Cover-Up Story (14 page)

‘Ridin' alone ...'

Sam and I stayed silent throughout the song. Whatever his thoughts were, they must have been nearly as depressing as mine. He grew steadily gloomier.

Bart held up his hand for silence after the song ended. He didn't seem displeased when it took longer than usual for the audience to quieten down.

‘Now, folks,' he said, ‘I want to introduce another little number I wrote myself – jes' like “Homesteader” –' It took another moment for the pandemonium to die down. ‘Yessir, it was inspired by a wonderful little lady, who had the misfortune to be killed in a traffic accident a couple of days ago, here in your wonderful city. It sorta cast a pall on the whole Troupe, even though we're carrying on, like she woulda wanted us to. Especially –' He went into the spiel about Lou-Ann then, and I stopped listening as I tried to control my queasy stomach. All this just-plain-folksiness was going to give me my first ulcer, if I wasn't careful. I tried not to look at Lou-Ann, smirking and taking bows.

A soft rustle behind me drew my attention. Crystal had slipped into the wings to stand watching the stage with shining eyes. ‘He's going to sing it now,' she murmured softly. ‘Oh, it's
so
pretty.'

Well, it was nice for Bart, I supposed, to have a permanent fan club in a member of his own family. It doesn't always work that way with families. But it didn't help the state of my stomach.

‘Yessir.' Bart, onstage, was returning to the main business of the evening. The spotlight snapped off Lou-Ann abruptly and was all his own again.

‘Yessir, our own Maw Cooney was my inspiration for this special number I'm introducing here tonight – for the very first time anywhere! ' He waved a hand, and the Cousins picked up the downbeat.

The lyrics were about as mawkish as you'd expect, but the melody was strong, wistful and haunting. And the audience was loving it. In all fairness, I'd have liked it myself if Bart hadn't been responsible for it. For a moment, I mused on the injustice of talent – why did so much of it have to be given to people one ordinarily wouldn't wish to associate with?

The song had brought Sam out of his gloom. I could see his brain cash-registering the probable sale of the record. Obviously, the next hit record for Black Bart and the Troupe. It was a spellbinder.

But, as the song continued, I was more than spellbound – I was riveted. Something about it began to seem terribly familiar. I had heard that song – that melody – before. And not so very long ago.

‘It's
so
pretty,' Crystal was murmuring in a soft litany behind me. ‘Beautiful. It's jest
so
beautiful.'

Then Uncle No'ccount, who had been standing thoughtfully in the background, lifted his harmonica to his lips and joined in. The low mournful wail of the harmonica added an extra dimension to the song, breathed soul into the melody.

It also brought recognition.

Black Bart's ‘Tribute to Maw' was the melody I had heard Uncle No'ccount doodling on his harmonica soon after the Troupe had arrived in London. Doodling, experimenting with, working into shape.

Black Bart might lay claim to it – but the song was no more his than Buckingham Palace. Uncle No'ccount had written it, and Bart was claiming the credit. And, if that were the case, then could Bart have written ‘Homesteader', either?

‘He's really got something there,' Sam said softly. ‘Maybe an all-time winner. Do you realize we've never had any song for Mother's Day? Oh sure, there's ‘Mother Machree', and ‘M Is for the Many Things She Gave Me' – but never a ‘White Christmas' kind of song the disc jockeys would keep coming back to, year after year. If we could promote this one the right way . . .' He trailed off, lost in dreams of avarice too deep for words. I didn't need to look up to know that there were dollar signs instead of tears in
his
eyes.

The song ended and the audience exploded into applause. And this was England, where we tend to take Dear Old Mother rather coolly, as a rule. In the States, with the whipped-up hysteria encouraged on all sides by the mass media, this could be a sensation. Especially on a Mothers' Day telecast.

Bart jumped into the wings between bows. He glared at us and pointed an accusing finger at Crystal. “Don't you run away now, you hear?' he growled. ‘I want to talk to you. You, boy –' he jerked his head at me – ‘you hang on to her, hear?'

‘Okay, okay –' Sam was pushing at him – ‘but get out there. They're going crazy. Take another bow. Take an encore.'

