Stranglehold (20 page)

“I hope that's coming up soon.”

She had an amazing female smile. “I didn't mean to give you a bad time. It's just that my little sister never stops getting into trouble.”

“I don't want to talk to him and you can't make me.”

“I think he's cute,” said a woman in one of the barber's chairs. Three or four others laughed.

I was in a world of women and I didn't know the rules. Should I press the issue or just go away?

“I'm trying to help somebody who's in trouble, Heather. I need to talk to you.”

“He's talking about the kid that killed Craig,” Heather said from down the row, silver scissors poised to snip away at the garishly dyed red hair of her customer.

Sister said, “Didn't surprise me when somebody killed him. Man who hits women has got it coming. My sister's too dumb to understand that.”

A woman in one of the chairs said, “I told my husband if he ever lays a hand on me I'm gone for good and I'm taking the savings account with me.”

“I wish I could convince my next-door neighbor of that,” another woman said. “The son of a bitch she's married to is always hittin' her.”

“You a friend of this kid Heather is talking about?” Sister asked.

“He's twenty. His wife is pregnant. He isn't really a kid.”

“Heather likes 'em in their forties.” Sister smiled. “That's why she thinks this guy is a kid.” She glanced back at Heather again. “You get done with Shirley's hair there, you go in the back room and talk to this man.”

“You don't have no right to boss me around like that.”

“He's tryin' to help somebody, honey.” There was an odd sweetness to her tone, as if she'd spent years hoping that her little sister would change her ways.

Sister pointed to a row of chairs lined across the front window. “There're some magazines there for you to read and you're welcome to help yourself to the coffee. She should be done in fifteen minutes or so.”

“Thanks,” I said, surprised at her largesse.

“All she can give you is a few minutes, though, Mr. Conrad. We're real busy today.”

Heather scowled at me every thirty seconds or so as she cut her customer's hair. She seemed a lot more interested in me than her customer. This woman might end up with a very strange hairdo.

I tried reading an issue of
Cosmopolitan,
but I could only slog through a couple of the articles. Whatever happened to feminism? This was all man-pleasing stuff. I remembered reading my smart-ass uncle's magazines when I was in my teens. When he'd been in his teens,
National Lampoon
was at its height. They did a parody issue of
Cosmopolitan
and one of the articles was titled “Ten Ways to Decorate Your Uterine Wall.” The magazine hadn't changed much.

“Mr. Conrad.”

I'd switched to an elderly issue of
Time
and was engrossed in their predictions about the next election. Looked like Giuliani was a shoo-in for
el presidente.
I put the magazine down and looked up to see that Heather's customer was finished and walking toward the cash register. Sister was letting me know that Heather was ready for me. Or had damned well better be.

“This is really bullshit.” As she spoke, Heather was sweeping up the floor around her chair. Sister ran a clean, tight shop. “The guy's a jerk.” The ladies were getting a full measure of daytime drama right here in the beauty shop.

“You're the jerk,” Sister said. “I told you not to get involved with that bastard.”

By now I was getting used to the idea that the argument was public business. This whole salon was sort of like one big family. The other kids obviously sided with Sister.

“Thanks,” I said as I walked past Sister toward a closed door in the back of the place. When I reached Heather's chair I stopped. She glared at me and shook her head. Then she gave up and flounced to the door, opened it, and disappeared inside.

It was a storeroom and office combined. There was a desk, a table for a computer and printer, a noisy refrigerator, and boxes piled floor to ceiling. Heather sat behind the desk and lit a cigarette. So much for the No Smoking law.

“This is really bullshit.”

“You said that.”

“That Bobby's an asshole. He came to the room three or four times. Craig always made me leave. I'd wait outside. I couldn't hear their words, but I could hear their voices. Bobby was always yelling. My opinion is that he snuck in and killed him. I want to see that little prick go to prison.”

“And you told the police that?”

Exhaled ice-blue smoke. “Damn right, that's what I told them.”

“Did anybody else ever visit Donovan while you were there? That's what I'm trying to find out.”

“I don't have to answer any of your questions.”

“Didn't the police ask you the same question?”

“Yeah. So what?”

“What did you tell them?”

“I didn't tell them anything because it didn't matter. Bobby killed him and that's all there is to it.”

“So somebody else came there, too?”

Another ice-blue stream of smoke. “Bobby killed him. Two nights me 'n' Craig were really getting along good, and then Bobby barges in and starts yelling and ruins the whole thing. Craig was in a shitty mood afterward. He gave me the black eye one of those nights. I blame Bobby for that. He had another fight with him the night before last.”

A knock on the door. Sister peeked in. “Just wanted to see how it's going.”

“He's tryin' to tell me that Bobby didn't kill Craig when I know damned well he did.”

Sister said, “She being any help?”

“Not really. She wants to see Bobby get charged with the murder whether he did it or not.” Heather watched me with the fleshy face of a bellicose infant. “I'm pretty sure somebody else came to see Donovan while she was there, but she won't tell me who it was.”

“That true, Heather?”

“How the hell would I know who came to see him? I wasn't there all the time.”

Sister frowned. “I'm sorry, Mr. Conrad. She's got three more appointments back to back. Best I can do is give you a few more minutes.” She closed the door. I listened to her walk back up front.

“He was gonna marry me.”

“You really believe that?”

“Yeah, for your fucking information, I really did. He told me he'd come into a lot of money. A
lot
of money. He said he had these friends way down in Mexico, where the drug people would leave him alone. That's where he was gonna take me—until Bobby killed him.”

Then she was up and charging around the side of the desk. She went right for the door. She had it open before I could stand up. “You heard
my sister. We're real busy. Now, you quit botherin' me or I'm gonna call that detective, that colored one or whatever she is.”

“She's Indian.”

