Steel Guitar (5 page)

“You know who that is?” the football player hollered at me.

“Can't say I do.”

“Used to be with the Uncle Wigglies. Jimmy Ranger. A regular top-ten hit machine. Produced this album for Willis.”

We went on shouting idle party-chatter. I kept hoping he'd mention where we'd met before. If he was hitting on me, he was pretty low-key about it.

“So how's Sam?” he said during a lull in the pounding music.

I only know one Sam: Sam Gianelli, my part-time employer and sometime lover. So I placed the guy then. And I wondered what a man I'd last seen at a Gianelli family funeral—the kind of funeral where the FBI records all the license plate numbers—was doing at a bash in honor of Dee Willis.

Six

Dee was impressed with my food haul, especially when I kept yanking items out of my bag to add to the two brimming plates.

I was impressed all over again by the size of the room.

“Want to see the bedroom?” Dee asked. “And the bath? Whirlpool, steam, Jacuzzi, whole hog. All attached. One huge suite. Come on. Might as well take a peek. I got to check to see if anybody sneaked in. Two weeks ago, I found some jerk from one of those supermarket sleaze tabloids trying to plant a microphone under my bed.”

“If he'd known you better, he could have just planted it in the hall,” I said. “Or in an elevator.”

Dee drew herself up, all prim and demure. “I have changed,” she said in her most exaggerated Southern drawl. “I am the silent type. And I only do it in bed. Most of the time, anyway.”

The tour was worth the price of admission. In the huge bedroom, a king-size bed sat on a platform like a throne on a dais. Its canopy was swagged in gold brocade. So were the tall windows that stared out over Boston Common. A bowl of fruit on an end table looked like it was posing for a still life.

We carried the fruit bowl into the living room in the interest of nutritional balance. A gift card from MGA/America was tucked between an orange and a pomegranate. Dee excused herself to go to the bathroom. Since I was nosing around anyway, I checked the flower arrangement: compliments of the management.

I stay in hotels where the management is stingy about plastic drinking cups.

Dee rejoined me, grabbing the plateful of shrimp.

“Cocktail sauce?” she said hopefully.

“Under there somewhere.”

“Great.”

I was halfway through a tiny spinach pie wrapped in filo dough. “Your arm okay?” I asked.

She chewed, ignored my question, and said, “Bet I could still find your aunt Bea's old house. Bet I could find it in the dark.”

“It's mine now.”

“I heard she died.” Dee kicked off her shoes, sat on the sofa opposite me, one leg tucked up behind her. Her toenails were painted powder pink. “I kinda miss old Bea.”

“C'mon, Dee,” I said.

“No,” she went on, chatting too brightly, too fast, “honestly, I do. I miss everybody. I miss all the old times. I miss people I hated. Remember Alice? Remember
Denny
? I mean, if that little twerp walked in here right now, I'd roll over like an ol' puppy dog and lick his face—except, you know, honey, I think that's the one part Denny never wanted me to lick.”

She stuck her tongue out, and I grinned. Ten years ago—pre-Cal—I might have rolled over and licked her face too.

“You know what time it is?” I inquired in mock despair.

“Late, huh? I know. I'm dead too. We were rehearsing before the party. Last-minute stuff. I'm here to kick off this concert tour. Jimmy, that's Jimmy Ranger, my producer on this last album and, pray God, the next, flew in special to check out the mix, and I'm higher than a kite, I know it. Not drugs, Carlotta. Not any of that shit. Not anymore. Just, you know, adrenaline.” She leaned forward suddenly, snapped her fingers a couple of inches from my face. “It came to me, just like that, when I saw you in the cab. You're the one.”

“Maybe,” I said warily. “Maybe not.”

“You never give me a straight yes or no.”

“You're always so pushy,” I said at the same time. We both glared at each other, and I felt like I ought to be sitting on the floor of her old Mass. Ave. apartment, barefoot, with a guitar in my hands, inhaling a roomful of dope.

It was marijuana back then; coke cost too much.

I never smoked the stuff, what with my dad a cop, and me going for the police academy. I stuck to my cigarettes, courting lung cancer. At Dee's you didn't have to smoke dope to get high. All you had to do was breathe.

