place. Wanted to know what the fuck he was paying taxes for.”
“And tell me, why do they call Gary Merker Pick?”
Cherry smiled. “Obsessive nose picker, with intense concentration. He could be beating a guy to death with one hand and still have a finger from his other mining away. Don’t shake his hand, don’t borrow his pen. You don’t know where they’ve been.”
I felt queasy.
“I got another question,” I said. “Part of the story I’m working on involves tracking down a woman who I think may have had something to do with the Slots, or with Merker.”
“You got a name?”
“Trixie Snelling.”
Cherry’s eyebrows came together in thought. “Doesn’t ring any kind of bell.”
“She might not have been going by Snelling then,” I said. “I don’t honestly know.”
“Merker had a lot of girls in and out of the Kickstart. Stripping, hooking, waiting tables. Lot of turnover in a place like that. I don’t ever remember a Trixie. What do you know about this woman? You got a picture or anything?”
I took the clipping from the Suburban out of my pocket, unfolded it, and put it on his desk. “She might have looked different then, hair color, that kind of thing.”
Cherry studied the shot, shook his head. “I don’t think so. What can you tell me about her?”
“Last few years, she’s lived in Oakwood. Trained in accounting, but actually making a living as a dominatrix. A pretty good living, I think.”
Cherry’s eyebrows went way up. “Really? The whole whips and chains thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Still doesn’t ring any kind of bell.”
“She might have had a child. Very young at the time. A little girl.”
“I still got noth…A little girl, you say?”
I nodded.
“I seem to recall, I think it was Eldon Swain. I think he may have had a kid. I remember, when he died, there was something about him leaving a baby girl behind.”
“He was married?”
“Don’t think so, but yeah, I think he might have had a kid. Maybe with one of the dancers there, I don’t know.” He thought a moment. “You know who might be able to tell you?”
I waited.
“Wingstaff.”
“The head of the Comets?” I said. “The biker?”
“Yeah. I could give him a call. Get the two of you together. He might know something about this Trixie chick. The two gangs actually knew each other pretty well, before the Slots up and faded away. When they weren’t trying to kill each other, they were probably drinking, fucking each other’s women.”
I glanced at the clock. Nervously, I said, “It’s the dinner hour. We wouldn’t want to disturb him during the dinner hour.” I was pretty relaxed talking to cops, but did I really want to talk to a biker boss?
“Nah, he’ll be fine. We’re on opposite sides, Bruce and I, but we get along. You’ll like him.”
I was not so sure.
Cherry was reaching for the phone, but before he could dial I had one more question.
“There was something, in one of the Metropolitan stories I think, hinting that there was something unusual about the manner in which those three guys were shot at the Kickstart.”
“Yeah,” Cherry said, holding the phone in midair. “We didn’t release everything to the press.”
“It’s been a while,” I said. “What was it?”
Cherry shook his head. “I’d like to tell you, but I’m not sure it would be a good idea at this time.”
“Let me ask you this,” I said, thinking back to the question I felt obliged to consider, even though I didn’t believe it was possible.
“Shoot,” Cherry said.
“Do you think a woman could have killed those three club members at the Kickstart?”
Cherry considered a moment before answering. “Maybe.”
21
I said no. “But I don’t want to be any trouble. Like, I don’t want you to miss dinner with your wife or anything.”
“No wife, no kids,” Cherry said. “We’ll grab something.”
I followed him out of the building the back way. We were almost to his unmarked Ford sedan when Cherry stopped abruptly and said he had to go back inside and tend to one thing he’d forgotten. I waited in the car and he reappeared about ten minutes later. We drove across town to a run-down-looking building that could have been a small motor repair shop, but was actually a restaurant. The clue was the Good Eats neon sign hanging over the doorway. Cherry led me inside, and a cloud of cigarette smoke billowed out as he opened the door. A waitress with big hair, lots of lipstick, and, I had to admit, a rather spectacularly engineered figure smiled at Cherry like he was a regular and showed us to a table.
I waved my hand in the air as Cherry got out some cigarettes.
“This town doesn’t have antismoking bylaws?” I asked.
Cherry nodded. “Sure. We just choose not to enforce them. And Rose, who runs this joint, she pretends not to notice.” He tipped his cigarette pack toward me. “Smoke?”
“No thanks,” I said, “I’ll just breathe the air. How’s the food here?”
“Basic. But good.” The big-haired waitress came over and got close enough to the booth so Cherry could give her a friendly squeeze around the middle. He pushed his head into her breasts. “How’s my honey?” he said.
She smiled. “They ain’t a pillow, Mikey,” she said. “What’ll you have?”
Cherry ordered a cheeseburger with onion rings and I said I’d have the same. When the waitress walked away, Cherry lit up, leaned across the table almost conspiratorially, and said, “So, you’re suspended.”
For a second I thought maybe I’d pretend not to be shocked that he knew this, but I didn’t have the stuff to pull that off.
“That’s right,” I said.
“I made a call when I went back inside. To your paper, to check you out. And they know you there, no question about it. But evidently you were put on a bit of a leave recently. I don’t like it, people don’t play straight with me.”
I swallowed, took a sip from my glass of water. “I haven’t told you anything that wasn’t the truth.”
Cherry put his index finger in the air. “Ahh, but, you haven’t told me everything. That’s a little bit like lying.”
“I’m still on the Metropolitan payroll. And with any luck, if I can figure out what happened up here, and find out what happened to Trixie Snelling, I think I might be able to end this suspension.”
“If you’re straight with me, then I can be straight with you. And if you’re not,” he leaned back in the booth, took a long drag on his cigarette and blew out smoke like he was a steam engine, “I can kick your ass all the way back to the city.”
“Do you think I could get a beer?” I said.
Cherry waved his waitress over. “Couple of beers here, hon,” he said. She had the bottles on our table in under two minutes.
I told Cherry everything I could think of. Finding Martin Benson’s body, Trixie’s disappearance, my being left handcuffed in the basement. Flint’s investigation. How Trixie’s dragging me into this mess might cost me my
