The Broken Promise Land

by Marcia Muller

  “He did join her?”

  “… Somebody did, yeah.”

  I set the publicity stills of Dan and Benjy that I’d gotten from Ricky’s files on the counter. “Was it either of these men?”

  Harry squinted at them, then pointed to Dan. “That’s the guy who came to the door.”

  “The door?”

  “Around ten o’clock the family in the bungalow closest to them called up and complained about loud partying. I went back there, knocked, and that fellow answered. He was polite enough, apologized and said they’d tone it down.”

  “Did they?”

  He didn’t reply. His grim expression said that he was finding real-life drama not nearly as pleasurable as what he viewed on TV. “Yeah, they did,” he finally said, “and the next morning, early, they were gone.”

  “And that’s it?”

  Silence.

  “For God’s sake, Harry, tell her and get it over with!”

  “Okay, okay! The wife saw her car was gone and went in to clean. Came and got me. The room was full of bottles and dirty glasses, and it looked like they’d been smoking marijuana, too. The bed had been ripped apart, and the wife… well, she claims she can always tell from the sheets. It looked like they’d had a wild night of it.”

  A chill crept over me; what he’d told me wasn’t enough to unnerve seasoned innkeepers. “Anything else?”

  “… Yeah. In the bathroom. There was blood. A lot of it, on the wall by the bathtub and on the towels and bathmat. Some of the towels were missing, too.” He shook his head, pale eyes sad and confused. “Can you imagine that? A man having sex with a women and hurting her enough to leave that much blood?”

  A man having sex with a woman and hurting her enough to leave that much blood…

  No, not a man—men.

  The innkeeper’s words kept rattling through my mind. All the way back to the L.A. basin, all the way through the interminable traffic clogs, all the way down the relatively free-moving straightaway to San Diego.

  How the hell was I going to tell Ricky about this?

  How do you tell someone that his childhood friends—the buddies who’d stuck with him on the long rise to success, the men to whom he’d entrusted his worst problem, the band members whose untimely deaths he still mourned—how do you tell him that those men were nothing but scum? How do you tell him that by his own self-indulgent actions and terrible judgment he may have caused a young woman to suffer serious injury—perhaps even death?

  But no, Terriss couldn’t be dead. She had to be the one behind this vengeful campaign. Or did she? Perhaps someone was avenging her death. But that couldn’t be right, either. If Dan and Benjy had killed her, they’d covered the crime well; no one knew what had happened.

  I was so preoccupied that I almost missed the La Jolla exit, and when I parked in front of the Sorrento I banged the bumper into the high curb. Dreading the conversation that had to follow, I hurried inside and up to Ricky’s suite. And found that such a conversation was not an option at the moment.

  The living room was full of people. Through the crowd I spotted Kurt Girdwood on the phone, shouting and pacing; he held the base in his left hand, and its cord was in imminent danger of being yanked from the jack. Ethan Amory sat on a chair by the door to the balcony, watching him; the attorney was quietly intense, ready to spring into action if called upon. Several men and women whom I didn’t know, as well as Forrest Curtin and Jerry Jackson, stood talking quietly. Linda Toole, Ricky’s publicist, whom I’d met at the housewarming, was using a cell phone. Toole was a diminutive woman with spiky dark hair, numerous silver earrings, and an incredibly short shirt worn over patterned tights. Surprisingly enough, her voice competed strongly against Girdwood’s.

  I finally located Ricky and Rae on the sofa. He sat on its edge, his hand pressing her knee—as wired as if he were about to take the stage. She eyed him watchfully. I hurried over and asked, “What’s going on?”

  He said, “You remember this afternoon when I asked you how much more screwed up life could get? Well, you’re seeing it.”

  Girdwood shouted, “Goddamn it, you tell that cocksucker to call me back within fifteen minutes or the shit hits the fan bigtime! I’m talking lawsuit, baby, lawsuit in seven figures! Tell him that and see if he keeps ducking my calls!” He slammed the receiver into its base and started toward us, but the cord restrained him. With a disgusted look, he ripped it from the wall, then hurled the instrument to the floor.

