“What the hell are you doin’ back here?”
There is, in fact, no business like show business, and no people like show people. She was dressed like the rest backstage: bikini, slippers, cigarette — with the painful addition of a mop handle that she held like a lance, like a knight in a joust.
I rubbed my side where she’d jabbed me. “Tony sent me. Actually, Teeth sent me.”
She hoisted her weapon away from me and flashed a smile like a ten-year-old kid. “Teeth. Where is he? We been missin’ him somethin’ awful.”
The dancer who’d just been on the runway shoved past me, naked as that proverbial jaybird, before I could answer. “’Scuse me, pops.” Then, to my companion, “Tisha…you’re, like, supposed to be on!”
She dropped her mop. “Oh, right.” She touched my arm. “Be right back.” Then, to her naked friend, “This is Teeth’s new boyfriend or something.” And she was gone.
My new little friend looked me up and down and shook her head. “You’re not Teeth’s new boyfriend.”
“I didn’t say I was. That was just Tisha’s guess.”
“She’s not bright.”
I nodded. “Not as bright as Tony.”
“Tony knows everything.”
“I think you’re right. My name’s Flap.”
She shrugged, folded her arms in front of her, but otherwise made no move.
I maintained eye contact. “So I don’t look like Teeth’s new boyfriend?”
She squinted. “In the first place, Teeth ain’t got over Ruby yet. In the second place, you dress like crap — and in the third place, aren’t you a little old for the boy?”
“Not to mention that he’s not the least bit queer.” Tony had appeared over my left shoulder. He smiled a cold smile at my current companion. “But he’s here to help Teeth, so be nice.”
I turned to Tony. “Here to help Teeth?”
“It’s my guess that the cops will eventually realize a dead boyfriend and two dead dancers got one thing in common — namely our friend Teeth. They’ll investigate, but you see through this coincidence. You don’t believe that Teeth did it.”
I shifted my weight and took a step toward him. “Whata ya got, a crystal ball? How do you know all this stuff?”
“This stuff is important. You gotta be a keen student of human nature, much like myself.”
“Plus, you’re enchanting.”
“That too.” He looked over at our girl. “So like I said, be nice, okay?”
She looked down and said, very sweetly, “Okay, Tony.”
And suddenly I saw Tony the Boulder as every girl’s dream brother, filled with tough but unconditional love. He pivoted and took a seat beside the curtain. I could see, through it, that the other guy had traded places with him and was standing at the door. Tony took his seat and didn’t look back, but he was there, close by — just in case all his instincts about me were off. And I had to admire that too. He was certain he was right — but what if he wasn’t? I could be as rotten an egg as they come. It’s not such a bad idea to cover all the bases if you can.
Without looking he called to me through the curtain, like he’d read my mind. “I saw Tisha poke you with the mop, and I thought maybe you could use the help.”
I parted the curtains. “What makes you think I’m gonna find something important in this deal? And just what would that something be, do you think?”
He still didn’t look at me. His eye was on the crowd. “It’s a real sick world we got out there right now, Flap. Those girls, they were just kids. They didn’t deserve to get shoved in a trunk. And Ruby…he was quite something else. We can’t let this kind of thing happen so much. You look to me like a man who could maybe do something about it. And so I want you to do something about it. That’s all.”
And then, like that was an explanation of everything that had transpired, he looked at me and winked.
I stared back. “Without knowing it, you are some kind of distant kin to a woman name of Dalliance Oglethorpe.”
He shrugged. “She owns the Easy on Ponce. Never met.”
Now, Atlanta’s a big place, but the club scene is a family just like any other, and it was no surprise that he’d heard of Dally. Her joint was a hangout for many a wayward soul. I decided, however, against explaining to him the connection I saw between his own big old self and my best friend in this admittedly real sick world.
Instead, I forged bravely ahead into the belly of the beast. Four or five girls were lounging in the big dressing room, including the one I’d just met. I cleared my throat and caught her eye.
“My name’s Flap. And I really am kind of a friend to Teeth. I’m…looking to find out more about Hanna and Donna…or whatever their real names were.”
The place got pretty quiet. The girl I was looking at kind of slumped in her chair. “We try not to talk about them…Flap.”
“I’d imagine, but I wanna help.”
Another dancer, in a black bathrobe, lit a cigarette. “You from their folks? I thought their folks might send somebody. I thought something like this would happen.”
The other one sat up a little. “Naw, he’s insurance.”
Bathrobe girl shook her head. “He’s not insurance. He’s too interesting-looking to be insurance. You’re not insurance, are you, hon?”
Naked girl rolled her eyes. “Jeez, Beano, he’s old enough to be your dad.”
Beano shrugged. “I didn’t say I wanted a date, I just said —”
“That I was interesting-looking, which I’ll grant you, but I really want to know a little something about…the other two.”
Beano took a deep drag on her smoke and poked her finger at the chair next to her. I took it.
She flicked her ash onto the floor. “I knew ’em pretty good account of I’m here all the time so I know everybody pretty good is why you should be talking to me about Donna and Hanna which I don’t know what was their real names or whatever.” She blinked.
