Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (31 page)

Charlie Raine was, apparently, quite well known for his ability to
avoid interviews and evade the media.

Jury read the article on Sirocco, went back and read it again. Then
he read it a third time. The other members of the band—Alvaro Jiminez,
Caton Rivers, a towering John Swann (sex symbol, and he knew it), the
drummer, Wes Whelan—all of them had been interviewed, all of them had
made comments. Jiminez scored top points for genuineness and
intelligence. Swann scored only monosyllabic, self-aggrandizing
points, like a man playing tennis with himself. Whelan and Rivers were
fairly quiet. But Charlie Raine hadn't even been in the hotel suite,
and the reporter-cum-pseudo-critic wasn't at all happy about that.

Thus the only information the reader could get about one of their
lead guitarists and vocalists was whatever the others said. It was
clear Jiminez was far more reliable than someone like Swann, who was
being upstaged all over the place. Not even that double-necked guitar
he kept on display could convince anyone that he was the main man in
this outfit.

If anyone was, it was Alvaro Jiminez, the original organizer of the
band, a black man from the Delta, a master of blues. Whelan was a
Dubliner, Rivers from Chicago, and

Swann and Raine were British. A strange assortment, the interviewer
said (with all the grace of a double-dose of
Whicker's World
).
No one took him up on "assortment"; no one enlightened him as to how
they'd come together. Jimi-nez said, "We just done fall into each
other's arms."

Nor could anyone answer the jackpot question: Why was Charlie Raine
leaving the band? "I expect—" (Jury smiled, sure Jiminez would leave
off the
t)
"—Charlie, he just want to."

And the future of the band?

"Same as the past, mate," Swann had said (offensively, according to
the thin-skinned reporter).

In various poses of self-indulgence or insouciance, they were
photographed in their roughed-up clothes and booted feet, lounging in
their suite at the Ritz.

It was a soppy, sappy interview. Jury liked the band, even Swann, in
some old-fashioned pasteboard-hero sort of way. At least all of them
were in concert when it came to this interview.

Jury put aside the magazine and folded his hands behind his head,
sitting down low on his sofa. No, they'd said, they
didn't
know why Charlie was quitting. No, again. They hadn't a clue.

Jury thought he might.

Jury went through the middle of the set of double doors. The
auditorium was empty except for a man to his right in one of the mixing
bays. Sound engineer, he supposed, for Sirocco. The fellow barely
grazed Jury with a glance, obviously too intent on his equipment to
bother with who should or shouldn't be here. More likely, he thought
Jury was one of the Odeon's staff. He probably didn't care one way or
the other; his interest was the long bank of equipment, with its
complex of knobs, levers, buttons, and slightly glowing lights that
made Jury think of a starship.

Mary Lee's appraisal of the auditorium was as far off the mark as
one could get. Far from resembling an airplane hangar or warehouse, it
still held on to the remnants of its old Art Deco splendor. Probably
the lighting fixtures weren't the originals, but it was hard to tell.

The distance from the center of the stage to where he was standing
at the rear must have been eighty or ninety feet, and the entire stage
was probably as much in width. It must have had the largest proscenium
arch in all of London, he thought.

A phalanx of lights had been set up on the side and overhead a
couple of technicians were working on the huge lighting strut, two or
three dozen lights positioned in lines along steel bands. High up as it
was, it seemed a precarious perch for the workers, unless they were
trapeze artists. The big strut swayed there, twenty feet or so above
the stage. They finished what they were doing, climbed down, and
disappeared off to the right. Jury could see part of a metal
staircase that must lead to private rooms up on the level above.

One of the humpers came in, deposited another amplifier, walked out
through the stage door off to the right. It was out there that Jury had
seen the vans parked.

The only one of the road crew left on the stage now was trailing
some sort of cable along the side of the stage and pulling a
microphone—there were five of them—over to center stage and out toward
the edge. It was the fellow Mary Lee had warned off the soft-drink
machine. He adjusted the mike and gave his attention to a voice that
must have issued from the steps on the right. All Jury could hear was
something about "lights."

