Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 1) Read online

  I looked at Teeth. “My sister used to be in a band with RuPaul, when he was a local phenom here. Remember RuPaul and the U-Hauls?”

  He was impressed. “Your sister was a U-Haul?”

  “She danced. It was a scene. A little past my time, but she’s told me about it.”

  He sighed. “Those were the days. I met Ruby when he was a backup singer for…that guy, who was he…along with Kitty Litter, remember her?”

  “Who could forget.”

  “What was that place on Peachtree?”

  “Where they played? I don’t remember.”

  “Sure you do. They had that choreography on the part, ‘He’s the nicest man in town.’”

  And Teeth did the choreography, a combination of lewd June Taylor and wild Alvin Ailey. We both had a good laugh…for a second.

  “Now,” he said, sitting on the sofa, “Ruby’s gone.”

  “Sorry.”

  He looked up at me. “Oh, I guess it’s better this way than the plague or some god-awful street queer-bashing — there’s a lot of that in town these days, you know.” Then he looked at me for the first time, really. “We met — ever?”

  “Don’t think so. Could I just have a look around? There’s probably no connection between what happened to Ruby and Lenny’s missing wife…”

  “I never knew Looney Lenny was married.”

  I shrugged. “And anyway, what makes you think what happened to Ruby wasn’t some kind of antigay thing? It was pretty weird.”

  Teeth looked down. “Yeah,” he said, quietly. “But I think that what happened to Ruby was antihuman, not antigay.”

  “Oh? You don’t think it had anything to do with the Satanism…thing?”

  “Look around. You don’t have to be Freud to figure out the difference between satanic worship and tantric sex.”

  So I humored him and cast my eye about the place. Sure enough, the items here and there that the cops had interpreted as satanic were, in fact, largely Hindu, some Buddhist, tantric icons. Most were couples in odd or impossible sexual postures. Some were special candles, scented, I thought, like a kind of incense. Some of the things were objects completely unfamiliar to me. But I could tell they had significance because they were lit by special sconces.

  I looked back at Teeth. “I especially like the one of Shiva embracing the planet.”

  He was surprised. “How did you know that?”

  “My cosmology is the entire human spirit.”

  He rolled his eyes and said, “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Makes twice I’ve used that line…with the same effect.”

  “I guess you’d better get some new material.”

  “I’m a student of world religions. I’ve seen pictures of the end of the world from the Hindu pantheon, and you have a statue of it in your living room: Shiva the Destroyer in a love embrace with the world. Not the cheeriest of objets d’art, but one with which I’m passingly familiar. You guys believe the end of the world is at hand?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “Uh-huh. So what happened to Ruby, then?”

  “Well…” He indicated a chair by the fire and I took it. He settled back. “Ruby and I began the Kamasutra for, you know, mostly fun back in the middle eighties as a way of safe sex. You know the thing where you get up to the point of actually — how shall we say — consummating the passion du jour, and then you willingly renunciate your ching?”

  “You don’t completely follow through.”

  “Uh-huh, and eventually you get some pretty intense stored-up energy.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “And this stored-up energy can eventually be channeled into other things: working harder, curing illness, helping friends. Ruby and I were pretty far into it. I know it’s hard to believe, but there was some heavy kind of action here every once in a while.”

  “Like?”

  “Once we knocked out an opportunistic infection in a positive.”

  “You cured a guy of AIDS?”

  He threw his hand at me. “No.” He shook his head. “We stopped an infection that would have killed him because he’d got no more immune-system juice left. And he didn’t die.”

  “What else?”

  “Well…we never worried about money or food or clothing. We were like the lilies of the field.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He lowered his voice. “Ruby dreamed about the other side.”

  “What?”

  “Even described it. A giant hall with huge statues. Ruby was walking above the ground — inches — headed toward a beautiful light, and then a voice like growling said, ‘Get away,’ and he was back in the living room here, only it was three hours later.” Teeth sat back as if his point had been proven.

