The Barrens & Others (44 page)

Just then Tracy felt a hum through the back of his head. The giant record vibrated as the label at its center began to turn. To Tracy's right, the tone arm shuddered to life.

Mumbles had turned on the power!

As the arm began to lift, Tracy began to swing his body left and right. Soon he had a bit of a pendulum motion established. The arc was small but he hoped it would be enough to give him a fighting chance to be out of harm's way when the tone arm came down.

It was swinging toward him now, looming over him. He augmented his pendulum motion with a quarter roll to the right just as the needle slammed down onto the record.

Missed me!

Now he had a couple of minutes to work at the ropes around his wrists. The left was not looped quite as tightly as the right. He made an all-out bid to pull it loose, clenching his teeth against the pain as the upper layer of the skin over his wrist tore away. He groaned and broke out in a cold sweat as something popped inside his wrist, but suddenly his left hand was free. Seconds later the right was also free.

Using mostly his right hand, Tracy pulled himself up inside the tone arm. He twisted himself around to an upright position and wedged his body into the metal struts of the supporting framework. His legs and ankles were still trussed up like a roast but he left the ropes where they were for now. He had to close his eyes and let this sick feeling pass. Good to be right side up again, but his left wrist was swollen and puffy and throbbing like an elephant's migraine. At least he still had his wrist radio. He flicked the transmitter switch.

"Headquarters, this is Tracy. I'm at the Wonder Records Building. I need immediate backup. Repeat: immediate backup requested. Do you copy?"

But when he switched to receive, he heard only static. He tried again with similar results. Maybe he'd damaged the radio getting out of the ropes. Maybe just the receiver was out of commission. He hoped that was all.

Because things were a bit dicey up here.

Voices...from far below. Angry shouts. Tracy peeked down at the gesticulating forms in the parking lot below. He realized with a grin that they couldn't see him from down there. Couldn't even see the rope. They probably thought he'd escaped.

Well, in a few minutes they'll be right!

He went to work on the rope around his legs, doing the best he could without putting too much stress on his left wrist.

Just then the tone arm began to rise. He heard the motor, groan with the strain of lifting his extra weight. The arm was just starting back toward its rest position when something snapped in its base. The motor screeched and died as the arm jolted partially free of its supports and tilted to an angle.

Tracy hung on by his fingertips, then got his feet braced against the framework again. Renewed shouts rose from below as he realized his hiding place was now exposed in the growing dawnlight.

He saw two figures, one blond, one baldheaded, dart for the rear of the building. It looked like Mumbles and one of his gang were coming back up to finish the job – probably by way of W. B. Cover's private elevator.

Tracy redoubled his efforts on the ropes but they resisted him. If only he could use both hands!

Moments later he heard a clank above him. Mumbles was there, grinning maniacally as he leaned over the edge of the roof and hammered at the tone arm's remaining supports with a tire iron.

Tracy felt the structure twist and sag further. Any second now it would go, taking him down with it. And still the knots on his legs resisted him. If he could just free his legs he could climb up the arm and at least give himself a fighting chance.

And then Tracy heard a wonderful sound: sirens.

So, apparently, did Mumbles' companion.

"The cops, Mumbles. Let's get outta here!"

"Ntlee fls!"

"Are you crazy, Mumbles?" baldhead said. "What're you doin'?"

Tracy glanced up and saw Mumbles swing his leg over the edge of the roof and begin kicking at the tone arm's base.

"Dmthns tuck!" Mumbles said.

The sirens were getting louder but every kick sent increasingly violent shudders through the arm. Its base was edging free of the support. A few more good kicks...

Tracy yanked on the rope that ran from his ankles up to the roof. Still tied. Suddenly he was glad he hadn't been able to conquer those knots.

Far below, Tracy saw the two other members of Mumbles' crew running for their car. Looked back up toward the roof to see Mumbles hanging from the edge of the roof by his arms, ramming both feet against the base of the tone arm.

Suddenly it twisted loose, but in twisting it caught Mumbles' foot. Mumbles lost his grip on the parapet. Baldhead made a grab for his arm but it was too late. Tracy dove free of the arm as it began to fall. The metal screeched but Mumbles' scream was louder as man and tone arm plummeted to earth.

Tracy was hanging upside down again, the blood rushing to his head. He saw the tone arm crash through the hood of the getaway car as it pulled away, saw Mumbles bounce off the car roof and land in a broken heap atop the trunk.

"That crazy bastard!" said baldhead from above. "All because of you."

Tracy angled his neck to see the man's angry face glaring down at him. A knife snapped open in his hand.

"No reason why you shouldn't join him, cop."

As baldhead began to saw at the rope, Tracy stuffed his right hand into the pocket the needle had made and clutched one of the record grooves with his bum left, hoping he might be able to hold on but knowing deep in his gut that there was no way in hell he could.

Suddenly there was a shot. Tracy looked up and saw part of baldhead's scalp explode in a spray of red, then he slumped over the parapet. Warm blood began to drip on Tracy.

Sam Catchem's face appeared over the edge of the roof.

"You all right, Tracy?"

"Just fine, Sam. Enjoying the view."

Catchem lit a cigarette.

"Yeah. Me too. You know, I was listening to a preacher on one of the news shows last night. He was warning the kids that hanging around these rock and roll joints would bring them nothing but trouble. Looking at you makes me think he may have a point."

"Pull me up, Sam. Now."

"Yes, boss."

