The Music Lovers by Jonathan Valin

Author:Jonathan Valin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AudioGO
Published: 2013-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

13

IT WAS beginning to look like Leon’s little circle of friends had at least one thing in common besides stereo. It also looked like Sheila had a funny way of repaying her sneaky but sweet lover for saving her life.

To avoid future surprises I asked Pavel Fleischer if Hank Diamond—the one member of the club I hadn’t yet met—had also been . . . shtupping Sheila Mozkowski.

“I don’t think so,” Pavel said miserably. “You don’t know how ashamed I feel.”

“It’ll be our little secret,” I told him. “Did Sheila tell you anything more about the guy with the records?”

“She says she has known him from before, in the seventies when he was performer. She says his name is Bob Adams.”

“Did she mention whether he came from Detroit?”

Pavel Fleischer shook his head. “No. He talks with kind of Southern accent, I think. Like Sherwood.”

“What did he look like, this Bob Adams?”

“He is a big guy, fat. Maybe he is forty years old. He has red hair, this guy, and a square face and blue eyes.”

I hated to admit it, but it did sound as if Bob Adams looked like Richard Wagner.

“There was something about this guy I don’t like. You go into so many strangers’ house like I do, you figure out how to know if there is gonna be trouble. This guy, he was pretending to be nice guy. But his eyes . . . they’re not nice. Also he did something bums me out—real bummer. We’re talking about these records he has, and Sheila, she says something . . . I dunno what, but I think it is funny. Only this guy, he doesn’t think it’s funny, so he hits Sheila on the cheek. Not hard, but not like no slap, either. Sheila, she laughs, but I don’t think it is funny. So, I leave.”

“Did you ever see this Bob Adams again?”

“No. I don’t want to see him again. Later Sheila tells me she isn’t gonna see him no more either. She says he’s just a one-night stand. Old times’ sake. I tell her I am upset how he hits her, but she tells me ‘I will handle it.’” Pavel Fleischer ducked his head. “Sheila is pretty good—best—at handling guys.”

“When was all this?”

“I guess maybe three and half, maybe four years. Nineteen eighty-eight.”

“O.K., Pavel. Thanks.”

Sighing as if his heart would break, Pavel got up from the table. “I guess I should go back to the room. Someday I’ll get enough courage to tell Leon. It is a bummer what I do . . . what I do to him. Total bummer.”

“He probably already knows,” I said reassuringly.

“It does not matter. I must tell him.”

******

I took what Leon and Pavel Fleischer had told me down to the CPD on Ezzard Charles. I found Al Foster, my dour friend on homicide, in his cramped little office, smoking up the usual storm. Officially they’d limited smoking at the CPD to certain areas of the building—just like they had everywhere else in the world.

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