Authors: Jeremiah Healy
”What is this, a name?” said Radescu.
”Of a young woman killed within hours of Veronica Held.”
Helides said, ”Never heard of her.”
Radescu worried his hands atop the patio table. ”Why do you tell us about this thing?”
”Sundy Moran was probably the daughter of Tommy O’Dell.”
The tennis pro shook his head, now more exasperated than confused. ”Another name I do not know about, or care about.”
Helides glanced at him. ”He was Spi’s drummer.” Radescu said, ”What?”
”In the original band.” She came back to me. ”He wasted himself with drugs.”
Her certainty stopped me. ”I thought that was long before you knew even the Colonel?”
”It was, but I’ve heard the guys talk about him. Only, what the fuck does somebody dead twenty years have to do with Very or this Moran girl?”
”Actually I was hoping you two. could help me with that.” Helides glared at me as Radescu drew back in his chair, arms folding across his bare chest.
She said, ”What’s that supposed to mean?”
”You used to drive Veronica here for tennis lessons with her”—I glanced at Radescu—”teacher, right?”
Now Helides crossed her arms, too. ”So?”
”So then you stopped, and Delgis Reyes had to do it. I’m wondering why?”
”Because that’s the little wetback’s job.”
I bored through the slur. ”But there must be a reason why you decided to stop bringing her to see your mutual instructor.”
”Okay, mister.” Helides raised her voice again, and other conversations around us halted abrupdy. ”You think Cornel was hitting on our poor little Very, right?”
Radescu shuddered. ”Cassie, please don’t—”
”Well,” she continued, a few decibels louder. ”Let me tell you, that wasn’t it.”
I said, ”Veronica was hitting on him.”
Helides actually smiled, but cruelly. ”No, mister know-it-all.” Then she leaned down, nearly hissing out her words. ”The little bitch started hitting on me.”
I didn’t say anything.
”That’s right.” Helides straightened up again. ”I was driving her here one day for a lesson with Cornel, and Very moves her hand over to my thigh. Then she starts walking her fingers toward the secret garden.”
I could hear people at the tables around us speaking in low tones as they pushed back their chairs. ”Mrs. Helides—”
”No fair, mister. You asked for it, now you’re gonna hear it The little bitch says, ‘If that feels good, you want to do it to me?’ And I slap her hand away, tell her what an incredible cunt she is, and she clouts me—
me
—across the face. Well, I’m halfway to punching her lights out when I decided instead to do a U-ey and take her back to granddaddy, let him know what his little angel tried on step-grandmummy.”
”You told the Colonel that Veronica—”
”No, of course not. It would’ve fucking killed the poor old guy.” Cassandra Helides rocked her head side to side like a clown making a discovery in center ring at the circus. ”But that, mister, is how come I stopped driving precious little Very to her tennis lessons.”
Radescu said, ”Cassie, I do not think we should say anything more to this man, no matter what your husband told you about cooperation.”
”Fine,” replied Helides quickly. ”I’m even sick of looking at him.”
I got up from my chair. ”The police may be by about Malinda Dujong. I hope you have a better story for them.”
”We don’t need any story,” said Radescu, standing also. ”And you better remember the last thing I told you on the tennis court.”
His threat about nobody taking away what he’d worked so hard to acquire. ”Actually, that reminds me. Who won today’s match?”
Cassandra Helides moved toward Radescu. ”Cornel, six-three, six-one.” She slipped her arm around his, like links in a chain. ”And to the victor belongs the spoiled.”
I almost corrected her before realizing she was right.
Outside the gate of the tennis club, I called the direct cellular number on Sergeant Lourdes Pintana’s business card. When her voice mail kicked in anyway, I left a message about Malinda Dujong trying to reach me and what I’d seen with Don Floyd and Shirley Nole in the apartment. After clicking off, I tried to think of someone else to see before going to the Skipper’s house and telling him—and possibly Justo Vega—about Sundy Moran.
Just one name came to mind. Directory assistance gave me the telephone number, but a man answering told me the woman I wanted was home sick.
This time I drove in slowly enough that the dust cloud stayed below window level on the Cavalier. I brought it to a stop near the man in the straw hat and overalls, lighting his pipe. When I opened my door, he spat in the other direction before saying, ”Information booth’s still open, but this late in the day, I’m on overtime rates.”
I took a five from my wallet anyway. ”As a repeat customer, I’m entitied to a discount.”
