Spider’s Cage (11 page)

A minute passed, and another, before Lobe spoke.

“Ch-check out her ex,” he gasped. “He's a studio talent called Roy Staple. Used to back her with his band. When
she got some notice she dumped them both. He's been no good ever since.
Now get the fuck outta here
!”

Windrow could see that the pain was beginning to use up most of Lobe's willpower. “What about the other?” he said.

“What other?” Lobe hissed.

“Who's got you packing a gun?”

Lobe opened his eyes and looked at Windrow, measured him. Sweat beaded his forehead.

“Just some psychopath.” He closed his eyes again. “Business is full of them Nothing I can't handle. Now get out of here, man. I gotta put in a call to Oral Roberts.”

Windrow retrieved the manilla folder from the floor. The satisfaction he'd gotten out of mauling Lobe had somehow dissipated. There was more to Lobe than just the conniving agent he'd spoken with a half dozen times on the phone, and more to Lobe than the one-sided contract Jodie had shown him. He found himself inexplicably moved by an urge to help the fat man he'd rendered nearly helpless. He tapped the folder against his leg. The sound seemed to add to the silence in the office.

“Lobe. You want help?”

Lobe snorted. His features contorted from a grimace to a laugh and back again.

“You can't even help yourself, Windrow,” he said. “How the hell can you do anything for me?”

“Tell me where the Ryan girl is.”

“No idea. You got the only lead I'm hip to.”

“Who's got you scared?”

Lobe said nothing.

“Look, Lobe. They could be the same people I'm after. Somebody made a try for me the day before yesterday. It wasn't professional, but it was vicious. They missed and I'm
lucky to be walking around. The Ryan girl's stepmother was definitely bumped off, her stepfather is missing, the girl is missing, and grandpa is dead. Grandpa left enough money to buy Big Sur and build a glass dome over it. With Pamela Neil dead it probably all goes to Jodie. There's a sadistic clothes horse running around dressed like a cattle baron beating people up, very remote control and mysterious. I'd like to do something about it. If you know anything you should tell me. I don't know why they should care, whoever they are, but they might be the same people putting the heat on you. How do I know? Now I'm asking you one more time: Are you part of this or not?”

Lobe's expression had changed while Windrow was talking. “Jodie Ryan doesn't have a stepfather,” he said.

“She does now. Three days after Grandpa died, they cremated him in Vegas. The ex-Mrs. Sweet Jesus O'Ryan got hitched to Thurman Woodruff, art dealer, about an hour later. They probably did it in the same chapel as the cremation, with the same congregation, for all I know. Now Mrs. Thurman Woodruff is an ex, period, and Mr. Thurman Woodruff's personal finances are no longer vague. That's if he's alive and if he's in the clear.”

Lobe suddenly looked thoughtful, as if he'd forgotten all about his pain. Windrow thought that must involve some pretty interesting thinking.

Then Lobe snapped out of it and laid the telephone receiver on the desk in front of him. It was a rotary phone. He dialed seven digits and paused.

“Beat it Windrow, and take your whore with you.”

“
Merde
.” said Opium Jade.

“Cunt.” Lobe spit the word.

Windrow looked at Lobe for a long moment. “Thanks, Lobe,” he said evenly. “I was beginning to forget I don't like
you.” He held up the manilla folder. “I'm taking this with me. If you live long enough, I'll mail it back.”

Lobe waited, saying nothing. Windrow could see he was gritting his teeth against the pain. “Don't count the Lobe out, dick,” he said quietly, through clenched teeth. Even so, Windrow could hear the mean determination in the man's voice. Lobe had some guts, it was true, but it was his mean streak that kept him going, the same facet of his personality that allowed him to live off a stable of women. In any case, Lobe's meanness helped his personality like phlebotomy helped the plague.

Windrow pulled the pistol from his belt and laid it on top of the file cabinet. “If whoever it was caught up with me and the Neil dame catches up with you, Lobe, this gun isn't going to help.”

Lobe scowled.

“Leave,” he said.

