Whenever I saw Noreen and Kenny together, I wondered how Kenny could have given up his former longtime girlfriend Cindy Baines, a sweet, smart, pretty nurse who loved Kenny in a way that was moving to see. But Cindy hadn’t wanted the abortion he browbeat her into having. And after that things weren’t right. She spent several long evenings at my house telling me how much she loved him but also how much she felt sad about the abortion. She still wanted to marry Kenny, but she wanted him to understand how the abortion had devastated her. Ultimately everything came to a sad end and Cindy moved to Omaha.
As for Kenny...
As she strummed her guitar in preparation for the song she’d written for me, she said, “Did Kenny tell you I’m in regression therapy now?”
“No, he didn’t mention that. I guess I’m not sure what that is.”
“You know, like they take you back to past lives.”
“This shit is so cool,” Kenny said. “I’m gonna try it for myself.”
“I was an Egyptian princess.”
“Isn’t that cool?” Kenny said, chugging beer. “She’s an Egyptian princess.”
This was bringing back all those insane nights in my degenerate period. Everybody was so drunk or so stoned on bad marijuana that everything that was said made a kind of sense. Did he just say he kept a dolphin under his bed? Did she just say that she was a telepath? Did he just say that he’d once fought Rocky Marciano and beat the crap out of him? Sure, why not, everybody was so stupid on booze and grass, anything that was said was perfectly fine. Down the rabbit hole.
So why not an Egyptian princess?
Every time I was around Noreen I realized, despite feeling like an outsider, how middle-class I really was.
“So go on, Noreen. Play him the song you wrote about him.”
I prepared my face to contort itself into an expression of seeming pleasure that would extend from the first to the last note she played. What choice did I have? I had to like it, didn’t I?
“You know the song ‘John Henry,’ Sam?” Noreen said.
“‘John Henry was a steel-drivin’ man’? Sure.”
“Well, that’s what this is pretty much except it’s ‘Sam McCain was a law-abidin’ man till they pushed him too far.’”
That was another thing about Noreen’s songs. They were never Noreen’s songs. She purloined the music from famous songs and just rewrote the lyrics, most of which were so radical politically they made me feel positively GOP.
“The deal is, see, in this song,” Kenny, ever helpful, said, “you bring this innocent man to court but the corrupt jury that’s bought off by the robber barons, they find this guy guilty. And so you track every one of the jurors down and shoot ’em.”
“Great,” I said. “A mass murderer.”
“See, you screwed it up again, Kenny,” Noreen said. “The last one he doesn’t shoot, he stabs.”
“Oh, sorry, babe.” To me: “The last one you stab.”
“Got it. The last one I stab.”
I don’t know about you folks but I believe in miracles. Big miracles and sort of smaller, everyday miracles alike. I mention this because right then the phone rang.
“Don’t answer that,” Kenny said.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because she’s psyched to sing you your song.”
The phone continuing to ring.
“He’s right, Sam. I’m ready now.” Starting to strum again. Ready. Psyched.
I picked up the phone.
“Am I calling too late?” Jane Sykes said.
“No. Not at all.”
Kenny was pantomiming “hang up” with his hand slamming down an invisible phone. Noreen was rolling her eyes at me and looking generally disgusted with humankind, especially those who served on juries.
“Have you heard what happened tonight?”
And I saw how I could get rid of them.
“Hold on a minute. I didn’t realize this was going to be official business,” I said to Jane and set the phone down. I stood up and said, “I’m sorry but you’ll have to leave. This is something I have to deal with alone.”
“Can’t you take the phone into the crapper?” Noreen said. “We couldn’t hear it then.”
“Much as I enjoy sitting in the crapper, the phone cord doesn’t reach that far, Noreen.”
I grabbed the phone and said to Jane, “Just one more minute.” I put the receiver down and said, “C’mon now, you guys, you gotta leave.”
“Well, this is really bullshit,” Noreen said.
“She was really psyched.”
“I write a whole goddamn song for him and he kicks me out,” Noreen said to herself.
But Kenny, finally understanding how pissed I was, grabbed her hand and started dragging her toward the back door.
“I write a song just for him and—”
I missed the rest because the door had slammed on her. Kenny was still on the inside of the door: “This is pretty rude, man.”
“Is it as rude as waking somebody up on a work night to play some lousy song?”
“Lousy? You haven’t even heard it yet.”
Kenny and I have had a love-hate relationship since grade school. We were definitely in hate mode now.
“’Night, Kenny,” I said, pushing the door open and giving him a little shove into the night.
The last thing I heard from them was Noreen strumming and singing “Sam McCain was a law-abidin’ man till they pushed him too far.” I was glad I couldn’t hear anything more.
Back on the phone, Jane said, “I’m sorry if I interrupted anything.”
“Just a murder.”
“What?”
“A double murder, actually. Two people who woke me up and decided to have a party. So what’s going on?”
“Rachael Todd — the one we thought was killed because she was going to tell you something about Leeds and Neville?”
“Yeah.”
“A sixty-six-year-old woman walked into Cliff’s office tonight — of course Cliff wasn’t there — and confessed to being the hit-and-run driver. She was coming back from her sister’s and realized that she couldn’t see very well without her glasses but assumed she could make it home without any problem. Well, there was a problem. Rachael Todd sort of stumbled out in front of the woman’s car and that’s how the woman hit her. The woman’s name by the way is Dot Taylor, and the deputy who looked over her car said you can still see blood and a little bit of hair on the right front bumper and fender.”
“I don’t know if this is good news or bad news. You know, in mystery novels you’re never supposed to have a coincidence like this.”
“Well, I guess it gives us one less thing to worry about.”
“But we still don’t know what she was going to tell me.”
A pause. “I notice you said ‘me.’”
“Oh. Right.”
“I was under the assumption that we were still working together. I haven’t heard from you in a while.”
“Well, I’ve been—”
“Before you tell a lie, which will really piss me off, let me tell you what’s going on. She got to you, didn’t she?”
“She?”
“God, c’mon, Sam. Just admit it. The judge found out that we were together socially and got all uptight about it. Right?”
My turn to pause. “Yeah, right.”
“And so she just naturally extrapolated from there that we were probably working together, too.”
“Pretty much.”
“And you gave in to her.”
I took a long time to answer it. “The judge and I have a very complicated relationship. She helped me when I set up shop and nobody else would. She helped me get my private investigator’s license, which isn’t easy in this state. And she’s steered a lot of business my way.”