Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 06 (19 page)

“I’m here,” Kyle said sulkily.

I hadn’t yet been blessed with inspiration, but I forged ahead. “I was wondering how the contestants were selected for the finals of the contest. Did a panel of judges make all the submitted entries and select the five best ones?”

“In your dreams,” Geri said with a harsh laugh. “Mr. Fleecum himself selected the winners, based on demographics. He then sent the list to the Krazy KoKo-Nut office for approval. Had his list not been trashed, we would have had a second man and better geographic representation to lure in regional press.”

“So how did you end up with these five?” I asked.

Geri pointed her finger at Kyle. “You’ll have to ask him. He’s the one who blundered into my office with the updated list of finalists.”

“I got the list from my father,” Kyle said, squirming at her scarlet talon, “and he got it from Interspace Investments. They’d asked to see it, and he could hardly refuse, could he? Some of the finalists were unavailable, and they produced the replacements.”

“Which makes this whole thing even more of a travesty,” Geri said. She paused as a garbage truck rumbled and squealed to a halt in the alley, then added, “The integrity of Prodding, Polk and Fleecum is on the line. If word ever gets out on the street that the finalists are nothing but a bunch of ringers, we’ll be the butt of cocktail party jokes for months.”

“Not all the finalists,” I said over the increasing din as the truck jockeyed with a dumpster, the men yelling and metal cans clattering as they bounced against the pavement. “Ruby Bee was on the original list, wasn’t she? Who else was?”

Geri touched her temples. “This is giving me a migraine. Can’t they do whatever they’re doing out there and go away? Why must they make so damn much noise?”

“Maybe they’re doing their job,” Kyle began, then stopped as we were engulfed in silence.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” said a stunned male voice. “We got one.”

“Why the fuck can’t these deadbeats find a better place to sleep?” said another. “It’s too late for the medics. You guys wait here and I’ll call the cops from inside here. Damn it to hell, I was counting on getting off early so I could take my kid to the ball game.”

Geri, Kyle, and I waited with all the animation of the teenaged finalist in one of her sulks. Even though we were anticipating the knock on the back door, we froze as if it were a spate of gunfire.

“I’ll get it,” I said at last.

I admitted an odoriferous man in a jumpsuit, who shrugged and said, “We got a sleeper in the dumpster. Would you call 911 and tell them we’re waiting in the alley out back? And tell them we don’t got all day.”

“A sleeper?” Geri said carefully.

“You know—one of those homeless people who sleep wherever they can. This one chose your dumpster for his final resting place. Could you call the cops?”

Geri and Kyle crowded behind me in the doorway. The sanitation truck had opened its mouth to receive another meal, and the dumpster hovered above, having dislodged its contents. Resting on the mound of garbage within the truck was a body, one arm thrown back and the face turned toward us. Dried blood and rotting vegetable matter made a garish mask, but Jerome Appleton’s features were identifiable. Behind the shattered lenses of his glasses, his eyes were wide and flat.

“The cops?” the man repeated. “We’re already behind schedule for the rest of the run. You want I should make the call while you enjoy the view?” Geri began to whimper. “This is too much. I was packed and ready to leave for the Cape when Mr. Fleecum called and ordered me back. I was willing to make the effort one last time, but this is it.” Not surprisingly, tears began to dribble down her cheeks. “I don’t care if Mr. Fleecum fires me or not!”

Kyle put his arms around her and allowed her to sob on his shoulder. I beckoned to the bemused sanitation worker and took him to the office midway along the hall, pointed out the telephone, and left him there while I went to break the news to Brenda.

The dining room was dark, and all that remained of her earlier presence was the untouched danish and coffee cup. I started for the stairs, then spotted Mr. Cambria at his post and veered out the front door.

“Good morning, good morning,” he said, beaming at me. “Are you off to shop or are you meeting your mother and her friend for lunch?”

I shook my head. “Did Brenda Appleton leave the hotel a few minutes ago?”

“The little woman with the dark hair?”

“Yes, and wearing”—I tried to remember something that had been of no interest—“a dark blue dress with white buttons.”

“Then I must admit she left not five minutes ago, and in such a hurry that the litter has not yet settled back in the gutter. Is she the one you’re meeting for lunch?”