  Rae flinched, and Ricky said, “So Ziff’s still ducking you.”

  “Yeah, the prick.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “You heard me—we sue! Seven figures—eight, maybe. We’ll put Transamerica out of business. Right, Ethan?”

  The attorney steepled his fingers and propped his chin on them. “It’s not an alternative. Nothing in Rick’s last contract specified that Transamerica had to use promotion reps on this single.”

  “Well, why the hell didn’t it?”

  “Don’t try to hang it on me, Kurt; you vetted the contract. As you may recall, that deal was done over two years ago—the largest to date for a country singer. Transamerica had done a good job of promoting him up to then, and we naturally assumed that with megabucks riding on each of the two albums, they’d continue to do so. At the time, we hadn’t begun talking about forming the new label, so we had no reason to anticipate that one day they’d retaliate for his leaving.”

  Girdwood groaned and collapsed next to Ricky.

  I said, “Will somebody please explain the problem?”

  The manager looked at me as if I were a mosquito he’d like to squash, but Ricky said, “The single of ‘Midnight Train’ is blacked out on all the large country stations, both on the West Coast and in the other major markets. It’s getting no airplay on them whatsoever.”

  “That’s incredible.”

  “Damned straight it is!” Girdwood bellowed. “And the hell of it is, we could’ve headed this off if my client here”—he glared at Ricky—“had been willing to take time out from his personal affairs”—now he transferred the glare to Rae—“long enough to talk with Ethan and me this weekend. We had ample warning.”

  “What kind of warning?” I asked, thinking of another anonymous note or perhaps something more bizarre.

  “What happened was, Friday night at a party I ran into the independent promotion rep Transamerica uses.”

  “Promotion rep? What’s his function?”

  The manager sighed impatiently. “The reps are high-powered guys with close connections to the radio stations’ program directors—the people who decide which singles get airplay and which don’t. They go around, lobby the PDs to put their releases on the play lists. Most labels’ve got them on staff, but a few years ago Transamerica went into negative cash flow and decided to cure it by letting them go and hiring them only to work on its priority releases—such as my client’s.”

  “Okay, I understand. You say you ran into one of them at a party?”

  “Yeah, guy who’s always done a good job for Rick in southern California. Right away I ask, ‘How does it look for the airplay on Savage’s new single?’ And he goes, ‘What single?’ and smirks. I go, ‘Transamerica didn’t hire you to push it?’ And he goes, ‘The label’s low-balling the promo on your client.’ And I ask, ‘What is it with them? Do they want the thing to stiff?’ And he tells me I better ask Sy Ziff and John Geller. Which I’ve been trying to do ever since, but neither of those cocksuckers’ll take my calls.”

  I glanced at Ricky. More of the same? He shrugged.

  The manager went on, “That’s not all of it. I call around. The situation’s the same with the guys they use in the other major markets. And then I’m talking with a PD I know in New York, and he says Transamerica is using the guys—only they’re using them to lobby against airplay.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Not really. The guys at Transamerica’re pissed about Rick leaving. So pissed that we—Zenit
h—are footing the bill for the Midnight tour. This is their way of sending a message to any of their other artists who may be thinking of jumping ship.”

  I frowned. This didn’t fit the pattern of harassment; vindictive as it was, it sounded like a purely internal business decision at the label.

  Rae spoke for the first time. “It seems to me that Transamerica’s cutting its own throat.”

  Girdwood gave her a withering look.

  Ricky said, “Not really. The point is to sell albums, and I’m in the enviable position where mine practically sell themselves. It’s not as if they’re trying to break some baby act with this single. They still stand to make back every cent they’ve paid me—and then some.”

  I asked, “If nobody stands to lose anything, what’s all this commotion about?”

  Girdwood rolled his eyes dramatically. “Is there some rare strain of stupidity going around up your way? You ever hear the phrase ‘the principle of the thing’? Rick’s made them truckloads of money over the years—which they’ve blown on mediocre acts and bad management. Now he decides to go out on his own, and they treat him like shit.”

