Free Fire Lake by Jonathan Valin Page B

had nothing
to do with Lonnie Jack. But I didn't believe that. There was a
connection. It was just going to take a lot of dangerous work to
piece it together. I hoped that it was worth the effort, that it got
me closer to Lonnie, because if it didn't, I knew that I could end up
dead too--for "personal" reasons.
    14
    After finishing with George, I located a house phone,
sitting on a console beneath a gilded mirror across from the
newsstand. I picked it up and rang Karen's room.
    "It's me," I said. "Any luck with your
friends in St. Louis?"
    "Not really," Karen said. "You've got
to remember, Harry, that I haven't lived the life in almost ten
years. Most of the old crowd knows that."
    I sighed. "So nobody's talking?"
    "Lonnie was in St. Louis, late last week.
Down-and-out. That's about all I've been able to discover."
    "I'm surprised that he didn't contact you."
    "Well, I'm not," Karen said with a grim
laugh. "The last time we talked, right before his trial two
years ago, I made it very clear that he and I were history. I think
he finally understood that I was serious. It takes a while with
Lonnie. He'll just keep sticking his finger in the socket, unless
someone turns off the juice."
    "How did you turn it off?" I asked.
    "At the trial, I told him that if he showed up
at my house or tried to see the kids, I'd call the cops again."
    "Again?"
    "I called the cops on him the last time he was
at my house," Karen said without apology. "He'd come over
to see the kids--stoned out of his mind, as usual. We got into an
argument over his life-style, if that's the right word, and he began
raving about how he was going to take the children away with him, so
far away that I'd never see them again. Then he started to break
things--little things, stuff my mother had given me and I had given
the kids. He was completely out of his head. I didn't want to see him
get busted--you know how I feel about cops. But I didn't think I had
a choice."
    "The cops busted him?"
    "It didn't come to that, thank God. Lonnie left
before they showed up, and I didn't press charges. A couple of weeks
later, he got caught for possession in an East St. Louis shooting
gallery."
    "And that's when they sent him to Lexington?"
    She said yes. "I worked hard to get my house,
Harry," Karen said with sudden defensiveness, as if I'd accused
her of selling Lonnie out. "I worked hard to build a life for me
and my children. He had no right-"
    "I understand, Karen," I said in a soothing
tone of voice. "You did the right thing."
    But she didn't sound convinced. "What's the
'right thing' to do with a man like Lonnie?" she said
despairingly. "Sometimes I think if I'd had a little more
patience with him, if I'd given him one more chance . . . And then I
ask myself, 'Who are you kidding; You, of all people!' That day at my
house, he claimed he was going to get straight--that he had a big
deal cooking with some booking agents that was going to make him
healthy again. But when you've heard a thing a hundred times, maybe
two hundred times, and it never happens ... well, it gets old. I told
him he was full of shit, and that's what started the argument that
ended with my calling the fuzz."
    She sighed wearilv. "During those last few
years, from about '8o on, it seemed as if Lonnie always had a 'big
deal' cooking. It was like his bow to the spirit of the age. You
know, fuck the sixties. Fuck sharing and peace and love. He was going
to become a capitalist, like the rest of the country. Lonnie, a
capitalist! Well, as he said, who knew more about the consumer
mentality than he did? If he couldn't figure out what would make
people buy it all, who could? His whole life had come down to
engineering a big score. To a magical fix. Something that would even
it all up--all those years of sticking a needle in his arm. He really
believed in his own fantasy-that the clouds were going to part
one day and a savior was going to descend and carry him off to Fire
Lake."
    "Fire Lake?" I said.
    "It's a private