Out of the Blues

by Trudy Nan Boyce

  “Yeah, I know what you mean, pardner.” He slapped his leg with a flat palm.

  “What other things do you do for him?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “You said you do whatever the preacher needs. Like what?”

  He stood in the doorway with his arms stretched up to the top of the sill, as if in preparation for a pull-up. He squinted at her for a second. “Now you sound like Internal Affairs. I thought you were assigned to Homicide.”

  “Just askin’. Just askin’.” Salt turned and walked out to her unmarked car parked in the vast lot. When she looked back, Madison was still hanging in the doorway.

  BLUE REPORT

  Salt had laid out the eight-by-ten scene photos sequentially, left to right, spread over her desk, far shots on the left, close-ups on the right. She’d had to take care removing them from the envelope because humidity had crept in, causing some of the photos to adhere to the backs of the others.

  Mike Anderson’s car had been found parked in the wide intersection of Elizabeth Street and Waverly Way facing the wrong way with the left front wheel in a street grate. It was an old 1950s Pontiac wagon, green and cream, funny, funky. According to the reporting party, the friend who found him, Anderson was supposed to have come by his girlfriend’s the night before. When he hadn’t shown up by the next morning, the girlfriend, Melissa Primrose, called the friend, Dan Pyne. There were no statements from either Pyne or Primrose transcribed for the record. After the medical examiner ruled the death “accidental,” no investigation would have been required, and there was no documentation in the file that any had been done.

  Salt picked up one of the medium-range photos. Michael was leaning from the middle of the front seat and slumped against the passenger window, left foot turned, heel up against the carpeting of the drive shaft hump. One bedroom slipper, mate to the other on his right foot, had come off and was on the driver’s floorboard. He was wearing a navy-and-gray-striped terry-cloth robe, open, the belt missing. He didn’t have on any jewelry. His hair was cut in a medium ’fro, slightly uneven at the left back and with what looked to be a small sprinkling of pink glitter where his hair was flattened. Both hands were in his lap, palms up, fingers slightly curled, a receiving gesture. Below his left eye was a spot of whitish dust, maybe salt from dried tears.

  “Sad.” Picking up one of the close-up photos, Felton sat down across from Salt’s desk in the chair from the empty cubicle. “Handsome, vulnerable-looking.”

  “Do you by any chance have a connection in the city’s business licensing department? I’m trying to find out who the individuals are that own a couple of businesses.”

  “Good luck with that. The bureaucrats are plentiful there and all knee-deep in pissed-off.”

  “Any advice?” Salt asked. “I don’t want to impose. I’m sure you’re constantly asked for help.”

  “You might be surprised.” Felton drew the photo closer to his right eye. “Prophet in your own land and all that.”

  “Oh, come on, with your clear-up rate they must come to you for help.”

  Felton handed the photo to her. “You’ll find that each of us has our strong suits in how we work a murder, Salt. Take the Wild Things, for instance, please.” He smiled at his own punch line. “They’re terrible with paperwork and documentation. The DA hates to get their cases. But together they work the streets like geniuses and put the cases down.”

  “You’re not going to tell me your secrets, are you?” She leaned back and smiled at him.

  “My dear.” He bent over and looked up from under his brows. “If my instincts are still intact, they’re telling me that you are probably best left alone with no one to get in the way.” He touched her shoulder as he stood and left.

  Salt gathered the photos, slid them back into the envelope, and turned to the inventory of the car and Mike’s effects. Other than the bathrobe and slippers, he’d been wearing only a pair of blue plaid boxer shorts.

  As she ran her finger down the inventory sheets, she became aware that she was humming. The report of the first uniform officer was brief and perfunctory, listing the reporting person and the responding homicide detective, followed by the detective’s very brief supplementary report.

  Dan Pyne’s and Melissa Primrose’s contact information was included on the now ten-year-old preliminary report. Salt hummed “Step Into the Light,” a Mavis Staples song, as she began entering names into the various Internet and law enforcement search engines.

