She knew the first and last names of the two other men on her list. Graham Weider was a Chicagoan she'd met in New York; he'd taken her to lunch and to bed, then jumped up and hurried her out of there, claiming an urgent appointment and arranging to meet her later. But he'd never turned up, and the desk at his hotel told her he'd checked out.
So he was lucky, and Alvin Kirkaby was lucky in another way. He was an infantry corporal on leave before they shipped him off to Iraq, and if she'd realized that she wouldn't have picked him up in the first place, and she wasn't sure what kept her from doing to him as she did to the other men who entered her life. Pity? Patriotism? Both seemed unlikely, and when she thought about it later she decided it was simply because he was a soldier. That gave them something in common, because weren't they both military types? Wasn't she her father's little soldier?
Maybe he'd been killed over there. She supposed she could find out. And then she could decide what she wanted to do about it.
Graham Weider, though, couldn't claim combatant status, unless you considered him a corporate warrior. And while his name might not be unique, neither was it by any means common. And it was almost certainly his real name too, because they'd known it at the front desk. Graham Weider, from Chicago. It would be easy enough to find him, when she got around to it.
Of them all, Sid would be the real challenge. She sat there going over what little she knew about him and how she might go about playing detective. Then she treated herself to another half glass of Brown Palace water and flavored it with a miniature of Johnny Walker from the minibar. She sat down with the drink and shook her head, amused by her own behavior. She was dawdling, postponing her shower, as if she couldn't bear to wash away the traces of Doug's lovemaking.
But she was tired, and she certainly didn't want to wake up the next morning with his smell still on her. She undressed and stood for a long time in the shower, and when she got out of it she stood for a moment alongside the tub and watched the water go down the drain.
Four, she thought. Why, before you knew it, she'd be a virgin all over again.
Who Stole My Monkey? by David Corbett and Luis Alberto Urrea
FROM Lone Star Noir
Port Arthur
Can you really make it stink?
– Beau Jocque and the Zydeco Ht-Rolkrs
LOOKING BACK LATER, Chester could not convince himself he'd heard the sound at all, not at first, for what memory handed up to him was more sensation than sound, the tight sawtooth grind of a key in a lock, opening the door to hell.
They were midway through a cover of "Big Legs, Tight Skirt," Chester caressing the custom Gabbanelli Cajun King he used for the night's first sets. Saturday night at the old Diamond 21, some of the dancers in western getup, down to the Stetsons and hoop skirts, the rest in the usual Gulf Coast duds-muscle shirts, ass-crack jeans, shifts so cellophane-tight a blind man would weep-the cowboy contingent arrayed in three rows for the line dance, the others rocking to their own inner need, women holding the hair off their necks, men combing back damp locks, the band double-clutching but bluesy too, John Lee Hooker meets Rockin' Dopsie with a tip of the hat to Professor Longhair. Yeah- fess, chile. Midnight in East Texas, the music savage and hip, the band hitting it good, the room steamy, the dance crowd punchy from the beat but craving more, always more.
But the sound. It came from outside, no denying it now, that distinctive growl, like the sulfurous thunder-chuckle of the devil himself-a rear-mounted diesel, rebuilt Red Diamond in-line six. Chester even caught a scent of the oil-black exhaust and the muffled scattershot of spewed gravel as the bus tore out of the parking lot.
No, he thought, blinking like a man emerging from a silly dream. Two-toned copper and black, a perfect match not just for the gear trailer but his ostrich-skin boots-100 percent personal style, that bus. Last gasp of the days when oil money ran flush, when Chester had a nice little stilt home in Cameron Parish (before the hurricane took it to Belize, that is), when the clubs were paying sweet money and Beau Jocque was still alive and touring the country and a good two-step chanky-chank band could make beaucoup cash dollars. That bus was just about it for the Chester Richard empire, the final signature on a bleak dotted line.
But that wasn't what broke his heart.
Lorena, he thought.
His fingers stopped their flight across the mother-of-pearl buttons as a drop of sweat, fat as a bumblebee, splashed onto the accordion's Honduras rosewood. He wore a tight leather apron-vest, cut and sized in Lafayette so the bellows didn't pinch his nipples. Underneath, his chest was a swamp.
The rest of the band, oblivious, pushed on, the dancers unfazed too, a whirlwind thrall of spins and dips and shuffles. He glanced into the mold-speckled mirror above the stage as though the smile of some last hope might reveal itself. Fog hazed his reflection.
Turning his back to the dance floor, he waved the band to a stop. Geno, his frottoir man, lost the rhythm with his spoons. Skillet, the drummer, faltered when the rubboard did. The tune stumbled and fell apart.
"You didn't hear that?" They stared at him gape-eyed. "Someone just stole the motherfucking Flyer."
Two hours later he sat in a nearby diner, waiting for Geno and Skillet to return with a car, the night pitch-black beyond the screens. One fan hummed in the doorway to keep out the wasps and skeeters, another sat propped on the ancient counter to whip the soupy heat around, the air thick with the smell of sweet crude off the ship channel. The cook was in back puzzling out the walk-in's condenser. A plain bare bulb swam overhead in the breeze, casting a dizzy light.
Chester, craving a pinch, leaned back in his chair, shirt clinging to his skin as he pretended to listen. The woman did go on. If he only had some Red Man. Hell, any chaw at all-he'd take gas station rubbish right now if it had some mint in it. All the other club patrons had trudged on home, demanding their cover charge back, getting half, everybody ripped off one way or the other. But this woman here, she'd elected to stay.
He remembered her from the first set, waltzing with the others in the grand counterclockwise circle, her partner a doodlebugger wearing throwback pomade. Small wonder they'd parted. Coppery freckles dusted her cleavage, which from time to time she mopped with a white paper napkin. Her hair was the color of bayou amber and she wore it swirled messily atop her head, strands curling down like so many afterthoughts, a pair of chopsticks holding it so. Another time and place, he could imagine himself saying, I bet you taste just like rice pudding, sha.
Chester had suffered three marriages, survived as many divorces, more time spent with lawyers, it seemed, than in love. He had a wandering eye and a ravenous crotch and a Category 5 temper, his love life a tale of wreckage-one judge had nicknamed him Hurricane, given his knack for sheer, mean, indifferent destruction. No woman could endure him for long, but few could resist him neither. Like fortunetellers staring into a glowing ball, they could sense within him a tragic, beautiful, lonesome soul. Hell, he was the crown prince of lonely; open his heart you'd find a howling wasteland, make West Texas look like Biloxi. And the ladies could not resist that- I'll soothe you, sugar Save you. But no bride, no groupie, no rice-pudding blonde with chopstick hair had ever honored his longing, or yielded to his touch, like Lorena.
"Mr. Richard," she whispered, pronouncing it richered, like something that happened when money landed in your lap, "I have been a hopeless fan ever since that night at Slim's Y-Ki-Ki Lounge in Opelousas, that first night I heard you, heard you and your band." Her hand rushed across the table like a hawk toward his. "I've been on my share of tailrides and I've been not just to the Y-Ki-Ki but Harry's Club over in Beaux Bridge and Richards Club in Lawtell, the Labor Day festival in Plaisance…"