“I see. Probably the pollen.”
“That’s it.”
“So what I found out,” I went on, “is barely a shock. You are not, in fact, St. Dalliance of the Azaleas or whatever. You’re a real live girl. Had a bit of a coke habit a while back. Who didn’t? Got messed up with the wrong guy. Talk to little Lucrezia about that sometime, probably. You’re in good company there, too, I’m saying. And you lied to me?” I took a sip of wine. “Who hasn’t? Flash: I don’t care about any of that. I don’t care if you’re lying to me now. I have a very … what’s the word? Existential? No: phenomenological viewpoint about the so-called truth — in this particular case, anyway. I think this truth is just a phenomenon and it’s largely up to my own personal interpretation as to how I’m going to see it, right? So I choose to see it …”
“… do you ever take a vacation from thinking too much?” She smiled a little.
“Thinking too much is my vacation.”
“I see.” She blew out a little short breath. “Well now would you care to hear a little more of the story?”
“Story?”
“It’s a story about marriage — about that relationship.”
“Oh.” I finished the rest of the wine. It seemed like a good preparation for what I expected she was about to tell me. “That relationship.”
38. Expectations
“There’s a time in your youth,” she began, “when you start to think to yourself, ‘I can do anything I want to in this life.’ So you take a look around and you assess. My assessment at a particular time in the past was that I was ready for some fun with a capital F. This was, of course, after you left, so I’d have to admit that my fun was partially to get back at you. I was just pissed off enough about your leave-taking to take a ride on the tilt-a-whirl.”
I put a silence into the room like the one before the earth was formed and there was, as I understand it, a void upon the deep.
“And there was Ronn.” That was all. Seemed simple. “Ronn was rich and handsome and charming — old South in one hand and Kennedy-forward-thinking in the other. As much unlike you as he could be. Knew everyone. And, God, you should have seen him dance.”
“I’ll just try to picture it.”
“Ronn must have told me twenty times a day,” she went on, “that he couldn’t live without me. He would ask me all the time: ‘Do you really love me?’ And he would always say, ‘Let’s get married.’ But my favorite was: ‘What happens when Flap comes back?’ I want you to get this right.” Her voice was steel. “I liked it. I liked Ronn — the high end of things. I even liked looking into the yawning chasm when it all got a little too wild, if you can believe that.”
“Yeah,” I shot back, “everybody likes a scary ride.”
“So long as we understand where I was.” She made a sudden flurry of activity. “So, so, so. Long and short: His parents found out that we were going to get married. They were on a rampage. Threatened to cut off our boy — no trust fund, no free ride.”
“Which is why you married in secret.”
“And the secret stuck. I think the truth of the matter was that even Ronn and I didn’t want to know we were married. The secrecy just made it more wild.”
“But the marriage was not,” I said as matter-of-factly as I could, “an entirely happy affair.”
“How much looking into all that have you done,” she managed, “just to save me time in case I can skip over gory details — which I really wouldn’t mind skipping.”
“I believe that the main body of my knowledge on the subject includes the aforementioned rec drugs, some money troubles, a tire iron, a kitchen knife, and a visit to the state hospital at Millegeville.”
“Oh.” It was an entirely dispirited syllable.
“What I don’t know is the aftermath.”
“The what?”
“Divorce. Continuing harassment. Threatening notes. That sort of thing. Things that have, at this point, invaded my life.”
“I see.” But she didn’t.
“You were divorced.”
“No.”
I sat in that chair, then, with a sudden sensation that I was sitting in an electric chair just before lights-out. It took me a minute to collect.
“So you were still married up until the night he died?” I tried to sound calm.
“That’s right.” She finally made eye contact and leaned toward me over the desk. “Look, Flap, the fact is, when that hand was delivered here — with the wedding ring on it? I thought for a while it was his hand.”
“What?”
“You don’t know what kind of people he was mixed up with. He got further and further into this weird world of big-money drugs — especially whenever his parents cut him off. I didn’t care. When I got out of the hospital, and you came home, I buried a whole lot of this. I told Ronn in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t stay away, if he ever messed with me again, I’d go straight to his parents and tell them about the marriage — certificate in hand. That scared him more than anything else. That’s one of the main reasons I stayed married — bizarre as it seems — it was insurance to keep him at bay.”
She sat back in her chair, and her face was barely a shadow.
“He’d call me sometimes,” she went on after a moment, “here at the club, whispering, begging me to come back to him, talking about how miserable he was and how much he had to have me back. I’d hang up. He’d call right back, then, and he’d turn mad and yell — mostly about you, about how you were part-owner of the club, and I was always with you, and if you knew all about me, you’d run screaming in the other direction. And how he could pay to have you killed. Wouldn’t even take a hundred dollars, he’d say. Then I’d threaten him with going to his parents here in Atlanta, and he’d shut up. But I swear to God, Flap” — her eyes were almost entirely flame — “part of the problem — part of it — was that you looked at me all the time — always — like I was some kind of … like I was the perfect …” And then she ran out of steam.
