The Barrens & Others (43 page)

"I understand, Carolyn, that you saw no one enter Mr. Cover's office."

"That's right," she said, nodding and sobbing. "They must've come up the private elevator."

"Do you remember hearing anything strange, any sounds of a struggle?"

"No struggle, but they were talking pretty loud in there. In fact they were arguing."

"Did you hear any of the words?"

"Mr. Cover said something like, 'You'll never work in this town again, or in any other for that matter!'"

"Did you hear the other voice?"

"Yes, but I didn't understand what he was said. Neither did Mr. Cover, I guess, 'cause he kept saying, 'What he say?' I guess the other man was foreign or something. Every time the other man spoke, Mr. Cover would ask over and over again: 'What he say?'"

In the far recesses of Tracy's mind, a bell of recognition chimed faintly. He shook it off.

"Would you recognize that voice again?"

"Oh, yes."

"Good. There might come a time when we'll need you for that. But right now, I want you to go down to police headquarters and make a complete statement."

After the receptionist had been led away, Tracy turned to Catchem.

"Who's the number-two man around here, Sam?"

Catchem checked his list.

"Hyram Figh. His office is on–"

"Did someone say my name?" said a short, slim, dapper man standing nearby. He appeared to be in his mid-twenties.

"I'm Detective Tracy, this is Detective Catchem, Mr. Figh."

"Just call me Hy. Everyone does."

"Okay, Hy. Do you have any knowledge of any associate of Mr. Cover's who doesn't speak English?"

"No. Not a one."

"How about some new act he might have been auditioning?" Catchem said.

"Well, I do know he was pretty excited about a new rockabilly quartet he was secretly rehearsing in one of our recording studios."

"What on earth is rockabilly?" Sam said.

"Hmmm." Hy scratched his chin. "I guess you could best describe it as a hillbilly white kid singing rhythm and blues to a rock and roll beat."

"Oh. Thanks. That clears it up perfectly."

"Any time. Anyway, W.B. – we called him W.B. – was grooming this quartet to cut the first all-original recording in the history of Wonder Records. He'd always said the key to a hit rockabilly record was to make the lyrics unintelligible. He told me he'd found a singer no one would
ever
understand. Said the kids would go crazy wondering what he was saying. They'd play the song over and over on jukeboxes all over the country, trying to figure out the lyrics. He was
very
excited."

Again that bell rang in Tracy's brain, louder now. He glanced at Catchem who shook his head.

"I know what you're thinking, but it ain't possible."

Tracy turned back to Mr. Figh.

"Thanks, Hy. You've been a big help. Please don't leave town for the next few days. We may have some other questions for you."

"Anything I can do to help. Anything. Just call."

As the young executive headed for his office down the hall, Tracy turned to Catchem.

"Who does that sound like to you, Sam?"

"Mumbles," Catchem said, lighting another cigarette. "Who else? But Mumbles is dead, remember? He drowned over a year ago, and almost took you with him."

"I know, I know. But it fits so perfectly. A guy no one can understand: that was Mumbles. Sings with a quartet: that was Mumbles. Crooked enough to have been 'borrowing' the Wonder Records masters and making illegal copies of Wonder hits–"

"I know," Catchem said. "Mumbles. But he drowned, he was autopsied, he was buried, and neither of us believe in ghosts."

"And violent enough to kill when cornered," Tracy said. "That would fit Mumbles too." Tracy pushed back his yellow fedora and scratched his head. "Yeah. A crazy thought."

"No argument there," Catchem said. "But until Mumbles shows up, what say we get back up to the murder scene and see if we can find anything to point us toward a
living
suspect."

*

Tracy couldn't sleep. The William B. Cover murder wouldn't permit it. Finally he gave up trying. He left Tess slumbering peacefully in their bed and wandered down the hall to Junior's room. He put his ear against the door and listened. A radio was playing low. He knocked and stuck his head in the darkened room.

"Got any rockabilly records?"

The light came on and Junior sat up in bed.

"Sure. Want to hear some?"

"Just a couple of samplings. And real low. We don't want to wake the sleeping, let alone the dead."

Junior hopped out of bed and pulled out his record box. He showed Tracy the labels with the titles and artists, and played snatches of the songs.

They all sounded pretty much the same to Tracy. Junior ran through "Blue Suede Shoes" by Carl Perkins, "Tongue Tied Jill" by Charlie Feathers, "Ooby Dooby" by Roy Orbison, "Be-Bop-a-LuLa" by Gene Vincent...

"Enough," Tracy said. "That's all I can take. But thanks for the lesson, Junior."

He tousled the kid's hair affectionately, the way he used to, but came away with a hand coated with grease. Wiping his palm on his pajama pants leg, he returned to his own bedroom.

And still he couldn't sleep.

Mumbles
...was it even remotely possible that he was still alive?

Tracy thought back to July of last year when he and Mumbles had been caught in that salt marsh at high tide. Tracy had survived but Mumbles had drowned because he wouldn't – or couldn't – let go of the loot he had dug up. Tracy racked his brain now trying to remember if he or Sam or anyone for that matter had officially identified the body. They'd found it strapped to the barrel of jewels, they'd shook their heads and said that Mumbles' greed had finally killed him, then they'd sent the body off to the coroner – tagged as Mumbles.

Tracy dragged himself back to the present. This was fruitless. All it did was distract him from zeroing on a real suspect in the Cover murder.

And yet...rockabilly, with all its hiccupping vocals and nonsense lyrics, was almost custom made for Mumbles, wasn't it? If he were alive, he could very well have been rehearsing in the Wonder Records recording studios–

Tracy bolted upright in bed.

