Dead Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 5) Read online

  “Jersey.”

  He almost went over. He twitched wildly and I saw his hand go inside his coat pocket. Then I saw him remember where he was, and he turned slowly my way.

  “Jesus. Tucker.” He blew out a long stream of smoke. “Slack off on the sneaking up. It could get ugly with a person more excitable than me.”

  “Okay. And for the record, you can take your hand out of your pocket now.” I took a chair at the table with him. “I come in peace.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He brought his hand back out empty. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “What the hell were you doing in Easy at four this morning?”

  I saw no point in beating around the bush. With the lesser-brained mammals, directness is often intimidating.

  “Where?” His eyes shifted to the tabletop.

  “I saw you. What’s the point in pretending?”

  “Look, Flap,” he said hastily, lifting his eyes to mine once more, “I know you got to be sore about Dally axing me to help out in a way that you would, ordinarily — but now look here: That’s her business. I mean, did you ever stop to think that she might have something she don’t want you to know? I mean, like what if it’s about a surprise party for you, or some special birthday present or something? Wouldn’t you feel ashamed to find out about it and ruin the fun, for instance?”

  Beads of sweat had popped out on his forehead.

  “Relax, brother,” I assured him. “I’m not going to get physical with you. I just want to make sure Dally’s all right.”

  “Sure, sure.” He bobbed his head quickly. “But see, that’s the problem — and you’d have it too, don’t tell me you wouldn’t. You don’t like to discuss what you’re doing for a client in a situation like this type of a deal. Right?”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, doing my best to demonstrate how he was trying my patience, “so what if you just tell me that Ms. Oglethorpe’s not in any danger or weirdness, and I’ll let it go at that, for the time being.”

  He swallowed. He looked around, like somebody might come to his aid. But nobody did. So: “The last thing in this world,” he began, “that I need, is to have you mad at me, see? But I can’t tell you.” He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  The poor guy looked like he was in front of a firing squad.

  He was saved by an angel — in the person of Kelly Hogan.

  “Tucker?”

  I looked up. “Kel.”

  “Man” — she hustled toward me when I got to my feet — “what the hell are you doing in a dump like this?”

  I squeezed her. “They tell there’s music tonight. You know how far I’d go to hear you sing.”

  She pulled back and gave me the eye. “Across the street, apparently,” she needled, “but God forbid you should get on a plane and haul yourself to Chicago to hear me in a really nice dive.”

  “I’d go to Chicago, Kelly.” Jakes was standing too.

  I let go of Hogan, and turned in his direction. “You’re not going anywhere until I get at least one straight answer, pal.”

  “Is that right?” He’d turned tough in front of the dame.

  “Boys, boys,” Hogan wise-cracked, “don’t fight on my account.”

  “We’re not fighting,” I assured her. “We’re talking.”

  “No.” He stood his ground. “We’re not.”

  Kelly stepped in between us. She shoved Jakes back into his chair, kissed me on the cheek, elbowed me in the opposite direction, and raised her chin to her drummer, who was at the table in light-seconds.

  “Everything all right here?” The drummer was the size of Kong.

  Hogan took a step toward the bandstand. “Sure. Why do you ask?” And she was gone inside the smoke.

  The drummer stood his ground.

  I turned. “You’re Toby.”

  He squared off, then dipped his head a little. “Mr. Tucker?”

  “Hey.”

  “God Almighty.” His face was bright as a high beam. “Great to see you. You remember my name?”

  “I do better than that,” I told him. “I remember your solo on ‘In a Sentimental Mood’ over at Easy about three years ago. Long, full of quotes, and just like poetry. Hard to play a drum solo like that on a ballad.”

  “Jesus.” He blushed. “That was a night.”

  “Uh-huh.” I checked out Jakes, who was absolutely attentive. I had wanted him to know who was friends and who was in need of the stiff-arm from Ms. Hogan. “Good to see you again.”

  “Same here. Tell Ms. Oglethorpe I said ‘hello’, okay?”