“You know many people at the party?” I asked.

“The band. A few of the roadies and techies. Far as MGA/America goes, my people meet with their people. I probably got introduced to about a thousand guys tonight, but I wouldn't know 'em tomorrow. My hand feels like hamburger. That's how I got out of there. Told Hal if I shook one more hand, I wouldn't be able to pick a note.”

“The name ‘Mickey' or ‘Big Mickey' mean anything to you?” I couldn't remember the last name of the man who'd asked about Sam Gianelli. Or maybe I'd never known it.

“Mickey Mouse. I remember him. Look, let's get down to business.” She licked cocktail sauce off a fingertip, then tried folding her hands in her lap. She seemed restless; it looked more like her left hand was grabbing the right to keep it still. “Could you find Davey for me?”

“Davey?”

“Davey Dunrobie.”

I hadn't thought about Dunrobie twice in ten years. “Hell,” I said impulsively, “I'd love to find him, see if he still looks that good.”

“I knew you'd do it.”

“Whoa, Dee. This is what I do for a living.”

“I'm gonna pay,” she protested, hand to her heart. “I'll pay you for this; it's not like a favor or anything.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” I asked.

My question seemed to catch her off balance. “Well, uh, I … Do I need to tell you stuff like that?”

“Only if you want me to work for you.” I reached out and grabbed a shrimp, ice-cold, firm and sweet, tail attached. I dipped it in red sauce, dribbling on my white shirt. “You can hire somebody else.”

“But you know him, Carlotta. Nobody else knows Dunrobie, knows what he looks like even.”

“I admit I've got the inside track. But you have to give me someplace to start.”

“Well, shit,” she said. “You knew him.”

“Nice seeing you, Dee.”

“Sit down, Carlotta, it's just … Damn. It's hard to talk about. Davey was my first partner.”

“There was Lorraine,” I said quietly. “The group. You remember: me on rhythm guitar, Cal on bass, Lorraine sharing the vocals with you and shaking the tambourine—”

“Yeah.” She cut my memories short. “But he was my first, you know, professional partner. Shit, I must have gray hair.”

“Tina Turner's older than you,” I said. “Relax.”

“Mick Jagger's older than me,” she said.

“You look great,” I said. “And you know it. So cut the crap. Were you looking for Dunrobie tonight? In junior-grade needle park?”

She couldn't find another way to stall, so she leaned forward, and spoke softly, as if people were listening on all sides.

“Let me start from the top,” she said. “You know, after we—uh, after the group split up, I went and formed the band and all. And Dunrobie, well, it's sad what happened to him. I mean, you ever hear a sweeter, finer voice than Dunrobie's? You ever hear a better guitar picker?”

I had, but not many, and she didn't seem to want answers to her questions.

“Dunrobie had more fans than me. He had women flinging themselves all over him. You thought one of the two of us was gonna make it, which would it be? Dunrobie, right? Davey every time.”

Again I kept still. I'd have picked Dee ten times out of ten. She always had that burning, hungry quality. Dunrobie had seemed overwhelmed by even minor successes. Cal had once described Davey as a 3 B man, the kind of musician who's good enough to play any town and come out of it with the all-important beer, burger, and blow-job.

Dee was saying, “It's like this: Dunrobie started to drink. Not like the rest of us. I mean, he drank like he did it for a living. And after he finished drinking, he downed every kind of recreational chemical he could beg or buy, and pretty soon he couldn't get work as a ditchdigger, much less a guitar player.”

“I didn't know,” I said.

“Maybe five years ago, I came into town, not playing anyplace, just trying to line up some gigs, and I ran into Davey. He was this bum, this shambling old man in a park, maybe a mile from the public library. Better than most. I mean, he wasn't mumbling to himself or anything, but he was staring at the grass like there wasn't anything in the world gonna interest him ever again. Dunrobie always had that little thing wrong with the way he walked—”

“The hockey injury.”

