Die Laughing: 5 Comic Crime Novels

by Steve Brewer

  Henry started out of the room but Eddie just stood there, silent, his glazed eyes staring at the floor. “Eddie?” Henry said quietly as he touched his son-in-law’s shoulder. “Eddie, let’s go. It’s over.”

  With that, Eddie looked up and said, “Good.”

  16.

  For the most part, Nashville’s fabled ‘Music Row’ consisted of a three-quarter mile stretch of two unassuming one-way streets running parallel to one another. 16th Avenue ran one-way north while 17th Avenue ran one-way south. Looking north from the south end of either avenue, one would never guess the business resulting in ninety percent of the country music consumed in the world was conducted in this generally sleepy mile-and-a-half of road, a stone’s throw from Vanderbilt University. But such was the case.

  Many of the publishing companies, recording studios, law firms, and record companies were quartered in the modest houses and other simple buildings that fronted on the magnolia-lined streets. But not everyone worked out of these quaint dwellings.

  There were several large structures of courageous architectural design on Music Row, primarily at the north end. When the country music industry hit it big and the money started pouring in, the entertainment conglomerates began building on Music Row. When they did, it appeared they were not hindered by any covenants, codes, or restrictions in terms of architectural styles or the unity thereof. For example, the Gaylord Entertainment building looked like something out of a 1950’s science fiction movie. On the other hand, Reba’s corporate headquarters, just up the street, offered a more modern design, almost church-like in its motif, while the MCA building, just off the Row, presented a facade reminiscent of a Seattle Brew Pub or an enlarged Ray-O-Vac battery.

  The largest of all the structures on Music Row belonged to the two main performance rights organizations. The ASCAP and BMI buildings were so immense as to make songwriters and publishers wonder if they were getting all the money they were owed.

  Somewhere on 16th Avenue, not far from Sony Music headquarters, was a two story house that had been converted for business purposes into Herron & Peavy Management, an artist management firm. Downstairs was the reception area and all the administrative functions. The upstairs featured two large offices with views onto Music Row.

  One of the offices contained a small legal library, some fine art, and a beautiful maple desk and credenza on which sat the most up-to-date computer equipment available at any given time. This was the office of Franklin Peavy, Esquire and technophile. Franklin was a serious over- clocker with a Celeron Socket 370 super-heatsink fan combo for keeping his gear cool. His CPU was always equipped with the most memory, the fastest processor, zip drives, and the latest video and audio cards on the market. He had a wireless mouse, a mounted digital camera for video e-mail, a thirty-six inch monitor, and every other cutting-edge peripheral available. “Wireless application protocol connects me to the universe,” was his motto.

  The second office consisted of three walls covered with framed platinum records, gold CDs, and cassettes of artists the firm represented. There were photos of the artists accepting awards, blown-up charts from Billboard, and racks of compact discs. It was in this office where Big Bill Herron, co-owner of Herron & Peavy, sat at his desk flipping urgently through a paper. It was the new issue of Nashville Scene — the one with the annual list of ‘Nashville’s Power 100.’ Big Bill needed to know where he stood among ‘The Most Important People in Country Music.’

  Big Bill was in his mid-sixties and liked to joke that he was suffering from what he called ‘biscuit poisoning.’ He wasn’t quite 5’8”, 220 pounds, but he was damn close. His gut was the first thing you noticed after you stopped staring at his spectacularly round head. It was a fleshy beach ball. In fact, all of Big Bill’s features, from nose to butt, were so unusually bulbous that many people in the business referred to him as Tennessee Ernie Borgnine.

  “Goddammitall!” Big Bill threw the paper on the floor, mad as a pig on ice with his tail froze in. “I don’t believe it! That can’t be right.” He snatched the magazine up off the floor and turned back to his listing and sure as God made little green apples, he was Number 99. It was a comedown, and a bad one. Less than ten years ago Bill was Number 7, and now he was Number 99? “Well shitgoddamitall!”

