Tough Baby (Martin Fender Novel) (10 page)

“Might be a long time,” he said. “Retha Thomas hasn’t gotten any better.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

I went back to my apartment, fed the cat, and flopped on the bed so I could think about the situation. But I hadn’t slept worth a damn in several days and ended up dozing off.

I woke up drenched in the proverbial sweat. The whole bed was wet. But it wasn’t sweat. It was blood. The bed was stabbed with so many knives it looked like a pincushion, a graveyard for knifemen. Damn, what happened, I thought. I scratched my eyes out and threw them against the wall. Why wasn’t I buried, too? Wasn’t I sharp enough? Just because I had one little blackout. From far away, a church bell rang. But it sounded tinny. Even the Christians were cutting back.

The phone was ringing.

I shot off the bed like a man shot from a gun. It was Billy. He wanted to know, was I coming to rehearsal or not?

&&&

We had the lease on an old warehouse behind a pool hall owned by Willie Nelson on South Congress. It was about as ugly as things like that can be—corrugated tin on the outside, concrete floor and walls that had been sprayed with acoustic damping material that looked like petrified vomit inside. Leo stumbled in an hour late, smelling like a bar rag, and Ray never showed up at all. Nick and Steve had another gig to work, but they

rarely worked rehearsals anyway. At least I’d remembered to bring the Danelectro bass.

We ran over a few songs we hadn’t played in a while. “Nutbush City Limits,”

“Born Under a Bad Sign,” and “Chain of Fools." We took a break. Leo cracked open another six-pack and lit a cigarette he’d bummed from me. He didn’t understand why I should have a pack if I wasn’t going to smoke them.

“You about out from under this thing yet, Martin?” asked Billy.

“In a way,” I said.

“I was just wondering, you know, for your sake,” he said. “Anything I can do?”

“No, don’t worry about it.”

“Because people are starting to talk,” he said.

Leo looked up. He was holding the cigarette in the hand in the cast, cradling that hand with the other. It almost looked like he was petting a smoking rabbit. “Only six weeks of this thing, guys,” he said. “It’s like playing guitar with a goddamn boulder on the end of my arm.”

I sighed. Billy sighed. “What are we doing here?” he said. “Haven’t we seen enough of each other?”

“I thought we decided to get together and work up some new songs,” said Leo.

“Yeah. Whose idea was that?” said Billy.

“Ray’s,” I said.

We observed a moment of silent annoyance dedicated to the saxophonist.

“He sure seemed pissed at you yesterday, Leo,” I said. “You know why?”

He shrugged, a dumb, innocent look on his face.

“Leo,” I said, “why don’t we go for a walk?”

He curled his lip at me. “Walk?”

“You know, you stand up, move your feet. . .”

“Something wrong with your car?”

“No,” I said. “We could get some fresh air and talk.”

“Talk?”

“Yeah, talk. Maybe you could tell me what’s been eating you.”

He cleared his throat and spit on the floor. “Well, look everybody, it’s Martin Fender, the great bandleader. He walks, he talks, he takes his guitar player out on a leash. You wanna fire me, Martin, is that it? You got some other player in mind? Somebody who reminds you more of the late, great KC? Lemme tell you something, Martin, I can’t drink as much bourbon as he could and maybe I don’t play as fucking loud as he did, but I can play as good as him any night of the week and I didn’t let my old lady get the best of me and then blow my fucking brains out.”

I didn’t say anything. Then, as suddenly as his hostility erupted, it faded, and his face fell into a slack, boyish expression. “Aw hell. I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK,” I said, sighing. “Why don’t we call it a night?” Billy nodded in agreement.

Leo said, “Well, you guys go on and go. I think I’ll stick around, work on this guitar. Maybe sleep here, I dunno.”

“Trouble at home?” I said.

Nodding slowly, he said, “Nadine, she . . . well, I think we need some, uh, you know . . .”

“Space,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

I went over and slapped him on the back, then packed up my instrument. Billy got his sticks and followed me out. Once we were outside the warehouse, he said, “Don’t worry, Martin. He’s not as dumb as he acts. He’ll work it out.”

