One Last Hit (Joe Portugal Mysteries) Read online

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  One Last Hit

  by Nathan Walpow

  A Joe Portugal Mystery

  Copyright © 2013 Nathan Walpow

  All Rights Reserved

  What This Mystery

  Is About …

  A fat, perfect joint … Midlife crises … A Gibson SG … Fresh-squeezed orange juice … The girl who got away … An eclectic after-hours club … Julie Andrews … Local television news … Breast reduction surgery … Grilled cheese sandwiches … The Berlin Wall … A gruesome murder-suicide … One VW Beetle after another … A girl’s gun … Skipping the light fandango … Voice mail hell … eBay … Naked neighbors … A high-speed chase … A biker bar … A shootout at the beach … Cookie tins full of photographs … A hideaway in the desert … A ten-foot-tall peace symbol …

  People This Mystery

  Is About …

  Joe Portugal: TV commercial actor, lapsed musician, and perpetual stumbler over dead bodies

  Gina Vela: Joe’s best friend, former and present lover, an interior designer by trade

  Squig Jones: A shrimp of a guy who never outgrew the sixties

  Robbie “Woz” Wozniak: Squig’s pal, something of a psycho, wielding a mean electric bass

  Darren Chapman: He had what it took to make Joe feel old

  Frampton Washington: A shadow of his former self, he gave up the drums for a slide rule

  Bonnie Chapman: Three-hit wonder, record company executive, and the girl Joe wishes he’d shtupped

  Toby Bonner: Ace guitarist, Bonnie’s recording partner, unseen in twenty years

  Deanna Knox: She needed Joe for something—she just wasn’t sure what

  Detective Kalenko: He knew Joe’s history, and told him not to repeat it

  Alberta Burns: A good cop, who took one in the leg

  Aricela Castillo: The kid was all right, but she did her best to hide it

  Ronnie from Arkansas: She may not have been a real blond, but she was the real deal

  Harold “The Horse” Portugal: He decided it was time to let his son in on a secret or two

  Mott Festerling: Cradle robber, couch potato, and part-time drug dealer

  Hoss, Buck, and Pam: The boys hung out at the joint where she and her cleavage tended bar

  Vinnie Mann: Only two things mattered to him—rock and roll was one of them

  Dedicated to the memory of John Entwistle

  Why can’t we have eternal life, and never die?

  “It is not hard to compose, but it is wonderfully hard to let the superfluous notes fall under the table.” —Johannes Brahms

  Get Your

  Motor Runnin’

  A Little Is Enough

  The relic in the next seat wore a threadbare Quicksilver Messenger Service T-shirt. His long blond hair was parted in the middle. His muttonchops were impeccable. His eyes were red, his pupils huge.

  “Hit?” he said.

  I checked on Gina. She was pumping her hand in the air, yelling “dude looks like a lady” at the top of her lungs.

  Back to my new buddy. “Sure,” I said, plucking the fat, perfect joint from his grimy-fingernailed hand. I took a toke, handed it back, said thanks.

  “Anytime, man,” he said, nodding sagely. He nestled the jay between his lips, inhaled deeply, closed his eyes. His head bobbed along half a beat behind the music.

  I hadn’t had any dope in a year or more, and this stuff hit me right away. A stupid grin stole over my face. I got lost in the bass line, the tinkle of the hi-hat, the interplay between the guitars. It was groovy, man.

  The song ended. Tyler went into a rap about the band’s early days in Boston. Gina turned to me. She frowned, looked in my eyes, leaned in and sniffed. “Somebody gave you dope.”

  “Take me to an Aerosmith concert, you suffer the consequences. It was just one hit.”

  “And you’re high as a kite. You’re such a lightweight.”

  The band broke into “Big Ten Inch Record.” Gina watched Tyler’s every move. When the song was over she said, “How can a guy so ugly be so sexy?”

  “It’s the clothes.”

  “You think?”

  “If I wore clothes like that, I’d have women all over me.”

  She smiled. “Dream on,” she said.

  Halfway through “Jaded” I felt a nudge. Another offer I couldn’t refuse. When I went to give back the joint the guy nodded in Gina’s direction. I held it out in front of her. “You’ve been offered some.”

  She thought about it. She rarely indulged, maybe twice in all the years I’d known her. Finally she shook her head. “I’m driving,” she said.

  I gave the jay back. Leaned in close so he could hear. He smelled like a hemp factory. “She’s driving,” I said.

  “Me too. Back to Fresno. Gonna see ’em there again tomorrow night. I’ve seen ’em a hundred and four times.”

  “Really.”

  “Yup.”

  It took me a second to come up with an appropriate response. “Far out,” I said.

  “Far fucking out.”

  He held out a fist. I punched it with my own, turned to watch the show. Tyler was giving the mike a blow job. Ah, rock and roll.

  We stayed at Gina’s place. I crashed while she was in the bathroom. She woke me and had her way with me. When she rolled off she said, “That was transcendent.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that word. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use that word.”

  “Well.”

  “You were fantasizing about Steven Tyler, weren’t you?”

  “What? No way.”