  Like many people in the business end of the music industry, Bill started out as an artist. But it quickly became clear he was better riding gain on the microphone than singing into it. Over the years he established himself as an innovative and successful producer as well as an artist manager. He had a good ear for a song, and he had hooked up with a good attorney, Franklin Peavy, to form a business exploiting their respective talents as well as the talents of others.

  That wasn’t to say Big Bill robbed his clients blind. You didn’t stay in business long if all your clients went broke. You had to be careful how and where you got that lagniappe. You had to know the intricacies of publishing, recording, performance, and merchandising contracts. You needed to know what songs were hits and which ones were filler and who was willing to give up some of their publishing just to get recorded. You also had to know when to give up some of your own points and to whom. These were the things Bill and his partner knew as well as anyone. Given that, Big Bill wondered why he was so close to being off the damn list.

  Big Bill knew the music industry was voracious, and in more ways than one. It chewed up and spit out talent as well as those who managed and produced them. The machine had to be fed. And with fresh meat arriving every day, there was always someone to feed into the teeth. It was just that Big Bill was used to doing the chewing. He wasn’t used to being the meat.

  Once a powerful and successful management firm, Herron & Peavy was now just getting by. They blamed it on the current state of country music. After a huge surge in popularity in the 1990s, which had translated into record breaking sales and staggering income for more than a few, the industry had gone into a slump. In fact if you believed all the whining on Music Row, you have thought everyone in the business was losing money. Still, Herron & Peavy had a marginal stable of artists and songwriters, and there was a steady trickle of old producing and publishing money coming in. But Big Bill needed more and being dropped to 99 on the Power 100 wasn’t going to help.

  Bill was his own worst enemy, financially speaking. His accountant liked to say Bill’s spending habits were out-of-line with his income. He maintained a 10,000 square foot home in Belle Meade, complete with a half million dollar recording studio which, unlike every major studio in town, didn’t have a computer or a single piece of digital equipment in it. Big Bill was dangerously devoted to analog technology, arguing that it gave a warmer sound than the crisp, isolated 0’s and 1’s of binary sound reproduction.

  Big Bill also wore expensive, tailor-made clothes. Not that he was a connoisseur. He was just trying to compensate for his looks. As someone once said of him, “Big Bill was born ugly and had a bad setback.” He also threw his money at car dealers. He figured if it was true that one was a lot more handsome with a c-note in his pocket, then imagine how good looking he must be when he pulled up to the valet in one of his Mercedes, or his Cadillac, or his decked out Excursion, the largest model of compensation made by the Ford Motor Company. And, as if the car payments weren’t enough, Big Bill was sending alimony checks to three ex-wives along with child support for six children and the lawyers they rode in on. Things had gotten so bad lately that Bill had been forced to sell his house in Aspen. Despite his six figure income, Big Bill Herron was, as they say, in a bad row of stumps.

  17.

  It was noon on a Thursday when Bill’s partner appeared in the doorway. Franklin was wearing his usual office attire: black mock turtleneck, sports coat, dark slacks. He was a graduate of Vanderbilt law school and a good attorney, but more and more he’d been thinking what he really wanted to do was produce. Unlike Big Bill, Franklin was enamored of modern digital studio technology, especially the computerized systems by Alesis, Tascam, and Fostex. But,
like everyone else in the business, Franklin’s favorite was ProTools by Digidesign, considered by many to be the ultimate system for digital audio production.

  Franklin looked up from the sheaf of phone messages in his hand. He could see Bill was irritated and he knew why. “I see you managed to hang on to the hind tit of that list,” he said in his southern gentry lilt. Franklin had grown to hate Big Bill more than he could say. There were a lot of reasons for the hostility but what chapped Franklin’s ass the worst was how Big Bill got all the glory and Franklin just dotted the ‘i’s’ and crossed the ‘t’s’. Of course, Bill hated Franklin just as much as he was hated. The two of them would rather not have to work together one more day, but since the names Herron & Peavy were worth a far sight more together than either name by itself and since they both felt they were too old to go out and start from scratch they stuck together like a hateful old married couple afraid of being alone.

  Big Bill tapped the face of his thin gold watch. “We open too early for you today?” His voice had the twangy stress of a mean good old boy.

