The Pink Flamingo Murders (17 page)

“Oh, come on. Have a real drink. On me. How about some Hot Sex?” he said with a big grin, and held out a bottle. Good thing I read the label before I decked him. Hot Sex was the name of the liqueur. It looked brownish, like Bailey’s Irish Cream.

“Don’t know you well enough for Hot Sex,” I said. “How about a Bud?”

“Cute,” he said. “Beer. That’s better.” Vinnie opened a bottle and put it down in front of me with a cold glass. I didn’t have to drink it, just order it, to make Vinnie happy. He was one of those men who felt threatened if he couldn’t control a woman. Getting me to order booze when I didn’t want it was his way of taking charge. Vinnie put the sliced fruit into plastic cups on the bar and set about polishing glasses. I watched him work. He was a scuzzy human but a good bartender.

“What do you know about Johnny’s death?” I asked.

“Nothin’,” he said. “I was real bummed out. Him and me, we had plans. Now I got nothin’.”

“What kind of plans?”

“We was going to open a bar like this in South St. Louis. Had the name and everything. Pudknocker’s. Cute, huh?”

“Cute doesn’t begin to describe it,” I said. He thought that was a compliment.

“This lady friend of Johnny’s was gonna bankroll him with some money she got from her ex-husband. Man, she was hot for Johnny. She was about sixty, but not bad looking for an old lady. He had the place all picked out, too, near this real nice street, North Dakota Place. Thought we’d get us a classy clientele
that way and do the neighborhood a favor. Liven the place up. We’d have your hot bod contest, your wet T-shirt contest, your Harley leather night, your shake your booty night, your karaoke and disco nights—something different every night. There’s nothing like that there now. We didn’t see nothing but gook and spic restaurants, and you can’t eat in those places, unless you like eatin’ cat, know what I mean?”

Vinnie took my stunned silence for approval and kept talking.

“You’d think those people would welcome a white man. Well, some of them did, and the rent was real cheap on this building, but then this nosy old bitch killed any chance of us gettin’ a liquor license. No liquor. No bar.”

“What was her name?” As if I couldn’t guess. For once, I agreed with Caroline.

Vinnie taxed his tiny brain. “What was it? Karla? Catherine? Caroline! That’s it, Caroline. Always wore cutoffs and T-shirts. Looked like a dyke to me. Spread a lot of stories about us running a biker bar.”

Harley night. I made the connection. “You were the motorcycle bar she stopped from getting a liquor license.”

“She was a liar,” Vinnie said hotly. “All we had was one Harley night once a week, and she told everybody we were a Hell’s Angels’ hangout. It was just a bunch of yuppies who liked to wear leather. There weren’t no bikers in our bar. Look around. You see any bikers here?”

I didn’t see anyone, period. “This second time, Johnny was smarter. He found an even better place, a storefront right down from the entrance to North Dakota Place on Grand Avenue, but he kept real quiet about it. The building was owned by some gook.”

I couldn’t take it any more. “If the man was Vietnamese, say so,” I said.

“Huh?” Vinnie said, “I don’t know what he was. Vietnamese, Korean, who gives a shit?”

“Listen, Vinnie, just call him Asian, okay?”

He looked at me suspiciously. “Whatever. This Aaasian,” he said, dragging the word out, “couldn’t talk so good, so he wouldn’t be telling anybody our plans. He just wanted his money in cash. This time Johnny was careful. Johnny was slick. He could work people around to his way of thinking, especially the ladies. He started runnin’ around North Dakota Place every morning, wearin’ those little short-shorts of his, showin’ his glutes and gettin’ them old maids around there all hot and bothered. That way they’d be on his side at liquor license time. Johnny knew running every morning with his butt hanging out was turning a lot of cranks.”

Including mine. I thought of myself staring at him. Served me right.

“Johnny’s ace in the hole was this homely, skinny broad, the dyke’s best friend. He’d talk recycling and shit to her by the hour and she loved it. He figured if things got ugly, she’d side with him. I mean, he had a real dick, and her dyke friend didn’t, and if he had to, he’d screw her. Johnny was already humping the old broad for the bar money, so what was one more lonely lady? Along with feeling out lonesome ladies, heh-heh, he was feeling out the neighbors. Took him ten seconds to figure out a lot of them didn’t like Caroline the Dyke. He didn’t say anything to them because the time wasn’t right, but he thought they’d be in his corner just because she wasn’t. Meanwhile, the more the neighbors saw him running, the more they’d know he wasn’t a biker, if Caroline started spreading her lies again. Caroline was helping him, too. She was ticking people off right and left. Every time Johnny heard she had another fight he’d say ‘That’s one more for my side.’ He
even ran on her grass. He knew it would make her nuts and get him more supporters.”

