Whale Music (28 page)

Jerry Lee did it in one take, which was fortunate, for the booze and pills in his system conspired immediately afterwards to completely befuddle him.

“I went to Elvis’s place,” he mumbled. “We’re friends, for fuck’s sake. Guy wouldn’t talk to me. Wouldn’t talk to the Killer. So I took out my gun, waved it around, I got thrown into the hoosegow for that. It’s not like I wanted to kill the King. I just wanted to shoot his ass. That fat man would have looked good with a bullet between his cheeks.” Jerry Lee Lewis laughed and wept in the space of a breath. “Hey, y’all see my cousin Jimmy on the news? What’d he say now, he said that Jews can’t get into Heaven. Well, I believe he’s right. You want to get into Heaven, you got to live on the right side of the line, man, you got to embrace Jesus Christ and walk with the Lord hand-in-hand. I know that for a true fact. But you do that, and guess what happens. You can’t sing for pigshit. Start singing like Jimmy does.” Jerry Lee did an imitation of his cousin Jimmy Swaggart. “
Shall we gather at the river …
Tell you one thing, man. Once I got strung out bad, my ass was hung up like the wash, I was playing some dive somewhere. I believe I would have been one dead Jerry Lee but Jimmy come into that place, and he goes up on the stage and picks me up, and people are beating on him and telling him to leave me alone, and he tells
them, Jimmy say, you don’t care about this man. Y’all watch this man die. Y’all watch this man consign his immortal soul to hell-fire and you don’t lift a finger. Shame on you, he says, shame on you. Jimmy took me home and dried me out. He say, cousin, I can’t watch you do this to yourself. I say, Jimmy, don’t watch, ’cause I’m doing it. All I care about is the music, man, and if you want to sing it right, you got to damn yourself. That’s gospel. I ain’t going to no Heaven. I am going to Hell, but hey, it may be hot and there may be eternal suffering, but I believe the music should be righteous.”

Jerry Lee Lewis rose from the piano bench, collapsed on the floor and fell into a fitful sleep.

Daniel stared at him thoughtfully.

The Broderick Crawford clone’s name is Hogan. I know this because every few minutes the telephone on his desk rings shrilly. The man tears the receiver from the cradle, throws it into the loose folds around his neck and clamps head to chest. “Hogan,” he croaks, fishing around in his pockets for smokes and matches.

He did this shortly after the remark about Mr. Jerry Lee Lewis. The phone rang, he tore it up and barked, “Hogan.” Hogan lit a cigarette. “Yeah? Well, what’s the, you know, age of whatever up there? Right. Well, if she left the hospital without her parents’ permission, then I guess she goes back. Crime? What crime, we don’t need no fuggin crime. Flashing the trim,
ain’t there some law against that? Yeah. We can think of—Hold on, somebody’s here.”

Dum-da-dum-dum
.

“Desmond!” says Kenneth Sexstone as he curvets into the room. “Have they beaten you?”

“Kenneth,” I tell him urgently, “I need to talk to you.”

Sexstone’s entourage files in. First there is the moustachioed cop, who proffers a sheriff’s badge under Hogan’s nose. Hogan, not to be outdone, fishes out his wallet and flips it open to his I.D. The sheriff still holds, in his other hand, the official-looking piece of paper, the writ. He waves that in the air, which sends Hogan scurrying for my arrest sheet.

That woman Mandy enters. She holds a tiny tape recorder up to her mouth. “Dank and dreary,” Mandy whispers, “the halls of justice do not seem to have changed since the days of Dickens. In one of the darkest corners, Desmond Howl, former glamorous rock star, sits quietly, awaiting the fall of society’s gavel.”

Then there’s Dr. Tockette, who has fetched along my entire file and is flipping through the pages for the juiciest bits. “What do you want?” he asks Kenny Sexstone. “Sexual aberrations?”

“I want nothing,” says Kenneth. “I want Desmond to tell me if he’s been mistreated in any way.”

“Shortly after his psychotic episode,” Mandy whispers into her machine, “Howl entered a downtown strip joint and went berserk, leaping on stage with a dancer and fighting with security.”

“Soundly trouncing the bouncer,” I suggest.

“Or this,” says Dr. Tockette, pulling out a sheet of foolscap. “Still in the note stage, but pretty ginchy, if I do say so. ‘Refusal to Acknowledge Same Sex Sibling as Betrayer and Felodese’.”

“Kenneth,” I repeat, “I really need to talk to you.”

“Oh, yes? We’ve been associated for more than twenty years, I can’t recall an antecedent. You need to talk to me. Imagine that.”

“What goes on?” Hogan barks, but he has lost control.

The sheriff unfolds the writ, holding it aloft as if it were a Royal Decree and he the Town Crier. He clears his throat and the first word is almost out his mouth when Kenny Sexstone touches him on the arm, silencing him. Kenny is staring at me, his eyes the brightest thing in the room. “All right,” says Kenneth Sexstone. “Desmond and I must talk. Alone.”

There is resistance from everybody—they’ve never had so much fun—but Kenneth Sexstone wags his fingers and shoos them out of the room.

“Much of what I do,” says Kenneth—I’m in for a dose of the famous Sexstone earnestness—“I do for your benefit, Desmond. An example. I dispatch Monty Mann to your residence. Why? To suggest a reunion. This is not evil. No malevolence there. I wish only to induce you back into the world, Desmond. I send along a journalist. She reports strange claxons. Hideous barks and stridulations. Your personal doctor tells me of retrogression. Your life is informed by squalor, autointoxication and tergiversation. You refuse to seek treatment for your drug dependency, your alcoholism. So. After years of trying to help—of having my offers of friendship rejected, and most recently of being threatened with death—I take drastic measures. I am decidedly in control now. You say you need to talk to me. I can’t say that I need to listen, Desmond.”

