Crime Plus Music (6 page)

“It's your word against his right now. Of course, once we go to trial . . .” His retainer is paid up front. It's $10,000 to begin with. We don't have access to our money, and I'm the only one who even has a family I can turn to. Or could. I think about my parents, I think about going back to them and asking for a loan. As if I can do that. I have to admire the genius of it; he's got us exactly where he wants us.

O
N
THE
WAY
BACK
FROM
the lawyer's office, we park at the Santa Monica pier and walk out to the far end where there's a metal railing and a view of the ocean.

“What are we going to do?” Tara asks.

“We could quit,” Eileen says.

“And let him get away with it?” I counter. I stare at the horizon and I think about all of it, about chance and fate and how I could have been somewhere else, anywhere else, but no, I was there, that day and he found me. It was for a reason, it has to have all been for a reason. Then I take a deep breath and turn to them and say, “It's not just about the money.” I tell them the rest.

Eileen goes pale.

“You too,” Tara says dully.

It's like the nursery fable only in reverse. Three blind mice have been given back the gift of sight.

D
ID
YOU
KNOW
THAT
YOU
can make daiquiris at home in a blender? All you need are the proper ingredients. For fun, pop in a festive paper umbrella. Then it's like you're really on vacation on some Hawaiian beach.

We lift our glasses and make a toast. “To us, Johnny.”

From our deck, the sunset turns the water blood red.

We clink, all four of us and drink to the dregs.

“We're going to rule the world we are,” he proclaims loudly.

We agree.

“We have a surprise for you,” I say. Then we lead him back inside, right down the hall to his bedroom. We strip him down to his underwear. He looks happy, thinking he knows what's coming next. He pats the bed vaguely. It rocks underneath him. Eileen and Tara step back. But I don't. I lean in and ask him, “Why did you talk to me that day?”

His eyes can't quite focus by then.

“What?”

“That day you met me, at the record store. Why me?”

He grunts. There's that lizard-like smile. “Because I did.”

“Because you did? That's it?”

I get nothing more.

“By the way,” Eileen tells him, “you're fired.”

“You can't fire me.” Only it doesn't come out cleanly, the words slur and then he hears himself and asks, “What is this? What did you give me?” And the panic sets in. I start to back up but he's too fast, he grabs me by my wrist and pulls me down to him. Hisses it at me. “Where would you have been without me, go on, tell me that why don't you, you ungrateful bitch. I made you!” There's spittle on the side of his mouth. His tongue darts out and freezes and I unlock his fingers as he falls backwards.

T
ARA
WASHES
THE
GLASSES
AND
the blender, though what could they really find in it? His drink was special, still. We put them all away. We sit out on the deck and watch the moon rise.

One by one the lights in the other houses go out.

Captain of the swim team and Red Cross certified as a senior lifeguard. I worked at the local pool every summer, didn't I? It takes all of us to get him down to the water's edge. But once he's in I use the fireman's carry. There's no need to keep his head above water. I swim out past the end of the rock wall. And let go.

H
IS
BODY
WASHES
UP
TWO
weeks later. The toxicology is inconclusive, but Johnny O's reputation precedes him. No one's surprised when they find the cocktail of downers in his system. It's clear he went for a midnight swim and succumbed.

It's a terrible tragedy. We are all beside ourselves with grief. We can hardly stand to talk about it. But somehow I manage to say a few words at his funeral.

After that, the requests pour in. Everyone wants to manage us but we tell them no. We say that none of them could ever match our Johnny. We prefer to take the reins ourselves.

T
HESE
DAYS
,
INTERVIEWERS
ALWAYS
WANT
to know the secret to our longevity as a band. “We like and trust each other” is what I tell them. “And we love playing music together. There's no other secret than that.”

But honestly, the way musicians get taken advantage of it's surprising more bands don't do what we did.

Eventually they always come 'round to Johnny. I smile as I imagine Johnny writhing in that special corner of hell that is reserved for him and I say, “I'm not a big believer, but I like to think that wherever he is, he knows and he's happy for us. It was his vision that pulled this band together in the first place and we owe him so much. I mean, honestly, where would we be if not for him?”