Windrow held Opium Jade's hand while she picked her way through the pieces of door that littered the floor. In spite of her care, one of the spiked heels speared a piece of veneer. She held Windrow's shoulder with one hand while she cocked the leg straight back and pulled the shoe off. She had a nice leg and a pretty foot. Big. Smooth. The heel was calloused.

While she held the shoe, Windrow pulled the thin sheet of luan off it.

“Just like the old neighborhood,” she said, replacing the shoe. She took the piece of wood out of Windrow's hand and tossed it back into the office behind them. It fluttered to the floor in front of Lobe's desk. “
Merde
all over the place.”

As they came to the stairhead, Windrow heard Lobe dial the last digit.

He thought it might have been a zero.

W
INDROW AND SISTER
O
PIUM
J
ADE WALKED TOGETHER
down Market street, 3 blocks from Lobe's office. The sun brightened the air that blustered cool around them, full of gum wrappers and pigeons. They entered the tableau of poverty and addiction that spills out of the mouth of Sixth Street onto Market, so carefully displayed on the new bricks under the restored streetlamps. While they waited for the light, they watched a man on the other side of Sixth who stood with a frozen expression, moving his hands back and forth in front of his face as if he were climbing an invisible rope. He would climb for a while, hand over hand, then stop and plait invisible strands, top to bottom, neck to waist. Then he'd give the rope a stout tug, as if to snug up his work, and begin to climb again.

Across the sidewalk from the rope climber, a man wearing a sandwich board completely covered with tiny red and black writing waved a Bible and orated invective. Next to him, a young man with matted hair and a vacant stare strummed a ruined Spanish guitar with three strings and sang the one line ‘bringing in the sheep' over and over. Not ‘sheaves.' ‘Sheep.'

The light changed. Office workers, bike messengers, businessmen, bums and tourists thronged between the stationary attractions. Two trolley cars released their brakes,
rang their bells and rolled in opposite directions, each as if it were plumetting helplessly downhill. Sister Opium Jade slipped her arm through Windrow's and eyed the street corner characters.

“Pour peu que tu te bouges,” she whispered, clinging to Windrow. “Renaissent tous mes désespoirs. And how.”

“Honey,” Windrow drawled sincerely, “I can't tell if you're ordering frog legs or snails, but we can't afford either one.”

“I got enough for two, baby,” Opium Jade said warmly, squeezing his elbow into the curve above her thinly sheathed hip. “Nothing but Willies up and down this street,” she added.

“No Johns?”

She gave his hip a bump with hers, nearly knocking him over. “I already got one a them,” she said huskily.

“You're barking up the wrong eucalyptus,” Windrow said softly.

Opium Jade pouted. “Aw, Marty. Just one little kiss?” She bumped him again and winked. “On the cheek?”

Windrow smiled and cleared his throat. “I'm on a case,” he said sternly. He shot his cuffs. “Best to keep my mind between my ears.”

Opium Jade looked sideways at him. “Is that where you keep her? In your mind?” Her tone caught between teasing and serious.

Windrow looked at her. Their eyes met. Hers were big, almond shaped, with brown, almost black irises.

“Cause that's the only place you're going to keep her,” she said quietly.

A drunk teetered into Windrow and exhaled the pheromones of a terminal corruption into his face. Windrow gently but firmly brushed the man away without taking his eyes off Opium Jade's.

The drunk stumbled a couple of feet, embraced a newspaper box and toppled over with it. Several people on the sidewalk gave Windrow stern glances and a wider berth.

He ignored them. “You're telling it,” he said to Opium Jade.

“You want her too bad,” she said simply. “It's affecting your judgement. I thought you were going to rip Lobe's arm off for making that cheap crack about her. Did you think that was chivalrous, or something?”

Windrow rolled his eyes. “It wasn't chivalry, it was fun.”

Opium Jade made a face. “It was weakness, Marty. Lobe saw it before I did. He saw your throat and jabbed at it. With him it's instinctive. He's an unctuous fat pimp, but that just makes him better at cheap shots. You should have seen your face.” She touched his arm. “No, I thought you were going to kill him for it.”

A bus roared away from the curb beside them, making talk temporarily impossible. A man ran alongside banging on it and screaming curses. After a hundred feet or so the bus outran him and he gave up, walked to the curb and furiously kicked the back of a news kiosk. An old, grizzled newsie stuck his head out the front and looked around the side, but said nothing.