The young man's answer was a laugh and a "What for?" Then he shaded
his eyes and looked toward the rear of the theater—Jury thought at
first he was about to get thrown out—but the fellow on the stage was
apparently directing his attention to the other one in the mixing bay.
The sound man raised his hand as a sign.

He picked a guitar from one of the cases, drew the strap across his
shoulder, and moved into a classic introduction to a Spanish song that
Jury thought he remembered as a Segovia number.

Mary Lee hadn't recognized him and it was her chief object in life
to meet him. As he listened to the staccato picking and arpeggiated
runs of the song, Jury thought that anonymity was not that hard to come
by. Here this lad had come face-to-face with someone who had seen his
picture again and again and she hadn't twigged it. Even in the context
of the theater he was performing in the next night, still he'd gone
unrecognized. It was perhaps not so astonishing, after all. You see
what you expect to see, and you don't expect to see the lead guitarist
of a famous rock group humping his own equipment or trying to get
himself a Coke when a half-dozen minions—not to mention Mary Lee
herself—would crawl on their knees for the privilege of supply-ing him
with whatever he needed. And you certainly wouldn't expect to see him
without the rest of his band.

And there was nothing about him that said
star
. Not his
appearance (jeans and a washed-out denim shirt), not his stage
presence. Rather remarkably (Jury thought) not his stage presence.
Charlie Raine didn't seem to have what Wiggins and Macalvie had called
"attitude." It wasn't attitude that made this classical Spanish piece
take wing. The guitar might as well have been playing him rather than
the other way round.

It was plain, raw exposure. He had to be more accurate and more
precise than if he'd been playing electric; like nerve endings, every
note was exposed.

The notes seemed to crystallize in the air, long notes arced out and
kicked back and into a lightning riff, like tracer bullets, so that
Jury felt he was caught in some sort of crossfire.

The music was fluid and frenetic at the same time. The piece
stopped, suddenly, with a thunderous succession of sustained chords.

When the echoes stopped, Jury had the strange sensation of standing
in a vacuum, air sucked out of the auditorium, walls about to collapse
inward.

Charlie Raine unstrapped the guitar and returned it to its case,
unbuttoned his shirt and wiped face and hair down with the shirttails.
Then he pulled another guitar from another case and attached the strap
to that one. It was white as blanched bone and almost glowed in the
semidarkness. He attached the cord from it to one of a trail of black
boxes, strummed a few chords, started making adjustments.

Quietly, Jury pushed open the nearby bay door just enough to look
out into the long lobby. There was no sign of Mary Lee. Then her face
appeared behind the ticket window, looking less bored than lost.
Framed in the small opening, the face appeared smaller
_r
pinched, even; and without anyone to impress it upon or intimidate it
with, considerably sadder and more vulnerable. Jury let the door whish
shut behind him and went to slot coins into the drink machine. He
grabbed up the Coke can and turned to see that Mary Lee had looked up
sharply from her magazine. Jury motioned her over.

She disappeared from the window and came out through the door to her
"office," feigning again that old look of world-weariness. "You still
here?"

"Come on."

She frowned. "Come on
where
? I got me accounts to do."

"You didn't hear that?"

"Hear what?"

Jury shoved the Coke into her hand and took her arm. And she, too
surprised by this manhandling (and probably liking it), let herself be
pushed into the auditorium. She did make a mumbled protest having to do
with losing her fucking job—

"Be quiet."

He didn't have to tell her twice.

Jury tried to pull her down into the back-row seat beside him, but
she just stood there in the aisle, open-mouthed, transfixed by the
stage, the singer, the song. She was leaning sideways, as if the
gravitational pull that had bent her toward the seat was not strong
enough to contend with the force of her discovery. Holding the can, and
in that odd listing, she was like a subject in a hypnotic trance who
might keep one arm raised in the air for hours.

