A Shroud for Aquarius (8 page)

“We were friendly.”

“You don’t seem too broken up about her death.”

“How I feel about her death is my business. Why did you want to see me, Mallory?”

“I’m trying to put the pieces together. I want to know what happened to Ginnie, and why.”

“Researching another book?”

“No.”

He raised his martini, looked into it like a crystal ball. The olive eye looked back at him. Neither one of them gave a damn.

“Might be a book in it for you,” he said with empty cheer. Then, with mock pomp, went on: “
Whatever Happened to the Love Generation?
You could compare the dreams and the platitudes of the sixties flower children with the disappointing realities and hypocrisies of their lives in the seventies and eighties. Ginnie might make a good symbol of that.”

“So would you.”

Without looking at me, he smiled, still contemplating the drink. “I was never a flower child.”

“Or a doper?”

“Or a doper.”

“No, I guess not,” I said. “I’ll bet you were a frat rat, in those days, weren’t you? Sigma something.”

He saluted me with his glass. “It’s Greek to me,” he said.

“You were never vaguely a hippie. You’ve been a capitalist all along.”

He turned in his seat, smiling. There was more warmth in the olive than in his smile. He said, “My father left me an insurance business. He was a bad businessman—a nice fella, but a bad businessman. I’ve made his business thrive. I’m a respected member of the community, Mallory. A member here at the club. A property owner. Whatever could you be implying?”

“Do you want me to say it?”

The lounge was almost empty, and the bartender was at the other end of the bar. Still, it was a public place.

Very softly, he said, “You think I’m a dealer. Let’s suppose you’re right. Let’s suppose I do have a… sideline. And let’s suppose further that Ginnie was in the same business. That we were business partners.”

“Let’s.”

“Fine. But Ginnie and I weren’t partners anymore. We stayed friends. I saw her from time to time. Strictly got together to… how did they put it in the sixties?” With heavy sarcasm, he said, “We’d…
rap.
”

“I bet you majored in business.”

“That’s right, and all the sixties meant to me was business. Oh, yeah, and a few days of no classes after Kent State.”

“You started dealing back then, I’ll bet. Just helping out friends, and friends of friends. And like any good business, it grew.”

His boredom was turning to irritation. “Is there anything else? I’d like to get home to my wife.”

“Beautiful woman. She was working on a painting.”

“Keeps her off the streets.”

“Five years ago the local law told Ginnie to quit dealing. Told her it wasn’t respectable for somebody running a place like ETC.’s.”

He nodded. “And she did what they told her.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Sure I’m sure. She quit dealing. She was doing fine with her shop; who needed it?”

“She had a gambling habit, you know.”

He laughed, a scoffing sort of laugh. “So she went to Vegas and Tahoe when she needed to cut loose. So what? Gambling habit, ha.”

The bartender came around and picked up Sturms’s empty glass; he didn’t order another.

“Now,” he said, “I’ve done you the courtesy of meeting with you. Now why don’t you do me the courtesy of leaving? Members and their guests only here—I’m about to go down and take a shower before I go home. And you’re about to be nobody’s guest.”

We sat amidst plants of all persuasions in a little bar/deli named after Amelia Earhart. I was having another Pabst, and she was having a Coors Light. Her eyes were greener than the plants.

“So you’re a writer?” she said, smiling nervously, her free hand tugging at the June Cleaver pearls.

“That’s right, Shirl.”

We had already decided that she would be Shirl, and I would be Mal.

“Not a copywriter, though,” she said.

“No—I wasn’t up to see your boss about an ad-writing job. Like I told you, we were both friends of Ginnie Mullens and I wanted to do some mutual commiserating.”

She shrugged with her eyes. “Dave was pretty miserable about it. They broke up, but he’s still carrying the torch.”

“I notice you refer to him as Dave, not Mr. Flater.”