  “Hello,” she said in response to one return.

  AN AWAKENING IN THE LIBRARY

  Cedar. Salt drew in another breath, confirming what her nose told her: she’d fallen asleep reading on the library floor. She peeled her cheek from a page of the open book, a Sherlock Holmes that had served as a pillow, and briefly scanned the paragraphs, searching as if she could get a clue there to the origin or impetus of a dream that was quickly evaporating but leaving her with rapid, shallow breaths and a fluttery anxiety.

  Felton’s advice aside, she wished she could make better use of the scientific method, be more Holmes-like rather than having the dreams, dreams that produced flashbacks and mixed with reality. Sometimes it was music or just being in a particular place, like at Westview or Fort Walker, some vision would worry its way to her consciousness. Last year after recovering from the shooting, she’d expected the dreams and intrusive images that came afterward to stop. Instead, the dreams continued but had also given her insight that helped her solve the case that led to her promotion. She looked over at the shelves that held the books on mental illness, their titles unreadable in the low light.

  The heavy navy brocade drapes were pulled tight and no light shone from behind the panels or up at the top. The overhead fixture surrounded by its crumbling plaster medallion hadn’t worked since Salt could remember; she was reminded to worry about the wiring in the whole house. A floor lamp was her only light source, its weak cone doing little to displace the dark, casting just enough light to throw shadows on the shelved walls.

  She pushed up, her palms to the prickly wool and worn, bare spots of the patterned rug, some of its fringed trim missing. The green indicator light on the recorder was on. The tape could have played out an hour ago or three. She touched the crease on her cheek left by the book and judged her nap to have been a longer one. She hit the eject button and the lid flipped up with the cassette tape that had accompanied her into the dream. “Mike Anderson and the Old Smoke Band, featuring—” She turned the plastic casing over. On the other side, her father had used a heavy-point felt-tip pen, the words and letters blurred. But the first letters of the two words looked like P’s and the words were the right shape and length to be “Pretty Pearl.”

  “Put the boogie on, Daddy,” she’d beg. “Put on the boogie-woogie. Put it on, please,” jumping in a circle around him, hopping and wiggling her bony pelvis. She loved it best when he’d boogie—his goofy, hilarious dance—flinging his limbs like a cartoon goon.

  “Leave it alone. Do not touch the radio without asking,” his other voice said. She didn’t want to listen, didn’t want him to hear the wailing voices as he drove. It scared her and she couldn’t think of how to get him to not listen. The singer sounded like he was crying. Her throat tightened so she wouldn’t cry. The guitar strings strained like the singer, like her throat; she tightened and tightened and squeezed her eyes shut but she couldn’t squeeze her ears shut and didn’t want to cover them or he would know. She couldn’t let him see her sad or scared.

  “Play the boogie, Daddy.”

  She slipped the tape back into its case, closed the lid of the recorder, and put the tape back with the others in the box. The recorder was still warm. As she turned it between her hands, the cheap plastic parts made little loose clicking sounds. Grime dimmed the indicator lights. There were nicks and dings in the silver-tone finish.

  With her adult knowledge she understood that h
er father must have struggled with and tried to understand his mental illness—the books spoke to his attempts at self-treatment. But why did he feel he had to do it alone? Why didn’t he get help? And why commit suicide—on her birthday?

  She put the recorder away, then fished the Anderson/Pearl blues back out of the box and put it in her shirt pocket.

  DESTINATION—DAWN

  Salt averted her face and put a hand up to shield her eyes from the headlights of the bus belching gray fumes as it made the turn and pulled up to the curb alongside the downtown Homefront Hotel. She held on to the hem of her coat as the wind picked up and the rain turned to a full downpour. She left the Taurus on a yellow curb and went to wait under the hotel’s overhead marquee that advertised in large black plastic letters the “MIDNIGHT SPECIAL.”

