Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 1) Read online

  Easy

  Phillip DePoy

  © Phillip DePoy 1997

  Phillip DePoy has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1997 by Dell.

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Easy is for Heather Heath, a real Dalliance Oglethorpe, Frances Kuffel, a real Catholic Girl, and Tracy Devine, a real editor. Any one of them calls at three in the morning, I answer.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Three A.M.

  Chapter 2: A Story

  Chapter 3: Solomon’s Seal

  Chapter 4: Looney Lenny

  Chapter 5: Soul Food

  Chapter 6: That Pretty Buick

  Chapter 7: Tip Top

  Chapter 8: The Alhambra

  Chapter 9: The House of Pain

  Chapter 10: One St. Dominic

  Chapter 11: Tea

  Chapter 12: Easy Listening

  Chapter 13: Teeth Marks

  Chapter 14: Brothers and Sisters

  Chapter 15: Augusta in the Rain

  Chapter 16: Early at the Majestic

  Chapter 17: The Golden Curtain

  Chapter 18: Kay Said Good-Bye

  Chapter 19: Golden Dawn

  Chapter 20: Streets of the Saints

  Chapter 21: Morning’s Light

  Chapter 22: The Easy Life

  Chapter 1: Three A.M.

  Imagine the phone rings in the middle of the night; it’s your best friend.

  “You asleep?”

  Check the watch. “It’s two in the morning.”

  “I got a job for you.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Yes, you do, you big layabout.”

  “What is it?”

  “Dead drag queen in a pentagram; topless dancers stuffed in a trunk — a pretty blue Buick; somebody’s wife is missing — maybe…”

  “Fine, don’t tell me, then.”

  “I’m telling you. Am I gonna see you at the Majestic in an hour?”

  You don’t want to, but curiosity gets to you. “Okay.” It’s a promise.

  Mythology is what other people believe; religion is what you believe. And reason doesn’t enter into it: Faith is the answer to everything. Pure reason is nothing but a phantom. Experience is the only truth. So here’s what I believe; this has been my experience: I can find anything you can lose. That’s my religion.

  I was born Flap Tucker in a little town in Georgia; moved to Atlanta when I was eight. The best friend is Dalliance Oglethorpe — curly dark hair never looks combed, still looks like a million bucks; green eyes always a little amused; tall enough to know better. Believes neither one of us had a chance at normalcy, growing up with our names. We never argue, it’s why we’re best pals.

  The Atlanta we grew up in doesn’t exist anymore — and in most ways thank God. We were just little kids in the early sixties, but there were still colored and white drinking fountains in the downtown department stores, clearly marked. We had no idea what they were. Dally thought they meant the water in one was regular clear water and the water in the other one was root beer flavored, for some reason. Colored water. I’ll never forget the way she cried when she found out what it really meant.

  I just wanted her to stop crying, so we went to the store and put cherry bombs under both fountains — blew them up real good. By the time they got around to replacing the things, the replacements had no signs. They were just two drinking fountains. We thought we’d really accomplished something — but maybe it all had something to do with Dr. King. He was in Atlanta too.

  Neither one of us had any money. She was an only child; her parents were divorced — something of a scandal in those days, believe it or not. Both my folks worked, still had no dough. I was the oldest of three. The brother’s an actor, the sister’s a dancer — I turned out to be a layabout. The folks are just sick about it.

  When you grow up without money one of two things can happen to you, as I see it. You get like Dally, where you’re real good about finding money and keeping it, or you get like me, where you don’t think about it at all. I just plain don’t care. I always have enough for what’s important to me.

  As the responsible half of our duo, Dalliance came to own a club on Ponce de Leon called Easy. Once it had been a quick auto-maintenance place called EASY LUBE. I got up on a ladder one Sunday afternoon after I got out of the service — drafted on account of being the aforementioned layabout — and knocked down the LUBE. Dally said she wasn’t looking to own a place with exclusively gay clientele. I didn’t laugh: The concept of easy stereotypes is one that’s kept the South down, so I’d prefer just to avoid them.

  My own slack desire for money got early reinforcement. When we were still in high school Dally gave me a book called The World’s Religions, and I got the same problem as every first-year medical student: They think they’ve got every disease they read about. I was a Hindu and a Buddhist and a Taoist and an Essene all before I turned twenty, a Gnostic and a Cabalist before I hit my first divorce.

  I grew up in Atlanta and let life take me where it would — that’s the Taoist in me. By the time I was tall enough to know better, my path took me to wife.

  Dally had tried to talk me out of it. “Now, explain to me exactly why you think you gotta marry this one.”

  I’d considered my response. “Well, she strikes me as a bit off kilter, and I think you’d agree I’m a little left of center myself, so I’m guessing we could be what they call ‘a good match,’ if you see what I’m saying.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Plus she asked me to marry her, and I think it’s bad manners to say no to a person like that.”

  “There’s gotta he more to it.”

  “Maybe not. It just seems to be where the path is takin’ me, you know?”