“… St. Dalliance of the Azaleas.”
She didn’t cry. Somehow she seemed all out of crying. She was shivering a little, and she folded her arms in front of her like she was cold. “What did you think it was that was always slowing down our … that part of our relationship?”
“So when did old Ronn start to threaten you with these letters?” I thought it best at that point to just brush over the emotional content of the situation and try to get on with the facts. They tell me that’s what most guys do.
Heavy sigh. “These letters started about six months ago.” Her voice had nothing in it. “Something big had happened — someone had gotten away with a ton of his money. He was in real trouble. He needed some major collateral. He was going to take the club away from me.”
“What?”
She eyed me. “Georgia’s community property laws: He’s the husband, he’s got the best lawyers money can buy, and he’s got judges who play bridge with his parents. He was certain he could have taken it real good …”
“… except for the fact that I was part-owner.” I nodded. “Now it all comes clear. I always wondered why you did that.” I thinned my lips. “Now I know.”
“No, Flap.” And for some reason, that was the moment she chose to start crying in earnest. “You don’t know anything. I gave you part of the club because I wanted to, because you’ve got no real income and no kind of retirement and you need a little something. I gave you part of the club because it was a tangible way I could try to tell you what you give me …”
“… but it didn’t hurt that it also kept Ronn at bay.” Okay. That was a little harsh on my part.
“Right.” She pulled back on the tears, sat up, and took in a breath. “Okay.”
See, when you want to make a person stop crying, you have to use any means necessary. Harshness worked in that case, as I had hoped that it would. And I wanted to get on with what I considered to be the real issues at hand.
“So about these letters. I gue
ss I get why you didn’t just come to me about them, although when this is all over we’re going to have such a long talk about this — but what I don’t get is hiring Jersey Jakes.”
“Hal knew him from the old music-union days” — she shrugged — “and he was someone I knew Ronn wouldn’t know. I mean, Flap, you don’t know the kind of people Ronn had around him sometimes — they would have known, somebody would have known if you had gone looking for Ronn. And they would have killed you. Ronn would have seen to it. Happily. It’s just that plain.”
“And you thought they wouldn't kill Jakes …”
“… because he wasn’t a threat. All I wanted him to do was keep an eye on Ronn — and an eye on me so that never the twain would meet. If Ronn came into town, I’d be forewarned.”
“Did Jakes make reports? You know, like a P.I. would?” I was working overtime, by that point, trying to stay above the swirling tides of bizarre feelings and thoughts that were having a significant pull on me.
“He did.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Well.” She steadied herself with a good solid breath, put her hands on the desk, and looked a little to the side, so that the amber light in the room caught the side of her face and turned it into gold. “One of the reasons I was in the club by myself that night is that Jakes told me Ronn would be paying a visit.”
Which, as it turned out, he did.
39. Vortex
“So, we knew Ronn was coming?” I sat as still as I could.
“Yes.” She didn’t look at me. I may actually have seen her skin crawl.
“So it’s quite clear to me — this was at least one of the things that’s contributed to the strain on our relationship of late.”
She let out a breath. “It’s tough,” she agreed, “to have a phantom husband and a … person like you — in the same town at once.” She was trying to get back up from being knocked down to the ground.
Person like me? I’d have to get more information on that score at my earliest convenience.
But for the time being, all I said was, “You know eventually you’re going to have to tell me exactly why Ronn was here, and what he wanted.”
“I did. I already told you.” Dally tilted her head and I watched her think. “He wanted money. He was scared. And he wanted me. So, I was scared too.” She looked up at me, finally, to punctuate her assessment of the situation. “That’s really it.”
“You were scared?” I understood the money angle, but was she afraid Ronn would have hurt her?
“I was scared of what I was like with Ronn,” she began, “and I thought how easily it might have come back to me. It’s funny how you can feel a slip in your personality, sometimes, just by the sound of the wrong person’s voice.”
Once again I found myself thinking about Daniel Frank. There wasn’t a more upright guy on the planet nine times out of ten. But on that tenth orbit? He was capable of serious drug incapacitation, mindless marriage busting, and threatening a friend within an inch of his life. What made that kind of stuff happen to two such fine people as Daniel and Dalliance? I found myself thinking that in both cases the culprit was a virus version of that crazy little thing called love.
Love isn’t always shining. Just as often, it’s obsession, it’s dark water that swirls downward into some hollow vortex that keeps wanting to be fed evil fruit.
“Well.” I roused myself from the black reverie and tried something like a smile. “Sometimes, also, you can feel the opposite: a tug toward heaven, just by the sound of the right person’s voice. So let’s just leave off second thoughts and remorse for the time being, and get down to the heart of the matter — if that isn’t an ill-chosen phrase in this regard.”
“Okay.” She was unsteady, but game. “Right.”
“Where was Ronn staying while he was in town. Let’s try that.”
“I don’t know.”
“I see. Then how often did you see him?” I was trying to keep the questions short and simple. “Any ideas about that?”
“Would ‘too often’ not answer it for you?”
