Spiral

sniffled twice. ”The fuck was I?”
    Biggs pointed to his own nose. ”Riding Snow White’s trail, babe.”
    Held looked at his keyboardist, but didn’t say anything.
    I stayed with Lazar. ”Go on.”
    He worried his scar some more. ”Well, a while later, this chick writes to Tommy. Claims she’s pregnant, and that it Had to be him. He hands me the letter and says, ‘What do you think?’ Well, there’s like details in there about the concert, songs we played and all. So I read what she wrote and said to him, ‘She claims it was on a Sunday, why don’t you call her kid that?’ And Tommy laughed and said that’s what he’d tell the chick to do.”
    Donna Moran, the woman who didn’t like country music, apparently felt different about rock. I tried to picture her as a young groupie. Couldn’t. ”Is that it?”
    Lazar glanced up to Biggs, then Held. ”Spi, you said We’re supposed to level with this guy, right?”
    ”Right,” said Held, without much conviction. ”But I still don’t see shit about what this has to do with Very.”
    Lazar went back to Biggs. ”You want to tell him the rest?”
    The keyboardist obviously wasn’t relishing the opportunity. ”What ‘rest,’ babe?”
    ”At Spi s dad’s place, man.”
    I said to Biggs, ”You know what he means?”
    ”Not me.”
    ”Christ, Buford.” Lazar looked at Held. ”It was month ago, when we were at your father’s house about him maybe bankrolling the comeback.”
    ”Wait a minute. Yeah.” Held sniffled some more but also sounded far, far away. ”Yeah, I remember that.”
    Lazar said, ”We’re all sitting around in that big living room, where the birthday party was. Very, Tranh, even Cassandra. And your father’s not too happy about Very being in the band, especially using that name, 'Very,’ and we all start talking about the really weird ones from the old days, like Frank Zappa’s kid ‘Moonbeam’ and somebody from TV being ‘Seagull.’ And then I said ‘Don’t forget Tommy’s Sundy, too.’”
    Lazar pronounced it without the ”a.” I leaned toward him. ”How did you know it was shortened like that?”
    He stared across the table this time. ”Buford, your lead."
    Biggs gave him a sour smile.
    Spi Held said, ”Come on, tell the man.”
    Biggs turned his head toward me. ”After Very convince her granddaddy that she really, really want him to make the comeback happen, we all start drifting out into that big corridor towards the front door. I pull Gordo aside, say he shouldn’t be bringing up Tommy’s kid, account of I heard she use the street name ‘Sundy’ when she on the stroll.”
    ”Meaning working as a prostitute.”
    ”Yeah, babe. We want Spi’s daddy to back us, don’t need him having no thoughts about his granddaughter turning whore just ‘cause she be using a funny kind of name.”
    I thought about it. ”How’d you know about Sundy Moran being a prostitute?”
    Biggs shrugged. ”You hear things, that’s all.”
    ”But how did you connect the ‘Sunday’ name from that letter O’Dell received twenty years ago to a prostitute around here these days?”
    He looked uncomfortable, the stringy black hands worrying each other on the table in front of him. ”Used to see the girls during my bad times, maybe where I got the H-I.V. even. I met this Sundy once or twice. Never spent any money on her, though.”
    I wasn’t sure I believed that last part. ”When you and Lazar here were in the corridor at the Colonel’s house, could anybody have overheard your conversation?”
    Biggs said, ”What, about Tommy’s kid being this whore?”
    ”Yes.”
    ”Not unless the walls have ears, babe. Why you think I be pulling Gordo aside, give him the hush?”
    I let my gaze go around the table. ”Anything else about Sundy Moran that any of you remember?”
    Spi Held opened his mouth, then closed it again, kind of his reaction fifteen minutes earlier.
    I said, ”Let’s have it.”
    He sniffled and shook his head. ”Man, this is like decades ago. I’m not even sure it was the same chick.”
    ”What was?”
    Held shook his head once more, but said, ”Just before he died, Tommy’s ranting and raving about a lot of shit. He was way too heavy into the junk, and it made him act moto-weird.”
    ”Weird in what way?”
    Held opened his hands. ”Tommy was giving me this tap dance about how some chick made him a daddy, that he wanted to be sure his kid was taken care of.”
    ”What did you do about