Act of God by Jeremiah Healy Page B

“stupidicide,” and I wondered.
    “Awright, awright. I’m getting a little tired anyhow.”
    “Tired” came out “tarred.” As he led me into the apartment, I said, “Where are you from originally, Teagle?”
    “What difference does it make?”
    “That doesn’t sound like cooperation to me.”
    “Fuck. I’m from Baltimore, awright?”
    Ball-a-more. The inside of his apartment was low-ceilinged and sooty, probably from the wood stove in the corner. The stove didn’t look very professionally mounted on the bricks underneath it, the fireplace tools lying on the bricks instead of in their upright stand behind the stove itself. The room was a modified studio, with a king-sized bed, covers unmade, in another corner and a couple of dinette chairs grouped around some music stands near the center. There was a stack of stereo equipment next to a nineteen-inch TV with a VCR, viewable only from the bed. Spoiled smells came from a galley kitchenette, dirty pots on the range. A bathroom, with towels hung over the shower rod and wadded on the floor, was visible through a half-open door in another wall. There were no windows, and the only light fell from a faint overhead fixture and a candle burning on a heap of dark, bagged shapes.
    Teagle sat in one of the dinette chairs, carefully easing into a soft-shelled black case the guitar from the photo on Darbra Proft’s bureau. “So, like what do you want?”
    I took another chair and straddled it, my forearms resting on its back. “What led you to come up here?”
    “What, you mean like to Boston?”
    “That’s what I mean.”
    “I was on tour, man.”
    “Tour.”
    “Yeah. Me and some of my buddies from the old group were opening for this mega-band. Maybe you heard of it.” He named the band; I hadn’t. “Anyways, we went all around the northeast, playing tight and getting raves, man, raves. But their drummer, he like OD’ed one night doing a college gig up here, and the manager stiffed us on the bread, like it was our fault their drummer couldn’t balance his shit. My buddies kind of freaked, but I’d saved my money and stayed on up here when they went back to Maryland.”
    Murl-lind. “They leave you their equipment?”
    “Huh?”
    I inclined my head toward the heap of bagged shapes. “The instruments?”
    “Oh, not. Those are for my new group, man. Bass, drum kit, and keyboard. I’m lead.”
    “Lead guitar.”
    “And vocals.”
    I looked at the heap again. “Seems like a lot of cases for just instruments.”
    “It’s not just the instruments, man. We got to bring our own amps and effects rack and all when we play a club. House just provides monitors and mikes.”
    “Monitors?”
    “Like the speakers, you know?”
    “You play a lot around here, Teagle?”
    He got cagey. “We do awright. What’s this got to do with Darbra?”
    “Never know till I ask. And you answer.”
    Teagle worked his jaw. “I did answer, man. You asked me if we play a lot, and I said we do awright.”
    “How’d you spend this past weekend?”
    “Spend it? I went out Friday night.”
    “Where?”
    “No place in particular. We could of had a gig Friday night, but we turned it down.”
    “Why?”
    “Aw, it was at this queer place.”
    “A gay bar, you mean?”
    “Yeah, only they try to pass it off like it ain’t. It’s mostly married guys from the ’burbs come into it, buying the hustlers drinks like they were big brothers to them, counseling them instead of feeling them up. It’s disgusting, you ask me. That’s why we call it the ‘Fag Dad Café.’ Got the nickname from that weird movie like a couple of years ago about the diner in the desert.”
    “ Baghdad Café? ”
    “Yeah.”
    “They also made a television series from it.”
    “You say so. I don’t watch TV.”
    I looked over at the nineteen-incher. “What’s that?”
    “Oh, I just like use it for tapes, maybe check out what the hot groups are doing for videos.”
    Teagle smirked at me for no