Lady Yesterday (21 page)

In Person

JOSEPHUS “SWEET JOE” WOODING

Boss Bass

Maharajah of the Moth-Box

Templar of Tailgate

The World’s Most Versatile Jazz Musician

The photograph was a profile of the same young man playing a slide trombone.

I found the color snapshot Iris had given me in my breast pocket and compared them. I didn’t need to. I’d known they would match before I set foot in the place. “One note looks pretty much like all the others on the sheet,” George Favor had said. Especially when the note didn’t match the name.

Joe Wooding had a reputation for violating union rules. It would be a career habit with someone who had started playing long before musicians’ unions grew teeth. The love of music was too strong in him to be chained by regulations. His membership had been suspended several times, narrowing his employment options, but being a professional he would find a way around that, appearing in places whose management didn’t care or borrowing a friend’s union card and playing under his name. Being a virtuoso on the bass, piano, and trombone, he’d have no trouble carrying off the pose so long as he didn’t meet anyone who knew him or knew the man whose card he was using. Kingston, Jamaica, would be a good place not to be seen by acquaintances of Joe Wooding or Little Georgie Favor. The band he had recruited and brought with him certainly wouldn’t say anything that might blow a gig.

In a place like that he could continue the act offstage without fear of discovery. He could pitch a fling with a local singer and then leave when the run ended and she would never know that the father of her child wasn’t who he said he was. It would explain why Iris’ father never got in touch with her; any attempt her mother might have made to reach George Favor would have been ignored by him, never having been in Jamaica and being clinically sterile, as another attempt to extort child support, and Wooding wouldn’t have known he had a daughter until he was old and sick and in no condition to acknowledge her.

But a man who had shut up his house to keep the memories inside when his wife left him wouldn’t remain untouched by a visit from the daughter he didn’t know existed, however he might deflect her from the ravaged and dying thing no one recognized as the spruce young blade in a thirty-year-old photograph. A thing like that would move him. I passed through a square arch and down a short dark hall lined with autographed pictures in glass frames and stood in an open doorway near the end.

The curtains weren’t quite shut, allowing a crack of light into a bedroom that had been shared by two people before it became stale and dark and without character. The air inside had a familiar bitter smell, strong not because it was fresh, but because it had been shut in for days, maybe since the day I had visited. On a bureau stood a photograph in a dusty frame of an older Wooding with his arm around a woman twenty years his junior. They were smiling, and his expression, while not as dazzling, was a link between the flashy young jazzman who had posed similarly with Iris’ mother and the thing on the double bed.

He lay atop the covers, looking smaller than before in a suit that had been far too large for him for months, but that had been brushed and arranged with the care of a mortician preparing for his own services. Inside the suit was a shell shriveled by age and cancer, everything but the big bead with its block features and nose that had been flattened in some long-ago backstage scuffle. He had combed his thin hair and trimmed the slim dark moustache and touched them up with something that was now definitely black dye, for it had an unnatural sheen against dead flesh. His eyes were glittering half-moons in the dim light. One of the sockets had filled with something dark that had spidered down from a puckered hole in his right temple and dried there. The big Ruger lay on the covers, its butt resting in his open right palm where it had come to rest.

I didn’t see a note. He wouldn’t have left one. The condition of his body would tell the medical examiner as much as he would want anyone to know. I didn’t go inside the room to see if I was wrong about the note or to feel the clamminess of his skin or the stiffness of his flesh. Instead I drew the door shut gently and went back the way I had come. The snowman next door was still weeping when I pulled away from the curb.

I
N LATE
J
ANUARY
a female ticket agent at Detroit Metropolitan Airport had reported finding a conical object inside a stall in the women’s room. The terminal had been evacuated while a bomb crew checked it out. It turned out to be a Thermos bottle left behind by a plumber, but reaction was still setting in almost a month later and Security was trashing the Bill of Rights all over the place. As a non-passenger I wasn’t allowed beyond the checkpoint.

“It’s all right,” Iris said. “I’d rather wait alone. It’ll be my first chance to sit down with my thoughts.”