She shrugged with her shoulders. “Don’t read anything into that. Dave just runs a casual shop. He likes his clients to feel among friends, and he makes his employees feel the same way.”

“You aren’t dating him or anything.”

“I’ve seen him socially a few times. What kind of writer are you, if you aren’t a copywriter?”

“Novelist.”

She brightened. “Really? What have you written?”

“I write mysteries.” I mentioned the name of the latest one.

She dimmed. “I don’t read mysteries, sorry. I’m afraid I’m one of those women into historical romances.”

“They make terrific escape, and some of ’em are very nicely written. When was the last time Dave saw Ginnie?”

“As far as I know, it was almost a month ago. It really broke off sudden.”

“Is that something you just gathered, or…?”

“I heard it. The tail end of it, anyway. She came up to Multi-Media and they went in his office and you could hear them arguing clear out at my reception desk. I never heard them argue like that before. They used to kid on the square sometimes, your normal good-natured sniping. Only this time they really blew, and she came storming out.”

“Did you hear her say anything to him?”

She made an embarrassed face. “Yeah.”

“What?”

She leaned forward and whispered: “She said, ‘You’ll get your goddamn money, asshole,’ and, boom, went out the door.”

“Did Flater follow her?”

“No. He just stood there with a real red face.”

“Then what?”

A different sort of embarrassment. “Then he asked me out to dinner.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t. We’d seen each other a few times, while he and Ginnie were thick. They had your basic open relationship… and, well, hey—I found Dave attractive, and he’s my boss, and I liked Ginnie okay, but I went out with him a few times, anyway, ’cause he asked. And I admit it made me uncomfortable,
after, and I asked him to cool it, at least as long as he and Ginnie were an item.”

“So when Ginnie stormed out, and he asked you to dinner, it was…”

“It was punctuation at the end of a sentence, if you know what I mean. It was like he was saying it for her benefit, even though she wasn’t around. Weird, but true.”

“But you haven’t dated him much since.”

“That was the last time. We didn’t have much fun. He was very blue about breaking up with Ginnie, blue and… angry, I guess. I’ve had that kind of relationship, haven’t you?”

“What kind?”

She sighed. “Where you bust up with somebody over something they said or did, and then you get to feeling blue, thinking about how much you miss them and how you wish you could patch things up with them, but when you start thinking about why you busted up exactly, you get mad all over again.”

“Yeah. I’ve had that kind of relationship.”

She grinned. “Who hasn’t? Say, why are you asking all these questions about Ginnie, and Dave?”

I poured the last of my Pabst bottle into my glass. “It’s not Dave, really. It’s Ginnie I’m interested in. I went to high school with her, and we were close. Drifted apart. Now she’s dead, and I’m trying to make some sense of it.”

She gave me a puzzled look; boy, her eyes were green. “That’s a funny sort of thing to do.”

“Is it?”

“It’s not unusual to mope around thinking about somebody after they die, and try and make sense out of it. But to go around asking people questions, like in
Citizen Kane
or something, that’s odd.”

I smiled a little. “You like old movies?”

She smiled a little back at me. “Sure.”

“Want to take one in some time, at the Bijou?”

“I go there all the time. Sometimes I take my daughter.”

“Oh, so you have a little girl.”

“Yeah. Seven years. I’m divorced.”

“Most single people our age are.”

“Are you?”

“I’m the exception that proves the rule.”

“I’ve never understood that expression. You’re a writer—why don’t you explain it to me?”

“I’ve never understood it either. That doesn’t stop me from using it, though.”

She sipped her glass of Coors. “You’re an odd duck. Maybe it’s because you’re a writer.”

“It’s because I’m a mystery writer, probably.”

“Trying to put puzzles together.”

“Yeah. Trying to make things make sense. Trying to make life tidy and neat.”

“Which it isn’t.”

“Which it isn’t. But trying, anyway. Do you know a guy named Sturms?”

“Sure,” she said, not looking at me. “He’s an insurance man.”