  I nodded. He left. Jakes relaxed.

  “Look, Flap.” His face contorted in silent, empty pain. “I know this is your town. I’m only a moron Yankee visitor — that’s a thing you hot-weather types never let a person forget. I know Kelly’s your friend, not mine. Ms. Oglethorpe too. A person such as yourself has lots of friends, I’m guessing. Me? I don’t got that many. You’re lucky. I’m not. That’s the way the story goes. But I got my pride. It’s not shiny, it’s not brand-new, and it’s not really large — but it’s mine, and you really can’t do anything about that. I won’t break a confidence. Shoot my kneecap if you have to. It’s been done before. But before you get out your pistol to do just that, let me say, by way of being friendly, that the last person who did anything like that to me is now called Popeye on account of somebody took one of his eyes while he was asleep once.” He closed his eyes. “Pride can make a man do terrible things. But it keeps him from being a rat. Are we clear?”

  “We’re clear, Jersey.” I tried to make my voice sound as friendly as possible. Not because I was in the least intimidated by his moron Yankee threats, but because he was right: He was in a town filled with strangers — nothing to warm him but the weather. It was my town. I did have friends. And I suddenly thought how awful life would have been without them. So I went even further with Jakes: “Sorry.”

  He drew in a long breath through his nose and opened his eyes again. “Don’t mention it.” And he smiled — showed a face that could make a storm trooper cry, filled with forgiveness and gratitude for small favors.

  “How about if I buy you something to drink and we listen to Hogan for a minute?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Don’t mind if I do.”

  The kid was behind me like magic again. She set down a glass in front of Jakes and handed me another juice.

  “On my tab,” she whispered close to my face.

  When I turned to thank her, she was gone again, like a ghost.

  6. Walking My Baby Back Home

  The kid’s name was Lucy, but everyone really did know her as Lucrezia — even if they didn’t catch the joke. I thought that’s what she appreciated about me — my sense of humor.

  “Kelly sounded good tonight.” I had my hands in my pockets and she had taken my left elbow. We were walking down Ponce toward Midtown, toward my place and toward her neighborhood — both. All roads lead to home at four o’clock in the morning.

  “Kelly always sounds good.” She showed no emotion about it whatsoever. “She and I had a thing, you know.”

  “No.” I mimicked her lack of content. “I didn’t know.”

  She slowed a little. “That doesn’t freak you out?”

  “That you allege to have had a fling with Hogan? If I had a nickel for everybody that ever claimed …”

  “… that I boinked a girl.”

  “Oh, that. Well, the fact is, anybody worth knowing’s had some sort of an adventure with a girl.”

  She tightened her grip on my elbow. “If that plus the tongue knob didn’t scare you off, then I guess you can come in and have coffee.”

  We’d arrived at her door. I stopped.

  “No coffee for me, thanks.” I took my hands out of my pockets so she’d have to let go. “Not at this time of night. I have enough trouble sleeping as it is.”

  “I didn’t really have it in mind,” she explained, “that you’d be sleeping much.”

  “All rig
ht, that’s it.” I’d had it. “What’s this about? You ply me with free juice, make sure I know how smart you are — and also that you have a tongue thing — and then invite me upstairs for coffee that isn’t coffee. I’m savvy. It doesn’t take me more than three hours or so to figure out something’s up.”

  “What do you mean?” Deadpan as ever.

  “What do you really want?” I folded my arms in front of me.

  “What makes you think I don’t just want you?”

  “Because you played your hand too well. I know how smart you are, remember?”

  “How smart am I?”

  “Smart enough to know better than to get involved with a character type like me, so what gives?”

  She took a short breath, watched the high-end car with Lumpkin County tags cruise by, and then looked me in the eye.

  “I’ve got a little problem, and you can help. I just can’t afford to pay you, so I thought if you had a personal stake in giving me a hand …”

  “… got it.” I nodded once. “Excuse me for saying so, but what kind of trouble could you possibly be in that could benefit from my services?”

