‘Naw.’ Sam shook his head impatiently. ‘Nothing like that. There’s nothing wrong with Uncle No’ccount – he’s clean as a whistle.’
‘And what’s buzzing with the Cousins?’
‘You heard about Ezra?’ Sam twitched nervously.
‘That was nothing, really – just kid stuff. Playing around with love potions. It could have happened to anyone.’
‘Not in my circles,’ I said firmly.
‘Yeah, well, not in mine, either. But things are different way down South. So, when he got this wild passion for an older woman four or five years ago, he put some Spanish fly in her drink.’
‘My God! Isn’t that stuff poison?’
‘Yeah, he found that out. He’d given her an overdose, too, to make matters worse. He was lucky she pulled through.’
‘The only reason the jury let him off, I presume.’
‘Hell, it didn’t get that far. I told you she was an older woman – friend of his mother’s, in fact. She didn’t press charges. Soon as she was feeling better, she couldn’t help seeing the funny side of it.’
‘All good clean fun,’ I said weakly.
‘That’s right. And it sure taught Ezra a lesson. We won’t have any trouble with him. And the rest of the Cousins are A-Okay.’
‘Good. That helps narrow the field, doesn’t it?’ I had a fairly shrewd idea to whom the field was going to narrow down, but felt I ought not to rush Sam too much. He’d tell me, now that he’d started. It might take a while, but I hadn’t any plans for the afternoon.
‘I mean, you’ve got to understand the background to this set-up before you can know how awkward it really is.’
‘Okay, fill me in.’
‘Sure, I’m going to.’ Again he gave the imitation of a man wishing someone would yell ‘Fire’ so that he could beat a fast, explicable retreat. No one obliged.
‘You see, it’s like this.’ He gave up with a sigh. ‘They – the Big Boys in New York – have kept their eyes on the Nashville Scene for a long while now. Some really big ones have come out of there since the days of Hank Williams. They may start out as Hillbilly, or Country and Western, but they can be turned into Folk – and that means International appeal today. The Madison Avenue boys keep an eye out for stars they can build, characters with staying power, who can capture the public and keep them. Preferably, ones who won’t go off the rails with a bit of success and start blowing their brains out with LSD, or drinking a couple of quarts of com squeezings and then racing their sports car down a highway playing “chicken” with oil tankers.’
‘And so, with all those sterling qualifications in mind, they picked on Black Bart?’ I said incredulously.
‘Well, uh, no,’ Sam said. ‘As a matter of fact, they picked on Lou-Ann.’
‘Lou-Ann?’ That was even harder to believe. ‘You can’t seriously mean you think that that little –’
‘Cool it! ’ Sam held up his hand, eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘Just think it over for a minute. There’s always a shortage of good female comics.’
‘Good is the word.’ But I didn’t say it too loudly. Something about Sam’s attitude was beginning to proclaim ‘vested interest’, even to my uncritical eyes.
‘Good,’ he repeated, on firmer ground. These things go in cycles. We feel the public may be tired of pretty girls standing up and snarling protest songs at them. There’s room for a comedienne who can also sing ballads and tearjerkers. There hasn’t been one since Judy Canova – and look how big she was.’
‘I remember,’ I said, treading cautiously. ‘But I don’t think Lou-Ann is quite –’
‘And look at Dorothy Shay – the Park Avenue Hillbilly,’ Sam went on enthusiastically. ‘You get some fast patter and some sophisticated material and –’
‘Now, I know Lou-Ann isn’t Park Avenue Hillbilly material,’ I said firmly. ‘Hillbilly, yes. Park Avenue, no.’
‘Okay, so the kid needs a little more polish, a little more class. But then, there’s nowhere she can’t go –’ He broke off. Nothing I had said had been able to get through to him, but now something from the back of his own mind stopped him. He deflated like a punctured tyre.
‘Nowhere she couldn’t have gone,’ he corrected.
Here it came. He slumped in his chair, staring into space, his head turning from side to side in agonizing, unbelieving negation.
‘Then the whole thing blew up,’ he said. ‘Right in our faces. After we had their names on the contract, but before we had time to start the star build-up.’
