Fiddlers

4.

IN THIS CITY there were some 4,000 nail salons scattered hither and yon, most of them in small, modest, fluorescent-lighted spaces in walk-up buildings, some more luxurious, with chandeliers, sculpted vases, silk-embroidered divans, and even stained-glass windows. A tenth of the city’s estimated Korean population was employed in these salons, some 50,000 in all, mostly all of them women. An industrious woman could earn as much as a hundred dollars a day, plus tips, giving manicures, pedicures, or - in the fancier establishments - green-tea treatments, Asian foot massages, or painted nail extensions. Moreover, instead of having to stand on her feet all day in a Dunkin’ Donuts or a factory, a girl could sit while she worked in one of these nail parlors. It sure beat wading around in a rice paddy.

The woman who owned and operated Lotus Blossom Nails had a rags-to-riches story, and she was not at all reluctant to tell it. Looking like the madam of a whore house in some forties movie set in Shanghai, as loquacious as a Jewish yenta, Jenny Cho - for such was her Americanized name - told the detectives that she’d opened her first salon fifteen years ago, with a $30,000 start-up investment, after a ten-week course that gave her a license in manicuring. Before then, she’d clipped, filed, and polished her own nails at home…

‘Korean girl have very strong nail,’ she told them. ‘No need nail salon. We do for ourselves.’

… and now she ran a string of six manicure salons scattered all over the city, all with the word ‘Blossom’ in their names. Yon had been her Korean name, before she changed it to Jenny. It meant ‘lotus blossom.’

The detectives listened politely.

At ten that Wednesday morning, there were women all over the place, sitting in these high, black-leather upholstered chairs, feet soaking in tubs of water, nails getting painted, or dried, reading magazines. One of the ladies with her feet in a tub was sitting with her skirt pulled up almost to Seoul. Parker was tempted not to look.

‘Who you looking for?’ Jenny asked.

‘Know a woman named Alicia Hendricks?’ Parker said.

‘Beauty Plus?’

‘Lustre Nails?’

‘Oh sure,’ Jenny said. ‘She come here alla time. Nice girl. She okay?’

‘She’s dead,’ Parker said.

Jenny’s eyes immediately shifted. Just the very slightest bit, almost as if the light had changed, it was that subtle. But both these men were detectives, and that’s why they were here in person, rather than at the other end of a phone. They both saw the faint flicker of recognition; both realized they might be getting close to something here.

Jenny was no fool.

She caught them catching on.

Saw in their eyes the knowledge of what they’d seen in hers.

‘I so sorry to hear that,’ she said, and ducked her head.

They allowed her the moment of grief, authentic or otherwise.

‘When did you see her last?’ Parker asked.

‘Two,’t’ree week ago. She come by with new line. What happen to her?’

Sounding genuinely concerned.

‘Someone shot her.’

‘Why?’

You tell us, Parker thought.

‘How long did you know her?’ Genero asked.

‘Oh, maybe two year. T’ree?’

‘Did you know she was doing drugs?’

Straight out. Made Alicia sound like a cotton shooter or some other kind of desperate addict, but what the hell. It certainly caught Jenny Cho’s attention.

The word flashed in her brown eyes like heat lightning. She knew Alicia was doing drugs. Dabbling. Experimenting. Whatever. But she knew. And she wanted no part of it now. The alarm sizzled in her eyes, they could feel her backing away from the very word. Drugs. Shrinking away from the knowledge.

But she was smart.

‘Yes, but not so much,’ she said. ‘Some li’l pot, you know?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Parker said.

‘Any idea where she was getting it?’ Genero asked.

‘You go An’rews Boul’vard, you buy pot anyplace. All over the street, anyplace.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Parker said again.

‘Other dope, too,’ Jenny said. ‘All kine’a heavy shit.’

‘You think she might’ve been doing any of the heavier stuff?’

‘No,’ Jenny said. ‘No, no. She a good girl. Jussa li’l pot ever now and then. Dass all.’

The detectives said nothing.

‘Ever’body do a li’l pot ever now and then,’ Jenny said.

They still said nothing.

‘Why? You think dass why somebody maybe shoot her?’ Jenny said.