Sirens shrilled at the end of the block as two police cars sped by, their blue lights flashing. I had a pretty good idea where they were going … and whom they would want to question about the body in the garbage truck. Simply because she’d been questioned two days earlier about an attempted homicide.

I gave Mr. Cambria a goofy smile. “I think I’ll run along now. So many shops, so little time.”

“I wish you much success.”

“So do I,” I muttered as I headed for the corner. Only when I was out of sight of the Chadwick Hotel did I slump against a concrete wall and permit myself the luxury of a howl. In Maggody, someone would have rushed over to inquire about my health. This was not Maggody, not by a long shot.

Once I’d finished feeling sorry for myself, I considered my dilemma. The fact that I’d fled the scene of the crime was hardly worth stewing over; New York’s finest would be hard-pressed to assign me a motive, and I was prepared to plead temporary insanity. I doubted it would be difficult to persuade them—or anyone else, including myself.

No, the dilemma circled around how to find Ruby Bee and Estelle in a city that stretched from the top of the Bronx to the bottom of Battery Park, less than fifteen miles but all of them a tad more congested than, say, the cow pasture out behind the Flamingo Motel.

They, along with Gaylene, Durmond and his disreputable friend, and Brenda, might come home to the hotel, wagging their tails behind them, but I wanted to talk to any and all of them before the police took charge. Somewhere in the city was a veritable parade of Krazy KoKo-Nut finalists. All I had to do was find it—and be damn quick about it.

Gaylene was the head majorette, I thought as I began to trudge toward Broadway. She could have taken off for any of a million destinations. Then again, I told my self with weary optimism, she could have gone to her apartment to practice her kabobs. It wasn’t an especially brilliant theory, but it was the best I could produce, and I went into a stationery store and asked to borrow a telephone directory. After a short discussion with a woman larger than Dahlia and twice as surly, I became a bona fide customer with the purchase of a large bottle of aspirin. The directory hit the counter with a thud.

If she had a number, it was unlisted. I thought about calling Geri to ask for Gaylene’s address, but decided it would not be prudent to call attention to my absence, or anyone else’s. I tried for a moment, and then came up with the name of the club where Gaylene worked. The Xanadu had a telephone, along with an address only a few blocks north of where I was.

I kept my eyes averted as I walked past porn shops, peep shows, and posters extolling the talents of both bosomy women and young men who aspired to be bosomy women and were dressed accordingly. Chains and leather seemed to be the fashion, as were whips and masks and a lot of things that I was unable to identify. It was sleazier than I remembered, but it may have been my fault. On sleepless nights in Maggody (and there’d been more than a few), I’d allowed myself to romanticize the city, to think of the theaters and galleries and museums, rather than of the deteriorating infrastructure, the growing population of homeless, the pervasive crime, the expressions of those who had been victimized and those who knew it was only a matter of time.

I instinctively tightened my grip on my purse as I went past a derelict sprawled in a doorway and kept my face averted as I passed a huddle of teenaged boys. The paranoia was coming back like a recurrent case of the flu, and I picked up my pace. When I arrived at the pertinent street, I looked both ways for any sign of the Xanadu, sighed, and headed to the right because it was easier than crossing Broadway to go to the left.

Halfway down the block I found a sunbleached poster that proclaimed the Xanadu Club to be the home of THE WORLD’S SEXIEST WOMEN. The neon sign was dark, however, and the door was locked. This was not earthshattering, since the poster also proclaimed that the first show would start in roughly eight hours. No cover charge, but the tab on the two-drink minimum might startle good ol’ Toledo Ted.

As I turned to retrace my path to the hotel, I noticed an alley beside the building. It was as inviting as the weedy path to Raz Buchanon’s cabin, but I’d walked a long way to do nothing more than gaze at the exterior of the nocturnal habitat of the World’s Sexiest Women. And I had to admit I was running low on brilliant ideas.

The alley was lined with metal garbage cans, most of them filled to overflowing. The walls on either side of me were decorated with unsavory suggestions in a rainbow of spray paint—New York’s only indigenous folk art. Things rustled as I walked by, and I was unhappily aware of the sweat spreading across my back and slinking down the sides of my face. It was nearly as much fun as stalking a still on Cotter’s Ridge, I thought with a grimace as I came around a corner.

