Spiral

Lazar’s mouth, and he spoke as he chewed. ”Not exactly senior-prom stuff. In feet, not half as good as we used to see on the road, our best tours.”
    ”Back in the seventies.”
    ”Man, you never did a trip—even as a roadie, the guys help us set up and break down?—you got no idea. Every chick in the audience wanted to be a real groupie, ride with the band.”
    I reached for a sandwich. ”On your bus?”
    ”We had a nice setup: little kitchen, closet bathroom with a shower. For sleeping or fucking, it was bunks mostly, but they’d do. And if the band was staying in the town overnight, Spi might be off somewheres, and we could maybe get his.”
    We. ”Spi’s what?”
    ”Bed, man.” Lazar popped a fistful of com chips, washed them down by chugging one of the Sprites. ”He had a real bedroom in the back. Oh, you could sit on the center of the fucking mattress and touch all four walls without moving, but it gave a hell of a nice ride for the chick of the night. In fact, I remember this one time, Mitch was on the road with us. Him and Spi had just counted our cash from the last gig, spreading it all over the bedsheets in back—twenty, thirty thousand wouldn’t have been unusual. And before we left the concert, the two of them picked up a couple of blondes from somewhere in Minnesota. Twin sisters, like the Twin Cities, get me?”
    I opened one of the other two Sprites. ”Mr. La—”
    ”Anyway, we’re driving toward Minot, S.D., only vehicle on the whole fucking road, with Mitch and Spi planking these twins on a comforter of cash in the back, when all of a sudden, the tires start going thump, thump, thump. Like we’re getting a flat everywhere at once only without losing our steering.”
    ”Mr. Lazar, I—”
    ”But we figure we got to pull over, and at the side of the road, we can see we been hitting toads.”
    That stopped me. ”Toads?”
    ”Yeah.” The other half-sandwich disappeared, and Lazar reached for the last one with his right hand and for more chips with his left ”When Mitch and Spi come up front, find out what the fuck’s going on—I guess the thump-thumps made it better for them back there on the hump-humps—we see all these toads, hopping across the road. And one of the Minnesota twins says they’re some special kind like salmon.” After a swallow of sandwich and Sprite, I said, ”Salmon.”
    ”Yeah.” Lazar spoke around his food. ‘These toads migrate back to the exact pond where they were born before they’ll breed with another toad from the same place. Amazing, huh?”
    ”Amazing. You never had any trouble from the women who rode on the bus?”
    Another evasive look as he snagged the last Sprite. ”Well, sometimes your standard chick turned into a raging bitch.”
    I took another bite of sandwich. ”How do you mean?”
    ”Coming on the bus and not expecting to do all of us.” I’d let the ”we” part alone once. ”You’d expect her to have sex with all of you?”
    ”Well, yeah.” A confused look. ”I mean, that was kind of the purpose of the enterprise. Unless we took on a chick for each of us, which happened too.”
    ”Any indictments happen?”
    ”Nah, not back then.” More corn chips and Sprite. ”I mean, remember, this is post-pill and pre-AIDS, with free-love as a real established concept. Bitch wanted to cry gang-rape instead of gang-bang, she’d look awful silly explaining how it was her come backstage after a concert and onto a rock band’s bus in the first place. And besides, the bitch factor was maybe one, two percent. The rest of the chicks loved doing it, probably at least as much so they could brag to their friends.”
    ”The police believe Veronica was sexually assaulted as part of the murder.”
    ”Yeah, well, that girl was a—the fuck did Mitch call her? Oh, yeah. 'Vixen.’ A real little vixen.”
    ”Did Veronica ever hit on the other members of the band?”
    Lazar finally looked shocked, crushed the soda can in his hand. ”She was Spi’s fucking daughter, man.”
    ”Did Veronica flirt with you guys?”
    Now a measured look. ”Spi said, we’re supposed to tell you the fucking truth, right?”
    ”That’s my understanding, too.”
    Lazar tossed the crushed can onto the empty food tray. ”Okay, man. Truth is, Very couldn’t turn it off. She’d be touching and teasing like Madonna until it went from embarrassing all the way to aggravating. And besides, with Buford carrying the plague—and Ricky queer as pink lace, so