“Right,” I said, “more like South Street. You have any idea where he drinks?”
He gave me the name and a description of the place.
“You’re kidding,” I said. “I didn’t know they had a place like that outside of Memphis. You ever go down there, have a drink with him?”
He said no, he said they couldn’t drag his fat Italian ass into a place like that with a team of horses.
“I don’t doubt it,” I said.
He growled something at me.
“You know, Detective, I’ve been thinking about you. We ought to have dinner sometime. Someplace nice. Candles and violin music. Someplace romantic that makes up a nice pasta fazool. My treat.”
He was quiet for a long moment and then let out an expletive I have tactfully deleted.
“And maybe we can talk about a new client I’ve just been hired to represent. François Dubé. Remember him?”
I held the handset away from my ear to save my eardrum the wear and tear as he told me, in his own way, that yes, he did remember François Dubé and how delighted he was that I had decided to take up his cause. That was one of my favorite things about my job as a defense attorney, the way I was able to create pleasant and meaningful relationships with the noble members of the city’s police department. But even as I suffered the detective’s abuse, I still felt the shivery thrill of discovery, the same thrill you get when you slide in the final pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It was coming clear for me, the story of Seamus Dent, not all of it, I would learn more in the course of my investigation, but now maybe just enough was coming clear to get François Dubé that new trial he so desperately sought.
It was late already by the time I figured it out. Beth was gone, my secretary, Ellie, was gone, it was just me in the office, the sole representative of the law firm of Derringer and Carl, but I was enough. I sat in Ellie’s chair, took out a blue-backed document, rolled it into the typewriter my secretary used to fill the blanks in preprinted documents, hunted and pecked, whited out the mistakes, hunted and pecked some more.
And then I put on my jacket, stuffed the document into my jacket pocket, and drove out to the Great Northeast to have myself a drink in the shadow of the King.
16
King’s Dominion was not the kind of joint people stumbled into by mistake. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d never find it, but then again you wouldn’t want to.
I parked in the lot of a small shopping center just off Roosevelt Boulevard. There was a Radio Shack, a T.J. Maxx, a dry cleaner, a vacant storefront, a CVS, a dollar store. Scintillating, no? The number I was looking for was taped onto a glass door next to the dollar store. I pushed open the door and was immediately hit by a deep throb of bass that resonated in my bad tooth. As I climbed the stairwell, I passed a series of signs tacked to the wall.
NO SNEAKERS
CHECK ALL GUNS
PEANUT BUTTER AND NANNER SAMMICH – 75¢
Not my kind of place, exactly. I just hoped they served Sea Breezes.
Beside the closed door at the top of the stairs, an old man sat on a stool, clipboard in hand. He was tall and stooped, his shoes were white patent leather, and it looked like a gray poodle was perched on his head. When I tried to walk past him, he shot out a bony arm and stopped me cold.
“What’s your song?” he said.
“I’m just here to see a Detective Gleason,” I said. “Has he shown up tonight?”
“Do I look like a matchmaker?” he said.
“Hello, Dolly,” I said.
“The name’s Skip.”
“Kept that from summer camp, did you? I like your shoes.”
“Dancing shoes. I know a guy what knows a guy what gets them direct from Hong Kong.”
“Maybe he can get me a pair.”
“You want a pair?”
“Nah. So is Gleason in?”
“Yeah, he’s in.”
I gave the old man a wink, and started again for the door, and again the bony arm barred my way. I looked at it for a moment and then at the old man.
“What, is there a cover?”
“No cover,” he said. “But it’s karaoke night.”
“Just my luck. I should have come tomorrow.”
“It wouldn’t do no good,” said the old man. “Here, every night is karaoke night. What’s your song?”
“I don’t sing.”
“Sure you do, if you want in. Everyone sings, at least once. Makes you part of the show, keeps it festive.” He cocked his head, the poodle shifted, his eyes brightened crazily. “It’s karaoke night.”
“I know ‘Feelings.’ Should I sing ‘Feelings’?”
He looked at me, looked at his clipboard, paged through the pages, looked back at me. “We don’t got it.”
“How about ‘Kumbaya’?”
He looked back at his clipboard. “We got ‘Kismet,’ we got ‘Kiss Me Quick,’ we got ‘Ku-u-i-po,’ which is pretty close, but no ‘Kumbaya.’ ”
“ ‘Satisfaction’?”
“None.”
“You don’t got much, do you?”
“Only everything he ever sung.”
“Ah,” I said. “Now I get it. Why don’t you pick something for me.”
“How’s your pipes?”
“Not so good.”
“Then stay with something low, something easy. I got one here that usually works for first-timers. There’s a slow part you can talk your way through.”
“Done.”
“What’s your name?”
“Franz.”
“Funny,” he said as he pulled a white slip from his clipboard, filled it out, handed it to me, “you don’t look like a Franz. That will be ten bucks.”
“Ten bucks a song?”
“Just for the first song. After that’s it’s free.”
As I pulled out my wallet, I said, “Good thing you boys don’t charge a cover.”
I stepped through the door and into a neon-lit room, ringed with everything Elvis. Velvet paintings glowing with black light, guitar clocks, gold records, ceramic busts, framed photographs from each Elvis era: Elvis impossibly young, Elvis impossibly handsome, Elvis impossibly svelte in black leather, Elvis impossibly bloated in a white jumpsuit. There were tables, about half full, in the center, bars around the edges, booths in the back. Waitresses dressed like schoolgirls with high hair carried drinks on circular trays. On a narrow stage in the front, a redhead in a ruffled shirt, looking a little like Ann-Margret, belted out the first verse of “Viva Las Vegas” as the words rolled up a television screen and the crowd hooted and clapped along.
A man in dark glasses greeted me with a bright smile. “Welcome,” he said in a deep voice. “Slip?”
I handed it over. He gave it a look.
“Good choice, Franz,” he said. “You want some company tonight?” He thumbed toward a trio of women at the bar with bouffant hair and low blouses. They were nice-looking women once, but once was enough.
“No thanks,” I said. “I already had my fiber today.”
I scanned the scene, found whom I was looking for in a booth in the back. He was sitting alone, hunched over a drink, something dark and almost gone in his glass. He wasn’t viva-ing to Ann-Margret. I wondered if my visit that afternoon hadn’t ruined his day. Knowing what I knew now, I didn’t doubt it.
Gleason glanced up when I sat down across from him, didn’t seem one bit surprised to see me. “How’d you find this place?” he said.
“Torricelli.”
He nodded, he understood. Torricelli hadn’t just told me about the bar, he had told me about the shooting, too. “I should hang up a sign,” he said. “Do not disturb.”
“You know that piece of gum you step on and can’t get off your shoe?” I said. “It ends up on your hand, your other hand, your nose. That piece of gum? That’s me.”
“I was thinking of something else that sometimes gets on my shoe. What do you want?”
“I want to know if you were the one to teach Seamus Dent karate.”
His eyes widened a bit, as if he were about to say something, but just then one of the waitresses with the schoolgirl skirt and high hair came to our table. Her eyes were rimmed dark, her lips were red as paint.