by T. N. Robb
"Buy you a drink?" Betts asked Larry.
He saw the Scorpion leader glance from him to Jesse and back again, considering the two.
He nodded. "Yeah, a beer."
Betts ordered three of them. There was a moment of awkward silence after the beers arrived. Betts looked down, trying to think of something to say. "You seemed to know what you were doing under the hood there. You were taking a chance."
Larry shrugged. "Chances are what it's all about. You took one the other night. You came out on top." He avoided looking at Jesse, glanced over her head, then took a swallow of beer.
Jesse was growing uneasy standing there with the two of them, and excused herself to go to the women's room. She took her beer with her. When she was gone, both men seemed to relax. It was obvious that her presence had kept them on edge, made everything they had said sound forced.
"Hey, don't think we had anything great going on between us," Larry began. "It wasn't what you think." His features darkened and he brooded a moment. "If it had been that way, you can be sure as hell I wouldn't be standing here drinking your damn beer."
Betts nodded, uncertain what to say.
"Don't get me wrong, man. She's a pretty package." He looked over in the direction where Jesse had disappeared. "But I'll warn you, man. Watch out for her. There's a part of that chick that just doesn't care about living."
Betts stared at him, confused by the comment and suspected Larry was just trying to cover up his hurt feelings.
He looked over toward the women's room and saw Jesse emerging with a couple of chicks. He watched as she walked over to the cigarette machine with them. Just the sight of her, the way she moved, ignited him. He didn't know what Larry was talking about because he just wanted her with him, and no one else. And as far as he was concerned that was gonna be tonight, tomorrow, and forever.
He tried to keep his cool with Larry, but when he answered him his words came out sounding defensive. "Hey, I like her just fine the way she is."
Larry smiled. "You'll find out." He turned away. "Thanks for the beer."
Betts walked over to Jesse, nodded to the two chicks. "These are my roommates," she said, introducing them.
"I see what you mean, Jesse," one of them said, and laughed in a sort of high squeal.
Betts felt embarrassed. "Listen, I gotta go check on Billy Ray. See you in a while."
She nodded.
"Say hi to Billy Ray for me," one of the chicks called after him.
Calvin Pettys was still seated in the comer booth as he walked by. "Betts."
He stopped, thinking Pettys was going to ask him about his car. But he didn't.
"You going backstage?"
"Yeah."
He tapped his watch. "Tell them to get out here. One more set and it's party time. You better remind him, because once he gets on that stage he gets forgetful."
Betts nodded, walked off, wondering why Pettys was just sitting on his fat ass and not doing his job himself. Backstage, he heard someone yelling as he walked down the hallway toward the dressing room. He could feel the tension in the air. He looked into the room and saw Billy Ray and Dwayne in the middle of an argument, pushing each other around. He rapped on the open door.
"Whataya want?" Billy Ray snapped at him.
"You're due on stage."
Dwayne headed for the door, then turned back to Billy Ray. "This is our band, Billy Ray, not yours. You ain't the star, you're the singer. And the singer don't make the decisions for the band."
Betts watched him storm out of the room. Billy Ray straightened his clothes, getting ready. "What's the problem?" Betts asked.
"Dwayne and the guys didn't think we should've played tonight. They didn't like it that I decided for them." He popped a pill in his mouth, washed it down with booze. "Hell, I gotta make some decisions on my own. Can't wait around to talk about every little thing with them."
Betts picked up the bottle of pills, amazed. "What is this shit...are you kiddin' me? Black Beauties? This stuff will rot your insides out, don't you know that?"
"Don't mess with those, man," Billy Ray said defensively.
"Whataya need this shit for?"
"When you're onstage, man, you need all the friends you can get."
"We're not onstage, Billy Ray. This is two guys on a hot night in L.A."
Betts opened the bottle, headed toward the bathroom. He flipped up the toilet seat.
"Dump those out and I'll kick your ass, Betts. Cut it out, damn it."
