“Tell me more about Pecos Peggy.”
Sebulsky said, “She’s a full eclipse—a real class item! She got the bluest eyes in this whole fucking solar system!”
Lockington nodded, motioning for a refill. Here he was in a major league stud poker game, the blue chips were down, and he’d just caught a deuce in the hole. Not bad. Deuces were wild, dealer’s choice, and Lockington was dealing, he kept telling himself.
49
He drove a mile or so south on Raccoon Road before locating a cozy little restaurant—Giamotti’s, typically Italian. Red lamps, red tablecloths, red carpeting, travel posters on the walls—Venice, Rome, Naples, Genoa. He ordered a bottle of beer and a small antipasto. The beer was the way Lockington liked it, bitter cold, and the antipasto was excellent. He lit a cigarette, found a pay telephone, and rang the number of Natasha Gorky’s fifth-floor lady friend. Natasha answered on the first ring. “Lacey?”
“Yep.”
“You’re in Youngstown?”
“Yep.”
“Are you all right?”
“By the skin of my teeth.”
“What do you mean?” There was concern in her voice.
“I’ll explain later. How about you?”
“So far, so good. I haven’t seen the Mafia man in the green Trans Am since yesterday afternoon, but the CIA fellow is tagging along. I can lose him when I want to.”
“The green Trans Am is in Ohio—the Mafia eliminated Billy Mac Davis early this morning.”
“He’s dead?”
“Just a bit.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. We’ll talk about it when you get here.”
“When should I come?”
“Tomorrow, if possible.”
“All right, I’ll get clearance at the embassy in the morning. Where are you staying?”
“Room Twelve, New Delhi Motel, Mahoning Avenue, Austintown—Austintown’s the first suburb west of Youngstown.” He gave her directions. “What about the house on Onines Avenue?”
“It’s owned by a James Slagle. Apparently he’s a traveling man—he’s never at home and the neighbors know nothing about him.”
“How did you get this?”
“I sent a man out there this morning—an insurance salesman, ostensibly. Have you been to the place you mentioned—the Club Crossroads?”
“I’ll make it later this evening. Who’s the honcho at the Chicago CIA office?”
“Do you want to contact him?”
“Not yet—he’s just a kicker.”
“His name’s Carruthers—Stanley Carruthers. He’s a graduate of Cornell University, he played basketball there—he’s six-three, he weighs one-eighty, he lives in Wilmette, he’s thirty-six, brown-eyed, balding, he has a habit of tugging at his left ear, he wears tinted spectacles, he’s Missouri Synod Lutheran, he has two children, twelve and ten, Harry and Estelle, Estelle wears braces. Carruthers is a good family man, he doesn’t smoke, drink, or gamble—he drives an ’eighty-eight white Toyota Camry, Illinois license plates TK two-nine-seven-eight.”
“And you’ve been in bed with him.”
“Just once.”
Lockington said, “Oh, my God.”
“Lacey, it’s my job—can’t you understand that?”
“Well, I gotta say one thing—you’re certainly a frank bitch!”
“Why are you shouting—where are you?”
“In a restaurant—who’s shouting?”
“You’re shouting. Are you angry?”
“No, I’m in a state of fucking euphoria!”
Natasha Gorky’s silvery laugh tumbled over the line. She said, “You’re slahduhk!”
Lockington snarled, “If that means stupid, I know it!” He slammed the telephone onto its hook, turning to go back to his table. He stopped, reversed course, and called again, dropping several quarters in the process.
Natasha answered immediately. Lockington roared, “And what’s more, you be mighty goddamned careful coming through Indiana—they got a whole bunch of road repair work going on there!”
He hung up. From a corner table an elderly white-haired lady was staring apprehensively at him. This baffled Lockington. At her age she must have seen hundreds of broken-down private detectives who’d just fallen ass-over-tea-kettles in love with beautiful young KGB agents.
50
Fearful that his welcome might have worn a bit thin, Lockington paid his tab at the little Italian restaurant and looked for a place with a telephone. He wanted to call Moose Katzenbach in Chicago. He found a tavern further south on Raccoon Road—Moo-Moo’s Place. There wasn’t a customer in sight but the woman behind the bar smiled hospitably. She had a huge pink ribbon in her mouse-colored hair and she weighed somewhere in excess of three hundred pounds. She said, “Hi, I’m Moo-Moo.”
