The Mortal Groove (12 page)

Melanie rolled the beer glass between her hands. “Sure, I did. But I figured I'd blown it and there was no turning back.”

“Look, I'll be honest with you. I've dated a lot of women since we were together. I'm never hard up for female companionship. But none of those women have your—”

“Sensuality?”

“I was going to say complexity.”

“Complexity is good.”

“We owe it to each other to give it another try.”

Melanie glanced over at the door as a man came in. “That's him,” she whispered, moving instantly into reporter mode. “He said he'd be wearing an Oakland Raider's cap.” Rising from her chair, she slipped a tape recorder out of her briefcase and said, “I won't be long. Wait for me, okay?”

As she walked over to him, Cordelia tried to get a look at his face, but with so little light in the bar, it was impossible. They disappeared outside, leaving Cordelia alone with nothing but Melanie's beer and her briefcase. She pulled the glass in front of her and inspected the room.

Five minutes went by. Then ten. Fifteen minutes later she was still waiting and the beer was gone. She was about to go outside and see if she could hurry things along when she heard the sound of an approaching siren. Then another. Several of the customers raced to the windows to look outside. With a bunch of squirming bodies blocking her line of sight, Cordelia couldn't see very much, except for the reflected flashing lights from the cruisers as they sped past.

A moment later, a woman stumbled in through the glut of curiosity seekers about to head out the door. “There's a woman in the parking lot who's down on the ground,” she gasped. “I think she's hurt.”

Cordelia grabbed the briefcase and flew off her chair, shoving her way through the crowd. Once outside, she rushed around to the back lot, but halfway there a cop blocked her way.

“Back up, lady. Let us do our job.”

“I think that might be a friend of mine. Is it a woman?” She described Melanie, what she was wearing, what she looked like.

Right then, a fight broke out between two of the bar patrons.

“Stay here. I'll be back,” said the cop, racing over to break up the scuffle.

“Forget that,” said Cordelia, skirting around one of the parked squad cars. Just as she broke through a gawker jam, she was stopped again, this time by a cop with a baton. “This is a crime scene. Nobody allowed in.” Another cop was winding yellow tape around the perimeter. People were shouting. Cordelia stood on her tiptoes and searched the crowd, but Melanie was nowhere to be found.

“I know the victim!” she shouted. “She's my girlfriend!”

A couple of the biker types turned to stare at her, but the cops were busy with crowd control. “You've got to listen to me,” she yelled.

The longer she stood there, helpless in the growing mass of onlookers, the more frantic she became. “I am Cordelia M. Thorn!” she shouted. It was her trump card. She assumed the very mention of her name could stop a roaring locomotive.

But nobody seemed interested.

A man oozed up to her and stuck out his hand. “You're that theater director, right?” He eyed her for a second, then said, “Am I wrong, or do you look different than you used to?”

“I am a
work
in
progress.”

“What?” He couldn't hear her over all the shouting.

“I cut my hair!”

“I liked it the old way better.”

“Everyone's a critic,” she snarled. Backing her way through the great honking gaggle, she reached the street. “Melanie?” she hollered, stomping her foot. “If you're out here, you better let me know right now, because if you don't, I'm gonna have a heart attack right here in the friggin' street!”

Nothing.

“Melanie!”

As she surveyed the scene, her eyes locked on the glowing
neon pyramid high atop the Xanadu Club less than a block away. That was it. Jane would know what to do. Jane always knew what to do. Picking up the hem of her evening gown, she rushed down the sidewalk toward the building.

 

Jane was working at her desk in her upstairs office when Cordelia burst in.

“You gotta come,” she said, yanking Jane out of her chair.

“Hey,” said Jane, feeling her arm almost wrenched out of its socket. “Where's the fire?” When she looked up, she did a double take. “What happened to you?”

Cordelia appeared wild eyed in her slinky midnight blue evening gown, but it was the magenta, blue and green hair spiking in every direction that caught Jane's attention.

“Just come!” She dragged Jane down the stairs, through the long bar and out onto the street. “Look!” she cried, pointing at the police cruisers, their lights flashing in the darkness.

Released from Cordelia's iron grip, Jane straightened her clothes. “I thought I heard sirens a few minutes ago,” she said, rubbing her shoulder. “Something happen down at the Unicorn?”

“It's Melanie! She's hurt.”

That's all Jane needed to hear. She cut around a group of people who'd gathered to watch the scene from a safe distance and ran flat out to the alley behind the bar. Ducking into the shadows, she took a moment to get her bearings. A paramedic van had pulled into the space between the parked cars. Just as Cordelia lumbered up next to her, Jane spied a cop she knew. “Hey, Michael?” She waved at him, hoping he'd see her and come over.

Michael Chen had bartended at the Lyme House a couple years ago while he was getting his law enforcement degree at North Hennepin Community College.

“Is that Chen over there?” asked Cordelia, pressing a hand to her chest as she tried to catch her breath.

Michael finished talking to one of the other cops, then drifted over. “What are you two doing here?” He was tall, dark, extremely good looking, and always had a grim look on his face. Cordelia thought he was a self-important jerk. Jane merely saw him as determined.

“Cordelia thinks she knows who was attacked,” said Jane. “Her name is Melanie Gunderson. She's about five-six, brown hair.”

“She was wearing a brown leather jacket over black jeans,” said Cordelia. “Is it her? Is she okay?”

Chen moved up next to them. “What else do you know about her?”

“Was she badly hurt?” asked Jane.

“She's lost a lot of blood.”

Cordelia's eyes opened wide. “But she's going to be okay, right?”

