Spiral

coughed. ”Got you to thank for this.”
    ”Luke and Hack?”
    ”They kept drinking after you showed them up, but they didn’t have you to take it out on.”
    ”Ms. Moran, I’m sorry.”
    ”Just like a man. You’re always sorry afterwards.” Now the open eye grew almost curious. ”Wait a minute. How’d you know they whaled on me?”
    ”I didn’t.”
    ”Then why’re you here?”
    ”I want to ask you some more questions.”
    Her face showed a different kind of pain. ”Not about Sundy.”
    ”Only indirectly.”
    ”What?”
    ”Tommy O’Dell.”
    The eye went dull. ”Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
    ”Because somebody else has maybe disappeared.” I decided to take a leap of faith. ”And she was trying to help me.”
    Moran hung her head. ”For such a polite man, you don’t seem to be much luck for the women around you.” An image of Nancy’s hair in my nightmares skipped across my mind. ”That’s a fact.”
    Moran lifted her head, the face trying to form a new expression before the pain overcame it. ”All right. Might’s well come set with me.”
    The air inside the trailer was stifling, filled with that stale pong of long-smoked tobacco, even though every window I could see stood open. A torn sheet in a daisy print acted as a slipcover for the sofa, some unwashed mugs and dishes next to the sink. The hatchlike door to a closet or bathroom was closed, but through an open doorway at the end of the trailer, I could see the foot of a bed, the covers mussed. Moran said, ”Kind of like that bus.”
    I looked at her.
    She slumped into the sofa, the slipcover pulling down off the top. ”When I met Tommy. You know about me and him, somebody must’ve told you how the band got its girls.”
    ”I’ve heard about the bus.”
    Moran sighed. ”Well, I got to say, it looked a lot more glamorous at the time.” The laugh like a hiccup. ”Probably about the same size as this place, though. Haven’t exactly moved up in the world, have I?”
    ”When we talked at the bar, why didn’t you tell me that Tommy O’Dell was Sundy’s father?”
    A shrug that pain stopped like a freeze-frame. ”Didn’t seem to matter much.”
    ”That the daughters of two members of the same band were killed within hours of each other?”
    ”That Held girl, you mean?”
    I made my voice stay patient. ”Yes.”
    The good eye closed. ”Mr. John Polite, they were gonna make her a rock star, right?”
    ”Right.”
    ”Well, my Sundy was—Lord forgive me—a streetwalker. Just what do you think those two could’ve had in common?”
    ”I was hoping you might know.”
    The eye opened again. ”Tommy and me, that was over twenty years ago. After I missed my... after I realized I was pregnant, and that it had to be him, I went to their manager person, Mr....?”
    ”Eisen?”
    ”Mr. Eisen, yeah. He told me Spiral got... bombarded. That was the word he used. Mr. Eisen said they got bombarded by... ‘sluts’ like me all the time. I didn’t go away, he’d call the police. I tried to sue them, they’d stand together, say none of them ever seen me afore. And after the band stonewalled it, this Mr. Eisen said probably the social services would take my baby away from a slut didn’t know who the father of her child really was.”
    ”What did you do then?”
    ”I shut up and had Sundy.” A moment of serenity came over Moran. ”I named her after the day Tommy and I... met, only not quite, account of it was the Sabbath, and it didn’t seem right to spell her name out the same way.” The moment passed. ”I’d gotten more religious by then, carrying Sundy around in my body like the Virgin Mary must have Him.”
    ”Did you ever see Tommy O’Dell again?”
    Another sigh. ”On the TV.”
    ”And after he died?”
    ”Oh, I went back to that Mr. Eisen, said now that I can’t hurt Tommy no more, could the band maybe do something for my baby? Mr. Eisen told me they couldn’t, that any money Tommy had coming to him was all tied up in legal things. And that now Tommy was dead and buried, I’d never be able to prove he was Sundy’s daddy any which way.”
    Eisen had concocted a more sugar-coated version for me that amounted to the same thing. ”Ms. Moran, anything else you can think of?”
    A hand went to her forehead. ”Sundy was always carrying on about how she was gonna travel all over the country. Travel in style.”
    ”Maybe with a... rock band?”
    ”But that’s what don’t make no sense. I never did