“Without our help, right?”

Billy sighed. “What can you do? Don’t tell me you’ve never had a problem you didn’t want to share with your pals.”

“He’s at the point where he’s sharing it with us whether he wants to or not. We may not be the Three Musketeers, but sooner or later he’s going to mess up bad, and we’ll either be his accomplices or his victims. The world is not made up of a bunch of separate, insulated compartments, you know.”

“OK, Martin. Whatever you say. But I’m no psychologist. I’m just a drummer. And right now, I’ve got a date with a girl around the corner from you who drives a Porsche. You think it would be OK if I park the van at your place and pick it up later?”

“Sure you don’t want to use the van?” I asked.

“Nah, she’s not the back of the van type,” he said, laughing. “Neither am I. I got a bad back, you know.”

CHAPTER NINE

While we waited for his date to pick him up, Billy and I talked about Donald Rollins.

“I wonder how a person gets like that,” he said, “so
out there,
so cut off from everybody that they can just drop off the face of the earth? I mean, you gotta let a lot of things go to get like that, so that you just don’t give a damn.”

“And no one gives a damn about you,” I added.

“Well, you’re right there. I mean, we all liked him fine when he was tending bar, sliding those free drinks over to us, didn’t we? I mean, he was a great guy back then, always on the guest list, we gave him free records and all that. But when he was rolling through the supermarket parking lots, asking people if they were ‘looking for a bargain on some stereo equipment,’ we didn’t talk to him too much, did we?”

“He wasn’t such a great guy at that point. Maybe he never was a great guy. Just because we might have been a little over- solicitous when he was living the straight life doesn’t mean we out and out turned our backs on him when he wasn’t.”

“You’re right. I’m just playing devil’s advocate here. Besides,” he added dryly, “he had Vick and Ed for friends, didn’t he?”

“You mean, with friends like that . .

“I don’t know much about it, man. Nothing, in fact. But I ran into Donald’s sister this afternoon, and she was running them down pretty bad. Said they ruined Donald. Ruined him as a person.”

A Porsche Speedster roared up, and Billy got up and shook my hand firmly. “What the hell, Martin? We all gotta go sometime.” The Speedster’s door swung open and I caught a glimpse of long, wavy blond hair. Billy climbed in, shut the door, and hollered out the open window, “Don’t worry about it, man. Nothing you could do about it.” Then they roared off.

&&&

I was sitting in the van, thinking that Billy was right. There was nothing I could have done about it. Donald Rollins had just been one of those people you don’t know, but see often enough to pretend you do. It doesn’t mean you’re friends, and it doesn’t mean you have any special obligations to look after him. But I’d snapped at Billy just a half hour earlier, saying that the world wasn’t broken up into separate, insulated compartments. And he wasn’t going to let me forget about it. I felt like a hypocrite.

I felt a disquieting mixture of familiarity and alienation sitting in the van. There was the stale smell of cigarettes and booze and road food and the characteristic scent of band equipment that has been given a good workout and then loaded into close quarters, and I knew that if I leaned back into the seat and closed my eyes the comforting sensation of rolling down a highway en route to another one-nighter would come easy. It struck me that the road trip had been, in some ways, like a working vacation. Now I felt a million little responsibilities tugging at me that I hadn’t felt on the road. It was time to start dealing with them. I got out of the van and locked it up. Number one on my list of things to do was to pay Vick Travis another visit.

But before I did that, I went inside and drew up a little contract.

“I think you just might be crazy, Martin,” said Vick. He held the typewritten pages under the light, waving them so that they crackled. “You want a shot of Cuervo?”

I declined, but he turned around and opened a drawer on the desk and brought out a quart bottle anyway. Then he made a face after he checked the level. “Damn. That Eddie’s been in here again.”

“Pushing a mop can make you work up a thirst real quick, I imagine,” I said.

“So can blackmail. Sure you don’t want a shot?”

“Not right now. What do you think of the contract?”