“Whoever knifed her knew right where to cause the most damage. But she's still breathing. We're transporting her to HCMC. Don't get your hopes up. From what I saw, I wouldn't hold my breath that she'll even make it to the emergency room.”

Cordelia collapsed against the side of the building and sank to the ground.

Jane bent down to make sure she was okay.

“She was the love of my life,” cried Cordelia, covering her face with her hands.

Jane looked up at Michael. “They were an item once, years ago.”

“No, no, we're back together,” cried Cordelia. “We just made up.

Chen crouched down on the other side of her. “Do you have any idea what happened?”

“She was supposed to meet a guy. His name was Smith, but—but she didn't think he was telling the truth. He promised to give her some information about a story she was working on. He showed up a little after one-thirty and they went outside to talk.”

“She's a reporter?”

“She works for
City Beat”
said Jane.

“That artsy-fartsy weekly?”

“It's not artsy-fartsy,” snapped Cordelia. It's
independent.
Counterculture.”

“Can you describe the guy?” asked Chen.

Cordelia rubbed the tears out of her eyes. “God, it was so dark in the bar. I remember he had on a black baseball cap. The Raiders, I think. That's a baseball team, right?”

“Football,” said Chen.

“Whatever. I'm sure that's what it was. I couldn't see his face very well. I can't believe—I mean, I was just talking to her a few minutes ago. And now—”

“Can you describe the man physically? Was he white, black—”

“White,” said Cordelia, glancing down at the briefcase slung over her shoulder. “And sort of, well, really, he was basically just kind of nondescript. Not fat, not skinny, not tall, not short, although maybe more on the thin side. He was wearing a dark jacket and dark pants.”

Except for the cap and the fact that he was white, nothing Cordelia had said was very helpful. Jane had a bunch of questions of her own, but decided to let Michael take the lead.

“Do you know what your friend was working on? What kind of story?”

Cordelia glanced at Jane, then looked away as if she were thinking the question over. Speaking in a tight voice that Jane new was fake, but Chen probably didn't, she said, “No, not really. She didn't talk about that kind of thing with me.”

Jane stared at her, blank-faced.

Standing up, Chen adjusted his cap and looked around. “I need you to talk to my sergeant. Wait here, okay?”

As he angled back through the crowd, Jane got right up into Cordelia's face. “Why'd you do that? You lied to him!”

“I'm protecting your dad!”

“That's great, Cordelia. But what about Melanie? Somebody just tried to kill her.”

“You think I somehow failed to grasp that point?”

“So how do the police find Mr. White Nondescript with the Raider's cap if they don't know where to look?”

“I don't know! I'm working on it, okay.” She closed her eyes and tipped her head back as a flood of helpless tears rolled down her cheeks.

 

 

I
t was almost three in the morning. Randy and Del sat on the lower deck at Randy's house, waiting for Larry to return from his meeting with Gunderson. The night was chilly and windy, with a brilliant canopy of stars overhead.

“He shoulda been back by now,” said Del, pressing the light on his wristwatch to check the time. “You think he ran into problems?”

Randy took a swig of beer. “Hope not.” The possible negative outcomes were so numerous, he couldn't even begin to anticipate them all. As a lawyer, Randy was used to working his way through each potential issue in a lawsuit. Before he entered a courtroom, he had all his bases covered. Everything was ordered, considered to the last detail. He was a man who craved order the way other men might crave alcohol or sex. It was survival coding, the only way he knew to keep the horror-stained semireality of his past at bay. But in a situation like this, order was impossible.

They resumed their restless silence, heads tilted up toward the sky.

“I hated the moon when we were in Nam,” said Del.

“Yeah,” said Randy, remembering how bright the nights could be. “I never felt that way when I was a kid. Night was just . . . like
dark.
Didn't matter if the moon was there or not.”

“There are so many kinds of dark,” muttered Del, leaning over and setting his empty beer bottle next to his chair. He kicked open the cooler and grabbed himself another—his third. Twisting off the cap, he said, “You know, when I was up in Grand Rapids a few weeks ago with the campaign, I met this old guy, an Ojibwe leader. We got to talking after Ray's speech. One thing led to another and he eventually brought up the subject of the Ojibwe Vision Quest. Ever heard of it?”

Randy shook his head.

“When I was in junior high, I was given this assignment on how boys become men in different cultures. I remember it because it touched a nerve in me. A lot of cultures make boys go through a rite of passage. I was supposed to pick one of them and write a two-page paper on it. I never wrote the paper, of course, but I did do some of the reading. I thought it was all pretty interesting stuff. So, I guess, I was curious what this guy had to say.”

“And?”

“Well, the Ojibwe look at life a lot differently than we do. They think the world is filled with spirits that inhabit birds, rocks, trees, animals, the wind, the moon, everything really. Each person gets a personal vision to help him navigate his life. They receive it when they're young—teenagers, usually. In fact, an Ojibwe's life doesn't really begin until he's acquired his guiding vision.”

“Is it just for boys?” asked Randy.

“No, girls, too. They make this journey into the wilderness, where they fast and wait for their personal animal spirit guide to reveal to them the central truth of their life. When they know what it is, then they go back home and take on the mantle of adulthood.”

“Sounds . . . civilized.”

“Yeah, it does—compared to what we went through. I mean, we were just kids when we were sent to Vietnam. I figure that's where we grew up, where we received our vision.”

“God, I hope not,” said Randy, finally seeing where Del was headed. “I suppose I had a few visions while I was there, usually when I was fucked up on something. But they weren't anything I'd want to build my life around.”