She had on a red beret in place of the yellow one she’d left at Mary M’s and the tan coat and new boots. A couple of male passengers and a gray-haired pilot looked her over on their way to the metal detector. I said, “I’ll cut through what red tape I can on this end. The air cargo outfits don’t like shipping bodies. You never see caskets in their TV ads.”

“Charles’ old partner will see to that. Charles said he caught him just before he checked out of his hotel in France.”

“Not every fiancé would go his future father-in-law’s transportation and burial. That may be a new one.”

“So I know two special men.” She watched the female guard going through an old lady’s purse. “I’m still not sure Joe wouldn’t rather stay here. Am I being selfish?”

“It’s not supposed to matter where your remains wind up. Anyway, a cemetery in Jamaica beats a trench on Wayne County property. He rented his house and the trailer wasn’t worth anything.” I handed her the flight bag full of new clothes.

“I want to bring him flowers without having to go through this. Maybe it’s guilt. I can’t even remember what I said to him when I left his trailer that one time. How could I not know my own father?”

“Easy. You’d never met him. I didn’t place him and I’m supposed to be trained to know what to look for. You were after George Favor. You had no reason to take a second look at Joe Wooding.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“It was too late to matter. By then he’d probably already made up his mind to kill himself before the cancer did,” I lied.

She was watching me now, not buying any of it. “Charles makes a good living—”

“I get by. I was spinning my wheels when I bumped into you and got a break from missing wives and runaways and insurance work. I thought I was burned out until I saw John Alderdyce. He’s on his way back now too. He’ll have relapses, but the important thing is he’s bottomed out. Maybe helping him turn around did something for me too, points in purgatory or something. Getting paid besides would be overkill.”

“I’ll write.”

“I’ll read what you write.”

She kissed me hard. Then she turned away and put her bag on the conveyor and stepped through the detector. The last time I saw her she was turning heads on her way down the terminal, carrying the bag.

It was days before I found the unicorn pin she’d stuck in my pocket.

The bucket seat on the passenger’s side of the Chevy was tilted as she had left it when she took her bag out of the back. I looked at it, feeling empty, and tipped it back and started the engine. The announcer on the radio said we were headed for an early thaw. Icicles were dripping from the lamps along the Edsel Ford and residents in St. Clair Shores and the Crosse Pointes were being warned that the lake was rising. We were entering the first of the series of false springs that would continue through April.

I’d called Detroit Receiving Hospital that morning and a nurse had told me that Felipe Salazar, Sam Mozo’s cousin, was expected to recover following surgery to remove a bullet from his chest. In the same tone she informed me that Lester Hamilton had died in Emergency without having regained consciousness. After that I’d tried John Alderdyce at police headquarters, but he was out and I asked for Mary Ann Thaler, who said they were still looking for the videotape Lester had killed Eldon Charm to get. She couldn’t talk long. The Colombian drug dealers had started killing one another over Sam Mozo’s territory and the entire department was involved in throwing water on the fire.

Approaching the lot down the street from my building I passed a black Camaro parked at the curb with two men seated in front. I got a better look at them on foot, at their brown Latin faces and the way they held their cigarettes high between their index and middle fingers like Gilbert Roland. They elaborately paid me no attention at all as I walked past the car and went inside. On the stairs I transferred my gun from my overcoat pocket to its holster.

The key met no resistance when I inserted it in the lock on my inner office door. I got the gun out again and backed up a step.

“Cut the drama,” somebody said inside. “Nobody’s laying for you today.”

I recognized the voice. I pushed the door open. Frank Acardo was sitting behind my desk. He had on a vicuña coat with peaked lapels over a gray suit and a silver tie with black diamonds on it. A pearl felt hat with a braided band lay in state on the blotter. His face looked like the corner of a building with eyes.

“No wonder you can’t afford a better lock, the hours you keep.”

Both his hands were in sight on top of the desk. I holstered the Smith & Wesson. “Where’s Tomaso?”