Betts ignored the threat, dumped the pills into the toilet.
"Damn you." Billy Ray rushed at him, grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him around. He cranked his fist back and slugged him in the jaw. Betts took the blow, making no effort to defend himself.
Billy Ray stepped back, shocked that he had lost control. He liked Betts, and felt like a rat. Betts had shamed him by simply taking the punch. "I didn't mean to do that, man. I'm sorry."
Betts just looked at him, wiped the blood from his mouth. "Forget about it." He turned and headed for the door. "Just trying to keep you alive, Billy Ray," he said quietly.
"Don't go, man."
Betts turned back.
"Listen, man. I've been all fucked up lately. I don't even know what I'm doing here in this town. I'm living in someone else's house, playing someone else's music. Everything's changing. Jesse saw that first. All I think about is getting back to Texas.
"Those pills won't help you get back there. Can't you see that?"
"It's not so bad when you're roaring along. I didn't need any extra help onstage then. See, that was a time when everything mattered, and everyone cared."
He glanced at Betts with a pained look. "Now I've lost my friends, at least the ones who gave a shit."
"You're getting blinded by the footlights, Billy Ray. You ought to take a good look at those folks sitting out there. This music's all they got."
"They're just coming here for a good time, Johnny. It's nothing more than that."
Betts shook his head. "The first time I heard your songs I was just crossing the Tennessee border. Going ninety miles an hour, about a hundred yards in front of the highway patrol. When your song came out of my radio, I was watching the white line going by on this two-lane blacktop and I knew, man..." Betts grasped for words to describe how he felt, shook his head. "I knew there was someone out there that feels like I do, who really knows what it's like to be on the outside all your life. Man, you have the talent to put it all down in words and get it in a song. This music is ours, Billy Ray. This belongs to us."
The emotions riding high, Betts grabbed Billy Ray by the shoulders, shook him, pushed him against the wall. "You know how lucky you are, man? You can lay it out there, man." He pointed out the door toward the crowd. "You can make them free. I don't know how to do that, see? I can't hardly write, so don't sing me some sad song about your pills being the only ones that care. That's bull, and you know it is."
Cleary sat in his Eldorado, parked on a busy street. He was slouched low, but the windows were open so he could hear the telephone when it rang in the booth a few feet away. As he waited, he thought about the case.
It had started out almost as a lark: finding some lost rock and roll tapes. But things had quickly escalated. Hammond had opened the possibility of counterfeit wax, and less than a minute later he was dead. From a lost-and-found job to murder, in a matter of minutes. And since then he had been threatened, beat up, and Betts had barely escaped being blown into next week. What was next? he wondered.
The phone rang, and he stepped out of the car. He answered it at the end of the third ring. "Yeah. Good. Just a minute." He pulled a notepad from his pocket. "Okay, go ahead." He wrote down the name and address of the man who owned the Chrysler 500. "A resident of Las Vegas, eh? Okay. Thanks for going to the trouble."
"No problem, Cleary. It gets boring here on this shift. Always willing to help an old friend, especially a PI. like you who I know is out there putting up a good fight against the b
ad guys."
"I appreciate that, but at the moment, I'm just trying to stay a step ahead of them."
Cleary hung up, got the number of Bill Devlon, the Chrysler man, from Nevada information. He dropped a handful of change into the phone, and dialed. A man answered.
"Hey, where's Devlon?"
"Who's askin'?"
"This is Jackie in L.A. I've been waitin' for him for three hours."
"Name don't mean nothing to me. Where did you get this number?"
"Devlon gave it to me in case any problems came up."
"What? He's nuts. Did you check the hotel?"
"Which one?"
"The Sunrise on Sunset. Room 5."
"Who's with him there?"
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line and Cleary knew he had gone too far.
"Who are you, Jackie who?"
Cleary hung up, slipped back into the Eldorado, and headed for the motel. He shook his head, amazed that he had called Las Vegas and found out Devlon was staying just five blocks from where he was standing.
