Pied Piper

CHAPTER 55

Smiling John’s Pleasure and Social Club, a corner establishment in an ethnically mixed neighborhood of Cajun, Caribbean and Afro-American, caught between the opulence of the Garden District and the commerce of downtown, smelled of a rude combination of perfume, stale beer and vanilla air freshener. The soles of LaMoia’s ostrich boots stuck to the wooden plank flooring. Obnoxiously loud Cajun accordion music roared from distorted ceiling speakers as six women-girls really-played pinball.

He sidled up to a set of recently waxed legs that disappeared into a tiny piece of red leather. The look she offered LaMoia was sad and distant-a junkie. He passed. The second machine received its hip bumps from a Creole girl still in her teens who filled out the denim overall shorts and white camisole so that any man would want to take up farming.

“Hey,” LaMoia said.

“Not now, sweetie. I got two thousand to go for the bonus.”

“Got all the time in the world,” he lied.

Alarms sounded, announcing she had crossed into bonus territory and sending her into a blinding frenzy of bumps and flipper thrusts. She kept the ball alive for three full minutes, having cleared the next bonus as well. He had never thought of pinball as sexy. The ball died on a bad left flipper.

“You could be here all day,” he said.

“Unless I had a better offer.” Her voice gave away her age, perhaps still a minor, although her equipment suggested otherwise.

“There’s a guy works here name of Jimmy.”

“So? Am I going to play this next ball or not?”

Before he could explain the twenty dollars he proffered onto the machine’s glass surface, she advised him, “That won’t even buy you a hummer, sweetie.” She drew back the springed metal ram preparing to launch another ball, but LaMoia grabbed her hand, stopping her.

“Need a little face to face with Jim-bo, sweetie. The twenty’s just to keep the meter running.”

The twenty disappeared into the bib of the overalls. There wasn’t a lot of room left up there.

“A location where I might find him would be nice.”

She pointed to the ceiling. “He goes on in an hour. His is the first room on this side,” she said. Eyeing LaMoia actively, she added, “Another twenty you go home with a smile on your face.”

He offered her a big, toothy smile. “I’m smiling just thinking about it.”

“You got a car with a backseat? Pull it around back. Lemme know.”

“We’ll talk,” he said.

“No we won’t,” she corrected. She released the plunger and launched the steel ball into the flashing lights, bells and buzzers.

LaMoia found the stairs and climbed them to the second story. From the far side of the first door Oprah played loudly. He thought she had given him the wrong room-one of Smiling John’s active employees, he thought. He knocked carefully.

“Yeah?” came a male smoker’s voice.

LaMoia fished two twenties under the crack in the door. Probably a night’s wage in a dump like this. The twenties disappeared. LaMoia stood there for a full minute expecting an inquiry or the door to open. “Hey!” LaMoia spoke to the door.

Oprah went louder.

LaMoia knocked for a second time. He teased a hundred under the door, but brought it back to his side. He teased it through again. The information he sought could not be valued-nothing less than the Pied Piper’s identity.

“I think you got the wrong room.”

“Jimmy?”

“Heat?”

“Was once. Not anymore. Repo now. Don’t want you. My thing is with an individual from your last known address.”

“I don’t think so.” The forty came back through the door.

“The guy wears the same eagle as you do, only on his forearm. Yours is on your right biceps. That bird is the only connection to you. I’m not carrying any trouble for you. The artwork was done at your last address.” LaMoia fished the hundred half through. “Take it.” It sat there, and he suddenly saw it not as currency but as Sarah caught in a deadly tug of war.

The door came open a crack. Jimmy wore a goatee and glasses in dime-store frames. His dark hair was pulled into a ponytail. He looked dumb, like so many of them did.

“Three of you got the same tattoo. I checked with the prison. Of the three, they remembered you. You stayed a little longer than was on the original invitation.”

“You gotta be heat.”

“Was once,” he repeated. “The guy-the one with the eagle on the forearm-is laying bad plastic from San Diego to Seattle. He’s late on payments for a Taurus. I’m representing the car dealer.”

“Never knew him.”

“A name would help. That tattoo was seen laying down the plastic, but we got nothing but aliases. Medium security. You had to run into him.”

The man glanced down at the hundred on the floor.

“Plus the forty,” LaMoia said. “Name of a friend. Anything I can use?”

“Never knew him. Not personally. Not so as I knew a name or nothing.”

“Listen, if you’re milking me. … I’m light as it is-”

“It’s not that. I didn’t know him. You listening?” Disgusted, he said, “He was smooth, that’s all I know about him. Talk his way into anything, out of anything. Was a stunt man-”

“Con artist.”

“Right, a stunt man. In for some kind of something. Sucked up to the screws and the chief. Got his way: butts, weed, booze. Didn’t want to know him. You know? Fuck the little kiss ass.”

LaMoia ate up every detail. “But he got the same tattoo as you,” he reminded, hoping to spur some rivalry. Inmates were little more than boys in this regard.

“Got mine first, Goddamn it. Everyone admiring it, like. Hisself included.” He eased the door open wider, more relaxed. Oprah was on a small color set that favored yellow. Jimmy saw LaMoia checking out the TV and he said, “Got hooked on that bitch in the joint. Can’t give her up.”

“Know what you mean.”

“You watch?”

LaMoia shrugged. “You’re saying all the sucking up won him special treatment. That’s why you didn’t hang with him.”

“He got privileges,” the man complained. “‘Jungle visits,’ we called them.”

“Conjugal visits.”

“Only the butt suckers-the brownnosers-pulled off that kinda shit, I’ll tell you what. Doing time and getting cheese a couple times a month. Gimme a fucking break!”

LaMoia knew it went against the rules, meaning the visits had been arranged by the guards as a form of payment. “He’s married?”

“Two, three times a month he’s sucking and banging the bitch who put them both in the joint the first place, way I heard it.”

“She was also incarcerated?”

“A stunt team, they were. She gets driven over here from the slammer in Lamont, drops the lace and spreads ’em. They do the Dippity-Do and she’s back in the van for Lamont.”

Conjugal visits between two inmates was unheard of in Washington State. “Lamont?”

“It’s the big house for chicks.”

“The wife is doing hard time?” LaMoia sensed his chance to identify the two. The conjugal visits were certainly not official, which meant they would not carry any kind of paperwork. They reeked instead of payoffs, or-knowing this team’s record-a con job. A few screws and a transport were involved at a minimum. “He have money, this guy?”

“How you think he rubs up against the screws so good? ’Course he had money, somewhere. And it must have been quite a few yards. But I heard that about him-no one ran a stunt like this guy. He was in for ripping off old hags, I think. Something like that.” He glanced back at the TV where Oprah paced in front of the stage. “I don’t know shit about him. Stayed clear of that shit.”

LaMoia handed him the remaining forty to add to the hundred on the floor. “You sure you don’t remember a name?”

“No way.”

“Looks?”

“Average. Your height. You gonna run stunts on people, you gotta look average, know what I mean? They gotta trust you.”

“Not me,” LaMoia said. “I don’t trust him an inch.”