Steel Guitar (18 page)

“Bump doors and ask if anybody remembers Davey.”

“You gonna hire an armed guard?” he said, glancing around uneasily.

“I've worked tougher neighborhoods than this,” I said, bristling.

“Yeah,” he said, “but today you look like you spent the whole night doing what you were doing. You don't look like a cop.”

“Cops don't screw?” I said.

“Don't yell at me. Can I come along? Maybe I'll recognize somebody. I think I'd remember this Malcolm guy.”

I'm not sure he really wanted to do it. I don't think either of us had figured out a way to say good-bye. “I'll call you” didn't seem adequate or honest. “I won't call” seemed hard.

He took one side of the street and I took the other. My side had three-decker weathered gray buildings with maybe a two-foot span between them and the sidewalk, enough for a brownish patch of grass, an occasional half-dead bush. Cal's side was yellow brick apartments, bigger and built right up to the sidewalk.

People were hesitant to open their doors and I didn't blame them. I inquired for Dunrobie through half-inch slits. I asked for Malcolm. I asked if there was a vegetarian commune in the neighborhood.

I finished the block with no hint of success. Cal and I met at the corner.

“You find anything?” he asked.

“Nope,” I said.

“I know we're close,” he said.

“I've got other stuff to do,” I said.

“How about if I keep looking?”

“I'm not asking you to.”

“I know. But maybe it could count toward an apology.”

“For?”

“It's one of the AA things. The twelve steps. Go back and apologize to the people you hurt when you were an addict.”

“You can apologize if it makes you feel better,” I said. “It doesn't change anything.”

He walked away.

“Cal,” I hollered after him. “I would appreciate it. I would deeply appreciate it if you'd help me find Davey.”

Twenty-Seven

Dee had moved down a floor to 718. She still rated a suite, but it wasn't half as grand as the last one. I used Mooney's name as a password to get by the two plainclothesmen guarding the door. I wondered if they were keeping Dee in or reporters out.

She wasn't alone.

Hal was hovering nervously over an elegant gent who sat bolt upright in an easy chair. I recognized him from the party: one of the men who looked like he'd stepped out of an ad for expensive evening wear. Maybe he was afraid his suit would wrinkle if he leaned back. Dee, forcing a smile, introduced him as Mr. Harvey Beringer, an executive vice-president of MGA/America, who just happened to be on his way out.

Mr. Beringer seemed surprised at the news of his departure. Dee looked like she was having a hard time controlling her temper.

“Great, Dee,” Hal said sarcastically as Beringer banged the door shut.

“You're next,” she said to Hal. “Scram.”

Hal said, “I'm not going anywhere.”

“Dee,” I said, “I need a copy of that letter you showed me. From Lockwood.”

“What?… Oh. I, uh, don't have a copy.”

“Trust me with the original,” I said. “I won't lose it.”

“Hal, for chrissake,” Dee said, “can't you just take a walk?”

“No way,” he said. “You've got two more press guys and three more MGA reps to reassure. They're waiting.”

“Dee,” I said, “give me the letter.”

“I told you to forget about it.”

“Too late.”

Her face didn't change, but her breath came a little faster. “Well, I don't know if I can find it, see?”

“Then just tell me the titles of the three songs,” I said evenly.

She looked at me, a long, slow gaze, then she yanked open a dresser drawer, pawed under some scarves, and pulled out the envelope.

“I'm gonna pay him,” she said. “Whatever he wants.”

“Can you pound any sense through her thick skull?” Hal said to me, sinking down on the easy chair Mr. Beringer had vacated.

Dee paced the length of the room. Then she said, “Hal here thinks if I need money so badly, I should borrow it from a loan shark. You know, somebody who'll break my fingers if I come up short.”

“Shut up,” Hal said.

“You shut up,” Dee replied bitterly. “First sign of trouble, and you're coming apart at the seams.”

“First sign of—I like that! Never have I had somebody die on a tour of mine! Never!” There were two glasses on the marble-topped table next to the easy chair. Hal picked up one that was still full of amber liquid and downed it quickly.

