A Song to Die For (13 page)

“Tell you what. Why don't we just wait it out for now and see how long it takes for this little oversight to dawn on the grieving Uncle Paul.”

“I guess we can wait a little longer. But sooner or later…”

“Let's give it a day.”

“All right, Hooley. See ya'.”

The Ranger leaned back into the tedious task of searching the names and numbers. The task had already become second nature—a chore his subconscious mind could sort through as his conscious thoughts whirled about the cloud of scenarios that loomed over and around him. Then, suddenly, a name shouted at him from the page. Celinda Morales. He double-checked the Jack sack to confirm the number. Bingo!

His phone rang. Hoping for a call from Lucille, down the hall, he answered it. Instead, it was the department's public relations agent. The media were clamoring for a press conference.

“Tell the goddamn vultures they're gonna have to wait!” He slammed the phone down, then picked it right back up and dialed the number for Celinda Morales. He heard a recording of a pleasant female voice, with a touch of a Mexican-American accent:

“Hi, you've reached Celinda. Sorry I'm not here to answer this call…”

Hooley thought about leaving a message, but decided against it. He wrote the name and phone number on a piece of paper to give to Lucille. On another scrap, he copied Celinda Morales's address on Riverside Drive. He sprang from his chair, grabbed his hat, and headed out. He stopped at Lucille's desk to give her the new information.

“This is the match I'm looking for. If you hear from the phone company, have dispatch radio me.”

*   *   *

He was almost to the address on Riverside when the call came over the radio: “Unit Thirteen, come in.”

“Roger, this is Thirteen,” Hooley said into his mic.

“Yeah, Thirteen, you have a match on the name and number you requested. A positive ID from your phone booth.”

“Ten-four.” So, Rosa
had
called Celinda. He immediately thirsted for details that he couldn't ask about over the radio. No telling who might be listening on police scanners all over town, including those press vultures. Some of them probably already knew that he was “Unit Thirteen.” Still, obvious questions begged his attention. How many calls? What time? What was the duration of each call?

Celinda Morales's address led him to an apartment building on Town Lake. He stepped into the business offices on the ground floor and flashed his credentials to a receptionist. “Do you have a Celinda Morales living here?”

“Yes, sir,” the slightly plump, attractive young blond woman said, staring out through oversized lenses.

“Apartment number…”

She glanced at his side arm in the holster, then flipped through a card file on her desk. “She's in two-oh-five.”

“Can you describe her for me?”

“She's real pretty. About twenty-five, I guess. She's Spanish … Well, I mean, her name's Morales, so you probably…”

By “Spanish,” Hooley knew she meant Mexican-American. He had heard Celinda's accent on the answering machine. She wasn't from Spain. Sounded like a San Antonio girl to him, and he was good at placing Texans by their dialects.

“What does she do?”

“I think she goes to UT. She always has her books with her when she comes in with the check.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Yeah. He lives with her. I hear he's a lawyer. I don't know his name..”

The cloud was lifting, affording glimpses of places still veiled in a lingering fog. “I'll need to use your phone, darlin'.”

The receptionist shoved the phone toward Hooley. He dialed Lucille's number and extension.

“
D.P.S
.” Lucille said.

“Lucille, this is Captain Johnson.”

“Hooley. The call was made from the phone booth in Albuquerque at three seventeen in the afternoon. It lasted a minute and forty-two seconds.”

“Just one call?”

“No. Right before the call to Austin, there was a call to directory assistance. Information.”

“Thanks.” He hung up. “I'm gonna go up and knock on Celinda's door. Do you have a master key?”

She nodded.

“Why don't you grab it and come with me.”

“Is someone in trouble?” the receptionist asked.

“I hope not.”

Together, they left the office and headed for the nearest staircase. Hooley remained silent, thinking: Rosa was on a first-name basis with Celinda, but didn't have her number memorized. She had had to call information. So they were friends, but not that close. They were about the same age. College acquaintances? He knew Rosa had graduated from UT just a couple of years ago.

