Spiral

insulting he was trying to be.
    ”Stroke,” said Helides.
    I turned back to him.
    He waved with the good hand this time. ”Thought you should know. Happened in the summer, out on Court One at the tennis club. Went to swing my backhand and remember the green clay surface coming up to hit me instead. Had a greenish-purple tint to my chin till Christmas, something about the dye in the clay.” Helides exhaled through his nose. ”Not the worst news, either. When I woke up in the hospital, the whole right side of my body was paralyzed.”
    I pictured the Skipper in action—in virtually constant motion—during the nightmarish time of Tet. Then I pictured that poor man at the airport departure lounge again, watching the debate over his coffee, and I think I realized for a moment how humiliating this scene had to be for Helides. He said, ”They call them ‘brain attacks’ now.”
    ”Sir?”
    ”Strokes. I suppose to remove some sort of stigma, make the brain seem more like just another organ subject to nature’s aggression. Heart attack, gall bladder attack.” The Skipper paused. ”Every minute in this country somebody suffers a stroke. Every four minutes, somebody dies from one. There’s even an 800 number for those of us who survive, and a few, like me, regain some degree of...”
    He raised the crabbed hand again, a tremor passing through it.
    To change the subject, I said, ”Justo mentioned you wanted to see me... professionally.”
    Helides shot his eyes up at the lawyer.
    Justo shrugged. ”I followed your instructions, Colonel, and I am sure Pepe did as well.”
    The Skipper came back to me. ”They told you nothing about my problem?”
    ”Nothing.”
    ”And you don’t know about it from the media jackals?”
    ”Only what I saw a few minutes ago in front of your gate.” Helides changed the focal point of his eyes somehow, and I felt as though I were a side of beef being scanned by an experienced meat inspector. He said, ”Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
    ”Sir, I’ve just been out of touch for a while.”
    The Skipper wasn’t buying that, but his eyes changed again, as though he needed other answers. ”My older son is Spi—short for ‘Spiro’—Held.”
    I didn’t get it, and Helides clearly expected that I would. ”Your son changed his last name?”
    Justo said, ”John?”
    ”Yes?”
    ”The news coverage on the killing of Very Held.”
    ”Her name was ‘Veronica,’ Lieutenant.”
    ”Sorry, sir,” said Justo.
    I must still have looked like a dunce to the Skipper, because he said, ”My son’s daughter, Veronica, was... performing as the singer in his rock-and-roll band, ‘Spiral.’ She died in this house on my birthday.”
    Rock band and... ” Your granddaughter was the little girl who drowned in a pool?”
    Helides flared. ”No, Lieutenant, she did not ‘drown.’ She was drowned, and not in a pool, but in my pool. And I would greatly appreciate your helping me identify the... bastard who did that to my family.”
    The first time I could ever remember the Skipper cursing.

    Justo had just finished helping Tranh make drinks for all four of us. I sat in a brass-tacked, red-leather chair, Justo on i ts matching couch. The Skipper had never left his seat, and Tranh remained standing, having taken one small sip after his boss had raised his glass in the good left hand and said, ”To old soldiers.”
    I lowered the vodka/rocks in my crystal tumbler. ”Colonel, are you sure you want to hire one as a private investigator?”
    To drink, Helides tilted both his glass and his head slightly to the left, enlisting gravity in the fight against the slack right cheek. ”I’ve tried everything else. Lieutenant?” Justo took his cue. ”John, the Colonel has met with the investigating officers on die police force and spoken with die State’s Attorney’s office, our prosecutor here. He has even—”
    ”—hired a profiler,” finished Helides. ”As in that horrible JonBenet Ramsey situation from Colorado. Golly Moses, Lieutenant, the man charged me fifteen thousand dollars to generate a report that said we should be looking for some orphaned drifter driving an old station wagon.”
    I said, ”Who may have broken in here?”
    ”What?” said the Skipper, clearly confused.
    Slowing down a little, I chose my next words carefully. ”From the things I’ve heard about profiling, the killer is usually a loner who wanders a great deal, partly for his own reasons, partly to throw off