“And you sent that letter according to his wishes?”
“Well, ma’am, it ain’t like I went down to my local post office and mailed it direct. Letters go to the censors first. If that letter got outa here, I’m a pickle in a barrel of brine.”
Scraggs and I drove back to Houston. “Scraggs, when you find her you’ll take her back to Gatesville, right?”
“That’s the law.”
“Do you believe she’s entitled to a new trial?”
“I believe the laws that steer our courts should be looked at a little closer.”
“A lot of innocent people could die while that’s happening.”
He sighed. He said, “It’s out of my hands.”
“No, it’s not.”
He gripped the steering wheel a little more firmly. “I cannot be distracted from this job. Which now has become finding Rona Leigh Glueck and bringing her back to justice.”
“You don’t see your job as bigger than that? As a peace officer?”
“Not if I want to keep it.”
I looked away from him.
Then he said, “How many kids you supportin’, Poppy?”
Scraggs went back to Gatesville. Had to tuck in all those kids he was supporting. I stayed another night in the Houston hotel. The globe-trotting was getting to me.
* * *
In the hotel room, I tried my British shrink again. He was back.
“Find her?”
“No, Doc. So what about rage?”
“What about it?”
“Can you become so enraged that you take on superhuman strength?”
He sighed. “No. You merely think you have superhuman strength. When you become enraged you are ready to take on the world. Enraged drivers leap out of cars so they can go and throttle the fellow who cut them off, only to be picked up by their collars and tossed to the side of the road by the big bully who rules it. Rage does not turn you into Superman.”
“It only makes you act on impulse.”
“Exactly. Yes. Poppy, people in this country watch too much bloody wrestling. They think a person can actually lift someone over his head, twirl him about, and throw him to the ground. The rage of wrestlers is, as we know, choreographed, but for some reason people have no inclination to believe that. Spoils their fun. I’m coming to understand Americans are taskmasters at avoiding reality. Do you think that’s true?”
It is. I didn’t tell him to go back to Liverpool. Because I’ll never forget a rape victim who told me she was just such a confident person. She always felt that if she were ever accosted she would be so angry she would be able to turn on her assailant, kick him in the balls, and gouge out his eyes with her car keys. And then, unfortunately, the opportunity arose. Her attempt to fend the man off meant two black eyes and a broken jaw. For her, not him. One of her front teeth lodged in her windpipe and almost killed her. I assured her when she came out of surgery that because of the confidence she’d just described, she’d had the presence of mind to crawl across the parking lot to where he’d first hit her, pick up the three other teeth he’d knocked out, and put them in her pocket. Which meant the dentist on call at the hospital was able to stick them right back in along with the one they suctioned out of her lung. An awful lot of rape victims are reminded of their assault each time they look in the mirror to put in their bridgework. “That’s not going to be you,” I said to her, as she wept and wept.
The shrink said, “Penny for your thoughts, darling.”
Ah, the British. Always too happy to soothe your soul.
“What about sexual frenzy?”
“What about it?”
“The killing of Sharon Tate.”
He actually said “Ah-hah,” like he was Sherlock Holmes. “Well, you see when Charles Manson and his followers killed those people in California, why, yes, they were all in a frenzy. Their act took on a passionate ferocity where the killers seemingly lost themselves in the joy of the killing, so excited by the violence they were perpetrating. One of Charles Manson’s girls, the one who actually killed the actress, described to the police how satisfying it felt when the knife thrusts didn’t hit bone. She stabbed her victim forty-five times, and about half the thrusts sank the knife up to the hilt. When that happened she said she felt satisfaction. So much satisfaction that when she hit resistance, bone—when her hand slid down the knife and she sliced herself—the pain of that did not stop her. She kept going for soft tissue. After she was arrested, the police took off the rag she’d wrapped around her hand and had to get her into surgery. Stitches alone couldn’t put her shredded flesh back together.”
“So what’s your point?”
“I’m talking, once again, about religious ecstasy. I’ve discussed it with people. You can have superhuman strength in a sexual frenzy, but only if that frenzy is created in combination with religious fanaticism.”