“They were new?”
She nodded very enthusiastically. “They just worked here…what…three months outside and they weren’t really into it, you know, because they didn’t really like the guys at all, or whatever, but they needed the dough until they got their real estate diploma whatchacallit.”
“Didn’t like which guys?”
“Guys guys, they didn’t like guys. Every once in a while they’d date some fat little blond guy who helped ’em out with the school thing, but otherwise they were completely into each other. I thought you would know that.” She seemed irritated at my ignorance. “There were a couple.” She sucked on her cig again, talked through the smoke. “I thought you would know that.”
Naked girl said, “Beano, you gotta get ready.”
Beano looked down at some kind of list or notes on her part of the dressing table and nodded. “I’m up in a minute. Better talk fast.” She shivered out of her robe in a flash and started powdering herself.
“Donna and Hanna were an item?”
“Yes, God — didn’t we just go over this? They were fishwives, they were landlubbers, they were thespians! Plus, all that long strawberry-blond hair everywhere — yooo!” She looked at me. “That’s a joke, thespians.”
“Yeah. Did they live together?”
“Of course. God.”
“Where?”
“The Alhambra.”
“The which one?”
“Alhambra Alhambra, like in Spain. It’s all — what’s that crap — Mediterranean architecture and whatnot. Stucco.” She shivered in disgust.
“And this place is…”
She smeared on lipstick. “…just around the corner. If you’re any good you could spit on it from here.”
“In which direction would I spit?”
She stood. “Out the driveway to the right. You sure are slow for a…whatever it is you are. Damn.” She slithered into a bikini, patted my cheek kind of hard, and reached over to a corner of a Baggie on her countertop. She stabbed her little fingernail int
o the stuff and held it under my nose. “This oughta speed things up a little.”
I stood up too. “No, thanks. I’m trying to save room for dessert.”
She shrugged. “Whatever.” Then she shoved the fingernail way up in her own right nostril and sniffed like a bloodhound. She wreaked the same havoc on the other side of her nose, tied up the Baggie, tossed it aside, pulled on her smoke one last time, and straightened my tie. “Always pays to look your best, hon.”
“I do what I can.”
“Me too. Well” — in a tiny voice — “it’s show time.”
And she zipped out the curtains and onto the runway.
Naked girl giggled. She wasn’t naked anymore though. She had on a plaid flannel robe. “Maybe I shoulda warned you about Beano.”
I smiled. “You’d think the name alone would be warning enough.”
“She’s okay.”
“So I’m hoping you can add to her story.”
“Not me. I didn’t really know the kids. They were real lovey-dovey all the time, and it kind of got on my nerves. I’m thinkin’ you got the high points.”
Lovey-dovey. I chewed on the inside of my lip for a second before I reached into my coat pocket. I held out the little chains with the hearts on them. “You never saw these things before, did you?”
She leaned in, then back. “Lotsa times. A lotta girls wear ankle bracelets.”
“Ankle bracelets.”
She wasn’t even looking at me. “Yeah. Those look like the pair Hanna and Donna had.” She made a face and a funny voice. “Love chains.”
“Unbelievable.”
She leaned forward again, like she’d missed something the first time. “What?”
“I thought they were kids’ necklaces, like for little kids. I couldn’t figure out the size thing.”
“You never saw an ankle bracelet?”
“I just never thought of it.” I was staring at them like they were the Grail. “I wonder how I could find out for sure if they belonged…”
She got a bright idea. “They got all that fiber evidence crap in police science now. They can tell you anything!”
Still staring, I shook my head. “I try to…avoid the police as much as I can.”
“Guy like you, don’t you got some, I don’t know, college friends or nothin’?”
“I do know a guy at Tech…”
“There you go.”
“Maybe.”
“Where’d you find ’em, anyway?”
“Hmm?”
“Where’d you find the chains?”
“Oh, you know, lyin’ around on the ground.” One at Ruby’s and the other in Buckhead — what the hell could that mean?
“Oh.”
“And these really look like the ones Donna and Hanna used to have?”
She leaned over the table and checked out the merchandise one more time. “A lot. You see the one Beano was wearing?”
“She’s got one too?”
“I’m tellin’ ya, Flap, it’s the rage. Doncha think they’re kinda sexy and all?”
I looked down again at the things in my hand. “Not really.”
“Yeah, well, imagine ’em on somebody’s necked ankle, and it gets better.”
“And Beano wears one like this?”
“Not exactly. Hers got little handcuffs all, like, linked up.” She took a beat. “Don’t ask.”
“Don’t want to.” I shoved the items back in the pocket. “I’m gonna want…to talk some more. But I’m thinking I oughta go check out their pad.”
“The Alhambra.”
“Like in Spain.”
“If you say so.”
“You workin’ tomorrow?”
“Nope.”
“Beano?”
“Every day.”
“And twice on Sundays.”
“Just about.”
“When are you here next, and what about Tisha?”
“I’m goin’ to Florida. Tisha’s here tomorrow.”
“Florida?”
She looked down, adjusting her carrot-colored hair very deliberately. “Goin’ south. Take a hint.”
