Way Past Dead d-3

by Steven Womack

  “Yeah, I don’t know what those are called. And I never heard of the band.”

  “Neither has anyone else,” he said. The waitress arrived with our food. Agon’s steak was about the size of a small hubcap and covered in hollandaise sauce. It looked exquisite. My club sandwich looked feeble.

  “Word on the Row is that Ford has made a string of imprudent decisions,” Agon said, sliding the first chunk of steak between his lips. His jowls vibrated as he chewed. “You knew he lost at least four major acts last year. Let’s see, there was Cathy Fields, Alan Simpson, the Prospectors, Emerald Jade.”

  I’d heard of all the above, since they’d each had more than one hit record in the past couple of seasons. Losing stroke like that had to knock hell out of Ford’s cash flow.

  “The conventional wisdom was that he’d lost his touch,” he said. “While he was brilliant in his day, the magic is gone. Perhaps it’s burnout. Maybe drugs, booze, age. Who knows? Some people have sense enough to see the end coming and prepare for it.”

  He shook his head, cheeks packed with food. “But most don’t.”

  “But there wasn’t any evidence that Rebecca was going to desert him, was there? Had there been any talk of that on the street?”

  “Nothing that I’d heard.” He polished off the glass of merlot and waved for yet a third. “But that doesn’t mean anything. It’s not something that these rednecks usually plan out in advance. The managers often don’t know until they get hit in the face with it. It’s all done very secretly, with great treachery and a lot of behind-the-scenes manipulation.”

  “Even if she was going to leave, why would it benefit him to kill her?”

  His eyes narrowed until they disappeared and became thin dark lines across the pink of his face. “That’s what you have to find out, isn’t it?”

  “How can I do that?” I asked. “That’s what’s got me confounded.”

  “I can give you two pieces of information that might help.”

  “Please do.”

  He shifted his cud from one side to the other and looked impatiently in the direction of the waitress. I checked over my shoulder as she brought the glass and set it down.

  “More tea?” she asked.

  I let a thought slip into voice mode. “Can I afford it?”

  She laughed. “Don’t be silly. Tea refills are free.”

  She topped off my glass and left. I took my first bite of the sandwich. Maybe it was the mood I was in, but it tasted like cardboard. Then again, how good can cold cuts on toasted white bread be?

  “First of all,” Agon said when she’d left, “it might help you to know that Ford has a steady lover. Someone who’s been quietly with him for years …”

  I waited while he chewed through two more chunks of steak the size of doughnuts. “You going to tell me her name, Agon?” I asked impatiently. Careful, I thought, don’t want to lose him now.

  “Faye Morgan.”

  I gave him a sideways look. “C’mon, I don’t believe it. She’s in her thirties. I’d always pictured guys like Ford having Beverly Hills 90210-type babes.”

  “That’s who he’s usually seen in public with. Faye’s been in his life for years, though. They’re both very closemouthed about it, but I’ve heard it’s her choice that their affair remain discreet.”

  “Given Ford’s reputation, I can understand that. I hope she gets a blood test every few months.”

  “That’s tacky,” he said, “but probably true.”

  “Okay, what’s the second thing?”

  He swallowed hard and lowered his voice again. “Well, this is something that only the very top people in the industry are aware of. The execs don’t like to talk about it, and the acts themselves often don’t know about it. But it’s very common practice among record companies, management firms, and the like to take out the industry’s own version of key-man insurance on their top acts.”

  “Key-man insurance? You mean-” I was trying to figure out how this all fit together.

  “Look, it’s like this,” he said, using his greasy fork as a lecture pointer, “you’re a manager or a record company. You’ve taken some ignorant hillbilly with an eighth-grade education and a dynamite twang under your wing and you’ve nurtured him along for, say, two or three years with barely a return. If they up and decide to leave you or fire you, there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s the risk you run, and it’s acceptable. But say your next Billy Ray Cyrus or Garth Brooks or Mary-Chapin Carpenter goes out and gets sloshed one night to celebrate the first gold record and drives head-on into a tractor-trailer.”