When they got to the door, Hooley knocked on it. No answer. He knocked again, louder. He could hear something inside. A radio? He knocked again, still louder. Nothing. He turned to the receptionist.

“Here's the deal, darlin'. I don't have a search warrant. But this girl, Celinda, may be in trouble. You're the manager here, so you have the right to open the front door. If you do that, I can look in, but I can't enter, unless I see evidence of a crime. Are you okay with that? I just want to see what I can see from the doorway. I'm worried about Celinda.”

The wild-eyed receptionist nodded, seemingly caught up in more excitement than she usually encountered in her job.

Hooley pulled his bandanna from his left hip pocket and handed it to the blonde. “Use this to turn the doorknob. I don't want your prints on top of anybody else's.”

She put the key in the lock, turned it, and opened the door, using the bandanna.

With the first glimpse of the body on the floor, the screaming started. Hooley rushed in to check for a pulse, but the body was already cold and stiff. The shrilling continued—a spine-twisting siren of a scream. He went back to the door and shook the blonde by her shoulders.

“Hush! Hush, now! Get ahold of yourself.”

The girl quit screaming, mostly because she had run out of breath.

“You okay now?”

She nodded, but didn't really look okay.

“Gather your senses, go downstairs, and call the Austin Police. Tell them what we found, and tell them there's a Texas Ranger already on the scene.”

The girl trotted off. Hooley hoped she wouldn't fall down the stairs. He picked up his bandanna from where she had dropped it. Some guy looked out of a nearby doorway.

He flashed his badge. “Everything's under control, sir. Sorry for the disturbance.”

He turned back to the body, feeling that devastating sorrow from Rosa's morgue drawer seep back into his heart. Celinda looked as if she had reclined on the floor for a nap. Long black hair spread across the beige shag carpet. It was Rosa all over again, and he had arrived too late to stop it.

 

12

CHAPTER

The song ended four different times, Metro Valenzuela putting the last of the finales on it with a completely unnecessary tom-tom roll and a kick drum blast. Frustrated, Creed took a deep breath to calm himself.

“The outro is exactly like the intro,” he said. “We all end together on the last downbeat. Or, we're
supposed
to. We need to clean that up.”

“It's just the third pass,” Luster said. “We're gettin' there.”

The door to the studio opened, and Lindsay's perfect Afro floated into the room like a shiny black bubble. “Sorry I'm a little late,” she said. “Can somebody come help me carry my stuff in?”

Tump put his bass on a guitar stand. “Go help her, kid,” he said to Metro.

Metro sighed and slammed his sticks down on the snare. “I carry my own stuff,” he muttered as he trudged to the door.

“I'll help,” Trusty Joe said. “I don't mind.”

Luster spoke low to Creed. “I thought we told her eleven o'clock. It's almost one.”

“I'll talk to her.” He racked his Strat and stepped over to the turntable. “Let's listen a few more times while Lindsay sets up her stuff.”

“I think we know the song by now,” Tump said.

“All right, we know the song. Now let's listen to the arrangement. Listen to the dynamics. The breaks should be clean. Seems like everybody wants to fill them up with something that's not on the record.”

“I like to be spontaneous. Does it have to be exactly like the record?”

“Yes,” Luster said. “People expect it. They hear a song on the radio, they want to hear it the same way live.”

Tump reached for the smokes in his shirt pocket. “I'll listen from the backyard.”

Metro and Trusty Joe came in with Lindsay's gear and she began slowly setting up her steel guitar, pausing to listen to her parts on the record. The rest of the band wandered out to the backyard with Tump. When the song had played through, Creed approached Lindsay.

“We need everybody here at the same time, Lindsay. I hope you don't plan on making a habit of showing up late.”

“I don't believe in habits,” she dodged. “Or vices.”

“I told you rehearsal was at eleven. It's almost one.”

She looked him in the eyes with a cool stare. “Everybody else said rehearsal was at noon.”

“Well, Luster and I wanted to work with you on some leads before the rest of the guys showed up.” He realized he was explaining himself to her, instead of the other way around. “Anyway, if you thought it was noon, you're still almost an hour late.”