  I said, “This explains the pentagram?”

  “The pentagram is the seal of King Solomon. It’s a holy sign. It was never a satanic sign. It has nothing to do with Christian thinking at all, and Satan is the Christian devil, right? Solomon was a Hebrew king, a master builder. His seal represents the architecture of the metaphysical world.”

  “Never knew that.”

  “Whatever. I’m just saying the stupid queer-hating cops have thrown a real net of ignorance over our whole belief system.”

  “So what about the pentagram?”

  “It’s supposed to protect you from the difficult energy of other realities. I mean, all this tantra, it makes you more susceptible to influences — light and dark. Ruby was trying to get inside the Solomon’s Seal to be safe from the growling voice that had followed him from the other side. I’m convinced of that.”

  “But it didn’t work.”

  “In a way, maybe it did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The demon didn’t get Ruby’s soul. I think the thing could only desecrate the body. The spirit was saved.” He lowered his voice. “I never heard anything that night. I think Ruby heard the monster and went outside to confront it. I think Ruby brought the monster from the other side. I think Ruby was going to banish it back to the demon world. That’s what the pentagram was for. I was in a deep sleep and Ruby was facing the monster from the id. Only the monster was too powerful for us…people like us.” And Teeth seemed to be including the entire human race in his assessment.

  “Okay. That explains it.” I tried to sound like I was taking him seriously, but it probably didn’t come out that way.

  “I know you think I’m insane…but it’s what I believe. Catholics think that the wafer and wine become flesh and blood and then they eat it. It’s ritual cannibalism, I call it.”

  “Well, they would say, wouldn’t they, that it’s a symbolic act of taking Christ into your heart.”

  Teeth shrugged. “I don’t care what they’d say.” He looked into the fire. “It won’t bring Ruby back.”

  No arguing with that. Once you’re found naked and killed in your backyard and you’re dead for a couple of days, there’s very little chance you’ll actually be coming back. I stood up.

  “Mind if I have a look in the back, where the pentagram was?”

  “Whatever.” Teeth was still looking into the dying embers.

  I pointed. “Out…this way?”

  “I’m not gonna take you back there, if that’s what you want.”

  “Okay. I’ll just make myself at home. Through the kitchen?”

  He nodded.

  I started out, then I turned around. “Um, I’m wondering what I’d call you in, say, a more formal setting.”

  “It’s Horatio, believe it or not. Horatio Thomaston. But I used to have an act in those wacky eighties we were just talking about? Horatio Hornblower. You can just imagine.”

  “I’d rather not.” But he seemed to be a little cheered up, thinking about the good old days.

  The kitchen was as neat as a pin. They had those copper pots and pans on a big rack above the gas range. In the window box there were spices growing: tarragon, basil, thyme, parsley, chives, and some kind of mint in a container all by it
self. You have to do that. Mint spreads.

  Out the back door, and there was the evidence of my hypothesis: mint everywhere. The backyard was shaded and the weather hadn’t frosted yet, so the mint was still hanging on. Past the little boxwood hedge that separated the backyard from the more wooded portion of the land, the mint got even more unruly. About forty yards into the outback there was a circle of stones close to a stand of pines and a patch of red clay dirt.

  Even after the rain, and the cops, there was still a trace of the design drawn in the clay. Georgia red clay is like concrete. You can play tennis on it. All by itself, nothing can grow in it.

  In the stone circle there were wet black ashes. I poked around, but there was nothing. I wasn’t even sure why I was there, except to get a feel of the place. You never know. Maybe something I was seeing but not understanding would come in handy later. It works that way a lot.

  I walked around the trees for a while, and in the pine straw about ten or twelve feet from the scene I saw a glint of gold. I bent down. It was a little kid’s necklace or something. Not big enough for an adult’s neck, but I thought it was too big for a wrist. It was a thin little chain with hearts. I didn’t really think it was anything, but I popped it in my pocket anyway. You never know.