  “So the people behind the stars have insurance on them? I mean, they can do that?”

  “If you’re willing to pay the premiums, you can take out that kind of life insurance on just about anybody.

  Nobody wants to suffer through another Patsy Cline or Hank Williams. Can you imagine how much their booking agents lost?”

  I stared at what was left of Agon’s lunch for a second. He’d snarfed down the steak like a hungry mastiff. “I guess I can dig around and try to find out. It’s not exactly public record, but it can be done.”

  “I can help you there, too, if you’re willing to stick by our bargain.”

  “If I dig up a story, you get it, right?”

  He grinned and wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin.

  “Okay,” I said. “The deal stands.”

  “I have a little network of people,” he said, lowering his voice yet once again to the cloak-and-dagger level, “who keep me informed about things in the industry. They provide me with information, and in return, I supplement their largely meager paychecks. You’d be amazed how much secretaries know.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So you’ve got a mole in Ford’s office.”

  “And I’m willing to share her with you.”

  I smiled. “Great, who is she?”

  He raised the glass of wine to his lips and downed a third of it in one gulp. Good, I thought, he’s slowing down. Then he set the glass down a bit too dramatically.

  “Alvy Barnes,” he said.

  My jaw dropped and a little chunk of white bread fell out of the corner of my mouth onto the plate.

  “Alvy Barnes? Ford’s assistant?”

  Agon Dumbler leaned back in the booth, stared at his empty plate, nodded his fat, pink head, and grinned.

  Chapter 31

  Agon Dumbler’s second lunch appointment showed up a couple of minutes later, and I was left holding a check for $54.68, counting the tip. I stared in amazement as Agon waddled to a table inside the main dining room. His forty-five minutes with me had just been the appetizer.

  I paid the check and left the Sunset Grille in shock. So Mac Ford’s loyal assistant had been paid to funnel insider information to a syndicated columnist and National Enquirer stringer. Wonder how that would go over with the boss.

  The sky was darkening outside, and the first few rumbles of a springtime thunderstorm were audible in the distance. The wind had picked up as well, with the poor suckers who’d waited an hour to eat outside in the courtyard now struggling to hold down their napkins and wishing they could get inside before the rain came.

  I stood on the sidewalk while the valet parker retrieved my car. Just as the kid pulled up I glanced across the street as a white Rolls stopped in front of Faison’s. I ducked down and got into my car quickly as Mac Ford parked on the street and got out of the car. His long hair was pulled back over an expensive sport coat. He wore a faded pair of jeans that probably set him back a hundred bucks. He was music-industry bullshit, all the way to his nonexistent bank account.

  I jerked the car into gear and sped away, catching a convenient hole in the traffic on Twenty-first Avenue. I drove past the old Peabody campus, now part of Vanderbilt University, and all the way down to Division Street. My eyes still hurt from lack of sleep and lunch was sitting in my gut like a brick. The worst part, though, was that the thought processes were still fuzzy. I couldn’t seem to get a clear
picture of everything. Couldn’t fit the pieces together …

  Of course I couldn’t fit them together; I didn’t have them all. Somehow, I’ve got to nail down whether or not Mac Ford had key-man insurance on Rebecca Gibson. If he did, that didn’t mean anything beyond the fact that I’d finally found someone who benefited from her murder.

  But that was a hell of a lot more than I had now.

  Would that be enough to take to the police? Would that be enough reasonable doubt to get Sergeant E. D. Fouch of the Metro Homicide Squad back on the case? Fouch would no doubt deny that he was even off the case, but I knew better. Once the police had someone in custody that they felt they could hang the crime on, they usually throttled back to a slow idle.

  Which was the last thing I could do, no matter how tired I’d become. Fatigue at this level acts almost as a tranquilizer. Consequently, I didn’t even care about the thickening Friday-afternoon traffic, which grew worse by the minute as the thunderstorms moved closer. I crossed the river and headed back into East Nashville.

