“We’d have to return in separate cars.”
“So?” she said. “I’ll go first, you’ll keep an eye on my rear bumper.”
“Now you’re talking.”
She hung up laughing.
Virgo Virgo was a slab of deep purple stucco the width of a double garage. A long time ago someone had tried to dress up the façade with gold stars and crescents. Most had faded to flaking beige.
Happy Hour!!! banner above the door.
Finally, I’d guessed right about something.
The club was a single room with rough pine walls turned nearly black by grime and miserly light. A sprayed ceiling hovered low. A six-stool bar ran along the western wall.
Tucked into a rear corner, a crudely built wooden stage held a battered upright piano, a drum kit, and a mike stand. The bass drum was painted with L.M. and the howling wolf logo I’d seen on Lonesome Moan’s website.
House band once a week?
Maybe the fuzzy country rock crackling from overhead speakers was the default soundtrack six days a week.
I continued toward the bar. Every stool was taken, four men and two women hunched over their glasses. No obvious conversation but when I got closer I picked up the low, slow mumbling that ensues when everyone’s blood alcohol is far past the legal limit.
The bartender was middle-aged and bald. A skinny face and fat features gave him the look of a tired vulture. His skin managed to be indoor-pallid but UV-wrinkled. His black T-shirt read Altamont Didn’t End It.
He saw me. “If you don’t mind standing.”
The barfly closest to me turned around. Big man, basset-faced, pushing seventy. “Belly up, thirsty traveler, we’ll give you space.” Rising painfully, he shifted his stool just enough to allow me access to the bar. The top was sprayed with a solid inch of resin, yellowed, splotched, nicked, and dull.
I said, “Thanks, next one’s on me.”
Basset pumped air with a shaky fist. He had on a shiny dark suit, a frayed white shirt, and a limp tie that looped like a scarf over his wilting lapel. A once-square jaw had melted around the edges. He looked like a CEO who’d been drummed for moral turpitude years ago, hadn’t changed clothes since the disgrace.
The drinker next to him, a woman with black frizzy hair and an off-center, verge-of-collapse nose, batted her lashes at me. “You treatin’ me, too, Good-Lookin’?”
I said, “Fill-ups for everyone.”
Scattered applause.
Basset said, “Fine man, indeed!”
The bartender looked at me. “Okay, Rockefeller, what’ll it be?”
“Got Sam Adams?”
“Got Heineken.” He filled a glass, clopped it down, moved up the bar to take orders.
Chairman Basset said, “You never been here. I know that.” Nodding in agreement with himself, as if he’d stated a profundity. “Least not Monday.”
I said, “Monday’s a special day?”
“Hell, yeah, they’re open.” He cackled, eyed the stage. “Despite.”
The bartender returned, took his glass, shot something from a hose into it. Suds foamed over the rim and landed on the bartop. Basset used his pinkie to pick up precious moisture then licked the digit clean.
I took a sip. The beer was Heineken like I was an Olympic skater. Not quite skunky but getting there.
The bartender foamed up several other mugs. Local etiquette prescribed Gulp, Don’t Sip. Maybe that helped the house brew go down easier. I glanced back at the bandstand, asked Basset who the entertainment was.
“No one tonight.” He swayed toward me, letting off a yeasty reek and whispering, “Count your blessings, traveler.”
“You’ve heard ’em, huh?”
He blotted me out with a wet cough. Glanced furtively up the bar as the bald guy approached, wiping his hands with a none-too-clean towel. “Not thirsty, Daddy Warbucks?”
I said, “Working on it.”
Basset said, “Hey, Chuck-o, you might got you a fan, here. He wants you guys to play.”
Bald’s eyebrows climbed. “You heard of us?”
Marvin “Chuck-o” Blatt: drums
I said, “Actually, a friend sent me here.”
“Who’s that?”
“Ree Sykes.”
He looked at me with new eyes. Sharper, curious. “How do you know Ree?”
Even if I’d wanted to lie, the trudge to the Valley plus stale alcohol fumes had sapped my creativity. “She had a court case I was involved in.”
Chuck-o’s posture stiffened. “You’re a lawyer?”
“Psychologist.”
“Psychologist,” he echoed, as if trying out a new word. “You’re the one testified she was a great mom?”
No sense quibbling. I smiled.
He said, “Well good for you, man. Ree talks about you like you’re God.”
Basset said, “Doncha know all doctors are God? That’s why their shit don’t stink and they get to suck all the Medi-Cal money outta the federal teat—”
“Lloyd,” said Chuck-o, “no politics today, okay?”
The woman with the precarious nose said, “Tomorrow we’re doing politics?”
“We’re never doing politics, Maggie.”
“Yeah, makes sense,” she said, showing the few brown teeth she had left. “Double boo on politics!”
Chuck-o turned back to me, flashing the weary smile of an exhausted babysitter. His teeth were perfect, white as milk. “Well, Dr. Psychologist, nice to meet you but sorry, we’re not playing till Monday. And if you were hoping to see Ree, sorry again, she doesn’t come in regularly. Having family responsibilities and all that.”
Maggie said, “That the one with that cute little baby, puts the baby seat top of the piano when she sings?”
Chuck-o frowned at her.
I forced down some beer. “You’re in the band?”
“Drums,” he said. “But finally I figured out getting the chicks didn’t provide long-term security so I became a businessman.” Waving his hand around the room.
“Place is yours?”
“This and two others, Sun Valley and Saugus. Got my sons managing.”
“Congratulations.”
“Making coin is cool, but I still live for the music.”
“So Monday.”
“ ’Less something comes up.”
“Ree sings.”
“Sometimes we let her do background. Deep background.” He grinned. “What the hell, she’s a good chick, always been righteous, I’m talking back to high school.”
“Nice for her to have that type of support,” I said.
“You bet,” said Chuck-o Blatt. “When things were sucking and we were all thinking of getting jobs she encouraged us to keep keepin’ on, telling us we had talent. And you know, something always worked out — but I don’t need to tell you that, you were her witness, you know the kind of person she is.”
When I didn’t answer, he said, “You hear me?”
I nodded.
“You didn’t say nothing.”
“She’s a nice person.”
“Not just nice, good,” he said. Steel in his voice. His neck tightened. “You’d know that if you really are the psychologist and not spying for her fucking sister.”
I held his gaze, showed him my civilian card. Doctoral degree and a professorial title that looked more impressive than it was.
He said, “Delaware. Yeah, that’s you.” More lactic teeth. “Hey, man, sorry for being paranoid but Ree figured the bitch was going to keep harassing her.”
“Even though the case resolved?”
“You know the system, right? Got the cash, make the trash. Anyone’s a rich bitch with a mean streak it’s Connie.”
He tried to return the card. Lloyd intercepted it, held it between shaky fingers. “Delaware. That was a Union state, not Confederate. But they still had slaves.”