  The bus came to a stop and lights came on inside, revealing a pale, lanky-tall man framed by the large front side window, standing and looking out in Salt’s direction. The rest of the passengers stood and began reaching for the overhead storage bins. The accordion doors opened. She recognized Bailey Brown’s deep voice. “It’s a rainy night in Georgia.” A taller dark-skinned man was the first down the steps and out the door. “I feel like it’s raining all over the world,” he harmonized. The musicians stretched and yawned as they stumbled out and into the hotel. The only white guy, the one who’d been looking out the window, walked from the front of the bus through its lit interior looking side to side at the vacant seats. He bent over one of the seats, picked up something palm-sized, stuffed it in his jeans, made his way back to the front of the bus, and pushed out the door as the youngest-looking of the band called to him from the hotel entrance. “You got the dog?” The guy hitched his jeans beneath a “DUDE” T-shirt and gave the kid a thumbs-up as he came under the marquee, watching a scruffy bellman push a flat dolly toward the luggage compartment on the underside of the bus.

  “Where’s the dog?” Salt asked, stepping toward him.

  Dan Pyne turned to face her. “What? Oh, just a joke.” He gave her a friendly but quick smile, shrugged, and turned his attention back to the bellman, who was hurriedly loading the instruments and cases onto the dolly. Pyne fast-stepped over to steady one precariously perched guitar case. As he escorted the bellman and dolly toward the door, Salt intercepted him again. “Dan Pyne?”

  Pyne turned, tucking shoulder-length hair behind his ears.

  She slung a few drops of rain from her fingers and offered her hand. “Detective Alt, Atlanta Police.”

  “Detective?” Pyne touched his left palm to his jeans as he took her hand.

  “I’m a homicide detective,” she said, attempting to be reassuring—that he didn’t have to worry about the perhaps illegal herb in his pocket.

  Pyne glanced at her, his eyes lingering just a half second longer on the scar that ran through her hair, now wet and flattened by the soaking rain. “Homicide,” he repeated.

  “Mike Anderson,” she said.

  He looked out at the night and the rain. “My God.”

  “Can I buy you coffee?” she asked.

  “Since you’ve tracked me down you must know I play guitar with this bunch, but I also do the road managing, so I have to get us checked in.”

  She ran a hand through her hair, slinging off some of the water. “There’s a bar inside. How about if you meet me there in fifteen minutes?”

  “Mike.” He shook his head. “My God,” he repeated.

  “Fifteen minutes?” she said.

  He held the door for the waiting bellman and the gear, “Yeah,” he said, managing to also hold the door for her. She paused, just for a second, walked through the door into the dim lobby and down a hall where she knew the ladies’ room to be.

  —

  THE HOMEFRONT was a sad substitute for a home. Not quite a fleabag place, but probably better than sleeping on the bus, although not by much. A cloying, deodorizer smell emanated from the carpet, intensifying when stepped on.

  By this time of night the hotel bar patrons had thinned to a couple of sad hookers in a corner. Salt sat facing the entrance at a small table against the wall. Pyne wound his way over. “How’d you get your hair dry?” He pulled out the leatherette chair.

  “Restroom hand dryer.” She tugged at the one curl that covered the scar.

  “I’ve used them a time or two for that.” He ran a hand through his still-damp hair. “Life on the road and all.”

  “In the street, on the road,” she said.

  A bleary-eyed waitress in all black left a barstool and came to their table.

  “Coffee for me,” said Salt.

  “How long will this take?” Dan asked Salt.

  “Depends. I don’t know how much you can tell me.”

  “I’m too tired for coffee and I don’t like to drink alone.” He looked up at the waitress. “I’ll just have water.”

  “One coffee and one water,” repeated the waitress, dropping her arms. “Will that be on the rocks or straight up? With or without lemon?” She turned to begin her slow trek to the bar, clearly not very excited about the late-night big spenders.

  “Wait,” Salt said to the waitress. “How ’bout a brandy?” she asked Dan.

  He nodded.

  “Two brandies.”

