Mourn The Living (13 page)

Vicki said, “You look at that stuff as though you know something about it.”

“I do,” Nolan told her. “Been everything from bouncer to manager in all kinds of clubs. You get to know musicians and their equipment.”

“What does that equipment tell you?”

“They have money,” he said, “and they’re going to be too goddamn loud.”

She laughed and a voice from behind them said, “That, my friend, is a matter of opinion.”

They turned and faced a six-foot figure resembling a coat-rack hung with garish clothes. The coat-rack spoke again, in a thick, unconvincing British accent. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to the gent, Miss Trask?”

She began to answer, but Nolan shushed her. “I can guess,” he said, looking the coat-rack up and down.

The boy was emaciated, the sunken-cheeked Rolling Stone type that shouted drug use. His hair was kinky-curly and ratted, making him look like a freaked-out Little Orphan Annie. His face was a collection of acne past and present, and the sunkenness of his cheeks was accented by a pointed nose and deep-socketed eyes that were a glazed sky-blue. He wore a grimy scarlet turtleneck with an orange fluorescent vest and a tarnished gold peace sign hung around his neck on a sweat-stained leather thong. His pants were black-and-white checked and hung loose, bell-bottomed, coming in skin-tight at the crotch.

“You’re Broome.”

A yellow smile flashed amiably. “Right you are, man.”

“Who picks out your threads,” Nolan asked, gesturing at Broome’s outfit, “Stevie Wonder?”

Broome’s laugh was as phony as his English accent. “You can’t bum me out, dad. I groove out at everything, everybody, everywhere. Bum
me
out? No way—I’m too happy, man.”

Nolan looked into Broome’s filmy, dilated eyes and silently agreed. “When you play your next set?”

Broome pulled a sleeve back, searched his wrist frantically for his watch, which turned out to be vintage Mickey Mouse on a loose strap. “In five, man, in five.”

Vicki pointed Nolan to the stage where the rest of Broome’s band was onstage already, four boys just as freakishly attired as Broome but apparently less wigged-out—they were tuning up, generally preparing to begin their next set. Teeny-boppers crowded in around the stage, shoving to get as close to the band as possible, and consequently pushing Nolan, Vicki and Broome into a corner to the left of the stage.

Broome was small-talking with Vicki and getting a cold- shoulder in return, Nolan having turned his back on both of them to watch the band set up. From the corner of his eye Nolan saw Broome light up a joint.

Nolan said, “That one of the things that makes you so happy?”

Broome lifted his shoulders and set them back down. “It helps a little, dad, you know?”

“I know.”

Broome spoke to Vicki. “I didn’t catch your friend’s name, love. What is it?”

“His name is Webb,” she told him. “Earl Webb.”

Broome looked at Nolan and something flickered behind the gone eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “I hear you get around, Mr. Webb, is that right? Do you get around?”

“I get around. How about you, Broome? Ever hear of Irene Tisor?”

Broome’s face tightened like a fist. “Maybe I have, Mr. Webb, maybe I have. So what?”

“What do you know about her?”

“She’s dead, haven’t you heard?”

“I heard.” Nolan smiled, the phony smile this time. “You just smoke that stuff, or do you sell it, too?”

“Hey, dad, I’m a musician.”

“Yeah, right. Who sold Irene Tisor that hit of acid? Whose music was she dancing to when she did her swan dive into the concrete?”

Broome dropped his joint to the floor and stomped it out, his face a scowl and in one motion thrust his middle finger in Nolan’s face defiantly.

“Make love not war,” Nolan reminded him.

Broome farted with his mouth and hopped up onto the stage, joining his band, keeping an aloof air when speaking to the other members, and mumbled “One, two, test” into his mike. He gave the band four beats with his booted heel and they roared into a long, loud freaky version of a rhythm and blues number called “In the Midnight Hour.” The amps screamed as if in pain, emitting feedback and distortion, while Broome tried to sound black, crouching over the microphone, as if making a kind of obscene love to it. The Gurus, his four man back-up band, seemed vaguely embarrassed by him, with the exception of the bass player, a blond youngster who wore a page-boy.

Toward the middle of the first number, somebody turned on the ceiling strobe, which flickered, flashed, making everything look like an acid-head’s version of a silent movie.

Nolan said, close to her ear, “I’ve had enough. I won’t get anything out of Broome. Not in public.”

Vicki followed Nolan as he burrowed through the crowd toward the doors. Above the deafening music she shouted, “Didn’t you get
anything
out of this evening?”

Nolan waited till they were in the hallway with the double-doors closed behind them before he answered. “I got a few things out of it. Saw some pot being smoked, and not just Broome. Did you smell it? Bittersweet, kind of. And I’d put a thousand bucks down that Broome is an addict.”

“An addict? Can you get addicted to LSD?”

“LSD, my ass. He’s riding the big horse. Heroin.”

“Heroin? Are you kidding?”

“I don’t kid much, Vicki. He may have Mickey Mouse on his wrist, but he’s got needle tracks on his arm.”