“Wasn’t he afraid she’d make trouble for him?”

“What could she do to Johnny?”

Kill him. And for better reasons than he wouldn’t keep off the grass. Caroline must have known what Johnny was up to. She knew everything in that neighborhood, and she knew he’d tried to start a bar before. When he dumped Caroline’s wheelbarrow into the fountain, and we laughed at her, he was demonstrating his power. This time he just might have enough neighborhood support to get his liquor license. Even her faithful friend Patricia found him attractive. Why did Caroline keep her mouth shut about who Johnny Hawkeye really was? Maybe because she was planning something even more devious than he was.

Now it made sense. Now I had a motive for Caroline, and it was a lot better than running on her grass. The barbarians were at her gates, bringing wet T-shirt contests within the very sight of her angels.

All I had to do was prove it.

Well, actually, I had to write a column first. And check in at the office. And call Lyle. Ralph purred his Jaguar purr all the way back to the
Gazette
and didn’t even get too unhappy when we sat for fifteen minutes in another downtown traffic jam. All around us cars were dying in the ferocious heat, and drivers were turning off their air conditioning to keep their cars running, but not Ralph. Ralph was cool. You could keep ice cream in Ralph.

For once things were quiet at the office. No new memos. No new gossip. No sign of Charlie or Nails. No messages from anyone, not even Lyle. I called his office and he wasn’t there. The department secretary said she thought he was gone for the day. I called his home and no one answered. I wondered if Lyle was working late again, and if so, why he wasn’t at his office.
I thought about my father telling my mother he had to work late, when he was really screwing around. Charlie and the guys at the
Gazette
used the same excuse. Some wives tried to track their husbands down by calling them at the Last Word, but the bartender was wise to that trick. He’d yell real loud, “Is Charlie here?” and Charlie would know that was the your-wife’s-on-the-phone signal and shake his head no. The wife wouldn’t hear anything but the question.

But Lyle wouldn’t do that. He loved me. He wanted to marry me. Of course, Charlie and his bed-hopping buddies were married, and so was my father. If I married Lyle, I wondered if I’d be calling the bars in a few years, another desperate wife with a cheating husband. It was an unworthy idea, and if Lyle had called me right back, he might have nipped it in the bud. But he didn’t, and my suspicions blossomed into something ugly, and I couldn’t get its roots out of my heart.

I think because I was so upset over Lyle, I didn’t remember to call Pam Klein about the mother-loving Erwin. I stayed at work way too long, waiting in case Lyle called. He could call me at home, too, but I wanted to hear from him now. I kept putting off leaving. When the phone rang at seven-thirty, I pounced on it. But it wasn’t Lyle. It was Margie, and she was laughing. I’d never heard her sound so genuinely happy.

“You gotta see my lawn,” she said, her rasp softened into a burr. “I’ve been flocked.”

“Forked?” I said. “I’ve already seen a forked lawn, thanks.”

“Not forked, flocked. This is done with flamingos. You gotta see it.”

It was déjà vu all over again, but I told Margie I’d come look at her lawn. What the heck. Lyle wasn’t going to call.

Margie’s lawn was a riot of hot pink, striped with
black evening shadows. There must have been a hundred plastic flamingos in her yard. Some were set up in rows and flocks and others were stuck in the ground at random. One flamingo peered out of the yew bushes, as if it had been flushed from its cover. Against the summer-green lawn, the plastic flamingos looked silly, stylish, and ridiculous.

“I did it.” Dina giggled. “I gave her the bird. We needed a laugh, so I had Margie flocked. My church does it for a fund raiser. The women’s club puts the flamingos on the lawn, and then you have to pay to have them removed.”

“Church-approved blackmail?” I asked.

“It’s a donation,” Dina said. “Even if you don’t give us any money, we’ll take them away the next day. It’s our most successful moneymaker. People consider it an honor to be flocked. It’s like T.P.’ing for grownups.”