  What a beautiful day it was. The leaves were raining down in fifty different colors and the sky was even clearer than it had been. You had to wonder how naked corpses and strangled dancers fit into such a rapturous scene.

  Then, just for laughs, I decided to stand in the middle of the pentagram, get a view from the victim’s perspective. I closed my eyes, trying to get a sense of what Ruby might have seen or felt or known at the last.

  For one second I thought I could hear a low, growling voice and see the rude beast slouching toward me dragging dead bodies and bent on murder. But it was a shadow monster and couldn’t live long in the sunlight. I opened my eyes. It was gone — so fleeting I wondered where the image had come from in the’ first place. Probably from what Teeth had just told me about Ruby’s odd nightmare. But I felt cold.

  Mostly so I could avoid the issue altogether, I headed back to the house. There was Teeth in the kitchen, fixing another pot of coffee. I came in through the back door. He seemed better, ready to hear the questions I really wanted to ask. That’s the trick of these kinds of interviews: get them talking about what they want to talk about first, and then ask them what you want to ask after.

  I shoved a chair out of the way and sat down. He brought me a mug of coffee without asking. It was a very lovely mug: Persian motif. I drank it black, but I wished there was sugar. I didn’t want to ask. I had more important questions.

  “So you know Lenny?”

  “Uh-huh.” And then, almost to himself, he said again, “Looney Lenny,” shaking his head.

  “Never had to bite him?”

  He raised his voice. “You bite a couple of guys on the arm.” He sat across from me at the white-pine table. “You get a reputation and it stays and stays…”

  “So anyway, Lenny ever mention a wife?”

  “Who paid attention? He talked about sex and aliens a lot. And he even said his father owned an island in the Pacific where he was going for vacation. I mean, he was cute and sweet and all, but I really didn’t take anything he said seriously, you know?” “You don’t happen to remember a Dannen Hilliard?”

  “Neena?” He smiled. “She was a pistol. I can’t imagine anyone ever meeting her and not remembering.” He lowered his voice. “She ran off with her doctor.”

  “I know.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “The doctor?”

  “You’re never going to believe this. His name was Nete Schlag.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one — anyway, Lenny says Dr. Schlag stole his wife away.”

  “He thought Neena was his wife? She would have eaten him for breakfast.”

  “No, Lenny thought Dr. Schlag was stealing all the girls, I think.”

  “Maybe.” Teeth raised his eyebrows.

  I couldn’t read him. “What?”

  “Well, I always thought he was one of our tribe…until he ran off with Neena.”

  “Why did you think that?”

  “Oh, he was sensitive and kind and warm and soft-spoken…you know, not like a real man.”

  “Uh-huh. Just like Lenny is nice and funny and smiling all the time, so there must be something wrong with him.”

  “Exactly.”

  I shook my head. “It’s a mean old world.”

  “You’re telling me?”

  I took a sip of coffee. It was good. French roast. “So, you bit a guy on the arm, and they let you go — over at GIMH.”

  “That falls under the ‘mean old world’ category. The guy wouldn’t calm down. He was screaming and waving those big arms around, whacking everybody in the face…including, I think, good old Lenny, now that you mention it…along with Dr. Schlag and a few other orderlies. But I was the one who subdued him, and that’s the thanks I get.”

  “Biting him was the only way.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “But he wasn’t your first?”

  He smiled. “All right, maybe he wasn’t.”

  “So you went to work at the Tip Top.”

  “You did get some information.”

  “Most of it came from a friend of mine. Ever go to the Easy club on Ponce?”

  “Easy Lube? Once or twice, when there was a good band.”

  “That’s my pal: Dally. She owns it.”

  “I don’t understand the connection.”

  “She’s my, like, manager. I’m a kind of one-man lost-and-found, and she sets up the work for me. Only this one is a little stranger than most…”

  “On account of it’s instigated by Lenny. Is this some kind of charity detective work, or is that an oxymoron?”

