Solo Hand

by Bill Moody

  “Evan, you okay, man?” Emerson says, jumping to his feet. Coop is sitting behind his desk, his legs crossed on top. Megan stops her pacing when I come in. Dixon stands by the window.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say to Emerson.

  Megan whirls around. “Well, you’ve got some explaining to do, Evan.”

  “Thanks, Megan, I’m fine. Nice to see you, too.”

  “Evan, I want to know—”

  “I’ll do the questioning if you don’t mind, Ms. Charles,” Coop says. They lock eyes for a minute. This is territorial, and we’re on Coop’s ground. It’ll be his show, at least here, a fact for which I’m extremely grateful.

  “Yeah, we’ll get this straightened out,” Emerson says. He puts a comforting hand on my shoulder. At least I’ll have one ally in the Cole camp.

  Megan sits down. “Very well,” she says, “but I have a number of appointments this morning.”

  “We’ll get you out of here as soon as possible,” Coop says. He looks at me. “Now, sport, you want to run this whole thing by me again?”

  I give another accounting, more detailed than last night’s, and add that Cindy has gone to New York. Coop raises his eyebrows. No tape, I tell him.

  “What tape?” Megan wants to know.

  “Sit down, Ms. Charles,” Coop tells her. This is clearly not a request.

  “These people,” Coop says to me, “Ms. Charles, are a little upset with you, Evan, and I can hardly blame them. Whether you went in the drink or not, they want their money back” Coop pauses. “They also seem to think you know a lot more about this than you’ve told us.”

  “Not me, man,” Emerson says. “We’re with you on this all the way.” To Megan he says, “C’mon, he almost got killed.”

  Megan is not convinced. “How do we know that? It looks to me like he arranged this whole thing.”

  “Oh, this is a crock,” I say. “I arranged to get hit on the head, go into the Marina Channel, almost drown. C’mon, Megan, even you can’t believe that.”

  She looks at Coop. “Ms. Charles might have a point,” he says. He picks up a sheet of paper off his desk. “This note, this one too”—he holds up another—”were written on your typewriter.”

  They all stare at me now as I sink into a chair, my head swimming. “My typewriter? How could that be? I—”

  “At least one very like yours,” Dixon chimes in. “These new electronic models are harder to match, but the typeface, everything, looks the same.”

  Megan jumps to her feet. “If they do match, I want him charged immediately.”

  Coop waves a hand at her. “Relax, Ms. Charles, we’ll come to that in due time. Have you got a lawyer?” he asks me.

  I look to Emerson. He shrugs. “I’m with you, man, but, you know, conflict of interest.” He too is obviously shaken by Coop’s revelation.

  “You certainly are not going to take him on as a client,” Megan fires.

  “Fuck you, Megan,” Emerson says, glaring at her.

  “Hey.” Coop is on his feet now. “Not in my office. You two can go now. We’ll be in touch.”

  “You’d better be,” Megan says, and stomps out of the office, earrings swinging.

  Emerson follows close behind. “Be cool, man,” he says. “Give Lonnie a call.”

  “Charming lady,” Coop says. Dixon and I sit in silence for a moment as Coop studies the notes.

  “I hope you got some ideas, sport,” he says to me finally.

  I have none. My typewriter. A sense of alarm spreads through me before I fully comprehend what Dixon has said. It never once occurred to me. Setup comes closer to the surface of my mind now. How did someone get into my apartment, use my typewriter? What happened to the tape if Cindy doesn’t have it?

  “How the fuck did you get into this?” Coop wants to know. He sends Dixon out for some coffee. Alone he continues, “This whole thing smells. Why didn’t you come to me? You know about as much about this shit as I do about playing the piano.”

  “I know, I know,” I say. “What happens now?” Coop and I went to high school just three blocks from where we’re sitting. Why didn’t I go to him first?

  Coop shrugs. “You haven’t been charged yet, so I can release you on your own recognizance, my recommendation, because I’ve known you a long time, but if that typewriter matches,” he puts up his hands, “they’ve got a case. There’s not much I can do then.”