  “Flap…don’t do it, okay?”

  “Why not?”

  Then — completely a mystery to me — she got mad. “You are absolutely as dumb as the law allows.”

  “They got a law about that now?”

  But the rest of what Dally’d had to say about my marriage plans had gone pretty much unspoken. I’d been stupid enough to believe at the time that it was because she’d run out of arguments about the proposed wife.

  Her name was Dannen Hilliard — Neena, a big tall drink of water, long hair, a crooked grin. Had a boyfriend, a real-life terror with an eye patch and everything, something about a bar fight.

  I guess it started when I had a sort of fling with her in the college days. She was smart and intense and so obviously out of her mind that I was impelled toward her and flung away from her with equal force — the way any meteor is around, say, Jupiter: You orbit for a while, then you’re shot back out into the recesses of space.

  The fling was brief — something of a secret from our pal Dalliance, I’m a little ashamed to admit — and then we went our separate ways. Little did I know what fiery juggernaut was headed back my way. Was there ever a Hurricane Dannen? There should have been.

  On an April day, a lovely spring day, I got the fateful phone call.

  “Hello?”

  “Uh…hi…um…it’s Neena.”

  “Neena? My God, where are you?”

  “Um…the Shell station?”

  “What?”

  “The Shell station. Down the street. Can I come over?”

  “God. Yes. Of course.”

  And there it was: the invitation. I knew better. You’re not supposed to invite a creature of the night past your threshold, into your home. They can’t come in unless you invite them. But that was my doom: I invited.

>   She came over, came in, and started to cry — actually, threw her arms around my neck and started to cry.

  “I’ve missed you so much, you just don’t know.”

  “Okay… I missed you too.” Why not?

  “…I was so lonely…”

  “…I thought you had that guy… Nathan…”

  “That bastard. He beat me, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. He put me in the hospital. His mother disowned him. And now no one knows where he is.” She lowered her voice. “I think he killed some guys.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Neena. Man. I’m…glad you’re back…”

  She nuzzled my shoulder like a child. “I’ve really been thinking about you.” She looked up at me with a sincerity that would have persuaded the pants off a lesser man. “You.”

  “What?”

  “I found that my life was empty without you in it, so I came back to ask you to marry me.” And she looked back down.

  “You…what?”

  “Oh…marry me. We have to be together. It’s all I could think of the whole time I was gone.”

  “The whole time?”

  “And when you’d answer my letters with all that poetry — I knew you must have felt the same as I did.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her the poetry wasn’t even in the least bit directed at her. “Uh…I guess I must have.”

  “Well, then…” and she slung her elbow up behind my neck and pulled me into a kiss that seemed to last half an hour. When it was finished, so was I.

  “So. Married, huh?”

  “Will you? Say you will. I think I might kill myself…”

  I mean, a woman comes all the way from the Shell station to say “Marry me,” it’s hardly polite to say no; it did seem like such bad manners.

  So what could I say? “Well, you know — we gotta get a license.” Beat. “Blood test.” Pause. “Two weeks soon enough?”

  And she began to cry, burying her face in my chest. Between her sobs I heard her whisper, “I knew you would.”

  We were married on a Saturday, two weeks to the day from our “proposal.” We picked the name of a justice of the peace out of the phone book and called him at eight-thirty in the morning.

  Within a half hour we were standing on the front porch of the very honorable Justice of the Peace Mr. Davis. He was irritated with us because he wanted to be on the lake, so he refused to let us in the house or even let go of his fishing poles. He held them in his left hand, his ceremony book in his right, and made his wife poke her head out the screen door to witness the time-honored rites. He wouldn’t even take off his fishing cap with the hooks and lures stuck in it. We were married by a man who had artificial sardines on his head.

  Rumors flew fast and wild about our nuptials. Dalliance continued to be angry for some unexplained reason and took to telling everyone Neena must be pregnant. So Neena did what she did best: She invented. Without telling me she made up an elaborate doctor’s report with X rays and everything — and I don’t even want to think about how she got X rays — to prove that she had a horrible tumor in her that prevented her from having children and was liable to kill her any minute. It made our Dalliance quite shamefaced.

  “Hi.” Her voice on the phone was very subdued.

  “Oh…hi.” I was zooming. “Listen, I’ve been really meaning to call you about the wedding and the deal with Dannen and all, you know — it just happened so fast.”

  “It’s okay. I understand now. I heard about the doctor’s report. You really are somethin’, pal. Just when I think I can’t like you any better, you go and do something this stupid and good.”

  So I said the only thing you could say at a time like that. “Doctor’s report?”

  “You know. About her tumor and everything.”

  “Ah. Right. Listen — do you mind, I think I need to take care of something here. Could I call you back?”

  “Of course.”

  We hung up. I called for Neena. She came into the room. I asked her about her tumor.

  She laughed. “It’s great. It not only quells the rumors about my being pregnant, but people think you’re a saint.”

  And that was that. That was her style. Why tell anything remotely resembling the truth when a really great whopping lie can get you so much more out of life? At the time I thought it was kind of charming in a wacky sort of way.