SHADEROC THE SOUL SHAKER

BY GARY PHILLIPS

O
H
FOR
THE
DAYS
WHEN
he could snort him a line of flake while some groupie was down on her knees, her head buried between his spread leather-clad legs, pleasuring him like he was a visiting pharaoh. Goddamn, that time in his room backstage at the Forum . . . the two big-titty blondes. Sheeet, the top of his head damn near blew off that night as they sexed him up, down, and sideways.

Churchill “Church” Gibson shook his head, regretfully cycling away from the glorious past into the stone-cold reality of now. He glared at the screen of his laptop as if it were an adversary. He put aside his coffee and tapped the keyboard and the music app replayed his most troubling track through external speakers. The green audio readout traveling from left to right as the music filled his compact home studio space.

He tapped a key again midway through to bring silence. The track was all right but it wasn't killer. It merely filled space. None of the tracks so far were killer. No, that wasn't quite right, two of them he was happy with . . . not in love with, but their shine only highlighted how lackluster the others were.

“Motherfuck,” he muttered. There came a momentary gurgle in the middle of his chest and he closed his eyes, centering his chi, breathing in and out slowly, summoning his mindfulness. He took hold of his crutch, sliding his arm through the bracket, latching onto the T-handle, and rose from his seat with a grunt. He walked over to his wet bar that no longer was stocked with Johnnie Walker Black, Majesté XO cognac, and blunts thick as a big mama's clit and trés potent, as if laced with jet fuel. Now it was an assortment of bottled green and red concoctions of blended fruits and vegetables, vitamins and his various pills for blood pressure and what have you. He sighed and checking his Tag Heuer Carrera watch, a gift from Quincy Jones, took his meds. He swigged it down with some kind of kale-and-berry smoothie that while he would never actually like the taste, at least his tolerance for the stuff had grown.

“Those were the days, weren't they, Church?”

Licking green foam from over his top lip, Gibson turned and gaped. There in his studio stood Shirley King. She'd been one of his backup singers once upon a time, one of the few who managed to make it across that twenty-foot expanse to the spotlight. He'd produced her first hit album. Then it got messy when they got involved. But, he frowned, hadn't she died in that car crash in Paris? Higher than a 707 in '02?

“Shirley,” he muttered.

She always had a body to make a sissy hard and she was rockin' it in a lavender dress with a slit up her shapely thigh. She sat before his laptop, swiveling toward him on the chair's ball bearings.

“I must be trippin',” he said. After the stroke four years ago, these days he barely had imbibed any booze or what they called controlled substances. Okay, sure, there was a blast of Macallan 25 he'd had last Christmas, alone, but it was only one drink and that was months ago.

“Maybe I'm your subconscious talking to you, baby,” she said. King crossed those magnificent legs. “Maybe the mother ship beamed you up and deposited you in the cosmic slop you could be swimming in, or could be I'm the constipation you got sneaking that bacon cheeseburger yesterday.”

He grinned. “I'm weak.”

“That was your excuse when I caught you wiggling your finger in Jeanie on the tour bus.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

She smiled sweetly, crooking a finger at him. “Come here.”

He did, feeling more spryness in his steps than in some time. Like when he was a youngster staying ahead of the Five-O and the competition. He'd amassed enough slangin' rock to finance dubbing his first effort, a cassette tape of his songs he sold out of the trunk of his hoopty and at swap meets.

She turned back to his laptop and after a few taps, brought up the clips from
Shaderoc the Soul Shaker
. This was a new version of the Stagolee inspired, “super bad” brother persona created by a comedian friend of Gibson's named Renaldo Redd. Redd had parlayed the character into a couple of low budget actioners in the eighties—
Shaderoc vs. Dr. Funkenstein
and
Shaderoc: Seekers of the Pimp Cane
. Both had done well at the box office. Enough so that Redd had been preparing a third outing, the bigger budget
Shaolin Shaderoc
. But he died of a heart attack as he panted while peeling off the panties of a percussionist named Sheila Ramirez.