  I get up and head for the door.

  “Evan.” Coop looks worried. “A blackmailer steals a moment of privacy and then tries to sell it back to you at a price he hopes you’ll pay. This wasn’t your moment and you can’t afford the tab. Most of the time it doesn’t go according to plan. Someone wants to get you. Watch your step.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “T.J.?”

  “Yeah, man. That you, Evan?”

  I’m using Lonnie’s private number, calling from a pay phone in Santa Monica. With Megan on the warpath and Emerson Barnes bailing out on me, other than Sharon, Lonnie is the only one left to talk to. I may need a lawyer of my own.

  “I’ve got to see Lonnie, T.J., but I don’t want to do it at the house. Can you tell him I want to meet him someplace?”

  There’s a long pause before T.J. answers. He must know about everything, but I can’t believe he’s lining me up the way Megan has.

  “Yeah, I can tell him, but it won’t do no good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s gone underground, man. Nobody knows where. Took off this morning by himself.”

  “C’mon, T.J. You know where he is.” Lonnie doesn’t make a move without T.J. Their relationship goes way beyond bodyguard and star.

  Again another pause. “Yeah, I know, least I think I do, but I can’t tell you.”

  “T.J., this is important.”

  “You’re damn right it’s important, but until I hear from Lonnie—”

  It’s no use, I realize. There’s too much loyalty between these two, and I don’t want to antagonize T.J.

  “Okay, T.J., I know where you’re coming from, but when you do hear from him, tell Lonnie I have to see him, okay? It’s important.”

  “You got it.” T.J. sounds relieved that I’m not going to press him.

  I hang up and watch the traffic on Lincoln for a moment. I don’t even know where to begin or how much time I have. If they do match my typewriter to the notes, I may be making calls from jail. How did anyone get into my apartment and use my typewriter to write the notes? Cindy? No way.

  I don’t want it to, but suspicion, even about Cindy, is creeping into the corners of my mind. I want to put that to rest as quickly as possible. Where is she and where is the tape? Even if they can match the typewriter, the answering machine tape would at least show that I was merely following instructions. I also have some idea as to how to trace the tape, figure out how it was done. If I can do that, I might figure out who made it, who is behind all this.

  Lonnie may be hiding out, but Charlie Crisp is very visible at the Frontier in Las Vegas. I’ve got to see him again. There are several questions I have for him.

  I turn to the pay phone again and call the airlines, but all flights are booked. A reservations clerk tells me she can put me on standby for a five-o’clock flight, so I go for that. I also call America West, but Cindy’s friend June isn’t around and the girl I talk to has no idea where she or Cindy is or when either will be back,

  I hang up and think again, the afternoon spread out before me. I decide the best thing I can do is to make my regular therapy group meeting. If I don’t, I’ll hear about it from Dr. Mann.

  According to a doctor who heads up a performing-arts medicine program in New York, seventy-one percent of all musicians suffer some kind of debilitating condition at some point in their careers. I’m just early, and the causes for mine were anything but natural. My group, though, is no different, and we are all benefiting from the research being done.

  When I first heard about it, I was fascinated. Violini
sts, I learned, are prone to bursitis of the shoulder because of the way they hold the violin. Flutists risk numbness of the right little finger. Drummers face carpal tunnel, nerve damage from all the strain on the wrists, or, as with Drew, a drummer with a pop singer, tendinitis.

  Drew has already had seven operations and now uses warm-up and cool-down routines, wears support gloves after playing, and soaks his hands in ice after concerts as a pitcher might do after nine innings.

  I was told all this before I met Dr. Carol Mann, who specializes in arts medicine therapy from the psychological perspective. Dr. Mann’s sessions are held in her small office in Brentwood, just off San Vicente.

  The grassy median on San Vicente is full of joggers enjoying the sun, dressed in a variety of outfits, everything from cutoffs to expensive warm-up suits. Some of them wear stopwatches around their necks and pause at intersections to check pulse rates. Too complicated for me.

