Coffin Dodgers (21 page)

"Sure."

"Okay then."

I've just climbed onto the bike when my phone rings. It's Amy. "Any sign of him?" she asks.

"Yeah, he's home."

"Where's he been?"

"On a date."

"Why wasn't he answering his phone?"

"I hadn't given it back to him."

"No wonder the two of you are such good friends," she says. "You're a pair of complete and utter arses."

She's gone before I have the chance to come up with a devastatingly funny reply.

Dave and Amy come round that night for beer, and that's the last I see of either of them for four days. Amy's doing a bunch of late shifts, Dave's spending all his free time with Sunny, and I'm moping about my apartment, playing video games and occasionally waking up convinced that somebody's breaking in to try and kill me. We have the odd chat on the phone, but there's nothing of any importance to talk about. Seymour hasn't called, the police don't seem to be doing anything and Everett doesn't seem to be sending any more goons after me. I'm bored out of my mind.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Amy calls. "Has Dave caught up with you yet?"

"I've got a missed call from him, but I haven't called him back yet. Why?"

"He wants us to go to the pub tonight."

"Sounds good."

"And he wants us to meet Sunny."

"Ah." We're not too enthusiastic about that. Dave's clearly bowled over by her, but we're both worried that all those unfortunate dates have gone to his head and he's fallen for the first person he's met who isn't certifiable, alcoholic or both. The prospect of trying to make small talk with some tattooed loon doesn't exactly fill us with feelings of joy.

"I'm sure it'll be fine," I say. "I'm sure she's lovely."

"Are you?"

"Nope."

"Me neither."

Sunny isn't quite what we expected. She's wearing denim, but not the denim, denim and denim combination we'd predicted: she's in jeans, heels and a floaty yellow top. Her long dark hair is glossy, not greasy, and if she has tattoos or piercings she hasn't got them anywhere obvious. Either Dave is pulling a fast one and has hired an actress for the evening, or Sunny could easily swap sound engineering for modelling. She's funny, too, with a filthy laugh and a sense of humour that's almost as sick as ours. Best of all, there's an obvious chemistry between her and Dave. I like her immediately, and if the amount of whispered asides and loud cackles she's sharing with Amy are any indication, Amy does too.

I'm finding it hard to square the Sunny who's sitting with us with the stereotypical sound engineer Amy and I had imagined, but it's a while before I get the chance to ask her about it. Eventually, though, there's a lull in the conversation while Dave goes to the bar.

"So how did you get into doing sound?" I ask.

"My dad," Sunny smiles. "He was a sound guy for years, did all the big bands, but his hearing was starting to go. So he got me to help."

"Too many loud gigs?"

"Old age, really," Sunny says. "You lose your hearing over time. The high frequencies are the first ones to go, so eventually you can't hear the top end."

"And that's where the problems are."

"Yeah, that's how you end up with feedback. You need to be pretty good at hearing the top end so you can tweak it without making everything sound like someone's thrown a big blanket over the speakers. Do you do music, then?"

"Used to play in a band. A long time ago."

"Did I ever do the sound for you?"

"I don't think so. I'm sure I'd remember."

As soon as the words are out of my mouth I start to panic: it sounds like I'm trying to chat her up, which wasn't my intention. Sunny either doesn't notice, or she decides to ignore it. Either way I'm grateful.

"I was about thirteen, fourteen when I started helping out. Suited me fine -- I was mad about music, still am, and it was really exciting to be at gigs as an insider instead of as a screaming fan. I liked the work, too. By the time I was eighteen I was good enough to do the whole thing myself. My dad was more or less retired by then, so he bought me a PA system and I started doing the sound for a few local venues. I've been doing it ever since."

"Still enjoy it?"

Sunny shrugs. "There aren't many gigs these days. Most of what I do is corporate stuff. Parties, presentations, conferences, that kind of thing. The money's good, but it's hardly the sort of thing that makes your soul sing. It's not exactly doing Radiohead at a big stadium somewhere, or a bunch of punk rockers in a basement."

"Your dad must be really proud of you," Amy says.

"Oh, he is," Sunny laughs, "but that doesn't stop him from giving me the same advice every time I speak to him. 'Sunita! Are you making sure you protect your hearing?' That sort of thing."

