Dead Wood (8 page)

Seventeen

M
uddy’s Saloon is a blues bar just a stone’s throw from the Detroit River. All of the greats have played there, leaving behind them the wail of a blues shout and a framed, signed picture.

The Spook stood in the lobby and looked at the pictures. John Lee Hooker, young and handsome with a sharp-looking felt hat and thick black sunglasses. Elmore James with his lean face and hawk nose. B.B. King and Lucille. Howlin’ Wolf. And Muddy himself.

The Spook walked through the doorway to the right of the bar to the small room in back with the stage. It had a small wooden platform with a dozen tables scattered around in front. Thick cigarette smoke filled the air and the wood floor breathed with the smell of thirty years worth of spilled beer.

The stage itself was only up a step or two and it had a piano in one corner, a big mahogany upright that probably weighed a ton or two. There were two microphones at the front and an old wooden stool sat in the middle.

The Spook had been to Detroit before. Quite a few times, in fact. After leaving the Agency and going freelance, some of his first jobs had been right here. There always seemed to be a lot of open contracts in Detroit.

In fact, it was on one of his first jobs that he’d heard about open mic night at Muddy’s Saloon. Back then, though, he’d been too busy to attend. Tonight was different. His job hadn’t officially started yet, which gave him a rare night off. He’d brought his guitar and was ready to play.

Half of the tables were occupied, mostly by other players, although the Spook noticed one table with a man and a woman sharing a pitcher of Heineken.

A man was on stage playing a serviceable Taj Mahal tune. His accompaniment was simple, his voice good if a bit tentative. The Spook took a seat and ordered a beer. He would hardly touch it.

Two songs later, the man on stage hit the last note of a Howlin’ Wolf song and quietly put away his guitar and left the stage. The Master of Ceremonies, a big pudgy white guy with a fedora and black shirt asked the audience who would like to play next.

The Spook immediately stood and headed for the stage.

“All right! We got an eager one!” the MC said.

The Spook slid the Martin guitar from its case and tuned by ear. He launched into the Midnight Rambler’s shuffle and everything felt good. Felt tight.

“Have you heard about the Midnight Rambler?” he sang. His voice wasn’t great. He had more of a growl than a true singing voice, but it was his playing that he was most proud of anyway. He played, his rhythm line aggressive and precise.

His intense concentration was broken slightly by something on the periphery of his awareness. He heard the man at the table with the woman snicker softly.

The Spook ignored him, turned back into himself and sang, “The one you never seen before.” His foot tapped the oak floor and the Martin bounced on his thigh. He rocked through the song, feeling strong and confident. When he finished muted applause broke out.

And then the man at the table spoke. Not real loud, but loud enough for most of the people in the room to hear. “Pick a key and stick with it, man!” A little bit of soft laughter broke out.

The Spook ignored him, and did two more numbers: The Spider and The Fly, and Love In Vain.

When he stepped down from the stage, the man at the table who’d heckled him earlier clapped especially loud.

The Spook sat back down at his table. He quietly put the Martin back into its case and wrapped his fingers around his beer, but didn’t take a drink.

He watched as an obese woman with a jumbo acoustic played a haunting version of a Son House song. Her guitar playing was basic, but her voice was beautiful. The man at the table who’d heckled the Spook was ignoring her, concentrating on the woman at the table with him. The Spook studied the man. He had on a white shirt and tie, slicked back hair and glasses. He looked like an accountant. Something shifted inside the Spook’s stomach. For the first time, he took a sip of beer.

The heckler ordered another pitcher of beer from the waitress and then excused himself from the table. The Spook waited while the man passed by the table and out the door to the bathroom.

After a moment, the Spook picked up his guitar case and followed. He leaned his case against the jukebox just outside the door to the bar and went to the men’s room. He stepped inside, shut the door and stood with his back against it as he slid the Ruger automatic out of his jacket’s inside pocket. He lifted the silencer from the other jacket pocket and quickly screwed it onto the end of the pistol. There was only one stall in the bathroom and no urinal. The Spook stood with his back against the door as he listened to the man finish up. The stall door swung open and the accountant appeared. He looked up at the Spook, then away, then back again. An “o” formed on his mouth as he saw the gun. He started to raise his hands.

The Spook shot him twice in the face.

The man fell back into the stall and the Spook stepped in, placed the barrel of the gun against the man’s skull and fired once more. The Spook then slipped the gun back into his pocket and hoisted the dead man onto the toilet and shut the stall door.

From the doorway, it looked like just another guy taking a crap.

The Spook walked back to the door, picked up his guitar case and stepped outside. As the door swung shut, he heard the faint voice of the obese woman singing “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.”

Ain’t that the truth, he thought.