He looked at the bill disdainfully, then reached out and took it. ”Reckon I’ll have to charge the next one double.”
”Her trailer?” I said.
He used the stem of his pipe as a pointer. ”Four down on the right, puke-green siding.”
”Thanks.”
”Don’t be too hasty.”
I got back in the car and drove. My guide was dead-on about the color of Donna Moran’s trailer. I had thoughts about whether Ford Walton might be in there as well, but only one vehicle slouched in front of it, and I couldn’t remember if the multiprimered Dodge was one of the many clunkers I’d seen outside Billy’s the day before.
Cement blocks created a stoop leading to an aluminum door. I knocked on it.
”Go away,” came more through an open window than from behind the door, but it was her voice.
”John Cuddy, Ms. Moran. Yesterday at Billy’s?”
Now the sound of bedsprings and heaving weight. I could hear someone pad to the door, then had to step down as it swung open at me.
”Jesus,” I said.
Donna Moran looked out through the one eye that wasn’t swollen shut. The closed eye and both cheeks were that purplish yellow of a recent beating.
She coughed. ”Got you to thank for this.”
”Luke and Hack?”
”They kept drinking after you showed them up, but they didn’t have you to take it out on.”
”Ms. Moran, I’m sorry.”
”Just like a man. You’re always sorry afterwards.” Now the open eye grew almost curious. ”Wait a minute. How’d you know they whaled on me?”
”I didn’t.”
”Then why’re you here?”
”I want to ask you some more questions.”
Her face showed a different kind of pain. ”Not about Sundy.”
”Only indirectly.”
”What?”
”Tommy O’Dell.”
The eye went dull. ”Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
”Because somebody else has maybe disappeared.” I decided to take a leap of faith. ”And she was trying to help me.”
Moran hung her head. ”For such a polite man, you don’t seem to be much luck for the women around you.” An image of Nancy’s hair in my nightmares skipped across my mind. ”That’s a fact.”
Moran lifted her head, the face trying to form a new expression before the pain overcame it. ”All right. Might’s well come set with me.”
The air inside the trailer was stifling, filled with that stale pong of long-smoked tobacco, even though every window I could see stood open. A torn sheet in a daisy print acted as a slipcover for the sofa, some unwashed mugs and dishes next to the sink. The hatchlike door to a closet or bathroom was closed, but through an open doorway at the end of the trailer, I could see the foot of a bed, the covers mussed. Moran said, ”Kind of like that bus.”
I looked at her.
She slumped into the sofa, the slipcover pulling down off the top. ”When I met Tommy. You know about me and him, somebody must’ve told you how the band got its girls.”
”I’ve heard about the bus.”
Moran sighed. ”Well, I got to say, it looked a lot more glamorous at the time.” The laugh like a hiccup. ”Probably about the same size as this place, though. Haven’t exactly moved up in the world, have I?”
”When we talked at the bar, why didn’t you tell me that Tommy O’Dell was Sundy’s father?”
A shrug that pain stopped like a freeze-frame. ”Didn’t seem to matter much.”
”That the daughters of two members of the same band were killed within hours of each other?”
”That Held girl, you mean?”
I made my voice stay patient. ”Yes.”
The good eye closed. ”Mr. John Polite, they were gonna make her a rock star, right?”
”Right.”
”Well, my Sundy was—Lord forgive me—a streetwalker. Just what do you think those two could’ve had in common?”
”I was hoping you might know.”
The eye opened again. ”Tommy and me, that was over twenty years ago. After I missed my... after I realized I was pregnant, and that it had to be him, I went to their manager person, Mr....?”
”Eisen?”
”Mr. Eisen, yeah. He told me Spiral got... bombarded. That was the word he used. Mr. Eisen said they got bombarded by... ‘sluts’ like me all the time. I didn’t go away, he’d call the police. I tried to sue them, they’d stand together, say none of them ever seen me afore. And after the band stonewalled it, this Mr. Eisen said probably the social services would take my baby away from a slut didn’t know who the father of her child really was.”
”What did you do then?”
”I shut up and had Sundy.” A moment of serenity came over Moran. ”I named her after the day Tommy and I... met, only not quite, account of it was the Sabbath, and it didn’t seem right to spell her name out the same way.” The moment passed. ”I’d gotten more religious by then, carrying Sundy around in my body like the Virgin Mary must have Him.”
