The Delta Star (18 page)

***

And while the groupie was letting the cat out of the bag to the mortification of the doggie cop, Mario Villalobos was smoking his third cigarette in an all-night ice-cream parlor near Farmer’s Market. He was watching Dagmar Duffy putting away a banana split and trying to pull himself together to talk about Russian spies.

“I just love hot chocolate syrup,” Dagmar Duffy said, sweating from the tension.

“Uh huh,” Mario Villalobos said. “How about wiping it off the end of your nose and let’s talk about Missy Moonbeam now.”

“Oh Lord!” Dagmar Duffy said, wiping off the syrup. “I was gonna call ya this morning, but I lost my nerve.”

“Why?”

Dagmar Duffy shivered so palpably that his blond curls jumped. “I was scared to call ya and scared not to call ya.”

“You know who killed Missy. Is that it?”

“I know what” Dagmar Duffy said.

“Yeah, Russian spies,” Mario Villalobos sighed. “Wanna cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke. It’s terrible for the complexion. It ages ya.” Dagmar Duffy reflexively fluffed his perm when he said it.

“What’s your connection to Missy?”

“Okay,” Dagmar Duffy said. He pushed away the empty dish and licked the syrup off his lips, which had just a hint of clear gloss on them. “I knew her because she scored coke from Howard. He’s my old boyfriend.”

“Go on.”

“Well… I don’t wanna get Howard in no trouble. He only started selling because he was tooting about a thousand lines a day. I told him he was gonna be a railhead, but he wouldn’t listen. I never use drugs myself. I’m thirty-nine years old but you’d never know it, would ya? I’m not from the drug generation.”

“Enough with your mid-life crisis,” Mario Villalobos said. “I got my own to deal with. Get to the point.”

“Then we became friends, Missy and me,” Dagmar Duffy said. “I started shining on old Howard because of his flake habit and all. Missy wasn’t a dumb girl. She used to read books and listen to good rock ‘n roll. I really liked her. Sometimes we’d get together at my place when she wasn’t hustling.”

“Did she have an old man?”

“A pimp? I don’t think. Like, she had to pay money to black guys sometimes just to make them leave her alone and all. She was a lonely kid. Reminded me a my little sister, Missy did.”

“Tell me about the Russian spies,” Mario Villalobos said.

“Oh Lord!” Dagmar Duffy shushed Mario Villalobos while the waitress removed the ice cream dish and brought fresh coffee. When she’d gone he said, “I don’t turn tricks for money. I’m not that kind a person.”

“Yeah,” Mario Villalobos sighed.

“But this one time, Missy told me she had a special date. Real special. She said the date was all-time important and she could let me have a hundred bucks out a what she was gonna get.

“Yeah, and what did it involve, this special date?”

“He liked to party with two people, man and woman. That’s all she’d tell me. It wasn’t like her, cause she usually told me everything, we was such good friends. At first I told her no and she goes, ‘I’ll give ya more money.’ Then I asked why it was so important and she said it just was, and she begged me. Finally I did it for the hundred bucks.”

“You and Missy did a double?”

“
Uh huh,” Dagmar Duffy said.

“Where? When?”

“About the middle a April. It was a Saturday night. We were in a hotel in downtown L. A. The tall glass one that looks like a pinball machine inside. Or maybe a jukebox.”

“I know the one,” Mario Villalobos nodded.

“There was lots a foreigners there. All over the lobby. He was a foreigner.”

“Who made the contact with this foreigner?”

“I don’t know. Missy had some friend who set him up. She never knew the foreigner before we saw him in the lobby. He was sitting near the glass elevators. Missy said he’d be fifty years old and be tall and blondish and be wearing a blue suit and a brown ha
t
with a feather.

She smiled at him and he smiled back, and I smiled at him and he smiled back. He offered to buy us a drink in the bar and we played a little hard to get for a minute. He was easy. We settled on twenty bucks apiece. He was so square he actually thought he picked us both up for forty bucks. Of course, somebody else had set it up and paid the real freight.”

“What did he call himself?”

“Edwin. We had one drink and went to his room and turned the trick.”

“Did he speak English?”

“Oh yeah, but with an accent.”

“What country was he from?”

