5 Tutti Frutti (12 page)

“
Hey, Biker, Dev Haskell, we met before, partied with Tommy D’Angelo that night. How’s it going?” I lied.

He
sort of snapped back to reality with the mention of Tommy’s name. Then suddenly grew all sweet and charming, shook my hand while he placed his left hand on my shoulder.

“Oh yeah, knew
you from somewhere. God, that was a night wasn’t it?’ He sounded like he was still trying to remember when and where.

“One for the books
, Biker, one for the books. Hey, Tommy told me to meet him at the victory party. That somewhere special?”

“Private party room
upstairs. That door next to the bar, take the stairs.”

“Folks
up there already? Tommy here?”

“Some of the usual crowd.
Tommy and Gino got a little delayed I guess.”

Yeah, I’d seen the delay going down
with Aaron and Detective Manning in the hallway of the courthouse, but didn’t feel the need to tell Biker about it.

“Hey,
when Swindle comes out will you tell her I’m up in the party room?”

“Ye
ah, Swindle,” Biker said and just shook his head.

There was a guard of sor
ts at the stairway. A young woman in Goth makeup wearing black latex and a cape stood next to the door. She was holding a spear about eight feet long and didn’t react when I spoke to her.

“How’s it going?
” I said.

She looked straight ahead, sort of standing at attention the way someone who’d never served in the military thought you stood at attention.

“The party for Gino up these stairs?”

Still no reaction. If I’d been drinking
, I probably would have pulled some stunt like drawing a mustache on her face or worse. Instead, I just opened the door and went upstairs. The kid probably thought she added to the atmosphere.

The party
room was a nice enough place. There were a half dozen reclining nude portraits gracing the walls. If I recalled, prior to the Tutti Frutti this place had been called Dusty’s, a cowboy theme bar serving long neck beers with a mechanical bull ride in one of the corners. The nude portraits seemed to be all that remained of Dusty’s.

A buffet
table ran along a far wall. A number of aluminum chafing dishes held different foods and were kept warm by small flames burning beneath and what looked like heat lamps positioned over the trays. People were clustered in small groups talking in hushed tones not quite whispering, but almost. Next to the buffet table was a bar that seemed to draw me toward it.

“Hi, what can I get you?” She was a cheery thing, the bartender. She could have been pretty, pr
obably was until she added fifteen pounds of metal piercing to her head. The ridge of both ears looked like a zipper had been sown onto them. I counted a half dozen jeweled bars running down the bridge of her nose. Her eyebrows looked like she’d had a bad experience with a staple gun, and her lips looked like the branch on a Christmas tree. I caught myself staring for a long moment.

“What would you like, sir?” she asked.

“You got a Summit EPA?”

“Yes sir, care for a glass?”

“Just the bottle will do.” I felt like asking her something personal like how she ever cleared airport security? Or were flying magnets a danger? Instead I just said, “Thanks,” and walked away.

I was standing in the middle of the room looking around and not recognizing anyone.
I had hoped to run into Candi, but if she was around I didn’t see her, and she wasn’t the sort you’d miss.

“How in the hell did you get in her
e?” It was Heidi. A least I think it was. She was adorned with more of her fake piercings. She’d dug out her red and purple skunk wig and had pulled the thing onto her head. She was poured into a military-looking sort of corset which was actually pretty good.

“Well
, at least I didn’t have to wear a costume.”

“Very funny. N
ot. You certainly seem to be climbing the social ladder. How did you rate to get in here?”

I looked around the room and
thought if the state medical authorities knew about this group they’d drop a net over the entire bunch.

“I think all these people fell off the
social ladder a long time ago.”

“I suppose you’d feel more at home in those dreadful dive bars you frequent. With people drunk and obnoxious or just passed out.”

“Probably. Hey,” I leaned in close and adopted the same hushed tone as everyone else. “What’s the deal, I thought the D’Angelos were having a victory party? This feels more like a funeral.”

“Figures you wouldn’t have a clue
. Get me another drink and I’ll fill you in,” she said then handed me what looked like a large bathroom glass.

“You’re either drinking mouthwash or lime
Kool-Aid?”

“A Green Fairy.”

“What?”

“A Green Fairy, of course
you wouldn’t know. It’s the latest thing and she can really make a good one,” Heidi glanced over at the zipper headed bartender.

“Be right back.”

“Better give me another Summit and a Green Fairy,” I said then set my empty down beside Heidi’s glass. “Hey, what’s a Green Fairy anyway?”

“Green Fairy, oh
, they can be nasty. Absinthe, melon liqueur and peach schnapps.”

“Absinthe?”

“It’s a French liqueur. They say Van Gogh was drinking it when he decided to cut his ear off.”

“Gee, better make
it a double then.”

“
Okay.”

“No, no
, don’t make it a double. I know where that would be headed.”

“You sure?
I can.”

“Very sure, thanks all the same.”

It was a couple hours later when Swindle finally made her appearance. She wandered in dressed in the same outfit she’d worn earlier, so she hadn’t gone home to change. God only knew what she’d been up to, but she clearly hadn’t missed anything at the victory party. Joey Cazzo, Louie and Gino and Tommy D’Angelo were nowhere to be seen.

The crowd
had thinned to probably half its original size, which hadn’t been a whole lot of people to begin with. The buffet table was still in place, but the food had been on the warm-cycle for more than a few hours and appeared to have developed some sort of dried crust over everything. Heidi was flitting back and forth between a couple of small groups and Zipper Head the bartender.

