Fiddlers

‘Why, wassa motta?’ the manager asked.

‘We’re investigating a murder,’ Parker said, using the word ‘murder’ instead of ‘homicide,’ which they probably didn’t understand in Korea. Scare the shit out of the little gook, he was thinking. Ten dollars extra for a fuckin pedicure! ‘Does the name Alicia Hendricks mean anything to you?’

The manager looked at him blankly.

But he was scared now. Fear in his eyes. Well, sure, a murder investigation.

‘Works for Beauty Plus,’ Genero said.

‘Lustre Nails,’ Parker said.

‘She’d have come here selling nail polish, cuticle remover, nail hardener, all that related stuff. A sales rep.’

‘Ring a bell?’

The manager was shaking his head.

‘We’re trying to work up her story’

‘Find out who might’ve wanted her dead.’

‘Remember her?’

Still shaking his little bald head. Eyes wide in fright. Well, murder.

‘You’re not in any trouble here,’ Genero assured him. ‘This is like a background check.’

‘Alicia Hendricks,’ Parker said.

‘Nobody,’ the manager said, shaking his head. ‘No. On’y Korean girl work here.’

* * * *

In the car on the way to Pear Blossom Nails, Parker asked, ‘Who said she worked there? Did anybody tell him she worked there?’

‘No, we told him she was a sales rep.’

‘And who said she wasn’t Korean?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did anybody say Alicia Hendricks wasn’t Korean?’

‘Well, no, but the name…”

‘They all take American names. You ask any of the Korean girls in there what their names are, they’ll tell you Mary or Terry or Kelly or Cathy or whatever. So why couldn’t Alicia be Korean?’

‘Well, Hendricks. That don’t sound Korean.’

‘She could be married to an American. Nice Korean girl married to an American, why not? My point is, what made that little bald-headed jerk think she wasn’t Korean? Ten dollars extra, can you imagine that?’

‘You think he knew her, is that it?’

‘I got no idea he knew her or he didn’t know her. Of course he knew her! She goes there all the time to sell her nail polish, she’s a regular like Clairol or Revlon, all at once he never heard of her! Tells us all the girls in there are Korean, when nobody said she wasn’t Korean!’

‘You think he’s hiding something?’

‘He better not be,’ Parker said.

* * * *

Because she couldn’t drive and sign at the same time, Teddy pulled the car into a roadside Starbucks, and talked to her daughter over lattes. This was after April’s Wednesday afternoon ballet lesson; she was sweaty and sticky and wasn’t expecting an ambush.

‘Who told you that?’ she asked at once.

Mark, Teddy signed.

‘I’ll kill him!’

No, you won’t kill anyone. He did the right thing.

They were sitting almost knee to knee on the front seat, mother and daughter, facing each other, look- alikes.

Teddy’s latte was in the cup holder, April’s in her right hand.

Why didn’t you tell me yourself? Teddy asked.

April said nothing.

April?

‘I couldn’t tell anyone, Mom. That was the thing of it. Not you, not even Mark at first. And I can just imagine what Dad’s reaction would’ve been if I casually mentioned that Lorraine Pierce had shoplifted a five-dollar bottle of red Revlon Crayon polish #34 from the local drugstore! Mr. Morality himself? Break out the handcuffs!’

He’d have done no such thing! And you know it!

‘Well, I wasn’t sure. The other thing was… Lorraine’s my very best friend on earth. We sit together in every class in school, spend all our free time together, do things together, talk about things together, secret things… we’re like sisters, you know? It was like forget the petty bullshit, Ape, what’s a little bottle of nail polish between friends to the end?’

Teddy said nothing about her language.

Or that someone was calling her daughter Ape.

‘It was really difficult, Mom,’ April said. ‘Really.’

I want you to promise me something, Teddy signed.

‘Mom, please don’t ask me to stop seeing Lorraine.’

No, I won’t do that. But if anything like this ever happens again…

‘I promise,’ April said.

You’ll tell your father or me right away.

‘Yes, I promise,’ April said.

* * * *

The word was out. No question about it. If the reaction at Plum Blossom was merely a harbinger, the responses at Pear Blossom and then Apricot Blossom were clear indications that nobody was about to tell them anything much about Alicia Hendricks.

This wasn’t quite the ‘Nobody Knows Nothing’ stonewalling you got in the Eight-Seven hood, or even in Washington, D.C, for that matter; the managers of the Blossom shops couldn’t very well deny the existence of a woman who visited them regularly to promote and sell Beauty Plus’s line of nail-care products. Instead, they all nodded and bowed and smiled in the Oriental manner, oh yes, we know Alicia, oh yes, she very nice girl, come here alia time, we buy many nail polish from her, oh, she dead? So sorry to hear. Nice girl.

But mention dope…

Fortified by the La Paglia drug bust yesterday, they were still pursuing the drug-related angle…

… and immediately the faces went blank.

Dope was news to all of them.

Except to Jenny Cho, of course, who had admitted that Alicia did ‘Some li’l pot, you know?’

But that was earlier today, and this was now, and the word had gone out, and the party line had changed.

Drug use?

Alicia?

No, no. Smiling. Bowing. Ladies all over the place looking up when the detectives mentioned drugs. This couldn’t be too good for business, all these nice city-slick ladies with their smooth sleek legs and their skirts pulled up over their thighs, hearing the word ‘drugs’ bandied about as if this was some street corner near a playground someplace instead of a civilized establishment where you could even get a bikini wax. What was the world coming to?

The world was coming to a dead end.

Until they visited a place called Cherry Blossom Nails.

* * * *

They knew the minute they stepped through the doorway that they weren’t supposed to be here to witness whatever was going down. There was that silent electric buzz that indicated something illegal was happening