Rehearsing! Wouldn't they be recording those rehearsals? At least parts of them? After all, the quartet in question was slated to be a recording sensation. Wouldn't W.B. have wanted to hear what they sounded like on vinyl?

Tracy was out of bed again, this time reaching for his clothes. Those tapes might break this case.

*

The all-night security guard at the main entrance let Tracy in and directed him to the recording studios on the tenth floor.

Tracy said, "On the way in I noticed that the big record player isn't working," Tracy said.

"We turned it off in mourning for Mr. Cover. The big Wonder record won't play again until after his funeral."

"I'm sure he'd have appreciated that."

Tracy headed directly to the recording studios. All the tapes and masters in W. B. Cover's office vault had been accounted for this afternoon, so Tracy figured that the mystery quartet's rehearsal tape, if it existed, might still be in the studio.

But which studio? There were eight of them on the floor.

He realized he should have brought Sam along to help go through the hundreds, perhaps thousands of tapes that were stored here. But better to let Sam sleep so he'd be fresh for the morning. Tracy hadn't been getting any sleep anyway.

Where to start? He decided to begin at the end. As he walked down the hall toward Studio H he heard a noise. He stopped and heard it again. A clatter... very faint. Coming from Studio C.

Tracy pulled his snub-nosed .357 and edged the door open.

The studio was a shambles. Empty tape canisters were everywhere, the entire studio was festooned with tangled garlands of recording tape. As Tracy watched, a ten-inch reel, trailing a shiny brown ribbon behind it, sailed across the room and clattered against the wall.

To his left, out of sight, he heard someone shouting.

"Fina fug inape!"

A chill crawled over Tracy's skin. He knew that voice. But it couldn't be. Without thinking, he shoved the door open and stepped inside.

There were four men in the room. Three of them – one wearing a gray fedora, one with a knitted cap, and one bald and bareheaded – were tearing through the studio's tape library. But it was the fourth, standing in the center of the studio floor, who seized Tracy's attention. Short, medium-framed, close-cropped blond hair, heavy-lidded eyes, dark eyebrows, and a small, thin-lipped mouth.

"Mumbles!"

The man's eyes widened. "Syoo!"

Tracy shook off the shock of seeing Mumbles alive and covered the room with his pistol. He realized he'd made a rookie-level error: no back-up. But he had the drop on them so maybe he could pull this off.

"Hands up and into the middle there – all of you!"

They hesitated, looking to Mumbles for direction.

"Doozee sz," Mumbles said.

"What he say?" whispered the one with the knitted cap.

"What'sa matter? You deaf?" the bald one replied. "He said 'Do what he says.' So let's do it."

They joined Mumbles in the center.

"Now – everybody face down on the floor."

When he had all of them down he could use the wrist radio to call for back-up. This would be a good collar, even if it wasn't by the book.

Three of them went face down on the rug. Only their leader refused to comply.

"You too, Mumbles," Tracy said.

Mumbles stepped to his left behind a microphone on a chrome stand. He stayed on his feet.

"Newt beoo, Trce."

"What he say?" said the knitted cap.

Baldhead said, "He said, 'I knew it'd be you, Tracy.'"

Tracy said, "How did you survive that tide? That's what I want to know, Mumbles. And who did we bury if it wasn't you?"

"Yoofih grout, cppr."

"What he say?"

"Shuddup" said the fedora.

"Down, Mumbles," Tracy said.

Mumbles' stare was coolly defiant.

"Nway, cppr."

Tracy approached Mumbles warily, keep the three on the floor in full view.

"I'm warning you, Mumbles. Don't try anything foolish. You're now the prime suspect in the W. B. Cover murder. And if that isn't enough, you'll be tried for Cinn's murder and as an accomplice in the George Ozone murder, now
get down on that floor!
"

Mumbles sidestepped, keeping the mike stand between Tracy and himself.

"Kz maz, cppr."

Tracy reached out to knock the mike stand out of the way. The instant he touched it, he knew he'd been suckered. He heard the buzz, felt the electric current shoot up his arm, saw Mumbles' sneering face dissolve in a cascade of blinding white, yellow, blue, and orange explosions.

Then everything went black.

*

Tracy awoke slowly, to the chilly caress of a city-flavored October breeze, to the sound of faraway voices, and to the throb of a thundering headache. He opened his eyes and immediately snapped them shut against the sudden, overpowering rush of vertigo.

He took a deep breath. For a moment there, he'd almost thought –

Tracy opened his eyes again. To his left the sun was rising. The dark, sleeping city was spread out above him...

No –
below
him. He was upside down – trussed up and being lowered by his ankles on a long rope from the roof of the Wonder building. He could feel the grooves of the giant record logo jouncing against his back as he was lowered along the north wall.

Voices filtered down from above. He picked out Mumbles' voice immediately.

"Hole air."

"What he say?"

"He said to hold it there. C'mon. We'll tie it to this vent stack here."

"Hey, that's pretty swell, Mumbles. You got him right over the dent where the needle hits. When the arm comes over it'll nail him good!"

"Lemring amurwep innacor!"

"What he say?"

"He said, 'Let them bring that murder weapon into court!'"

There was laughter from above.

"Swaj blow," said Mumbles and the voices faded out.

Tracy's hands were tied behind his back. He probed the depth of the pit in the surface of the giant record where the tone arm's "needle" impacted twelve times an hour. A deep pit. He glanced over at the metal spike that served as the needle. It wasn't sharp, but it had to come down with considerable force to wear a pocket like this. Force enough to punch a hole in Tracy's gut.

But the laugh was on Mumbles. The giant phonograph had been shut off.