A couple of minutes later, he spotted the Chrysler, parked under a neon light. He glided into the parking lot, pulling in next to it. He noticed the room was dark inside, and saw his chance to catch Devlon sleeping. He pulled out his .38 and kicked open the flimsy door.
The motel room was lit by a cold iridescent flashing of neon from outside the windows. Each burst of light created weird shadows. The bed was empty, but Cleary saw a lamp tipped over. He moved ahead cautiously, gripping the .38 in front of him.
Suddenly the phone rang on the bureau next to him and he jumped. He let it ring, stepping forward. Then he saw the body lying on the floor on the far side of the bed. He leaned over. Devlon was dead, strangled by a wire. The same kind of wire that was attached to the bomb from Betts's car.
He stood up. The phone was still ringing. He answered it. "Yeah."
"Billy, that you?"
It was the same voice from Las Vegas.
Cleary softly replaced the phone receiver. He had probably been calling to ask Devlon about the guy named "Jackie." But they were both too late.
Devlon wasn't talking to anyone.
Billy Ray was singing his last song, a slow ballad about his homeland. Texas was a state of mind, he sang, a place to be free, but a place that is maybe too far away. He looked as if he was singing to a greaser couple in the shadows, dancing together like they had been doing it forever.
"Ever been to Texas?" Jesse asked as she clung to Betts on the dance floor.
"Nope. But I'd sure like to go."
"How about tonight?" she whispered in his ear, and slid a hand down his back.
"That's funny. I was hoping you'd say that."
TEN
The Album Party
Billy Ray's house in the Hollywood Hills was lit up like a Christmas tree. One side was a forty-foot-high glass wall that projected out over a steep hill. The view was dramatic, and made Betts feel like the city was lying at his feet, a carpet of lights, a dream of lights.
Betts could understand how Billy Ray didn't feel like this was his house. He was a twenty-two-year-old kid from Lubbock, Texas, who had lived for years in dumpy motel rooms. No wonder he felt like a guest here. Hell, Betts thought, even to him the house was a kind of false heaven, a scenery prop for a movie. It wasn't real. If he leaned too hard against the wall, it would collapse inward and he would find himself tumbling headlong down that cliff.
Sure it looked good, but how long would a guy like Billy Ray stay there? It was almost as if these kinds of houses were built for show, for parties; that people didn't live regular lives there. At least that was the way it seemed to him.
Silhouette Records had rounded up a regiment of partygoers, and they were drinking and dancing to Billy Ray's new songs, spilling outside, over the patio and the lawn, and down the slope to the pool. There were record execs and promoters, agents and managers, a mix of rockabillies, greasers, cool kitties, and groupies. At least half of them had been imported directly from The Crescendo. The others were probably on some master list of partygoers.
Tommy Slade was standing in front of the glass wall, a silhouette against the lights, and proposing a toast to all those within the range of his voice.
"Tonight," he bellowed, "we're celebrating the finish of Billy Ray's second album, and the beginning of what we know will be a long and prosperous arrangement."
"What a jerk," Jesse said. Betts wasn't the only one to hear her.
He glanced at Billy Ray, who looked more like a convict trying to appear repentant than a high-energy rising star. "Come on up here, Billy, and say something on this occasion, would you please?"
He walked over to Slade and smiled weakly. "This one's dedicated to Archie." He looked around at the faces, mostly strangers. "I guess everything else has already been said. Hope y'all enjoy yourselves tonight. I'm sure that's the way Archie would've liked it."
Jesse groaned and rolled her eyes. "God, let's get out of here, Johnny. We've got the road in front of us. Waiting." She slipped an arm around his waist. "You haven't changed your mind, have you?"
Betts looked from Billy Ray to Jesse, his allegiances divided and pulling him apart as if he were on a torture rack. "Let's go outside by the pool," he said evasively. "I want to stick around awhile, make sure Billy Ray's all right."
