Wild Cards V (35 page)

“I know,” said Jack. He groaned. Any other year he'd be pretty sure he could avoid the flu-type stomach bugs. But Tachyon had briefed him about opportunistic infections. He'd had the instant image of viruses zeroing in on him from every pesthole in the world. “I think maybe it's just the flu.”

Holley shook his head. “It's a heavy-duty power intrusion I'm pickin' up here.”

“It's a bug.”

“And the bug's gettin' through to you because your protection, your personal mantle is screwed.”

“Couldn't have put it better myself,” said Jack.

Holley took his hands away from Jack's abdomen. “Sorry, nothin' personal. I don't know if Cordelia told you, but I—well, I know something about this stuff.” Jack looked back at him bewilderedly. “What you need,” said Holley seriously, “is a traditional treatment. You need to have the intrusion sucked out. I think it's the only way.”

Jack couldn't help himself. He started chuckling, then guffawing. He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed like this. It hurt to laugh, but it helped as well. Buddy Holley looked on, apparently astonished. Finally Jack straightened a bit and said, “Sorry, I just don't think, uh, sucking an intrusion out of
my
body would be a real wise idea right now.”

“Don't get me wrong,” said Holley. “I'm talkin' about a psychic thing, pullin' out the cause of the discomfort usin' the power of the soul and the mind.”

“I'm not.” Jack started laughing again. But
Dieu
, he
did
feel better.

By two in the afternoon Cordelia had accessed both the New York Public Library Reference Base and the Public Records DB in Albany. She covered several notebook pages with scrawled numbers and notes. Her task was akin to one of the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles she never had the patience to finish.

Shrike Music was a wholly owned subsidiary of Monopoly Holdings, a New York corporation. Cordelia had dialed Monopoly's central Manhattan number and tried for the president. Who she eventually got was the executive vice president for corporate affairs. That man told her the Buddy Holley matter was not his to comment upon, but that she should send a detailed letter to Monopoly's president, one Connel McCray. But couldn't Cordelia speak to McCray directly? she inquired. The president was indisposed. It was hard to say when he'd be back in the office.

Cordelia ascertained from Public Records that Monopoly Holdings was a division of the Infundibulum Corporation, a consortium controlled by CariBank in Nassau. The call to Infundibulum netted her a frustrating twenty minutes holding for an equally unsatisfactory conversation with the CEO's executive assistant. The long distance call to Nassau got her a heavily accented Bahamian voice claiming complete confusion about this Holley chap.

After hanging up, Cordelia regarded the frustration the phone represented. “I think I go home now,” she said to herself. A break was in order. She could come back to the office later and work all night.

Veronica and Cordelia shared a high-rise apartment downtown on Maiden Lane. There wasn't much of a view—the living room windows looked out on a narrow courtyard with eleventh-floor neighbors only thirty feet away. At first it had been like watching very dull big-screen TV. Cordelia quickly learned to ignore the rest of the building. It was pleasant just having her own small room. Veronica could use the rest of the apartment as she pleased.

Cordelia had made the maximum use of her room, engaging a Soho carpenter to build an inexpensive frame of two-by-fours to support her bed. Instant sleeping loft. She just had to remember not to roll off the top during the night. The six feet of space beneath the mattress allowed her a closet, book shelves, and space to store her albums. That left her most of the wallspace for prints and posters. One wall was dominated by a color poster of Ayers Rock at dawn. The opposite wall had the common
WHEN YOU
'
RE UP TO YOUR ASS IN ALLIGATORS
poster, but with the tired maxim's payoff amended in black marker to read
YOU KNOW YOU
'
RE HOME
.

Cordelia was slotting a Suzanne Vega tape into the deck when her roommate walked in. Veronica was wearing a slinky white gown, along with a platinum wig and violet contacts. “Masquerade?” Cordelia said.

“Just a date.” Veronica rolled her eyes. “It's a guy from Malta with a crush on both Marilyn Monroe and Liz Taylor.” She changed the subject. “Listen, any good tickets left for Saturday?”

“At twenty-five hundred dollars a pop, I can't really comp you,” said Cordelia.

“No problem. These are for management. Miranda and Ichiko can afford them. They just would like a little consideration about table placement. Close to the stage okay?”

“I'll see what I can do.” Cordelia jotted a note and put her book of Things to Do back in her handbag.

“So how's work?” said Veronica innocently.

Cordelia told her.

“Sounds like you could use a
real
detective.”

“If I knew one, I'd ask. I'm desperate.”

“Well,” said Veronica. “It just so happens maybe I can help you out.”

“You want to tell me what you're talking about?” It would be
so
good, thought Cordelia, to turn this over to someone else.

“Not yet,” Veronica said. “Let me work on it. And you can make sure those seats are good ones.”

“Help me get Buddy Holley in front of the cameras,” said Cordelia, “and I'll let Miranda and Ichiko sit onstage behind the monitors. They can hold the microphones. Anything their hearts desire.”