The small parking area was defined by a chain-link fence and dominated by a white Cadillac. A few hardy weeds had cracked the asphalt and were flourishing as best they could in perpetual shade. Two steps led up to a blue door with a sign that discouraged trespassing, as did the descending line of locks and the bars on the window beside it.

I righteously told myself I had no desire to set foot inside the place, continued to the window, and stood on my tiptoes. Through a wire mesh and a veneer of accumulated grime, I could see a dark office crammed with standard furniture—and a three-quarter profile of Brenda Appleton, who was seated at the desk, her fingers tapping the arms of the chair and an impatient look on her face.

I sank back on my heels, but before I could get my jaw off my chest, the blue door opened. I ducked behind the front of the Cadillac Cadillac, anticipating at least one bullet between my eyes, and asked myself how I could be so incredibly stupid. Nothing came to mind.

“You’re such a sweetie, Mr. Lisbon,” Gaylene said. “I know it’s awful of me to miss even more work, but when a girl’s got a free trip to Vegas, she’s gotta take it.” I heard a murmur; then she giggled and said, “Who knows? Maybe I’ll win the tenthousand-dollar prize, too. Wouldn’t that be something!”

The door closed, and her high heels echoed down the alley. I peeked over the hood of the car, but ducked as a light came on in the office and a darkly tanned man with a crewcut appeared. His mouth was moving as he reached for a cord and closed the curtains on whatever the hell was going on in there.

I stood up slowly, ascertained my forehead was as last I’d seen it in the cracked mirror (with the exception of a heavy glaze of sweat), and eased around the Cadillac to the edge of the building. Gaylene was gone.

I arrived at the sidewalk in time to see her turn at the corner and head down Broadway. Seconds later, two figures emerged from a deli and took off after her at what I’m sure they felt was a prudent distance for amateur sleuths hot on the trail of Manhattan’s version of Mata Hari.

Half a block later said sleuths yelped loudly as I clamped down on their shoulders. Ignoring the pedestrian traffic that flowed around us as if we were submerged rocks in Boone Creek, I said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“You’d like to give me a heart attack!” Ruby Bee said, clutching her chest and blinking at me.

Estelle looked no more thrilled to see me. “I can’t believe you don’t know better than to sneak up on folks like that! Why, the very first thing that flashed across my mind was that that psychotic man had finally caught up with us and was aiming to murder us right here in broad daylight.”

“In broad daylight on Broadway,” I said agreeably. “It has a certain poetic ring to it, doesn’t it? At the moment I’m the only one thinking about murdering you two, but I’m willing to hold off for a few more minutes. We can discuss your behavior here, or we can do it in this bar. God knows I could use a beer.”

Ruby Bee glanced down the sidewalk, but her prey had vanished. “I could do with one myself, come to think of it. But I don’t have all the time in the world to sit and chat. I’m supposed to be in the lobby at two o’clock sharp so Geri can fetch me to fix my cake for the contest.”

I followed them into the bar, and we found a table near the window.

“This is right nice,” Estelle commented, nodding at the wide mahogany bar and row of padded stools. “Of course it ain’t at all as homey as yours, Ruby Bee, but I must say those ferns add a summery feeling.”

“Ferns shed,” Ruby Bee said. “I’m not about to have to sweep the floor any more than I already do, and—”

I unclenched my teeth long enough to say, “Stop it!” then subsided subsided as a waitress approached our table and took our orders. “We are not going to debate the decor. You are going to tell me what the hell’s been going on, and why you were following Gaylene just now.”

“Following Gaylene? ” Estelle chuckled at the very idea. “We wanted to see Times Square, so we figured we had enough time to walk over and look around. It’s kinda odd how the famous theaters are stuck between those nasty shops, isn’t it? It seems to me the police ought to—”

“We’re not going to debate the zoning, either,” I said coldly. “I came to find you because Jerome Appleton’s body was discovered in a dumpster behind the hotel less than an hour ago.”

Estelle gasped. “But that can’t be! He’s on an airplane going to South America.”

“Not anymore,” I said. “I recognized him.”

“Then that’s who was in the kitchen last night,” Ruby Bee said. “I thought that might be who it was, but Brenda’s such a dithery thing that I didn’t want to worry her. I took a real fast look and almost fainted on account of the blood being as awful as it was …”