She nodded glumly, as if she had resigned herself to the fact that their talk of escaping L.A. for Texas tonight had been nothing more than wishful thinking. As the minutes ticked by, she knew their plans would fade like the memories of a dream. She started to follow Betts outside, stared a moment, at the shiny lights of the city below them, then turned away.
The hell with it, she thought, and turned back, passing Billy Ray on his way outside. She walked over to the bar, ordered a beer and a bump, and quickly swallowed the shot. "Hi, there, sweetheart," a smiling hustler greeted her.
She looked him up and down, and was about to turn away. Instead she smiled, laughing to herself. "Well, hello there to you, too."
An hour later, the enthusiasm and indulgences of some party-goers were bubbling over. A promoter and two nubile young chicks—one in short shorts, the other in capri pants—weaved drunkenly out of the house. The promoter carried a big flashlight and was waving it around. The beam shot off into the dark. "I know that pool's out here somewhere. There it is, and no one swimming."
"Take off your clothes, man. Let's go for a swim," one of the chicks yelled. It was Jesse.
"Go ahead. I'll watch," the promoter said.
"Like hell you will. Let's get him."
They chased him over the patio and down a sloping lawn. The promoter tumbled into the grass and wrestled with the two chicks, who tugged at his clothes, stripped him naked. He yelped. He struggled. He obviously loved it. Then they pulled him to the pool and shoved him into it. At the last moment, the promoter dropped the flashlight. It rolled and came to rest at the side of the pool, illuminating the sharp edge of the canyon drop-off.
Several feet back from the edge of the canyon was Billy Ray's turquoise '57 Chevy. It was parked under a couple of palm trees that waved in the night breeze. The hood of the car was facing the canyon and the distant, sparkling lights of the city. The top was down and the car radio was playing "Without Love There is Nothing" by Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters. The music floated sweetly out of the car and seemed to cool off the hot night.
Betts lay sprawled in the front seat, his feet up on the steering wheel, drinking beer. Empties lay on the floorboard. Billy Ray sat in the backseat, his feet out the window, sipping Southern Comfort. Standing next to the car was Calvin Pettys, who was wearing his lawn-party suit and nursing a gin and tonic.
"The first side of the album with Archie was rockin', man," Billy Ray said to Calvin. "But the flip side, with this slick..." He shook his head.
"You get kicked in the shins in this business, kid. I told you that way back in the beginning. They don't call it show art. You either bend or y
ou break. Believe me, Billy Ray, you're doing the best thing."
He patted his young star on the shoulder and weaved off across the lawn. "Looks like people are starting to get real frolicsome by the pool, boys," he said after he had vanished into the dark.
Betts looked back at Billy Ray. Neither one spoke for a while. "Things change, I guess," Billy Ray began. "We used to play all night and feel guilty about taking the five bucks. We really dug it."
He strummed an acoustic guitar as the Drifters tune ended, and Betts softly sang:
Let the Midnight Special,
Shine it's light on me.
Let the Midnight Special,
Shine it's ever-loving light on me.
"My old man used to play that song when I was a kid," Betts said.
Billy Ray kept strumming the song. "Where's your old man now?"
"Memphis... Shelby County Jail."
"Mm, man, I hear ya."
"Went to see him one time. We sat across that wire, nothing much to say... told me about a train that rides by the jail every night, right at midnight. Every night they waited up to hear that whistle coming. He said if the light from that train hits you in your jail cell, you'd be released. He believed that."
Billy Ray played out the song. His eyes gazed up toward the blanket of stars. "Jesse told me that story once, said that's where the song comes from."
"How'd you meet her?"
He smiled. "With a whole lot of tremblin' and apprehension."
"He was kinda shy in those days," Jesse said, walking up to the car. "I had to get him drunk just to get him into the backseat."
Betts saw her as she emerged from the darkness. Her hair was mussed, her voice slurred. It was obvious she was half drunk.
"Is that right, Billy Ray?" he said, and laughed in a friendly way.
"Jesse don't lie."