‘Maybe,’ Parker said, and shrugged.

‘What do you think?’ Genero asked.

‘I think I so sorry she dead,’ Jenny said.

* * * *

‘So tell me about yourself,’ Reggie said.

The top of the Jaguar was down, they were tooling along soundlessly on back roads, her red hair blowing in the wind. He had bought a billed motoring cap at Gucci’s, cost him four hundred dollars, the tan leather as soft as a baby’s ass. He wore it tilted jauntily over one eye. All he needed was a pair of goggles to make him look like some kind of Italian playboy.

‘What would you like to know?’ he asked.

She was wearing a white T-shirt and a green mini. She’d kicked off her flat sandals, and was leaning back in her seat now, her knees bent, the soles of her feet propped up against the glove compartment. The radio was tuned to an easy-listening station, the volume up to combat the rush of wind around the car. It was a bright beautiful day, and she was a bright beautiful girl. He could almost forget she was a hooker.

‘Well, for example,’ she said, ‘what kind of work do you do?’

‘I’m retired,’ he said.

‘What kind of work did you do?’

‘I was in sales.’

‘When was this?’

‘I left the job just recently.’

‘Why?’

‘Tired of it.’

Reggie nodded, brushed hair back from her eyes.

‘So what’ve you been doing since?’

‘Loafing.’

‘For how long?’

‘Past few months.’

‘You can afford to do that?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘I guess so,’ she said, and giggled, and opened her arms wide to the car. Music oozed from the speakers, swirled around them.

‘How old are you, anyway?’ she asked.

‘Fifty-six,’ he said.

‘Bingo, no hesitation.’

‘Is that okay?’

‘Yeah, I like it. It’s called being honest.’

‘Or foolhardy.’

‘Fifty-six. You look younger. I guess it’s the bald head. How long have you worn it that way?’

‘Past few months.’

‘I like it. Very trendy.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You ought to get an earring.’

‘You think?’

‘For the left ear. Right is a signal to fags.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Sure.’

Music swirled around the car, drifted away behind them.

‘I’m enjoying this,’ she said.

‘I’m glad.’

‘I ought to be paying you,’ she said, and then immediately, ‘Don’t get any ideas!’

They both burst out laughing.

* * * *

Huntsville, Texas, is about 70 miles north of Houston and 170 miles south of Dallas/Fort Worth. Not for nothing is it known as the ‘prison city’ of Texas: there are eight prisons in Huntsville, and some 15,000 inmates are imprisoned there. This means that every third or fourth citizen of the city is a prison inmate. It further means that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is the city’s biggest employer; only two percent of Huntsville’s citizens are out of work.

Walker County prison records showed that Alvin Randolph Dalton was released on parole almost twenty years ago, and subsequently granted permission to move out of state. Parole records here in this city indicated assiduous attendance. He’d paid his debt to society in full, and was now free to go wherever he chose to go, and do whatever he chose to do within the law. But, no longer required to report to anyone anywhere, his whereabouts were a mystery until they checked the phone books, and found a listing for an A. R. Dalton on Inverness Boulevard in Majesta.

A phone call confirmed that he was the man they wanted.

Parker told him to wait there for them.

Dalton said, ‘What is this?’

Same as Hendricks asked up there in Castleview.

‘Just wait there,’ Parker said.

* * * *

The Walker County prison records gave Dalton’s age as fifty-seven. Remarkably fit, jailhouse tattoos all over his bulging muscles, entirely bald and wearing an earring in his right ear, he greeted them in a black tank-top shirt and black jeans, barefooted, and told them at once that Wednesday was his day off. What he did was drive a limo for Intercity Transport, mostly airport pickups and dropoffs, but sometimes trips to the casinos upstate or across the river.

‘So what’s this about?’ he asked.

‘Your wife got killed,’ Genero said.

‘I don’t have a wife,’ Dalton said.

‘Your former wife. Alicia Hendricks.’

‘Yeah. Her. That’s too bad. What’s it got to do with me? I haven’t seen her in fifteen years, it must be.’

‘Lost track of her, is that it?’

Dalton looked at them.

‘What is this?’ he said again.

‘Routine,’ Genero said.