  The real evil started the very next day. In the crashing thunder and pouring rain, there came a knock on the door of our little blue heaven. Neena was gone — job hunting, she said — so it fell on me to answer.

  Two men stood at the door. One flashed a badge. “Flap Tucker?”

  The other held up some papers and asked to come in. “Are you acquainted with one Dannen Hilliard?”

  “She’s my wife.”

  The two men looked at each other in unmistakable shock. The guy with the badge closed his eyes. “Wife?”

  “Uh-huh. What’s wrong?”

  The one with the papers shook his head. “You’re married to Dannen Hilliard?”

  “Yes. Is she all right? What’s going on?”

  The one with the papers stood his ground. “I’ll tell you what’s going on. She’s wanted for questioning in a murder case in Alabama. We’re here to take her back to Birmingham.”

  The badge guy shook his head. “Yeah…questioning in a murder case…”

  The other one, right at me, “We think she did it.”

  And I sat down without asking. “Murder?” Then I gathered my thoughts. “Does this have anything to do with someone named Nathan?”

  The badge guy stood there. “How do you know about him?”

  “My wife knew him before we were married.”

  They explained to me how old Nathan was wanted for the murder of three prominent “businessmen” in the Alabama nightclub scene, and eyewitnesses described his female accomplice, who had also fired shots, as being tall, redheaded, and fair skinned.

  The badge guy lamented, maybe sympathized. “But now that she’s married to you it…complicates things. See, her legal last name is Tucker now?”

  I nodded.

  He went on. “And, see, we got papers for Dannen Hilliard. We have to get that little thing right. We have to go all the way back to the office and change the form.”

  Paper guy was calmer. “No big deal. We’ll be back.” He leaned in. “Maybe you could even be a part of this.”

  But I think they saw right away that I was just too stupid to be a part of a thing like that. They left; said they had a line on Nathan. They’d be back. I sat for the rest of the day in a darkened home, listening to the rain outside, waiting for my bride to return.

  But fate is filled with little jokes. Before she came home the phone rang. And who was it? None other than Nathan himself.

  “Hey, is Neena there? It’s Nathan.”

  “Nathan?”

  “Uh-huh. Is this that guy?” His voice kind of lightened and filled with jollity. “Neena told me about you, bud. How you took her in and hid her from the police, and how you’re going to give her the money for us to hook up in Canada. You must be a great guy. I can’t wait to meet you. Anyway, is she there?”

  I couldn’t speak for a second. Then, like I was talking in an office or something, “No, she’s not in right now. Could I take a message?”

  “Just tell her I’m back at the hotel now.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m back in my room, you know, that she got me at the hotel? She knows where it is.”

  “She does.”

  “Um-hmm. She just left. I forgot to ask her about the plane tickets.”

  “I see.”

  “So…”

  “Yes. Absolutely. I’ll tell her the minute she comes in.”

  “Thanks, man. Can’t wait to meet you.”

  “Uh-huh, me too.”

  And we hung up. Neena came home less than five minutes later.

  I greeted her. “So…find a job
?”

  “Huh? Oh…no. No. It’s tough out there.”

  “It’s fairly tough in here at the moment.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Nathan called.”

  “Uh…”

  “That’s right. He’s at the hotel room you got him. How long’s he been in town?”

  “In town?”

  “Yeah, and while you’re pondering let me just mention that the cops paid us a little visit, and they were very disappointed to find out you were married. They wanted to ship you back to Alabama. Something about a few dead businessmen. But I told them you were with me, so it was all right, for the moment.”

  “Um…”

  “Then Nathan called…”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Apparently he thinks you’re with him, so once again: Imagine my surprise. Oh, and plus, he’s very grateful to me for saving you from the police and — here’s my favorite part — giving you money to finance your retirement to Canada.”

  “He got all that into one phone call?”

  “He’s very eloquent.”

  “I told him not to call here.”

  “I’d imagine.”

  “He’s insane.”

  “Oh, and of course, this makes me very happy — to hear this makes me very, very happy indeed.”

  “No, I mean, he won’t understand that it’s over between us. He beat me, you know.”

  “So you said. How about telling him we’re married? He might get the idea.”

  “Or he might kill you. He really might.”

  A sobering thought.

  “How long has he been in town, Neena?”

  She hesitated. I could actually see the faint whirl of gears in her head as she was trying to think up the next great lie, but in the end she just gave up, shrugged. “Two days. The cops probably followed him here. He’s absolutely useless at anything covert.” It was a very uncharacteristic moment of aplomb.

  That night Neena checked herself into the Georgia Institute of Mental Health. She said she was having a breakdown. It was based on what she called double-bind ambivalence brought on by the cops, the boyfriend/husband confrontation, and some sort of regression or other. Did I happen to mention that her degree was in psychology? Plus I could only imagine what red tape was involved in some cops from Alabama trying to get somebody out of a mental hospital and back to Alabama.