"Whenever my mum phones she asks if I'm eating properly," I say. "And if the weather's cold, she'll remind me to wear a jumper."

Sunny laughs again. "Yeah! No matter how old you get, you're always going to be their little baby."

Amy's staring into the distance, but Dave brings her back to reality when he loudly plonks the drinks down on the table. "Talking about how great I am again?" he asks.

"Something like that," Amy says. "We're talking about giant babies."

Dave looks baffled. The three of us crack up.

I'd planned on a lie-in but I'm woken by the sound of my phone at nine o'clock. I don't recognise the number, so I hit the OK button fully prepared to shout at a computerised telemarketer.

"Is that Matt?"

"Who's this?" I croak.

"Charles Seymour, from the Journal. Sorry I haven't been in touch sooner. Is this a good time?"

"Yeah," I say, wiping the sleep from my eyes. I stumble out of bed, stumble to the coffee machine and punch the big orange power button.

"I'm just calling to give you an update," Seymour says. "I've spoken to my editor, and we both agree that there's a story here."

"That's great. When do you think you'll run it?"

Seymour clears his throat. "That's why I'm calling. Do you have anything else I don't know about?"

"I don't follow you."

"Are you sure you don't have any other photos, ones that show Everett with the other men? Any more recordings?"

"No, nothing. You've got everything I've got. That we've got."

"Okay. That's not a problem. But we're going to have to sit on this for a while."

"What do you mean?"

"We've run the whole thing past legal, and they've got some concerns. The story's solid, but we can't run it. Not yet."

"Why not? There's more than enough evidence to show that Everett's dirty."

"We've got lots of pieces, but we don't have the complete picture yet," Seymour says. "Everett is a very rich man, a very well connected man, and that means we have to be careful. If we run with what we've got, his lawyers will shut us down in a heartbeat. They'll kill the story and bury it so deep that nobody will ever dare touch it."

"So that's it? Everett gets away with it because he can afford good lawyers?"

"No, that's not it. But if we're going to do this, we need to be bullet proof. Right now, we're not."

"No evidence," I say, hoping Seymour can hear the bitterness in my voice. If he can, he doesn't acknowledge it.

"Not yet. I'm going to keep digging. But I need you to keep me informed. If you hear of anything else, find anything else, no matter how insignificant it seems, I need you to let me know."

"Okay."

"You've got my details?"

"Yeah."

"This isn't over, Matt. But if we're going to do this, we need to do it properly."

"I understand," I say. But I don't. Not really.

We arrange to meet in The First and Last just after ten. Amy's on back shift and can't make it any earlier, although Dave and I wander in just after nine to get a few pints. There's no point going through the story of Seymour's call twice, so Dave and I talk about nothing in particular until Amy turns up. She arrives at quarter past and brings three beers over to our table.
 

"Thanks," I say. "How was work?"

"Usual. What's up?"

I tell Amy and Dave about Seymour's call, but they don't seem particularly bothered. Dave's probably too busy thinking happy thoughts about Sunny. Amy, though, seems to have expected it. She looks at Dave, rolls her eyes and turns back to me.

"Fine," she says.

"Fine? Burke can't help us. Now Seymour can't help us. Unless Everett has a sudden change of heart and makes a full confession, we can't touch him."

"That's true," she says. "So let's get him to confess."

Amy's plan isn't particularly complicated, but it sounds pretty good to me.

"We keep coming up against the same problem," she explains. "No evidence. So if we can provoke Everett or Sleazy Bob to do something dumb when there's plenty of people around, we might be able to change that."

Adam Everett is the guest of honour at a charity event the day after tomorrow, raising money for people with Kynaston's Disease, and it's the sort of high profile, touchy-feely thing that Sleazy Bob will want to be associated with.
 

So we're going to sabotage it.

We spend most of the evening talking about the plan and working out who's going to do what. I think we've covered all the angles, but there's something that's been bugging me for a few days. "Here's a thing," I say. "Ever since Everett caught us on his boat, I've been waiting for them to do something. I mean, Sleazy Bob knows who I am, he can find out where I live easily enough, and Everett will have told him about the bug." Amy and Dave both nod. "So why hasn't he done anything?"

