Walk on the Wild Side Read online

  The flashlight doesn’t come back, but the soldiers are still close. One of them says something to the other, who laughs again.

  Footsteps. Five meters away. Four. Three. Kane can’t see anything, it’s too dark. The man doesn’t have the flashlight. That was someone else. The soldier stops at the base of the tree. So close that if Kane reached out, he could touch the man’s leg.

  The man is still. Then the first splash of urine hits the vegetation and Kane. It’s a thick stream, the man has been holding it a long time. He’s sighing with pleasure as he pisses. It’s pungent, not just from the local diet, but the man is dehydrated.

  A voice calls out and he replies, irritated. Still pissing.

  Kane’s face is soaked and the urine is flowing into his sweat-stained shirt.

  The NVA finishes. Buttons up and walks away.

  Kane waits. The voices are moving on.

  How far?

  Kane and the others don’t move. The first faint indication of BMNT lightens the small gap. They can still hear sounds of troops. Orders. Something metal clatters. Kane sniffs and realizes it’s a cooking fire. The NVA are bivouacking in the jungle next to the target. How close to their position? It doesn’t matter. They can’t conduct the recon.

  Not today.

  They can only hope the NVA move on. Perhaps continue the search after a break? Or are they stopping for the day?

  Kane slowly lowers to CAR. Slumps back against Merrick.

  As the morning wears on, Thao has to wake Merrick up when he begins to snore once more, this time louder. They can hear voices and other sounds and there’s no indication the NVA are breaking camp.

  Kane’s mind wanders, his muscles twitch. He smells fresh urine and knows either Thao or Merrick had to relieve themselves. He can’t reach his canteen, not without a major readjustment of the three inside the hole and that will cause noise and noise will get them killed. A tiny voice is screaming deep in his brain, desperate to get out of this hole. An almost uncontrollable urge to move.

  Another sound. Shovels into earth. They’re burying their dead.

  There is also the sound of the NVA moving. The voices pick up urgency. Are they leaving? Were they here to police up and bury bodies?

  Orders being issued. The NVA are starting another search. Kane gingerly brings the CAR up, his hand twitching. He keeps his finger on the outside of the trigger guard. At first, the voices seem be fading, but by mid-afternoon it’s clear the line of searchers is coming this way once more.

  Kane aims at the tangled brush, peering through the opening. Angled up, all he can see is blue sky.

  Closer.

  Kane can’t hear Thao or Merrick breathing, they’re so quiet. His own lungs are working slowly.

  Closer. A voice calls out, not far away. What has he seen? Someone is pushing through the debris. A sharp exclamation of pain and then cursing, familiar in any language. Sweat slides down Kane’s face. Despite his best effort, the muzzle of his rifle is shivering. He keeps his finger off the trigger. He’s afraid if he has to leave the hole, his legs won’t respond.

  Everything is so tight. The earth surrounding them, the tendrils of roots draped over him. Merrick’s hot body.

  A branch snaps. Close, very close. Just a few feet away. Kane blinks, trying to focus, but the small patch of blue gives him nothing to fix on.

  The muzzle of an AK-47 appears, then a face behind it, peering in. Kane’s eyes focus. Meets the gaze of an old man, face wrinkled, eyes crinkled. The man is staring directly at him. The man’s eyes narrow in recognition. Their eyes lock.

  9

  Thursday Night,

  11 August 1977

  CHELSEA, MANHATTAN

  The Roundabout Stage wasn’t far from Jane Street, roughly fifteen city blocks to Chelsea, the neighborhood to the north of the Meatpacking District. It was definitely ‘off-Broadway’ although Pope, Morticia or Truvey could have educated Kane that the term didn’t mean location, but a theater with less than five hundred seats. One of those pieces of trivia Brother Benedict hadn’t passed on as he’d been more into history than the arts.