“Ever hear anything else about him?”

“Such as?”

“Such as, I don’t know. Just wondering.”

“No. He’s Dave’s insurance man, that’s all I know.”

“Really. Does he ever come to see Dave, at the office?”

“Sure. He was in this morning.”

Interesting.

“Like another beer, Shirl?”

“No. Thank you. This’ll do me.” She glanced at a round clock on the pine wall, surrounded by shrubbery. “It’s almost five. I have to pick my little girl up at the sitter’s in fifteen minutes.”

“Thanks for taking off early, so we could have this little chat.”

“It’s okay. Dave’s loose. Anytime after four, I can go if I need to, or just feel like it.”

“He sounds like a good boss.”

“He really is.”

I walked her from Amelia Earhart’s around the corner and a couple blocks down, to a parking ramp where her car was. Mine, too, actually.

On the way, I said, “You must be about my age—probably a little younger, though.”

“I’m thirty-three.”

“You’re a year younger than me. Can I ask you a question?”

With nice dry humor, she said, “It’s a little bit late to start asking me if you can ask questions, Mal, isn’t it?”

I put my arm in hers; she seemed to like it.

“You’re right,” I said. “But I wanted to get a little personal.”

“I’ve been sort of hoping you would.”

“What’s your attitude toward drugs? Recreational ones, I mean.”

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “I’ve used some over the years. I may not look it today, prim and proper and all, but I did acid, once upon a time. Among other things.”

“And?”

“And I never had a single flashback, and I never sat and stared at the sun till I went blind, either.”

“Good for you. So, are you still into that, at all?”

“No. That’s kid stuff, don’t you think?”

“I do, actually. But a lot of people don’t.”

“I have a little girl of my own. I don’t have any of that stuff in my house. I see it at parties sometimes, but stay away from it, even there.”

“Why?”

We were at the parking ramp.

“I wasn’t a campus radical or anything,” she said. “But I’m the right age to remember what people said back then. What sort of changes they hoped to make. The Woodstock nation, give peace a chance, dawning of the age of Aquarius, all of it. And what became of it all? Look at Dave—he was a mover and shaker in those days, in those circles. And now he sells advertising. Oh, he does a great job at it, I’m all for it. But isn’t it funny how the only thing left from those days is the dope? The ideals, they’re all gone. But the dope is still here. And what good has ever come from it?”

I didn’t have an answer for her.

“Ginnie was part of that,” she said suddenly. “I didn’t know her but to speak to her, but she was part of that.”

“Part of what? Dope?”

“Yes.”

“She still used it?”

“Oh, probably. She used to be a dealer, everybody knows that.”

“Was she still?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not. I’m just an outsider.”

“Shirl, if you know something, please tell me.”

“I don’t, really.”

“All right.” I let some air out, took her by both her hands, squeezed gently. “Thanks for having a beer with me. I’d like to see you again some time.”

“Even though you found out I have a little girl at home?”

I grinned at her. “If I didn’t go out with women who have kids at home, I’d have to restrict my dating to preteens. And I’m getting a little long in the tooth for that. I like women my own age.”

“Is that why you wear the Sgt. Bilko T-shirt?”

“What do you mean?”

“If a girl recognizes Bilko, then she’s old enough to date you, is that it?”

I laughed. “Subconsciously, that could be the reason. Never thought of it that way. Could I have your phone number?”

She got a little piece of paper out of her purse and wrote the number on it and gave it to me.

“Please call,” she said. “I like you, Mal.”

“I like you too, Shirl. And I bet I’ll like your kid, too. It, uh, may be a week or so before you hear from me.”

“You’re going to be asking around about Ginnie.”

“Yes.”

“Just ’cause you’re curious about what made her tick.”

“I’m curious about what made her stop ticking.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be.”

“Why not?”

“Didn’t you listen to me before? I said Ginnie was part of it, Mal.”