“Rona Leigh didn’t find Jesus till after the frenzies.”
“Listen, my dear, if you Americans continue to insist on the death penalty, why not use it only when the motive has to do with personal gain? If someone kills simply because she’s a bad seed, programmed by heinous circumstances beyond her control, maybe that particular sort of killer deserves to be rehabilitated. Whereas—”
“Thanks, you’ve been a great help.” I maneuvered myself off the phone. This wasn’t about the death penalty. I was tired of explaining that. Now I was about to hit the sack when the phone rang. Joe.
“How did you know where I was?”
“I’ll tell you later. There’s an interview with the merry widower in Time magazine. It’s just out, in case you missed it. I thought—”
I didn’t even maneuver, I hung up. Joe would understand. I grabbed my purse, dug out my wallet, and went down to the lobby.
Gary even got a photo, big slick hair and all. Looked like he’d painted it with Kiwi shoe polish. I started reading the article in the elevator. There was an older photo of him too, taken at Melody’s funeral. Two knots of mourners outside the church were separated by a few feet of empty sidewalk One group was stoic-looking, well tailored, heads held high. Fred Helton stood at its center. Gary was lost in the second group, newly cleaned up, though none of the men wore suits and all the women sported Rona Leigh hair.
In his interview, Gary mostly talked about how much he had looked forward to seeing his wife’s killer caught and executed. How much he looked forward to seeing her die. He hoped that next time the drug that first puts her to sleep would be thrown out. He wanted her to feel her lungs when they wouldn’t work, feel the pain of the heart attack that would kill her. Feel her life being stolen away the way Melody had.
I needed to talk to Gary Scott again. I called the AstroBar. I got a recorded message: This here’s the AstroBar. Come on down and drink to the capture of that bitch, Rona Leigh Glueck. On the house.
I looked up the name GARY SCOTT in the Houston phone book and dialed. The Gary Scott I dialed wasn’t Melody Scott’s widower. It was an irate man who shouted, “Sumbitch! This is it. I’m gittin’ me an unlisted number!”
I opened my laptop. I searched the Houston papers. In the last few days, Gary had been interviewed, or at least quoted, everywhere. I found that “Bad-Ass Houston” was still in business and they’d interviewed him as well. In their interview, his direct quotes were printed semi-phonetically. He told them:
I intend to enjoy watchin’ that little piece a dirt die. When I’m settin’ there while Rona Leigh is gettin’ croaked one more time, I won’t take my eyes off her till she’s as dead as the two hundred armadillos between Gatesville and my bar. After that, I will close my eyes for just a second and enjoy what will happen next. [The reporter slipped in a little narrative line to point out that Gary had stopped talking long enough to slug down a bottle of Lone Star.] That’s when I’ll be seein’ Melody standin’ and waitin’ outside the Pearly Gates so’s when Rona Leigh finally gets there Melody’ll have an ax of her own. Right in her two sweet little hands. She will chop the livi
n’ shit outa that two-bit whore. Whack her into a million pieces. Then Satan’ll put the pieces together so’s Melody can have another go. Melody will ax that whore right through till Kingdom Come.
Repeating his lines for all he could get out of them.
I looked at my watch. I read the latest fax from Delby one more time. Then I changed into jeans, put on my new boots and my armadillo belt, stuck on the Stetson, and left.
* * *
The Friday-night crowd had shoveled itself into all available standing room. They happily passed beers over their heads to anyone who shouted out an order and then passed bills back up to the bartender. Gary wasn’t doing the bartending. Good. They wore western gear, and the bar—being in Texas—meant that no one had a problem with the gun butts poking out from between waistbands and gut.
Music blared: Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys singing one of their standards, “I’m an Asshole from El Paso.” Kind of song a crowd can’t help but sing along with. Most of them were.
I saw Chuck and threaded my way toward him. When he spotted me he came over and shouted into my ear, “You back?” as in Whatcha doin’, mowin’ the lawn? Wish I could get over that.
I shouted, “I’m back.”
He shouted, “What?”
I shouted louder, “I want to talk to a few people who were here the night of the murders. Were you?”
