Dead Wood

by Dan Ames

  “I send them to my doctor for analysis,” she said, by way of greeting. So I guess she didn’t think it was a bad time. “You know, they study my vitamins, nutrients, what I’m missing, what I’ve got too much of.”

  “I never realized you could learn so much from pubic hair,” I said. And I’d just used “learn” and “pubic hair” in the same sentence.

  “It’s like Nietzsche said, ‘when you look into pubic hair, pubic hair looks into you,’” she said. She gave a weird sort of giggle after she said it.

  “Well, I suppose in your job you have to be very aware of your health,” I said. I felt like I was trying to communicate with an alien. I needed Richard Dreyfuss to start playing notes on an organ.

  Shannon Sparrow took the opportunity to respond by producing a huge joint. She took a monstrous hit from it. She then set the joint back in an ashtray, picked up the razor, and sheared off another half inch of pubic hair. It was like she was trimming the shrubs.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a question or two?” I said.

  “Shoot,” she said and shook off another batch of clippings into the envelope.

  “Jesse Barre.”

  “Technically that’s a statement,” she said.

  “Let me rephrase. What do you know about Jesse Barre?”

  “So sad,” she said, without a trace of emotion in her voice. She lifted the joint and gave it a good two-second suck. Maybe that was how she grieved. Boy, I had enough to go to the tabloids. I wondered what the National Enquirer would pay. I could see the headline: P.I. Claims Famous Singer Shaves Pubic Hair while Smoking Marijuana!!!

  “How well did you know her?” I said.

  “We bumped into each other once in a while,” she said. “Well, when I wasn’t traveling. You know her dad right? You’re working for him?”

  I smiled. “I don’t remember telling you that.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Someone did.”

  The stench of the marijuana smoke was getting to me. Or maybe it was the little scene unfolding in front of me. Probably both. I felt like I was stuck in some kind of 1960s experimental film and soon a man in all black with a long goatee would come out and start rambling about the symbolic roots of fascism.

  “Tell me about the guitar she was making for you.”

  “Oh, Christ, I’d practically forgotten about it,” she said. She shook her head, a vaguely self-condemning act. “I’ve got quite a few, but this one was going to be special. Jesse said she was making it just for me—you know, my size, my playing style, my sound, as it were.”

  “Did you approach her or did she approach you?”

  She sucked on the joint then answered while exhaling. “I approached her. I’d seen a lot of her guitars around. Studio guys love to record them. A lot of dumbasses think they’re only for looks, but the sound is truly incredible.”

  “So you asked her to—”

  “I told her to spare no expense,” she said. “I just wanted her to make her masterpiece. She told me she loved it so much, you know.

  “The guitar?”

  “Building guitars. It was what she lived for.” Now, for the first time, some emotion crept into Shannon’s voice. She and Jesse had obviously enjoyed some sort of relationship. How deep it had gone, I wasn’t sure.

  “I guess in that sense, she died happy, doing what she loved to do,” Shannon said. “We should all be so lucky.”

  She licked the envelope and sealed it closed, then rolled her panties back up. What, no aftershave lotion?

  “If she had finished it, how much do you think a guitar like that would have been worth?” I said.

  “Fifty grand. A hundred grand,” she said. “More if I’d actually played it.” No boastfulness on her part, just a statement of fact.

  “Do you know if she finished it?” I said. “Do you have it?”

  “Nope. She must have been close to finishing it. I was going to play it at the concert, which is just a week or so away. But I never got it.”

  “She never contacted you and told you it was ready?”

  “No, she didn’t work that way. You didn’t rush Jesse. She did what she did, and she told you when it was ready.”

  “If she loved building guitars so much, why do you think she was going to take a sabbatical?” I said, using the word Nevada Hornsby had used.

  The joint stopped halfway to her mouth. “Sabbatical? What sabbatical?”

  I shrugged. “Someone told me she was maybe going to take some time off from her work. Do something else.”