Lockington said, “Hi, I’m thirsty—let me have a bottle of beer, please.”
Moo-Moo popped a glass onto the bar, jerked a bottle of Rolling Rock out of the cooler, opened it, and spilled half of it into Lockington’s lap. She said, “Oooops!”
Lockington shrugged. He said, “Think nothing of it. Hardly a day goes by but what I get a bottle of beer poured in my lap.”
Moo-Moo said, “Sorry about that.”
Lockington said, “You see, on those days when I don’t get a bottle of beer poured in my lap I become disconsolate and ill at ease.”
Moo-Moo said, “Hey, looky, I told you I was sorry, didn’t I?”
Lockington said, “Why, just yesterday I didn’t get a bottle of beer poured in my lap, and I developed a severe case of indigestion and constipation set in.”
Moo-Moo’s hands went to her hips. She said, “Now listen, buster, I already apologized! Whaddaya want, a fucking seven-piece fucking string ensemble playing fucking ‘Moonlight and Roses?’”
Lockington shook his head. “I never liked that one—could they maybe do ‘When My Fucking Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again?’”
Moo-Moo said, “Take your pants off.”
Lockington stared at her. He said, “Well, I’m a sonofabitch!”
Moo-Moo said, “Get outta those pants and I’ll dry ’em over the stove in the back room.”
Lockington said, “All I want is a telephone—I gotta call Chicago.”
“There’s a phone in the basement. Throw your pants up to the landing and I’ll get ’em dried out while you’re calling Chicago. The call’s on the house. That’s fair, ain’t it?”
Lockington shrugged. She showed him the stairs, Lockington went down, took off his pants, threw them up to her, found the telephone and called the Roundhouse Café in Chicago. Sadie Berlitz answered. Lockington recognized Sadie’s voice instantly. Sadie sounded just like Betty Boop. She said, “Lacey, I recognized your voice instantly! You sound just like Popeye!”
Lockington said, “Is Moose Katzenbach there?”
“Sure is.”
“Can I speak to him?”
“You can if I can pry him loose from that blonde in his booth.”
Lockington waited, listening to a polka on the Roundhouse Café’s jukebox. Polkas had always been popular at the Roundhouse Café. Eventually Moose took the phone and Lockington said, “Sadie just told me that you’re hooked up with a real hot item.”
There was a guarded silence before Moose said, “’Right about now the hot part ain’t all that important. What’s important is this is a woman I can talk to. Y’know, Lacey, there’s some things that men just can’t discuss with men. You get where I’m coming from?”
“Yeah, Moose, I get where you’re coming from. What’s happening in Chicago?”
“Hotter than Kelsey’s nuts here—might rain tomorrow. Cubs lose to Houston seven-one, Nolan Ryan beat the Moyer kid. Something on your mind?” Moose seemed vague, preoccupied. A blonde in the booth can really mess up a man’s thinking.
Lockington said, “There’s a house out in unincorporated Leyden Township—Three Thousand North Onines Avenue. Know where Onines is?”
“A few blocks east of Wolf Road, north of Grand Avenue, as I figure it.”
“What about it?”
“Bust into it.”
“Jesus, Christ, Lacey, you serious?”
“Damn right, I’m serious—it could be important.”
“When?”
“Pronto—tonight.”
“What if I get nailed?”
“You won’t get nailed—they got county police protection in unincorporated Leyden. The county cops spend their time holed up in Mannheim Road greasy spoons, gargling coffee and goosing waitresses—takes ’em two hours to answer a call.”
“What am I looking for?”
“Hell, I don’t know—anything of interest. The owner doesn’t spend much time there, apparently.”
“Apparently? Apparently ain’t so fucking encouraging!”
“Just do the best you can with it, Moose—play it by ear.”
“Okay—where can I reach you?”
“Room Twelve, New Delhi Motel, Austintown, Ohio. I may be out late tonight—if you run into something, keep ringing until you get me.”
Moose hung up. Lockington went to the foot of the stairs. He hollered, “My pants dry yet?”