“You know somebody in the loan business?” I asked Hal when he seemed to calm down a bit. “Somebody local?”

“A shark,” Dee snapped.

“A friend,” Hal said defensively. “A guy who's loaned me money in the past.”

“Hal is a gamblin' man,” Dee said, giving the words the same intonation she does on one of her songs. “He likes the part of the tour that goes through Atlantic City best.”

“He knows about the money?” I asked.

“I know she's trying to make some dumb deal with MGA/America she's gonna regret for the rest of her life,” Hal said. “You can get more than you're asking for, Dee. More money. More clout. You couldn't be hotter. If MGA doesn't want you, Capitol, RCA, anybody, will sign you. For a big fat advance.”

Three hundred thousand seemed like a big, fat advance to me.

“Dee,” I said, “in the letter, is he asking for the right amount?”

“What do you mean?”

I glanced over at Hal. He might know Dee needed money, but what else did he know? “Would a jury give him more?” I asked Dee. “Would a judge?”

“Hal,” she said, “get the hell out of here. Now. Or I swear, you're fired.”

He left, announcing that he'd be back in three minutes tops and slamming the door angrily.

“Three hundred thou is about right,” Dee said, still holding on to the envelope, still pacing. “
If
he'd written the songs.”

“Why? How would he come up with that number?”

“Mechanicals,” she said.

I'd heard the term at the MGA party, but I still didn't understand it. “Explain,” I said.

“You don't make money from royalties in the music business, not unless you're a superstar with a studio by the balls. You make money on what you write, especially songs other singers cover. Because for every copy of your song that's sold, you get your nickel. Or your two-point-five, depending.”

“Depending?” I asked, more puzzled than before.

“Listen. You got your recording studio, your songwriter, your song publisher, and your singer. Let's forget about the singer for now. The songwriter's share is always a nickel. That's mechanical; it's carved in stone. If you keep your publishing rights, you get the whole nickel. Now, sometimes songwriters talk about ‘losing' their publishing rights. If you lose your publishing rights, you get two-point-five cents a copy. The song publisher splits your nickel with you.”

“How do you ‘lose' your publishing rights?”

“A lot of companies put it right in the contract. They get the publishing rights, or you don't get to do the album. And you're young and stupid, and you don't know enough to hire a lawyer or a manager to tell you to hold out for the whole nickel. I lost the publishing on ‘For Tonight.' If I lost the rest of the nickel on that one, I'd go broke. Thank God, you can't negotiate the two-point-five away. If you could, some maggot businessman would figure out how to nab it.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “How does this add up to three hundred thousand?”

“Work it out. An album goes gold at five hundred thousand copies, platinum at a million. I write one song on a platinum album, I earn twenty-five thousand dollars. You know how many golds and platinums ‘For Tonight' wound up on?”

“Nope.”

“Well, three hundred thousand dollars is just about what I've made on that song. It sounds like a lot, maybe, but it's come in dribs and drabs over, what? Twelve years. It's my living money.”

“And the other two songs the lawyer mentioned?”

“Nobody else covers them. My money song's ‘For Tonight.'”

“And Davey would be able to figure out how much you'd earned on it?”

“Anybody in the business could figure it out. But we're getting away from the point here. I wrote the goddamn song.”

“But that's not the point, is it, Dee? That letter's not about mechanicals, or rights, or who wrote the songs.”

“It says what it says,” she answered after a long pause. She stopped pacing long enough to draw the drapes aside with her hand and stare down at the street below.

“Dee, don't do the MGA deal yet. Give me a little more time.”

“To find Davey? Davey's gone nuts.”

“Cal Therieux's out looking for him.”

“Cal,” she repeated slowly.

“Did you know he was here? How come you didn't tell me to start with him?”

She swallowed hard, let the drapes fall back in place. “We lost track,” she said. “Just another boy who stole a little piece of my heart. How did Erma Franklin sing it? I always liked her version better than Janis Joplin's. ‘Take it! Break another little piece—'”

“Give me the letter, Dee.”

