Lost in New York: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 5)

by J. J. Henderson

  Just a few weeks ago Lucy had heard through the fraying but still intact college grapevine that Bill and Robin had separated bitterly, and now battled for possession of the house. Robin had moved to an apartment on Queen Anne Hill, Bill had moved downtown to Pioneer Square, and the house was empty pending resolution of their disagreements. They had each hired lawyers. On hearing this Lucy had shrugged it off as none of her business, since she had no plans to travel west. But Sunday night she'd called Robin from Portland to talk, and within minutes, with death and divorce on their dance cards, Lucy had decided to head up to Seattle to pay the girl a visit. Maybe even see Bill too, hear both sides.

  In Seattle she zipped off the freeway and headed to Queen Anne, where Robin was holed up in an apartment on the west side of the hill.

  Robin was Lucy's age plus a couple of years, black-haired, green-eyed, and lightly freckled, five ten and skinny. As they embraced, she felt and looked even thinner than Lucy remembered, and on close examination her eyes appeared hollow and haunted. She looked like she hadn't slept in days, but as always, she was living well, on the upper level of a three story house hanging on the hill over the rail yards of Interbay. She had a spectacular view of the Sound and Magnolia and the jagged edge of the Olympics. "Yeah, well, it ain't Perkins Lane though, is it?" she said, as Lucy commented on the view.

  "So who's in the house?" Lucy asked. "What's the..."

  "Let's go get some liquid lunch," Robin said. "This story calls for daytime alcohol."

  "And food," Lucy said. "Rob, you look like you need to eat a lot of food."

  They went to the Five Spot on Queen Anne Avenue, got a table, and ordered margaritas as they sat down. "So..."

  "God, I'm so sorry about your Dad," Robin said. "He was so young."

  "Yeah. Just 61. I don't know what my mom's gonna do," Lucy said. "She's like..."

  "How are you doing, Luce?"

  "Fine, fine," Lucy said. The margaritas arrived. She shook her head. "Fuck, that's just what my Mom answered when I asked her the same question, with the same well-meaning intensity, a couple of days ago. Fine, fine. Just a dead friend in New York, and a dead father in Portland is all." She grinned a little bitterly, and tasted her drink. "It's perfect," she said to the waitress. "Thanks." She lifted her glass. "To..." Robin picked her own glass up.

  "The future," Robin said, and they both drank.

  "Aaah," Lucy said, putting down the glass. "It's nice to get wacked by daylight every now and then." She looked at the menu. "So anyways, I don't know how I am, Robin. It is so weird." She looked at her friend. "I don't know how I feel. I mean, I feel sad, and worry about what my Mom's going to do, but...as for my own feelings about my Dad...I don't know, he was always so remote, and kind of nasty, and then I left. The way people talk these days, I guess I should be happy he didn't beat the shit out of me or try to hump me every night when I was a kid. This damn confessional stuff is enough to..."

  "Bill's gay," Robin interjected.

  "What?"

  "That's why we split up. He came out a couple of months ago."

  "Gay?" Lucy gaped. "Bill? But you guys...you've been together forever. I mean, what about the kid at 35 plan, and..."

  "Well, I'm 36 and as you can see there ain't no kid, honey. Thank God, since my husband...my ex-husband...has a husband of his own now." She smiled bitterly. "A 26- year old new age dweeb from Ohio. A chiropractor, for God's sake!"

  "Bill's in love with a 26 year old male chiropractor from Ohio?" Lucy couldn't help but smirk, and Robin couldn't help but smirk back. "What the hell! A boy back cracker. When…how did you find out?"

  "He announced it one night, after yet another failed fuck." She sipped her drink. "And there I was thinking he'd taken up with another woman. I tell you this is the most...it's so weird, I look back over all these years, and try to figure out what I did wrong. What I did to..."

  "It's a force of nature, honey."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I've never met a gay man who had any choice in the matter, Rob. I mean to say, there's absolutely nothing in the world you could have done to...in fact, you must have been doing a pretty good job of keeping the boy happy if your marriage lasted this long. That is if he's really gay."

  "Oh, he is, believe me."

  "Jesus, I hate to ask this, but...was he going out on...did he start cruising a long time ago, I mean when you guys were..."

  "He swears not...but I got tested anyways. Negative. So's Bill."

  "Thank God."

