Tony laughed. “She was just trying to save her own sorry butt from havin’ to do any real work. Aggie was twice the worker she was.”
I nodded. “Even Donna admits that, or something like it.”
Aggie leaned in too then. “Why are you…what’s all this about?”
I blew out a breath. “Well, if I take a vacation on the idea that you’re the evil wife out for Lenny’s money, and I buy for a second the idea that somebody in the parking lot of the Tip Top thought they were getting you in a stranglehold, then I have to reevaluate almost everything I’ve been thinking so far about this whole business. I gotta start thinking in other directions, however odd they might be. I have to eliminate what I know to be false, and then whatever’s left, however impossible it may seem, must be true.”
Tony shook his head. “Yeah, but how do you do that?”
I stood up. “I got a system. I was interrupted by some nonsense when I tried to do it before, but I gotta go now and try it again.” I looked at him. “Okay?”
He held me in his gaze a moment longer than he needed to, then he nodded. “Don’t be a stranger.”
I pushed in the chair. “You’ll pick up the tab, I’ll go talk things over with Ms. Oglethorpe, and then I’ll hie me home for a visit to the Truth. You’ll both be available by phone?”
Tony nodded again. “You got my number?”
“Brother, do I have your number.”
But I was out the door before he could think of a snappy retort.
Chapter 16: Early at the Majestic
Since Tony had inadvertently prevented my eating dessert, I chose to complete my fine-dining experience back at the Majestic. A quick call to Dalliance first:
“Hey, meet me at the Majestic.”
“Now?”
“Uh-huh. I gotta talk it over with you. I’m on the edge of an understanding.”
“You do your thing?”
“Naw. Didn’t I tell you I was interrupted by a call? From none other than our old pal Dannen Hilliard, actually.”
“So you’re gonna talk to me, then go home and do it?”
“Yeah.”
“Be right there.”
I didn’t want to be at the club for some reason. Somehow the diner seemed more private. I parted the glass doors, found an empty booth, and slung myself down. Shortly thereafter I was eating chocolate pie.
The pie was gone and so was the rest of the daylight when Dally shoved into the booth and sat across from me. She didn’t say anything. She just waited.
I finished off my coffee, looked at the tabletop. “This may be the weirdest situation you ever got me into.”
“I told you.”
I looked up at her. “You know, it’s that I-told-you-so attitude you have…”
“I know. Drives people nuts.”
“Actually, I was gonna say I kinda like it. It’s endearing.”
“Uh-huh. Tell me a story.”
“I found Augusta.”
“No, see: A story has a beginning and a middle, not just an end.”
“That is the middle. We’re a ways off from the end.”
“Oh.”
“Augusta and Lenny are in a marriage, of a sort. Augusta is the sister of a guy named Tony who’s the bouncer at the Tip Top, which is how Teeth got a gig there. Teeth is in jail. Teeth is into tantric sex. And a new dancer is dead. I helped Tony find her body. Plus, it’s just possible that the killer thought the dancer was Augusta. And did I mention that the two previously murdered girls had been in the trunk of the Buick for maybe a week or two before they were discovered? And did I mention they were lovers? Did I tell you Augusta is more nuts than any of her patients? And did I say that the only guy I’m certain didn’t kill anybody is the guy the cops have in custody?”
She leaned back. “No, see: This is not good storytelling either. You gotta have a kind of once-upon-a-time mentality about it.”
I ignored her. “And when I sat me down to do my magic thing, just as I was gettin’ into it the phone rang, and it was Neena, outta the blue, with some wild hoo-ha about Tibet, and it got me off track.”
But instead of rolling her eyes or poking fun at Neena, which ordinarily she would have done, she sat back up. “Tibet? What about Tibet?”
“There’s a new Lama, but he’s only a stooge of the Red Chinese. It’s something about economic growth. But as I understand it that’s a foundation of Marxism, right? Economics, class struggle, and…what’s the third thing?”
“Maybe it’s not coincidence.”
“What?”
“You don’t…even you don’t quite realize the extent of your luck.”
“I said: What?”
“I know you did. I’m telling you that maybe Neena’s call was part of the thing, not a distraction.”
“Okay, this is my third and final: What?”
“I just read in the paper — not in the news part, in the business section — this thing.”
“About…”
“About the new proposed import deal with the Red Chinese: They’re gonna start to sell off some religious artifacts from Buddhist Tibet — for fabulously inflated sums of money. And the deal’s been in the making for a while now. And it was looking good because the new Lama…”
“…is a stooge of the Red Chinese…”
“…like you said, but here’s the connection.”
I closed my eyes. “Don’t say it.”
Even with my eyes closed, I knew she was nodding. “The deal is supposed to be with that well-known international company, Cascade Art Imports. Only it looks like it may go south on account of the bad press with the fake Lama.”
In the movie version I think there would have been lightning and thunder or a dramatic rising of the underscoring. As it was, we had to settle for the neon in the window blinking out. Not the whole thing, just the part that said EGGS ANY TIME.
Dally was staring at me when I opened my eyes. I looked over at the window. “I guess they ran outta eggs.”