“Why don't you just butt out of my life?”

“I can't believe how much I used to admire you.”

“Yeah, well, that's because you didn't know me. You never saw anything but my hands on a guitar. You thought the songs I wrote were me. You still do, don't you?”

“Maybe.”

“And maybe you still hate me a little for Cal, huh?”

“Maybe.”

“So why the hell should I trust you?”

“Who else have you got?”

“Don't lose it,” she said when she finally handed over the envelope.

As I left, I could hear her singing “Piece of My Heart.” She was staring at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door.

Down in the lobby I used an elegant pay phone to ring Joanne at D Street.

“Mickey,” I said. “Mickey who works for the Gianellis. He's a shark, right?”

“You broke down and asked the boyfriend?”

“I haven't even seen Sam,” I said.

“Well, you're out of date. Mickey Manganero used to be a shark.”

“Atlantic City?”

“Bingo. If that's the appropriate term.”

“And now?”

“Skipped up the ladder. Money laundering. Nobody's sure how he handles it, but he seems to handle it in fairly big chunks.”

“Drug money?”

“I can let you talk to a narc.”

“No. Let it go for now. Mickey got a rap sheet?”

“Since Juvie Hall. That's sealed, but he's been busy ever since. Car theft, burglary, molestation. Almost got him on a rape. He likes young girls.”

“How young?”

“Why don't you ask him? I'm sure the boyfriend can set up a meet.”

“Maybe I will,” I said.

Twenty-Eight

I couldn't get an appointment with Stuart Lockwood. I couldn't get one under my own name. I couldn't get one by mentioning Dee Willis's name. I couldn't get one under an alias. Either business had improved dramatically or Lockwood was allergic to the sound of my voice.

I called Taylor Baines, of the gorgeous office and influential practice. The man who wanted to do his all for any artist employed by MGA/America.

Mr. Baines was cooperative. He had his efficient secretary telephone Stuart Lockwood's inefficient one. A suddenly liberated Lockwood assured Baines he could attend a three o'clock meeting with no difficulty.

Baines and I met in his lush office at two thirty. After politely offering coffee, which I accepted, he said to me, “I don't know about this. It's tough to throw a scare into a lawyer.”

“There are lawyers, and then there are lawyers,” I responded once the coffee lady had come and gone, silently leaving her tray of steaming china cups. “You already scared him. He's coming. And if he can be impressed, your office is the place to do it.”

“It is rather nice, isn't it?” he agreed, taking time to stir his coffee and spin his leather chair to admire the view. The ocean was more blue than green today. The water closest to shore had a brownish cast. I wondered where they were digging the third harbor-tunnel.

“If I were trying to make it as a lawyer in this town, I'd want to do you a favor,” I said.

“We do steer a lot of overflow business to smaller firms,” he observed.

The secretary ushered Lockwood in at a quarter past three although I was sure he'd arrived earlier. Baines had given instructions not to bring him in until he'd cooled his heels in the outer office and had sufficient time to admire the floral arrangements, the original oil paintings, the rosewood furniture.

I'd briefed Baines, and he started off. I stayed in the room, but he didn't introduce me. Lockwood obviously thought I worked for the law firm, and his estimation of me skyrocketed. He smiled at me.

“I assume you're handling the Dunrobie case on a contingency basis,” Baines began. He didn't offer Lockwood coffee even though our cups were still half full.

“I can't discuss that,” Lockwood answered predictably.

“Then let's discuss blackmail,” Baines said, with a perfectly charming smile.

“Blackmail,” Lockwood repeated. He scratched his nose with his index finger, hurriedly stuck his hand in his lap when he realized what he'd done.

“The use of letters, containing threats and producing fear, to obtain money. Would you agree on the definition?” Baines said smoothly.

“Well, yes. On the definition.”

“Blackmail is a criminal matter. When a blackmailing letter is sent through the mails, the charge of federal mail fraud can be appended.” Baines took his time rereading the letter, then offered it to the lawyer. “I assume this is your letterhead and your signature.”