slop around in my skull. I was naked, my pants and shirt were folded and sitting by the side of the bed. Piper let out a laugh. “Don’t worry, I had my eyes closed when I undressed you.” I cocked an eyebrow. “Ok, I might have peeked, but fair is fair, I mean you’ve see all of me. Now I’ve seen all of your scar-tracked fine self. Now get dressed, or I’m going to be late,” she said tossing my clothes to me. In a show of false modesty she turned her back as I dressed.
At the club, I retrieved my Norton and drove home with Marilyn tucked under my jacket. Back at my crib, Angel had lived up to her name, I had half expected to find the place trashed, but no. She had eviscerated a stuffed bunny but had left my furniture alone. We walked down to a taco stand where I had a bowl of menudo, Mexico’s sure fire hangover medicine. Walking home I felt like a new man. And the first thing the new man wanted to do was vomit.
It had been nine days since I found Kelly. Nine days blurred with booze. Nine days of stuffing my feelings down into a tight little lockbox in my stomach. I poured myself a scotch, but when I rose the tumbler to my lips I saw Kelly’s face.
I was down to only two options, gather my balls up and finally kill myself or find the freaks who had killed Kelly and make them pay. The numbness in my soul shifted, replaced by a building rage. An eye for a fucking eye, a tooth for a tooth.
The rage felt clean and simple, blowing the cobwebs from my mind. Someone must be made to pay the price for the ride Kelly had to take. If the cops couldn’t find them, I would.
I had two leads to chase down, one was the Armenians. I still had the skinny one’s driver’s license, his address was in Glendale. The other was the word “sister”. She had never talked about having any family, but it wasn’t the kind of word she would use for any of the club girls.
I rode back to Silverlake, maybe Lowrie had missed something. Pulling off the crime scene tape, I let myself in. The bloodstains had all darkened to a deep brown. A line of ants climbed up the wall over her bed. I went through her dresser but found nothing. She had an antique dressing table with a round mirror. In her jewelry box, I found a tarnished little girl’s charm bracelet amongst the cheap costume pieces, rhinestones and paste worn to attract diamonds and gold. I picked up the charm bracelet, feeling the little shoe, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Scottie dog. I was sure they all meant something, each had a memory if only Kelly were there to decode them for me.
I let myself in the back door of the club. The cleaning crew was busy vacuuming. Kelly’s locker was almost bare, a cute furry sweater she wore when the air-conditioning froze her out and a small makeup bag. Slipped into the lining of the bag was a postcard from the Cock’s Roost, one of Nevada’s many legal hot pillow joints. The postcard had a cartoon picture of a rooster surrounded by big-titted hens in lingerie. On the back was a Nevada postmark. It was addressed by hand in flowing purple cursive. The note read, “Kelly, all is swell, peachy in fact. I’m making mucho ducats, and if you don’t expect much from the guys you don’t get disappointed. For the first time in my life I feel that I am in control of my fate. I hope all is well with you… Write me! Cass.” It wasn’t much but it was all I had. My search turned up nothing else of any use.
Back at the crib I cranked up a little Black Market Clash, I needed the edge. Four calls to different area codes in Nevada finally delivered a number for the Cock’s Roost. A woman with a thick sultry voice answered the phone, “Cock’s Roost, how can we pleasure you?”
“Yes, I’m looking for Cass?”
After a brief pause she said, “We have no one by that name here, but if you want to stop by I’m sure we can find you a pleasing substitute.” I told her I would and jotted down the address, not that I knew what the hell good it would do me.
“An old Jew, a Black guy and a cop come into a bar. ‘What’ll you boys have?’ says the barman. ‘Goys?’ says the old Jew, ‘Goys? I didn’t survive two years in the death camp to have to listen to this crap.’ And he stomps out.” Bob the bookie and I were sitting in his booth at Bordner’s, a local low-life watering hole. “Now the black guy looks the bartender up and down real slow. ‘You call the Amazon a creek?’ he says, ‘You call King Kong a monkey? No? Then don’t call a man a boy.’ And he walks out. So, the cop, he walks up.”
“What color was he?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The cop?”
“It don’t matter.”
“Well you got a Jew and a Black guy, so what color was the cop?”
“Blue, ok? Blue, like all of them bastards. Now can I go on?”
“Go ahead,” who was I to stop him. “I just wondered.”
“Ok, ok so the Jew, no the cop, yeah ok, so the cop steps behind the bar and shoots the bartender in the knee and then arrests him for resisting. Moral of the story, don’t call a man a boy, unless you’re sure he doesn’t have a badge.” Bob looked at me, waiting for a laugh that wouldn’t be coming any time soon.
“You make that up?” I said.
“Sure, this morning while I was in the crapper. Get it?”
“I got it. I think the cop was probably White.”
“Who the fuck cares what color the cop was, it’s not the point.” Bob was a fur covered fireplug of a man. He kept his moon shaped face clean-shaven all the way down his neck but through his open collar a tee-shirt of chest hair showed. We had been friends since we hooked up in Juvie. I was twelve at the time, he was two years older than me, but even then I had size on him. The Mexicans were all crewed up as were the Black kids, that left Bob and me to fend for ourselves. We covered each other’s asses in there, but when we got out we drifted back to our separate worlds. He had the good fortune of being born Italian. He had never been made, but that didn’t stop him from being a good earner for the LA family. And when he was busted in the eighties he did his jolt like a man and never rolled on anyone. That earned him a new Cadillac and a permanent place on the team.
“Tell me you brought me some cabbage,” Bob said. “We’re pals and all but cheezus I can’t keep covering for you.” I slid an envelope across the bar. I had $600 donated by the Armenians, cash I had meant to give to Kelly. Bob flicked the envelope open and closed. That was all it took for him to count it.
“Couple of grand light, aren’t you?”
“It’s a start. I need you to take me to the Pope.” You never knew who was listening so we always call Don Gallico the Pope, his lieutenants we called the cardinals.
“No, you don’t,” Bob said with as much steel as his pudgy face could muster.
“Yes, I do.”
“He doesn’t have a real soft spot in his heart for you. Not since you ankled it out on him.”
“Old news.” I said. Years back the head of the LA family offered me a job in collections as a way to get out from under some cash I owed them. I tried, really, but it just wasn’t me. “He said he understood.”
“He says all kinds of stuff. You hurt his pride. It was like you were saying you were better than him.”
“I’ll take my chances. Come on, Bobby, it’s a short drive and ‘a hello how are you’.”
“Forget about it. Ain’t going to happen.”
“I’ll tell him you sent me.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I need this.”
In public we may have called the old man The Pope, but to his face we called him Sir. He’d been the head of the LA family going back to the day. In all those years the man had never seen a single night in the cage. In part this was because he never let the business actually touch his hands, also he insisted that the LA family stay clear of drugs, but the main reason for his lack of jail time was that if anyone even thought about ratting him out, they wound up as so many body parts floating in the LA river. He was old when I was a kid, but walking into the restaurant I wasn’t prepared for what fourteen years had wreaked on his body. His once large frame had collapsed