“Taking the dog for a leak. Nobody else to do it until Jonesy finds his feet, and anyway he likes the little mange. They’re two of a kind; no balls.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe means what?”

“Just that I’m making conversation.”

“You look like you could stand some time in the hay yourself,” he said.

“Nice of you to care.”

“That’s civilization for you, saying you give a shit when you don’t. You really work here?”

“When I’m not wasting time talking to cheap gangsters.”

“Cheap, yeah. That’s the word I was looking for. You broke our deal, Walker. You were going to hand me something on Mozo I could take to the board and get the green light to pencil him out. Nobody said nothing about dragging in the cops.”

I stretched my legs from the customer’s chair. It was a tight fit in my overcoat. I shook out a Winston and tapped it against the pack. “You never know which way these things are going to jump,” I said. “Anyway, Mozo’s dead. That’s what you wanted.”

“The shit killed my old man. I wanted to blow him off myself. No buttons, just me and a piece and that little spick looking at me over the barrel.”

“The board wouldn’t approve.”

“Bunch of slits, my old man called them. And he sat on it. But I didn’t come here to talk about the board.”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“No, I don’t think I could. I underestimated you, pal. I won’t make that mistake again.”

He waited for me to ask. I lit the cigarette and pulled over the souvenir ashtray from Traverse City and blew smoke and said nothing. He gave up waiting.

“Flynn was a good soldier, one of the best. That deal we made cost plenty when I lost him. But I’m not bitching. Don’t you want to know why I’m not bitching?”

“You tapped the state lottery for a million.”

“A million, I spit on a million.” He leaned over and spat on my rug, which was a contradiction I didn’t bother to point out. “No, I’m not bitching on account of right now I’m farting rose petals. I’m farting rose petals on account of since Mozo got it every little Juan Valdez in town is tripping over his tacos to grab what Mozo left behind and hitting every other little Juan Valdez in town to do it. Meanwhile Jackie Acardo’s boy isn’t letting any grass grow, if you get my drift. This keeps up we’ll have our old lock back on the town by Easter. The spicks had their day. Now it’s the guineas’ turn back at the trough.”

His Richard Widmark was getting to me. “You came here to tell me that?”

“I thought you might like to know you’re off the stick. I’m still out one button, maybe two if Jonesy don’t come out of Receiving with all his jacks, and maybe you owe me and I’ll be in a position to collect someday. But because it all turned out so good I won’t be putting any hurt on you. Maybe that’s worth knowing.”

“Tomaso could have told me that himself. It sounds like his idea in the first place.”

“Uncle Goat never did have all
his
jacks. But he’s got a heart in him as big as his ass and he asked me to stop by and tell you to your face you’re off the stick. I’m feeling so good I say, sure, what the hell? Make an old man happy. Maybe he’ll put in a word when he sees God.”

“You’re smart to cover your bet.”

He watched me. “Well, I guess I didn’t come here to get thanked.”

“Maybe I do owe you,” I said.

“Yeah?” He had started to get up.

“Tomaso told me he had twenty quarries. Your grandfather gave him his first but you don’t run that into a string unless you’ve got brains and not a little ruthlessness. He said you were a hothead and had to be watched to see you didn’t draw too much fire. I think he’d do anything to prevent that, even if it meant dealing with the enemy. He’s got his own business to protect.”

“You saying he’d turn?”

“I don’t think he’d see it as turning. I know if he went down it wouldn’t be for something he had no control over.”

“You got him mixed up with someone with guts.”

“Maybe. He likes that dog. He said it would win the fights it cared to.”

“I got no time for this.” He stood and put on his hat.

I shrugged. If they won’t be warned you can’t make them. “You’re always welcome here, Frank. Next time call. If I’d known you were coming I’d have installed bars in the windows.”

“That’s Mr. Acardo, fuck.”

“Interesting name. Is that hyphenated?”

His little eyes grew sunken. On his way around the desk he stopped and looked down at me. The skin on his ugly face was pulled back tight. “I see you again I’ll feed you to the dog.”