Charlie Raine's voice was like his guitar, each word clearly
articulated. It filled the huge, hollow room and reminded Jury of the
clear sound one got from tapping crystal.

and yesterday's sun have all begun to fade

Charlie did not have one of those killer voices like Otis Redding or
Presley, the sort that punch out an audience with one note or phrase.
But what got to Jury was the sincerity, the
tone
that Wiggins
had rabbited on about in that argument with Macalvie that Jury had only
half-heard. Even Jury's uneducated ear could pick up the total emotion
that was going into this singing.

/
watch the streetlamp down below

I watch you turn, I watch you go

away

under yesterday's sky

The feeling contained in the song was beyond words. It was as if the
song served as a window to some expansive vista one hadn't raised the
curtain on before. Charlie was transparent; he was accessible. And Jury
bet it was this quality that must knock out his listeners.

and when the leaves are blowing down the lane I know I'll see
your image through yesterday's rain yesterday's rain yesterday's rain.

It had certainly knocked out Mary Lee. She was crying in the way
he'd seen children cry sometimes, silently unaware of the tears that
dropped like waterbeads onto the top of the can of Coke that she had
clamped in her hands.

Jury got out his handkerchief, but she was still spellbound, even
after that final chord had wavered out on the tremolo. "Come on," he
said, wiping her face for her. "He's packing up."

When Mary Lee realized that Jury meant she was to follow him down
the aisle to the stage, she became even more fixed, immobile. Except
for her head, which shook and shook, no, no, no. The fellow in the
mixing bay was gone, probably to kick the Coke machine or go to the
toilet. She had drawn her pale lips in, clamped them shut, as if making
sure nothing would explode from her mouth. All she was able to do was
make a steady
ummmmmmmm-mg
sound like a vibrating guitar
string.

Jury put his hand on her arm and gave it a little tug. He knew that
later, she'd never forgive herself if she missed this chance. "I'll do
the talking. You can just look at him."

At this she relented, caving in from the temptation of it all. She
wobbled down the aisle after Jury on her new heels and her shaky legs.

"You're Charlie Raine?"

He turned in surprise, laden down with his two guitars, portable
amp, and two small black metal boxes. He came over to the apron of the
stage and looked down, squinting. "Yes. Why?"

Jury brought out his warrant card, hard to get to because Mary Lee
was standing behind him, nearly melding herself to his back. He brought
it out. "My name's Richard Jury. Metropolitan police." He said nothing
about C.I.D., decided to let Charlie Raine think Drug Squad and then
felt ashamed of himself for beginning this ridiculous lie. But if he
wanted to talk to him, it seemed simpler. And he would have no reason
otherwise to talk to him any more than one of Charlie's fans.

Charlie flicked a glance at the ID, his handsome face still and
serious. He looked at Jury. "You didn't like my tunes?"

His smile was so high-voltage that it seemed literally to pull Mary
Lee from behind the wall of Jury's back.

"This is Mary Lee," said Jury. He didn't even know her last name.

Charlie said hello and held out his hand. It was met by the
Coca-Cola can in Mary Lee's. He looked from it to her.

"I brought it for you," she blurted out quickly, adding, "I'm sorry."

He understood the apology. "Thanks, Mary Lee." With his shirttail he
mopped the water from the top and popped it open. Took a swig, frowned
slightly.

Jury wondered if it tasted like tears. "I did like your tunes. Your
music. Very much."

"What's this about, then? I've done something—?"

"I wondered if you'd heard any talk?"

He frowned, shook his head, no, he hadn't. He turned away to pick up
the gig bag.

"We been having trouble, see." This came, surprisingly, from Mary
Lee. Finding her voice still worked, apparently, she stepped away from
Jury's protective side and embroidered: "Found a stash of coke—a
kilogram, it was—up in the projection room."

Jury could not look at her, so strong was his desire to laugh. Why
Mary Lee was going along with this charade— indeed, that she was swift
enough to know it was a game— could only be answered by her desire to
prolong the encounter. Or it might have been a desire to let him know
she wasn't just any old blathering fan, but someone in a position of
authority.