  “So what’re you going to do about it?”

  As we’d been talking, the others in the room had begun to pay attention; now they were silent, looking at Girdwood. In turn, he looked at Amory.

  The attorney shrugged. “Well, we’re not suing. It wouldn’t be productive or cost-effective.”

  Girdwood said, “What I’d really like to do is go over to Sy Ziff’s house and break down the door and choke the son of a bitch!”

  “You’d be useless to me on death row,” Ricky told him.

  Forrest Curtin said, “You want, Rick, I’ll kill Ziff—and John Geller, for good measure.”

  “This kind of talk isn’t getting us anywhere,” Amory said. “We’ve got to come up with a course of action.”

  Linda Toole moaned. “Between this and that item in ‘StarWatch’ this morning, it’s a publicist’s nightmare. Why me, Lord?”

  “It’s not only your nightmare!” Girdwood snapped.

  “Well, I’m the one who’s going to feel the most heat!”

  Rae had taken Ricky’s hand and was staring down at where their linked fingers rested on her knee, thoughtful. Now she looked up and said to him, “Why not use it to your advantage?”

  Heads turned. Girdwood snorted derisively. Rae flushed.

  But Ricky looked at her with interest. “How?”

  She took a deep breath, nervous but encouraged. “Well, what Transamerica’s done to you makes you the underdog. And this country loves an underdog. We’ll forgive most anything if an individual is wronged by a greedy corporation. Especially if the underdog fights back.”

  He nodded slowly. “If the underdog fights back, people’ll forgive him an attractive redhead—or even worse sins. Go on.”

  “Okay, you fight back. The question is—how? You’ll have to finance the offensive yourself. Huge ads in the papers exposing the label for the swine they are come to mind, but that’s not only costly but legally tricky.” She glanced at Amory, who nodded. “What you need,” she added, “is a way to get the word out that’s not quite so explicit or costly, and that also turns a buck for you.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  Buoyed by his prompting, she went on more confidently. “You were talking about the Winterland merchandising earlier. How fast could they get a large order of T-shirts made up?”

  Ricky looked at Amory. The attorney said, “Pretty damn fast, since those contracts for the additional Savage merchandising are still only in the draft stage. They want to keep us happy till they’re finalized. Besides, orders like that’re done all the time.”

  Rae asked, “Could they deliver in time for Wednesday’s kickoff concert? As well as supply other shirts, with a slightly different wording, to the other cities on the tour where the single’s blacked out?”

  “I’m sure they could.”

  Everyone was listening closely now, even Girdwood—although the manager’s face was set in contemptuous lines. Rae transferred her attention back to Ricky. “You could have a special tee made up. One of a kind. Not a run-of-the-mill concert-tour tee, but one that people’d treasure because of its… let’s call it ‘historical significance.’ Everybody on the tour, from you down to the roadies, would wear it. At some point during the concert, you’d explain its significance to the audience, ask them to call the radio stations and request the single. And when reporters asked you about it, you’d do the same. And you’d offer the tees for sale in every city along the route.”

  Ricky and Linda Toole had started to smile. Girdwood frowned skeptically, but Amory leaned forward in his chair.

  “What does it say?” he asked, his southern-accented voice intense.

  “Well, something along these lines: ‘Blacked Out in Los Angeles: The Midnight Train to Nowhere.’”

  “Shirt color?”

  “Black.”

  “Lettering?”

  “Silver.”

  “Graphics?”

  “A train inside a circle with a slash mark through it.”

  Jerry Jackson let out a whoop.

  “All right!” Ricky enveloped her in a hug.

  I myself was stunned. Rae had always been bright, quick, and creative, but she often lacked confidence. I’d never seen her so self-assured—or so potentially powerful.

  Amory said, “Rick, you better keep this one. She’s a genius.”

  Rae blushed, and Ricky said, “I’ll do my damndest.” Then he added, “You want to get on to Winterland as fast as possible.”