  Shannon inhaled a few cubic feet of pot smoke. “Not Jesse. She couldn’t stop building guitars any easier than Van Gogh could have stopped painting. I think it was more than a passion, it was her calling in life.”

  She took another hit. Her eyes were bloodshot and I felt a little faint.

  “Thanks for your time,” I said. “How did you find out about her death?”

  “My manager.” I waited, thinking maybe she’d like to add thoughts about her reaction, but nothing happened.

  “Can I call if I have any more questions?” I said.

  “You have Molly’s number?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure. Anytime. You coming to the concert?”

  “You bet,” I said.

  “I’ll have Molly give you a backstage pass,” she said. “Do you have kids?”

  “Two of the biggest Shannon Sparrow fans in the world,” I said. It was a little bit of a lie. They actually liked the Dixie Chicks a lot more, but brutal honesty wasn’t needed right now.

  “I’ll have Molly hook you up. I try to make the shows good for families, you know. Some of my biggest fans are young kids.”

  I was sure her pubic mound was raw and angry, and my eyes were dry and irritated from the marijuana, but damn if she wasn’t making herself sound like the poster girl for family fun.

  “Okay, thank you,” I said. “But I guess I do have one more question. How often do you have to . . . shave?”

  “It’s kind of when I feel like it.” She scowled, looking down at her crotch. “This is always the tough part.”

  “You should borrow some Aqua Velva from Freda,” I said.

  “Who’s Freda?”

  I left then, Shannon reaching for the joint, me gasping for fresh air.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Molly instantly appeared and produced four backstage passes as if she’d been present during my conversation with Shannon. Maybe she had.

  “She seems very normal and down to earth,” I said. I thought I saw a little smile creep onto Molly’s face. New in the self-help section of your local bookstore: Building Better Relationships through Sarcasm by John Rockne.

  She walked me all the way to the front door without saying a word. Then just as she was about to show me out, her pager went off.

  “Hold on,” she said to me. She flipped open a cell phone and listened for a moment, then snapped it back closed.

  “Teddy wants to see you,” she said.

  “Who—?” I started to ask, but she’d already turned on her heel and was headed back into the house. Thanks for asking, I thought. Why yes, I do have time to chat with someone else.

  I caught up to her just as we entered what would normally be considered a library. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, made of some dark wood, like cherry or mahogany, surrounded the place and matched the dark wood trim throughout the room.

  But under these circumstances, it wasn’t a study. It looked like some kind of slinky private room at a nightclub.

  Chairs and sofas were scattered around, filled with what I assumed could euphemistically be described as “Shannon’s people.” There were probably about twenty of them all together. They were sort of an odd mixture. A few looked like New York runway models, some refugees from the 1970s, others prim and proper Wall Street types.

  Now I knew where the term hangers-on came from. Maybe it should be changed to hangers-around. Because if there were ever a group of people who looked like they had no
place to go, no job to do, not a care in the world, it was this group. Most of them were drinking. Beer, wine, cocktails. You name it. Same with the smoking. Cigarettes, cigars, joints, maybe even a crack pipe somewhere.

  I wondered if they had business cards that simply said Professional Leech.

  Music blared from some kind of sound system whose camouflage rendered it completely invisible. Not that it mattered, because guitars were being strummed, clashing with the music as well as with each other.

  Of course, I shouldn’t have rushed to judgment. Maybe it was a high-powered business meeting. In fact, that thought led me to the man who appeared to be in charge.

  He was seated in front of, rather than behind, a massive desk. He had a shaved head, a nice tan, and blue eyes. He reminded me of a college football coach. This, I assumed, was Teddy. And, listening to my private investigator’s hunch, I had a pretty good idea he would turn out to be Shannon’s agent or manager: PI talks to big star, manager wants to know why.

  The suit he had on looked expensive. Fifteen percent of whatever Shannon Sparrow grossed was probably a pretty respectable annual take. Maybe five or ten million?