“It's a deal. Now then,” continued Veronica, “before I go uptown, whose turn is it to buy cat food?”

The men sat and listened to music and drank. Buddy Holley drank soda. Jack drank dark beer. Room service was accommodating. They talked. Every once in a while Holley would get up to change the tapes. They went through Jimmie Rodgers and Carl Perkins, Hank Williams and Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Conway Twitty. Jack was surprised that the singer had some tapes of newer artists: Lyle Lovett and Dwight Yoakum and Steve Earle. “Like the monkey said,” Holley said simply, “you gotta keep up with evolution.”

They talked about the fifties—about Louisiana bayou country and the dry vastness of West Texas. “Tell you,” said Holley, “it ain't sayin' much about Lubbock when about the only place to go on Saturday night is Amarillo. I went back there after the oil boom, and then again after the crash, and nothin' much had changed either time.”

“No Buddy Holley Day?” said Jack.

“Figure I'll have to die before that happens.”

They had a lot in common, Jack decided. Except there'd never be a Jack Robicheaux Day in Atelier Parish. Not even after he'd died. He fumbled through the box of cassettes and held up one that was unlabeled except for the word “new.” “What's this?”

“Aw, that's nothin',” said Holley. “Nothin' you'd want to hear.”

There was something about the way he'd protested, Jack thought. When Buddy Holley went into the bathroom, Jack set the mysterious cassette in the deck and punched “play.” The music was simple and unadorned. There was no backup, no double-tracking, no layered sound. The singing was reflective in the first song, exuberant in the second. The lyrics were mature. The characteristic hiccup in the vocal line was there. This was Buddy Holley. Jack had never heard either of these songs before.

He heard the bathroom door open behind him. Buddy Holley said, “After the plane went down with my family, and Shrike bought all my music, people seemed to think I just wasn't gonna write anymore. And for a few years, I guess I didn't.”

The third song began.

“All dis is new,” said Jack reverently. “Is it not?”

Buddy Holley's voice was soft and powerful. “Just as fresh as resurrection.”

Tuesday

The Funhouse was no Carnegie Hall, and as with virtually any other Manhattan club, daylight didn't become it. This morning the mirrors were streaked and dusty. They'd be polished to a high sheen by Saturday. As Jack looked across toward the stage, what he mostly saw were chairs stacked on tables. The few windows and skylights admitted bars of spring sunlight that contained myriad dancing dust motes. The place smelled stale. The other predominating odor was that of machine lubricant.

Jack stood beside Buddy Holley. Holley stood beside C.C. Ryder. On the other side of C.C. was Bagabond. It was an unbreakable protocol. Bagabond had chosen to be C.C.'s constant companion and protector. Jack realized he had consciously picked a similar role with Buddy Holley. He genuinely liked the singer, and it wasn't merely a matter of nostalgia for the fifties and sixties. He felt he was becoming genuine friends with the Texan, though
too bad
, whispered the nasty voice in his head,
you're not going to be buddies for very long.
Jack had seen Dr. Tachyon earlier in the morning. Tachyon had proposed hospitalizing him. “No way,” he'd said. Tachyon appealed to his reason. “Can you really predict what my version of the virus is going to do?” he'd asked. Tachyon admitted that he didn't truly know. But there were precautions … Jack had shrugged ruefully and left.

Xavier Desmond, his elephantine trunk seeming to wilt down his chest, watched over the stage preparations. He moved slowly, in the manner of a man knowing the real proximity of death, yet he seemed proud beyond words. For a night the eyes of most of the world would be on his beloved Funhouse.

The limited space in the club was being further curtailed by the camera tracks laid in front of and to the side of the stage. The tech people had cleverly rigged a superthin Louma boom from the ceiling. “Don't let it brush the chandelier!” Des said as the remote operator put the mantislike camera mount through its paces.

Even with the shafts of sun glinting off the mirror balls, the club looked drab.

Buddy Holley scratched his head. “Shoot, I've seen worse stages.”

C.C. laughed and said, “I've
played
them.”

“Guess there won't be no chicken wire around the stage, huh?”

C.C. shrugged and affected a deep, deep Texas accent. “Joe Ely used to tell me about places so tough, you had to puke three times and show a knife before they'd let you in. And that was if you was singin'.”

“Des runs a classier dive,” said Jack. “I figure people laying out twenty-five hundred dollars a seat aren't gonna heave Corona bottles at the band.”

“Be more real if they did.” Holley glanced at C.C. “I gotta tell you, I'm pretty excited about hearing you sing.”

“Same here,” said C.C., “though I'm still edgy as a cat. You decided to go on for sure?”

Holley turned to Jack. “Anything from your niece?”

Jack shook his head. “I talked to her this morning. I guess things are going slow with Shrike, but she said no sweat. Just bureaucratic runaround.”