  “Gi. You don’t have to lie about it. It doesn’t bother me.”

  “It doesn’t? I mean wouldn’t?”

  “Nope. Actually, I was fantasizing about the singer in the opening act.”

  “You thought she was sexy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s young enough to be your daughter.” Five seconds passed. Ten. “How did you know?”

  “The way you were watching him.”

  “How was I watching him?”

  “Like a mongoose watching a cobra.” Not quite what I was looking for. Clearly the dope hadn’t quite worn off.

  “You think I looked like a mongoose?”

  “It was a metaphor. Simile. Whatever.”

  “Oh.” Another few seconds passed. Her fingers idly stroked my stomach. “What is a mongoose, anyway?”

  “I think it’s like a fat weasel.”

  Her fingertips glided south.

  “Here’s what I think,” I said.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s time to break out my SG.”

  She gave me an odd smile. “That’s your electric guitar, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Her hand diverted from its course, left me altogether. She sat up. “I think you should.” She reached behind her, grabbed a pillow, laid it against the headboard, leaned back into it.

  “But you don’t think I will.”

  She was bouncing around, searching for the perfect position. “I didn’t say that.”

  She didn’t have to. I knew what she was thinking.

  Every time we saw live music, I relived my dream of being a rock star. Not someone like Steven Tyler or Joe Perry, Aerosmith’s more flamboyant guitarist, strutting around the stage with my outlandish shirt unbuttoned to my pupik, acting like I was a generation younger and getting away with it. I just wanted to be like Brad Whitford, the other guitar player. One of the guys in the background, making music I liked with people I liked, being the target of some small degree of adulation.

  A couple of years back, I’d gotten as far a
s pulling my old Epiphone acoustic out of the closet, and since then I’d played it every two or three days. I’d gotten to the point where I was at least competent, with occasional flashes of, if not quite brilliance, at least minor luminosity. The fingertips on my left hand boasted a fair set of calluses. I could play most of Tommy by heart.

  But the next step—the Gibson SG—was a whole ’nother kettle of fish.

  “I’ve been thinking about the AARP,” I said.

  “Nice segue.”

  “When I was at Austin and Vicki’s yesterday, Austin mentioned he’d gotten his invitation to join.”

  “No way Austin’s sixty-five.”

  “They come after you when you’re fifty. It was creepy, he said. The letter came right on his fiftieth birthday.”

  “So?”

  “So it got me thinking. In a year I’m going to get a letter like that.”

  “And two years after that I will too. So what?”

  “So I started thinking about my life.”

  “You never think about your life.”

  “I am now.”

  “And what are you thinking about it?”

  “That I haven’t really done anything. I’m nearly fifty and I still don’t know what to do with my life.”

  “The old midlife crisis.”

  “I suppose.” I sat up, leaned my own pillow against the headboard, positioned myself next to her. “Tonight reminded me what I want to be when I grow up.”

  “A rock and roll star.”

  “Maybe not a star, but in a rock and roll band. And seeing Aerosmith—hell, those guys are older than I am—made me think I should go for it. Unless it’s the dope talking.”

  Her hand gripped mine. “So go ahead.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “You’re humoring me.”

  “You’ve talked about this ever since I’ve known you. Even twenty years ago, you would jabber about your bands when you were a kid, especially that first one when you were living at that place in the Hills, what was it called again?”

  “The Platypuses.”

  “Right. Them. When you’d talk about them your eyes would light up. And your eyes hardly ever light up that way about anything else.”

  I thought about it. “Here’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “What?”

  “I’m afraid I’ll find out I’m terrible, and this dream of mine that I’ve sublimated for so long will be impossible, and then what?”

  “You’re a really good guitarist. I’ve heard you enough times.”

  “I’m okay. And electric is different.”

  “How?”

  “It just is.” I heaved a sigh, reached over to the nightstand for water. “I don’t even have an amplifier.”

  “What happened to your amplifier?”

  “I sold it. I figured I’d never need it again, so I sold it.”

  “But you kept the electric guitar.”

  “No way I could ever part with that.”

  “So you buy an amplifier.”

  “I guess.”

  “Not, I guess. You do it. End of story. Now go to sleep. I have clients in the morning.”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise me you’ll follow up on this.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good.” She kissed me good-night, laid her pillow and herself down. A while later thinking got too hard, and I did the same.

  I spent the next morning shuffling plants at the Kawamura Conservatory. When I got home I found three messages from Elaine on the machine, each more peeved than the last. She had a Toyota audition for me at three-thirty in North Hollywood. Where the hell was I?

  Elaine’s my agent. Also my cousin. Also, for a few years on either side of 1970, my housemate. I called back, soothed her feathers, explained again why I didn’t have a cell phone, no-not-even-a-beeper. I made myself presentable and around two headed up to North Hollywood. An early start, but you never knew about the traffic.

  There wasn’t any. I got there at twenty to three. I stashed the car at the industrial park where the casting people had their offices and walked back to Lankershim to amuse myself until audition time at Rico’s Recycled Records.

