A Song to Die For (16 page)

“What are you trying to get it to do?”

“I'm trying to call the Vegas field office. Let them know I arrived.”

Hooley grabbed his radio mic. “This is Thirteen.”

“Go ahead, Thirteen.”

“Agent Doolittle is in town. Please advise his home office.”

“Roger, Thirteen.”

“Portable phone, huh? Kind of like a two-way radio?” Hooley turned into the parking lot of Celinda's apartment complex. “This is crime scene number two. Celinda Morales.”

Chagrined, Mel stuffed the cord and receiver back into the leather box. Like Hooley, he got out of the truck. Unlike Hooley, who lightly pushed his truck door closed, Mel slammed the passenger door with a loud metallic thud.

Hooley stopped in front of the truck and turned to the young F.B.I. agent. “Mel, you want to do me a favor? I mean, as a track and field man, and all?”

“Sure, Hooley. Name it.”

“Next time you slam that door, just back off and take a good run at it. Now, come on and let's get this over with. I'm sure they want to rent this apartment out again as soon as possible.”

 

14

CHAPTER

Creed strolled around the carcass of the forty-foot-long Silver Eagle bus, wondering what he had gotten himself into now. The three-axle configuration told him this was an 01 Model, built in Germany. It was nicknamed The Silver Eagle for its nickel-plated siding, though this one had a tree sap patina to it. The U.S. company, Continental Trailways, had contracted the construction of this model of bus in Europe, but had given the engine contract to the Detroit Diesel Company. Creed had helped repair more than a couple of Silver Eagles in his uncle's diesel shop working summers there, as his uncle held a regional maintenance deal with Continental Trailways. A precious few of these old buses had been converted to entertainers' coaches.

Kicking back the weeds around the wheels, he found all the tires flat. He walked around back and opened the engine cowling. There was a Detroit Diesel engine, sure enough. He wondered if it was blown.

He circumnavigated the bus and wound up at the front where he muscled the door open on the right side and stepped in. He nodded, finding the interior in remarkably good shape. He walked back through the sitting area and peeked into a couple of bunks. It would take some cleaning and patching here and there, but he didn't see any water damage or rats' nests. The diesel engine and drive train were his primary worries.

Walking back up to the driver's seat, he looked at the old registration sticker on the inside of the windshield. He could barely make out the year model: 1961. He frowned, for he knew what this meant on a Model 01 Silver Eagle: four-speed manual transmission and manual steering. This thing was going to be a bear to drive on long hauls. He noticed a key sticking out of the ignition. He wondered. He sat down in the driver's seat. Slowly, he reached for the key.

“Those batteries are deader than Buddy Holly,” Junior said, stepping into the door unexpectedly. “Help yourself to whatever you need in the shop. Batteries, parts, tires, tools, whatever. If you get this thing runnin', you can have a job here after your music career craps out.”

“Thanks,” Creed said, smirking.

Junior shook his head and went back to work.

Still sitting in the driver's seat, Creed tested the pedals. The clutch felt good. The brake and accelerator seemed normal. He grabbed the stick shift jutting up from the floorboard and went to jam it into first.

“Uh-oh,” he muttered. The stick flopped around like a handle in a butter churn. Something between the shift knob and the transmission had gone bad.

He bailed out of the bus and tried to figure out where to start. He decided his first task would be to replace the dead batteries and attempt to crank the engine. He found a toolbox in the shop and went to work removing the old batteries. He then lugged two new batteries out to the bus and connected them.

Back in the driver's seat, he turned the key one notch and saw, somewhat to his surprise, that the gauges on the dashboard sprang to life. Maybe the wiring was not completely shot, as he had feared. Rodents liked to chew on wiring insulation, causing short circuits, but there were a number of semiwild house cats living around the bus yard, so maybe they had kept the mouse population in check.

Creed saw that the fuel gauge showed empty. The inside of that empty tank was probably corroded by now, he thought. He would probably have to flush the tank out with solvent before he filled it with diesel.

