Wild Cards V (36 page)

C.C. poked Holley in the ribs. “Listen, man, I will if you will.”

“A challenge?” Holley slowly grinned. “Think this'll be as much fun as racin' for pink slips? What the hell. Okay. I'll go on first like the Ghost of Charts Past, and if I have to, I'll cover—oh, Billy Idol.”

“No!” Bagabond spoke up. “No, you won't.”

Things weren't going terribly well for Cordelia. She had gotten into the office by seven. It was too bad about being so phased that she forgot about the sequence of time zones west. Little Steven's road manager wasn't terribly happy about being awakened in his hotel room at a little past four in the morning.

On the other hand, better news had come in about ten. X rays had determined that The Edge's fingers were mildly sprained rather than fractured. Even though U2's performance that night in Seattle was being scrubbed, the guitarist had a good shot at being operational by Saturday.

Then there was the matter of Shrike Music. Cordelia had a terrific flow chart with lines and arrows indicating the tangled skein owning the music publishing firm. She had lists of CEOs, presidents, vice presidents, and heads of promotion departments. And lawyers—lord, hordes of attorneys. But no one would talk to her.
How come?
she wondered.
Is it my breath?
She giggled. Fatigue, she thought. Early burn out. Way too soon. There would be time to collapse after Saturday night. She poured another cup of high-caf Colombian and started thinking seriously about Shrike and its masters, and why everyone was evading as if she were a Congressional investigator out bird-dogging payola charges.

The phone beeped. Good. Maybe it was one of a dozen executives connected with Shrike or its Byzantine ownership returning her calls.

“Hi,” said her roommate. “You got the tickets for me?”

“Have you lined up Spenser, or maybe Sam Spade?”

“Even better,” said Veronica. “Got somebody here I want you to talk to.”

“Veronica—” she started to say. Why was everyone playing cloak-and-dagger?

“This is Croyd,” said an unfamiliar male voice. “You met me. We had a little date, you, me, and Veronica.”

“I remember,” said Cordelia, “but—”

“I'm in investigations.” Flatly.

“I guess I knew that, but I didn't think—”

“Just listen,” said Croyd. “This is Veronica's idea, not mine. Maybe I can help. Maybe not. You want to know something about Shrike Music.”

“Right. Buddy Holley and I need to find out who really owns his music, so I can get permission for him to sing it, and I can convince him to appear Saturday—”

“So isn't Shrike in the phone book?” said Croyd.

“They've been stonewalling me like they were the Mafia or something.”

She heard a dry chuckle. “Maybe they are.”

“Anything you can do,” Cordelia said, “I'll be very—”

Croyd broke in again. “I'll see what I can find out. I'll get back to you.” The connection clicked off.

Cordelia set the phone down and allowed herself a smile. She crossed her fingers. Both hands. Then she picked up from the desk the next note begging her attention. This one was simpler. Maybe she could find out in less than an hour exactly why Girls With Guns seemed to be hung up in Cleveland.

Wednesday

GF&G had decided that the Funhouse club band would back both C.C. Ryder and Buddy Holley. Actually it was C.C. who approved them; GF&G paid the checks.

“They're all sound musicians,” said C.C. to Holley.

“Good enough for me.” He watched and listened as the two guitarists, drummer, keyboard woman, and sax player tuned.

Jack observed too. Practice would be long and tedious. But if you were an observer, it was show business in action. It was diverting. Glamorous. It was heaven.

C.C. led Holley onto the stage. Bagabond sat down at a front table, though the action looked performed under duress. Jack knew that she really did want to follow C.C. on up there.

“Mind if I sit here?” he said to her, setting his hand on the back of the chair opposite. Bagabond's dark eyes fixed on him fiercely for just a split second; she shrugged slightly and Jack sat.

“Okay,” C.C. was saying to the musicians on the stage. “Here's what I'm gonna want to start with. Or maybe end with. Damned if I know yet. All I really know is that it's new and it's part of my twenty minutes.” She jacked in her ebony twelve-string and strummed a chord progression. “We got a whole three days to get in tune. So remember the advantage we have over dudes like the Boss or U2.” Everybody grinned. “Okay, let's do it. This is called ‘Baby, You Been Dealt a Winning Hand.' One, two, three, and—”

The moment C.C. started bto play, she looked stricken. Nervous, Jack thought, was too mild a word for it. There was no crowd. There was no audience save the musicians, the technicians working on sound and lights, and the few odd observers such as Jack and Bagabond. C.C.'s lead went hideously flat. She stopped, looked down at the stage while everyone in the club seemed to hold a collective breath. Then C.C. looked up, and to Jack it seemed the motion was executed with enormous effort. Her fingers caressed the strings of her guitar. “Sorry,” she said. That was all. And then she played.

Baby, the cards are out

    Baby, there is no doubt

That when the dealer calls

    You been dealt a winning hand

The drummer picked up the backbeat. The bass player chugged in. The rhythm guitar softly filled the spaces. Jack saw Buddy Holley's fingers lightly stroking the strings of his Telecaster even though it wasn't jacked in.

You played since you were just a kid

    You played till you got old

Baby, you never knew a thing

    Cause all you ever did was fold

The woman on keyboards ran an eerie, wailing trill out of her Yamaha. Jack blinked. Holley smiled. It sounded like the rinky-tink Farfisas both remembered from the presynthesizer, good old days.

