Denton - 03 - Way Past Dead (12 page)

The necktie had already been loosened after my disastrous meeting at the insurance company, but now it was off and flung onto the bed before I even got my jacket off. I changed into a pair of jeans and an old
flannel shirt, then flipped through the television listings to see if there was anything worth watching.

I realized, as I stood there desperately scanning the cable listings, how empty my evenings were without her. Before Marsha, my evenings were equally empty, but they didn’t feel that way.

I settled back in the chair next to my bed and pointed the clicker at the TV. I surfed around the early-evening stuff, pausing to watch a new Mary-Chapin Carpenter video on Country Music Television, then jumping over to Comedy Central.

“Make me laugh, damn you,” I muttered to the stand-up comic who appeared onscreen.

When the hell is she going to call? I wondered. On the local stations, there was nothing but a brief recap of the morgue situation, then the regular evening stuff. For Marsha, it would be just another quiet evening down in the bunker.

I turned to the phone on my nightstand by the bed. “Ring, damn you,” I demanded. That’s when I noticed the blinking red light on the answering machine. I pushed the mute button on the remote control.

“Aw, hell,” I exclaimed, figuring I’d probably missed her call.

I pushed the button on the machine. The computer voice came on: “Hello, you have
one
message.…”

Then a short beat, followed by Ray O’Dell’s frantic voice: “Harry! Where you at, Harry? They done arrested Slim, man! They done charged him with killing that bitch! Can you believe that shit? Call me, man, just as quick as you get home!”

There was a breathless pause for a second, followed by Ray’s voice again leaving me a number to call.

I mumbled another obscenity, pointed the clicker at the TV, and unmuted it. Hysterical laughter erupted from the set. Presumably the comedian had just told the funniest damn joke of the entire damn century.

And I’d missed the punch line again.

I slipped the car into a space on Seventh Avenue just across Church Street from my office. I walked back across Church, down the hill toward Broadway, and stepped up into the alcove that led up to the front door of my office building. It was eight-thirty at night, and there was already a bundled-up wino cradling a bottle of Wild Irish Rose sleeping next to the door. He stirred uneasily, caressing his bottle, as I hit the step in front of him.

“Just going into my office,” I said soothingly. “You go back to sleep.”

He mumbled something and rolled over as I struggled in the dim light to get the key in the lock.

The hall lights were off, the hallway illuminated only by the glowing red Exit sign at the other end. The stairway to my left had a silver cast to it from the streetlights outside shining through a dirty window at the landing. I hit the stairs two at a time, got to the landing, then turned back to my left and hopped up the last half of the flight.

“That you, Harry?” a voice boomed from my right, down the hall from my office.

“Yeah, Ray,” I called. “On my way.”

Ray and Slim’s office door was open, with the muted light from a shaded lamp barely illuminating the end of the hallway. I stopped at the door and looked in. Their office was bigger than mine, but still consisted of only one room jammed with file cabinets and desks. Ray sat
at one of the desks, his feet up, a large acoustic guitar on his lap. His right arm draped loosely over the body of the guitar, his left hand dangling off the side of the chair.

“You okay?” I asked, wondering if he was drunk, stoned, shocked, or all of the above. “Yeah, I guess,” he said.

I sat on the edge of one of the desks. “When did they arrest him?”

“About six.”

“They chase him down?”

“No.” The chair creaked loudly as Ray shifted his weight. “I got hold of him and told him what you said. He called the detective in charge and went on down there. He said they just asked him a few questions, then Miranda’d him, then booked him.”

“What did Slim do?”

“Well, it appears he had the good sense to shut his mouth at that point. They let him call me so I’d know what was going on.”

“What are they holding him on?”

“Murder, but I don’t know what degree. Arraignment’s at nine in the morning.”

“No,” I said. “Not arraignment. They’ll have to have a preliminary hearing and a bond hearing first. That’s when you get the first indication of how strong the DA’s case is.”

Ray stared at me over the honey-colored wood of his guitar. “Well,” I asked, “how strong is it?”

“I don’t know.”

I figured if his closest buddy and business partner wasn’t jumping up to defend his honor, that was a real bad sign. “Okay, next step is to find him a lawyer. Preferably an experienced one.”

“Yeah.” Ray seemed almost dazed.

“You guys got any money?”

Ray stood up and leaned the guitar against the wall, its neck balanced precariously on the shiny paint. He
paced back and forth in the limited space between the desk and a window overlooking Seventh Avenue.

“Not much.”

“That’s bad. Justice costs money.”

“We’ve got Roger Vaden. He handles all our contracts and does our books, what books we have.”

I’d heard of Roger Vaden. He was an entertainment attorney, a reputable one, but he wasn’t the guy to get you off a murder charge.

“That’ll do for tomorrow,” I said. “But you’ll need a criminal attorney on this one, Ray.”

Ray stared out the window, his head leaning against the dirty glass. “Slim’s got his faults, Harry. I don’t think he killed Becca.”

He turned and looked at me. “But he sure as hell had reason to. That woman was a snake, Harry.”

I took that to mean that when the divorce came down, Ray’d been on Slim’s side. I’d learned from painful experience that everyone feels compelled to take sides in a divorce. There were people I’d considered good friends, only to learn they wouldn’t take my calls after Elaine and I split.

“Tell me about her,” I said.

“Rebecca Gibson was a Thoroughbred. Frisky, fast, creative. Could put a song together better than anybody I ever knew, me and Slim included. But she was unpredictable. You never knew what was going through her. All you could count on was that sooner or later she was going to explode.”

“She was the volatile one and Slim was the steady, patient type?”