Moo-Moo threw the pants down. They landed at Lockington’s feet, a smoking hole in their crotch. Moo-Moo said, “You wanna call Winnipeg?”
51
In his old blue Pontiac Catalina and his new blue K-mart pants, Lacey Lockington closed in on the Club Crossroads. It was set back some seventy-five yards south of Mahoning Avenue, the several acres surrounding it covered by neatly yellow-lined blacktop. A half-dozen uniformed men patroled the expanse, waving flashlights, shouting instructions, guiding automobiles into parking slots. It was shortly before ten o’clock on the last Saturday evening in May, the Ohio night air was balmy. There was a fragrant light breeze out of the west, there were more stars than Lockington had seen in one sky since he’d been in Vietnam, there was a huge yellow crescent moon nuzzling the flank of a wispy stray cloud. A carnival atmosphere drenched the parking area, men laughed, women tittered, and Lockington slammed the Pontiac’s rusty door, joining the holiday weekend throng in the long hike across the macadam to the big red building with the bright green neon CLUB CROSSROADS sprawled across its roof peak.
He passed a belligerent-looking security man at the entrance and he paused momentarily, taking in his surroundings before seating himself at a small rough-hewn table, the splintered surface of which supported a black tin ashtray and a guttering candle in a red glass chimney. There were more than a hundred such tables, Lockington figured. They poked mushroomlike from the sawdust floor, encircling the gaunt wooden stage in the center of the place, and better than half of them were occupied at that comparatively early nightclubbing hour. The Club Crossroads bar took up the entire east wall of the building. It was crowded, its five blue-jacketed bartenders hustling to handle the demand. A dozen or so young ladies wearing floppy western hats, sequined shirts, imitation cowhide vests, brown corduroy shorts, and highheeled cowboy boots ranged the compound, smiling, chatting, jotting orders on pads. One of them pulled up at Lockington’s elbow and he asked for a bottle of Rolling Rock beer. She nodded and moved on, pausing at other tables on her way to the service bar. Lockington leaned back on a wobbly wooden chair, lighting a cigarette, frowning an appreciative frown. In a financially depressed area the Club Crossroads amounted to a major league operation.
The beer arrived—one dollar fifty, a fair nightclub price. In Chicago it was averaging two and a half in the sleaziest of joints. Lockington handed his waitress three singles, accepting fifty cents in change. He said, “When does Pecos Peggy come on?”
The girl tilted the brim of her Stetson, glancing at an old-fashioned Sessions clock high on the wall. “Right away—about ten minutes. She works half hour on, half hour off.”
He’d just started on his second bottle of Rolling Rock when the turnout began to murmur. Then the Club Crossroads erupted in a jungle roar and Lockington turned to the stage. Pecos Peggy was coming up the steps, waving, smiling, some five feet eight inches of dark-haired lissome female clad in a skin-tight short black satin dress, black-seamed fishnet stockings, and four-inch-heeled red pumps. There was a tight double strand of pearls at her throat and a slim bold bracelet on her right wrist. John Sebulsky had been dead right—she was beautiful, nearly as beautiful as Natasha Gorky, and her eyes were as blue as an October sky. She paused on the lip of the stage, a veteran show-woman, sizing up her audience before lifting a hand microphone from its stand and stepping to centerstage, laughing now, waiting for the commotion to die down. She was queen of the Club Crossroads, mistress of all she surveyed, the darling of that multitude, and she knew it. The overhead lights dimmed and there was something undeniably regal about Pecos Peggy when she turned to her lead guitar player, a slim, bearded, hatchet-faced fellow in gray denim jacket and jeans. She said, “Marty, let’s kick it off with ‘Down to My Last Broken Heart.’” The crowd roared affirmation of her choice and Marty twanged out an introduction, repeating it several times before the torrent of sound subsided.