“Well, I'm gonna call her and tell her you're botherin' me. I'll bet she won't like that at all.”

She walked out front. By the time I crossed the threshold, she was at her barber chair, feigning profound interest in her scissors.

I was on parade as I walked up to the cash register. As I passed Sister I said, “Thanks for trying to help.”

“She's some piece of work, isn't she?”

A couple of the customers laughed.

As I opened the front door, two women whispered behind me. I didn't pick up on the words but I heard the giggles.

The motel had a central office and two wings that formed a V. After the Oklahoma City bombing we became aware of shadowy men who moved across the country staying in motels like this one, vague members of even vaguer groups that hated the government and hoped to destroy it. The feds began to miss the days when most of these people could be found in racist or seditionist compounds and were much easier to keep track of. Now they were scattered and impossible to track, much like the days before and during the Civil War when seditionists were hiding in the mazes of lodging houses in Washington, D.C., and other Northern cities.

Gwen had given me the room number. It was second from the end on the west half of the V. The newest car I could see was at least fifteen years old. A baby cried in one room, in another a TV preacher shouted Bible words, and in a third a woman wept. I knocked on Gwen's door. She opened it immediately.

She wore another faded maternity top. This one was a kind of puce
color. She'd put on makeup and combed her hair. The gamine face was somber. “He isn't here, Mr. Conrad.”

I'd hoped to get something helpful from Heather before coming out here. Something that would help make my case when I talked to Bobby—but nothing.

“You know the police are looking for him. And there isn't any time for this, Gwen. He's in real trouble. Now let me in.”

“I told you, Mr. Conrad, he isn't—”

“Gwen, listen. He's inside and he's in trouble. I'm trying to put this whole thing together. He can help me and maybe I can help him.”

“Oh, Mr. Conrad . . .”

“Screw it, let him come in.” A male voice, young, despondent.

“You sure, honey?”

“Am I sure? Of course I'm not sure. I'm not sure of a thing right now. But you might as well let him in.” Hard to know which was the dominant tone, the fear or the self-pity.

“He didn't kill anybody, Mr. Conrad. He really didn't.”

I followed her into a room that was a coffin of old griefs and old fears, the sort of place the human animal goes to hide out like any other animal that is being chased by yesterday. The room was painted mustard yellow. There was a double bed that appeared to slant from both ends into the middle. The ugly brown bedspread once had merry nubs on it. Most of the nubs were gone. There was a bathroom. The doorknob was missing, so all that remained was a hole. The tiles on the room floor curled upward in places. I couldn't be sure, but tiny pieces on the floor looked like rat droppings.

Bobby Flaherty sat in the only chair, a beaten armchair with so many stains they looked like part of the design. He was a handsome kid in a sullen way. He wore a black sweatshirt, jeans, and blue running shoes. Gwen closed the door behind me. “You be nice to him, Bobby. He wants to help us.”

Bobby added to the haze of smoke in the room by tamping out another
cigarette from the pack on his lap. He dug out a long blue plastic lighter and snicked it into flame. He blew out enough smoke to hide behind. He just watched me, animal-alert, assessing a potential enemy.

“You call the police before you came over here?”

“No. I wanted to talk to you.”

“You be nice,” Gwen snapped. She might have been talking to her snarling dog. “Tell him you appreciate how he's helped me. You promised you would.”

He laughed but in a tender way. “Honey, I do appreciate it. But I want to make sure he didn't call the cops. Is that all right?”

“He said he didn't call the police. And I believe him.”

He stared at me through the blue haze. “All right, I believe him.” Then: “I didn't kill anybody.”

“All right. But you were seen running from Monica Davies's room. And there's a witness who said you've had several fistfights with your father.”

“Heather,” he said. “He could really pick 'em.”

The east wall hummed with TV dialogue from the room next door. I sat on the edge of the bed.

“How did your father get back in touch with you?”

“Why?”

“Because your mother is very worried about you. And so is Jim Shapiro and so am I. You've got to face this, Bobby. I'm trying real hard to believe you're innocent, but I have to know what happened, starting with your father coming back into your life.”

“If you don't tell him, Bobby, I will. You need to let him help us.”

Bobby's glance met hers. He sighed and looked back at me. “I got adopted out to the Flahertys when I was little, that's where I picked up the name. I didn't know anything about my old man until a year ago. He managed to track me down.” The smile was bitter. “He was a con man. Did some time in Joliet for running a scam in Chicago, so he wouldn't have had much trouble getting through the adoption system
and finding out where I lived. He gave them a bullshit story that they went for. He was very good at bullshit.” There was nothing but contempt in his voice for his father. “But I'm probably being hypocritical. I did a little time in county myself. The six longest months of my life. Got drunk and got into a fight and beat the guy up pretty bad. By then the Flahertys didn't want me around anymore and I couldn't blame them. I'd been in trouble a lot in school and they just couldn't deal with me anymore. All the time I was in county I kept thinking of how good they'd been to me and how I'd hurt them. I was a real asshole.”

“But you're not anymore, honey.”

This smile was warm. “She's my number-one fan.”

“What did your father say to you when he found you?”

He fired up another cigarette. As a card-carrying liberal I should have whipped out my CD about the dangers of secondhand smoke, especially around pregnant women, but I decided I'd be selfish and push him for more information instead.

“He gave me a line of crap about how sorry he was he'd never contacted me and how he wanted to make it all up to me and how he'd had some rough times—the way he told it, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and he'd made the mistake of hanging around the wrong kind of people and he'd had a bad childhood, all the usual bullshit—and that he wanted to help me make some money so I could get the chance in life that he'd never had. I just sort of watched him—I actually thought it was kind of funny. The way he was trying to work me, I mean. I think he actually thought I believed everything he was saying about wanting to be my old man now and how we'd hang together the rest of our lives.”