‘Bart?’ I asked.
‘Bart,’ he agreed grimly. ‘We’d been planning to phase him out of the act. You know the routine. A little less to do every few shows, then part of the background, then – pfft. He quietly disappears. And, all the while, Lou-Ann would have been coming to the fore, getting known, taking over the show.’
‘But it didn’t work out that way.’
‘He got hold of the ‘Homesteader’ song. They cut the disc. Nobody realized it was going to be that big a hit. Now, he’s dead centre in the Public Eye, and we’re stuck with him.’ Sam got to his feet wearily, as though the effort of finally telling me the story had drained his last reserves of strength.
‘Did Bart know what you’d planned?’
‘Hell, no. We were keeping it Top Secret – Agency level only.’ Sam began moving towards the door slowly. ‘You want to know something funny?’ He bared his teeth in a brief, mirthless grimace.
‘Now, Bart wants us to get rid of Lou-Ann. Phase her out of the act, and just leave him and the boys. More appeal to the public, he says. His female fans.’
‘Well, why not?’ I couldn’t see why Sam was making such a grand tragedy production of it. ‘It seems like the perfect answer. You just split up the act. And then you have two star acts. Perhaps even, two big television shows.’ I should have known that, if the answer were that easy, Sam would have thought of it.
‘It doesn’t quite work that way.’ He paused at the door and turned back to me. ‘Nothing in life is ever that simple. You see, Lou-Ann is married to him. Not only that, but she’s still so crazy, out-of-her-skull nuts about the bastard that what he says goes! ’
I spent the rest of the afternoon in a fool’s paradise, thinking that Sam had finally confided in me. I knew the worst – and it had nothing to do with Perkins & Tate. It was the Agency’s problem.
After cleaning up a few jobs for remaining clients, and finishing the photo call, I went over and opened the window, and leaning against the window frame, looked down at the Thames. I even had one of our left-over cigars, while the band music from the Embankment Gardens floated up to me, inducing that curiously inspiring euphoria music from a brass band always does – you feel that a world which produced Gilbert and Sullivan and John Philip Sousa can’t be all bad.
It had also produced Black Bart, but I still felt inclined to forgive it that – any world can have an off day. Besides, Black Bart and the Troupe would soon step back on board ship and return to the States, leaving Perkins & Tate (Public Relations) Ltd solvent and with a new lease of life.
And, given just a little more time, I had no doubt that the Agency would manage to split Black Bart and Lou-Ann into two equally successful acts, despite Sam’s pessimism.
Perhaps a nice quiet divorce all round – professionally and personally. Lou-Ann might be crazy about Bart, but he certainly didn’t show any signs of affection for her. And she was sharing a room with her mother. (Which brought up another thought – did Maw know? Or was it part of the problem that it was a secret marriage?) If Lou-Ann was reluctant to leave Bart, perhaps it was because the idea hadn’t been put to her in the right way. The way he was ferrying Crystal around with him ought to provide evidence in any court in any country . . .
The telephone rang just then, and I eyed it mistrustfully. It had been a long time since incoming calls were good news. They still weren’t.
‘I want to talk to Mr Perkins.’ The sharp voice twanged at my eardrums.
‘You put me right through to your boss – immediately – and don’t be so sassy! I’ll have you know my daughter is an important client.’
It was no time to argue. I tapped the receiver on the desk a couple of times, ran a pencil around the dial, snapped my fingers into the mouthpiece, then cleared my throat and tried again.
‘Good afternoon. Douglas Perkins here.’
‘About time, too. You ought to train that office boy of yours to answer the phone better. He was downright rude to me.’
‘I’m terribly sorry, Mrs Cooney. I’ll speak to him severely.’
‘I should hope so. I don’t mind for myself, but as the mother of Lou-Ann Mars, I ought to be accorded decent treatment. And you ought to be careful for yourself, too, he could insult important people some day. You know, you’ve got to have an efficient staff, if you want to get ahead in the world. Talent can do a lot, but you need good backing. Believe me, I know.’
It was then that I had my bright idea. At least, like most catastrophic conceptions, it seemed a good idea at the time.