“Dutch is what I thought. He had blue eyes and milky skin. He was nice but I didn’t dig it, turning tricks for money like that. I’m not a whore. When I can get a job, I’m a great housekeeper. You know anybody needs a macho maid, gimme a call.”

“I’m sort of fond of my clutter and dust,” the detective said. “How about any special instructions Missy gave you before the date?”

“Well, the sex was normal. I mean normal for us, you understand, but there was a scary part. It makes me scared when I think about it. We weren’t really alone with him.”

“Whadda you mean?”

“I’m not dumb. I mean I’m not smart, but I’m not dumb. I
could see what Missy was doing. The way she turned in bed. The way she made him turn when we were on the bed. The way she said things and made him talk.”

“What was she doing?”

“We were making a movie! Or at least we were posing for still shots. Maybe a tape recording. Like that. There was somebody there. Maybe in the closet, I don’t know. Maybe in the other room, shooting pictures through a wall. I don’t know how they do those things. But I know somebody was getting us down.”

“Did the john guess?”

“He was totally square,” Dagmar Duffy said, shaking his head. “He was drunk and into what he was doing. We made him crazy, Missy and me.” Dagmar Duf
f
y looked as though he wanted to take a bow. “When it was over, he thanked us and gave us each a ten-dollar tip. He was a real gentleman, drunk or not.”

“That was a month ago. Did you see Missy after that?”

“A few times.”

“Did she ever talk about that date?”

“Sort of. I mean, she said how much she appreciated me helping her. And that pretty soon she’d make it up to me and pretty soon she’d be off the streets. Poor Missy, she was doing coke like crazy at a hundred and fifty a gram. I knew she wouldn’t be off the streets. Ever. Anyways, I knew what she meant.”

“Extortion?”

“Whadda
ya
think? I feel bad about it. He seemed like such a nice man.”

“Now let’s get on to the Russian spies,” Mario Villalobos said.

“Oh Lord!” Dagmar Duffy said. “Well, the week before she went off the roof I seen her a couple times. Once was in her apartment. She was real excited, looking at magazines. One was Time or Newsweek, but it was from last year. It was open to a picture of the Russian sub that got caught by Sweden. Then I saw this other magazine that didn’t look familiar. It had pictures of scientists in white coats doing experiments and things. I go, ‘Whatcha reading?’ She surprises the shit outa me by going, ‘Dagmar, can you believe I’m gonna make a lotta money and get off the streets?’ I go, ‘Sure and I’m gonna be straight and start dating waitresses.’ She goes, ‘No lie. The Russians’re doing it for me.’ Then she goes,
‘
My boyfriend’s a Russian agent.’ Then she blows a rail or two of coke and starts laughing like a maniac and she wouldn’t say no more.”

“That’s it?”

“Don’t ya see? We turned a trick with this guy. At first I thought he was Dutch, but I bet he was a Russian! Maybe he was a famous Russian scientist and the KGB was involved!” “KGB.”

“Yeah! And the KGB took pictures of us and they’re now telling him he can’t deflect.”

“Defect.”

“Yeah! And the KGB decides to get rid a Missy!”

“Why?”

“Cause Missy contacted the Russians and said she’s gonna tell!”

“This isn’t making much sense, Dagmar.”

“Well I haven’t worked it all out,” Dagmar Duffy said. “Anyways, I’m next! I was in that room too!”

It was hard for Mario Villalobos not to sigh and roll his eyes. But it was easy to ask himself what the hell he was doing here. Russians? Fruitcake and caviar?

“Tell me, Dagmar, did Missy ever mention a friend of hers in Pasadena? An older guy named Lester? A private investigator?”

“Come to think, she knew an old geezer in Pasadena. I don’t know his name, but he called the same day she was looking at the Russian’s picture. She never said who he was, but after she hung up she goes, ‘That’s a friend a mine from Pasadena.’ I go, ‘Keepin the good stuff for yourself?’ She goes, ‘He only likes girls. And besides, he’s too old to interest you.’ Old guy in Pasadena! Is he connected with this?”

“No, he’s dead,” Mario Villalobos said.

“Dead? They got him too? Oh Lord!”

“Heart attack,” Mario Villalobos said. “Try to calm down, Dagmar, and tell me, do you know anything about Missy having a stolen or borrowed credit card belonging to a man named Lester?”