  Kane was glad she’d given him the address because the marquee was simply a window with a poster in it taped to the inside of a tiny ticket office set next to a blacked out door in a nondescript brick building that had no windows. There was no one in the ticket office. The play being hawked on the poster was titled Naked and there was a picture of Truvey on stage in a red men’s bathrobe that was invitingly uncinched, but not far enough to cause problems with censorship, which made Kane wonder if there was censorship in New York City given the state of the Times Square area. She looked better in a robe than Pope.

  “Right,” Kane muttered as he read the poster and checked to make sure the forty-five was loose in the holster under his denim shirt.

  The theater was on the north side of the street and Kane tried the door. It was open, but he figured discretion was the better part of not being stupid so he went around, through the alley, to the back. He vaguely remembered something about backstage doors being the key to theaters. West 24th made an odd bow to the south between 8th and 9th Avenues, meaning the rear of the theater was actually on that street, not backing to another row of buildings. An unmarked steel door was the only possibility. Kane gave it a try, but it was locked. He pulled the kit out of his map case and picked it, a skill passed to him from a former investigator who’d worked at Toni’s old firm.

  He kept his hand near the forty-five as he slipped inside. A narrow, dark hallway extended twenty feet then took a right. Kane walked down it. When he made the turn a large man with a prodigious beer gut blocked his way. A wider corridor to the left led to the stage while there were several doors to the right along a hall, the dressing rooms. “How’d you get in?”

  “Door was open,” Kane said.

  “Damn it,” the man said. “I keep telling ‘em the lock don’t work right, but do they listen to me?” He focused on the immediate concern. “Who are you?”

  “I’m here to see Truvey.” There were voices echoing from the stage, a man and Truvey’s.

  “Yeah, you and every other mook, except you’re supposed to be in the audience.”

  “She’s a friend and she—”

  “Yeah, you and every other mook who’s seen her.”

  “No. Really.” Kane was still mulling over the man’s use of mook. “She just called me before she had to go back on stage. For her big scene.”

  The guy frowned. “Had a creep, couple weeks ago, taped the lock. Came in, ogling the dressing room. I gave him a good beating.”

  Kane could hear the voices upping in volume, but the words were indistinct. “She called me because she’s worried about some guy in the audience.”

  The big man laughed. “You sneak in the back door claiming she’s worried about some guy who bought a ticket and came in the front door? Good one. I been working here seven months and I heard all sorts. Every excuse in the world. I like Truvey and—”

  “And her name rhymes with groovy,” Kane said. He pulled out his moleskin notebook and produced Truvey’s card. “She gave me this.”

  Applause echoed.

  The guy looked at the card, then at Kane. “Yeah. Okay. You wait here. They’ll be back in a sec.”

  He moved toward the stage, leaving Kane alone.

  Kane edged toward the stage, trying to see into the audience. The play was over and the middling sized crowd of probably a hundred, almost all men, was moving toward the exits. He didn’t see any of the Flint Boys, but even with the house lights on, the place was pretty dark. He spotted Truvey in the red robe featured on the poster and some guy, wearing a blue robe, exiting on the far side of the stage.

  Kane circled back around to the corridor with the dressing rooms.

  “K!” Truvey cried out when she saw him, apparently having given him her own designation. She ran forward and wrapped her arms around him. Her co-star disappeared through one of the doors, leaving them alone.

&
nbsp; Kane stood still, then patted her on the back with one hand, while looking past her big hair to make sure there wasn’t a Navajo tracking her from behind. She continued to hold on, and he glanced over his shoulder.

  “Truvey?” he finally said.

  She let go and looked up at him, and there were tears in her eyes. “You really came!”

  Kane frowned. “I said I would.”

  “I know,” Truvey said, “but guys say all sorts of things. I mean to just drop whatever you were doing and come here because I called, I mean it’s like, I don’t know, like picking someone up at the airport, not that I got a car, or helping them move apartments. Like really, really, nice.”

  “The Indian?” Kane asked.

  Truvey blinked. “Oh. Yeah. He was in the back.”

