Текст книги "The Widower's Two-Step"

Автор книги: Rick Riordan

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27

Cam Compton's Monster Music was a twostory white cube on PerrinBeitel Road, right next to the Department of Public Safety. The bottom floor was the store, with burglarbarred windows and a five car parking lot and silver doors plastered with brand name guitar stickers. The top floor was Cam's residence. His front door was on the side of the building, accessed by a metal staircase and a narrow concrete walkway. There was one large picture window so Cam could look out every day and enjoy the scenery—an endless stream of gawky adolescents and bulldogfaced patrolmen engaged in the American ritual of parallel parking between the orange cones.

I tried upstairs first and got no answer. Then I tried the music store, which for a Friday afternoon was not exactly crawling with customers.

The guy behind the sales counter said, "Cam can't talk."

I looked over the guy's shoulder, through the glass wall into the room where Cam was giving a guitar lesson to an adolescent kid whose acne was the same shade of red as his Stratocaster.

Cam was hunched over, examining the kid's fingers as the kid moved them on the fret board. Cam's forehead had a pancakesized yellow and purple hickey on it from our last meeting at the Cactus Cafe. He had a heavy drinker's swollen morningafter face and rumpled clothes that suggested he'd crawled out of bed and down the steps just in time for this lesson. Probably a normal week in the life of a superstar guitarist.

I looked back at the salesman. He was a large man. Flabby large, with arms that had mass but no muscle lines. His face hadn't seen a razor blade or a toothbrush or even a nose hair clipper in a mighty long time. He had a HarleyDavidson Tshirt with cigarette burn holes on the belly.

"Cam's looked better," I said.

Harley grinned. "Some guy's been leaning on him. Some big ass motherfucker—private detective or something. He slammed Cam's head into a wall.

Then last night he came back and did Cam's ribs."

"You saw this?"

Harley leaned closer to me. "Naw, but you know what I told Cam—I said take me along next time. I'll put that dick motherfucker in a vise grip."

I smiled appreciatively.

The slow, distorted power chords of Bad Religion seeped through the glass window of the practice room. Cam nodded his head and the adolescent smiled. Talent under development.

"He'll want to talk to me," I told Harley. "Tell him it's the dick motherfucker."

Harley started to laugh, then he saw I was serious. He scratched his beard. He pointed at me with his thumb and tried to frame a question.

"I don't know about the ribs," I amended. "I just did the forehead. And it was a beer keg.

You get prettier bruises with a beer keg."

Harley searched his beard with his fingers a little more. Then slowly he cracked a grin.

He turned and started what he'd been doing before I came in—hanging guitar straps on a rotating display.

"Cam ain't much of a boss," Harley told me. "Be my guest."

I walked into the practice room. Cam was nodding his head and saying encouraging things about the adolescent's Fchord. Then they both saw me.

I winked at the kid and told him to keep up the good work with the Fchord. Then I looked at Cam, whose purplish forehead was turning almost flesh colour. "How you feeling?"

"Got a student," he managed to say.

"He can practice." I turned to the kid. "I bet you know 'Glycerine' already, don't you, Slick?"

The kid got that elated light in his eyes that beginning guitarists get when they actually know a request. He looked down and dutifully began plinking out the Bush song.

"Let's talk," I told Cam.

"Why you think I'd want to—"

"I went to see Alex Blanceagle last night. He looks a lot worse than you do. Jean paid him a visit."

Cam's beady, bloodshot eyes move an inch farther apart. He looked around uncomfortably, at his student, at Harley who was grinning sideways at us through the glass, waiting for some kind of show to start.

Cam put his guitar pick between his lips and spoke around it. "Upstairs. And you ain't gonna fuck with me again, y'hear?"

I held up my hands. Truce.

Harley looked disappointed when he saw we were taking our conversation elsewhere.

Cam led me out into the afternoon heat, then up the stairs and into his place. He headed straight for the refrigerator.

His apartment was about the same size as mine—one main room, closet, bathroom, side kitchen. An unmade twin bed set flush against the south wall was occupied by piles of laundry that still retained the upsidedown shape and crisscrossed texture of laundry baskets, like Jell0 out of the moulds. I counted three guitars in the room– two electrics in open cases on the floor; one black Ovation twelvestring on a corner tripod stand. The coffee table was a Sears appliance box covered with spare guitar tuning pegs and string packets and old Olympia cans and an extra large Funky Bird, the kind with the red hair and the hat and the big butt that bobs up and down. Instead of chairs Cam had guitar amps. The posters on the walls were all from the store downstairs—peeling advertisements of bikini girls showing off the latest thing in mixing boards or speakers or trap sets. The only thing in the room that reflected care and meticulous upkeep was the CD collection. That took up three levels of cinder block and board shelving.