‘Bullshit,’ Dalton said. ‘You guys get a dead woman whose ex done time, all at once your ears go up. Well, fellas, I’ve been clean for almost twenty years now, a gainfully employed, respectable citizen of this fair city. I wouldn’t know Alicia if I tripped over her, dead or alive. You’re barking up the wrong tree.’

‘How long you been wearing your head bald?’ Parker asked.

‘Why? Some bald-headed guy do her?’

‘How long?’

‘My hair began falling out in stir. Before I got busted, I was living in D-Town, wore it long like a hippie. All of a sudden, I’m a white male inmate with a bald head, the hamhocks hung a racist jacket on me, made my life miserable.’

‘When’s the last time you saw Alicia?’

‘Whoo. We’re talkin fifteen years ago, that’s when we got divorced. We’re talkin Johnny Carson leaving The Tonight Show. We’re talkin the invasion of Kuwait. We’re talkin the first Gulf War. We’re talkin ancient history, man!’

‘Was she doing dope back then?’

‘Who says she was doing dope ever?’

‘That’s what you went down for, isn’t it? A dope violation.’

‘I learned my lesson.’

‘Was she doing dope?’

‘Nothing serious.’

‘Nothing serious like what?’

‘Little griff every now and then.’

‘And you?’

‘Same thing. Marijuana never hurt nobody.’

‘That right?’

‘Marijuana’s the most frequently used illegal drug in the United States.’

‘Tell us all about it, professor.’

‘Over eighty-three million Americans over the age of twelve have tried marijuana at least once.’

‘Including Alicia, huh?’

‘Big deal.’

‘She ever move on to the heavier shit?’

‘Not to my knowledge. Not while we were married, anyway.’

‘How about after you split?’ Genero said. ‘You sure she never went hardcore?’

‘Is that a trick question, Sherlock? I told you I never saw her after the divorce. Why? You think some dealer did her?’

‘We understand she was keeping bad company.’

‘Not on my watch.’

‘On your watch, all you did was blast a little stick every now and then, right?’

‘That’s not all we did.’

‘Just two happy airheads…”

‘Don’t put the marriage down,’ Dalton warned. ‘In many ways, it was a good one.’

‘In what ways was it a bad one?’

‘Why’d you get a divorce?’

Dalton hesitated.

‘So?’ Parker said.

‘She was running around on me.’

‘But that wasn’t bad company, right?’

‘It was the company she chose. That didn’t mean I had to go along with it.’

‘Where were you last Friday night at around eight o’clock, Al?’

‘Airtight,’ Dalton said.

‘Let’s hear it.’

‘I was driving a van to an Indian casino upstate.’

‘We suppose you have wit…’

‘Six of them. All high rollers. Check it out.’

* * * *

The waiter possessed the good grace not to card Reggie. Then he spoiled it by saying, ‘I’m assuming your daughter is twenty-one.’

‘Yes,’ Charles said.

The waiter nodded and padded off.

‘Did that bother you?’ she asked.

‘A little.’

‘When he comes back, I’ll kiss you on the mouth.’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘You realize there are guys dying in Iraq who can’t order a drink in this state?’

‘It was that way when I was a kid, too. We used to bitch about it all the time. Being in the Army, not allowed to order a drink.’

‘What war was that?’

‘Vietnam.’

‘You were in that war?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Wow,’ she said. ‘That seems so long ago.’

‘To me, too.’

‘Are you from here originally? I don’t mean here, this state, I mean the city,’ and with a jerk of her head indicated its general direction.

‘Yes.’

‘I was born and raised in Denver,’ she said.

‘I’ve always wanted to go out West.’

‘Maybe we can go out there together sometime,’ she said.

‘Well… maybe. Yes.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to?’

‘Here we go,’ the waiter said, and placed their drinks on the table. ‘Did you folks want to hear the specials now, or would you like to enjoy your drinks first?’

‘Give us a few minutes,’ he said.

‘Take your time,’ the waiter said, and went off again.

‘So you were in the Army, huh?’

‘Yes.’

‘See any action?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did you get out?’

‘1970.’

‘I wasn’t even born yet!’

‘Shh, he’ll hear you.’

