Spiral

it?”
    ”Told him to go see Mitch.”
    ”Your manager?”
    ”Yeah,” said Spi Held. ”I figured it’d ease Tommy’s troubled mind, you know?”
    I looked around the table again. ”What did it do to your minds when Sundy Moran turned up dead?”
    ”Say what?” from Biggs.
    ”Dead?” from Held.
    ”Aw, shit,” from Lazar. ”Tommy’s luck’s still the same.”
    To me, Biggs said, ”Wait a minute, babe. When did this girl get herself dead?”
    ”Within ten hours of Veronica’s being killed. And Moran had help, too.”
    Biggs seemed to be trying to process something. Lazar just stroked his facial scars.
    Held said, ”How come we didn’t know about it?”
    ”Your daughter’s death pretty much pushed everything else off the news, right?”
    ”Yeah, but... Tommy’s kid?”
    Biggs nodded. ”Make sense, though. Nobody outside us knew Tommy her daddy, and probably that never been proved nowhere, or Mitch would of told us. So, one more hooker gets herself offed, not likely the police gonna talk with the grieving family of a thirteen-year-old about it. Right, babe?”
    In a very level voice, I said, ”You’ve explained it better than I could.”
    Now even Spi Held seemed to be putting the pieces together. ”Hold on, hold on. Man, you telling me that the same maniac who drowned my Very stabbed this hooker, too?”
    I saw Biggs’s eyes flicker to Held, then to me. Lazar was just shrugging.
    I said, ”Spi?”
    ”Yeah?”
    ”How did you know the Moran woman was killed with a knife?”
    Biggs closed his eyes now.
    Spi looked from one of us to the other before settling back on me. ”Isn’t that how they always get it?”
    ”Always?” I said.
    ”Yeah.” Spi Held became almost enthusiastic. ”You know, the phallic thing?”

    The four of us were rising from the table when Ricky Queen came out of the shadows at the back of the club. ”Party breaking up?” he said.
    Spi Held swiped under his nose. ”You straighten out that fucking houseman?”
    Queen winced a little. ”We’re cool with the dude again, but let’s keep it that way, huh?”
    Held looked around. ”Where’s he hiding?”
    ”Had to bug for a minute. Be right back.”
    ”Fucking wanna-bes, don’t got no sense of professionalism.” Held sniffled again. ”Look, I gotta hit the head, anyway, so we’re back on in five, got it?”
    Mumbled response from Gordo Lazar, Buford Biggs saying, ”Don’t forget, I’m picking up Kalil in half an hour.”
    ”This numbnuts houseman ain’t got his shit together by then, I’ll be drowning him in a toilet, anyway.”
    An awkward pause as Spi Held lumbered off toward a rest room sign, he apparently the only one unaware of how awful his remark sounded less than two weeks after his daughter’s death and barely two minutes after being reminded of it.
    Walking toward the street door, I felt a tug on my good arm, and Ricky Queen fell in beside me as I hit the sunshine.
    He turned his face to the sky like a convict in the exercise yard. ”Man, feels good to be out in the fresh air, huh?”
    ”It does that.”
    ”I don’t mind the gigs at night so much, even the ones that stretch to dawn, because that way, you get to see the sun come up over the beach,” Queen gesturing toward the east and an ocean I guessed to be a good mile or two away. I said, ”You walking me to my car?”
    ”Kind of.” He glanced at my bad arm. ”Any of those old druggies even notice you were hurt?”
    ”Not that they mentioned.”
    Queen brought his face toward mine, the platinum and orange hair looking even more bizarre in natural light. ”Before you said that the guy paying the freight wants us to cooperate.”
    ”Colonel Helides.”
    ”Right. Our angel on this comeback thing.” Now Queen looked down at his sneakers. ”Well, I think the old guy’s had it pretty tough, but he’s been good to me, and good to Buford, looking past my being gay and Buford being full-blown.”
    With AIDS. ”The kind of man the Colonel’s always been.”
    Queen nodded, then squinted. ”After I finished with the houseman, I came back, heard part of what you guys were talking about.”
    ”What part?”
    ”You asking about this hooker named Sundy, and Spi saying how he couldn’t see what one had to do with the other.”
    Uh-oh. ”And you can?”
    ”Can what?”
    ”See a connection between the deaths.”
    ”Between the deaths, no way. I’m a clean gene on that
    score. No, I meant more between the girls themselves.” I