“No,” he said. “No credit card. Well..

“Puh-leese, Dagmar!” Mario Villalobos said, and this time he did show the whites of his eyes.

Dagmar Duffy said, “I mean, okay, like she was a coke freak, she was a hooker. Sometimes she lifted guys’ wallets when she tricked with them. She talked about it, about how risky it was, but how it gave her a rush to do it. Like coke, she said. Trick with a guy and lift his wallet and run outa the motel. Crazy girl.”

“And about the credit card?”

“Sometimes she’d take me out to dinner. We’d get dressed up real nice and she’d… I can’t get in trouble, can I? I never did it.”

“I’m only interested in murder.”

“Sometimes she’d use a hot credit card and pay for the meal. She looked like a lady when she dressed up. She talked very nice. Her husband’s card, she’d say. We did it a few times, no problem.”

Mario Villalobos took Lester Beemer’s credit card from his pocket. “Did you ever see this card?”

“American Express? All look alike, don’t they? Don’t leave home without it. I never looked at the names on them. Once we almost got caught with one a those American Express cards. It didn’t work.”

“Whadda you mean, didn’t work?”

“It was a few days before she died. We went to a very nice restaurant on La Cienega. Ate about a hundred bucks’ worth a food and she gave the waiter an American Express card and pretty soon he came back and he goes, ‘There’s something wrong with this card. Please talk to the manager.’ “

“What happened then?”

“She got real huffy and snatched the card outa his hand and pulled a hundred and ten bucks outa her purse and threw it at him and said we were never coming back. He was apologizing to us all the way to the door. She was beautiful!”

“And maybe it was this card?”

“Maybe,” he shrugged. “Same kind. She said she only kept them a few days after she stole them. Said tricks usually thought it over a few days before they figured out a good lie for their wives about the missing wallets. She was a smart kid. Too smart, maybe. Did she have that card when she died?”

“No, not when she died,” Mario Villalobos said. “I’m gonna want your address and phone number. I’ve gotta think about this for a while and do a little more checking.”

“Can I get police protection? You know, the Russians? Are you sure the old guy in Pasadena wasn’t murdered? They can make it look like an accident!”

“Heart attack.”

“Did he die the same day as Missy?”

“No, he died on the first of May.”

“First of May!” Dagmar Duffy screamed, scaring the crap out of Mario Villalobos and the waitress, who spilled some coffee, and the only other customer in the ice cream parlor, an old woman who said, “Keep it down, you little screamer!”

“What’re you yelling about?” the detective demanded.

“May the first! That’s May Day in Moscow! A perfect time for Russians to kill their enemies!”

This time Mario Villalobos could not prevent his eyeballs from sliding back in his skull. Fruitcake and caviar.

***

The last of the regular losers to leave The House of Misery was Jane Wayne. There were a few other cops still there when she left. Three civilians had wandered in and were talking baseball to Leery. Jane Wayne wondered why The Bad Czech had not showed up. All in all, the evening had offered all the fun of an Ingmar Bergman movie.

While Dagmar Duffy was scaring himself with Russian spies, and Jane Wayne was longing for her favorite sex object, a feverish Laotian woman saw a giant with winged eyebrows in the corridor of a local hospital. She had been recuperating from a bone graft and was now allowed to hobble around pretty much when she felt like it. She had seen several Asian people in the ward that evening, but they did not speak her language. Two of them were middle-aged adults and the rest were pretty girls who were crying.

The Laotian woman was about one-third the size of the giant who stood awkwardly in the corridor. After all the Asians had gone, the giant tiptoed softly, on the largest pair of jogging shoes the woman had ever seen, to the room where the people had been. The patient in that room looked like a battered child. The white sheets and big bed made him look very small. And he was very battered. There were tubes everywhere, including one plastered inside a mound of bandages on his broken face.

The giant stood clumsily by the bed and watched the patient. The patient breathed fearfully shallow and hadn’t moved or stirred or opened his eyes since the Laotian woman had first noticed him.

The giant whispered to the battered patient.

“Magilla?” he said.

The Laotian woman was extremely curious about the giant. He stood by the unconscious patient for nearly an hour. He was still there when the woman got very tired and had to shuffle back to her room. Every five minutes or so she could hear him.

“Magilla?” the giant said.