  He held a black cane over his knee. He smiled at me. His teeth were straight and a brilliant white. Behold the power of bleach.

  I turned, expecting Molly to do the instructions, but she’d already left. I admired her footwork. Doug Henning couldn’t have made her disappear any faster.

  “The PI,” he said. His voice was as smooth as his bald dome. If anyone noticed my arrival, they all hid it carefully. It seemed a safe bet that the stuff they were drinking and smoking held a lot more interest than I did.

  “The manager,” I said.

  He smiled. “Molly told you.”

  “No.”

  “Then . . .”

  “Who else would you be? A roadie?”

  Again, a light, self-mocking laugh. He held out his hands and gave a little clap. Like I was a seal who’d just jumped through a hoop at Sea World. “Good point. I’m Teddy Armbruster.”

  “John Rockne,” I said.

  He folded his arms and watched me for a moment. I sensed it was going to be one of those little power-struggle games. Make the uninitiated feel uncomfortable.

  “Well, if that’s all you wanted,” I said and turned back toward the door.

  “John,” he said.

  I turned back. “Look, Teddy, I’ve really got to get going. Can you cut the dramatic power bullshit and tell me what you want?”

  A few of the bloodsuckers lifted their heads up. It seemed that challenging Mr. Armbruster wasn’t the typical modus operandi.

  “You’re direct,” he said. “I like that.”

  He fixed those baby blues on me and said, “Did you get all of your questions answered? With Shannon?”

  “For now,” I said.

  “See, that’s why I wanted to talk to you,” he said. He set the cane on the desk behind him and folded his arms across his chest. It was quite a feat. Both his arms and his chest were pretty thick. I bet he had a Bowflex on his private plane.

  Teddy said, “Shannon has to concentrate on the concert, which is only a week away. It’s a big deal, back home in front of all her friends. That’s a lot of pressure.”

  “She’s used to it by now, isn’t she?” I said.

  “As well as a million other things,” he continued, ignoring my question. “I thought it would be good for you to get these questions in, but from here on out, maybe you should run them by Molly who’ll run them by me first, and then at the appropriate time, I’ll talk to Shannon.”

  He was a college football coach, I thought. He’d just diagrammed a perfect case of running interference. Or the famous end-around.

  “I know it’s your job to make your client’s life easier,” I said. “But I have a client too. And it’s my job to find out who bashed his daughter’s head in. So I’ll take your request into consideration, but let’s not forget where it falls in terms of priority, okay?”

  By now, all the hangers-on were looking at me. I watched them back. One in particular, a woman in a white silk blouse and red velvet pants, walked over to me.

  “Why don’t you stay and have a drink?” she said.

  “Memphis,” Teddy said, a stern warning. “I’m sure Mr. Rockne has better things to do.”

  The woman held out her hand. “Memphis Bornais. I’m Shannon’s songwriter.”

  I took her hand. “John Rockne, private investigator.”

  “Come along, Mr. Rockne,” I heard a voice say behind me. Molly had reappeared.

  “Thanks again, Mr. Rockne,” Teddy said. “I’ve enjoyed your directness.” Teddy smiled, nodded his head like he’d enjoyed the fuck out of my company. “You don’t hesitate either. I really like that.”

  Without hesitation, I said, “Plenty more where that came from.”

  * * *

  •

  * * *

  I went back to the office and worked the phones. Oddly enough, my mind wasn’t on the case, despite the unsettling meetings with Shannon Sparrow and her slimeball manager.

  I decided to call Clarence Barre. He wasn’t home, but I left a message telling him I wanted to ask him a few questions about how well he knew, and how well Jesse knew, Shannon Sparrow.

  My last call went to Nate. I wanted to ask him what he knew about Shannon Sparrow and her entourage. Nate had an encyclopedic knowledge of local history. He knew anyone and everyone that ever had a significant connection with Detroit.