  “Why do you think he had anything to do with Yazzie or—”

  “Oh, yeah,” Truvey said, recalling a key thing she’d left out in her hurried phone call. “He pointed at me in the middle of the second act and did this.” She was perhaps over-acting, but the simulated slitting of the throat was enough to indicate it was a Hard Flint Boy. “I spotted him leaving as we were finishing and just before the house lights came on and we took our bows and it was weird because everyone always stays for the bows, because, well you know.” She indicated the loose robe and leaned forward a bit, the front parting, then straightened and pouted. “I got my lines right, but it didn’t have the usual zing, you know, not the same. It’s not easy, you know, having to remember all those words while doing all the right moves and being on my spot and all that. People think it’s easy, but that’s because we have to make it look easy and that’s the hard part.”

  Kane nodded at her logic. “Right. Sounds like he’s one of them.” He checked both directions. “You better get dressed. I’ll escort you home.”

  “Oh.” Truvey’s pout deepened. “I was thinking about it, you know, when Lance was doing his third act monologue and—”

  “Lance?” Kane asked.

  She indicated her co-star’s dressing room door. “Lance. That’s not his real name, but Lance Forth, his stage name, I don’t know, seems a little off, you know? Not like Rock Hudson. I mean, that’s a man’s man name. Or Cary Grant, but did you know his real name was Archibald Leach? I mean Archibald? Who names a kid that? What do you get called? Archie? Or Baldie? And Leach? He did right on the nom-da-plume, don’t you think? But I think my one name thing is special, you know, easy to remember. I think it’s the wave of the future.”

  Kane was trying to keep track. “What were you thinking about that had something to do with your place?”

  Truvey blinked, gears shifted, and she found the right lane to proceed. “That Indian, the cute one with the weird eyes, he came to my flat which I share with another girl that next morning after thing on the boat to talk to me and he wasn’t particularly nice, but doesn’t that mean they know where I live? And if this guy in the audience tonight was up to no good and he knows Jazzie, then he knows where I live, right?”

  “Right,” Kane agreed.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have called you,” Truvey said as she headed for a door with a faded gold star hand-painted on it. “But there was something about the guy. More than him just being an Indian. He was looking at me weird. Oh yeah and the old--” She did the throat slitting. “That kinda bothered me and it should, shouldn’t it?” She paused at the door. “I mean, lots of the guys in the audience are looking at me a bit weird, but usually nice, you know the kind of look where they kinda want you but they keep their distance, but this guy, he was looking at me mean, like he wished he could slice me up with lasers, like what happened to James Bond in that movie. Well, almost happened.”

  She opened the door and Kane reacted instinctively, stepping in front of her, hand hovering over the forty-five, half-expecting a Navajo to be lurking, but the tiny room, more a windowless closet, was empty.

  “I’ll wait outside while you get changed,” Kane said.

  “Come on in,” Truvey said as she shrugged off the robe, revealing flesh colored bra and panties. “It ain’t a strip show. There are limits. I hear some of these younger playwrights are going for the full nudie thing, but it seems like a schtick, doesn’t it? It’s about the story. It’s always gotta be about the story. The arc.”

  As she went on, Kane waited, since she would have had to push against the small table with mirror for him to open the door and she was busy pulling on some jeans while talking.

  “I know the name of the play is suggestive, but it’s about naked emotions, not people,” Truvey continued. “Isn’t letting your emotions out kind of being naked, but in a different way?” She paused and glanced at him. “Did you catch the final scene?”

  “I just got here,” Kane said. “And the bouncer was giving me a hard time.”

  “Oh, he’s a big teddy bear,” Truvey said. “And he’s not a bouncer. He’s an usher. Although sometimes he’s got to remove guys who get too close to the stage, well, really, like on the stage. That’s just not allowed.”

  Truvey buttoned up a blouse, then turned to the mirror. She grabbed a towel and worked hard for almost a minute, cleaning off the heavy make-up. When she was done, she turned to Kane and he was surprised at how young she suddenly appeared. Her cheeks were rosy from the scrubbing and her lips pale minus the bright red.

  “How old are you?” Kane asked.