  The eight-track player in my ’72 Datsun had nearly made it through the millennium. When it finally gave up the ghost I was stuck with a clutch of eight-track tapes and no way to play them. Gina went on eBay, found a portable player, and surprised me with it on my birthday. A week and a half later it ate the Electric Light Orchestra. Gina said it was time to move up to CDs. We compromised on a cassette player.

  I replaced some of my eight-tracks and made cassettes of a few LPs. But I was stuck without Splinter. They were George Harrison protégés who had an album called The Place I Love that made my ten-best-of-the-seventies list. Until that afternoon, the only copy I’d ever seen was the eight-track cartridge gathering dust in my spare bedroom.

  I found the LP in the miscellaneous Ss, right between Azalia Snail and Salloom Sinclair & The Mother Bear. I pulled it out. $5.99. Seemed fair. I slid the album out of the jacket, angled it to the light like I knew what I was doing.

  Someone said, “Good band.”

  He was about my age, and very small. Not a little person, but a couple of inches shorter than Gina, and she’s a shrimp. He had a long dark ponytail and a receding hairline. Not a pretty combination. He wore jeans and a T-shirt from the Jefferson Airplane reunion tour. You don’t see many of those, unless you happen to be rummaging through my dresser.

  I said, “You’ve actually heard of these guys?”

  “Course I have. Hell of a group. And George, shit, he played better guitar on this than he did on his own albums.” He shook his head. “Poor George. I really miss him.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “It’s like, when John died, it was, you know, he was killed, but George—I mean, even though he was sick, he was old. Well, not old exactly, but—you know what I mean, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “So it’s like, what do they call it, the end of an era, and—”

  “Yo, Squig,” someone behind me said.

  “Yeah?”

  I turned to see who was there. The face raised a rogue memory.

  Back in ’97 there was a bank robbery in North Hollywood, not terribly far from the record store. Couple of guys came bursting into a B of A branch, armed to the teeth and wearing body armor. The law showed up, and a huge gun battle erupted, with hundreds of shots fired, ending with one of the robbers bleeding to death on the pavement because somehow the cops never got around to calling an ambulance. I’ve seen pictures of him, lying there with his hands cuffed behind his back while his life leaked out.

  The man in front of me had the same look in his eyes as that bank robber. Like everything bad that ever happened to him was your fault and he was ready to exact his vengeance. Like he would give your well-being about as much thought as that of a cockroach that crawled into his breakfast. Middle-aged, with slicked-back thick black hair, and a scar that started at the outer tip of his left eye and went down an inch, then jagged toward his nose, like a backwards L. He had shoulders like a linebacker and a lot of muscles everywhere else.

  He held up a cassette, waving it at us. “Blue Cheer,” he said. His voice was rough, like he was getting over a cold. “Outsideinside. I have it?”

  The short guy—Squig—shook his head. “Don’t think so.” Back to me. “Like Blue Cheer?”

  I dropped my voice. “Not really. A little … primeval for me.”

  “‘Primeval.’ I like that. I can’t stand ’em either. But he likes that shit.”

  He moved across the aisle, to the beginning of the alphabet. “There’s a Long John Baldry I’ve been looking for forever.”

  I reinvestigated the Ss until I felt someone standing behind me. I turned around. It was the Blue Cheer guy. One hand held three cassettes. The other, a gun, directed at my midsection.

  I managed a wild-eyed
scan of the record shop. The counter guy was on the phone, with his back to us, checking a rack against the wall. A crewcut chick with a Daffy Duck tattoo on her shoulder was at the import rack, also facing the other way. No help there.

  “There’s no need for that,” I said to the Blue Cheer fan. It didn’t seem very persuasive, but I’d heard it in a Dana Andrews movie just a couple of nights before.

  “For what?” the man with the gun said.

  “Shooting. Blood. Me dying.”

  He didn’t see it that way. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  Bang.

  Getting In Tune

  I clutched my hands to my stomach. Reflex, really. There wasn’t any good reason to do so. No searing pain wracking my guts, no dawning realization that I’d never see Gina again, no pitching face-first onto the chipped linoleum. Just a ringing in my ears. And a memory of a sound I hadn’t heard since I was a kid.

  I took a good look at the gun. Snatched it out of his hand.

  A toy. I hadn’t seen one like it in years, decades maybe. Cheap chrome plating, flaked off in spots so you could see the gray plastic underneath. SIX-GUN impressed into the part you wrapped your hand around. The kind of toy I used to play with when I was a kid. You would put a cap under the hammer, and when you’d pull the trigger the cap would go off. You could run around terrorizing the neighborhood. Good clean fun.

  “A toy,” said Squig.

  “I figured that out.”

  “For my kid,” said the linebacker. “Found it at the swap meet.”

  “Nice,” I said. “Mind telling me why you were aiming it at my stomach?”

  He smiled. “Why not?”

  It didn’t matter that it was a toy. I didn’t like him pointing it at me. I’d had a couple pointed at me over the last several years. “That was an asshole stunt.”

  “Scared you?”

  “Yes, you scared me.” He was still scaring me. That smile was like the clown’s at a funhouse.

  He took the gun from my hand, stuck it in a pocket, turned to Squig. “Guy can’t take a joke.”