I walked over and looked through the titles while Cam was rummaging for beer. The CDs were all kinds, rock and jazz and country guitarists, heavy on the Eric Clapton and the Chet Atkins and too light on the Blind Willie McTell for my taste. The titles were perfectly arranged in alphabetical order except that the top shelf started with Cam's own releases. I was surprised how many—at least fifteen different CDs. I pulled one.

The cover art was a bad photocopy of Cam's face, with his name and the title

"American Cowboy" and the rest of the liner notes in what looked like Cyrillic script.

Russian? Czech? I checked the other titles. Most were similar foreign releases. Only one was labelled Split Rail Records, dated five years ago and entitled The Best of Cam Compton. Probably went platinum, that one.

Cam opened himself an Olympia and walked over to the bed like he was in pain. He knocked the laundry off and sat down slowly, elbows out, the way you'd lower yourself into an extrahot bathtub.

"Your ribs are taped," I said. "Somebody gave you a talkingto last night."

"What the fuck business is that to you?"

I took the stack of Compton's own CDs and went over to an amp and sat down, facing him. I started flipping through the jewel cases. "Interesting discography. Bulgaria.

Romania. Germany. You must have had some success over there."

Cam studied me warily. His one eye with the bloody ring around the iris was almost closed. His urge to play silent was duking it out with his urge to talk about himself. The latter finally won.

"Good market in Europe," he admitted. " 'Specially since the Eastern parts opened.

Had me a number ten song for a week in Yugoslavia 'fore the country broke up."

"That so?"

He nodded morosely, like the whole political mess had been a plot to get him off the charts. "Course Germany's always loved Texas stuff—horses, cowboy hats, country music. They cain't get enough of that shit. Sheckly had me touring some honkytonk clubs over there four or five times. Good money."

"Yeah?" I held up the CD I'd been looking at earlier. "What's this—Russian?"

Cam grunted. He was drinking more beer, warming up to the subject. "Fan sent that to me with a real nice letter. Said it wasn't playing right anymore and she loved it, could I please send her a copy of the American original. Goodlooking girl, too."

"You sent it?"

"Couldn't. There is no original. It's a bootleg of one of my shows in Munich. Half the titles in there are boots. Hell, half the titles in Europe. Now you gonna tell me about Alex B.?"

I put the CDs aside. "I came here to help you, Cam."

He stopped with his beer can halfway to his mouth, put the can down. "That a fact?

You get me fired one day, now you're gonna help me."

"Alex Blanceagle was shot dead."

He blinked, kept his eyes closed a second too long. "And what's it got to do with me?"

"He was talking to a man named Samuel Barrera about Sheckly's business. In particular those shipments you've been helping process through the Indian Paintbrush."

Cam put together a smile. He rubbed the bruise on his forehead. "I ain't been close to Sheck for a long time, son. Last help I gave him was signing up with Miranda's band.

Look where that got me. Sheck has some other kind of problem, it ain't mine."

"I know different, Cam. Samuel Barrera's exFBI and he's very good. He'll come talking to you eventually. With something like this he'll have Customs involved, the State Attorney, the D.A. You want my guess, Sheck and his friends know something is coming. They know Les SaintPierre caused a leak and they're plugging up any places where it might've come from—Julie Kearnes, Alex Blanceagle, you. If I were you, I'd be worried."

Cam looked at his beer, thought for about five seconds, then decided to laugh. "Tha's bullshit."

"Ask Alex Blanceagle if it's bullshit."

I opened my backpack and pulled out Cam's .22 Montgomery Ward. I set the gun next to me on the amp.

"You could've killed John Crea, Cam. Not likely, but possible."

Cam looked at the gun and his eye ticked. "What you going on about now? What's that for?"

"I suppose the demo tape's around here somewhere, too. You wouldn't be smart enough to trash it. You think I should give this to the police, Cam, tell them where I found it? I could tell them what idiot it's registered to and how he probably forgot to wipe the inside of the chamber for prints. They put this together with the Julie Kearnes murder, the way that was done, guess who's going to get the blame?"

Under his bruises, Cam got redfaced. He stood up real slow, holding his beer can as if he were about to throw it. "Wait a goddamn minute—"

"When it comes to Sheckly's helpers you're at the bottom of the food chain, Cam. I bet he didn't even pay you—I bet he just knows how to get you riled up, how to put ideas in your head of things he wants done. He's got

absolutely nothing to lose, using you, and when people come knocking on his door with warrants for larger problems, you're the first sacrifice he's going to toss out.

Sheckly's got you set up pretty good."

Cam's eyes narrowed. The anger got diffused and tangled up inside him. He lowered the beer can. "And what you think I should do, son—sit there and enjoy the knife in my back? How you think that feels? There's a time not too long ago I's in Miranda Daniels'

corner pretty fierce—even after she got with Mr. SaintPierre. I used to drive her to the Paintbrush every night—nice and friendly. We'd talk about the business. She and me had an understanding. I's gonna look after her; she's gonna be my ticket somewhere else besides here." He waved a hand around at the apartment. "Look to you like I'm getting anywhere?"

