Tough Baby (Martin Fender Novel) by Jesse Sublett Read Free Book Online Page A

behind.
    If Ed the Head cared about the quick departure of the customer in the Plymouth it didn’t show on his face. Abruptly a dark bulky shape blotted out the light in the entranceway behind him. The dark shape loomed about a foot taller and a hundred and fifty pounds bigger than Ed. Inky shadows dripped down from the stone ledge of brow on Ed’s face and danced from side to side as the shape I recognized as Vick Travis reached around and turned the key in the door. They made a scary- looking couple, the three-hundred-pound man with his arm around the hundred-and-fifty-pound thug.
    I came inside and Vick looked me up and down as if I were the weird-looking one. He creaked as he moved in the extra- extra-large black motorcycle jacket, mopping his forehead with a red bandana, coaxing back a corkscrew of dark hair. “Well, what is it, Martin? Break a shoelace before a big gig? Your bass amp blow up on you? What the hell is the emergency?”
    “Retha Thomas is the emergency,” I said.
    “Never heard of her,” he said. As he stepped back to give me a few inches’ breathing room, he hit me with a suspicious look. But there was something vaguely conspiratorial about it, like a cigar store owner with some Havana cigars in the back that he’s dying for you to ask for.
    “Well, she heard of you,” I said. Ed was uncomfortably close, fingering the mop and glowering as if I were standing on the last spot of floor that needed to be mopped. I gave him a look and said, “Do you know where I went after the party last night?”
He shook his head. “I left before you. Came straight over here.”
“That’s right, Martin,” said Vick. “We had a little party of our own.”
“Then neither of you know what happened to the black girl I was with?”
    “Only the gossip we heard tonight from a couple of customers,” said Vick. “You’re the first one mentioned a name. What’s it got to do with me?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” I said. I scowled at Ed. He scowled back.
“Hey, Eddie, you get the bathroom done yet?” said Vick.
“Sure,” he said in a dull baritone.
“You mop it good, Eddie?”
“I swabbed it, yeah.”
“Well, check it again, OK?”
    “What's the matter, Vick, afraid you left something in there?” When Vick didn’t answer, he shrugged and ambled off, saying, “I’ll check it and then I’m out of here.” When he was gone, Vick motioned for me to follow.
    The store was a terrific cluttered hell of overflowing bins of used clothes, racks of leather jackets, rows of tweed, polyester, herringbone, and hound's tooth, shelves stacked with appliances, dishes, records, books, and junk with vague or unknown purposes and origins. I followed him into the back room, where dozens of old guitars hung from hooks like the carcasses of slaughtered animals. Moonlight poured in off the tinfoil lake through barred windows, enhancing the effect.
    Vick sat down on a carpeted ledge below the guitars, wheezing from the effort of walking from the front of the place to the back. He propped one boot on the edge of an old Gibson guitar amplifier and mopped his forehead again. “Tell me about it, Martin.”
    “This girl you say you never heard of came to town, asked a lot of questions about you, then got beaten to a pulp and left for dead. Whoever did it used my bass. They didn’t rob her. But someone slipped a dose of elephant tranquilizer in a drink I ended up drinking and I think it was intended for her, so that makes it look like it wasn’t just a random assault, either. You see what I’m getting at?”
    “Let’s pretend I’m stupid, OK. Might save time. Why don’t you tell me where this truckload of bullshit is headed.”
    “Like I said, she asked a lot of questions about you. Ed was at the party. Let’s pretend I’m stupid. Why don’t you tell me how these things might fit together.”
    “Man, I’m just a junk salesman. Why you trying to dump all this in my lap? Some Jane blows into town and takes