  "Yeah. His new line is, if I hadn't waited this long to come out I'd probably be dead."

  "Ha," Lucy said drily.

  "Yeah. Ha ha ha." Robin finished her drink. "My God, we should order before I get totally crocked. I haven't had a margarita in months, and it's been even longer since I had one at noon."

  And so they drank on, and ate Seattle Tex-Mex food, and talked away the afternoon. Lucy convinced Robin to jettison Bill's last name and become Robin Waters, Architect. Then Robin talked Lucy into moving to Seattle, where they would open an office together, selling building designs, pictures, and words; or go back to college and become lawyers, or marry sensitive, feminized, yet still manly lawyers and live happily ever after in big houses in Bellevue, enthroned in vibrator chairs at the holistic hair salon, talking about the good old days and worrying about the price of arugula and the status of their rose bushes, stocks, and children. Then they realized there were no children, stocks, or rose bushes, and they laughed and laughed, and then cried too, not because there were no children but because Lucy's friend and father had died, and Robin's husband had left her for another man. At four they drove slowly and quietly back to Robin's where she passed out on the bed and Lucy passed out on the couch. Before doing so, she called the Seattle number she'd gotten from Tim Bob Chain Saw Yarber at the Chelsea Hotel a couple of lifetimes back. The message was pure static, climaxed with the sound of a chain saw starting up, and then the beep. "Clever, Tim Bob," she said. "This is New York Lucy calling. I'm here in Seattle, and hoping you are too. If so, if you want to see me, call me at my friend's place, here's the number."

  She woke in the dark, with a bleary headache. It was early evening, a bad time for a hangover. Train wheels shrieked on the tracks in Interbay. Robin stood there in the half-light, radiating sadness, the phone in her hand. "It's for you, Lucy. Some guy named Zeno. Says he has a message from a Chain Saw for you."

  "Oh Christ," Lucy said, sitting up. "Chain Saw. He's this...he's a singer," she said, taking the phone. "What time is it? Hello?"

  "Is this Lucy Ripken?"

  "Yeah. What's..."

  "I'm Zeno. I work with Prophets management." He paused to let the importance of that sink in. "Listen, Chain's doing a sound check so he didn't have a minute to call but he said you're on the list for the band's unadvertised gig at the Crocodile Cafe tonight, if you wanna make it he'd love to see you starts at ten should I tell him you'll be there?"

  "Whoa, whoa...Give me a plus one and I'll give you a maybe."

  "Plus one what?"

  "Can I bring a friend?"

  "Um, OK. Should be a really good show. Keep it under your hat but Chris Novoselic may show up to jam."

  "Who?"

  "You don't know who Chris Novoselic is?"

  "The president of Croatia?"

  "Nirvana. He was the bass player." He said it softly, reverently.

  "Great. Well, listen, Zeno, I gotta do a face check, so tell Tim Bob...er, Chain Saw...I'll catch him at half-time."

  "Cool," said Zeno. Lucy put down the phone.

  "Cool," said Lucy. "Yo Rob, you wanna go hear some loud obnoxious rock n' roll tonight? Drink more drinks and possibly get stupid enough to chase some long-haired, bad-mannered boys?"

  Robin shrugged. "Sounds better than sitting around here with a headache."

  Lucy wore black jeans and a black t-shirt. Robin wore blue jeans and a black t-shirt. They left at nine, headed down into Belltown. Not exactly the East Village, but there wer
e people wandering around on foot, and slow-moving cars full of bridge and tunnel heads. On this coast, bridge and ferry. The Crocodile Cafe was a funkily-decorated combination bar, restaurant, and live music joint in the middle of Belltown, and on this particular night there was a line outside the door of the music room, while the bar and restaurant were nearly full. Apparently word had gotten out on the Prophets' secret gig. Lucy and Robin sat at the bar eating Caesar salad and waiting for the aspirin to kick in. Looking around the room at the club kids, Lucy said to Robin, "Why are we here?"

  "I thought you were hot for this Chain Saw character," said Robin. "Damn, Lucy don't make me answer that question. I'm just an old lady out for a good time." Her grin, meant to signal the joke, was strained.

  "Say it ain't so, hon," Lucy said. Why was it the things that made them laugh in the afternoon were no longer funny? Lucy caught a flash of the two of them in the bar back mirror, heads between glittering bottles, and looked away. "Hey, let's hit it," she said, shaking off the blues and sliding off the barstool. "It's nearly ten."

