"Well, there were parties everywhere we went," Fames said. "Did he mean the one where the girl got drunkg.”
"Black girl one of the professors invited," Brown said.
"Yeah, that's the one. What about it?”
“Seemed to bother Mr.Hollister," Brown said "Bothered all of us. The band was color-blind. We didn't dig that kind of shit.”
"How much did it bother Katie ?”
"I didn't discuss it with her.”
“What we're trying to find out," Carella said, "is why she quit the band and went back into the order.
Did anything happen that might have occasioned ... ?”
"Nothing I can think of," Fames said. "Hold it, let me see that," he said, and motioned for a short Hispanic man to put down the carton of melons he was carrying into the restaurant. Fames knelt beside the carton, opened it, and looked into it. "These were supposed to be honeydews," he said to the driver.
"That's what they are," the driver said.
"No, they're cantaloupes," Fames said. It says so right on the carton. Cantaloupes. And that's what they are." He picked up one of the melons. "This is a cantaloupe," he said. "Honeydews are green.”
"You don't want it, I'll give you credit and put it back on the truck,”
the driver said.
"Haven't you got any honeydews on the truck?”
“These are all the melons I've got. There's no problem. You don't want them, they go back on the truck.”
"Yeah, but Why should I accept cantaloupes when I ordered honeydews?”
"You don't have to accept them. I'll put 'em right back on the truck.”
Just put 'em back on the damn truck, Brown thought.
And remembered that it was Davey Fames who'd got all agitated when the booking agent thought the name of the band was The Five Chords instead of The Five Chord.
The thing went on for another five minutes, Fames complaining that this was the third time in a month he'd ordered one thing and another thing was shipped, the driver explaining that all he did was make deliveries, he was just the messenger here, so don't chop off his head, okay? Finally, Fames accepted the cantaloupes and signed for the entire order, and the truck driver moved out into the city.
It was very still again.
"Come on inside," Fames said, "have a glass of beer.”
The detectives opted for iced tea instead. They still oiorit 1 6w tlaat tour of the squad were at this moment in the Chief of Detectives' office, trying to justify their earlier actions, but they were still on duty, and you never knew who was going to make a phone call. saying two cops were sipping beer at one, one-thirty in the afternoon. The restaurant inside was furnished like a true steak joint, all mahogany and brass and green leather booths and hanging pewter tankards. If the food tasted as good as the place looked, Davey's was indeed a find, albeit far from the beaten track. Carella was tempted to ask for a menu he could take home.
"The band had no leader, right?" Carella asked.
"Right. We made all our decisions by vote. We were very close, you know. It's a shame what happened.”
“What do you mean?”
"Well, Katie quitting, first of all. And then the band breaking up, and Alan dying last month. And, of course, Sal.”
"What about SalT' "Well ... I really shouldn't tell you this, I guess...”
Carella nodded. Not in agreement, but in encouragement.
"But at the funeral last month, he was doing cocaine.”
"Crack cocaine?" Brown said.
"No, he was snorting the white stuff.”
"You saw this?”
"Oh yes. I shouldn't have been surprised. Even back then, he was smoking pot.”
"Back then?”
"On tour. Four years ago.”
"That's normal, though, isn't it'!" Uafella a:en. "Musicians doing a little pot?”
"This wasn't a little pot. It was day and night. I just never thought it would escalate.”
"Katie Cochran do any dope when she was singing with you?" Brown asked "No, sir. She came from a good family in Philadelphia. Her father taught political science at Temple. Her mother was a psychiatrist.
From what she told us, they were very well off. I never saw her go near anything.”
"How about you?”
"Pot, sure. But that's all.”
"Who'd she go to?" Carella asked. "When she decided to quit the band.”
"I think she told all of us. If I remember correctly, we were discussing our plans for the fall when she said she was quitting?”
"Did she give you any reason?”
"She just said she didn't think this was the life for her.”
"Did she say she was going back to the order?”
"We didn't know there was an order to go back to. She never once mentioned she'd been a nun.”
"So she just said this wasn't the life for her.”
“Maybe not in those words. But that was the essence.”
“Did she say what she didn't like about the life?”
“No. Up till then, I thought she was pretty happy.”
"When was this, Mr. Fames? That she told you?”
“Right after Labor Day. We'd ended the tour, we were back here in the city. The last of the tour was really terrific, especially down in the Everglades. We played a little town called Boyle's Landing, just south of Chokoloskee. Man named Charlie Custer ran a roadhouse there. Called it The Last Stand because of his name and also because it was the last watering hole before you jumped off into the glades. He did a lot of business. We played to packed houses every night we were there. Which wasn't easy on the edge of the wilderness ...”
Boyle's Landing is on the northernmost rim of the national park. The greater part of the town is situated on the Gulf of Mexico. The rest sprawls haphazardly toward an inland marsh teeming with wildlife, a precursor of the wilder glades themselves. Custer has built his roadhouse with its back to the swamp, its entrance on Route 29, a secondary road running from Ochopee through Everglades City and Chokoloskee, dead-ending at Boyle's Landing. On any given night, the sound of the band competes with noises from the "swamp critters", as Charlie Custer calls them, the birds, frogs, and insects that make their home in the river and the marsh. There are great white herons here and short-tailed hawks and flamingos. And alligators. The alligators make no sound.
But you know they are in the water behind the roadhouse. If you stand on the waterside dock and run a flashlight over the bank, you can see their yellow eyes in the dark. Charlie tells Sal that they've already taken two of his dogs, one of them a German shepherd the size of a panther. Sal shivers when he hears this, and the notion that he's managed to frighten him tickles Charlie no end. "There's panthers here, too," he tells him, chuckling. "You better watch your ass, Piano Boy.”
They are 19ooKec to pray Stand, arriving on a Friday morning, and playing through the weekend and most of the next week, departing on the following Friday for a Labor Day weekend stand in Calusa, some hundred and thirty miles to the north. The Calusa gig will be the end of the tour. Calusa is supposed to be the Athens of southwest Florida, and Hymie Rogers has booked them into a club called Hopwood's, one of the younger places in town, on Whisper Key.
Here in Boyle's Landing, they play to capacity crowds on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, and then to almost full houses on Monday and Tuesday. Charlie is absolutely delighted with the band's spectacular success. He has hired an unknown rock group and they are pulling in teenagers not only from neighboring towns like Copeland and Jerome, directly to the north, and Monroe Station and Paolita, to the east, but also more distant places like Naples, to the northwest, on the Gulf of Mexico.
On Wednesday morning, in newspapers as far north as Fort Myers, the first of Charlie's ads appears. They announce that tonight and tomorrow night will mark the. final appearances of The Five Chord in "the Wildlands of Southern Florida," as he calls them. That night, to accommodate overflow crowds, he has to set up tables on the deck overlooking the river where the alligators silently watch. On Thursday night, following a repeat of the ad, there are cars backed up all along Routes 41 and 29. He is compelled to do three shows that night, one at eight, another at ten, and the last at midnight. He has never done better business in his life. The irony, of course ... Well, i guess the others told you about it," Fames said.