Spiral

stopped at the curb, my car diagonally across the intersection. ”Sundy Moran and Veronica Held.”
    ”Yeah.” A quick glance around, but nobody was in earshot or even coming out the entrance to Dicey Riley’s behind him. ”Something Very said once when Spi was pissing her—and the rest of us—off with one of his tantrums.”
    ”Like I saw today?”
    ”Dude, what you saw inside there was mild crankiness. Spi gets the wrong powder up his nose, and he goes ballistic.”
    ”I’m listening.”
    ”All right. Like I said, this one time, we’re rehearsing and Spi wants the chord one way, but Very thinks the harmony should be hers, so she’s the center of attention, you know?”
    I thought about my impression watching the videotape of her performing at the party. ”I’m following you.”
    ”Okay, then. Follow this: After they explode at each other, the fighters retire to their corners. Very, though, comes over to me before we get started again, and she says, ‘Like he never experimented in the seventies.’”
    ”Experimented?”
    ”Yeah. The song had to do with a black chick and a white dude, getting it on in a tough club. Would have made an awesome video, too, if the actor/dancers—”
    ”Would have made?”
    ”Spi killed the song, said we weren’t going to do it. And Very’s asking me, ”What’s wrong with a little vanilla and chocolate together?”‘
    An image of Kalil Biggs crossed my mind. ”Anything else?”
    ”Yeah, the weirdest part. To me, anyway. Very says, ‘Ricky, you ever do girls?’ And I knew she meant the dirty, so I told her, ‘Sorry, hon, not my taste.’ And Very goes, ”Well, I think I’d like to experiment a little more than just vanilla and chocolate. Maybe a sundae, even.’”
    I stared at him.
    Queen said, ”At the time, I thought she was just pushing the ice-cream metaphor, the way a songwriter might, you know? Now, though, I’m not so—”
    ”Rick!” Spi Held’s head curved around the doorjamb of the bar, the lush but silly wig still in place. ”Will you get the fuck back here before we lose Buford to his chauffeur service?”
    ”Right there, Spi.” Then Queen turned again to me. ”You ever... experiment, John?”
    ”No.”
    ”You decide to enter the laboratory, keep me in mind, huh?”
    And with that, Ricky Queen walked back toward the entrance of Dicey Riley’s, rolling his buns under what I now noticed were pretty tight jeans.

    Figuring I wouldn’t have long to wait, I got behind the wheel of my Cavalier.
    About twenty minutes later, Buford Biggs hurried out of the bar and sprinted to an old Pontiac Bonneville I’d seen at Spi Held’s house the day before. He fumbled some with his keys at the lock, which gave me the chance to leave my car and walk over to him.
    Glancing at me, Biggs scowled. ”Don’t got no more time for you now.”
    ”And I understand why, so I’ll ride shotgun a while.” The lines on his collapsing face grew deeper. ”Say what?”
    ”I’ll come with you, and we can talk on the way to picking up Kalil.”
    ”How about if I don’t want you in my car?”
    ”Then I follow you in mine, and eventually we talk, or I tell Colonel Helides he can write one less check this month.”
    ”You’d do that?”
    ”Reluctantly.”
    Biggs gave a look harder than his scowl, trying to back me down. Then he gave it up. ”Yeah, you would, babe.” Biggs opened his door. ”Go around, I let you in.”
    Once we were settled, he started up and drove east on Second Street. We had two cars ahead of us when the railroad gate came down.
    ”Shit-mother-shit!”
    Biggs craned his neck around, but there were three or four cars behind us, with nowhere to back up or turn around.
    ”Mother- fuck -er. You let me alone, I’m way past here by now.”
    ”Maybe, maybe not.” I stopped for a moment ”Just how much cocaine is Spi Held using?”
    Biggs watched the train roar by, mostly flatbeds with road equipment lashed to them.
    ”Mr. Biggs?”
    ”You got me by the shorts, you might’s well call me Buford, like any other white mother’.”
    ”How much is Held snorting?”
    ”Don’t know.” A slap at the steering wheel. ”He always done some, but it was under control, ‘less the man start mixing and matching.”
    ”With other drugs.”
    ”Booze, more likely.”
    I thought back to Jeanette Held telling me about her husband’s twin addictions. ”And is he mixing cocaine with alcohol now?”
    Biggs glanced at me once, then back to the