  “You’re implying,” she told me, “that I’m too young to be in big trouble, but if you’ll crack open a newspaper every so often, you’ll notice that kids my age are more prone to trouble than any other demographic group on the planet. So stuff the ageism.”

  “There’s an ism for that?”

  “Are you going to talk to me about it or not?”

  “‘Kids your age,’ you said. Just what would your age be?”

  “I’m sixteen but I look nineteen so I can pass for twenty-one.”

  I watched her face. Underneath that voodoo base and midnight lip liner there might be a little girl. You really never ought to judge a book by how it’s advertised.

  “If,” I began, “indeed you are sixteen, what on earth would make you think I’d be remotely interested in your post-coffee favors?”

  “There is not a guy alive,” she shot back coolly, “that doesn’t want a sixteen-year-old.”

  “But see,” I tried to explain, “now that I know how old you are, the word statutory suddenly pops into my head. I hear a judge saying, ‘Well, Mr. Tucker, did you or did you not know how old the young woman was?’ And I hear myself saying, ‘But your honor, she passes for twenty-one.’ And I hear him say …”

  “… enough. I get it. You’re the type who always has to tell the truth no matter how whack that is, so I get it. No sex. Is that how this is spelled?”

  “In all capital letters,” I affirmed.

  “So what am I supposed to do?” Suddenly she was a kid again. But I’d gotten a whole lot smarter in the preceding few moments.

  “Pouting and acting like a helpless waif will avail you nothing either, kiddo. It is my belief that you could chew up nails and spit them back out as bullets, so skip the lost little girl routine too.”

  “Well, fuck.”

  “First off,” I rushed in, “I don’t care for that word. It demeans an act of inexplicable beauty. Secondly, in a world where every tough guy can speak harshly, there is an advantage in a little thing called vocabulary — which is to say that you could find at least seven hundred and fifty-three words in English that would be better to express your current frustration with my demeanor. And finally, why don’t you just tell me your problem and maybe I’ll help because I’ve got nothing better to do with my time. What do you say?”

  That froze her for a second. But she thawed nicely. “I’ve got decaf.”

  “Well, there you go.” I opened the door to the house.

  The Mouseketeer Vampira lived in a house on Myrtle that had long ago been made into apartments. If you opened the front door to the house, you looked in on a long hall and a staircase. To the right and left of you were apartments, and if you went down the hall, there’d be another. She’d lucked out. She was upstairs. I always liked the upstairs better because (A) you don’t get quite so many boosters crawling in your windows and (B) nobody walks on your ceiling.

  Her place was a neat-as-a-pin efficiency. That was the first surprise. Next, she popped a very soft CD of Billie Holiday into the stereo beside the daybed. And when she’d said she had decaf, she’d meant she had black, whole decaf beans which she ground to dust in the kitchenette and shoved into a very ornate espresso machine. It began to hiss as she walked back toward me.

  “You’re not like most kids your age, I’m guessing.”

  “Each era,” she began, throwing herself onto the daybed in an arcane pose, “steals from the previous era. Stones stole Chuck Berry, punks stole James Dean, kids my age are a bizarre amalgam of swing babies and gutter punks.”

  “Agreed,” I said, still standing, “as far as the so-called Swing Revival goes. It may be the old tunes but it’s got a punk-a-billy sense about it that’s nothing like the days of yore. Ever heard Bowl of Fire?”

  “It’s new,” she agreed. “Sit?”

  There was a bent wrought-iron ice-cream chair beside the daybed. I took it.

  “Tell me your tale of woe, if you’re going to.” I leaned back.

  “Okay, here goes.” She closed her eyes. “There’s this guy.”

  In the history of poor swing-frails like Minnie the Moocher or San Francisco Fan, every tale begins with the sentence: “There’s this guy.” So I just settled back, prepared to let the story pour over me like the music on the stereo.

  “He’s the prettiest man I ever saw.”