  And on the unlikely occasion in which he didn’t know the answer or answers, he could almost always point me in the direction of someone who did.

  But I’d be goddamned if I was going to commit to another meal. At this point, I could be labeled an “enabler” by a psychologist. I felt like Nate was a drunk, and as long as he kept helping me, I kept buying him shopping carts full of Budweiser. I’d have to figure something else out.

  I punched in his number on my phone.

  “I was just about to call you,” he said. I could hear background voices, maybe even a siren.

  “What, were you going to dicker with me over whether or not an apéritif could technically be considered dessert?”

  “No,” he said. “And it obviously isn’t a dessert as it’s consumed before a meal. Jesus, haven’t you learned anything?”

  “Yeah, I now know the difference between pâté and a patty melt.”

  He ignored me and said, “Where the hell have you been?” This time, I definitely heard a siren.

  “Data entry. It’s a part-time job I had to take in order to pay for your restaurant expenses,” I said. “I get three cents a word.”

  “Good, don’t be afraid to work extra hours.”

  “Thanks for the advice. Where are you, by the way?”

  “Hey, have you talked to your sister lately?” he said.

  “Define lately.”

  “Like . . . today?”

  “No,” I said, wishing he’d get to the point. “Nate, where are you? What’s going on?”

  He laughed, a low, deep chuckle, obviously relishing the news. What reporter doesn’t love breaking a story?

  “Once again, she’s proven why she’s chief of police,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “She found him.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy.”

  “What guy, Nate?” I was already on my feet, grabbing my car keys and heading for the door when he gave me the news.

  “Ellen found the guy who killed Jesse Barre.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It was about as bad as Grosse Pointe gets: a third floor walk-up facing Alter, the street that divides my fair city and the urban decay that is Detroit proper. I don’t say that with any degree of snobbishness; that’s just the way it is. In fact, the average Grosse Pointer would love nothing more than to have a thriving, vibrant city next to its borders. But that wouldn’t be happening any time soon. For now, it was duck pâté on one side, duck-for-co
ver on the other.

  The building itself was an ugly structure that probably hadn’t met a housing code since Nixon took office. You certainly wouldn’t find it on any of the brochures at the Grosse Pointe Hospitality Center.

  The coroner’s van was already outside.

  I parked the lovely white Sunbird right out on the street. I sort of hoped someone would steal it—that way I could share the embarrassment a little bit.

  I climbed the steps and walked inside, where I saw my sister standing in the doorway. She had her hand on the butt of her gun and was watching the coroner and crime scene technicians doing their thing. She turned to me as I got to the top of the rickety steps.

  “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” she said. No place was sacred when it came to my sister giving me crap.

  “Your buddy Nate call you?” she said. Ellen lifted her chin, and I saw him outside, talking on a cell phone. He was eating what looked to be a corndog. I looked around to identify the possible source of the corndog, maybe a diner or something. Nothing. You had to admit, the guy was pretty impressive.

  “My instincts brought me here,” I told her.

  “Your instincts are about as sharp as the vic’s,” she said, and gestured toward the inside of the house. She walked off in that direction, and I followed. She hadn’t invited me to tag along but she wasn’t telling me to take a hike, either. I wasn’t sure why she put up with me. On good days, I believed she liked having me around to watch her back. On bad days, I was certain she did it for me out of pity. The successful sister, chief of police, pitying her disgraced, deadbeat PI brother. The duty of the sister just as important as the duty of the law. Maybe there was a little bit of both in her reasoning to let me hang out. I doubted I would ever know. I sure as hell knew Ellen wouldn’t tell.

  I followed her deeper into the apartment. I wouldn’t have imagined it possible for the inside of this place to look worse than the outside, but that was the case. The smell was bad, of course. My sense of smell, always reasonably astute, told me that the death hadn’t happened terribly recently. Maybe not long after Jesse Barre had been killed.