Baby, don't ever fold

    Not when you got

    That winning hand

When it was done, there were a long few moments of absolute silence in the Funhouse. Then the tech people started to clap. So did C.C.'s backup musicians. They cheered. Bagabond get to her feet. Jack saw Xavier Desmond in the back of the room; it looked as if there were tears on his face.

Buddy Holley scratched his head and grinned. A little like Will Rogers, Jack thought. “You know somethin', darlin'? I think maybe all of us here were privileged this mornin' to see the high point of the concert.”

C.C. looked pale, but she smiled and said, “Naw, it's pretty rough. It's only gonna get better.”

Holley shook his head.

C.C. Ryder marched over to him and tilted her face up toward his. “Your turn in the barrel, boyo.”

The man shook his head, but his fingers were caressing the guitar.

C.C. tapped the side of her head. “I showed you mine.”

Holley made a little shrug. “What the heck. Gotta do it sometime, I reckon.”

“No Billy Idol,” Bagabond said.

Holley laughed. “No Billy Idol.” He strummed contemplatively for a moment. Then he said, “This is new.” He glanced over at Jack. “This one ain't even on the tape you heard.” The strum deepened, picked up strength. “I call this one ‘Rough Beast.'”

Then Buddy Holley played.

“It was incredible, Cordie. It's the old Buddy Holley with all the maturity laid in.” Jack's voice was exuberant and uncritical. “Everything he played was new, and it was absolutely great.”

“New, huh?” Cordelia tapped the earpiece with her right index finger. “As good as ‘That'll Be the Day' and ‘Oh, Boy'?”

“Is ‘Maxwell's Silver Hammer' better than ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand'?” The excitement crackled in Jack's voice. “It isn't even apples and oranges. The new stuff's as energetic as his early songs—it's just more”—Jack seemed to be searching for the precise word—“sophisticated.”

Cordelia stared at the photographs across the office but wasn't seeing them.
Click. There might as well be a light bulb switching on above my head
, she thought.
I've gotta slow down. I'm starting to miss a lot.
“What I'm guessing,” she said, “is that Shrike doesn't have any claim on the new stuff. What I can do is put him in the hammock in the middle of the show. Maybe cut him down to ten minutes.”

“Twenty,” said Jack firmly. “It has to be as much as everyone else.”

“Maybe,” said Cordelia. “Anyhow, he's in the center so the audience warms up before they have to decide whether they're gon' be disappointed when Buddy Holley don' sing ‘Cindy Lou.'”

There was a silence on the line. Jack finally said, “I don't think he'll mind.”

“Okay, then. Great. This is really gon' simplify matters. I can tell the wet-brains at Shrike to screw off.” Cordelia felt the crushing weight start to lift from her head. “You sure he'll do the show with new material?”

Jack's words were a verbal shrug. “The ice do seem to be broken. He and C.C. are reinforcing each other. I think it's all gon' work out.”

“Great. Thanks, Uncle Jack. Keep me current.”

Cordelia's mood was cheerful after she hung up the phone. So Buddy Holley was in. And now she could call Croyd off the wild-goose chase. But when she phoned the apartment, no one answered. All she reached was the answering machine.

Maybe
, she thought cheerfully,
it's all gon' be downhill from here.

Thursday

Cordelia realized she was humming “Real Wild Child.” The up-tempo rocker perfectly matched her hyper mood this afternoon. She wondered for a moment where she'd heard it as she identified the tune. She knew it was on none of her Buddy Holley albums. The song must just be in the air.

She tapped along with her fingers to the guitar runs in her head as she dialed her postlunch calls. Cordelia had phoned over to the Funhouse just about the time her takeout Vietnamese soup had arrived. Jack was sounding up.

“Practice is going great,” he had said. “C.C. and Buddy are getting along fine. And Bagabond even nodded to me when I said good morning.”

“How's the music?”

“They're both doing mostly new stuff—well, Buddy's is
all
new.”

“Can he fill the whole twenty minutes?” Cordelia had said.

“Just like before—when I said he wouldn't have any problem? He still won't. You really ought to give him an hour.”

“I'm not sure how U2 or the Boss would like that,” Cordelia said dryly.

“I bet they'd love it.”

“We won't be finding out.” Cordelia sniffed the fragrance of crab and asparagus wafting out of the styrofoam soup bucket. “I've got to go, Uncle Jack. My food's here.”

“Okay.” Jack's voice hesitated. “Cordie?”

“Mmmp?” She already had the first spoonful in her mouth.

“Thanks for asking me to do this. It's a terrific thing. I'm grateful. It's … keeping my mind off everything else going on in the world.”

Cordelia swallowed the hot soup. “Just go on keeping C.C. and Buddy Holley happy. And Bagabond, too, if it's possible.”

“I'll try.”

About two o'clock Cordelia was dialing the contract firm that was trying to exorcise the demons from ShowSat III when, out of the corner of her eye, she caught an unfamiliar figure silhouetted in the office doorway. Setting down the phone, she saw a distinguished-looking middle-aged man dressed in a cream silk suit that she knew had to be worth two or three months of her salary. Tailored to the final angstrom unit. Knotted foulard precisely positioned. Head cocked, he regarded her with sharp eyes.

“You're too well-dressed to be Tom Wolfe,” she said.