Denton - 03 - Way Past Dead (17 page)

I had about as much hope of pulling this off as a steerage passenger had of getting on one of the
Titanic’s
lifeboats. Every little piece of information I learned was one more revelation that could send Slim packing for the next couple of decades.

“One more bad piece of news. That’s just what we need.”

“How is that bad?”

“What do you mean?” I almost shouted at him without meaning to. “It’s one more motive!”

“But the DA ain’t going to find out about that,” Ray insisted.

“Ray, excuse me for allowing a little reality to intrude upon this discussion. But I think we’d both be better off if we assumed the District Attorney’s Office and the police are going to know everything.”

I paused for a second.
“Everything!”

He jumped back. “Okay, okay!”

“Now let’s move on,” I said. My stomach churned. “Let’s look at her other business arrangements. I don’t know the music business very well. What other people did Rebecca work with?”

“Well, I guess the closest would be her personal manager, Mac Ford. Then there was her talent and booking agent, Faye Morgan over at CCA, the Concert Corporation of America. And then there was her accountant. What was his name? And the lawyer, of course.”

“Mac Ford,” I said. “I’ve heard of him. Got a weird
name or something, hasn’t he? I’ve seen it in the papers.”

“Ford McKenna Ford is his real name, but everybody calls him Mac. He used to manage Slim and Rebecca both, but Slim left him after the divorce. Mac’s taken care of Rebecca since he stole her away from her original manager back when she and Slim were just selling their first songs.”

“Stole her?” I asked. “That happen often? Managers stealing each other’s clients away, I mean.”

Ray smiled. “You
don’t
know this business, do you?”

“So let me in on it.”

Ray leaned back, glad to take back control of the conversation. He threw his big snakeskin shitkickers up on the desk and intertwined his fingers into a headrest. Suddenly he’d changed from a serious, scared middle-aged guy about to lose it all to the country-music-industry insider who was holding court for the uninitiated. His ego was back in gear.

“Harry, I once knew a guy who paid an artist’s manager ten thousand cash under the table to talk him into a record deal that wound up ruining the singer’s career. The first thing you learn in this business is that people will lie to you when it’s goddamn easier to tell the truth, and would be a hell of a lot less to keep track of in the bargain. You got to watch out for yourself, ’cause the wounded are left behind or eaten.”

“But what about Rebecca?”

“Rebecca Gibson came to town in the late Seventies, with a little bit of talent as a singer, a lot of determination, and a whole lot of undiscovered talent as a songwriter. She had hair bouffed up to the ceiling, an ice-cream-cone bra, and dreams. That was about it. She got a job as a waitress and worked the open-mike nights for about two years before her first manager discovered her. He was a guy named Will Harmetz, and he was known then for hanging around the Trailways station like a child molester.”

“Was he? A child molester, I mean?”

“Let me put it this way. Rebecca spent most of her time with Will on her back with her legs in the air. But she was over twenty-one and he blew enough smoke up her ass that she was willing to put up with it. Besides, the world wasn’t exactly beating a path to her door. Then she met Slim.”

“And started to blossom.”

“You bet your ass she did. Slim taught her a lot, and she taught him a lot. They were going places, and the first thing they had to do was find a real manager. Mac Ford was just starting out then, but he was taking in some of the hippest young country acts around. He wasn’t getting very far with most of them, but he was in there punching. Rebecca had a long-term contract with this slimebag Harmetz. If I remember correctly, he was putting together a deal to have Rebecca start a tour singing in truck-stop restaurants. You believe that, man? Truck-stop restaurants …”

“So how’d he get her out of it?”

“Rebecca was going to go to Harmetz and just tell him she wanted out. Mac knew better, though. He knew Rebecca would eventually be worth something, and he figured Will Harmetz probably knew it, too. He also was savvy enough to know that if Harmetz figured Rebecca was about to jump ship, he’d just get the wagons in a circle.”

Ray was the Charlie Daniels of the mixed metaphor. I struggled to keep a straight face. “So what did they do?”