“You better go home right now. You’ve got to get to the bottom of this one quick.”
“I called you here to listen. I have to sum up, I have to get in my head the events of the past couple of days, all right? So just sit back.”
She sat back. “Okay, but make it a better story than you had going a minute ago.”
“Once upon a time there was a guy who said ‘shut up’ to his best friend.”
“Fine.”
“The players: We start with Teeth. He didn’t kill Ruby; he loved Ruby. He and Ruby were into tantric sex and it made ’em wacky in the nut —”
“The technical, psychological term.”
I nodded. “And Teeth really believes that Ruby was killed by a demon, but it’s okay because Ruby got to the pentagram soon enough to save his soul. Now Teeth is in jail because the cops realized, finally, that he was at least a nominal connection between Ruby’s murder and the two dead girls in the Buick.”
“Make a great band name: Two Dead Girls —”
“I’ll never get to the punch line if you keep interrupting.”
“— in a Buick. I’m finished.”
“Next in our merry band: Looney Lenny, the sweetest little guy in town. Turns out he’s not just loaded, he’s fabulously loaded, and he’s got a swell house not far from here with lions on the banister. All he wants is his wife back.”
“Which is your main job.”
“Check. But I get a glimpse of his diary or something open in his den, and it’s pretty odd: like he made up his wife. Like she doesn’t really exist except in his mind.”
“Except you’ve seen pictures.”
“Gets better, but wait. Then I go to where the girls were found, meet a nice girl named Kay. Know what she told me? That the guy they got to tow the car away is the one who discovered the bodies.”
“No.”
“And do you know how he discovered the bodies?”
“No.”
“He smelled them.”
She blinked. “In this cold snap? That means…” I nodded. “They were in there a while. So I hie me to the club Tip Top, a rollicking establishment on the other side of town, and what to my wondering ears do I hear?”
“I give.”
“The two girls were in love. They shared a life together. They were in real estate school. It could have been something beautiful.”
“Uh-huh.”
I slumped a bit. “Honest to God, Dally, I wish you could have seen their sad little digs. Woulda tore you up. And…” I produced from my pocket the two heart chains and showed them in the palm of my hand.
Dally nodded. “Ankle bracelets.”
“Does everybody figure everything out before me?”
“What did you think they were?”
“Anyway, I found out they were ankle bracelets and I think they belonged to the girls. I found one close to where the Buick was parked in Buckhead. But…”
“I knew there’d be something about this.”
“I found the other — be glad you’re sitting down — in Ruby and Teeth’s backyard.”
“Get out.”
“I’d like to, but I promised everybody and his brother I’d finish this thing.”
“Are you sure they belonged to the girls?”
“No, but it’s a pretty weird coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah, but…
“And I’m taking ’em over to Paul at TECH. Maybe he can tell me something DNA-wise or blood-wise or whatever.”
“He’s a biology teacher.”
I lowered my voice. “He’s done this sort of thing for me before.”
“Still, you’ve got to have a sample of the girls’ actual —”
Before she could finish I produced from my coat pocket two hairbrushes, each in a little Baggie. “I snagged these when I was at the girls’ apartment, whilst the landlady, a former stripper herself, was not looking. Got ’em outta the bathroom — you shoulda seen the tile work.”
“Sometimes you fascinate me.”
“I secretly fascinate you all the time. But enough about me. There I am at the Tip Top, and who should I meet but a coke-head dancer called Beano and a red-headed kid whose name I never knew who was so scared by the deaths of her two compatriots that she was about to take a powder.”
“So the atmosphere at the club was…”
“…depressing, like all those places. Speaking of which, my next stop was the House of Pain…”
“GIMH.”
“…where I discover Lenny’s not making up this alleged Augusta, but she is in fact none other than Augusta Donne, nurse’s assistant, quite real and in some circles fairly beloved.”
“So she worked at GIMH — she wasn’t a patient.”
“That’s what I’m saying. I showed her picture around, and all I could get was she was fired around the same time as Dr. Schlag — and for something of the same reason: She and Lenny were caught at least twice in the X-ray room with their pants down.”
“So that’s why he thought he was married to her.”
“There’s more. I get her last known address from the files there at the hospital —”
“How did you swing that?”
“I’m fascinating, remember? So I go to this last known address, and who comes to the door?”
“I give.”
“Lenny. It’s his house. On St. Dominic.”
“Wow.” She sat back.
“Uh-huh, and that’s where I read this weird diary about how he made up Augusta, only now I know she’s a real live girl. Then he tells me I’m part owner of the Easy.”
“I saw this part. Skip on down.”
“Okay, so then I went home and tried to do my magic whatchacallit, and Neena called.”
“Which is so spooky given what we know about the…thingus.”
“Right. So anyway, since she called, I’m bad luck.”
“Such as?”
“I went to visit Teeth; he got arrested — right after he told me, incidentally, that Augusta is the sister of the bouncer at the Tip Top, which is how Teeth got his new job.”
“It’s a small world after all.”
“Then, when I went to the Tip Top, the redhead who wanted to go south?”
“You really need a program with this story.”