  And what about Faye Morgan? I’d liked her, felt something decent about her. How could she be involved with a sleazeball like Mac Ford?

  “There’s no accounting for taste,” I said out loud.

  It was nearly two in the afternoon by the time I made it over to Lonnie’s. I remembered to make sure Shadow recognized me before I entered the gate, then knocked loudly on the metal door. It took a few moments, then Lonnie slowly pushed it open, yawning and scratching his side.

  “Sorry, I’d dropped off,” he explained, yawning again. “Got to make a run up to Kentucky tonight. Trying to get a little sleep.”

  “Stop yawning,” I said, walking past him into the trailer. “You’ll get me started and I won’t be able to quit. You get my message?”

  “Yeah, but I haven’t had a chance to get to the bank yet.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said. “The credit report.”

  He nodded his head. “Yeah, hold on.” I heard him yawn loudly as he walked down the narrow hallway to his office.

  I paced the floor nervously, wishing he’d get a move on.

  “Here you go,” he said, coming back with the shiny fax paper. “But it ain’t pretty.”

  I sat down, then scanned the columns and the codes. My credit-report interpretation skills had become a little rusty since I’d largely given up skip-tracing the past six months or so, but I still recognized financial collapse when I saw it. There were two outstanding judgments against him, one for a default on a co-op mortgage in Manhattan; the other a signature loan to First American Bank in Nashville.

  He was also months behind on credit-card payments, two other loans, and, of course, car payments. The Rolls was going this month; my guess is the year-old Ford Ranger pickup would be next. Even his house payment in Nashville was two months behind. And to top it all off, a check-clearing agency had reported a series of bounced checks, which in this state could land you in jail if there weren’t so many of them being written that the jails couldn’t hold us all.

  Ford McKenna Ford was truly and genuinely in desperate straits. Everything he’d worked for, fought for, lied for, cheated for, and screwed anybody who got in his way for, was about to be lost. When word got out in the industry that everything had collapsed, Mac Ford would be history.

  After all, nobody remembers a loser.

  Alvy Barnes had an unlisted number, but a quick stop by the public library got me an address out of the city directory, which I verified through the Tennessee Department of Safety. If people ever find out how easy it is to track down people, and how much information is public and free, half the PIs in America will have to close up shop.

  Alvy lived in a house off Belmont Avenue, near where Belmont crosses over I-440. I knew the neighborhood well, had once had an apartment over there myself before my ill-fated and ill-timed marriage. It’s an area of older homes, some classic near-mansions, all mixed in with a variety of rental housing ranging from upscale, remodeled apartment buildings to tenement duplexes. It was a fun neighborhood, kind of funky. But I wouldn’t want to walk the streets alone in the middle of the night.

  By the time I’d tracked Alvy’s home address down, it was nearly four. I gassed up the car and picked up an afternoon paper at the Shell station just across the river on Main Street. The headline read HOSTAGE SITUATION WORSENS and below the main story, a headline announced that the state attorney general had ruled Evangeline would have to have an autopsy. No way around it.

  “Oh, hell,” I muttered, spewing a sigh of disgust. This wasn’t going to cool anything off.

  “Yeah, that be something, don’t it?” I looked up from the paper to find an older black man with thinning, gray hair reading over my shoulder as we stood in line to pay.

  “It’s awful,” I agreed.

  “You know, somebody oughta go in there and just get those people out of there.”

  “Pump number six?” the cashier asked.

  I nodded my head. “Twelve sixty-four,” she said, “plus thirty-five cents for the paper. Will that be all?”

  “Yes, thanks.” I handed her a ten and a five, then stood waiting for change.

  Back at the house, I waved at Mrs. Hawkins through her kitchen window before she had a chance to come out and rope me into a conversation. Right now I didn’t have the energy.

  The answering machine in my apartment was empty, so I called my office. When I punched the remote code, the answering machine came back at me with two messages. The first was from Roger Vaden, Slim’s first lawyer, who said he’d forwarded my agreement on to Herman Reid, who’d be taking over the criminal defense. That put a kink in my gut, since I was counting on being under some lawyer’s aegis now. The second was a tight, frantic message from Ray basically asking where the hell I’d been. He hadn’t seen me in the office in a couple of days and I hadn’t called.

