your weight on your right hand, hike that. Take your boots off with your left. One at a time. Slow and easy. Lay the blade on the ground. Take your socks off, too, while you're at it.”

“I could get frostbit.”

“You could get dead,” I said pleasantly. “Okay. Now stand up and walk to the car. Hands over your head, please. Take one step toward me, make a move for the knife or the tire iron, and you're meat, understand? My hands are getting too cold to go for anything but gut shots. And, trust me, I will empty the magazine. I've got seven left. And they're not twenty-twos.”

I felt better as soon as I'd slammed the trunk. I grabbed the keys from the snow and locked the damn thing just to make sure.

I slung my bag into the backseat, then gathered up the “chauffeurs” belongings, boots, smelly socks, and all.

In the driver's seat, I turned on the engine and let blessed heat flow over my shaking hands and chilled feet. I set the safety on the 40 and stuck it in the glove compartment.

I searched for a map. Nothing in the dash. Nothing in any of the fancy seat pockets. As dawn brightened the sky, I settled down for a thorough exam of the man's wallet.

Cash: one hundred and eighty-seven bucks. A crumpled note giving my name—spelled wrong—airline—spelled right—and arrival time. I stuck it in my pocket, went on to examine a mine of contradictory ID. He had a California driver's license in the name of Claude Fillmer. A Discover card for one Clyde Fulton. Several business cards for Clyde, one introducing him as a claims rep for State Farm Insurance, another asserting his connection to California Security, Incorporated. He'd made himself vice-president. I wondered why he hadn't gone for the top job.

A motel key. Room 138.

A video-rental card for Claude.

A Burger King receipt. I was getting nowhere; I should have made him strip.

Mooney, my former boss at the Boston PD, once told me that ex-cons tend to keep more than knives in their boots. I could practically hear his voice. I hoped I wasn't starting to hallucinate.

Inside the left boot, I felt the raised outline of a cardboard rectangle. I upended the sucker, shook it hard, but the card was stuck to the insole. It felt too thick and stiff for a manufacturer's label. I used Clay's (or Claude's or Clyde's) knife to pry it out, taking grim satisfaction in the gouges I hacked in the leather.

I found the kind of ID card that comes with cheap wallets. Clayton Fuller had filled out parts of it in a barely legible scrawl. If anything happened to Clayton, anything necessitating the removal and examination of his boots, he thought Mrs. Caroline Fuller of Hazlehurst, Mississippi, was most likely to care.

Hazlehurst, Mississippi
. The name swam before my eyes.

Memphis means Elvis.

Detroit is Aretha.

Liverpool equals Lennon and McCartney.

Hazlehurst, Mississippi, is the birthplace of the legendary Robert Johnson, a man who recorded forty-one tunes in a tragically short twenty-nine-year life span and left his imprint on country blues forever. King of the Delta Blues, they called him. Any blues musician worth his salt would boast of sharing a hometown with Robert Johnson, even a player born years after Johnson's mysterious death in 1938.

One had.

I needed to rock the car to get us moving. I may have done it more vigorously than necessary out of consideration for my passenger in the trunk.

I had no idea where we were. I drove, searching for a convenience store, a phone booth, a police station. The Lincoln had half a tank of gas.

I pulled into the parking lot of a little mom-and-pop store near a crossroads, taking care to remove the keys and lock all the doors. Wouldn't do to have my possibly stolen car possibly stolen again. Mom-and-pop sported a Pacific Bell logo on their door. The clerk shook his head sadly as he informed me that I was in the town of Gresham, Oregon. Women drivers, his glance said, hardly ever knew where the hell they were. I was glad I'd left my gun in the glove compartment.

I requested a phone book and ten dollars' worth of change. I learned that all of Mississippi shares one area code: 601.

Clayton's mama was home, practically housebound, she said, what with the “artheritis” actin' up like it done, and just full of chitchat about her son and his best boyhood pals. What a memory.

I was exhausted by the time I talked her off the line. I used some of Clay's cash to buy a local
Oregonian
, a map, a cup of steaming coffee, and a huge Nestlé's Crunch bar.

Breakfast.

I knocked on the trunk in passing.

“I'm gonna faint in here,” Clay yelled.

“Good,” I hollered back.

God knows what the nosy clerk, peering through the blinds, thought. I gulped the coffee without tasting it, ate half the candy bar standing in the chill morning air. It felt fine to be outdoors in sunlight.

The air was different, canned and smoky, at Dee's first Portland gig. After managing a few hours' sleep, I entered the hall as soon as the doors opened, the first fan inside the tiny auditorium. The stalker was not in the house. The police had been glad to take him off my hands. We'd had a little private eye—to-felon chat before I turned him in. I'd mentioned the inadvisability of naming Dee Willis, unless he wanted his fifteen minutes of fame fast, followed by a lifetime of hate mail and hard prison time.

Dee's popular with inmates. She does jailhouse concerts.

I kept my lies simple. I'd landed late at the airport. No cabs. Guy had pretended to be a legit limo driver, offered me a ride into town for twenty bucks, tried to attack me. I showed my license, my Massachusetts permit to carry. Perp had picked on the wrong victim. The cops were sympathetic. I presented them with Clayton's various IDs, suggested they check outstanding warrants and parole violations in all his assumed names as well as his own.

I didn't think they'd come up empty.

I watched the crowd filter in, young and old, dressed up, dressed down. Joking, laughing, getting ready for a great time.

No opening act. The curtain rose on the band, playing “For Tonight,” the early rocker Dee had made her anthem. Her voice came from everywhere, amplified. The audience gawked, expecting her to enter from stage right, stage left, down one aisle, then another. She chose her moment brilliantly, theatrical as always, appearing suddenly behind an onstage scrim, rainbow lights glistening her white satin tux.

I settled into my crushed velveteen seat and fell for the magic. For glistening bodies shiny with sweat. For the beat and the lyrics and the glorious close harmonies. For the old songs, by John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson and Son House and Mama Thornton, that Dee had taken, transformed, and made her own. I saw her through a looking-glass of memory at first, but she shattered the barrier with song after song, dragging me into the moment, her moment.

That's her gift. She makes you forget everything but the song. Makes you care about lyrics written seventy years ago by a Mississippi sharecropper, makes them more important than a crummy day at the office or a fight with the kids. Dee gets so deep into the music, it's a wonder she ever climbs out.

I didn't leave my seat at intermission. I didn't move until the last encore ended. Didn't stand till everyone else had gone. Then I parted a red velvet drape and mounted the steps leading backstage.

The dressing rooms were upstairs, eight of them, two per floor, four floors. The “chauffeur” had outlined the setup. I knew which room was Dee's. First floor back. I kept climbing, up to the second floor front. I knocked once, stepped inside. I kept my voice low; I didn't want Dee to hear.

The room was Spartan, linoleum floor, peeling paint on bare walls. Air freshener and body odor warred, neither victorious.