His hand was still on the key. He decided to try cranking the motor briefly, just to see if it would turn over. He turned the key clockwise, slowly, as if cracking a safe. He heard the starter catch the flywheel and move the internal organs inside the motor block. He turned the key back off and risked a smile on one side of his mouth. The motor wasn't frozen. With some new fuel and fluids, it might actually run.

His mind now drifted back to that lazy stick shift. He figured he'd better check that out next. Borrowing a flashlight from the shop, he dropped to the ground, rolled onto his back, and began to shimmy under the front of the bus. With all the tires flat, he didn't enjoy much crawl space, but he scooted as best he could, brushing aside dead leaves and spiderwebs as he made his way. The clothes he had worn to rehearsal were not the best for greasy mechanic work, but he wanted this heap up and running as soon as possible, and he had no way to go home and change, anyway, having left his van at Luster's ranch.

Creed found the bottom of the stick shift lever and quickly saw that the bolt at the bottom of the gearshift had sheered off from thousands of gear changes. He crawled out from under the bus and went to the shop, grabbing an assortment of bolts that might fit, and nuts and lock washers to hold them in place.

Back under the bus once again, he began testing the parts to see which would work best. The linkage was hard to reach and the bolt would be difficult to work back into place, but he knew he could make it work. While struggling to get the linkage hooked back up, he heard the purr of Luster's El Dorado, its tires crunching gravel. The door slammed with that precision
choonk
of a Cadillac.

“I figured you'd have it runnin' by now,” Luster prodded, for he could see Creed's boots sticking out from under the bus.

From his own perspective, Creed could see Luster's well-worn ranching boots in the crack of daylight that shone under the bus. The country music legend had duct tape wrapped around one toe to keep the sole from flapping.

“I don't think we'll be taking any bus rides today,” Creed admitted.

“This is good practice for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“When things go wrong, the band leader is the guy who always gets thrown under the bus.”

Luster opened a folding lawn chair. Creed saw its aluminum frame settle into the gravel. Beside it, a Coleman cooler dropped into view, presumably full of iced beer. As if to answer that question, Luster rolled a cold one up under the bus.

“Thanks,” Creed said, pulling the tab on the can of Pearl. “I thought you were a Schlitz man.”

“It was on sale.”

Lying on his back, Creed poured a swig into the corner of his mouth and managed to get the new bolt to slip into the linkage with his left hand. Now if he could just get the lock washer and the nut on, he would be in business. Luster sat in the lawn chair, and then Creed heard the strum of a fine acoustic guitar—a Gibson, judging from the fat bottom end. Luster began to sing:

“Fair thee well … May your good times never end…”

To Creed's surprise, Luster sang the whole chorus, never missing a word or a note, though he had only heard the tune once, an hour ago, in the car. Creed felt chills run up his back at the sound of that gold-record voice singing something he had written. At least he hoped they were chills, and not black widow spiders or fire ants.

“Must be a catchy song,” Creed suggested.

“My ears have a photographic memory.”

“Sounds like a hit song when you sing it.”

“Son, the Preamble to the Constitution would sound like a hit song if I sang it.” He laughed to soften the arrogance of the comment.

“Maybe you should record it.”

“Maybe I will, if this song don't pan out.”

“I'm hoping this one will pan out,” Creed said. “Here's an idea for the first verse.” In the same key, Creed sang, “
May your fires warm your hearth and home in winter, may your garden bloom with flowers in the spring…”

“Hold on, Hoss,” Luster said, interrupting. “Let's have a little talk first. We're giving birth to a song. It's not something you take lightly. Now, you've got a good chorus started, with a pretty strong hook-line—a familiar phrase. A good hook-line is rule number one. But here's the deal: The first line of the song has got to be better than the hook-line. That's rule number two. And the first verse has got to be solid, but the second verse has got to be better than the first verse. That's rule number three. Then there's rule number four: Everything in the song—every word, every phrase—has got to tie into the hook-line.”