“Hey, I been here every night for twenty years. But, honey, I don’t think your budget is gonna get any of us to open up, especially me. What with Rona Leigh on the loose. We’re all scared she’s gonna show up and kill us all.”
“Is that why Gary’s not here?”
“That’s it. Figured she’da been caught in two shakes of a cow’s tail but the man was wrong. You people ain’t gettin’ the job done, if you don’t mind my sayin’.”
I shouted into his ear the contents of Delby’s fax. Then I told him he was not a priority with the Houston police as far as his involvement in the beating of a certain loan shark Thanksgiving morning of last year, but that his name could be put at the top of their list with just a phone call from me.
This was the first that Chuck heard he was even a suspect in the crime. I could tell by the sudden slackness in his jaw. But he shored his face back up after a moment and he said, “That guy would shake down his own granny, rip off her fingernails if he needed a laugh.”
“First, he’d have to get out of his full body cast, wouldn’t he?”
The cowboy shrugged. Then he scanned the crowd. Every head was turned our way. He looked back to me. “My stock is way, way up. They’re all wonderin’ where I latched onto the fox.” He picked a strand of my spiraled hair from my shoulder and gave it a little toss. Houston humidity had given it a great perm. “I think I got just the customers you’re lookin’ for. But they’re hard up. They’ll be welcome of a bribe unless you got something on them, too.”
He felt hurt. Too bad. “I always pack a little slush.”
He looked back to the crowd and crooked his finger at a couple slow-dancing, very slow-dancing. They weren’t moving, just standing, hips pressed up against hips. The couple looked toward him. Chuck led me out the door and they followed.
The man’s name was Stick, the woman’s, Pinky.
He told them they’d all three get an early Christmas present, a damned good one, if they chose to tell me what was going down at the bar the night Melody and James were killed. All three. Chuck would have his cake and eat it too.
Pinky said, “What’s the present?”
“Couple hundred for you two, couple hundred for me.”
Pinky said, “Well, hell, just tell us where you want us to start from.”
I said, “From the minute you saw something was up.”
Chuck made a noise that was akin to hee-haw. He said, “Somethin’ was up when Melody walked in the door. Hadn’t been around in the last few days, but she didn’t wait long enough for the black eye to fade out all the way. So she’s flirtin’ around here and there, and once she comes on that dude, James, she starts to rev up.”
I asked if they knew James.
Pinky said, “Nah. I seen him a few times. He liked to stay by his-self’cept when he was yearnin’ for some female company. He got a ride with someone from the motel to the bar. No car. He didn’t have any notion Melody was Gary’s wife. But Melody made sure to stay right in Gary’s line of sight, didn’t she, Stick?”
Stick: “Sure as hell did.”
Pinky: “Rubbin’ up against James like a calf to a cow. James put his hand on Melody’s butt and she didn’t make any move to shift away. That’s when we knew trouble was on its way.”
Stick: “Next thing, the two a them are goin’ out the door while he’s still feelin’ her up. Not that this was anything all that new for Melody.”
Pinky: “’Cept this James was one real cute dude.”
Stick: “Once they was out, Gary just kept handin’ out Lone Stars, same as always, drinkin’ a few hisself. Then he started lookin’ at his watch, lookin’ at it a lot, pacin’ a little bit too, ya know? Mutterin’ to hisself, sloppin’ beer on the customers, watchin’ the door. Hour went by, they didn’t come back. That’s when he knew Melody’d taken off with James, sure. A quick one out in the back of a truck is one thing, but he knew she was intendin’ a whole night a fun. She crossed the line. Gary threw a towel at Chuck here and told him to take over.”
Pinky took a pack of cigarettes out of her shirt pocket and offered them around. I declined. The three of them lit up.
Pinky: “Soon’s he was gone, Chuck says to me, ‘Hope he don’t find ’em.’”
Stick: “But he did.”
Pinky blew out a stream of smoke. “Melody drove James to his motel room, one he rented at the weekly rate. His mattress was on the floor because one corner of the bed frame collapsed. He’d throwed the frame in the Dumpster outside.”
I asked her how she’d come by that information. Chuck and Stick snickered.
