“I was beginning to think you couldn’t get him here,” Howard said, the ironic smile remaining on his face.
“I almost didn’t. He threw up and wanted me to take him back to his apartment.”
“His apartment.” Howard shook his head and frowned. “I’d be surprised if even rats wanted to live there. It’s the kind of place a nobody deserves.”
“All your customers seem to like him. To them he’s somebody.”
He scowled. “They aren’t exactly great arbiters of taste. Look at the trash they buy.”
This time I smiled, indicating the over-priced merchandise cramming the store. “And the prices they pay for it.”
He laughed. “And the prices they pay for it.” His good mood vanished abruptly. From inside his suitcoat he took a small prescription bottle and handed it to me. Murky behind the tan plastic were capsules I recognized as Librium.
I hefted the bottle in my hand, then slipped it into my own pocket.
I glanced out the front window. Buddy was still in his glory, signing autographs, laughing with people who found his boozy chatter amusing. In the eight months I’d known him, I’d never seen him happier.
“I’m glad we gave him this reception,” I said. “It makes me feel better about — well, you know.”
Howard did not seem interested in sentiment. “We’re doing him a favor. Look at him. Look at where he lives. He’s a goddamned helpless wretch, is what he is.”
Another glance out the window. I couldn’t really disagree with Howard. We were doing Buddy a favor, ultimately.
“Maybe if he’d had better management, he could have had another hit,” I said, feeling sorry for Buddy again.
“He was lucky to have had the one he did,” Howard said. “He didn’t have much talent.”
I nodded. “All he had was one incredible piece of luck.”
Howard nodded. “The tape.”
“Yes,” I said. “The tape.”
During the three years Buddy had been able to get work on the rock ’n’ roll circuit, one fantastic thing had happened to him. He had talked his manager into cajoling an Allied Artists P.R. man into letting him on to the set of an Elvis movie. For some reason, Elvis had liked Buddy, perhaps saw something of himself in the raw and affecting Buddy Knoeller presence. Whatever. Elvis called Buddy up a few days later and invited him out to his Hollywood mansion. Elvis had been depressed and wanted to talk to somebody who wasn’t a sycophant. Buddy had done something terrible, put a tape recorder inside an acoustic guitar he’d brought along ostensibly to play should Elvis want to sing. Buddy had been the most devout type of Elvis fan. He wasn’t running a scam, thinking he might sell the tape later on. He wanted it for himself, for the satisfaction of knowing that whatever else might happen in his career, he had once had an intimate conversation with Elvis Presley.
When I phoned Buddy that first time eight months ago, I’d simply been inquiring about any memorabilia he owned that he might want to sell. After getting drunk with him a few times, he brought up the existence of the tape. At first I hadn’t believed him, but one night he played me a few minutes of it. It was the real thing. A melancholy Elvis talking about his life, some startling feelings and memories, a whole new perspective on the supposedly “hayseed” singer.
Of course I immediately offered Buddy a great deal of money for the tape. He surprised me by refusing. “It’s all I got to show for all the bullshit and heartache I went through, man,” he’d said. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever owned that was valuable to me.” Buddy even refused my offer to pay several thousand just to make a dub of it. Instead, he put it back in the strongbox he kept under the couch and wouldn’t even talk about it any more. It was his secret, his icon.
When I told Howard about the tape he got excited, too. For several months we talked about ways we might wedge the tape from Buddy. That’s why I’d been hanging around him, listening to his tirades, buying him booze, clothes, medical supplies, but it hadn’t done any good. Buddy liked me and had begun to trust me, but he wouldn’t part with the tape, or let me dub it, under any conditions.
That was when Howard evolved his plan.
The day he’d revealed it to me he’d seemed pleased with himself. “If it was good enough for Nick Adams, Judy Garland and Dorothy Kilgallen, it should be good enough for a nobody like Buddy Knoeller.”
“Looks like the crowd is breaking up,” Howard said now, nodding to the sidewalk outside.
“I’m still glad we gave the reception for him,” I said.
“What a sentimental bastard,” Howard laughed.
I sighed. “Well, it’s been an hour, I suppose I should take him back now.”
“He’s had his thrill,” Howard said. He pointed to the pocket where I had slid the librium. “Just get him plenty drunk and start putting them in his drinks. Nobody will ever know what happened. Just another suicide.”
“I’ll call you when I get the tape,” I said.
Howard glanced at his watch. “I promised my wife lunch today. Get him out of here, will you? I’ve got to close up.”
Outside, Buddy was joking with a fat woman in hair curlers. “Was Dick Clark as nice as he seemed?” she was asking.
“Helluva nice guy,” Buddy said, “helluva nice guy.”
It took ten minutes to get Buddy to the car. The stragglers remained on the sidewalk waving to Buddy as we pulled away, Buddy waving back.
Once we hit the freeway, Buddy reached for the glove compartment, then stopped himself. “You mind if I have a little suck on the tit?”
“Of course not, Buddy,” I said. In my pocket the librium seemed to pulsate.
“Man,” Buddy said, “I owe you. I really fucking owe you. I mean, those people loved me.”
“We all love you, Buddy,” I said, “We all love you.”
Dance Girl
One day, while researching a historical novel, I came upon a one-hundred-year-old newspaper story about a small-town girl who'd come to the sinful city of Cedar Rapids and been murdered a year later. I kept thinking about it and this tale is the result.
At the time of her murder, Madge Tucker had been living in Cedar Rapids, two blocks west of the train depot, for seven years.
After several quick interviews with other boarders in the large frame rooming house, investigating officers learned that Madge Evelyn Tucker had first come to the city from a farm near Holbrook in 1883. At the time she’d been seventeen years old. After working as a clerk in a millinery store, where her soft good looks made her a mark for young suitors in straw boaters and eager smiles, she met a man named Marley who owned four taverns in and around the area of the Star Wagon Company, and the Chicago and Northwestern Railyards. She spent the five final years of her life being a dance girl in these places. All this came to an end when someone entered her room on the night of August 14, 1890.
A Dr. Baines, who was substituting for the vacationing doctor the police ordinarily used, brought a most peculiar piece of information to the officer in charge. After examining Madge Evelyn Tucker, he had come to two conclusions — one being that she’d been stabbed twice in the chest and two being that she had died a virgin.
One did not expect to hear about a dance girl dying a virgin.
Three months later, just as autumn was turning treetops red and gold and brown, a tall, slender young man in a dark Edwardian suit and a homburg stepped from the early morning Rock Island train and surveyed the platform about him. He was surrounded by people embracing each other — sons and mothers, mothers and fathers, daughters and friends. A shadow of sorrow passed over his dark eyes as he watched this happy tableau. Then, with a large-knuckled hand, he lifted his carpetbag and began walking toward the prosperous downtown area, the skyline dominated by a six-story structure that housed the Cedar Rapids Savings Bank.