“She needs help,” Windrow said. “She asked me for it.”

“I don't know anything about that,” Opium Jade said, shaking her head, “but I might be able to rope it into my theory later.”

Windrow looked at her and smiled. She frowned.

“Look, Marty. It's none of my business, but what's a slick item like Jodie Ryan doing with a fuck-up like you?” She held up her hand. “Don't tell me: you're good in the sack?”

Windrow shrugged modestly. Opium Jade nodded.

“Okay, you're good in the sack. Here's a woman's got a record out, maybe a hit tune on it, and talent to back them up with. On top of that, her granddaddy just died and left her Southern California. Five years ago—if she was walking then—she needed an agent. She signed on with Lobe. She won't whore for him, but she hits the hay with Lobe once in a while to keep him happy.”

Windrow bristled and stopped. “I don't buy that.”

“Even if it's so he'll do what he can for her?” She shrugged. “So maybe she doesn't. Either way, he gets her exposure and keeps her working. That's good. After all, she's trying to make it in show business.”

Windrow buried his hands in his pockets and watched his feet as they took their turns in front of him on the sidewalk. He didn't like what he was hearing, but he listened.

“But now she's just about used Lobe up. Like, she could probably sing the same song at the Grand Old Oprey every Christmas from now until the end of her life. Ain't that what it's about?” Opium Jade twirled a finger. “Anyway, the point is, she doesn't need Lobe anymore. His connections get her into a truckstop casino in Stateline, Nevada, on any Tuesday night—maybe—but no more. He couldn't do a television deal if his life depended on it, all the sharks in that game are five or six times bigger than he is. Not only that, he's a pimp. Nobody legitimate would even let him into the elevator.”

“So the deal is,” Windrow interrupted her, “scare Lobe so bad he'll simply do nothing until her contract expires. Or until he sells out.”

“Right. But the kicker is, Jodie Ryan herself has the heaviest motive for wanting that to happen. Right?”

They heard a distant explosion. Opium Jade looked
behind them. Windrow, in midthought, paid no attention. A few of the people milling around them looked to one side or another as they hurried along the sidewalk, but no one gave any indication of seeing anything. An old man with white hair and a nicotine-stained beard looked up and held out his hands, palms up, muttering to himself. No fiery debris or chunks of concrete rained out of the sky onto his hands. The old man shrugged and clasped his hands, one over the other in front of him. He resumed pacing an obscure pattern of little steps back and forth on one portion of the sidewalk, muttering.

“But that's a pretty bad scare,” Windrow said. “If she's that talented and that on the way up and that successful, his earnings off her contract could save years of subservience to Lobe. Even if he completely mismanages it, he should be able to sell it to somebody for a considerable amount of money.”

Opium Jade considered this. “My man had to leave town once,” she said after a pause. “He sublet my action to a friend of his for a percentage.”

“Yeah,” said Windrow bitterly. “Something like that. There are precautions against stuff like that, a clause to make any changes contingent on the artist's approval and so forth. But I've seen the contract Jodie signed with Lobe.” He held up his thumb and forefinger. “It's about this thick. He could do anything he wanted, and it would probably stick.”

They passed a beat cop who stood in a doorway pressing his radio's earplug tightly into his ear, listening intently. He recognized Windrow and raised his chin at him. When he saw Opium Jade he wagged his eyebrows, but continued to listen to his earplug.

“The thing is,” Windrow continued, “it's a performance
contract. Lobe gets a cut of her performance work, and anything that grows out of it—a broadcast made of a performance, for instance. But he sees nothing from anything else. As far as I know, he receives no proceeds from her record—if there are any. If she doesn't perform, he doesn't earn anything off her.”

“So what? That's to her advantage, isn't it?”

“Yes, it is good for her. But it would put the heat on Lobe to cash in on her before their contract expires. He probably thinks it's his natural-born right and duty to cash in on her. That's what employees are for, right?” He raised an eyebrow at Opium Jade.

“Lord, tell it,” she sighed. “It's enough to make a body vote CWP.”