‘Fuck him,’ she said. ‘I think I will kiss you on the mouth.’

And reached across the table, and cupped his face in her hands, and kissed him openmouthed, her tongue searching.

* * * *

All of Jenny Cho’s salons had the word ‘Blossom’ in their names. Plum Blossom - where the detectives were now headed - Peony Blossom, Pear Blossom, Cherry Blossom, Apricot Blossom, and the eponymous flagship establishment Jenny herself ran, Lotus Blossom. It would have been simpler to call each and every one of these places to ask questions about Alicia Hendricks. But Genero and Parker were still pursuing the ‘drug-related’ angle, and were trying to find out whether her supplier - if indeed such a supplier existed - might be someone she’d met at any of the regular stops on her schedule. Besides, you couldn’t gauge reaction on the telephone; that’s why legwork was invented. That’s why it took so much time to track down a person’s story. In police work, everyone had a story. Was Alicia’s story dope? Getting the story straight was often the answer to solving a crime.

The first thing the manager of Plum Blossom Nails said to Parker was, ‘Pedicue ten dollah ex’ra.’

He was pointing at Parker’s shoes.

The two detectives had barely set foot in the shop, guy tells Parker it’s ten dollars extra. He looked down at his feet.

‘I don’t want a pedicure,’ he said.

‘Manicue same price,’ the manager said. ‘Pedicue ten dollah ex’ra.’

‘I don’t want a manicure, either,’ Parker said. ‘Why is it ten dollars extra for a pedicure?’ He was thinking of busting this little bald-headed gook for price gouging or something.

‘You man,’ the manager said. ‘Big feet.’

‘But you save on nail polish,’ Parker said.

‘Big feet,’ the manager insisted, shaking his head. ‘Ten dollah ex’ra.’

‘That’s sexist,’ Genero said.

‘Exactly,’ Parker said. ‘If this was a man’s barbershop, and you charged a woman ten dollars extra for a pedicure, she’d take a feminist fit. Am I right, ladies?’ he asked, playing to the house now, hoping for a little female support here.

‘Right on, brother,’ one of the women shouted, and thrust her clenched fist at the air. The others kept reading their magazines.

‘I feel like getting a pedicure just for the hell of it,’ Parker said. ‘Make this a test case.’

‘Sure,’ the manager agreed. ‘But ten dollah ex’ra.’

‘You in charge here?’ Genero asked, and showed his shield.

‘Why, wassa motta?’ the manager asked.

‘We’re investigating a murder,’ Parker said, using the word ‘murder’ instead of ‘homicide,’ which they probably didn’t understand in Korea. Scare the shit out of the little gook, he was thinking. Ten dollars extra for a fuckin pedicure! ‘Does the name Alicia Hendricks mean anything to you?’

The manager looked at him blankly.

But he was scared now. Fear in his eyes. Well, sure, a murder investigation.

‘Works for Beauty Plus,’ Genero said.

‘Lustre Nails,’ Parker said.

‘She’d have come here selling nail polish, cuticle remover, nail hardener, all that related stuff. A sales rep.’

‘Ring a bell?’

The manager was shaking his head.

‘We’re trying to work up her story’

‘Find out who might’ve wanted her dead.’

‘Remember her?’

Still shaking his little bald head. Eyes wide in fright. Well, murder.

‘You’re not in any trouble here,’ Genero assured him. ‘This is like a background check.’

‘Alicia Hendricks,’ Parker said.

‘Nobody,’ the manager said, shaking his head. ‘No. On’y Korean girl work here.’

* * * *

In the car on the way to Pear Blossom Nails, Parker asked, ‘Who said she worked there? Did anybody tell him she worked there?’

‘No, we told him she was a sales rep.’

‘And who said she wasn’t Korean?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did anybody say Alicia Hendricks wasn’t Korean?’

‘Well, no, but the name…”

‘They all take American names. You ask any of the Korean girls in there what their names are, they’ll tell you Mary or Terry or Kelly or Cathy or whatever. So why couldn’t Alicia be Korean?’

‘Well, Hendricks. That don’t sound Korean.’

‘She could be married to an American. Nice Korean girl married to an American, why not? My point is, what made that little bald-headed jerk think she wasn’t Korean? Ten dollars extra, can you imagine that?’