"You figure she owes you," I said.

"Damn right."

"You figure the whole world owes you. You got an ego so big you collect your own bootlegs, Cam. Probably autograph them for yourself too. I think your perception of what Miranda promised might be a wee bit twisted."

He took a step forward. "You asking for something, son, you're going to get it."

"Knock it off, Cam. I want to get Miranda extricated from Sheckly, so her deal with Century Records can go through. You could give me the leverage I need to do that."

Cam laughed harshly. "Heard that before."

"You mean from Les?"

Cam shook his head in disgust, walked stiffly into the kitchen, pulled another beer from the refrigerator. "Ask little Miss Daniels. Ask if I didn't tell her, first time she came crying to me about Sheck's contract on her. I figured a Century Records deal, hell, she was going to take me along for sure. We'd be set. I told her somebody wanted to get a little pull with Sheck, all they had to do was look into those shows he's been taping for radio.

Maybe get close to Julie Kearnes, ask Julie to pull some files here and there from the Paintbrush computers, ask her about those trips to Europe with Alex B."

I stood very still. The only sound was the hum of Cam Compton's refrigerator and the traffic on PerrinBeitel. "You told Miranda all this."

"That's what I'm saying."

"And if somebody was to dig where you said to dig—?"

Cam gave me his closelipped smile. "Not like every sound man who's ever worked the Paintbrush doesn't know. Not like the headliner artists don't know, son. It's rankled them for years. Just nobody can prove it. I tell you, what do I get?"

"I'll introduce you to Sam Barrera, make sure he cuts you a fair deal."

"Price would be higher than that, son."

"Somebody's already kicked in your ribs, Cam. You think you can afford to wait around for a better offer?"

Cam's smile dissolved. "Get the fuck out, then."

"You should talk to me, Cam."

He went across the room, retrieved his .22 from the guitar amp. He held it lazily in my direction, never mind the chambers were empty.

There wasn't much more I could say.

I opened the door. The heat immediately sucked into the room around me, along with the traffic sounds and the smell of exhaust.

As I left, Cam Compton was standing in front of his music collection, his .22 wedged in his armpit. Cam was examining one by one the stray CDs I'd taken out, using his grubby Tshirt to wipe the front of each jewel case before he put it back in its proper place.

28

That night it took more than a little self convincing to get myself out of the house, away from the possibilities of a simple chalupa dinner and my medieval drama book and maybe even some sleep, to drive out instead to the address Miranda Daniels had given me—her family ranch house near Bulverde.

It had been less than a year since an inheritance case had taken me out that direction, but I was amazed by the urbanization, how much farther I had to go to start smelling the cedars and the fertilizer.

San Antonio grows in concentric layers like a tree. It's one of the few ways the town is orderly.

My grandfather rarely went farther from downtown than Brackenridge Park, unless he was looking for deer to shoot. My mother used to think Scrivener's fabric store on Loop 410 was the edge of town. In my high school years the outermost boundary of the known world was Loop 1604, and even inside the loop it was still mostly tracts of live oak and cactus and broken limestone.

Now I could drive past 1604 and halfway to the village of Bulverde before I was ever out of earshot of a convenience store.

The sky behind me was city grayorange and ahead of me rural black. Just above the hills, the full moon made a hazy white circle behind the clouds.

I exited on Ranch Road 22, a narrow twolaner with no lighting, no posted speed limits, plenty of curves, and nothing on the shoulders but gravel and barbed wire. A killway, my dad would've called it.

In my goreloving adolescent days I used to pester the Sheriff to tell me about all the traffic accidents he'd handled on little ranch roads like RR22. He usually said no, but one night he'd gotten drunk enough and fed up enough to tell me in graphic detail about a particularly nasty headon collision. He told me murder scenes were nothing compared to car accidents, and then he went on to prove it. I never asked to hear any more of his work stories.

I swerved once to avoid a dead deer. Fence posts and mile markers floated into my headlights and out again. Occasionally I passed a billboard advertising a new housing development that was about to be built—CALLE VERDE, FINE LIVING FROM THE 120's. I bet the folks who'd moved out here for a retirement in the country were pleased about that.

The 7Elevens and H.E.B.s would be coming in next.

The turn for Serra Road was unmarked, despite what Miranda had told me, and it wasn't much wider than a private driveway. Fortunately I could see the Daniels' party all the way from RR22. A quarter mile or so across a dark pasture, lights were blazing in the trees and a fire was burning. There was the distant hum of music.