“By this time, Slim and Becca were living together and planning on getting married. Harmetz didn’t mind so much that she wasn’t doing the horizontal bop with him anymore. After all, there were other girls out there. Now that she was near her midtwenties, she was quickly becoming too old for him anyway. But she arranged to meet Will at his office for one last bout on the leather couch. She must have put it to him, because he
fell asleep afterward. Rebecca lifted some of his letterhead, and Mac forged a letter releasing her from her contract. He forged Harmetz’s name, then had a friend notarize it for him.”

“They forged a release?” I asked, surprise in my voice.

“Sure, happens all the time. Then they made a few crappy-looking copies of it and planted them in file folders. Rebecca stuck the original back in Harmetz’s filing cabinet. And when he started raising hell about having her locked in on a long-term management contract, she just produced her copy and told him where to find his.”

“And he fell for it?”

“Wasn’t nothing to fall for,” Ray said. “Wasn’t nothing Harmetz could so. They had him by the short ones. Besides, this kind of shit happens all the time. Harmetz knew how the game was played. He certainly wasn’t surprised.”

“But you’d think he’d at least go to court and fight for it.”

“Oh, he tried. Threatened to, anyway. Said he owned twenty percent of everything she ever did for the rest of her career and a hundred percent of the name Rebecca Gibson. Becca just laughed and told him to get a life. An artist and a manager have almost a marriage. You can’t sue somebody to make ’em love you when they don’t anymore.”

“Given the way this society’s going, I’m surprised somebody hasn’t tried it,” I said. “But okay, we’ll add Will Harmetz to the list.”

“Well, you can add, but it won’t do any good in his case. He got drunker’n Cootie Mae Brown about five years ago and fell off a houseboat out in Percy Priest Lake. He washed up on the beach at Hermitage Landing on the Fourth of July weekend.”

I drew a line through Will Harmetz’s name. “Okay, so much for that. What about Mac Ford?”

“Well, I could see Mac Ford killing somebody. He is, after all, a manager. But it don’t make sense. He and Becca got along. They’d been working together for years. She was all set to make him some serious money. Mac’s kind of a wild man, but why would he want to kill her?”

I couldn’t answer that. “Okay, no motive for him. Who else?”

“Well, there’s Faye Morgan over at CCA.”

“All right, that’s something I don’t understand. What’s the difference between a booking agent and a manager?”

“A booking agent actually arranges the dates. The personal manager handles an artist’s business affairs, approves contracts, negotiates deals with record companies. Basically, anything an artist needs. You got to understand, Harry, some of these kids come up here out of these small towns where the most sophisticated thing they’ve ever seen is the VFW hall on Friday night. As a rule, they ain’t too well educated, and most of them are a little light in the basic-brains and common-sense department.”

Ray smiled like a cat with a mouthful of warm mouse. “Why there’s one famous-as-hell country singer, and I ain’t going to tell you who he is, who can’t even read. Literally can’t sign his own goddamn name.”

“But how do these people survive?” I protested. “It’s got to be a cutthroat business. Record deals have got to be complicated. How do they protect themselves?”

“Most of them can’t,” Ray said. “That’s why it’s so important to have a manager you can trust. And a booking agent who’s working for you and not against you. It’s real difficult, too, ’cause a lot of these yahoo hillbillies come up here and get lucky enough to cut one or two hit records, and all of a sudden theirs don’t stink anymore.”

“Get the big head, huh?” I realized we were getting sidetracked, but on the other hand, if I was going to
jump into this cesspool, it sure would be nice to know where the rocks were.

“They can get to be real assholes, some of them. And the ones who come across nicest on the interview shows and at Fan Fair and stuff like that are usually the biggest assholes of all.”

“Was Rebecca one of them? Did she have the big head?”

Ray hesitated, unsure, I thought, of what he really wanted to say. “A woman with Rebecca Gibson’s talent was entitled to be a prima donna,” he said. “You don’t realize the pressure that’s on these people. Of course, you’re going to be difficult when you go through what these people go through. Especially when it takes as long as it did for Rebecca.”

“Did it take a long time for her to get a break?”

“Rebecca Gibson worked her butt off for over ten years before she started to make even a little bit of money. Anybody who works in this business long enough gets hard, Harry. You got to be. Nice guys get served up on a plate. So you’ve got the natural, understandable artist’s temperament combined with a residue of vinegar left over from the struggle and all the times she got screwed. The two albums she did early on that cratered. All the broken promises, the rip-offs. Hell, the heartbreak.”