  “Yeah. The rep we’ll be dealing with on your merchandising is as sharp as they come, and I happen to have her home number. Even at”—he looked at his watch—“one-ten in the morning, Mary’ll welcome an order of this size.”

  It felt as if everyone in the room had let out a collective breath; suddenly they were all talking in light, excited tones. Linda Toole called to Ricky that she’d get started immediately on his statements for audiences and the press, so Ethan could check them for potential legal problems. Amory looked for the phone, spotted it on the floor where Girdwood had hurled it, and headed for the extension in the bedroom.

  Ricky had his arm around Rae and was speaking softly into her ear. Whatever he said made her blush again. Girdwood watched them, his expression quizzical. After a moment he said, “Hey, Rae, I thought you were an investigator. How’d you all of a sudden turn into a PR whiz?”

  She looked him in the eye. “Both jobs require the same basic problem-solving abilities… Kurt.” And then she favored him with one of her crinkly-nosed grins.

  The manager grunted, pushing his lips out petulantly. Rae grinned some more. He frowned, scratched his head. She winked.

  “Oh, hell,” he said to Ricky, “I give up. You can keep her. Only treat this one good, would you?”

  Sixteen

  At nine the next morning I was back at Ricky’s hotel suite, watching as he, Hy, and Virgil Rattray went over diagrams of the various concert venues along the tour route. Rae drifted in and out of the living room, stopping occasionally to examine one of the plans that were spread out on the floor, but mainly looking cheerful and somewhat distracted. Ricky’s gaze followed her, and he seemed to have trouble keeping his attention on the business at hand.

  As time went on I became aware of a peculiar nagging feeling. Not the anger I’d directed toward them the day before—I was through with that, anger couldn’t alter what was—but more of a prickly discontent. I glanced at Hy to see if he was feeling the same, but he was intent on his security plans, scarcely aware of my presence. The discontent intensified, and I tried to ignore it and concentrate on the discussion.

  The diagram that interested me most was of the special Amtrak train that would serve as a publicity vehicle following the kickoff concert at the Universal Amphitheatre. Linda Toole had arranged for the performers and select press representatives to depart from L.A.’s Union Station
at midnight, accompanied by much manufactured fanfare. Ricky and his band would mingle with reporters and photographers over drinks and a buffet supper in the lounge car, then detrain a few hours later at Barstow and transfer to a charter flight for Albuquerque. The press would remain on board and be flown from New Mexico to their various home bases, courtesy of Zenith Records.

  “Why’re the performers flying from Barstow, for God’s sake?” I asked Rattray. “Why not just stay on board like the press is?”

  He snorted and looked at me as though I’d taken leave of my senses. “Have you ever seen the size of one of those bedroom compartments—even the deluxe ones? Have you ever tried to sleep on a train?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t recommend it. There’s no way Rick and the guys could endure fifteen miserable hours en route and then perform the same night. Shit, even the crew and equipment’re going by air out of LAX! This is a goddamned idiotic scheme dreamed up by that twit of a PR woman, and it only makes my job harder because I can’t be in two places at once.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “On the stinking train, in case his majesty needs me.” The road manager scowled ferociously at Ricky, who merely smiled.

  After a while my brother-in-law went into the bedroom to make some calls, and Rae settled down on the balcony with a cup of coffee. I continued to listen to Hy and Rats debate various security options, none of them completely satisfactory. Rats’s comments grew more acerbic; his brush with death hadn’t improved his disposition, and he complained constantly of pain in his wounded shoulder. Finally I got fed up and said, “Rats, just be thankful you didn’t get shot in the ass.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I was once, and believe me, it’s a thousand times worse than a shoulder wound. More embarrassing, too.”

  He grunted but ceased complaining.

  After half an hour more, Hy began rolling up the diagrams. “Time to take this stuff over to our headquarters,” he said. “We’re meeting at eleven with an outside consultant that I met at Ricky’s Sonoma County concert.”