  “Lenny’s got money. His father owns an island in the Pacific.”

  “Okay, then don’t tell me.”

  “I’m telling you.”

  “Whatever.”

  I shifted in my seat, leaned forward. “So you went to work at the Tip Top.”

  “They love me there. The girls are safe with me, as you might imagine, and I’ve got the reputation of biting people who don’t behave…”

  “…and the name to back it up…”

  “Exactly, and the money’s good and the girls are really sweet, most of them, so…” He shrugged and took a sip of coffee.

  “Did you know the girls who got killed?”

  He set his mug down on that pretty white tabletop. “Wasn’t that awful? I only knew them slightly. They were part-timers. I think they were in school together or something. They only danced when they had to.” He leaned forward and whispered, “And they weren’t very good.”

  “Loath, as we are, to speak ill of the dead.”

  “Right.”

  “So what do you think happened?”

  “Some weird bar guy? Some of the men that come in that place are really awful. And believe it or not, coke is still a big habit with these girls, some of them. A guy comes in and gets them a bump or two, they’ll follow him anywhere. I try to watch out for it, but…” And he shrugged again.

  “You’re not their mother.”

  “Alas, not.”

  “Nothing else?”

  He peered into the corner of the room like he was watching some movie in his head, and then he blinked. “Nope. Nothing I can think of.” Then he wised up. “Hey. Wait a minute. Why are you asking me about…you don’t think there’s some connection between Ruby and the…those girls…”

  “I don’t know. But there you are: the link between Lenny, Ruby, and two dead dancers.”

  Incredulous as he doubtless was, he managed a calm “Surely you can see it’s a coincidence.”

  “The fact that you’ve been anything but cagey?” I nodded. “That would seem to indicate coincidence — to me. But I’m smarter than the cops. They may see a connection and be back to talk. Watc
h yourself. You got a coupla strikes already, you know.”

  “I’m a queer Satanist with a gangster nickname.”

  “For starters.”

  “It’s my lot in life to be misunderstood.”

  “Horatio,” I said, leaning back in my chair, “that’s everybody’s lot in life.”

  We spent another forty minutes or so chatting. He seemed like a good guy, really — the talk about tantric energy notwithstanding. I guess everybody’s got to believe something or other. A lot of indigenous Australians believe that dreams are the real stuff of life, and waking hours are just what you have to put up with to get back to reality. Take it from me — and, I guess, Kierkegaard — facts are mutable, faith is real.

  Chapter 4: Looney Lenny

  That evening I was in Easy at about my usual time. The band was starting a second set, it was after twelve, and the night had turned a little cold. The club was warm and the music wasn’t too loud — to tell you the truth, it was the closest thing to home I had. I walked in and Hal the bartender pulled out the bottle of wine he kept just for me: 1986 Chateau Cantenac Brown. It’s a third grand cru Margaux, and it’s not an affectation. It tastes better than anything on earth. I found a bunch of it in an A&P superstore, and it was mispriced. It was supposed to be $91 a bottle, but the clerk thought it couldn’t be that much so he made it $19 a bottle instead, and I bought all they had. I could take the rest of my days waxing poetic about its finish alone, but as I was about to warn Hal not to spill a drop, Looney Lenny walked in and my mind moved to other matters.

  Easy is set up in a kind of outré way: The tables are all junk-metal sculpture-looking things, and the bandstand is set on top of one of the old automobile hydraulic lifts from when the place was a garage. So the band starts playing, the lights go funny, the band goes up. The first couple of times you see it it’s pretty impressive. This was a little combo called Judy’s Grace. The singer, Kelly, had just been called one of the hottest new voices in alternative music by none other than Rolling Stone magazine, so there was a pretty fair crowd for a Tuesday night. They were pumping out a crunching vocal version of the Peter Gunn theme song. It seemed appropriate.

  “Lenny!”