“I had to drop my sister's kid off at day care. Family is the most important thing, Mr. Creed, don't you agree?”

Creed sighed. “Just try a little harder, Lindsay. That's all I'm sayin'.”

“Be a doll and move that amp over for me, Mr. Creed. And put that record back on, too. I
love
this song.” She flashed a perfect smile at Luster.

When the band came in, Creed smelled marijuana smoke following Metro into the studio. Trusty Joe looked a little glassy-eyed, too. He made the band listen to the record twice more, talking them through the rough spots. When they played it, Lindsay got every lick perfectly in place on the steel, yet the bass, drums, and fiddle were still noodling around.

Three hours later, Creed finally got the band to nail the song like the studio cut. “Good!” he announced. “Now, if everybody will just remember that, we've got exactly one song in our repertoire. What's next, Luster?”

“Short rehearsal today, boys and girls. I gotta go see a man about a bus. Let's meet back here tomorrow at two o'clock. Lindsay, that'll be ten thirty a.m. for you.”

Lindsay cackled. “Oh, Luster, you are a pistol!”

“There's cold beer in the icebox if anybody wants one,” Luster announced.

Only Creed and Trusty Joe went with Luster to the kitchen for a beer, and Trusty Joe took his away with him for the drive.

“What do you think so far?” Creed asked, pulling the top on a beer can in the kitchen.

“It'll come together. They're all good players. They'll make a band someday.”

“Maybe we need a deadline. Do we have any gigs lined up?”

Luster waved the suggestion aside. “I can get gigs. Right now, I want to see about getting us a tour bus. You and Dixie ever have a bus?”

Creed nodded. “Our last little tour across the South we used a bus. Man, I thought I had arrived.”

“We had three buses for the band toward the end. That's rollin' in style. Spoiled me. I know we can't afford one, but I think I can sweet-talk one out of the son of an old friend of mine. He rents tour buses to bands.” Luster looked at his watch. “I better skedaddle on over there. It's across town.”

“Mind if I ride with you?”

“Hell, no. Let's grab a couple for the road.”

They grabbed a six-pack of Schlitz beers, sank into the plush seats of Luster's Cadillac, and left the ranch. On the drive toward Austin, Creed resumed his campaign. “Anyway, like I was saying back at the house, if we had a gig—say, two weeks from now—maybe the band would get a little more serious about rehearsals.”

“All right, Creed, I'll line something up.”

“Are you nervous about it?”

“About what?”

“You know … Being onstage again, and with a new band, at that.”

“Why should I be nervous? I'm Luster Burnett. I know what I'm doin'. I hired you to be nervous for me.”

Creed nodded. “It's workin'.”

They turned onto Ben White Boulevard, passing old farmhouses now crowded by an expanding city.

“I've been wondering…” Creed said.

“Yeah?” Luster shot a glance toward the passenger seat.

“I've got this song I've been writing. I wonder if you'd help me with it. I mean, if you like where it's going.”

“I don't co-write.”

Disappointed, Creed stared out through the windshield, but couldn't let it alone. “Why not?”

“Did Rembrandt co-paint?”

Rejected, Creed did not reply.

They drove past Bergstrom Air Force Base, and Creed watched a huge Sikorsky helicopter lift from the tarmac. His mind shot back to Vietnam, where the “Super Jolly Green Giant” gunships had rumbled the whole sky with rotor wash and fifty-caliber machine-gun fire.

“So, what do you call it?”

Creed came warping back to the present time and place, safe in the Cadillac, except for the fact that Luster was at that moment running a red light. Realizing Luster was asking about the song, he said, “‘Fair Thee Well.'”

“Sing me a little.”

Creed shifted in his seat, wishing for a guitar. “It's like an old Irish toast. It would be a good song to end a show with, or put on the last track of an LP.”

“Don't sell it to me, just sing it.”

“It starts on the chorus.”

Luster shot a glance at him that said,
just sing the damn song.

“Okay, Boss. I'm just gonna sing the parts I've got so far.”