“Most of the time,” he said, crossing the office and stuffing his hands in his back pocket. “But she liked to pick at him, and it got her goat when she’d go to work on him and he wouldn’t fight back. She’d nag and pick at him until he just couldn’t take it anymore. Then ol’ Slim’d pop his cork. Next thing you know, you got a domestic-disturbance call in the middle of the night.”

Damn, I thought, and the DA would be glad to mention each and every one of them to a jury, as long as the judge would let him.

“He ever hit her?”

Ray hung his head. “Time or two. Hell, she hit back, though.”

“How long were they married?”

“Almost nine years. The last straw came when she booked a tour without him. Didn’t even tell him about it. They were trying to make it as singing partners, working the nightclubs and the honky-tonks for a grand or two a night. She did a three-day gig down in San Antonio without even letting him know where she’d be. When she got back, Slim was gone. Just packed his shit and left.”

“Who filed for the divorce?”

Ray shook his head. “I don’t know. It just happened. I think she did, but I’m not sure.”

“What happened to all the songs they wrote together?”

“Most of ’em were sold to different publishers. This was back before me and Slim formed CKM.”

“CKM?”

“Cockroach Killer Music,” Ray said, grinning. His right index finger motioned toward the floor as his other hand pulled his left trouser leg up a couple of inches. He wore a pair of shiny gray snakeskin boots that had the sharpest pair of pointed toes I’d ever seen on human footwear.

“They get in the corners real good,” he added. “Decided to name our publishing company after them.”

I smiled back at him. “Okay, CKM it is. Does Rebecca own any part of CKM?”

“No, but we’ve published a lot of her songs. Even had a couple of them recorded. But the truth is, Harry, me and Slim have been struggling for a long time. On the other hand, Rebecca’s career was about to take off.
She was going to be up there with Reba and Dolly, Tricia, and Kathy and the rest.”

“Professional jealousy, then, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what them bozos down at the courthouse are figuring. I know it But you see, it don’t make any sense. We’ve published enough of her songs that when she hits big, we’re going to ride along with her at least a little ways, and so is everybody else who’s ever worked with her. It’s a gravy train, man. That’s the music business. Most of the time, fame’s a short ride. But when you’re on it, it’s a holler a minute.”

I pushed one of the chairs out from under a desk with my foot and plopped down on it. I interlaced my fingers behind my head and leaned way back, staring at the dirty acoustic ceiling tiles.

“So then the question remains—if Slim didn’t kill his ex-wife, who did?”

“That’s why I called you, Harry.”

My feet dropped to the floor, and I shot up in the chair. “Oh, no, Ray, I—”

“Aw, c’mon, Harry, he needs your help.”

“I’m booked up right now,” I said. I thought of Marsha again and forced myself to bring her face into focus. Funny how when people are gone, it’s not very long before you have to struggle to remember what they look like.

What am I talking about, I yelled inside my head,
she’s not dead!

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Ray pleaded. “If it’s the money you’re worried about, we can pay you over time.”

“It’s not the—” I stopped. Wait a minute, what was I saying? I didn’t come into this office every day just because I thought it was a neat place to be. Of course it’s the money. At least, part of it is. And I knew that if I took the job, it would be forever before they paid me, if they ever did. That was time and energy that could best be put to hustling clients with ready cash.

On the other hand, it’s Slim. And right now he’s sitting in a cell.

“I’ve just got too much going on right now.”

Ray resorted to the last refuge of the desperate. He rolled his lower lip out and scrunched his eyes together.

“Aw, c’mon, Harry,” he drawled. “Please …”

It was another thirty minutes before I managed to talk myself free of Ray O’Dell’s clutches. I anguished for them both. Obviously Ray was in acute distress over his partner and friend’s fate. And I liked Slim enough, even though I didn’t know him all that well.

Mainly, I just couldn’t handle it. I was already going at life like killing rats. I had no reserves left, nothing to draw on.

No blinking red light on my answering machine, so if Marsha tried to call, she’d hung up. One of these days, I’m going to get an answering machine with built-in caller ID so I can know who the hang-ups are. Imagine the look on some poor sucker’s face when I call him back and demand to know why the hell he hung up on me.

Some days you eat the bear; other days the bear eats you. This was one of those few rare days when I felt like I’d managed to fight the bear to a begrudging draw. I took a quick shower, dried my hair, and had just settled into bed with my history-of-jazz paperback when the phone rang.

“Yeah?” I said into the phone, fumbling with the mute button.

“You’re home,” she said.

“Damn it,” I said, then let out a long sigh. “I missed you earlier, didn’t I?”

“ ’S okay. Gave me a chance to wait until I could get back here alone.”

“How are you, lady? This’s your third night.”

“Don’t remind me. I’m okay, but we’re all getting on each other’s nerves a bit. The food’s running low, too. We’re all tired of eating out of cans anyway.”

I sat up in bed. “Wait a minute. You telling me you haven’t got enough food down there?”

“We’re okay for another day or so. We’ve let the hostage negotiators know. They’re working out the details to have provisions passed through the lines.”

“I know.”

“You know? How do you know that?”

I bit my lower lip. “I was down there today. Howard let me through the lines.”

“Harry, what the hell did you think you were doing? I assume you had to tell Spellman what vested interest you had in visiting the trenches.”

“Marsha,” I said, hesitating for a moment. “They all knew anyway.”

There was a long, static-filled silence over the cellular phone. “Oh,” she said.

“Who cares? We’re both single. Nothing to be ashamed of, right? It’s not like we’re running around on our spouses or anything. I don’t have anything to be ashamed of. Do you?”

“Of course not,” she snapped. “It’s just that … Well, I’ve just never, well, not never, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been involved with anyone so, so
publicly.”

“Hey, screw ’em if they can’t take a joke, right?”

She sighed. “I guess so.”

“So what’s the latest? There hasn’t been much new on the news programs.”