Bart had never had any intention of doing anything else. The Cousins knew it, they waited with their instruments poised and began again as Bert came back onstage. Bart, his face back in the ingratiating smile, shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly at the audience, and went into his encore – a son any mother would be proud to own. At least, during the moments when he had a spotlight on him.

He took two encores and, while the applause was at its height, I felt a faint movement behind me. When I turned, Crystal had gone. It seemed to be Bart's day for having girls run out on him. And I was on the girls' side. At the same time, it occurred to me that this was the second girl I had let slip away, and Bart was going to be none too pleased about it. It might be a good idea to disappear myself.

I was too late. Bart was with us again, mopping his face with the sleeve of his shirt. ‘Where is she?' he demanded.

‘Perhaps she went to the Ladies' Room.' It wasn't very good, but it was the best I could think of. I was grateful that his costume wasn't the type that called for six-guns, he was looking at me as though he would have used them.

‘I've had jest about enough of you, boy. I asked you where Crystal went. You let her get away, didn't you?'

‘Why shouldn't I? I'm not your sister's keeper.'

‘You sure ain't – you ain't man enough! Nobody is! You hear me?'

The front rows probably heard him, the way his voice was rising. The Cousins and Uncle No'ccount had filed offstage and were waiting to get past us. Obviously, no one felt like giving Bart a friendly nudge to move him out of the way. It would have been like shoving a wounded panther.

‘Take it easy, Bart. Take it easy.' Sam, the human buffer, was working at his job again. ‘Look, she can't have gone far. She only just left. I would have stopped her, but I was too busy applauding. You were great, Bart.'

Bart shook him off like a gadfly. He was too intent on trying to intimidate me. ‘Some day, it's going to be you-and-me, boy! '

I stared back at him levelly. ‘That wouldn't surprise me a bit.'

He turned abruptly, and his eye fell on the unlucky Uncle No'ccount. ‘I want to talk to you, too,' he snarled. ‘Come on.'

‘Bart.' Lou-Ann moved in front of Uncle No'ccount. ‘Bart, why don't we jest go home? I'm awful tired. Please, Bart.' She clung to his arm. ‘Let's go.'

On a vague impulse to close ranks with anyone Bart was gunning for, I walked over to Uncle No'ccount. I had chosen the wrong moment, and got there just as he was putting back his teeth. I saw him catch my expression from the corner of his eye, and the flicker of amusement.

‘Why the hell do you do that?' To cover my revulsion, I snapped at him. ‘You can play perfectly well wearing those things. I've heard you.'

‘Well, now,' he said gently. ‘It was Bart's idea – his orders, sorta. After all, there can't be more than one glamour boy in the act now, can there?' Something in his voice, perhaps in the very lack of expression in his face, travestied the remark. I grinned involuntarily. If Lou-Ann could ever learn to deliver a line with that expression and that timing, Sam might be on the way to his great female comic.

After a moment, something flickered in his eyes again to answer my grin. ‘Not that there was ever much chance of me giving him a run for his money,' he went on. ‘I'm only jest poor old Uncle No'ccount.'

But he
had
another name – and I had heard it once. Standing there, I groped after it, and then I remembered. ‘Come on, Eugene,' I said. ‘I'll buy you a drink.'

They had the Client almost calmed, but it set him off again when he saw us start to walk away. ‘Where the hell do you think you're going, you no-account old fool?'

Uncle No'ccount turned slowly and stared at him. ‘Doug here and me is going out and have a drink,' he said slowly and clearly. ‘Maybe we're even goin' to talk business a little. Maybe we'll even talk about songs.'

Unbelievably, I watched the Client deflate. There had been no menace in the quiet voice. Nothing to give the game away – they couldn't know that I had recognized the tune. Yet, Bart had given way against the veiled threat.

I decided it was going to be a very interesting drinking party. There was more to Uncle No'ccount than met the eye.

FOR THE FIRST TIME in months, Gerry and I met over the breakfast table in the morning. That is, we collided in the cupboard that serves us as a kitchen, poured boiling water into some instant coffee, dredged some biscuits and a jar of meat paste out of an almost forgotten recess, and carried everything into the office to spread out on the desk.