“Kenneth,” I say, “you have to help her.”

“Her?”

“The girl from Toronto. They want to put her back into a mental hospital. But there’s nothing wrong with her.”

“I hardly think you’re fit to judge.”

“I’m fit to judge because I know her. And I’m fit to judge because I’ve been in those places. You know what happens, Kenny? People break other people—sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident—and they just throw them away. Into those places. And the doctors try to fix them with Krazy Glue. And I don’t want Claire to go there, and I’m asking you please to help me.”

Kenneth exhales a bewildered snort. “What do you know? A universe at the centre of which is someone other than Mr. Desmond Howell.”

“And I’m sorry if I, um, misinterpreted some of your intentions.”

“Hmm!” Kenneth does a little turn about the room. “Desmond!” he calls. “Here’s a riddle. What am I not?”

“You’re not the, um—”

“Suggestions: ogre, monster, fiend.”

“Monster. You’re not the monster I take you for.”

“Very true. For example: the rectification of our problem with Howl
mater
. I purchased Mantlepiece Records. At a very fair price. Extremely philanthropic, enough to ensure poor Maurice of adequate care. Mind you, I like Moe and your mother. They have always treated me civilly.” Kenneth Sexstone gathers in his lapels, adjusts his clothing vigorously. “In your case, it may be a little late in the day.”

Sexstone opens the door to the room, the rest of them come tumbling in. Kenneth singles out the sheriff with his index finger. “Read,” he commands, and the man unfurls his writ and begins.

“Whereby, in the State of California and on this day, it has been determined by licensed professionals that Desmond Henry Howell is not …”

Kenneth snatches the paper away, tears it neatly into many pieces. “Not that. Read this.” Kenny reaches into his jacket pocket, removes more official-looking papers, hands them to the sheriff.

“What the fuck is going on?” demands Hogan.

“Oh,” explains Kenneth, “Mr. Howl is in violation of his contract. He is supposed to have handed over master tapes months ago.”

“This is not a criminal matter,” says the sheriff. He has taken a quick glance at the papers, finds them so boring that he doesn’t even notice as I remove them from his hands.

“Kenny,” shouts Dr. Tockette, “what are you doing?”

“Retainer, retainer,” sings Kenny, which silences Tockette.

Mandy is babbling nonstop into her tape recorder, but she has ceased to make any sense.

“I understand,” says Kenneth, “Desmond’s tardiness. He has had some personal problems. In light of which, Mr. Detective, might I suggest that you release Mr. Howl’s betrothed?”

“His what?”

“His fiancée.”

“He never said nothing …”

“Say …” I have stumbled upon something interesting in this contract, not that I remember signing it or anything. “Kenneth, here where it says ‘unspecified songs of a popular nature.’ Now that the work is just about completed, we could name it. Instrumental cetacean compositions, i.e., the Whale Music. Here, I’ll just make the change. Would you mind initialling this in front of these witnesses?”

Kenneth leans over, scrawls a quick
KIS
, whispers, “Don’t push it, Desmond.”

“That quiff,” says Hogan, “is nobody’s fiancée. She is a Canadian loon.”

“May I please use the telephone?” asks Kenneth.

“I guess,” shrugs Hogan.

Kenneth begins to dial. “Are you a religious man, detective?”

Hogan considers this briefly, pushing out his lower lip. “Yup.”

“Leviticus, chapter 26, verse 21.
And if ye walk contrary unto me, and will not hearken unto me, I will bring seven times more plagues upon you
. Hello, Sexstone here. Legal department, please.
I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number. And your high ways shall be desolate
. Yes, Edgerton. Full force, code red. Including the
SWAT
teams. Twenty-seventh precinct. Weil expect you in about five minutes.”

“Hold on …,” says Hogan.

Sexstone cradles the phone. “My lawyers,” he explains sweetly.

“All I’m saying is,” Hogan says, sweat beading on his Broderick Crawford brow, “Mr. Howell never mentioned that this young woman was his fiancée.”

“Desmond?” says Kenneth.

“Hmmm? Oh. Yes, she is. We are to wed. Kenneth, here where it says ‘record shall be released in a reasonable amount of time.’ Now that we’ve almost finished, we could be more specific. We could finalize a release date of, say, two months hence?”

Kenneth Sexstone is clenching his teeth slightly. “Perhaps we could.”

“Dr. Tockette, would you mind witnessing this?”

Hogan is trying to light a new smoke, but his fingers tremble and he can’t hold the match steady. He tosses the cigarette away. “Maybe we don’t need for those lawyers to come.”

Kenneth pulls back his sleeve, peers at the forty-thousand-dollar chronometer occupying most of his hairless forearm. “In forty more seconds I shall be unable to stop them. Produce the girl.”

“And the dog,” I say.

“And the dog,” reiterates Kenneth.

“And Bob.”

“And the fuzzy one.” Kenneth watches Hogan scurry from the room. Then he turns. “Desmond,” he scolds affectionately. “You old slyboots.”

“I’m sorry, Kenneth. I couldn’t help myself.” I offer him the contract. “Have your lawyers chew it to bits.”

Kenneth shurgs. “The only thing that truly bothers me about that contract is that you are in violation of it. Hurry home, Desmond.”

We have been launched into the world again, Barney, Bob, Claire and myself, the Whale-man. Barney is legally mine (I am even required to get him his rabies shot within the next forty-eight hours), the erstwhile Babboo Nass Fazoo is now my
ward
, if you can believe it (I’m taking him down for a shot, too, just to be on the safe side), and Claire is my betrothed.