They moved back through the hallway, past the ex-pug who still didn’t recognize Nolan, and out into the open air. Just as they started to walk away from the Eye, Nolan spotted a familiar face—Lyn Parks, whom he’d last seen in her apartment, as she sat naked, painting a flower ’round her navel. As she went through the door she caught Nolan’s eye; she said nothing but her smile said everything.

Touch of jealousy in her voice, Vicki said, “They all give you the eye don’t they, teeny-boppers on up?”

“Sure,” Nolan said. “Even Broome.”

They walked back to the Lincoln and drove to Nolan’s motel.

4

NOLAN PULLED
the Lincoln up to the Travel Nest’s office, where through the glass he could see Barnes, the manager, at the desk inside.

“I’m going to pick up some of my things,” he told Vicki, “and see to it the manager keeps my room vacant and my name on the register for the next few days.”

“But you’ll really be staying with me?” she asked.

“Right.”

She leaned forward and caught his arm as he began to get out of the car. He glanced back and she moved forward and they kissed. A brief kiss, with a touch of warmth, of promise. He squeezed her thigh and climbed out of the Lincoln.

He had barely gone through the door and into the motel office when an ashen-faced Barnes started babbling.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Webb, they made me let them in, believe me, I couldn’t help it. . . .”

Nolan grabbed him by the lapel. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Those policemen . . . they made me let them in. . . .”

“What policemen?”

“The officers who searched your room last night!”

Nolan said, “Plainclothes? One tall and fat, the other short and dressed for shit?”

“That’s right, that’s them.”

Tulip and Dinneck. That was how they had gotten into his room last night, before the pool skirmish. He hadn’t bothered to check with Barnes; he’d assumed Dinneck and Tulip had gotten in on their own.

“Why the hell did you let ’em in?”

“They had a search warrant . . . I . . . I couldn’t refuse them.”

Nolan let him go. Of course. Of course they’d have a warrant. That financial secretary of George’s, that Elliot, had a cousin for a police chief. A guy named Saunders. No trouble getting Dinneck and Tulip a police cover and a search warrant.

“Okay,” Nolan said. “It wasn’t your fault. But you should’ve told me about it later.”

Barnes was dripping sweat; his bald blushing head looked like a shiny, water-pearled apple. “I was afraid, Mr. Webb, I’ll . . . I’ll tell you the truth. They told me you were a killer, a dangerous psychopath.”

Knowing that Barnes was high-strung, scared easily and would bite almost any line fed him, Nolan leaned over the desk and looked the manager in the eye.

“What I’m about to tell you is confidential, Mr. Barnes,” he said. “I need your sacred oath that you won’t repeat the following to anyone.”

Barnes was confused, but he nodded.

Nolan continued. “I’m an FBI special agent, investigating the illegal sale of hallucinatory drugs here in Chelsey.”

Nolan could see in Barnes’ face that he bought it. It rang true to Barnes; there was a lot of funny business about drugs in Chelsey. He believed Nolan.

Just as Nolan was ready to hand more FBI bullshit to him, Barnes’ eyes lit up like flares and he began to shake.

“What’s wrong?”

“Have . . . have you been up to your room yet? You have, haven’t you, Mr. Webb?” Barnes shook like a bridegroom at a shotgun wedding.

“No, I haven’t. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“Then you better get up there quick! I told you they made me do it!”

“What are you talking about?”

“They came in again tonight, didn’t you know? I thought that was why you barged in here!”

He grabbed Barnes by the lapel again. “When?”

“Ten minutes before you came in, Mr. Webb . . . I thought you knew. . . .”

“Damn!”

Nolan turned and ran to the door, spoke over his shoulder to Barnes. “Keep everybody away from that room as long as you can. No cops—they’re crooked!”

“Should I call your superiors . . .”

“Don’t phone anybody, don’t do anything. Just keep your mouth shut.”

Nolan flew out of the office, sprinted to the Lincoln and pulled open the door. “I got visitors in my room, Vicki. Sit tight till I get back. Be alert and make a fast exit if things start looking grim.”

He left her with her mouth open, left before she could stop him to ask questions. He ran lightly across the motel lot and stood in an empty parking space beneath the balcony of his room. He looked up. The lights were on inside, shadows moved behind the curtained windows of the French doors leading from balcony to room. Nolan put his hands in the iron grating and his grip crumbled the crisp brown remains of the vined flowers that had climbed the trellis before the air had chilled. He tested the grating and it felt firm. He inched up slowly, the metal X’s cutting into his hands; only the very ends of his shoe toes would fit into the X’s, and they provided unsure footing. He edged his way up the iron trellis and in a minute and a half that seemed much longer, he found himself parallel to the balcony.

Clamping one hand tightly in one of the grating openings, Nolan withdrew his .38 from the under-arm holster and slipped one leg up and over the side of the balcony. He fought for balance, shifted his weight and landed on the balcony cat-silent.