Shipwrecked heart, my shipwrecked heart…
Watching for your sails on the horizon.
Not a peep from Cleo’s end.
“I’d sound a whole lot better with a band,” I tell her. “By the way, if you’re charting the chords on the refrain, it’s C, G, A-minor, A-minor seven, then hack to G—”
“You bastard!” she explodes in the strangled cadence of a nine-year-old brat.
I suppose I should be more sensitive. “Cleo, I’m just trying to help. You missed that minor seven when you did the song at Jimmy’s funeral.”
Three years of lessons and I’m spouting off like I’m frigging Segovia. I’ve played barely a lick since college, though I’ve still got my old Yamaha and a fairly reliable ear.
“Hey, Tagger? You’re done.” Impressively, Cleo Rio has composed herself. I get a sense of what young Evan experienced that night in the condo—her voice has turned glacial. She says, “You’re fucking done. I’m not wasting another minute on you.”
Lord, who can blame her.
A man comes on the line.
“We got your girlfriend,” he says.
“She’s not my girlfriend, but she’d better be alive.”
“She is.”
“Can this be Jerry?” I say. “Bodyguard to the stars?”
“Be at Jizz tonight. Main room. Ten sharp.”
Exactly what I’d hoped for: They’re offering to trade Janet for Jimmy Stoma’s song.
“Ten sharp, dickhead. Bring the package.”
Package? This is what comes from watching reruns of Hawaii Five-0.
“Oh,” I say. “You must mean the master recording that belongs to the estate of the late James Bradley Stomarti?”
“Ten o’clock. Come alone.” Jerry doesn’t seem eager to get to know me over the phone.
“How’s that empty eye socket, big fella?”
Boy, when I get rolling I just can’t shut it down. It used to drive my mother nuts; Anne, too.
“Jerry, you listening? I want my laptop back, you worthless simian fuck.”
“I shoulda”—more heavy interference, like they’re driving past an airport radar tower—”when I had the chance.”
“Put her on the phone,” I tell him.
“No, dickhead. She don’t wanna talk anymore.”
“Not Cleo. Your guest.”
“She ain’t here,” Jerry informs me.
“That’s convenient.”
“She’s alive, okay? Just like I told you.”
“I’d love to take your word for it, Jer, but that would require me having an IQ no higher than my shoe size. So I won’t be making another move until I hear the lady’s voice.”
Out of the corner of my eye I spy the eavesdropping opossum man, loping nimbly away. From the end of the phone line comes a muffled rustling—Jerry, covering the receiver while he and Jimmy’s widow debate strategy. Then: “Okay. The girl, she’ll call you at three-thirty. Gimme a number.”
“It’s 555-2169.”
“Where the hell’s that?”
“Brad and Jennifer’s place. We play rummy every Thursday,” I say. “It’s my office phone, you ass-scratching baboon.”
Jerry unleashes a string of bilious epithets. It’s possible I’ve offended him. In the background, the former Cynthia Jane Zigler is yowling like a bobcat caught in a belt sander.
“They should make a movie about you two,” I tell Jerry. “Whitney Houston could play Cleo. For you I’m thinking either Kevin Costner or Ru Paul.”
“Blow me,” he responds, then hangs up.
Instantly I feel drained and fuzzy-headed. Frightened, too, mostly for Janet. I rest on the bait bench, drying my sweaty palms on my trousers. Ninety-two-year-old Ike is chasing a larcenous pelican down the length of the pier. He’s my new hero. Buying a fresh set of teeth at the dawn of one’s tenth decade—talk about a positive outlook! He returns triumphant from the pursuit, brandishing a slimy handful of mushed pilchards. He alights next to me, saying, “Jack, that was the ballsiest half of an interview I ever heard.”
“Sorry. I got caught up in the moment.”
“Don’t be sorry, it was priceless. All my years in the business, I could’ve never gotten away with something like that.”
Putting an arm around his spindly shoulders, I hear myself say, “What makes you think I’ll get away with it?”
26
A cardinal rule of the business is that reporters should never become part of the story. I’m hopelessly up to my nuts in this one. And while I’m dying to tell Emma about the telephone call from Cleo, I know she’d want me to call the cops.