"Maybe Everett hasn't told him anything," Dave suggests. "We know they don't do details on the phone, so if they haven't had another meeting then Sleazy Bob won't know all the details yet."

"There could be an even simpler explanation," Amy adds. "Sleazy Bob is as dumb as rocks. Maybe he hasn't realised that you're the same guy Everett caught."

"Yeah, that makes sense," I say. "When you're talking about Sleazy Bob, the dumb explanation is probably the right one."

"Or maybe he does know everything," Amy adds. "Maybe he's just waiting until you turn up at work."

"Which I'll have to do the day after tomorrow."

"Yep."

"I think it'll be okay," I say. "I don't see Sleazy Bob hiding in his office, scanning cameras. Not when there are people to slime."

"As long as he's not watching, I don't think we'll have a problem," Dave says. "None of the staff are going to notice anything. It's not as if we've quit or been fired. We just haven't been turning up."

We talk some more and agree on our respective roles. Amy's going to be working the event anyway, Dave's going to be scanning the cameras for unwanted guests, and I'm going to do the actual sabotaging. For that, I need to do two things. I need to get my hands on some gadgets, and I need to track down Rodeo Rick.

Rodeo Rick does the sound for various functions at the casino, and according to Sunny he's the person most likely to be working the charity event. She was offered the gig, but she'd already taken a booking for somewhere else. The rodeo bit -- which he doesn't know about -- comes from his love of country music. Not the cool, modern stuff, but the traditional, whiny country music where everybody's crying into their beer because their dog done left them or their grandma done got hit by a meteorite. Rodeo Rick takes this kind of stuff very seriously, not just in the way he dresses -- it'll be a cold day in Hell before he goes anywhere without wearing cowboy boots -- but in the way he talks. He's adopted what he clearly thinks is an authentic country and western accent, but it just sounds as if he's suffering from a terrible disease. Factor in a bit of a personal hygiene problem and a face that looks like a huge potato and you won't be entirely surprised when I tell you that Rodeo Rick doesn't have a lot of luck with the ladies. Some people look like international playboys. Rodeo Rick looks like the sort of person who interferes with livestock. He's not a bad guy, though, and the plan won't work if I can't get him on board.

I'd originally planned to go to the electronics shop first and then find Rodeo Rick afterwards, but thinking about it the whole thing's pointless if I can't persuade Rick to do what I want to do. I don't know where he lives and I don't want to show my face at the casino just yet, so I decide to hang out in the casino car park and hope he turns up -- and that Sleazy Bob doesn't. I'm in luck. There's no sign of Sleazy Bob, but I've been in the car park for less than an hour when Rodeo Rick turns up in a dusty black panel van and parks just four spaces away from me. As ever he's in cowboy boots, too-tight jeans and a faded T-shirt with some country and western band's logo on it.

"Hey, Rick. How's it going?"

"Good," he drawls. "Real good."

"Keeping busy?"

"Yeah."

Rodeo Rick isn't the world's greatest conversationalist.

"Are you doing the Monroe suite tomorrow night?" All the casino's function suites are named after Hollywood greats, probably because Sleazy Bob thinks that's classy.

"Yeah."

"Fancy a night off?"

"What do you mean?"

"I could do the shift for you."

"Well..."

"You'd still get paid for it. It's just a set up and forget job anyway, isn't it?" When you do sound, some jobs are more difficult than others. If there's a live band or a string quartet or something like that then the sound guy's in for a busy night moving microphones and tweaking the mixing desk pretty much constantly. If it's just people talking, though, it's a doddle: test the microphones before it starts, hit start and stop on the music player at the appropriate time, be there in case anything important explodes or electrocutes people and that's about it.

"Yeah. It's an easy one." Rick looks at me quizzically, his little eyes almost disappearing into his face. "Why do you want to do it?"

"I want to impress a girl," I grin.
 

Rick grins back.
 

Excellent.

Traffic's light and I make it to the electronics shop in five minutes flat, only to spend ten minutes sighing as the grey-haired man in front of me asks a hundred thousand questions about audio cables. Eventually he buys something -- one of those cables wrapped in pseudo-science that costs ten times as much as any other cable because it's made of angels' hair and space metal, or some such crap -- and I'm back on my bike two minutes later, a cheap digital music player and a cable adapter in my pocket.