Even before Redd's body was interned at Inglewood Cemetery, complete with six Amazon honeys in gold hot pants and matching top hats as honorary dancing pallbearers, Gibson had made his bid for the character. He'd recalled coming up with the Shaderoc moniker as he and Redd drove up the coast one day, passing a bottle of Jack back and forth while Redd told him about his idea. But through various legal and who-knew-what-all-else twists and turns, Ramirez eventually secured the rights to the character.

“Wasn't there a Shaderoc graphic novel out in the early oughts?” the King apparition said. They both watched the actor playing Shaderoc as
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
-like, he sailed through the air delivering a devastating kung fu kick to three bad-guy ninjas, scattering them like bowling pins.

“There was. There was also a talk of a limited series on cable but that didn't happen. Until . . .”

“Until Thomlinson.”

She meant the cult director/writer Nic Thomlinson known for giving grindhouse the A-picture treatment. He worked out the rights with Ramirez and the flick was scheduled to drop on Netflix. Going full bore on the retro vibe, he brought Gibson out of semi-retirement to do the soundtrack.

“But it's not flowing like it used to, huh, Church? Like the notes were singing their song in your head.”

“I felt it when I worked out the title song and recorded with Marie and Sylvia,” he answered, the two old friends of both of them.

“Meaning they knew where to fill in where you left holes.”

“True,” he admitted. For the big love scene between Shaderoc and Xtal, the Queen of the Aztecs, he'd scrapped the dopey lyrics he'd written and went with an instrumental version, which had come out pretty good he'd concluded. But since then, he was running on fumes and Thomlinson and the suits would know it.

“I've already pushed back the deadline,” he said, knowing such increased expectations or dampened them in some quarters.

Elbows on the desk, King leaned forward, her fingers with their gold twinkling nails pressed before her face as she looped the scene again. This time with the lackluster track Gibson had been listening to underneath. “Speaking of fingers, stud, yours still work, right?”

“About the only damn thing that does.”

“Figures. Get your guitar.”

He shrugged and, turning, reached for his Fender Telecaster. He pulled a stool close and turned on the amp as King swung the mics attached to adjustable arms into position. She smelled good, Gibson noted as he plucked the strings while he tuned it. How could a ghost have a scent? But then again, how the hell did a ghost have solid form?

If a gun was pressed to Gibson's head, later he couldn't recount how it all went down. How Shirley King dusted off the Yamaha keyboard in the closet and played the thing like when he first heard her in that night spot on Florence in the 'hood. He worked his fingers and thumbs on the strings like he too was in his twenties again, standing before thousands in the Sports Arena, his licks moving through them like current. He was sweating and rasping the songs that used to make the honeys swoon and the men bop their heads. The music like a cocoon around him as he and his band, Rhythm Pulse, did their thing and there was no one who could touch them.

Head back, the Telecaster a blood-pumping part of his body, was a thing alive that didn't make music, but rather the music channeled through it from the Source. He was plugged in and the crowd was with him. Looking across the sea of faces he saw his ex-manager Sandy Igar. Smiling. Into it. What the hell . . . ? Head back in the gloom, Gibson's eyes came open.

“About time, ya goddamn lazy bastard.”

Igar was standing over him in Haggar flared slacks, that porno-actor mustache and those two-tone aviator shades—a look he sported well past its prime.

“Dreaming about pussy your sorry self ain't never gonna get you can do any time. Right now we got to lay down some sound, son.”

With effort, given his left leg was the one with the strength, he sat up on the couch in his studio. “I'm in purgatory, is that it? I have to earn my way out by completing this soundtrack?” The real Igar was still alive but had been ensconced, some said entombed, in his Bel Air mansion for years. He was said to be suffering from a short list of long-suffering ailments.

The fit Igar before him had his hands on his hips like an NFL coach judging his new prospect, a sour look on his face. “Look, crip, you gonna sit there and wallow in self-pity or you going to earn?”

“Carrot and stick I see,” Gibson muttered, slipping on his crutch. He must have sued Igar at least three times during his music career. “Or better,” he huffed, getting to his feet. “That stick up your ass.”

“My job is not to stroke your fragile ego,” Igar began. “That's what groupies and your hangers-on are for.”