  “I was out late,” Franklin said, returning his attention to the phone messages. “Went to Estella’s after the awards, kept her from killing a man, had a few drinks.”

  “That’s very touching. I’m happy for you both.” Bill held up the magazine. “Now what the hell we gonna do about this?”

  Franklin shook his head in contempt. “Nothing to do. The magazine’s out, you’re on the list, stop your whining.” Franklin walked away leaving Bill to stew about his decline in Music City’s power structure. One of the phone messages triggered a thought and Franklin pulled his tiny digital recorder from his pocket. “Reminder. Call Ken at Swerdlow, Florence to discuss controlled composition clause.”

  As soon as Franklin turned his back, Bill angrily flipped him the bird, mouthing the words, ‘stop your whining.’ He stood, went to the door of his office, and slammed it. On the way back to his desk, Bill stopped to look at the wall of gold records he had produced and he wondered how and when things had gone so wrong. When Bill came into the music business all you needed was a microphone, a room with padded walls, a two-track reel-to-reel, and somebody who could sing and play guitar. Now everything was 24-bit, integrated digital recording, editing, processing, and mixing systems. Big Bill had seen things go from 45s to LPs to 8-tracks to cassettes to CDs. And now, according to the trades, the compact disc was about to be replaced by something called a flash memory device. Then there was something called music streaming and a computer file compression code called MP3. What the hell was that all about?

  Before long, record company executives and artist managers were going to be out of the loop entirely and the damn artists would be in control of everything. This was not the kind of world in which Big Bill was equipped to live. One minute he was at the top of the charts, the next he was an eight-track tape in a digital download world. It wasn’t supposed to end this way, he thought. He just wanted to get across the finish line with some dough in his pocket, but he’d gotten lazy and fallen behind. He looked again at the Nashville Scene and knew he couldn’t let it end like this. He had to find somebody to help get him out of this mess.

  18.

  Two days after the funeral Eddie was still in an emotionally blunted state. He calmly packed his car and headed to Nashville. He got a cheap motel room his first night there. The next day he found a one-bedroom unit at the Country Squire Manor Apartment complex, a sprawling series of cheaply constructed apartments offering three floor plans. Eddie took apartment number nine, the smallest available. He signed the documents and put down his deposit. He moved his stuff in and drew the curtains. Five days later, Eddie was still inside with the curtains drawn. He hadn’t arranged for phone service or cable. He had a pizza or two delivered, but otherwise he was a complete recluse. The only way his neighbors could tell he was there was the sound of his guitar.

  Eddie was troubled. In his mind everything had gone to pieces. Nothing made sense. His emotions were all over the road, like George Jones behind the wheel of a lawn mower on his way back from the liquor store. He felt abandoned, cheated, guilty, violated, confused, remorseful, anxious, and saved, all at once. Eddie didn’t know how to deal with the emotional chaos, except with his guitar. He was scared half to death and he knew he had to find words for his confusion or it would consume him. But words wouldn’t be enough, the emotional turbulence had to be set to music. The dissonance in his mind had to be translated into melody. Minor chords seemed inevitable.

  Eddie couldn’t sleep more than an hour at a time. When he did, he dreamed of Tammy, twisted and choked by the poison. The shot to the head would jar him awake and he’d pick up the guitar and try to pry the thing out from inside him.

  By day five, Eddie was in the grip of a powerful force and he knew what it was. He just hoped he could survive it. He wondered if this was what great songwriters suffered every time they wrote a great song. Eddie remembered an interview of a writer whose work he admired. She said, “a lot of us have good songs inside, the trick lies in getting one to come out. Every time I manage to get one out, I’m immediately struck by the terror that I’ll never be able to do it again. Or worse, that I will.”

  Late on the fifth night, the song poured out of Eddie like hot oil. The words, the melody, the lonesome harmonies. It was sorrow set to music. It wasn’t a blues, but it was in the neighborhood. It was a requiem, a confession, and a guilty celebration. And it had a great hook.