I was bored out of my mind and even though the
people-watching was great it was beginning to get old.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Hey,
where’s the action?”
Swindle asked. She’d made a beeline for the bar the moment she entered the room. At first I thought she might be okay. Now close up she appeared higher than a kite with wide unblinking eyes and dilated pupils that glared at everyone in the room.

She sniffled as she rubbed her nose back and forth then drained the top third of her drink
. It looked an awful lot like bourbon on the rocks. I prayed it was ice tea.

“Where’s the action? I don’t think there is any, Swindle
. Tommy and Gino haven’t bothered to show. Half the folks have already left and the other half will leave about ten seconds after the bar closes. The food has been slow cooking under those heat lights for the past three or four hours so I’d stay away from that.”

“We gotta get this place moving, get some action going.
There should be a band playing or something, this sucks big time,” she said then took another gulp.

“Maybe the band is
waiting for Tommy and Gino to show up. Or maybe they just cancelled.”

Swindle kept
moving around, shifting her weight, and looking here and there unable to remain still. She downed the remainder of her drink in one massive pour, shuddered a moment then handed me her empty.

“Get me another. I’m gonna get this place moving, this is total dul
lsville,” she said, then staggered across the room to the stairway.

“Working friend of yours?” Heidi said in my ear.

“No, actually, my date, sort of,” I replied.

“Oh
, Dev, I’m sorry I didn’t mean…”

“Relax, it’s a business deal, she’s a client.”

“You’re working for hookers?” she said.

“I better get her drink refilled, need anything?”

“No, moderation is the key.”

I walked over to the b
ar. Zipper Head was still there. “I need a Summit and this was Swindle’s, so whatever she was drinking, I guess.”

She handed me my
Summit then filled a glass with ice and free-poured a large amount of Grey Goose vodka over the cubes.

“
Actually, I think Swindle was drinking bourbon,” I said.

“Y
eah, you’re right, she was.” She emphasized the word “was”. “But she always likes to mix things up. She usually starts with a white wine, then a shot or two of something strange, followed by bourbon, vodka, and then a gin martini. She finishes up with tequila shots if she can make it that far. Some extra curricular stuff in-between,” she winked.

“Sounds absolutely lethal.”

“That’s Swindle,” she smiled.

My client
, I thought. And I was supposed to watch her? She didn’t just need a keeper, she needed about five years in rehab and a team of social workers.

“Oh, oh,” Zipper Head
suddenly said under her breath.

“All right
, everybody, let’s get it going tonight. Come on, put your hands together and start clapping.”

I turned round to see Swindle with
a cordless mike sort of circling in the center of the room. Biker was quickly setting up a sound system or something behind her looking very flustered.

“Come on
, clap with me you bastards. Give me the clap,” she giggled, shook her hips, raised her hands over her head, and clapped. A couple of the women followed suit, sort of beginning to dance in place. Most of the guys looked toward the door.

A moment later
Biker gave her the thumbs up as he quickly fled the scene.

“God
, I better have another,” Heidi said, coming alongside and slamming her glass on the bar.

“Come on you pricks
, let it all hang out,” Swindle shouted and pulled her blouse out from her little leather skirt. That brought a couple of the guys moving in closer and joining in the clapping.

“Better make it a double,” Heidi said to Zipper Head.

Swindle had made her way to the corner where Biker had set up the sound system. She stepped on a foot switch and a light down by her feet suddenly flashed on illuminating a section of the wall and the painting hanging behind her.

I feared the worst.

Music started to blare across the room’s sound system and suddenly Swindle was in the throws of singing Karaoke. I don’t know if it speaks to my broad range of interests or one of my many bad sides. I recognized the song. Actually, it wasn’t all that tough because the title was momentarily illuminated up on the wall. Then the words to the song began to scroll across the painting of a dark haired naked woman holding a strategically placed bottle of liquor. None of this seemed to bother Swindle as she burst, horribly off key, into the chorus, “I just want to make… love to you.”

Theoretically
, she was shaking her hips in time to the beat although she never really found it; the beat. The music stopped for a moment and more than a little applause ensued.

“Give me
another,” Heidi said and drained her glass.

“You better take it easy, Heidi.”

“Make that a double,” she said and glared at me.

Swindle was on
to the next tune, “Rocket Queen.” Sadly I recognized it. Everyone crazy enough to still be in the room was forming a large circle around her, well, except for those fleeing toward what little refuge the bar provided.

“I’ve
got a tongue like a razor,” Swindle slurred and staggered a couple of steps, which just seemed to encourage the crowd.

“God, that’s fucki
ng dreadful,” Heidi shouted then sipped.

“…but then you’ll do w
hatever I like.” Swindle roared off key, staggering in a circle all the while pointing at various individuals in the crowd.

From out of no
where someone handed her a drink, it looked like a martini. At least it was in a stemmed glass and clear. She downed the thing spilling quite a bit across her chest in the process. That seemed to be a cause for more applause. Thankfully, some guy grabbed her empty glass just as she wound up to throw it against the wall.

Thirty minutes later and the bar was three deep with people trying to inoculate themselves. What may ha
ve been funny for the first few minutes had turned into a marathon of bad taste and off-key shouting. Swindle was in her element, an absolute mess. She’d torn her blouse open two or three songs ago and was displaying four thousand dollars worth of surgical implant expertise.