Pinky pushed her chest out. “I been there one night. James was just a kid, see? Lonesome. He liked to make out is all. Fool around. He had a little fridge with bottles a beer in it. But see, his air conditioner didn’t work. He didn’t care. I cared. Nighttime, I got to have my AC. So I told him I’d be seein’ him some other time, thank you all the same. Too bad his not havin’ AC didn’t bother Melody. Well, maybe it did. But she was there to get even with Gary, not to keep cool. For the black eye.”
Stick: “So Gary comes back—he’s gone about a hour hisself—tells some people Melody is fuckin’ that cowboy in a motel and then he starts whinin’ that he only smacked her, didn’t mean to give her a black eye. Said he didn’t deserve that kinda shit. So then he’s drinkin’ heavier and heavier, gettin’ madder and madder, and finally he says to a few of us, ‘Any a you seen Lloyd Bailey tonight?’”
Pinky: “Nobody seen ’im.”
Chuck: “Nobody. Too bad. Lloyd used to come around, buy drugs from Gary. But once he’d took up with that hooker Rona Leigh, he let her handle the drug supply. Lloyd rather be with her ’steada hangin’ out at the bar, which was fine with us ’cause Lloyd Bailey had one dangerous temper. Meaner ’n’ a rattler on a hot skillet. A brawl’s one thing, but Lloyd liked to cut.”
Pinky hugged herself.
“Word came down later Rona Leigh’d struck gold that night. She got herself a stash of heroin from an old friend she used to do business with, gal who owed her. Lloyd and Rona Leigh were home shootin’ up.”
I asked, “What did Gary do?”
“Pinky knows exactly what he done. And I mean exactly.”
Pinky put her nose up in the air. “Gary came into the back room of the bar where there’s a phone. Where I happened to be.”
Stick: “Where she happened to be givin’ the former owner a blow job.”
Pinky: “We was engaged.”
Chuck: “You was engaged, all right.”
Pinky: “Only way you could get a blow job, mister, is to hold a gun to a girl
’s head. And even then.”
Me again: “What did Gary do?”
“He called Lloyd. Couldn’t make Lloyd understand him at first. Here’s why. See, I got a girlfriend who was friends with Rona Leigh for a while? She heard, after they finished their heroin that night, they cooked up a little crack and then followed up with a surprise dessert Rona Leigh come by. She’d bought a twenty-four-bottle case a cough syrup from a kid for five bucks. Dimetapp. Twenty percent alcohol is my understandin’. Makes it forty proof. She did it because Lloyd had a sweet tooth. Liked to make her man happy, ’cause Lloyd surely did do right by her.”
Chuck: “’Cause a Lloyd, she was off the streets.”
Pinky asked if I wanted to know what Gary said. Chuck said to me, “Ain’t this girl some kinda idiot?” Then, to Pinky, “She wants to know or she wouldn’t be throwin’ hundred-dollar bills at us, would she?”
Pinky stuck her tongue out at him. Then she said, “Gary told Lloyd that James Munter stole his bike. Told him where to find James. Told him James was with his own wife. Said Melody informed him earlier she was goin’ to fuck James, and once she was done she was goin’ after him—Lloyd—next. He told Lloyd, ‘See, my wife wants to have a ride on a good bike. Yours.’”
Chuck: “Ain’t it just a sonofabitch?”
Out came Pinky’s cigarettes. They all lit up anew. They were agitated.
“Then what happened?”
Chuck: “We all know what happened. Melody and James got theirselves axed to death. Lloyd did it. If he told Rona Leigh what Gary had said about Melody havin’ the hots for him, Rona Leigh mighta gotten in a few licks. But I doubt he told her.”
Pinky: “I doubt it too. I don’t believe Lloyd woulda told Rona Leigh about that there part.”
I asked, “Why not?”
Pinky: “He loved Rona Leigh.”
They all took deep drags on their cigarettes. Stick said, “Pinky’s right. Lloyd had no interest in makin’ Rona Leigh jealous. And he woulda had no interest in Melody whatsoever. It was Rona Leigh he wanted, and he had her.”
Love Her Madly Page 22