“He wanted money from you,” I pressed on, “how? He wanted you to give him money from the club …”
“… that’s right. As the husband,” she continued, “he could get what he wanted out of the profits, he thought. But he also thought that it would be invisible money — because it would look like it was only my money. So he thought he could have all he wanted without it ever showing up anywhere else.”
“Like the IRS or something. How much was he looking for?”
“Seven hundred fifty thousand.”
I tried not to blink. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t that be roughly closer to ten or twenty years’ worth of personal profits?”
“I do a little better than that — but not much.” She looked at me again. “See, that’s why the subject of your share came up.”
“My ‘share’ just goes back into the operation of the place. Right?”
“Mostly.” She licked her lips. “But there’s a little account I haven’t told you about. Your retirement fund. It’s not much.”
I stopped her. “So Ronn wanted my ‘share,’ which would screw up your operating expenses, and my retirement, which would leave me alone and penniless in my dotage. I get it. But if I really am a silent partner in the place, he would have had to convince me to turn over my part to him — or have me … oh.” Ronnard Raay Higgins might have considered shuffling me off.
“He didn’t care what he did. In fact, if it messed me up, he liked it better.” She closed her eyes. “He thought it could get me back.”
“Get you back for what?”
“No.” She squeezed her eyes tighter. “He thought it would get me back into the marriage with him. He thought we could go on like we used to. He’s always wanted that.”
“All right.” I folded my arms. I tried to sound jaunty. “You’ve really led quite a double life. Must have been kind of a strain.”
“Yes.” She was sinking into her zombie voice. “That’s the understatement of the century.”
“Well, then,” I told her softly, “it’s got to be kind of a relief to get it all out in the open.” I got even quieter. “And to know that it all doesn’t make one bit of difference to me — not in the way I feel about you.”
She opened her eyes, then. “Flap.”
And there it was: that voice angel that could tug a person up to heaven. The same voice of which I had to be so careful — in case I was wrong about it.
40. Wrong
Since I was so completely off my game, and the falcon could not hear the falconer or whatever else there is in that poem about not knowing where the center is, I thought it best to repair homeward about then and see if I could polish off a quick trick.
My little trick is nothing more than sitting back and watching a parade of daily events stroll by the mind’s eye. If you can pull back far enough, settle down deep enough, and not mess it up with a whole lot of thinking, you can see things in the parade that you missed the first time. Then you have what some people like to call an epiphany.
I can sometimes go on and on about what the trick is. That’s because I don’t really know what the hell it is. I remember being quite enthusiastic when I saw Van Morrison’s record called Enlightenment in the stores. I bought it and rushed home to see what Van had to tell me, at last, on the vital subject. And what was it? “Enlightenment,” he said, “don’t know what it is.”
Right. So if the man himself is fuzzy on the topic, who am I to spout off?
Still, I thought it was worth a shot, at least to sink into the center of the storm, the eye of the hurricane, the middle of the miasma, and so forth.
I took my shoes off. I loosened my skinny gray tie, the one with the poised heron on it. I sat on the floor in the sunporch, three sides of light, with home at my back. I stared. That’s all there was to it.
I stared and waited for the light to create a curtain. Eventually gold was eve
rywhere. Light came from all sides. All I could hear was my breathing. All I could see was golden haze. I didn’t taste or smell anything at all. And I’d completely forgotten about the floor I was touching.
But here’s the funny thing about your human being: It’s like an uncontrollable child sometimes. It sees candy, and rushes for it, even across a traffic-crowded highway. Sometimes you see the kid run, and catch it. Sometimes the kid gets away. And sometimes the kid gets hit by a bus.
Which is exactly what happened to me. I suddenly found myself in the middle of some images that I always had to avoid — Dalliance with another guy — especially if that guy was Ronnard Raay Higgins.
I found myself, in fact, in a state only slightly less atomic than Chernobyl, and just as poisoned.
My eyes popped open and I stood up like the house was on fire.
“Woof.” Sometimes you have to growl out loud at the demons to make them go away. Even if you’re all by yourself in your apartment.
Luckily, the cordless phone in the very next room rang before I could even focus out of the trouble.
Without thinking, I got to the phone and picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Flap? It’s Lucrezia.” I could hear the noise of the Clairmont Lounge in the background. “What the hell is going on?”
“Well,” I told her, flopping down on the sofa, “I have news for you.”
“Is that right?” She sounded mad — but who wouldn’t be, I figured, at her job?
“Yes, that’s right,” I shot back. “I’m pretty sure the guy who messed with you is dead and gone. Happy?”
“What?” She didn’t sound happy. “You killed the guy without getting back with me first?”
“What is it with me this week?” I looked out the window. “Everyone seems to think I’m capable of icing somebody. I’m really a whole lot nicer than that, you know.”
“You didn’t kill the guy.”
“I most certainly did not. And I’ll thank you to consider how you speak to me at the moment. I’m ordinarily a gentleman, but I’m in a terrible mood at the moment. So unless you have news for me, I’m hanging up.”
Dead Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 5) Page 16