  They say that kind of thing a whole lot in those old “he done her wrong” songs — so I was immediately suspicious.

  “He won’t tell me his name, and he’s older, but I don’t care. He’s the one for me. I’ve got it bad.”

  “‘And that ain’t good,’ I believe is the lyric.” I shifted in the chair.

  “He came into the Clairmont one night,” she went on, only a little nonplused by my demeanor, “just to have coffee. He just sat there and read something or other. He didn’t look up once. I had to know about him, but he wouldn’t talk to me. I know he’s staying in town, but I don’t know where. You have to help me track him down, wherever he is. I think it’s close.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I feel it.”

  I’m not one to take a feeling of that ilk lightly, especially delivered in such an earnest manner. Not to mention that it’s my belief that most southern women have a higher ESP quotient than anyone outside of Tibet. Still, it was the skeptic in me that said:

  “You feel it.” I looked around her room. It was sparse but tasteful. “Okay.”

  The espresso machine was hissing like a steam train. I saw a white ghost rise up from it out of the corner of my eye. It was the ghost of other men who’d sat in that chair and stared at that kid’s mug and thought about how strange it was to be in her apartment at four in the morning. Guys who’d bought her line.

  “Now are you going to tell me why I’m here, or not?” I locked eyes with her.

  Her pose grew more Mata Hari. “You’re not buying the ‘pretty man’ scenario?”

  “Not by a long shot.” You have to be completely honest with a person who has had her share of the opposite.

  “Why would I be lying to you?” But her voice was too studied, too deliberately calm.

  “I don’t know, but you’re not the type to be pining.”

  “I’m not?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What type am I?” Her pose on the bed was intended to be increasingly inviting.

  “You’re the dangerous type,” I shot right back, “because even though you think you do, you don’t know what you’ve got.”

  “What have I got?” One simple lift of the shoulder made the strap of her top fall halfway down her upper arm. I wondered how long she’d sat in front of the mirror perfecting the move.

  “You’ve got a fine sense of the theatrical and a keen eye for suckers,” I began, “but tonight it so happens that I’m in a pensive mood, and when
I’ve already started thinking, it’s not so easy for the brain to shut off and listen to the rest of the body.”

  “What’s the rest of your body telling you to do?” She leaned forward, eyes looking up at me, top revealing what they used to call cleavage.

  “It’s telling me to run.”

  “Man” — she shifted, suddenly sixteen again — “what the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “Not a thing. Are you telling me that this works on most guys? This B-movie vamp from Pretty Baby meets Taxi Driver?”

  “Never saw either one, but the answer is yes. It usually works. Although ordinarily I’ve got younger material to work with.”

  She’d wanted it to be an insult, but when it was forming in her mouth, it seemed to me that she realized what she was saying, and reassessed instantly. I don’t know where her mind went, but I’d seen the process before. It’s an ability that you have to acquire if you’re a teenager and on the streets of an unfamiliar town: instant reevaluation. If you don’t develop that sense, the wolves eat you alive and spit out your bones. And there she was: alive and kicking. I actually started liking her more in that moment.

  “But that’s my problem,” she went on, as if the shift hadn’t even occurred. “I see that now. I’ve been hanging out with youngsters. They’re thin — in every sense of the word. They’ve got no substance. I can’t learn anything except how to swear and where to cop dope, and I just decided I don’t want to do either one of those things.”

  “Just now? You just now decided that?”

  “I think on my feet,” she told me from her supine position.

  “I can see that. In fact, I was just admiring it. Now how about espresso and some genuine conversation.”

  “You’re staying?”

  “I think I’m actually starting to take a shine to you.” Once again I thought that honesty was most likely something she was hungry for.

  I just didn’t expect the effect. She popped out a smile like a kid who just stole third base in Little League. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” I looked at her rug. “How about that?”

  She got up silently and went for the coffee. Inside of three minutes, she was back on the bed sipping and I had finished my first demitasse.