“‘My job is to get the best out of you, and that takes sweat and blood,'” Gibson finished. He knew all the Igarisms. The two settled in, trading insults and verbal jabs back and forth, as Gibson reworked two other tracks. As had happened to him in the past, he was annoyed and envious that Igar knew his shit only too well. He couldn't sight read like Gibson and at best could keep time banging a cowbell, but the sumabitch knew how to pace, where to emphasize this riff over that one, what to bring up and what to bring down. More in the role of engineer than musician, Gibson worked the mixing board cutting and remixing tracks at Igar's direction.

“I'm going to grow tulips out of the shit you spread,” Igar said.

“I'm'a put my two lips on ya mama tonight,” Gibson replied, but followed the other man's cue.

Finally, as dawn approached, they took stock. “Okay, that's not too bad,” the Igar simulacrum allowed, sitting on the stool, his ear turned toward the playback monitor speakers.

A spent Gibson was back sitting on the couch. “It's great. The best I've done in I don't know how long.” He said in a whispery tone as if his vocal chords were made of some gossamer material.

Igar turned his head toward him. It was a stuttering, mechanical motion, as if there were gears in his neck and they slipped slightly with the effort. He removed his glasses revealing all-white eyes with red glowing outlines. This did not rattle Gibson.

“About my end,” the Igar thing said.

“I got your end, bitch.” Gibson grabbed his crotch, managing a chuckle.

Igar returned the insult but Gibson's attention was on a framed original artwork print on a near wall. It was the cover for his
Dominoes with Selassie
album. The more he stared the more he was drawn into the scene—that of a man and woman warrior back to back with futuristic-looking weapons in their hands battling half-monster-reptile and half-machine creatures. He blinked, and it was if he were floating away.

“About time you go here, brother man.”

Gibson blinked again. Before him was Shaderoc the Deifier, the Demolisher, the Defender, the Soul Shaker. He was a big cat as Gibson had always imagined him. Six four or five and built like Mike Strahan back when or J. J. Watt now.

“Sheeet,” he muttered.

Shaderoc wasn't real. That is, Gibson looked down at his hands and they looked like . . . his hands. But this construct before him was hyper-idealized, like a live pencil drawing by comic book artist Jack Kirby, inked with fluidity by Gil Kane and colored in a combination of a bold primary palette.

“We've got our back up against it, Church,” said Shaderoc in his, of course, bass voice. He was hefting a retro kind of space rifle like what Dr. Funkenstein's minions used in that movie. The weapon looked like it was made of tin and plastic. In a scabbard attached to his belt was a sword.

Gibson realized they were in a good-sized cave and a group of people were crowded in here too. There was the fine muscled sister from the album cover in a kind of modified tiger-skin bikini with breechcloth, heavy gravity boots slinging a large, curved knife weapon like the Klingon's bat'leth. There was Miles Davis in his
Kind of Blue
phase, sharp in a sharkskin suit, shades, and wielding a onyx samurai sword, the blade phasing in and out of solidity. Near him was a hunched over Chet Baker who worked the valves of his horn and out of the music end swirled color tendrils that snapped as they lashed and licked the thick air. Big Mama Thornton was in a svelte aquamarine space suit while she expertly loaded a magazine into a World War II-era Thompson submachine gun. Like a character in a Sam Fuller movie, she rolled the dead cigar stump around in her mouth.

“Are you ready?” Shaderoc asked Gibson.

Given he was unarmed and unprepared, he said, “What can I do?”

Shaderoc looked bemused. “Bring it home, baby, bring it home.”

“I want you bad,” the wet-dream woman said as she threw her body roughly against Shaderoc's. She kissed him with lustful ferocity as he kneaded a handful of her incredible backside.

Looking away, Gibson was handed his Telecaster by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Charlie Christian sparked a cheroot behind him. Gibson heard a screech and turning around, flying into the cave were musical notes the size of greyhounds. They undulated as they spread about, the strains of Muzak and smooth jazz. Miles was visibly shaken but rallied as an F note rushed at him, a jaw full of razor-like teeth opening in the note head. Those teeth closed in on Miles's face but he executed a spinning move, his sword cleanly severing the note head from the stem.