He poured a couple of fingers of the gold tequila in a shot glass and took it all in one gulp and picked up the contract again, hissing through his teeth as the tequila did its stuff. “OK, Martin, so you want my store. The way I read this, I give you the store in return for your ‘assistance in a private matter.’ Hah. I like that wording.”

“But you also have my word that I’ll help you for the thousand bucks you offered, plus pretend this contract never existed, unless," I emphasized, “it turns out that you’ve lied to me.”

“Your word
."

“I’m taking you on faith, you can take me. Share the risk, in other words.”

“This joint’s only worth about ten grand after debts.”

“Used to be worth fifteen.”

He tilted his head back and let out a laugh. “OK, fifteen. Whatever. You know, the funny thing is, after I get the hundred grand, even if I shell out twenty on this blackmail thing, I’ll still have eighty. So I was thinking about lamming outta here. Maybe buy a farm in Mexico. So hell, if you’re interested in running the place . . .”

“I’m not. I already told you, it’s just insurance, encouragement for you to be straight with me. One other thing, though, I need to know.”

“What is it now?”

“Donald Rollins.”

“Don,” he said, shaking his head. “Poor ole Don. Used to be a damn good bartender. Had this German shepherd named Alamo. Got run over by a semi. His old lady run off the next day too. Poor ole Don. Used to be a good bartender.”

“Yeah, I share your sympathy,” I said. “Did you give him any while he was alive?”

Vick’s head rocked back as if I’d slugged him again. “OK, Martin, look here. Don owed me some money, and we worked it out, OK? He used to borrow money from me all the time, and we always worked something out. I didn’t sell him no heroin. He was fine when he left here.”

“I guess I’ll have to take your word on it. But you’d better not be lying to me.”

“I ain’t lying, OK? Christ, Martin, you think I’d shoot up one of my friends with smack and dump ’em in the river?”

“No, I guess I don’t. That’s all for now, then. You going to sign the contract?”

“You get off my ass for a minute I might,” he said, sighing and shaking himself. He started to write his name, then looked up suddenly as if pricked by some private thought. “You know, none of this would be necessary if the goddamn guy from the record company would fly in here in the morning with a check. Then I could tell these guys to kiss my ass, tell the whole world I used to do business with Bingo Torres, South Texas Payola King, a k a Danny Cortez. None of this would be necessary if the IMF boys would just get here and do the deal.”

As I watched him put the pen down to the paper again, I wondered why he hadn’t said that before. Suddenly he leaned back in the chair and giggled.

“Martin, you know how he got that name, Bingo?” I shook my head. He leaned forward, grinning. “His daughter. When she was little, he’d hold her on his lap and play a little game, looking for her tickle spots. Whenever she’d start giggling, he’d say ‘Bingo.’ So she used to call him that instead of Daddy. She hasn’t been around here in twenty years I bet, but I like to think she still calls him that. Kinda brings him down to size, you know?”

“Are you gonna sign that or not?”

He nodded and scratched out his name. “The kid wasn’t more than two, three years old when the wife took off with her. Mrs. Torres was a good-lookin’ gal, too. Tall, blonde, looked kinda like Kim Basinger ...”

He signed both copies, and he poured two more shots. After we’d downed them he looked at me with glassy eyes and said, “OK, now what? They called again today. They said to get the money.”

“Where are you going to get it?”

For a moment, he didn’t seem to have heard me. He got a faraway look in his eyes and said, “He’s too good for me now. You think he cares about my problem? And it’s his fault. But he doesn’t care. He’s too big, too rich to care.”

“So what?” I groaned. “Where are you going to get the money?”

He laughed like a
bandido.
“You’re gonna like this: from Bingo Torres.”

CHAPTER TEN

The next morning I drove out there. Vick was pretty certain that Bingo was the right place to go for the money. For one thing, he’d have it. For another, this was the in-between world of pimping, smuggling, payola, land flipping, and other shady enterprises; honor and codes were more important here than the United Nations charter was among heads of state. But Vick didn’t say all these things. He just rubbed his fat stomach and said, “A favor’s a favor.”