O’B pulled the door shut behind him and went in search of Hitler and Betty Boop. He figured they had a good clear twenty minutes to get away with Blow Me Baby’s instruments and amps. He opened the stage door enough to see the biker and his mama waiting in the parking lot outside. He waved them in.
When they came through the door, he said, “Let’s start grabbing the instruments” — just as the noisy fight by Hitler’s fellow bikers broke out at the far end of the bar.
“All of them?” asked Betty Boop.
“Yeah, everything — including the amps.”
“Whadda we do with ’em?” demanded Hitler.
“Into the longbed Dakota next to their van.”
A few curious faces watched from their tables lining the cavernous walls as they started carting off the instruments, but nobody challenged them. The fight by the front door had developed into a mini-riot that was spreading out across the wide-open middle of the room. But the Baggie of coke would keep Blow Me Baby in their dressing room.
The instruments were in great condition, except for the four sets of Marshall Stack amplifiers. One set could do for a four-piece band, but Death, Taxes, Love and Hate had the egos — if not the talent — to insist on each having his own set. Secondhand, at least, retailing for a grand each instead of two.
O’B and Hitler heaved them into the truck as Betty Boop carefully arranged them in place. The yellow sulfur lights of the parking lot raised the painted-over names of previous-owner bands — all of them unknown — on the sides of the speakers. Death’s set a record: eight previous bands had failed to drum up the hysteria for fame and the big bucks.
Looked like heavy metal had a short shelf life in Eureka.
When they were finished, he dealt Hitler and Betty Boop each a hundred-dollar bill, then added a third.
“Great work, guys.”
Betty Boop gave him a little-girl kiss on the cheek as she tucked the bill in her monumental cleavage and O’B gunned the truck away into the night.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Charlie Bagnis, owner or at least manager of Mood Indigo, was a slight man who looked like a theater usher left over from a 1930s Saturday kiddy matinee. The sort who whacked little boys on the shins with a big flashlight if they had their feet up on the back of the seat in front of them.
He wore a black narrow-lapel suit and gleaming patent-leather shoes like those you get when you rent a tux for a wedding. He also had a poor complexion, narrow-set snapping black eyes flanking a frankly generous nose, and impossibly black, impossibly shiny hair parted in the middle and slicked down on either side of his head. The hair was as truly patent leather as the shoes.
He came into Mood Indigo through the alley door and squeaked at Bart, “They’re waiting for you in the alley.” His nasty voice matched his nasty eyes.
“So was somebody last night.”
“These guys are gonna make you some money.”
Sleepy Ray Sykes grabbed a handful of blues chords off the piano to toss them out into the room. Maybelle started to sing:
Her own whole big suddenly wicked body was moving to the beat of Sleepy Ray’s piano; her head was back and her voice flowed over everybody there to transform the scuzzy Tenderloin bar into a nostalgic ’30s Harlem hot spot made golden by time.
“Who the fuck’re they?”
“Couple of your customers.”
“What the fuck’re they doing?”
“Filling up this joint like it hasn’t been filled in years. It’s called music, Charlie-baby.”
The alley door shut behind Bart. While Bagnis stared open-mouthed at the duo up on his unused stage, Larry Ballard came in the front door, stopped dead at sight of Maybelle in her red dress bringing down the house:
The gray-haired man Bart had served had his instrument case up on the table now and was taking out a battered but lovingly shined trumpet. People were calling to Bagnis to send up drinks. Maybelle was flushed with pleasure at the crowd and its reaction. Larry caught her eye as he threaded his way through the throng. She came forward to the edge of the stage.
“Larry, honey, whut you doing here?”
Ballard chuckled. “Better yet, what’re you doing here?”
“Havin’ me a little fun with my friend Sleepy Ray. Ray, this here’s Larry Ballard, a real good friend of mine.”
Sleepy Ray raised his right hand from the keyboard in greeting as his left walked the dog. “Peace, brother.”
Larry gestured Maybelle to lean down. “Maybelle, has there been a black bartender in here tonight with a ring through—”
“You mean Bart,” she said complacently. “I rec’nized him.” Catching Larry’s urgency, she moved her eyes toward the bar’s alley door without moving her head. “White dude behind the bar showed up, Bart took off his apron and went out the back door just as you was comin’ in the front.”
“Damn! I’ve got to warn him the cops might be back again. If you see him before I do—”
“I’ll shoo him on outta here,” she said.
Old Maybelle would make a hell of a detective herself — cool under pressure. He went past the stage to the rear hallway where the rest room and door to the alley were. Sleepy Ray was starting Harlem Hannah’s “Nose” and Maybelle was singing again.
Larry stood scowling at the empty alley for a moment, then sighed and turned back inside. Lost his girl and his best friend all in one night.
The two men in the front seat of the long black Chrysler sedan were both white. Heslip was in the back. The driver, a nondescript chain-smoker with glasses and hunched shoulders that made him look like a vulture, drove aimlessly through the Tenderloin. The man beside him was about ten years younger, narrow-chested, had a tight, judging face like a Mormon’s.
“We hear you had a little trouble closing up the bar last night,” said the Vulture from behind the wheel, holding Bart’s eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Those were your guys?” Bart asked.
“Call it a little test — they weren’t really trying.”
“Neither was I or they’d all three of ’em still be in the alley. And you gents owe me for the new leather jacket they ruined — the guy with the knife meant business.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said the Mormon.
“Don’t never kid about money.”
The driver started a turn uphill into Leavenworth. An aged black man with a little white mustache, a mountain hat, a blue jacket, and a cane was very slowly crossing the intersection against the light, head up, eyes straight ahead, totally inside himself with the pain of walking on knees without cartilage.
“Get outta the way, you fuckin’ coon!”
The Vulture blared his horn, snapped the smoldering butt of his cigarette out the window against the old man’s shoulder. He pushed in the lighter to fire up his next cigarette, breathing hard as if he’d been running.