“Wasn't it football?” Dee said. “Shit, he probably fell down a flight of stairs and told everybody some kind of romantic crap. Anyway, the limp clinched it. I walked right up to him and put my hand on his shoulder, and he jumped like I was gonna steal his last dime. He
smelled
, Carlotta. He stank. I bought him a cup of coffee, and you should have seen the faces in that café when I came in with him. Honest, the looks on their faces. And I tried to make him eat a meal, you know. I wanted to do something, and finally I talked him into letting me give him some rent money. You know, you get to a point where two hundred bucks, what's it gonna do for you? You buy a blouse for it, right? Get your hair streaked. And here I could give Dunrobie a couple hundred, and he could make the security deposit on a place to live, just a room, you know, but it was all he'd take, and he swore it was just a loan and he'd pay me back and all that.”

Dee was staring at the floor like she was embarrassed at being caught in a good deed.

“Well,” she continued when I didn't say anything, “I asked him to keep in touch, but I never found out the name of the street he was planning to live on. He didn't have a phone. Then maybe a year later, four years ago, he started calling, oh, maybe twice a year, and honey, he had the worst luck. God, everything happened to Dunrobie. He got kicked out of his room. He lost his shoe-clerk job because his boss hit on him. His landlord wanted him to go to work in his snow-shoveling business and quit playing that guitar all night. His dog died. He was always phoning me with some sorry tale and I was always sending him a money order care of somebody or other, usually a woman, and that was fine. I mean, I made it clear to him, I hope to hell I did, that I didn't want him living on the streets while I was putting money into a bank account for my old age. You might die young, I always say.”

“I wish I'd known about Dunrobie.”

“Well, now you do, and you can find him for me. That's what I was trying to do tonight, only it seems like it was a rotten idea. I haven't heard from him in over a year, fourteen months. I mean, maybe he's sobered up, and doing fine. I don't want the money back, even if he's living in a palace. I'm worried about him.”

“That's all?” I said.

“What do you mean all?” she asked. “Isn't that enough?”

“Well,” I said, “let me tell you. A missing persons search is either easy or it's hard. Either you find something right away, like his name and number in the phone book, or you can't find anything at all. You should have filled out a report while we were at the police station.”

“Carlotta, the drugs he did, I'm not going to point some cop in his direction. If he's still hooked, that's all he'd need.”

“Okay,” I said, “I see your point. What I'm saying is that the cost varies because missing persons stuff is dicey. I take a fee up front and I charge for expenses, and then I charge for results. If I get results, it costs.”

“Carlotta, I'm playing the Berklee Performance Center Saturday night. I mean, it's not a giant stadium, not like some of the places on this tour, but it means a whole lot to me. The acoustics are incredible. Jimmy Ranger's here, recording some live cuts for a new album. Believe me, I can afford your rates, and I want Dunrobie there. I need to look in the audience Saturday night and see certain faces. I need Dunrobie.”

“This Saturday?” I said skeptically. It was only four days off, but unless he was hiding, I was almost sure I'd be able to locate him by then. Still, magicians have to make a few fancy passes before they pull rabbits out of their hats. Otherwise nobody applauds.

“Carlotta, see what you can do.”

“Sometimes I have to mail requests for information. Saturday's not enough time to do a state-by-state motor vehicle check.”

“But you could do local stuff.”

I shrugged. “If he's local, I can get him. If he's local and he drives, I can get him in twenty minutes. Hotel have stationery?”

She pointed me toward a desk and I opened the top drawer and found a sheet with gold lettering at the top. A slim white pen sat next to a white phone. I used it to print David Dunrobie's name at the top of the page. Then I sat in the desk chair and started asking Dee all the questions, beginning with Dunrobie's middle name.

“How the hell should I know?” she said. “You still have that rotten National guitar?”

“Last known address? You still have that crummy Dobro?”

“I guess that would be the dump on Mass. Ave., when he was living with me. Eight-sixty-five, I think.”

“His name on the lease?”

“No.”

We amazed ourselves with our ignorance. We didn't know who Dunrobie's parents were, whether he had any sisters or brothers. We sure didn't know his social security number.

“Shit, Carlotta,” Dee said finally. “Why don't you ask the right questions? I can tell you he was one fine lay.”

I grinned, and took the last shrimp. “I didn't have to ask, Dee.”