Page 62 of The Happy Month
“Anyway, thanks for the phone numbers. I’m calling them now. Has Lydia’s door been closed since you got here?”
“Yeah.”
She nodded and turned on her computer. After that I walked to the back. Manny and Virginia Marker lived in Eagle Rock. I called the number Karen had found and got an answering machine. I decided it was too complicated to leave a message; I’d call back later. Before answering machines, if you didn’t get an answer you could call back to your heart’s content. Now that everyone had an answering machine it seemed rude to call back if you’d already left a message. That’s the main reason I didn’t.
Rocky Havoc had a number in Long Beach. That shouldn’t surprise me. Long Beach had a pretty large lesbian population. Unfortunately, when I called the number it had been disconnected. There was a street address, and it took me a few moments to realize it was around the corner from us. 243 Lime Avenue.
As I walked through the lobby again, I said to Karen, “One of these addresses you got is right around the corner.”
“It took you four days to figure that out?”
“It took me four days to look. I figured it out pretty fast.”
“Tell her I said ‘hello’.”
I decided to ignore that and just walked out the door. It was over eighty degrees and expected to hit ninety sometime in the afternoon. The sky was clear and there was a barely there breeze. Lime Avenue was two blocks down. When I reached it, I turned north and walked almost the whole block. Right before 3rd Street there was a small, clapboard, one-story courtyard complex made of five small buildings. It was painted light green with cream-colored trim. Between the two buildings at the front was a black iron gate that had been added at some point. It wasn’t a great part of town.
The two buildings at the front were 239 and 247. That meant the other buildings had the numbers in-between. There was a call box attached to the fence. I pushed the button for 243 and waited. And waited. Nothing happened.
I could see 243 from where I stood. It was the back building. I couldn’t tell if it looked lived in or not. Taking a chance, I pressed all the buttons to see if anyone in the complex was at home.
While I waited, I moved my shoulder around to loosen it up. Ronnie was right, I should go to a doctor. It had gotten worse over the years. When I was a bartender, I managed toavoid lifting cases of beer and wine whenever possible. I wasn’t a dick about it, I’d tip the other bartenders if there wasn’t a barback around. Lifting a single bottle of vodka was well within my abilities.
A screen door flopped, and a short, squat little woman in her late twenties came out of 245. Her hair was cropped except for a patch above her forehead, and she wore a T-shirt that said QUEER NATION. She looked at me and said, “Yeah?”
“I’m trying to find Rocky Havoc. Do you know if she’s around?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“My name’s Dom Reilly. I used to be a bartender at the Hawk. Now I’m looking into the murder of a lesbian in 1949. Vera Korenko. She and Rocky were friends.”
I put as many bona fides into my response as possible, and still she stared at me like I was a Christian minister ready to cart her off to a conversion camp.
“She told me all about Vera. What do you want to know?”
“Well, I’d like to know where Rocky is.”
“Yeah, I get that. I’m not sure I want to tell you. Do you get that?” She was jutting out her chin ready to keep fighting.
“It’s coming across,” I admitted. “So, you’re close to Rocky? You watch out for her?”
“Everyone watches out for Rocky. You don’t know who she is? You said you worked at the Hawk. You should know who she is.”
“I worked there for about three years.”
Doing some quick math, Rocky had to be at least in her mid-70s and was probably more like 80. That made it less likely I’d know who she was even if she was locally famous.
“Do you want to know what she told me about Vera or not?”
“Okay.”
It would have been nice if she’d open the gate and at least sit on the stoop with me, but that didn’t seem likely. I said, “She and Vera were friends. How close?”
“Close. Rocky’s a bull dyke. I don’t like that expression, but she calls herself that. To each their own, you know? Vera was femme. Rocky was crazy about her, but she wasn’t Vera’s type. Vera had a thing for straight girls, mostly married.”
“Did she mention any straight girls in particular?”
“A lot actually. She wasn’t a U-Haul kind of girl.”