  Lucy's New York technique got them to the front of the line quickly. A boy in black with a Samurai topknot hairdo checked her off the guest list and they entered the music room. Stage to the left, tables and chairs strewn in disorganized fashion throughout, a bar in the right rear, and no design. The place was so non-descript it had charm, like a school cafeteria from the 1950s.

  They sat in the back, with beers, watching the room fill. In New York the clubs were crowded with hipsters and wannabe cool characters aged from fifteen to sixty, but here, less than a dozen among several hundred people looked over thirty. Robin's anxiety was palpable: Lucy watched her look over the mob, and could see the fear of loneliness welling in Robin's eyes. Nothing to worry about, babe, you just...live your life. Wake up alone, breathe deep, get a dog to talk to, put on your shoes and run a few miles, work. The hours, days, weeks, years go by. Where was Mr. Chain Saw? Lucy finished her beer and waved her empty mug at Robin, who polished off her own and handed the empty to Lucy with a nod. Apparently the two women were going to get drunk twice in one day. This was not smart, but Lucy, headed to the bar to re-load, didn't care at the moment. This surge of self-destructive energy was kind of exciting. It had been years since she'd felt such a mindless rush of, "Who the fuck cares?" Who the fuck cared if the rush came from misery?

  Then she saw her: Patricia Moody. Rather, someone who looked exactly like her, in profile, across the room. Only the ring glinting in this woman's nose gave her away. Patty never wore a ring in her nose. Never would. Especially since she was dead. Lucy gasped, staring, then shook her head. Christ, Patty, why'd you have to go and die? She turned to the bar. The woman tending it had black-dyed hair, zombie-white skin, a nose ring in her left nostril and another ring looping out of the right side of her pale, exposed navel. She looked dead, actually, except for the friendly sparkle in her eyes. It was tough to be morbidly fashionable in the Northwest. The air was too clean, and there weren't enough psychotics in the streets. "Couple more of these, honey," said Lucy. "I need to get numb ASAP."

  "Why don't you try tequila? It's much faster," said the bartender as she drew the beers.

  "Had it for lunch," Lucy said. "I'm trying to vary the menu. In fact, you got any smack? I could use some dope, know what I mean?"

  "Yeah, sure. You want Mexican or Chinese?" she laughed, sliding the beers across the counter. "Actually," she lowered her voice and glanced around furtively. "I could talk to somebody who might be able to get you some shit, if you're really interested..." she looked at Lucy speculatively.

  Lucy thought about it for a moment. "No, I was just kidding. I...alcohol's it for me these days, hon. But thanks anyways." She threw some bills on the counter. "Keep the change." She found Robin, and handed her a beer. "I just turned down a chance to buy some dope. You interested?"

  "Lucy, really. I haven't even smoked a joint in like seven years!" She said indignantly, and then grinned. "How much?"

  "I didn't actually let the conversation get that far, Rob," she said. "Should I have?"

  "Nah," Robin said. "I'm feeling crazy enough already."

  "Me too," Lucy said. "On the other hand..."

  "Hey, it's ten-thirty, the place is packed, and I have to make a major presentation at nine tomorrow morning. Where's your pal Mr. Saw?" Up on stage people conferred, testing amps and mikes.

  "Any second now, I'm sure, your life will be changed by the Wet Prophets," Lucy said.

  A moment later, the crowd in front of them lunged forward as the band took the stage, sans announcement and lead singer, and quietly picked up their instruments and commenced fine tuning. A second surge, accompanied by a kind of group shriek, followed, as Chain Saw, leading a guy carrying a bass and wearing a brown paper bag over his head, emerged from backstage and walked up front. "Yo Seattle," said Chain Saw, grinning. "Good to be back in town. Good to see you." He threw his arm around the shoulder of the guy with the bass, and suddenly jerked the bag off his head. "This here's Chris Novoselic." The audience shrieked, pushing towards the stage. "He's gonna play a few tunes with us tonight." The guitar player ripped a chord. "So let's get fuckin' down!" Chain Saw shouted, and the band rammed into a loud, hard, three chord monster of a song. The crowd went crazy.

  Lucy felt the adrenaline surge as Chain Saw strutted around the stage in his grubby jeans, his slender white chest bared. Remembering the feel of that chest under her fingers, she looked at Robin, who grimaced, and stuck her fingers in her ears. "Too loud," she said. "How can you stand it?"