‘You think he knew her, is that it?’

‘I got no idea he knew her or he didn’t know her. Of course he knew her! She goes there all the time to sell her nail polish, she’s a regular like Clairol or Revlon, all at once he never heard of her! Tells us all the girls in there are Korean, when nobody said she wasn’t Korean!’

‘You think he’s hiding something?’

‘He better not be,’ Parker said.

* * * *

Because she couldn’t drive and sign at the same time, Teddy pulled the car into a roadside Starbucks, and talked to her daughter over lattes. This was after April’s Wednesday afternoon ballet lesson; she was sweaty and sticky and wasn’t expecting an ambush.

‘Who told you that?’ she asked at once.

Mark, Teddy signed.

‘I’ll kill him!’

No, you won’t kill anyone. He did the right thing.

They were sitting almost knee to knee on the front seat, mother and daughter, facing each other, look-alikes.

Teddy’s latte was in the cup holder, April’s in her right hand.

Why didn’t you tell me yourself? Teddy asked.

April said nothing.

April?

‘I couldn’t tell anyone, Mom. That was the thing of it. Not you, not even Mark at first. And I can just imagine what Dad’s reaction would’ve been if I casually mentioned that Lorraine Pierce had shoplifted a five-dollar bottle of red Revlon Crayon polish #34 from the local drugstore! Mr. Morality himself? Break out the handcuffs!’

He’d have done no such thing! And you know it!

‘Well, I wasn’t sure. The other thing was… Lorraine’s my very best friend on earth. We sit together in every class in school, spend all our free time together, do things together, talk about things together, secret things… we’re like sisters, you know? It was like forget the petty bullshit, Ape, what’s a little bottle of nail polish between friends to the end?’

Teddy said nothing about her language.

Or that someone was calling her daughter Ape.

‘It was really difficult, Mom,’ April said. ‘Really.’

I want you to promise me something, Teddy signed.

‘Mom, please don’t ask me to stop seeing Lorraine.’

No, I won’t do that. But if anything like this ever happens again…

‘I promise,’ April said.

You’ll tell your father or me right away.

‘Yes, I promise,’ April said.

* * * *

The word was out. No question about it. If the reaction at Plum Blossom was merely a harbinger, the responses at Pear Blossom and then Apricot Blossom were clear indications that nobody was about to tell them anything much about Alicia Hendricks.

This wasn’t quite the ‘Nobody Knows Nothing’ stonewalling you got in the Eight-Seven hood, or even in Washington, D.C, for that matter; the managers of the Blossom shops couldn’t very well deny the existence of a woman who visited them regularly to promote and sell Beauty Plus’s line of nail-care products. Instead, they all nodded and bowed and smiled in the Oriental manner, oh yes, we know Alicia, oh yes, she very nice girl, come here alia time, we buy many nail polish from her, oh, she dead? So sorry to hear. Nice girl.

But mention dope…

Fortified by the La Paglia drug bust yesterday, they were still pursuing the drug-related angle…

… and immediately the faces went blank.

Dope was news to all of them.

Except to Jenny Cho, of course, who had admitted that Alicia did ‘Some li’l pot, you know?’

But that was earlier today, and this was now, and the word had gone out, and the party line had changed.

Drug use?

Alicia?

No, no. Smiling. Bowing. Ladies all over the place looking up when the detectives mentioned drugs. This couldn’t be too good for business, all these nice city-slick ladies with their smooth sleek legs and their skirts pulled up over their thighs, hearing the word ‘drugs’ bandied about as if this was some street corner near a playground someplace instead of a civilized establishment where you could even get a bikini wax. What was the world coming to?

The world was coming to a dead end.

Until they visited a place called Cherry Blossom Nails.

* * * *

They knew the minute they stepped through the doorway that they weren’t supposed to be here to witness whatever was going down. There was that silent electric buzz that indicated something illegal was happening here. Eyes flashing. People caught in the act, though all that seemed to be happening was innocent manicures and pedicures. They flashed tin simultaneously, and marched straight to the back of the shop, the manager rushing along behind them, waving her hands in the air, yelling that a waxing was in progress, and then turning abruptly and running for the front of the shop when she saw they were about to open one of two closed doors in a narrow passageway.