‘I’m glad you rang, Mrs Cooney. I was going to call you and suggest dinner this evening, if you’re not engaged.’
‘Dinner?’ She sounded so suspicious that, for a moment, I wondered if it had turned into one of those double-meaning slang words that lurk like traps in the undergrowth of Anglo-American relations. ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid Lou-Ann is eating with Mr Marcowitz tonight. They’ve just left. Maybe we could make it tomorrow night?’
‘If you’d rather. But you’re the one I asked.’
‘Me?’ I couldn’t blame her for being incredulous. I would have been myself, had someone told me earlier that I would issue this invitation. ‘But I only called up to find out if those pictures your friend took of Lou-Ann are ready yet. I wanted a couple of nice ones to send back to the fan magazines for the next See the Stars with Lou-Ann Mars column.’
‘The film is being processed at the laboratory now. We should have a set of contact prints tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’ll come round for you in about an hour, shall I?’
The Italian restaurant was close enough to Soho for one to stretch a point, providing that one were dealing with American tourists. I’d taken the precaution of telephoning first and warning them that I was bringing along an American journalist – well, the column was in six fan magazines.
Luigi greeted us like minor royalty and bowed us to a table. We got the full red carpet treatment, with a personal consultation over the menu, and Maw Cooney was suitably impressed.
‘My goodness,’ she sighed, as he disappeared into the kitchen to supervise the chef, ‘wasn’t he nice? Why, he couldn’t have been nicer if – if Lou-Ann was with us. I surely would like to tell folks about this. Do you suppose –’ she looked around furtively – ‘do you suppose I could write all about this – him bowing and suchlike – in my column, and make out like Lou-Ann was with us, and it was on account of her he was being so nice?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ I said. ‘If you’re worried about it not being quite ... accurate, perhaps we could come back another time, and bring Lou-Ann with us.’
‘So it would be true, after all! ’ She leaned back and beamed at me. ‘You are a gentleman. A true gentleman.’ She scrabbled in her handbag and brought out a ballpoint pen and a tiny notebook. ‘I just want to set a bit of it down, so’s I don’t forget it later. All that red velvet and crystal chandeliers – it’s near as good as some of them real fancy places in New Orleans that used to be cat-houses before the Vice Squad cleaned up the city. Folks sure will be interested to hear all about it.’
She seemed to be at her happiest talking, so I let her ramble on. There was a certain paucity of subject matter, but she was in the best mood I’d ever seen her in, so I concentrated on the food and made encouraging noises when she paused.
I had Lou-Ann’s scintillating babyhood with the lasagne (‘right from the minute she opened her baby-blue eyes, I knowed she was something special’); and Lou-Ann’s meteoric rise to fame with the veal scallopini (‘she won three amateur contests in a row before she was even in her teens, so I knowed I was right to be grooming her for stardom’).
By the zabaglione, we had reached Lou-Ann’s present state of theatrical acclaim, and the moment seemed to be right for me to put my idea into execution.
There used to be a song called ‘If I Knew Then, What I Know Now’, which was fairly popular when I was in the States. They should have had a full orchestra of sobbing violins playing it at that moment, instead of just Luigi whistling ‘Santa Lucia’ off-key in the kitchen.
‘It’s too bad things have turned out the way they have,’ I said.
‘Too bad?’
‘With the “Homesteader” song being such a big success for Bart – just when the Agency wanted to ease him out of the act and concentrate on building Lou-Ann.’ That was the great idea. Just drop the word to Maw Cooney, and count on her doing the work of persuading Lou-Ann to drop Bart.
‘The Agency wanted to do that!’ Hook, line and sinker. She goggled at me – for a moment, I saw where Lou-Ann had found that grotesque grimace of hers. Was it unconscious, or did she realize that she was parodying her mother? ‘I never heard nothing about that.’ Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. ‘I never reckoned they had that much good sense.’
‘It was too early to tell anyone,’ I said. ‘Probably they were afraid the word would get around if anyone knew. It was to be a gradual easing-out. I think they were afraid Bart would make trouble.’
