Down And Dirty

By noon Monday, while Cordelia was playing silicon Nancy Drew, Jack had moved Buddy Holley into his eighth-floor room at the Hotel California. "You've got an open account," the desk clerk had said, so they ordered up sumptuous lunches.

Jack watched as Holley unpacked a compact tape deck and a box of cassettes. There was an eclectic selection of new age music-lots of Windham Hill albums, along with starkly packaged relaxation tapes of wind, storm, sea, rain-and a varied lot of early rock, blues, and country. "Got some scarce stuff here," said Holley, picking up a handful of what were obviously home-dubbed tapes. "Tiny Bradshaw, Lo

"What's that?" Jack pointed at what seemed to be the only vinyl record in the box of tapes.

"I'm real proud of that." Holley held up the 45. "'Jole Blon.' Waylon Je

Jack took the record and examined it gingerly, as though looking at a holy relic. " I guess maybe I heard this on WSN."

"Yep," said Holley. "Just about everybody I respect from that era learned about music first from listenin' to the Grand Ole Opry."

Jack set down the 45 of "Joie Blon." A tremendous lassitude swept across him. He looked at the remains of lunch. Nausea rocked back and forth in his belly. He sat back on the hotel couch and tried to keep his voice steady. "'Fore I came to New York, I listened to the Opry all the time. Once I was here, I found a station out of Virginia dat carried it."

"You come from the same place as your niece?" Holley said interestedly.

Jack nodded.

"Alligator your totem too?"

Jack said nothing, trying to control the new pain in his gut.

"'Gator's a powerful guardian animal spirit," said Holley. " I wouldn't mess with one."

Jack doubled up and tried not to whimper.

Holley was at his side. "Somethin' wrong?" He ran his hands down Jack's chest and stomach. His fingers fluttered lightly over the man's belly. He whistled. "Oh, man, I think you've got some trouble here."

"I know," said Jack. He groaned. Any other year he'd be pretty sure he could avoid the flu-type stomach bugs. But Tachyon had briefed him about opportunistic infections. He'd had the instant image of viruses zeroing in on him from every pesthole in the world. " I think maybe it's just the flu."

Holley shook his head. "It's a heavy-duty power intrusion I'm pickin' up here."

"It's a bug."

"And the bug's gettin' through to you because your protection, your personal mantle is screwed."

"Couldn't have put it better myself," said Jack.

Holley took his hands away from Jack's abdomen. "Sorry, nothin' personal. I don't know if Cordelia told you, but I-well, I know something about this stuff." Jack looked back at him bewilderedly. "What you need," said Holley seriously, "is a traditional treatment. You need to have the intrusion sucked out. I think it's the only way."

Jack couldn't help himself. He started chuckling, then guffawing. He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed like this. It hurt to laugh, but it helped as well. Buddy Holley looked on, apparently astonished. Finally Jack straightened a bit and said, "Sorry, I just don't think, uh, sucking an intrusion out of my body would be a real wise idea right now."

"Don't get me wrong," said Holley. "I'm talkin' about a psychic thing, pullin' out the cause of the discomfort usin' the power of the soul and the mind."

"I'm not." Jack started laughing again. But Dieu, he did feel better.

By two in the afternoon Cordelia had accessed both the New York Public Library Reference Base and the Public Records DB in Albany. She covered several notebook pages with scrawled numbers and notes. Her task was akin to one of the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles she never had the patience to finish.

Shrike Music was a wholly owned subsidiary of Monopoly Holdings, a New York corporation. Cordelia had dialed Monopoly's central Manhattan number and tried for the president. Whom she eventually got was the executive vice president for corporate affairs. That man told her the Buddy Holley matter was not his to comment upon, but that she should send a detailed letter to Monopoly's president, one Co

Cordelia ascertained from Public Records that Monopoly Holdings was a division of the Infundibulum Corporation, a consortium controlled by CariBank in Nassau. The call to Infundibulum netted her a frustrating twenty minutes holding for an equally unsatisfactory conversation with the CEO's executive assistant. The long distance call to Nassau got her a heavily accented Bahamian voice claiming complete confusion about this Holley chap.

After hanging up, Cordelia regarded the frustration the phone represented. " I think I go home now," she said to herself. A break was in order. She could come back to the office later and work all night.

Veronica and Cordelia shared a high-rise apartment downtown on Maiden Lane. There wasn't much of a view-the living room windows looked out on a narrow courtyard with eleventh-floor neighbors only thirty feet away. At first it had been like watching very dull big-screen TV Cordelia quickly learned to ignore the rest of the building. It was pleasant just having her own small room. Veronica could use the rest of the apartment as she pleased.

Cordelia had made the maximum use of her room, engaging a Soho carpenter to build an inexpensive frame of two-byfours to support her bed. Instant sleeping loft. She just had to remember not to roll off the top during the night. The six feet of space beneath the mattress allowed her a closet, book shelves, and space to store her albums. That left her most of the wallspace for prints and posters. One wall was dominated by a color poster of Ayers Rock at dawn. The opposite wall had the common WHEN YOU'RE UP TO YOUR ASS IN ALLIGATORS poster, but with the tired maxim's payoff amended in black marker to read YOU

KNOW YOU'RE HOME.

Cordelia was slotting a Suza

"Just a date." Veronica rolled her eyes. "It's a guy from Malta with a crush on both Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor." She changed the subject. "Listen, any good tickets left for Saturday?"

"At twenty-five hundred dollars a pop, I can't really comp you," said Cordelia.

"No problem. These are for management. Miranda and Ichiko can afford them. They just would like a little consideration about table placement. Close to the stage okay?"

"I'll see what I can do." Cordelia jotted a note and put her book of Things to Do back in her handbag.

"So how's work?" said Veronica i

"Sounds like you could use a real detective."

"If I knew one, I'd ask. I'm desperate."

"Well," said Veronica. "It just so happens maybe I can help you out."

"You want to tell me what you're talking about?" It would be so good, thought Cordelia, to turn this over to someone else.

"Not yet," Veronica said. "Let me work on it. And you can make sure those seats are good ones."

"Help me get Buddy Holley in front of the cameras," said Cordelia, "and I'll let Miranda and Ichiko sit onstage behind the monitors. They can hold the microphones. Anything their hearts desire."