I nodded slowly.
She looked up, and all of a sudden she was just a kid. “I don’t mind ridin’ in the backseat, but the trunk’s a little close for me, you know?”
“I know.” I stood. “Have a nice time in Florida.”
“Whatever.”
Gone south, as in: to vanish. There it is again, that metaphorical Yankee-land prejudice in everyday English. I lumbered out the curtain, a little confused by the light change and the thickness of the fabric, and there was good old Tony the Boulder, reading a magazine by the poorest light in the land.
I leaned over to his ear. “You’ll go blind.”
“I eat a lotta carrots.”
And what was he reading, shipmates? A girly mag or the sporting news? Not in the least. It was a very fine periodical about gardening.
“Whata ya grow ’em yourself?”
He rocked back and forth a little, unconsciously in time to the music. “Sometimes. But I prefer perennials. If you do it just right you got color all season long.”
“Really.”
“’Course, it’s a lotta work at first, plantin’ the damn things, what with your bulbs and your hostas and your daisies, and you hope the impatiens’ll come back, which sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. But after a while all you gotta do is sit on the deck and admire.”
“Yeah, but what do you do with your spare time then?”
“Start a new bed.”
I shook my head. “Where does it all end?”
He closed up his mag. “It doesn’t. Nature’s work is never done.”
“I see.”
Up on the runway Beano and Tisha were “dancing” together, doing things I think could have shut the place down if there’d been a vice cop within fifty miles. But the crowd seemed to like it.
Tony stood up, admiring the dance. “Does my heart good to see young people enjoying themselves. You goin’ over to Donna and Hanna’s?”
“What makes you think that?”
“I got good ears too.”
“What do you gotta eat for that?”
“Peppermint.”
The music was so loud I didn’t think I heard him right. “What?”
“Peppermint. Keeps the eustachian tubes clear.”
“Does it.”
He slipped the magazine into his back pocket and laid his big paw on my shoulder. “Take a right outta the parking lot, you can’t miss it. The Alhambra, Apartment Two B.”
“Yeah. You know I’ll be back.”
“Can’t wait. Say hey to Teeth if you see him. We miss him.”
I smiled, got my bearings, and waded through the empty tables to the door. I’d like to say I didn’t look back, but it was too much for me when the crowd actually started making noises — like in the movies. I was a pillar of salt. There were Beano and Tisha with vibrating candlesticks, applying them appropriately to one another. The crowd was on its feet. I think someone even hollered, “Author.” But Sophocles and Shakespeare? They didn’t take a curtain call that day.
Chapter 8: The Alhambra
Spain was once ruled by Moorish kings, and the country led the world in mathematics and architecture — the fortified palace at Granada, the Alhambra, being the foremost example of same. By 1492 the Catholics had taken over. Queen Isabella financed an expedition to another continent and, by the way, helped to start the Inquisition. Islam used to be a fairly peaceful religion, they tell me, until the Crusaders taught the Muslims a thing or two about how to spread a faith. They used to roast and eat Muslim babies in front of the parents in their quest to teach the gospel — and it produced a jihad the ramifications of which, I believe, we are still feeling today.
The Alhambra apartments in southwest Atlanta are a fine study in the old Moorish style: great sweeping arches, twisty columns, and thick, wedding-cake-style stucco. I might have just busted into 2B, but as
luck would have it there was a resident manager.
I patted politely at the door, and a round woman in her fifties opened up. She nodded like she knew I was coming. “Two B.” And she disappeared into the darkness of her rooms.
“How did you know?” I was beginning to think everybody in the world knew more than I did.
Her voice came back muffled from the deep recess of her little cave. “Tony called.” After a brief repose she was there again, key in hand. “He’s so sweet. He really cares about those little girls.”
“Yes, ma’am. Tony called you?”
“Just now. Said to let you in, doncha know.”
“Um-hmm. Did he say why?”
“You’re gonna help, aren’t ya?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, good.” She shoved past me and along the corridor to the stairs. “Those two were so cute. I think they were sisters or something, always wearing one another’s clothes and whatnot. Always callin’ the other one ‘delicious’ and ‘honey bun’ and…who in the world would want to put two nice girls like that in the trunk of a Buick?”
I followed her up the short staircase. “Who indeed.”
She squinted at me over her shoulder. “I think it’s one of those awful men that goes in that Tip Top place. We tried to get it out of the neighborhood, but this city is run by big old fat men with dinky little wienies.”
“Really.”
“Uh-huh. They can’t stand up to take a pee; how they gonna stand up to organized crime?”
“Organized crime?”
She resumed her trek down the upstairs hall. “Who do you think runs all the necked clubs?”
“Businessmen?”
“They’d like you to think so.” She stopped in front of 2B and shot me a look like out of a howitzer. “Look. I used to be a stripper in the sixties, when it meant something.”
“Hmm?”
“When I showed my titties it was a statement.”
“Really.”
“That’s right. I helped to open up this whole country. If it wasn’t for me you’d still be livin’ in the Eisenhower years.”
“You and Lenny Bruce.”
Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 1) Page 7