Genero ran after her.

Parker threw open the door.

A small Asian man was sitting behind a small table upon which rested what appeared to be a one-kilo brick of cocaine.

The detectives had just stepped in shit, as the saying goes.

* * * *

On the drive back to the city, he told her what the options for this evening were.

‘I have an errand to run,’ he said. ‘We can either have dinner before or after, take your choice.’

‘What kind of errand?’

‘Someone I have to see.’

‘I’m not hungry yet, are you?’

‘No.’

‘So why don’t we make it a late dinner?’

‘Good. You can wait for me at the hotel.’

‘What time will you be leaving?’

‘Around seven.’

‘I’ll take a little nap.’

‘Okay,’ he said.

‘What time will you be back?’

‘Eight, eight thirty.’

‘Will we be going out?’

‘Absolutely. Celebrate.’

‘Oh? What?’

‘Us,’ he said.

* * * *

Jenny Cho told them Alicia was nothing but a mew.

They didn’t know what she meant at first.

She was trying to say that no one would have killed her for her minor role in what amounted to a penny-ante drug operation.

‘She on’y a mew,’ Jenny insisted.

They finally realized she was telling them Alicia was ‘only a mule.’ No, not a so-called swallower, who ingested drugs packed into latex gloves in order to transport the contraband through customs, not that kind of mule. Nor even a so-called stuffer, who inserted similarly packed drugs into vagina or anus with the same end in mind, you should pardon the pun. Just your everyday, garden-variety mule, a mere delivery boy, or girl in this case, woman actually, because she’d been fifty-five years old, even though Jenny Cho called her a delivery boy, a mew, a mule.

Jenny would not tell them the source of the cocaine Alicia delivered to her Blossom salons on her regularly scheduled visits. Jenny knew that in the business of drug trafficking or distribution, there were worse things than arrest and imprisonment. A garrulous person could oftimes meet with a sudden and untimely demise. But she did not think Alicia’s death had anything to do with her activities as a courier. She was ‘ony smaw potatoes,’ she said. ‘A deli’ry boy. A mew.’

The bust itself was small potatoes.

This wasn’t the French Connection, or even the Pizza Connection. This wasn’t billions of dollars of heroin or cocaine being smuggled into the United States with the illegal proceeds being laundered via many different methods and through many different countries. This was merely a Korean immigrant, a self-made woman in a land of opportunity, an enterprising woman who’d seen a way to earn a few extra bucks by funneling dope through her shops, which was safer and more convenient, after all, than having to buy it ‘all over the street, anyplace.’

Her arrest put an end to her success story.

But it left open the question of who had murdered Alicia Hendricks and Max Sobolov.

* * * *

The campus lights were spaced some twenty feet apart. This meant that there were pools of illumination under each lamppost, and then stretches of utter darkness, and then another splash of light as the path meandered its way between buildings and benches toward the sidewalk and the nighttime city beyond.

Christine Langston had packed the papers for the spot test she’d administered during her three o’clock class on the Romantic Poets, and was heading off campus, matching her stride to the areas of darkness and light, making a game of it, bulging briefcase swinging in her right hand. She was a woman in her late sixties, but spry as a goat, as she was fond of saying, and alert to every nuance of campus sound. This was the middle of June, and the cicadas were at it hot and heavy, as were the students, she suspected, mating behind and on top of every errant blade of grass.

In the far distance, she could see the beckoning street lamps on Hall Avenue. She would catch an express bus there, and be whisked downtown to her apartment in sixteen minutes flat. Mortimer would be waiting there for her, mixed drink ready, dinner heating in the kitchen. She would report to him on her day, and listen to his publishing-industry atrocity stories, and then they would have their dinner and perhaps go down for a stroll later on, walking hand in hand in the quiet streets outside the apartment they shared. And yet later, they would…

‘Professor Langston?’ the voice said.

She had just stepped into the circle of light under one of the lampposts. Peering into the darkness beyond, she asked, ‘Who is it?’

‘Me,’ he said. ‘Chuck.’

And shot her twice in the face.