Then Pecos Peggy was clutching the mike with both hands, holding it as she might have held the face of a midnight lover, singing to it, not at it. Her left foot was planted forward, her right leg was slightly cocked at the knee, she was leaning into her song, feeling it, caressing it, giving of herself. This was no gravel-throated hog-caller from southeastern Georgia. Her voice was gentle, crystal clear, her tremolo controlled; she had range, dropping to low notes effortlessly, floating to upper registers with unconcerned ease. Her stage mannerisms reminded Lockington of Bobbie Jo Pickens, but they were less pronounced. Bobbie Jo’s bawdy gaudiness wasn’t there, and he didn’t miss it. She was a singer, not a belter, a portrait in oils, not a cartoon, and when she’d finished “Down to My Last Broken Heart,” Lockington found himself on his feet, joining in the tumult. He was no critic, country music had never topped his list of preferences, but if Bobbie Jo Pickens had been good, Pecos Peggy was excellent.
She sang “I Wish That I Could Fall in Love Today” and the roof nearly came off the Club Crossroads. She took a short breather, stepping to one side, snapping her fingers, doing a nifty little dance step to an instrumental of “Roadside Rag.” When it was over, she thanked her musicians, introducing them individually, then collectively as “the best darned country band in the business,” leading the applause for them. Then she took a deep breath, lifted the mike close to her lips, and slid into “Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind?” That threw the switch. Lockington counted half a dozen simultaneous but unrelated fistfights at the bar, three more at the tables. Bouncers materialized, moving in with barracuda speed, tossing the brawlers about like cordwood, sifting them, ejecting the chaff from the building. Pecos Peggy sang on, covering the ruckus with “Break It to Me Gently,” and “Old Flames Can’t Hold a Candle to You.” The big red barn on Mahoning Avenue was filling with people, swelling with sound, Pecos Peggy was an event—with one more like her, the wrong promoter could have started World War III. When she left the stage at ten-thirty, tripping light-footedly down the bouncer-lined sawdust aisle leading to her dressing room, the crowd went limp, like a fighter on his ring-stool, conserving energy for the next round.
Lockington’s waitress returned and he ordered another bottle of Rolling Rock before taking the flyer he’d come prepared to take. He tossed a five-dollar bill onto her tray. He said, “Tell Pecos Peggy that a friend of Rufe Devereaux is in the audience—tell her that he’d like to meet her.”
The girl’s face was blank, the name meant nothing to her, but she tucked the money into a pocket of her imitation cowhide vest. She said, “Rufe Dev-er-oo?”
Lockington nodded. “You got it—‘Dev-er-oo.’”
The waitress frowned. “Okay, I’ll tell her, but you’re wasting your time—Peggy doesn’t date customers.”
“Honey, I’m not trying to date her—Peggy and
I had a mutual acquaintance, there’s nothing more to it than that.”
“Had, did you say?”
“That’s right, had—he’s dead.”
“Oh—well, I’m—I’m sorry. Does Peggy know?”
“Probably.”
She turned toward the service bar, picking up an order at a table of four on her way. In a couple of minutes she was back with Lockington’s Rolling Rock. She said, “I’m going on break now—I’ll talk to Peggy.”
Lockington nodded, sipping at his beer. A wild goose chase, possibly, but an empty matchbook had brought him 425 miles to the Club Crossroads, and a beautiful dark-haired, blue-eyed woman had accompanied Rufe Devereaux to Chicago, or so the story had gone. The matchbook was real, so was the thousand dollars that’d come with it, and Pecos Peggy was a beautiful dark-haired, blue-eyed woman.
In a few minutes the waitress was back, plunking a fresh bottle of Rolling Rock on Lockington’s table. She said, “That’s on Peggy.”
Lockington said, “My thanks.”
She took a small lavender-colored card from her vest pocket, handed it to him, and left without another word. Lockington cupped the card in his hand, peering at it in surreptitious fashion like a spy in a B-movie, he thought. The ink was blue, the handwriting dead-vertical, the handwriting of a woman who stood squarely on her own two feet. Clancy’s—Market St.—Boardman—1:45. Lockington finished his beer.
In the parking lot he approached an attendant, a big bushy-haired man. He said, “Where the hell is Boardman?”
The attendant said, “Any particular place in Boardman?”
“Yeah—Clancy’s on Market Street.”
“You’re new in the area, right?”
“Right.”
The attendant scratched his head. “Well, let’s see—I’m gonna try to make this simple, understand?”
“I understand.”
“Okay, a stranger’s best bet would be to drive east on Mahoning Avenue and pick up six-eighty just this side of the bridge. Check?”
The Devereaux File Page 14