”Did you ever see Tommy O’Dell again?”
Another sigh. ”On the TV.”
”And after he died?”
”Oh, I went back to that Mr. Eisen, said now that I can’t hurt Tommy no more, could the band maybe do something for my baby? Mr. Eisen told me they couldn’t, that any money Tommy had coming to him was all tied up in legal things. And that now Tommy was dead and buried, I’d never be able to prove he was Sundy’s daddy any which way.”
Eisen had concocted a more sugar-coated version for me that amounted to the same thing. ”Ms. Moran, anything else you can think of?”
A hand went to her forehead. ”Sundy was always carrying on about how she was gonna travel all over the country. Travel in style.”
”Maybe with a... rock band?”
”But that’s what don’t make no sense. I never did tell my’ girl who fathered her. And if Sundy somehow got connected up with this Held child, why wouldn’t my daughter have told me? And why would somebody kill the both of them when somebody else like you might find it out?”
I thought about Cassandra Helides that afternoon. ”I’m sorry to ask you this question, but it may be important.” The hand stayed on her forehead. ”Please just let it be the last one, all right?”
”Ms. Moran, there’s some reason to believe that Veronica Held was interested in experimenting with sex.”
The hiccup laugh. ”She should have asked me about it first.”
”Maybe with... a woman older than she was.”
The hand came down, the face tightened from more kinds of pain than I could imagine. ”You’re saying she... That my Sundy and this little girl...?”
”Did your daughter ever tell you any—”
”No!”
The only thing louder than Donna Moran’s answer was the shattering sound from outside her trailer.
A
second shattering sound reached me before I got to the window next to the door. The Cavalier’s two headlights were smashed, glass and plastic and tin on the ground in front of its bumper. Luke, the guy in the Peterbilt ballcap, was moving around to the rear of my car, Hack wearing his bandanna and doing his barnyard laugh. Luke had an aluminum bat over his shoulder, receiving compliments on the quality of his swings from my guide in the straw hat and overalls, standing off to the side, his pipe in a corner of his mouth.
No firearms in sight, though.
I turned away from the window. ”Ms. Moran?”
”Luke and Hack, right?”
I heard what I guessed to be one of my taillights. ”Do they carry handguns?”
”Never known them to.”
I glanced around. ”There another way out of here?”
* * *
Coming around from the back of the trailer, I saw Hack’s bandanna first, his face turned toward the door I’d entered by. Sticking up from a back pocket of his jeans was a wrench the size of a camp hatchet.
Crouched low, I was on him just as my guide yelled, ”Behind you!”
Hack turned obligingly into the heel of my right hand, his nose going flat as I felt the cartilage collapse on itself. There was a torrent of blood and snot running down his shirt as he sank to his knees, both hands going up to his face, what was coming out of his mouth not identifiable as words.
I stepped past him and yanked the wrench out of his jeans pocket. Holding it by the handle, I felt the head of the tool dowsing toward the ground.
Luke had the bat off his shoulder now, as though he were in a hitter’s stance at the plate but advancing on the pitcher’s mound.
I said, ”That was for what you two did to Donna Moran.”
”Boy, I’m gonna take your head clean off your shoulders.”
”He can do it, too,” my guide offered around the pipe stem. ”Luke led the county in home runs, his senior year at the high school.”
I let Babe Ruth get to within ten feet of me before saying, ”You ever see
The Last of the Mohicans,
Luke?”
He stopped his advance. ”The what?”
Which is when I brought the wrench back behind my neck and let it fly like a tomahawk.
Luke’s reflexes were still pretty good, but he probably— instinctively—thought I’d be aiming at his head, so he tried to duck under my chin music. I’d hoped for his chest, though, to knock him enough off balance that I could get inside the bat before he could swing it. The combination of his reaction and my target made his left cheekbone the bull’s-eye.
There was a sickening thud, and Luke folded like a crash-test dummy.
My guide said, ”Waste of the man’s ten dollars.” Stepping past Luke this time, I spoke over the sound of Hack groaning and rolling in the dirt behind me. ”You called him.”
A hand reached into the overalls. I tensed, but all that came out was a cell phone.
”Great invention,” said my guide. ”Call cost a buck, but that’s still ninety percent profit on my time.”
I bent down, picked up Luke’s bat. My guide’s pipe fell from his mouth to a spot between his feet.