‘Let him try! ’ Her eyes were slits now, her fingers flexed like claws. The lioness ready to do battle for her cub. I was momentarily unnerved. What had I unleashed. ‘I reckon two can play at trouble-making, and I know enough to keep that there boy in his place.
‘I’m sure everything will be all right,’ I soothed. ‘It simply means that they’ll have to delay their plans. You’ll just have to wait a bit longer.’
‘We’ve waited long enough! ’ She glanced at me, then, with conscious effort, she relaxed. ‘I take it most kindly of you to let me in on this little secret – and I know Lou-Ann will appreciate it, too. But now, if you don’t mind I think I’d like to go back to the hotel. I’ve sure got a lot of new thinking and planning to do.’
CHAPTER VII
THE HOTEL was near Fleet Street and the drinks were free, so a reasonable number of journalists showed up for the Presentation. We had about eight photographers, too. Most of them were from Dairyman’s Gazette type of mags, but a few were from actual fan magazines, albeit tending towards the shoestring bi-monthly variety, which would probably fold before they could use the pictures. At least, it gave the Client the impression we were doing a good job for him.
Just in case nobody showed up, of course, I had Gerry festooned with flashbulbs and on stand-by. He entered too lavishly into the spirit of the occasion for my taste – with all those legitimate photographers around, he needn’t have taken so many pictures. Those flashbulbs cost money.
Penny had dressed up in her abbreviated best to make the presentation, and looked even younger than her fifteen years. Which was fine, it was the kids we wanted to sell Black Bart to. Sam had made arrangements for a single of ‘Homesteader’ to be released at the end of the week.
Somehow, Penny had dragooned her three mates back into their school uniforms and kept their make-up to a minimum, so that they looked about thirteen – just the age when pocket-money is being stretched to buy records. They kept together and made a nice background for photos as Penny stepped forward to present the silver guitar to Black Bart.
Bart grinned at her, with more animation than I had ever seen him display before. I began to wonder if I had wronged him – he obviously had a soft spot for children, and wasn’t going to be difficult over this presentation. If he liked animals, too, it must mean that he wasn’t all bad. Unfortunately, he was bad enough.
He continued being more lamb than black sheep. He held
the silver guitar on high, still grinning with delight at Penny. My first sense of unease came when I caught a glimpse of Sam over his shoulder.
Sam had gone a nasty greeny-white, and was dabbing at his brow with a handkerchief balled up in one hand, while gnawing at the remnants of fingernails on the other hand. There was an expression in his eyes I never wanted to see again. I was now certain that there was more to this whole deal than the cards Sam had turned face upwards so far. I began to feel rather greeny-white myself.
The Client seemed to feel that more was indicated than just a simple thank-you. With a quick movement, he caught Penny to him and kissed her. She wriggled back, but couldn’t get away. Imprisoning her, with an arm around her shoulders, he grinned at the cameras.
‘Ain’t she just as pretty as a waterhole on a hot day to a thirsty man?’ he inquired. ‘Honey, you’re so cute, I tell you what I’m a-gonna do – just for you ...and your cute little old friends,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘I’m gonna sing our song just especially for you. Sort of a Command Performance. Now, how do you like that?’ Penny smiled dutifully and tried to slip away to join her friends, who were standing an enviable five paces away, but Bart didn’t let go. He gave the downbeat to the Cousins, with his free hand and, looking deep into Penny’s eyes, began to sing.
‘Homesteader, Homesteader,
‘Ridin’ alone ...’
There is nothing worse than being sung at. If you look away, you’re afraid of seeming discourteous and possibly putting the singer off stroke; whereas, if you look back into those searching eyes, you’re afraid of giving the impression that you return whatever dubious sentiments are being yodelled at you. And singers always feel that they’re doing you such a big favour by singing to you. I once had a girlfriend who was a music student and, to my dying day, will remember the exhibition she made of me by choosing to serenade me – complete with meaningful gaze into my eyes – on a crowded escalator at Piccadilly Circus tube station. She never was able to figure out what ended the romance so abruptly, but it was the expressions on the faces of those gliding past us on the downward side of the escalator. Horrified to a man, and amused to a woman, they seemed to be saying, ‘Good lord, can’t the chap control that girl – and in public too!’
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