“Remember I mentioned her?”
“All right.”
“She’s dead, in the parking lot of the club, in Augusta’s raincoat. Now I’m thinking maybe Tony the Boulder is the killer.”
“But he’s not.”
“Well…”
“Why is she wearing Augusta’s raincoat?”
“I was hoping you’d ask. Augusta was at the Tip Top. I found her.”
“You found her?”
“I had dinner with her.”
She whispered, “Well then: Case closed.” But I knew she wasn’t serious.
I shook my head slowly. “Not nearly.”
“Who killed the redhead?”
“Got me. I split and went to the Colonnade.”
“I love their pork roast.”
“And anyway, you can’t possibly imagine how wacky this kid Augusta is. She’s in some way convinced that Lenny made her up. She’s also afraid there’s a demon after her, like there was a demon after Ruby — and she’s also very, very attractive.”
“A demon?”
“There’s somebody trying to kill her. Which, for a minute if you believe, fits the dead-girl-in-the-parking-lot-in-her-raincoat picture. Not to mention Ruby in a pentagram hiding from the demon, and my friends over at the Golden Potala who are scared of a monster in bad slacks and worried about getting their own personal effects out of none other than Red Chinese-tainted Tibet, which is really another kettle of fish altogether — except for the fact that it’s a kettle stirred up by all this trade-deal-Cascade hoo-ha.” I sat back. “So now: The End…so far.”
“But she’s still nuts.”
“Augusta? Oh, yeah.”
She flung herself forward. “So…now, how in the hell does all this fit in with Cascade Art Imports, again?”
“I dunno exactly. But I’m telling you it’s a pretty weird coincidence with Linda’s family, not to mention that the rest of the planet is screwed if Tibet goes under.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There are guys in Tibet who pray and turn wheels and breathe a special way and all — some of ’em are even in Linda’s family. These guys think they’re the only thing keeping the world together, keeping the dark forces in the universe at bay. They’ve had this gig since the beginning of time, and if they stop now…darkness wins.”
“You believe this.”
“Not really. But, you know — what if? What if they’re all that’s keeping us outta the soup? You wanna take that chance?”
“Go home and get into your magic lantern and put this thing in its place — for both of us — or for humankind, whatever.”
I smiled. “Okay. I will.”
But she wouldn’t let it go at that. “Flap, this one is pretty strange, right?”
“I guess.”
“I mean, it’s not every day you find a dead body in a parking lot, right?”
“Not every day.”
“So you gotta be a little extra careful.”
“You too.”
She didn’t quite understand. “I will.”
“The killer, whoever, goes after women, and men who dress like women — either way, I’m safer than you, right?”
“A little. How does he feel about women who dress like men?”
I hadn’t noticed. She was wearing a man’s suit again, fifties style this time, skinny tie and all. I smiled. “You do look pretty sharp — but nobody’s gonna mistake you for a guy, not even from a mile away.”
“Uh-huh. I’m saying be careful.”
“I’m sayin’ okay.”
I reached for my wallet, but she got the tab. “This one’s mine, pal. Just go home. Let’s get this one over with; get back to
what we laughingly refer to as a normal life.”
I tipped my imaginary hat to her and shuffled off toward the door. Imaginary hat, imaginary wife, imaginary magic at the top of the world. Maybe good old Lenny was the only one with a real grasp on the whole thing at that.
Chapter 17: The Golden Curtain
My apartment was dark. The whole world seemed dark. I didn’t turn on any lights this time. I went straight to the phone and unplugged it. Then I took off my coat and sat at the dining room table again, straight as an arrow, and tried to breathe like a baby, so I couldn’t notice it. You breathe in, you breathe out. That’s all. It’s all quiet and easy.
The traffic was quiet too, for a change, which was a break. Usually you could hear a siren or a gunshot or a scream — but just now the world was soft. I tried not to think about anything, and if something came into my head I tried not to hold on to it, let it drift out, like on the water. That was it: the water of it all, in me and outside of me.
And after a pretty good while, when it was all water, I opened my eyes to the golden curtain. There it was. But you have to not notice it so much or it goes away. And the angel is even more skittish. If the angel comes, you can’t let your mind go: “Look, an angel!” That chases the whole thing away. You just have to sit there. You have to not be distracted. You have to focus and not focus. You have to be in the middle of everything.
By and by the angel came and tossed up the puzzle, and all the pieces were like rain in slow motion falling on the surface of the water, making ripples, and all the images were drifting in and out: There was Lenny, the house where he lived, Teeth’s backyard, the painting of Ruby as the auburn-headed Venus, the big blue Buick, the parking lots, the naked women, a barstool at the Easy, the beatific face of Dalliance Oglethorpe, the broad, trusty shoulders of Tony Donne, Augusta’s reddish hair, the copper of the leaves raining down in Decatur, Lenny playing with his little paper airplane, Lenny playing with his little paper airplane, Lenny playing with his little paper airplane — and grim-faced monks in saffron robes at the top of the world, who looked like Linda’s father, spinning prayer wheels shaped like the Golden Potala as fast as they could to keep away the darkness.
Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 1) Page 15