Eighteen

I
attended a seminar once. It was hosted by a private investigator and believe me, I know a write-off when I see it. Anyway, the seminar was put on by a woman from Los Angeles who claimed to work for celebrities and had, at least according to herself, been involved with some extremely big, high-profile cases. I suppose when an actress insures her left ass cheek for five million dollars, they probably hire a lot of security personnel.

I ponied up the three hundred bucks for an afternoon of learning the tricks of the trade from one of the self-proclaimed experts in my field. Personally, I thought the woman was worthy of investigation herself, but I can be rather skeptical. And as a con, wouldn’t it be a hoot to pull the wool over the eyes of a room full of wannabe private investigators? Reference check, anyone?

Anyway, I remember laughing out loud at one of her points. She had quizzed the audience about what abilities we felt were the most important for a P.I. to possess. The crowd threw out self-delusional concepts such as courage, tenacity, and perceptiveness.

It turned out the correct answer was the ability to listen.

I couldn’t help it. I started laughing. It just sounded so New Age to me. I mean, I understood her point and all, but I just pictured myself in my office, acting like Bob Newhart. A client tells me his wife is cheating on him and I say, “Go with that. How does that make you feel? I’m listening, friend.”

Listening? Come on. I would have guessed the most important ability was to be able to photograph both faces of two people fucking.

Of course, like so many things in life, over time the concept kind of grew on me. The more cases I had, the more times I realized that something I’d heard ended up playing a pretty big role in the case. So maybe the afternoon had been worth a little more than a sore ass and few glasses of watered down Coke.

I thought of the seminar when I realized that something Nevada Hornsby had said to me, that hadn’t registered then, was now simmering on my brain. At the time, I hadn’t really been listening. But now, I knew I had. Because he had told me something important.

It was just before he slammed the boat into gear. He’d said something about we’d be out there for eighteen hours and that I would have to work because someone had called in sick. Now I searched my brain for the name. Had he said a name? I thought about it, cursing that hotshot from L.A. I never should have laughed at her. Karma.

Rudy.

No, that didn’t sound right. But it had definitely started with an R. I was sure of that.

Ralphie.

Rodney.

Randy.

Randy.

That was it.

Randy had called in sick the day the boat blows up and everyone but a scared P.I. dies. I’ve always been wary of coincidences and that was just too glaring for me to take in stride. Maybe I’d host a seminar one day and make that
my
big point.

Fortunately, during my questioning with the good police officers of St. Clair Shores this particular memory had yet to surface. Somehow, now that I’d had some time to recover from the initial shock, it had just popped right back up. I’d even been with my sister and still hadn’t remembered it then, either. Coincidence or had some small part of me repressed the idea until I could act on it alone?

Go figure.

But since I had failed to remember this little detail during my official questioning, it didn’t seem like a terribly significant slighting of protocol if I were to look into this Randy angle by myself.

I may not be the best listener in the world, but I am one hell of a rationalizer.

•  •  •

My first challenge was to find out just who this Randy guy really was and where I might be able to find him.

I pulled up across the street from St. Clair Salvage. I didn’t feel any post-traumatic stress from my near brush with death, but I wasn’t exactly doing cartwheels over being back. And having finished going through Jesse Barre’s workshop and apartment, I wasn’t thrilled at being back at another murder victim’s place of work. Again, I’m not the most sensitive guy in the world, but this case was really starting to get to me.

In the gray light of early morning, with a fog rolling in from the lake, the bright yellow police tape over the front door of St. Clair Salvage made the message pretty clear. Everyone stay away. Especially nosy private investigators.

In the old days, I suppose a ballsy investigator might pick a lock or slip through an old window into Hornsby’s office and check his employee records. But I had a couple problems with this. One, I wasn’t anxious to break any laws. The guys at Jackson State Prison just a half hour away would love my soft white ass. It’d be like chucking a Krispy Kreme donut into an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.

Second of all, and not quite as anally intrusive, I figured Nevada Hornsby’s records were about as neat and organized as a frat house after Rush Week. In fact, I highly doubted that Hornsby kept any employee records at all. No W-2s, no problems from the IRS, right? I pictured him paying cash under the table, along with a few beers and a greasy burger at the café across the street.

The café across the street. It was a Ram’s Horn. I’d eaten once at a Ram’s Horn. Runny eggs, soggy hash browns, weak coffee. It was one big room with no dividers between the tables. The culinary equivalent of a pig’s trough to an uppity Grosse Pointer like myself, but Nirvana perhaps to Hornsby and his crew.

I locked the Taurus, crossed the street and went through the restaurant’s fingerprint covered glass door. A cute, chubby waitress took my order of coffee with a pleasant little smile. She had a dimple and a nametag telling the world her name was Gloria. I sipped my coffee. It was weak, all right. Kind of like coffee-flavored water. When she returned to refill me, I ordered the Hungry Man special, figuring she might be a little more cooperative if a slightly larger tip were at stake. 15% of a fifty-cent coffee wasn’t about to loosen her up.