  It was over in an hour. Eddie seemed to wake from a fugue state. He looked around, unsure of where he was. He set his guitar down and wiped his sweaty hands. There was a pad of paper in front of him. There was a song, written in Eddie’s hand, though he only vaguely remembered writing it. He stood and stretched his muscles. Eddie felt a relief he couldn’t describe. He felt cleansed and purified, but it was more than that. It was a purge. It had to be what women felt upon giving birth. Or maybe it was what Tammy felt when she finally died after suffering through the poison and arriving at relief.

  Eddie knew he’d just forged a great song out of emotional turbulence and suddenly the pall lifted, whatever had happened was over, and the air was calm and clean. It was just past dawn. Eddie went to the curtain and pulled it back. He saw trees and sunshine and he knew he had a song that could launch a career. Now he just had to take it out for a test ride.

  19.

  Buddy Glenn wrote a beauty back in 1974. He called it “Good Old Daze.” Carson Fletcher recorded it on his debut album with Big Bill Herron producing. It went to number one on the country charts and crossed over to become a number one pop hit as well. Carson Fletcher’s career took off and soared for six good years until he had a heart attack in 1980 and retired.

  After “Good Old Daze” Buddy Glenn spent the next twenty-seven years trying to write another hit. Yet despite his prolific output Buddy never wrote another song that earned him more than a few thousand dollars. He wrote a lot of good songs during that period but, as sometimes happens, nobody recognized them. Fortunately Buddy had retained his half of the publishing rights and “Good Old Daze” still brought him about $15,000 a year from radio play and record sales. But that was about all Buddy had coming in and lately nobody was particularly interested when he had a new batch of songs to plug. “Too old school,” they said.

  All of this chipped away at Buddy’s spirit, eventually crushing his confidence and stealing his gift. But things really fell apart a year ago when Buddy’s wife, Lynn, was diagnosed with cancer. They didn’t have any insurance and they ate through their meager savings in short order. Buddy took a second on the house to cover medical expenses. He started giving guitar lessons and working as the night manager at Shoney’s but it wasn’t enough. When the money ran out he turned to his publisher for a loan. The terms were simple. Big Bill loaned Buddy ten thousand dollars. Buddy agreed to pay it back in a year with five thousand in interest. If he was unable to repay the loan with the interest, Big Bill would take ownership of Buddy’s hal
f of the publishing on “Good Old Daze.” Now the loan was due.

  Buddy walked into Big Bill’s office that afternoon drawn and tired. He’d aged badly in the past few years. Lynn was at home dying and just about everybody had stopped returning his calls. He recently sold his last two guitars.

  “Hey now!” Big Bill said, gesturing at a chair. “Come on in, take a load off.” Big Bill sat down behind his desk. “How’s Lynn doing?”

  Buddy sat down and took off his hat. He couldn’t look Big Bill in the eyes. He just worried the rim of his hat as he spoke. “Not real good,” Buddy said. “The tumors didn’t respond to the last round of chemo.”

  Big Bill frowned slightly. “Mmmm.” There was an envelope in front of Big Bill. He picked it up and began tapping it on the top of the desk.

  Buddy tried to sound optimistic. “But we just heard about a new, experimental treatment that might help.”

  “Well all right,” Big Bill said, pointing with the envelope. “Sounds like things are startin’ to turn around for ya.”

  Buddy shook his head. “Problem is they can’t do the treatment here ‘cause the FDA hadn’t approved it yet. We gotta go down see this doctor in Mexico. He does the treatment at this special clinic. It’s real expensive.”

  Big Bill nodded. “Boy, I tell you, they get you comin’ and goin’, don’t they?” Bill casually opened the envelope and removed the document inside. “Look,” he said, “I know you wanna get back so you can take care of Lynn, so let’s just go ahead and do this and then you can head for the border.” He gestured toward the south.

  “Bill, I ain’t got the money.” Buddy just blurted it out.

  Big Bill sat there, expressionless. “You ain’t?” He said it real flat, almost like he knew already. “Well. Hmmm.” He unfolded the piece of paper and glanced at it.