  The waitress clicked her pen and stepped toward the bar with just a bit more energy.

  Salt shrugged off the coat and pulled her damp shirt collar out from the black linen jacket that concealed the leather shoulder holster and .38. “Where’s the dog?”

  Dan gave her a quizzical grin, eyebrows raised, his mouth in a twist. “I left him with Mustafa.”

  “Funny, you seem slimmer without him.” She kept a sense of humor about weed.

  The waitress set the drinks on napkins in front of them.

  Dan patted around for the cigarettes in his jeans pocket, pulled one out, lit it, and then looked up. “Do you mind?” he asked, sliding the ashtray from the center of the table, ready to put it out.

  “I’ve got my own.” She went into a pocket of the coat. “I carry them mostly to give away. Makes talking easier for some folks. I don’t smoke, but I don’t mind if you do.”

  She put her giveaway smokes on the table next to his. “About Mike,” she said.

  “Of course. It was me that found him, his body. That’s why you’re here, that and Melissa.” Dan took a draw on the cigarette. “Do you listen to the music, the blues?”

  “Some.” The light in the bar was low. As he talked, she leaned forward.

  “He was the best, could have been the best-known bluesman of our time, bigger than Hendrix even. When I met him, I was living with friends in Inman Park, near Little Five. Were you around then? It was alive. Not all the rich, phony kids that come there now pretending they’re somehow living on the edge. One day I was at that old laundromat on Moreland. I guess it’s something else now. Mike came in wearing a bathrobe, that bathrobe, I swear.” The smoke from his cigarette curled into the air above the table candle, and he looked up as it projected the past.

  “I knew who he was right off.” Dan sat back up, returning his focus. “And me, I’m not shy, California boy originally. I went over while he was putting his clothes in the machine. I just wanted to tell him how much I admired his playing. He was so warm, shook my hand, said thanks, and asked if I had any quarters for the wash. We started talking about the blues. Turned out he was living about a block from where I did. After that we started hanging out. We both just loved the music.” The corners of his mouth drew up a fraction to an almost smile.

  “I’d been listening to the blues since I was nine or ten. I was twenty-five when I met Mike, playing guitar and doing the sound setups for a couple of local clubs.” Dan blew out a long breath, then took a sip of brandy.

  “Why after all these years is a homicide detective interested? I thought the cause of his death was officially
an accidental drug overdose.” He leaned over the candle in the middle of the sticky table.

  “Officially, it still is. But a con, who’s in the federal prison system and trying to make a deal to cut his time, gave us information that Mike Anderson’s death may not have been accidental or a suicide.”

  Dan shook his head. “I thought at the time that things didn’t add up.”

  “What things?” Salt picked up her pack of cigarettes.

  “He cared about the music but he didn’t care about performing. I think he felt bad about getting so much attention when so many of the old bluesmen were practically starving. He did use, heroin, sometimes other stuff. He’d drink and do drugs. But he loved, loved, loved the music. He wanted to help the old blues musicians, wanted them to get the respect they deserved. It seemed at times like he was on a mission. He was especially protective of several of the real roots folks. I don’t know—maybe the best word to describe him right before he died was focused. I just couldn’t imagine that he’d wanted to die, but also I couldn’t imagine anybody wanting him dead—everybody loved Mike. Accidental seemed the most reasonable explanation.”

  “Where did he get his drugs? Did he have someone regular he’d score from?” She shook out a smoke.

  “He had some very skeevy people hanging around, people telling him how much he could do for the blues. Also he had some bad guys in his band, talented but bad. There were parts of his life that I didn’t know about. Stuff from his old neighborhood, parents, church, and clubs he went to after hours. But here’s another thing—when Melissa and I would say something about being scared of heroin, Mike always said that he was careful; that he never bought off the street, only from one guy so he could be sure of the strength of the pop—that it wouldn’t be too little or too much.”

  “Do you know who he bought from?”

  “It was a long time ago. I guess I’ve tried not to think about it.”