“So she was difficult?”

Ray sighed. “Man, you hit her on the wrong day, she’d rip your face off and stuff it down your throat before you could get your jaw shut back.”

“Funny,” I said, “she seemed just sort of flaky on the stage. Cute and flighty.”

Ray snorted. “That’s the act, man.”

“Woman like that must have made a lot of enemies. Tell me about this Faye Morgan.”

“Faye Morgan,” he said. “Best booking agent in the business. One of the few booking agents with a reputation for being straight with artists and promoters both.

Usually an agent will lean toward lying to one more than the other. But not Faye. She lies equally to both.”

“I thought you said she was straight.”

“In this business, if you lie to everybody equally, you are straight.”

Christ, I thought. What am I getting myself into?

“Great, so how are they connected?”

“Faye and Mac worked out a deal about six months ago, giving Faye exclusive rights to schedule and arrange dates for Rebecca. See, Rebecca’s got an album in the can. Supposed to be out next month. Everybody figures it’s going to be her breakout album. Coming out on Sanctuary Records.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Hottest independent company in the business,” he said.

“Why an independent? Why not one of the big companies?”

“Sanctuary’s independent, but they’re distributed by Warner,” he explained. “They’ve thrown a lot of money behind this album. It’s all contracts, man. Numbers and contracts.”

“Which can be forged, torn up, changed …”

“At the drop of a hat,” he said.

“So the hottest booking agent, the hottest manager, and the hottest independent record company were all getting behind Rebecca Gibson.”

“You got it, big guy. Rebecca Gibson was going to be fire in the sky.”

“Only now she’s the coldest thing going—a corpse in a casket.”

Ray gritted his teeth and forced a smile in my direction. “Harry, you got a weird sense of humor.”

Ray continued on for another hour with his insider’s account of the music biz. Funny, I’d gone through my phase of wanting to be a musician. The attention, the glamour, the babes. Great fantasy, only in my case I
spent most of my daydreaming playing air clarinet to Benny Goodman records rather than air guitar to Dire Straits. I liked the stuff I heard back in the Sixties, but my father had a collection of old jazz 78s that really stole my heart. I’ll take the Quartet’s Palomar Ballroom recording of “Vibraphone Blues” over “Sympathy for the Devil” any day. Charlie Watts hasn’t got a thing on Gene Krupa.

Fortunately for the music world, I gave up that fantasy early. And the more I learned about the music business, the more I realized how fortunate it was for me as well.

I sat down in my office, alone now, and reviewed my notes. Where should I start? There were so many people who might have wanted to take a shot at her. Jealousies, rivalries, old simmering hatreds that erupt in passion and violence and blood. Treacheries and betrayals, lies and counterlies and counter-counterlies.

I shook my head, trying to stay focused. Too much to think about lately, all this chaos. Maybe I should run downstairs and get the late edition of the afternoon paper, check up on the day’s developments.

I threw my coat on, but the phone rang just as I was headed for the door. I reached for it instinctively, quickly, then stopped with my hand just above the handset. I fingered the tape in my pocket, the one where somebody had told me to enjoy these last few days of mine. What if …?

To hell with it. If it’s the same caller again, damn him, let him hear my voice. He can’t hide behind an answering machine forever, and neither can I.

I picked up the phone. “Denton Agency,” I said, coldly, professionally, partially holding my breath.

“I need a private dick.”

I spewed out a breath and giggled like a teenager. “Well, honey, you’ve come to the right place.”

“Good,” Marsha said. “I’m beginning to miss you a lot.”

“Just beginning?”

“Okay,
already
missing you a lot.”

“Yeah, well, if it’s any great comfort, the hormone levels are climbing into the stratosphere on this end, too. How are you? How long can you talk?”

“I’m fine. Who knows how long this blasted phone will hold out. They allowed food and supplies through today. We got Sterno, soap, batteries, and flashlights. But you know what they sent us to eat?”

“What?”

“MREs.”

“MR whats?”

“Meals Ready to Eat. Government supplies. Can you believe that?”