I bumped along Serra Road with rocks pinging into the wheel wells of the VW. The air was the temperature of bathwater and had a strange mix of smells– manure, wood smoke, gasoline, and marigolds. One more right turn took me over the cattle guard of the Daniels' property.

Their front yard was a full acre of gravel and grass. A dozen pickup trucks were parked around a granddaddy live oak several stories tall and hung from root to top with white Christmas lights. One of the pickup trucks was a huge black affair with orange pinstriping and silver Barbie doll women on the mud flaps. I wondered if there could be two such trucks in the world. Not with my luck.

The house itself was low and long and white, with a front porch that stretched all the way across and was now spilling over with people. Willis Daniels and his standup bass were the centre of attention. He and a small bunch of grizzled cowboy musicians, none of them from Miranda's group, were burning their way through an old swing number—Milton Brown, if my memories of my father's 78 collection served me right.

All the players were drunk as hell and they sounded just fine.

Smaller clumps of people were gathered around the property, drinking and talking and laughing. Half a dozen were throwing horseshoes by the side of the house, their light provided by a line of bare bulbs strung between a mesquite tree and a toolshed. Some women in dresses and boots and lots of silver jewellery were gathered around a campfire, helping blearyeyed kids roast marsh mallows. All of the pickup truck cabs were dark and closed but not all of them were vacant.

Next to the oak tree two men were talking—Brent Daniels and my buddy Jean.

Brent was wearing the same dingy checkered shirt and black jeans he'd been wearing the last three times I'd seen him. They weren't getting any prettier and neither was he.

His black hair looked like dayold road kill. He was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.

Jean wore a dark blue linen jacket, slacks that were a little too tight around his middle, a white collarless silk shirt, black boots, and a silver bracelet. His hand was clutching Brent's shoulder a little too firmly and he was leaning close to Brent's ear, telling him something.

When Jean realized somebody was watching their conversation he cast around until he found me. He locked his fierce, indifferent little eyes on me for a second, finished his statement to Brent, then pulled away and laughed, patting Brent's shoulder like they'd just shared a fine humorous story. Brent didn't laugh. He turned angrily and walked toward the house.

Jean leaned back against the oak. He put his heel on the trunk, produced a handrolled cigarette, and began fishing around his pockets for a lighter. He watched me as I walked toward him.

"The steel guitar player."

"It's honest work."

Jean lit his cigarette, nodded. "No doubt. Honest work."

"Why are you standing out here in the dark?" I asked. "Your boss too embarrassed to bring you into the party?"

Jean narrowed his eyes. He mouthed the words your boss like he was trying to interpret them, like he was suspicious he'd just been insulted.

"Sheckly," he decided.

"Yeah—the big ugly redneck. You know."

In the glow from the white Christmas lights, Jean's smile looked unnaturally luminous.

The fierceness in his eyes didn't diminish at all. "I see."

"You did a hell of a job clearing out Alex Blanceagle the other night."

No response. Jean took a drag on the cigarette, turned his head, and blew smoke leisurely toward the porch. The old drunk musicians had launched into something new—an instrumental that sounded vaguely like Lester Scruggs. A couple of women were dosidoing with each other on the sidewalk.

I looked toward the front door. Brent Daniels now stood next to an icefilled garbage can, drinking a beer as fast as he could. Several people were talking to him but Brent wasn't paying them any attention.

"What was that about?" I asked Jean.

He followed my gaze, caught my meaning. "I told Brent Daniels I admired his sister.

Her music. I said I hoped she would tour Europe soon."

"Like Cam Compton used to. Make a nice courier system, wouldn't it? Good cover, touring with a band, with lots of equipment, if you had goods you wanted to deliver to a lot of places in Europe."

Jean blew more smoke. He gave me the crab eyes. "Do you intend to provoke, Mr.

Navarre, or are you simply an idiot?"

"I'm not usually like this," I confessed. "Usually I don't find so many corpses in one week. You usually leave so many?"

Jean smiled coldly. "An idiot," he decided.

He disengaged his back from the tree and was leaning forward to say something when some commotion erupted around the side of the house.

Somebody by the shed yelled "Ohhh!" like he'd just seen a great triple play. A woman shrieked. A crowd of people started to converge around the horseshoe pit. Some were swearing, a few laughing. Willis Daniels' hoe down faltered to a stop as the musicians got up to see what was going on.

A drunk cowboy staggered away from the scene, laughing, telling people what had just happened in a loud enough voice that Jean and I could hear him fine. Apparently Allison SaintPierre had just knocked Tilden Sheckly out cold with a horseshoe.

I looked at Jean.

He tossed his cigarette down in a leisurely way. It bounced off a root and disappeared in the crack between two other roots, then dimmed to a little orange eye. Jean looked up at me and smiled, almost pleasantly this time.

"My boss," he said with satisfaction.

Then he turned and casually walked in the opposite direction, into the dark.