When Gloria came back in an astonishingly quick five minutes, burdened down like a pack mule with my Hungry Man special, I said, “Hey, I was supposed to meet a guy for breakfast. He worked at the salvage shop across the street. His name is Randy. Do you know him?”

Gloria’s face blanched a little bit. “Did you hear about the accident?” she said.

“What accident?”

“Their boat blew up. The owner and one other guy died.”

“Was it Randy?”

“I don’t know.”

She unloaded her arm full of platters onto the table. It was like a dump truck raising its bed and a ton of gravel sliding down to the pavement. The smell of grease was intense and in a morbid kind of way, somewhat alluring. I made my face good and thoughtful. “I wonder how I could find out if Randy’s okay.”

“Don’t you have his phone number or something?”

I shook my head. “I bumped into him at a bar. I overheard him telling someone he worked for some place that salvaged old lumber. I’m remodeling my kitchen and the better half wants something fancy for the cabinets, so I introduced myself and he said he could hook me up with a good price, but we’d have to make it look like he was buying the cabinets, for the discount, you know? So we agreed to meet here and talk.”

Gloria seemed to buy it. The dimple kind of faded in and out while I talked. I wondered if it was a tell, kind of like full dimple for when she believed me, less dimple for skepticism. If so, I was doing pretty well.

“You should talk to Michelle,” she said. Full dimple. I was golden. “Those guys came in here once in awhile, but they always wanted Michelle to wait on them.”

“Okay. Is she working today?”

“She’s on break. Out back.”

Gloria topped off my coffee and left. I threw money for the Hungry Man down and added a nice hefty tip, then hurried out the door and around the back of the restaurant where I spotted a large tangle of blonde hair and a steady plume of smoke.

“Michelle?” I said.

She turned to me and I got a good look at her. Fine features, hidden beneath some thick makeup. Pretty green eyes. A slight overbite. I had to admit, these Ram’s Horn waitresses were kind of cute.

“Uh-huh,” she said. Her voice was deep with a hint of rasp. It wasn’t the most flattering setting. Michelle stood next to the restaurant’s dumpster. I’m glad I hadn’t touched the Hungry Man. The smell from the giant green bin of death was overpowering. If I had consumed the 10,000 calorie special, I might be hurling it back up right about now. But the back of the restaurant opened up onto an alley and there was nowhere else for a smoker to go.

“I’m trying to track down a guy I met, his name is Randy and he said he worked for the salvage shop across the street.”

“He ain’t workin’ there no more,” she said. Grammatically challenged, I noted, without judgment. Hey, we’ve all got our faults. Mine happens to be a propensity for lying to waitresses.

“Because of the accident?”

She nodded.

“Did you know him?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “He’d only worked there a week or two, right?”

It was my turn to shrug.

“I knew his boss, Nevada,” she said. “He’d been coming here for years.”

“Were you guys friends?”

She raised an eyebrow at me while simultaneously taking a deep drag.

“Are you a cop or something?”

“I’m remodeling my kitchen. Randy was going to hook me up with some cool wood for my cabinets.”

She gave me a quick glance up and down. Yep, I could read her mind, he looks like Mr. Suburban House-Fixer-Upper.

“As good a friends as a waitress and customer can be without ever hooking up outside of here,” she said, her tawny mane nodding toward the back of the Ram’s Horn.

I paused. Not much here, I thought. Then I asked, “Did Nevada ever bring his girlfriend in here?”

She nodded. “Cute girl.”

Okay, not much accomplished.

“Randy cracks me up,” I said. “I can’t believe he still drives around that piece of crap yellow Cadillac. What is it, like, a 1965?”

She shrugged her thin shoulders. “I only seen him in that black Nova. I used to drive one just like it in high school. Mine was gold, though. With huge rust spots all over. If I hit a pothole, little chunks would fall off.”

“Did you know Nova in Spanish means ‘It won’t go?’” I said. I was chock full of interesting tidbits like that. It was a big reason waitresses found me so fascinating.

“No shit?” she said. “That’s funny.”

Our bonding over and with a description of Randy’s car, I thanked Michelle, resisted the urge to run my hands through her hair and see if my dog Biffy, who ran away when I was three years old, was hidden in there. He wasn’t. I walked back to my Taurus. Well, I had a description of a car. But little else.

I looked at St. Clair Salvage across the street. I wondered if I could just peek in the window and get a look at Hornsby’s desk. That wouldn’t be a crime, would it? Window shopping? People do it all the time.

They wouldn’t send me to Jackson for that, would they?