  Just beyond Barrington Avenue I turn into the parking lot. Today, for a change, I’m early. Only Dr. Mann is there.

  “Hi, Evan,” she says. “You’re looking a bit tense today.” She’s dressed in a plaid skirt and blouse, and her blond hair is swept back. She has soft features, a tiny mouth, and unwavering green eyes that can bore into you.

  “Thanks, Carol, knew I could count on you.” I light a cigarette in spite of her frown. We stand outside the office in a communal patio area that several offices share.

  Until my accident, I was always skeptical of counseling, therapy, that kind of thing. I could never stand the psychobabble—sharing, relating, identifying. All I wanted to do was play the piano again.

  Through Dr. Martin, I’d become well acquainted with physical therapy over the past few months, but head games were something else again. That’s when I learned about the psychological side of performing-arts medicine. The effect of having someone tell you that you may never do again what you do best can be devastating. Dealing with it through a third party sometimes helps.

  A friend of mine with the L.A. Philharmonic was sold on the idea. Arthritis was creeping into his hands and it wouldn’t be long before he would no longer be a first violinist in a symphony orchestra. His career wasn’t over, but adjusting to playing less demanding parts is hard to come to terms with. There’s a professional pride, a love for performing that won’t let you admit your execution is slipping.

  There was another pianist in the group, Rob, who could no longer stretch more than an octave, and Miroslav, a sulky Hungarian bassist who was finding it difficult to play sitting on a stool now that a skiing accident had ended his days of cradling an upright bass while on his feet. He was sure the new posture affected his intonation and was angry about it.

  They were all, I reminded myself, still playing, even if their playing had become limited.

  I finish my cigarette and wait with Carol for the others to arrive. They straggle in, there’s small talk, and finally, with all of us present, Carol seats us on folding chairs in a circle that takes up most of the small carpeted room. Carol is familiar with all our medical files, so her comments are central to our discussion.

  “So, what have you done for yourselves this week?” Carol begins. It’s always the same. Miroslav shrugs and stares at the wall. He’s never gotten into this. All he knows is his knee hurts. Rob reports he’s been regularly performing the therapy exercises, and Drew says he feels like Nolan Ryan after nine innings.

  “It’s better,” Drew says, flexing his wrist, “but is it going to stay better?”

  Carol looks around the circle at all of us before she comments. “No, Drew, it’s probably not. That’s why we’re here, why we have to come to terms with the idea that you may not always continue performing. Right, Evan?”

  Carol has been using me as a model, she thinks, since I’m not playing at all. I’m not like the others, gradually losing facility. Mine was lost suddenly, all at once.

  A nonplayer might have pointed out that with my accident, I was lucky to be alive and more or less in one piece with my brains unscrambled. But my lost skills were inordinately important to me. I had taken years out of my life to become as good as I’d once been. You don’t pay that kind of price for a skill and then become indifferent to it when it ends.

  I might never play piano in the same league as Oscar Peterson or Bill Evans, but my playing ability was vital to my persona, a big chunk of my heart, central to where I lived emotionally. The music that came from my heart, my brain, could no longer come out the ends of my fingers. Not yet, anyway, but I wasn’t giving up.

  The therapy group was one way of sounding off about it, and having Carol stab us once in a while with some truth friends would never offer was probably good for all of us. Dr. Carol Mann was very good at stabbing.

  “I don’t know, you tell me,” I say.

  “I don’t see your rubber ball,” she says. “Have you given that up?”

  My hand goes to my coat pocket. Must have lost it in the water. “I don’t know. I’ve got to get another one.” The others look at me too; they’ve never seen me without it.

  Carol keeps things going for a while but no one is really into it today. Sometimes that’s the way it goes. We break up early and once again I’m left with Carol.

  “Something else bothering you, Evan?” she asks. “You seem distracted. Is it Cindy? Sharon?” My therapy with Carol has spilled over into my personal life. She knows about the divorce and my relationship with Cindy, and I know she wants to know where that’s going.