“That's a lot of rules.”

“Wait till you hear rule number five.”

“There's more?”

“Rule number five is that when you start writing, you throw all the rules out the window. Don't think about it. Just let it flow.”

“I thought that's what I was doing,” Creed mumbled.

“Kid, how many chart hits have you written?”

“Well, let me think,” Creed replied. “That would be a total of … uh … one.”

“If you want to write some more, you should pay heed to the master. Now listen, I'm serious about this, no matter how crazy it sounds. You've got to know what the rules are, and use 'em, while ignoring the rules all at the same time.”

An empty beer can hit the gravel beside the lawn chair and the cooler. Creed could hear Luster plunging his fist into the ice for another can.

“I hear you, Boss. I'm listening. So … Where do we start?”

“We finish the chorus. You know that line where you wrote ‘blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…'”

“Well, I didn't actually write that, I just…”

“How's this:
May a fair wind fill your sail, fare thee well…”

Creed finally got the nut to thread on the bolt, the muscles in his left arm burning from reaching awkwardly upward for several minutes. “I like that. That fits right in.” He dropped his arm to the gravel to rest his muscles before tightening the nut on the bolt.

“Good,” Luster said. “Now what was that line you had for a first verse?” He rolled another beer under the bus for Creed though Creed still had half of the previous one left.

“What I said a while ago:
May your fires warm your hearth and home in winter; may your garden bloom with flowers in the spring…”

“I see where you're going,” Luster said. “Okay…” He strummed and hummed as Creed laboriously tightened the nut on the tempered-steel bolt. After a minute or so, Luster began to sing: “
May your fires warm your hearth and home in winter; may your garden bloom with flowers in the spring; May your hills know the shady trees of summer; that in autumn rain down gold and crimson leaves…”

“That's beautiful,” Creed said. “It's not an exact rhyme—
spring
and
leaves
—but it's pretty close.”

Luster gulped. “Close enough. Don't nitpick. Now, what's the first line of the second verse?”

“I was thinking something like…”

“Don't think. Just blurt it out.”

“
May your heart lead you down the path you follow…”

“That ain't bad, Hoss. Are you writing this down?”

“I'm under a bus, Boss.”

“You ought to write under a bus more often. That's pretty good. Let me get some paper.”

Creed finished his first beer, the cold brew running down his cheek as he struggled to drink it lying flat on his back without much room to lift his head. He opened his second can, and went back to tightening the linkage bolt.

“I found a grocery sack in the trunk,” Luster said, returning. “There's nothing I like writing on better than a grocery sack, except maybe a Big Chief tablet or a paper placemat at some diner. Not a cocktail napkin, though. All these stories you hear about writing some hit on a cocktail napkin … That's bull. You can't write shit on those things. They're too small, and they rip too easy.”

Creed heard a whittling sound, and saw pencil shavings fluttering to the ground. Faintly, he heard the pencil point scribbling on the grocery sack. He could tell by a certain resonance that Luster was using the back of the guitar as a makeshift lap desk on which to write. Creed, himself, had often used the same method to scribble lyrics.

“How about this, Creed?
May your heart lead you down the path you follow; May your trail soon and often cross my own
?”

“I like it.”

“Pipe down, I ain't done:
And in the end; When your wandering days are over; May the road you travel safely lead you home … And fair thee well.
Back to the chorus.”

“That's good. Damn good.”

“Why do you think they call me Luster?”

“Sing the whole thing, Boss.”

Luster stumbled through the freshly penned co-write with just enough of a flow to give a fair rendering of the new composition. Creed listened on his back under the bus, his heart swelling to hear the voice of his hero singing something they had just written together. By the end of the tune, he was lost in daydreams about performing the song for huge crowds of admiring fans.

“You still alive under there?” Luster asked.

“Yeah.” He realized that he had finished tightening the linkage bolt, snugging the nut down on the lock washer.