”Hold on there,” he said. ”I wasn’t hurting you none.”
”These two tried beating me up in that roadhouse, and when they fumbled the ball, they attacked Donna Moran instead.”
”Maybe so, but I’m no part of that.”
”You told me about the roadhouse.”
”Only because you asked. And paid for it.”
He was right there.
”So,” said my guide. ”Why don’t we just leave things where they be?”
”Not quite.” I moved forward, he moved back the same distance. Then I looked down at the ground.
”Aw, no. That was my daddy’s pipe.”
”Your phone, then.”
”My...” He glanced at the thing still in his hand. ”But this here cost me—”
"Your pipe, your phone, or your hand.”
He dropped the cellular and backed up.
After finishing with it, I said, ”Take Hack and Luke to a hospital. One’s got a broken nose, the other at least a fractured cheekbone. And if either of them, or anybody else, touches Donna Moran again, simple medical attention won’t be enough. We clear on that?”
”Clear,” whispered my guide.
”I didn’t hear you.”
”Clear,” he said, with some effort.
”I truly hope so.”
My adrenaline surge abated enough in the car for me to think ahead again. Using my own cellular phone, I called the hotel for voice-mail messages. The first was from Justo Vega, saying he would meet me at the Skipper’s house by six for dinner. The second, via Duy Tranh, conveyed the same information, though his tone suggested he viewed the invitation as more an order. The third was from Sergeant Lourdes Pintana, saying another matter kept her at a crime scene but that she’d meet me to talk about Malinda Dujong ”at ten as we agreed.” After hanging up, I tried Dujong’s number at the tennis club, though without much hope. When I got only her outgoing tape, I clicked off the cell phone.
The same woman who’d helped me the last time was behind the rent-a-car counter at my hotel. When she saw me walking up, the back of her right hand went to her mouth.
”Sir, are you all right?”
How could she...? ”What do you mean?”
She spoke the next words very slowly. ”Your shirt.”
I looked down. Hack’s blood had spattered on me in a blotchy, polka-dot pattern.
I looked back to the woman behind the counter. ”Guess I’ll be needing another one.”
A very guarded expression on her face as she nodded.
I trotted out some kind of smile. ”I’m afraid I’ll be needing another car, too.”
* * *
After five forms in triplicate, followed by a shower and change of clothes, I was behind the wheel of a red Olds Achieva. When I got to the Skipper’s house, Pepe was talking with Umberto Reyes outside the little gazebo.
”Hey,” said Pepe as Reyes opened the gate for me. ”What happen to you Chevy?”
I pulled up even with him and braked. ”Batting practice.” Pepe nodded, as though my explanation made perfect sense when it came to rental vehicles. ”This look like a better car for you, anyways.”
As Reyes closed the gate behind us, I said to Pepe, ”Justo already inside?”
Another nod. ”Mr. Vega and me, we got here maybe ten minutes ago.”
”Do you know who else is in there?”
Now a grin. ”How you say it, the usual suspects?”
Based on the number of cars parked near the garage bays, I could see Pepe was close to right. Leaving the Olds next to Cassandra Helides’s Porsche, I could also see they were the identical shade of red, though I doubted the Bavarian company’s promo literature would agree on that.
When I knocked at the back door, Duy Tranh came to it, wearing a very tight smile on his face.
Through the screening, he said, ”You do this intentionally.”
”Do what?”
”Come to a different entrance of the house each time.”
I reached up for the handle on the massive door. ”Why would I?”
”To disturb my composure.” The smile went from tight to defiant as he raised his hand. ”You will not succeed in such an endeavor, Mr. Cuddy.”
”Frankly, I hadn’t realized I was trying.”
But I did let him open the door for me.
”Forgive us, Lieutenant, but my medications require me to eat at the same time each evening.”
The salad course had already been served, though most of the people around the elliptical dining table were less than halfway through it Nicolas Helides sat at one end, his wife Cassandra opposite him, a good twenty feet away. On the near long side were Justo, Mitch Eisen, and two empty chairs, a tented napkin still at one of the place settings. On the far long side were all four members of Spiral, which surprised me. I didn’t see David Helides, which didn’t surprise me.
I took the chair with the tented napkin as Duy Tranh slid silently into his on my left. If pecking order mattered, Justo was closest to the Skipper, with me next and even the band’s manager before the trusted almost-son.