That’s what Margie reminded me of—a high school girl who had just discovered that her yard and all the trees and shrubs were covered with loops of toilet paper. Now she knew she was popular. “I love it!” she said. She picked up a flamingo and danced with it, then held it overhead like a trophy, while Dina took her picture. Then Dina photographed her with the flock. Dale and Kathy came over, arms around each other, looking chipper despite Kathy’s recent downsizing. Even poor Patricia, lean and unloved in her “Walk for Wildlife” T-shirt, managed a pale smile.

“These are genuine Featherstone flamingos, designed by Don Featherstone, the inventor of the pink plastic flamingo,” Dina said. “You can tell by the bright color. The other ones are Pepto-Bismol pink. Plus Featherstone flamingos are signed on their butts.” She upended one, and we checked the signature.

“Tasteful,” I said.

“That’s what it’s all about,” Dina said. “I saw Featherstone
on TV. He bragged that before he came along, only the rich had lawn ornaments. ‘I brought poor taste to poor people,’ he said.” We considered Feather-stone a St. Louisian not only in spirit but also by marriage. His wife, Nancy, was a St. Louis girl, even though she and her husband now lived in Massachusetts.

“This is so South Side,” Margie said, and she was right. It played to the South Side obsession to decorate lawns with rubber and plastic. Along with buying countless plastic ducks, deer, swans, and donkey carts, we had the first known program for recycling truck tires. We made them into planters by turning the tires inside-out. Then we cut the edges into triangular flaps and painted the tires white. A yuppie hosta would die of shame if you put it in a tire planter. They require sturdier breeds like geraniums and petunias, which flourish in my neighborhood.

Tire planters, alas, would not be allowed on upscale North Dakota Place.

“How long are those tacky things going to be in your yard?” a voice demanded, and I didn’t have to turn around to see who it was. I knew it was Caroline. She was wheeling her barrow down the sidewalk, and she looked like an escapee from the loony bin. The sweat was coming off her in sheets, and her eyes were wild and angry.

“They’ll stay for as long as I want,” Margie said, defiantly.

“You have to get them out of there,” Caroline said, and I could hear the desperation in her voice. “They’re bad for the neighborhood. They’ll give the wrong image. People will think—they’ll think you are gay.”

“If you want, I can have my boyfriend fuck me on the front lawn, so everyone will know I’m straight,” Margie said. “But if I was gay, what’s it to you?”

“It’s not what you are,” Caroline said. “It’s what the
West County real estate agents will see. It will look bad. I’m trying to sell that house at two hundred, and I’m bringing in a van-load tomorrow. You have to remove those tacky things.” Her voice was somewhere between a command and a plea.

“I don’t have to do anything. This is my property,” Margie said, and her rasp sounded like a wasp on steroids. Her face was beet red with purple tinges, and veins stood out on her neck. Caroline was about the same shade, so furious she was having trouble talking. Their rage was so hot, I expected them to burst into flames. They flung insults across the lawn like Viking goddesses hurling thunderbolts. The rest of us stood ineffectually on the sidelines. Dina made a halfhearted attempt to explain that the flamingos would be removed tomorrow, but Margie shooed her away like a fly.

“Those flamingos will be gone by morning,” Caroline said imperiously.

“Over my dead body,” Margie screamed. “Better yet, over
your
dead body. Everyone hear me? Touch one flamingo, Caroline, and you’re a dead woman.”

Caroline picked up her wheelbarrow and rolled it toward her yard.

Dina burst into tears. “I only wanted us to have fun,” she said.

“This is North Dakota Place,” Margie snapped. “We can’t have fun. It wouldn’t look right.”

I was dazed by the swift viciousness of the fight. I wondered if I’d see Margie alive tomorrow.

Caroline was screaming at Margie. Her sturdy face was distorted with rage. Her eyes burned with crazy anger. Her mouth was a black cave, filled with hate. Out of it came a scream as loud as a siren. It was a siren . . . several sirens . . . sirens. That’s what woke me up. What time was it? I glanced groggily at my bedside alarm clock. Six-oh-six in the morning. Why were the sirens screaming again? I looked out the window and saw a howling parade of police cars. I didn’t wait for the EMS ambulance, but I knew it would follow. They were all heading toward North Dakota Place.