Gerry burbled cheerfully, reading me snippets from the morning papers, and regaling me with his own observations about them. I didn't mind. It was sheer reflex action on his part. Birds get very narky if you don't chat them up in the morning, and I knew he was so used to this breakfast routine that he hardly noticed it was only me across the desk.

I concentrated on the meat paste, wondering how long we'd had it, and how long it could keep safely. It tasted slightly odd, but that might have been the spices, and there was a faint flavour of cardboard, which was interesting in a product which had been sealed in a glass jar. I spread more on another biscuit. With any luck, I might come down with a first-class case of food poisoning and have to be taken to hospital for a while. Say, until the Client had gone back to the States.

‘Did you learn anything from Uncle No'ccount last night?' Gerry folded the paper and settled down to a business conference.

‘Not much.' He'd been very cagey. There had been moments when I'd thought he was secretly laughing at me. ‘He wouldn't come off the act.'

‘You think it
is
an act?'

‘What do you think? He wrote that song, you know, ‘Tribute to Maw'. He probably wrote ‘Homesteader', too.'

‘He
told
you that?' Gerry was incredulous.

‘He didn't tell me anything, and I didn't ask. I heard him working on the melody shortly after they arrived. It was rough, but it was the same tune. I'm sure of it.'

‘But, “Tribute to Maw” –
before
anything happened to her? Do you mean he was expecting something to happen?'

It was a thought that hadn't occurred to me, and I pushed it away firmly. It might be risky, but I was excluding Uncle No'ccount from my short list of bastards. ‘No,' I said, ‘I think it was just the melody he was working on. Then, when this happened, he set the words to it.'

‘You mean, sort of an all-purpose dirge. In case Zeke bought it, perhaps? Then, when Maw did, instead, he just switched over to her?'

‘Something like that. It's a good melody. Too good for the words. If we could introduce him to a competent lyricist –'

‘You're mad!' Gerry called me back to order. ‘We don't want any more to do with them than we can help. In less than a month, they'll all be back in the States – and the best of British luck to the States. Don't rock the boat.'

‘You're right,' I agreed. Apart from which, the Client was claiming credit for both songs, and it could be very nasty to interfere there. Whatever agreement there was between him and Uncle No'ccount – or, rather, whatever hold they had over each other – presumably it was more or less satisfactory to both, and there was nothing to be gained by an outsider coming along to upset the apple cart.

‘In a way,' Gerry said thoughtfully, ‘it restores my faith in human nature to know that the Client didn't write those songs. Uncle No'ccount may not be any lily, but he's a lot more fragrant than the Client.'

The telephone rang, and we looked at each other. Neither of us made a move. It went on ringing.

‘We ought to answer it,' I said, without conviction. ‘It might be Penny.'

‘Or Amanda,' Gerry said. ‘Or Samantha, or Jane.' He got up and crossed to the phone. ‘Or Christine, or Kate, or ... Good morning. Perkins & Tate.' His face fell, and he listened without saying anything. I had already felt in my bones that it was the Client. It was going to be that kind of day – again.

‘Charming,' Gerry said, replacing the phone and tottering to the kitchen for more coffee. ‘We are invited to drag our arses over there just as fast as we can get the lead out.' He came back, sipping coffee, and slumped across the desk from me.

‘I don't know,' he said pensively, ‘perhaps I have it coming. We pay for our transgressions, and all that. But you're a reasonably clean-living chap – how did you get dragged into it?'

‘Perhaps I had my fun in a previous incarnation.' I sat there hopeful, waiting for some twinge from my stomach to tell me that the meat paste was doing its deadly work. Nothing happened. I felt fine. I was fighting fit and ready to face the day – it was too bad that the day had to include the Client.

Lou-Ann opened the door to the suite. Without make-up, the circles under her eyes were blackly noticeable. She had been crying, too. It was probably unfair to blame that on the Client – after all, the girl's mother had just died. But I found myself wishing that she were still in the room downstairs.

‘Come in, boys,' she said. ‘It was real nice of y'all to come over here so quick-like.'