The Old Silent

difference if I go double platinum or what. She just says, 'Stanley, you been to mass?'' His voice was a high-pitched squeal. 'So what kind of shit you're laying down here? You mad at me because I messed up Delia?'

'Not particularly.'

'You guys are sadists. Hey.' He snapped his fingers. 'I already talked to your friend. He was cool.' Stan laughed, choked on smoke, and wiped away some spittle. 'Your friend got by Nose. She thinks she's protecting me from the press. It's got nothing to do with my band; it's because she thinks I'm a Pole. An agent provocateur, or something. She saw me in this newspaper photo with Lech Walesa.'

'What were you doing in a photo with Walesa?' Stan looked disgusted, searching Jury's face for signs of intelligent life, apparently. 'What the hell would I be in a picture with Walesa for? Do I play Gdansk? It was just some cretin who looked like me. I told Mum this story and she told me Lech goes to mass all the time, and why ain't I more like him? Want a beer? If you drink bottled, I can send Stone. Hey, Stone, man-'He raised his bottle of Abbott's and the Labrador rose, yawning. Keeler held up one finger. The dog burrowed off through the crowd. 'He can only get one at a time.' He sounded apologetic.

'I can only drink one at a time. Look, Mr. Keeler-'

'Call me Stanislaw. Nose does. Wanna go to Brixton? There's a pub there I play at for free some nights. They're in kind of deep shit, and I help the manager out.'

'You're very humane.'

'No humanity to it. I'm trying to get it on with his wife.'

'Sorry. Brixton's out. I want some information.' Two other women had more or less oozed into the empty chairs. They looked like twins. Stan told them to get lost. 'You knew Roger Healey, the music critic.'

'I didn't know him and I wouldn't call him a critic.'

'According to my sergeant, you did.' Jury heard Dickie run something by the microphone and the band started up. 'Healey didn't seem to care for your music very much. As a matter of fact, the reviews I read made it sound like a vendetta. Why would he be devoting a column to you, anyway. Segue's pop, jazz, rock critic is Morpeth Duckworth.'

'You been talking to Rubber Ducky?' His head was turned to watch the band and his eyes squeezed in pain at the high whine of the slide guitar. 'Oh, we have certainly got a double platinum.'

The customers were beginning to wake up and inch nearer the stage. Stone was back with a bottle clamped in his jaws and Stan took it and snapped the cap off with an opener on his keychain. The dog lay back down again. Stan shoved the Abbott's toward Jury.

'Again, why?'

'Huh?'

'Roger Healey. Why was he trying to get at you?'

'I expect because he was coming on to my old lady.'

'Are you saying Healey was having an affair with your wife?'

'Aren't you old-fashioned? I never said she was my wife.' He was searching out a butt in the littered tin ashtray. Jury tossed his own packet on the table, but Stan said, 'Thanks, but new ones don't taste as schmuzzy.' He found half a cigarette and lit it. 'Deli's not my wife, though I think she might be several other guys'. She said, no, she wasn't screwing Healey, but Deli couldn't open her mouth without lying. She even lied about the weather. Pathological, right?'

'Deli who?'

Stan's eyes were on the group bathed in blue light. He didn't answer.

'Mr. Keeler?'

His fingers were beating a rhythmic tattoo on the table.

'Deli's last name?' asked Jury patiently.

'I never asked. Dickie's getting better; he must've cleaned the moss off that slide.'

'Sounds great to me, but we won't stick around for it. Come on.' Jury rose and the lady whom one of the customers had called Karla turned her head slowly to stare at him. People didn't order her boy around, it seemed.

'Come where, for God's sake?'

'New Scotland Yard. You can't seem to keep your mind on answers here.'

'You're a real happening guy.'

'That's me.'

'Look, I don't know if it's her real name.' Stan motioned him to sit back down. Karla looked off into the unfiltered air again. 'She said it was Magloire. Delia Magloire. No one knew how to say it right, so we just called her Deli MacGee.'

Jury had his notebook out. 'Where was she from?'

'Martinique. So she said. Well, she did look like she might of come from the islands. Honey-colored skin, hair as black as Stone here.' He reached down to scratch the dog's head. 'Don't ask me where she went to…' His voice trailed off as he concentrated on the inert dog. Stone was a good name.

'Pretty?'

'Oh, yes. Thick as two planks, but pretty, oh, yes.'

'How'd she meet Healey?'

Stan mashed out the butt, searched for another. 'She was on her way to the Hammersmith Odeon and stumbled into the Royal Albert Hall by mistake. You believe that, you believe anything. About two a.m. she weaves past Nose and up to the flat and says, 'Love, Eric's got this big new band…' ' He raised his eyebrows above the tiny match-flame. 'The London Symphony. She wanted me to think she was that dumb. Then she starts talking about this famous music critic and kind of oomphing round the old bed-sit, puts on Robert hootchi-koo Plant and wants to dance. I never could figure out what possible centrifugal force could blow Deli across the path of that pissant Healey.'

'When did Deli leave?'

Stan shrugged. 'Year ago.' He glanced at the small stage where the blue lights made the group look cyanosed. Dickie's slide screamed in Jury's ears. He wondered how Wiggins could make it through a concert without a nosebleed. 'If that slide's got moss on it, you couldn't prove it by me,' he shouted across the table. 'Did you believe her? About Healey?'

Stan shrugged. 'Why not? The guy was a lech.'

It was getting harder to talk and to hear. The riffs were ear-splitting and the drummer had gone into an epileptic frenzy. Jury's ears seemed to have closed up, as if he were in a plummeting airplane. Stan was pulling a black Stratocaster from the case on the floor.

As he fastened the leather strap around his neck, the dog gave a terse bark. 'Sounds like Dickie's picking with the top of a tin again. I think I'll join. Stick around.'

'Where's the picks, Stone?'

The dog snuffled in the long arm of the case and brought out a tortoiseshell pick.

'Not that, for chrissakes. Thinner.'

Stone spat out the one in his mouth, rooted again, brought out a black one nearly thin enough to see through.

'Thanks.' He stuck the pick beneath the strings.

'Did Deli MacGee dump Healey?'

'I'd say so. She made some comment about him 'trading licks' that wasn't-how'd she put it?-'within my venue.' ' Stan smiled. 'I kinda liked that.'

'What did she mean?'

Stan brought his hand away from the tuning knobs, hit a chord. 'Comeon, man. What'd'ya think? Healey wasn't an axeman. At best a ladies' man, at second best a lech, at worst a sado. You look surprised. You're a cop; you've seen these squirrely types before.'

'And were those reviews written after Deli walked out?'

'You got it.'

'Jealousy?'

'Who knows?' Stan shrugged. 'Who cares?'

You do, thought Jury, sadly, looking at the smudges under Stan Keeler's eyes.