Our host raised a glass that appeared to be just water.
”A
second toast, to the success of Spiral in its public appearance tonight.”
Which explained why the band members were there. The meal might have been intended as a banquet but the pace and conversation resembled more a wake. Any small talk was forced, the only exceptions being Justo asking polite, softball questions of Spi Held, Mitch Eisen answering most of them too elaborately in what seemed an effort to fill the voids of air and time. Cassandra Helides drank wine as though it were Gatorade during the third set under a blazing sun. Delgis Reyes served the courses; each time she got to me, Veronica Held’s former au pair wouldn’t meet my eyes.
As the last dessert forks clattered against empty dishes that had held slices of rum cake, the Skipper turned to his right and said to the band, ”Well, I believe you all need to go. Can’t be late for your big evening.”
It was painful to hear, maybe because he sounded like an emotionally distant man speaking to a twelve-year-old son home for the weekend from boarding school.
Spi Held stared at his father, his eyes milky. ”Thanks.” He stood. ”Dad.”
Buford Biggs, Gordo Lazar, and Ricky Queen all got up like a drill team, mumbling softly in appreciation as well. Mitch Eisen took the trouble to approach the Colonel and shake hands. After the five of them trooped out, the table seemed unbalanced, and not just because there were four empty chairs along the far side of it.
Nicolas Helides looked at his wife. ”Cassandra, I’ll be needing to speak with these gentlemen for a while.”
”You’re excused,” she said, slurring the last syllable. Then the Skipper’s eyes went past mine to Tranh. ”Duy, we’ll be in the library, should you need me.”
I didn’t turn, but the air leaving the lungs of the man to my left sounded like a death rattle.
”Brandy, Lieutenant?”
Justo said, ”No, thank you.”
Nicolas Helides looked at me, inclining his head toward the decanter on the sideboard between two tall shelves of books. I shook my head in return.
The Skipper settled deeper in his chair. ”Could I have your report?”
I told him about Malinda Dujong and what I’d learned of Sundy Moran from her mother and Mitch Eisen. I didn’t mention how Cassandra Helides had described Veronica’s behavior on their last drive to the tennis club or what Ricky Queen had implied outside Dicey Riley’s regarding Veronica’s ”experimental” attitude. I finished with the incident involving Luke and Hack at the trailer park.
A glimmer came into Helides’s eyes. The same one I’d seen after describing the bar brawl of the day before.
Which is when it hit me. The man was living vicariously, feeling capable again through hearing about an investigation involving violence. And a part of me—deep inside—withered a little.
Justo said, ”John, you have not yet spoken with the police about the disappearance of the Dujong woman?”
”I’m supposed to meet with one of the homicide investigators tonight at ten.”
The Skipper frowned. ”Pity.”
”I’m sorry, sir?”
”You’ll miss the band’s re-debut.”
A smile that for a moment made me think Helides had become senile.
Justo filled the gap. ”Anything else, John?”
I refocused. ”Colonel, it seems pretty clear to me that you’ve cut Duy Tranh out of the loop.”
No smile now. ”I imagine it’s pretty clear to him as well.”
”Can I ask what made you change your mind?”
The Skipper’s left hand went to the brace leaning against his chair, the fingers almost caressing its metal. ”Since my stroke, I have relied on Duy to be my effective... self. Financially, administratively, totally.”
Helides stopped. I waited.
The Skipper’s hand came back into his lap. ”However, he was the person who found Veronica’s body. And what I’ve heard from you so far about this Sundy Moran seems a remarkable coincidence, but not tied by evidence to anything approaching a motive—even an irrational explanation—of why anyone else would want to kill my grandchild.” Very quietly, I said, ”Colonel, could Veronica’s death have been related to the way she acted at your party?”
The face flushed, the eyes squeezed shut, and for a moment Helides’s features could have been an older version of his son David’s. Then the moment passed, and the eyes of the man I’d served under in Saigon were piercing me again across thirty years. ”Find out, Lieutenant. Find out.”
After Justo and I went through the back door, there were only a few cars remaining by the garage, and the red Porsche wasn’t one of them.
I said, ”Cassandra Helides shouldn’t be driving after what she drank at dinner.”
”I am afraid the Skipper has long ago given up any hope of affecting her decisions.”
We reached my Olds, and I could see Pepe walking toward us from the security gazebo.
”Justo,” I said. ”A difficult question?”