  Truvey rolled her eyes. “Not cool, man, not cool.” She laughed. “I don’t get you at all, K, but I dig you, you know? I mean, when I thought I needed help, the only person who came to mind was you. Far out, right?”

  “Right. Are you ready?”

  She picked up her large, leather tasseled purse. “Yep. Where? Your place?”

  “Uh. No.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to seduce you, Mister Robinson.” She frowned. “I think I got that one backwards.”

  “It’s not that,” Kane said. “I’ve had some problems at my apartment lately.”

  “Bad landlord?”

  “Bad visitors.”

  “I hate when people drop by unannounced,” Truvey said, putting the strap of her purse over her head and letting hang by her side. “My place is out, your place is out, what place is in?” Something occurred to her. “Why would that cowboy guy from the boat send one of his Indians after me? He paid me off and I already talked to Jazzie? I don’t get it.”

  That was the first thing Kane had thought about after getting her call and heading over here. “Crawford is erasing all loose ends. Guys like him tend to be a bit paranoid.” He cracked the door and checked the hallway. Clear. He pressed against Truvey to open the door all the way, feeling her warmth and more, then exited and she followed.

  “Sorry I’m all sweaty but the place doesn’t have showers.” She cocked her head. “’Erasing’?”

  “Like he did Selkis.”

  That stopped Truvey in her tracks. “You mean he wants to kill me? That’s not very nice is it?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Shouldn’t we go to the cops?” Truvey asked.

  “It won’t do any good,” Kane said. They reached the end of the hallway and he turned left, toward the stage door. He went with the simplest explanation. “Crawford is rich. Rich people can get away with stuff the rest of us can’t.”

  “Ain’t that the truth!” Truvey said as they walked to the stage door. “It ain’t fair at all. I mean, I like money as much as the next gal, but it doesn’t make you a good person, does it? Almost seems like it makes you a bad person, cause most of the rich people I’ve met are jerks and the thing I really don’t get is that they’re cheap. Me, if I had money, I wouldn’t be cheap. I’d spread the wealth you know. Capitalism, not communism.”

  “Yeah,” Kane said. He had his hand on the forty-five as he pushed open the heavy steel door. “Wait here a sec.” He held the door open and checked both ways on 24th. No sign of danger, but he didn’t like the set-up, which it obviously was. The Hard Flint Boy had te
legraphed his intentions to Truvey and there could only be one reason for that: to draw Kane here. Perhaps they were going for a twofer.

  “Come on,” he said. “How did you have my phone number?”

  “Oh, Morti gave it to me earlier today. I ate lunch in the diner. Your cook, Sweet-T, is really good. And he’s really nice.”

  “’Sweet-T’?”

  “He is sweet, isn’t he? So small and cuddly.”

  Kane wondered what Truvey would think if she ever saw Thao wielding his machete. “Why did Morticia give you my phone number?” Kane wondered out loud, but Truvey took it as an actual question.

  “She said that anyone who knows you runs the chance of having problems happen because you’re like that kid in Snoopy, you know the one with the cloud over his head all the time, or is he dirty all the time, whichever, but she says trouble seems to follow you and if it followed me I should call you because you’re good at dealing with trouble.”

  They reached the corner of 8th.

  Truvey was on a roll. “Actually, that’s not totally true and I don’t want to get Morti, that’s what I call her, but just between us, in trouble, because I told her something I probably shouldn’t have told her and she got worried and that’s when she gave me your number.”

  “What did you tell her?” Kane asked.

  Truvey was looking down and the cracked pavement. “I mighta said something about getting attacked on the boat. I didn’t say anything about the bomb, or who was there, other than you handled yourself really good.”

  “Yeah,” Kane said. “Might not want to tell people about that.”

  “Where are we going?” Truvey asked as Kane halted and looked about.

  Kane pointed ahead. “Taking the train to the Village.”

  Truvey was confused. “It’s only one stop. We can walk, save the money.”

  “But it’s an important stop,” Kane said. “That Indian is following us.”

  Truvey spun about, searching. “Where?”

  “I haven’t been able to spot him,” Kane admitted, “but he’s around.”