Down And Dirty

"It's a deal. Now then," continued Veronica, "before I go uptown, whose turn is it to buy cat food?"

The men sat and listened to music and drank. Buddy Holley drank soda. Jack drank dark beer. Room service was accommodating. They talked. Every once in a while Holley would get up to change the tapes. They went through Jimmie Rodgers and Carl Perkins, Hank Williams and Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Conway Twitty. Jack was surprised that the singer had some tapes of newer artists: Lyle Lovett and Dwight Yoakum and Steve Earle. "Like the monkey said," Holley said simply, "you gotta keep up with evolution."

They talked about the fifties-about Louisiana bayou country and the dry vastness of West Texas. "Tell you," said Holley, "it ain't sayin' much about Lubbock when about the only place to go on Saturday night is Amarillo. I went back there after the oil boom, and then again after the crash, and nothin' much had changed either time."

"No Buddy Holley Day?" said Jack.

"Figure I'll have to die before that happens."

They had a lot in common, Jack decided. Except there'd never be a Jack Robicheaux Day in Atelier Parish. Not even after he'd died. He fumbled through the box of cassettes and held up one that was unlabeled except for the word "new."

"What's this?"

"Aw, that's nothin'," said Holley. "Nothin' you'd want to hear."

There was something about the way he'd protested, Jack thought. When Buddy Holley went into the bathroom, Jack set the mysterious cassette in the deck and punched "play." The music was simple and unadorned. There was no backup, no double-tracking, no layered sound. The singing was reflective in the first song, exuberant in the second. The lyrics were mature. The characteristic hiccup in the vocal line was there. This was Buddy Holley. Jack had never heard either of these songs before.

He heard the bathroom door open behind him. Buddy Holley said, "After the plane went down with my family, and Shrike bought all my music, people seemed to think I just wasn't go

The third song began.

"All dis is new," said Jack reverently. "Is it not?"

Buddy Holley's voice was soft and powerful. "Just as fresh as resurrection."

Tuesday

The Funhouse was no Carnegie Hall, and as with virtually any other Manhattan club, daylight didn't become it. This morning the mirrors were streaked and dusty. They'd be polished to a high sheen by Saturday. As Jack looked across toward the stage, what he mostly saw were chairs stacked on tables. The few windows and skylights admitted bars of spring sunlight that contained myriad dancing dust motes. The place smelled stale. The other predominating odor was that of machine lubricant.

Jack stood beside Buddy Holley. Holley stood beside C.C. Ryder. On the other side of C.C. was Bagabond. It was an unbreakable protocol. Bagabond had chosen to be C. C.'s constant companion and protector. Jack realized he had consciously picked a similar role with Buddy Holley. He genuinely liked the singer, and it wasn't merely a matter of nostalgia for the fifties and sixties. He felt he was becoming genuine friends with the Texan, though too bad, whispered the nasty voice in his head, you're not going to be buddies for very long. Jack had seen Dr. Tachyon earlier in the morning. Tachyon had proposed hospitalizing him. "No way," he'd said. Tachyon appealed to his reason. "Can you really predict what my version of the virus is going to do?" he'd asked. Tachyon admitted that he didn't truly know. But there were precautions… Jack had shrugged ruefully and left.

Xavier Desmond, his elephantine trunk seeming to wilt down his chest, watched over the stage preparations. He moved slowly, in the ma

The limited space in the club was being further curtailed by the camera tracks laid in front of and to the side of the stage. The tech people had cleverly rigged a superthin Louma boom from the ceiling. "Don't let it brush the chandelier!" Des said as the remote operator put the mantislike camera mount through its paces.

Even with the shafts of sun glinting off the mirror balls, the club looked drab.

Buddy Holley scratched his head. "Shoot, I've seen worse stages."

C.C. laughed and said, "I've played them."

"Guess there won't be no chicken wire around the stage, huh?"

C.C. shrugged and affected a deep, deep Texas accent. "Joe Ely used to tell me about places so tough, you had to puke three times and show a knife before they'd let you in. And that was if you was singin'."

"Des runs a classier dive," said Jack. "I figure people laying out twenty-five hundred dollars a seat aren't go

"Be more real if they did." Holley glanced at C.C. "I gotta tell you, I'm pretty excited about hearing you sing."

"Same here," said C.C., "though I'm still edgy as a cat. You decided to go on for sure?"

Holley turned to Jack. "Anything from your niece?"

Jack shook his head. "I talked to her this morning. I guess things are going slow with Shrike, but she said no sweat. Just bureaucratic runaround."

C.C. poked Holley in the ribs. "Listen, man, I will if you will."

"A challenge?" Holley slowly gri

"No!" Bagabond spoke up. "No, you won't."

Things weren't going terribly well for Cordelia. She had gotten into the office by seven. It was too bad about being so phased that she forgot about the sequence of time zones west. Little Steven's road manager wasn't terribly happy about being awakened in his hotel room at a little past four in the morning.

On the other hand, better news had come in about ten. X rays had determined that The Edge's fingers were mildly sprained rather than fractured. Even though U2's performance that night in Seattle was being scrubbed, the guitarist had a good shot at being operational by Saturday.

Then there was the matter of Shrike Music. Cordelia had a terrific flow chart with lines and arrows indicating the tangled skein owning the music publishing firm. She had lists of CEOs, presidents, vice presidents, and heads of promotion departments. And lawyers-lord, hordes of attorneys. But no one would talk to her. How come? she wondered. Is it my breath? She giggled. Fatigue, she thought. Early burn out. Way too soon. There would be time to collapse after Saturday night. She poured another cup of high-caf Columbian and started thinking seriously about Shrike and its masters, and why everyone was evading as if she were a Congressional investigator out birddogging payola charges.

The phone beeped. Good. Maybe it was one of a dozen executives co

"Hi," said her roommate. "You got the tickets for me?"

"Have you lined up Spenser, or maybe Sam Spade?"

"Even better," said Veronica. "Got somebody here I want you to talk to."

"Veronica-" she started to say. Why was everyone playing cloak-and-dagger?

"This is Croyd," said an unfamiliar male voice. "You met me. We had a little date, you, me, and Veronica."

"I remember," said Cordelia, "but-"

"I'm in investigations." Flatly.

"I guess I knew that, but I didn't think-"

"Just listen," said Croyd. "This is Veronica's idea, not mine. Maybe I can help. Maybe not. You want to know something about Shrike Music."

"Right. Buddy Holley and I need to find out who really owns his music, so I can get permission for him to sing it, and I can convince him to appear Saturday-"

"So isn't Shrike in the phone book?" said Croyd. "They've been stonewalling me like they were the Mafia or something."