  Lucy shrugged. Robin was right. It was brutally loud. The room was half the size of the space she'd seen them in in New York, and surely tonight they had their amps cranked up twice as high. Her headache throbbed with the double bass beat. But so did her body, and after a moment she couldn't help but move with it, as the first song segued into the second with hardly a pause between. Lucy edged forward, on the fringe of the pulsating mob. Robin grabbed her arm, and leaned close. "Lucy, I can't do it," she shouted. "I gotta go. Can you take a cab?"

  "Yeah, I'll get back one way or another," Lucy shouted back. "Don't worry. Talk to you in the morning. Later, hon."

  Robin waved and disappeared in the direction of the door, leaving Lucy alone with her headache, her frenzy, and her yearning. She let herself drift forward, her body supported by the surging bodies surrounding her, and she fell into a kind of metallic trance, watching Chain Saw driving the music, being driven by it. She wanted so desperately to lose herself, and watching him, enveloped in the mania of maximum rock n' roll, she slipped away into that loud, defiant place where her body felt everything, and her mind felt nothing.

  Two hours later the set and its three encores ended, and Lucy found herself with a dozen other people, mostly girls, lined up at the stage door. She had been unable to make contact with Chain Saw during the set; and now it was one fifteen in the morning and her head felt hammered, but she didn't want to go home or stop what the music had started. The line of well-wishers and groupies moved forward quickly. Some got through the door, others didn't. The pretty young girls did. Lucy knew she was reasonably pretty, but she wasn't quite so young. The guy at the door looked at her quizzically. "What's up?"

  "I'm a friend of Tim...of Chain's. Lucy Rip..."

  "Lucy...hey, I'm Zeno. C'mon in. Chain said to be sure and get you back here if you showed up." She couldn't help but feel a little thrill of satisfaction as she waltzed backstage, one of the privileged few. She paused in the doorway of the dressing room.

  Inside, the lights were so dim she could hardly see across the room, a featureless twenty by twenty box packed with people—the long-haired, scruffily-dressed boys in the band, a couple of even scruffier-looking roadies, two Armani-clad record company-looking dudes with little tiny ponytails, and assorted girls. Piles of clothes and equipment, a couple of ice chests full of bottled beer. It hadn't been ten minutes since they ended the set, but everybody spoke softly, in muted tones, and—this struck Lu
cy as surrealistically odd after the sonic barrage she had just experienced—Vivaldi's Four Seasons played background. There were at least ten girls in the room. Hanging around the members of the band, uniformly cool, collected, and beautiful, these girls radiated, above all, availability. That was their job: serious groupies. After all, the Wet Prophets had just signed a major label contract and completed a successful national tour. Not one of the women looked over 25. Tim Bob Chain Saw Yarber sat on a table with a beer in one hand. An Asian woman was massaging his bare white shoulders. She had long, jet-black hair, deep red lipstick, fine, exotic features, and a great body wrapped in a low-cut black velvet dress. She was so hot she practically smoked. Two other equally ravishing girls stood close by watching, and looked as if they wanted nothing more from life than an opportunity to participate in the rubbing of Chain Saw's shoulders.

  Lucy watched for a moment, then gathering a little nerve she raised her voice to say, "Yo, Tim Bob, what's up?" and strode into the room like she belonged there. She went straight for him. "Hey, you guys were great out there tonight," she said, a little too loudly. The room ruffled slightly. Was this an uncool person entering the inner sanctum? She could feel the hysteria rising like a tide beneath her own brittle, exhausted surfaces. She'd put the make-up on thick tonight, and at the moment was glad for it.

  "Hi...uh...Lucy!" said Tim Bob, shrugging out from under the babe's massage. He had almost misplaced her name there, Lucy sensed, and if he had, she would have had to walk. Instead the Asian beauty backed off, and with her two friends drifted a few feet. Their eyes stayed riveted to Lucy, lovely smiles frozen on their faces. Like, who is this aging bitch cutting in on our rock star? "Hey its cool you showed up," Tim Bob said. "What's it been, four days since we played that gig in New York? How are you? How'd you get out here so fast?" He lowered his voice. "Hey, what's the story, anyways? I got a call at my hotel in Boston from some New York cop, wanted to know what you were doing the other night. What was..."