  “No, Cindy is fine. Sharon I haven’t talked too lately.” The lie comes easily. “See you next week,” I say, but I can feel her watching me as I leave the office. I wonder if I will see her next week.

  There’s a friend also waiting for standby at LAX. He’s seated in a corner, Fender bass cradled between his knees, lost in the sounds of a Walkman, eating potato chips from a bag. The lounge is crowded. Everybody, it seems, wants to go to Las Vegas.

  I come up behind Buster Browne, lift off the headphones. “How much are they payin’ you, Buster?” He has so much studio work, Buster Browne doesn’t leave L.A. unless it’s for big bucks.

  “Hey, man, how you doin’,” Buster says. “You on this flight?” He crumples the empty bag into a ball and lofts it toward a trashcan.

  I slide into the seat next to him. “I hope so. I’m going up to see Charlie Crisp.”

  Buster frowns. “Yeah? That’s what I’m doing,” Buster says. “Something happened to his bass player. You’re not—” Buster glances at my hand.

  “No, not yet. Just some personal business. What happened to the bass player?”

  “I don’t know, man. It’s weird. Just got the call this morning, from Bo Harris. Some kind of accident. You know this Harris dude? Bad cat.”

  “Just slightly. What do you mean?” Buster is one of those guys with his hands in a lot of things. His ability gets him on a lot of gigs. Buster not only has phenomenal technique, but as the saying goes, he can read flyspecks. His demeanor makes people think he’s not really all there, but Buster is deceptive. He picks up on everything.

  “Word is he was into some kind of record scam, not with Crisp though.” Buster puts the headphones back on and shows me a cassette box. It’s a Charlie Crisp album. “I got to listen to this,” he says.

  Record scam? Is that where this is going? Well, I have some of my own questions for Charlie Crisp. Buster and I wait another half an hour. Both of us make the flight. We grab a couple of seats near the back, buckle up, and settle down for the fifty minutes in the air.

  After we level off and unbuckle our seat belts the stewardess comes up the aisle with a drinks cart. We both order a beer; Buster gets my complimentary peanuts. “So what do you know about the record business?” I ask.

  Buster shrugs. He’s been around the L.A. scene for so long, I’m not surprised at his answer. “Nasty, man, nasty. I used to make demos for a guy had a little studio up on Sunset. Least we thought they were demos. Turned out the guy was pirating the tapes,
selling them to a distributor, making covers, and shipping them to Indonesia to sell cheap.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Friend of mine on tour bought one in Thailand, thought it was me.”

  “Was it?”

  “Fucking A, but when I went to check it out, the studio was dosed, guy was gone. All I got was demo bread for the dates.”

  I nod. The music business is no different from any other, and in L.A. it’s probably worse. Unless you do movie and TV sessions—and that’s another scene—musicians, even ones as good as Buster Browne, are subject to the unscrupulous promoters, who run some very creative bookkeeping scams and promotion deals.

  “What about the stars?”

  Buster looks at me strangely. “You mean like Crisp and Lonnie?” Buster is one step ahead of me. “I bet they don’t know how much they make and I bet they make more than they’re told.”

  “You mean some kind of royalty deal, kickbacks, that kind of thing?” I think Buster is suddenly onto something.

  “Whoa,” Buster says. “I don’t know the details, man. I just know it happens.” Buster reaches into his bag, takes out one of his cards and a pen. He writes a name and a number on the back.

  “You really want to know, call this guy when you get back to L.A. Be sure you tell him I told you to call.” He puts his headphones back on and leans against the seat. That’s all I’m going to get from Buster.

  I look at the card. Elvin Case and a Hollywood number. Worth a shot.

  We touch down in Las Vegas and make our way to baggage claim. Buster and I share a cab to the Frontier. We promise to hook up later and I make for the Capri Motel again. I don’t know how long I’ll be here, but I want a room in case I can’t get back tonight.

  I make a couple of calls from my room. One to Sharon, but she’s still out. The other one gets me Cindy’s answering machine again. It’s starting to be worry time. The last call is to Charlie Crisp. Bo Harris answers the phone.