  “That’s right, Ray,” I said to the wall. “I’ve been a little busy.”

  I dialed his office number and got their machine. It was weird to hear Slim’s voice on the recording, knowing where he was now. I found myself filled with a heaviness I hadn’t expected; something about seeing an innocent man languish in jail gets to me. I had no sympathy for the guys who were in jail because that’s where they belonged, but nobody can deny there are some there who shouldn’t be.

  I left Ray a quick message, then finished the rest of the newspaper. A few community leaders were beginning to question the wisdom of the mayor’s decision to negotiate. There were also a few letters on the editorial page suggesting we just go in there and blow them all to hell, including one amusing epistle from a regular letter writer who suggested that since these people were so looking forward to being with Jesus, we should just go in there and help them along a little.

  “Bloody hell,” I muttered. “Idiots …”

  Later, as I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, I tried to will myself to fall asleep for a couple of hours. The brain would not disengage, however, and I kept running around in circles. I kept imagining Alvy Barnes and Agon Dumbler whispering on the phone to each other, telling secrets, giving away insider information, then meeting in a dark alley to pass an envelope stuffed with cash from his fat hand to her slender, pale one. Gradually, the visions began to run together until they became first a bit surreal, then full-fledged dreams.

  Without even being aware of it, I slipped off to sleep.

  When I woke up, I was facing the wall. Only a faint glow of streetlights filtered through the shades. I rolled over. The luminous dial on the clock read ten-thirty.

  I felt like I was slugging my way to the surface of a barrel full of fresh mud. My joints ached and my eyes burned, but it was a measure of how crappy I’d felt earlier that I perceived this as an improvement.

  Painfully, I staggered to my feet and stumbled into the bathroom. A full sixty seconds of running warm water over my face followed by a serious tooth scrubbing got me to the half-alive point. I combed my hair back and pulled on
a flannel shirt and jeans.

  I thought about calling Marsha. Wondered, in fact, why she hadn’t called me. I grabbed the phone, punched in her number, and got a busy signal. Maybe she was on the phone with Howard Spellman. Maybe they were negotiating an end to this mess.

  When, I tried to remember, had I last eaten? I hadn’t paid much attention at first, but hunger had caught up with me. Mrs. Lee’s was already closed, but I felt more like breakfast anyway. I jumped in the car and headed back across the river, to the all-night International House of Pancakes on Twenty-first Avenue. The IHOP had been a late-night mecca for decades. With this being a Friday night close to final exams at Vanderbilt, I was lucky to get a booth.

  I snarfed down a plate of eggs and grits, toast and bacon, with two cups of decaf. Slowly, I was beginning to feel a little less fragmented. I walked outside into the brightly lit parking lot. Back in the cool night air, cars were rolling by in an endless stream from left to right. I remembered what Nashville had been like when I was growing up as a child. Back then, if you lived as far out as the airport, you were in the country, and the town went to bed so early you didn’t need traffic lights after nine. That was a long time ago; that memory combined with all the perky, tight little undergraduates in the IHOP made me feel about a hundred years old.

  I got back in the Mazda and joined the long parade. I cut left on some side street, then jogged my way over to Belmont Avenue. Down Belmont past the International Market, I turned right up a hill into a neighborhood of restored nineteenth-century homes. Inside my shirt pocket was a slip of paper with Alvy Barnes’s address. I unfolded it and held it up to the window, reading it by the flickering silver and orange of the streetlights as I drove by.

  A half block from Alvy’s house, I pulled over to the curb and parked. I leaned down low in the seat and stared over the top of the dashboard, studying the brick-and-stucco two-story house. Sometimes it was hard to tell, but I think this one was rental property, a large, towering house that had been converted to apartments. The yard was neatly trimmed and bordered in sculptured shrubs. Whoever owned this place cared for it.