As he was being dragged upward across the grooved surface of the giant Wonder record, Tracy stared down at Mumbles' inert form and...

No – not inert. His arms and legs were moving – not much, but moving all the same. He was alive. Tracy shook his head in silent wonder. Mumbles' luck never seemed to run all the way out.

Well, at least now they had a good chance of finding out who was really buried in Mumbles' grave: They could ask Mumbles himself. Either way, though, Tracy would have to get an exhumation order. But that could wait.

At least until this afternoon.

foreword to "Bob Dylan, Troy Jonson, and the Speed Queen"

With the Dick Tracy piece sold, I went back to
Reprisal
and the short story I'd been tinkering with in November. I'd contributed "Menage a Trois" to Jeff Gelb's
Hot Blood
a few years before (where Jeff Fazio spotted it and bought it for an episode of Showtime's
The Hunger
). In the summer of 1989 he'd written asking me if I could come up with a short story for an anthology combining horror and rock. I'd already done two rock related stories – "The Years the Music Died" and "The Last
One Mo' Once Golden Oldies Revival
" (see
Soft & Others
) – and didn't know if I had a third in me.

But it got me thinking about my days as a drummer in a garage band during the mid Sixties. We had the hottest party band along the upper Barnegat Bay section of the Jersey Shore when the lead guitarist, Mike Murphy, and I walked away, found new players, and devoted the summer of '67 to seeing how far we could take this music thing. We cut a demo of two original songs; the demo got us a manager who booked us into Greenwich Village spots like the Cafe Wha? and midtown gigs at The Scene West, but we went nowhere.

Remembering those times, though, it occurred to me how far we could have gone if only we'd known then what we know now.

And that was how the story started.

So "Bob Dylan, Troy Jonson, and the Speed Queen" takes you back to the West Village in 1964, when Dylan is digging The Beatles and a rough beast called folk rock is slouching toward the City of Angels to be born. The Eighth Wonder was real – Murph and I used to go there to hear a friend who was in the house band – and I've tried to reconstruct it as accurately as my fogged memory will allow. But on rereading it I find I wasn't careful enough about the songs Troy rips off from the future. Imagine how something like "Life During Wartime" with its references to headphones, computers, disco, and CBGB's would have sounded to an audience in 1964.

Bob Dylan, Troy Jonson, and the Speed Queen

Dylan walks in and I almost choke.

I've known all along it had to happen. I mean, it was inevitable. But still, finding yourself in the same room with a legend will tend to dry up your saliva no matter how well prepared you think you are.

My band's been doing weeknights at the Eighth Wonder for two months now, a Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday gig, and I've made sure there's an electrified Dylan song in every set every night we play. Reactions have been mixed. At worst hostile, at best grudging acceptance. Electric music is a touchy thing here in Greenwich Village in 1964. All these folkies who think they're so hip and radical and grassroots wise, they'll march in Selma but they'll boo and walk out on a song by a black man named Chuck Berry. Yet if you play the same chord progression and damn near the same melody and say it's by Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters or Sonny Boy Williamson, they'll stay. So although my band's electric, I've been showing my bona-fides by limiting the sets to blues and an occasional protest song.

Slowly but surely we've been building an audience of locals. That's what I want, figuring that the more people hear us, the sooner word will get around to Dylan that somebody's doing rocked-up versions of his songs. It has to. Greenwich Village is a tight, gossipy little community in 1964, and except maybe for the gays the folkies are just about the tightest and gossipyest of the Village's various subcultures. I figured when he heard about us he'd have to come and listen for himself. I've been luring him. It's all part of the plan.

And tonight he's taken the bait.

So here I am in the middle of Them's version of "Baby, Please Don't Go" and my voice goes hoarse and I fumble the riff when I see him but I manage to get through the song without making a fool out of myself.

When I finish I look up and panic for an instant because I can't find him. I search the dimness. The Eighth Wonder is your typical West Village dive, little more than a long rectangular room with the band platform at one end, the bar right rear, and cocktail tables spread across the open floor. Then I catch his profile silhouetted against the bar lights. He's standing there talking to some gal with long straight dark hair who's even skinnier than he is, which isn't much of a description because in 1964 it seems all the women in Greenwich Village are skinny with long straight hair.

The band's ready to begin the next number on the set list, our Yardbirds-style "I'm a Man," but I turn and tell them we're doing "All I Really Want to Do." They nod and shrug. As long as they get paid, they don't give a damn what they play. They're not in on the plan.

I strap on the Rickenbacker twelve-string and start picking out Jim McGuinn's opening. I've got this choice figured to be a pretty safe one since my wire tells me that the Byrds aren't even a group yet.

Dylan's taken a table at the rear with the skinny brunette. He's slouched down. He's got no idea this is his song. Then we start to sing I see him straighten up in his chair. When we hit the chorus with the three-part harmony I see him put down his drink. It's not a big move. He'd trying to be cool. But I'm watching for it and I catch it.

Contact.

Research told me that he liked the Byrds' version when he first heard it, so I know he's got to like our version because ours is a carbon copy of the Byrds'. And naturally he hasn't heard theirs yet because they haven't recorded it. I'd love to play their version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" but he hasn't written it yet.

There's some decent applause from the crowd when we finish the number and I run right into a Byrds version of "The Times They Are A-changin'." I remind myself not to use anything later than
Another Side of Bob Dylan
. We finish the set strong in full harmony on "Chimes of Freedom" and I look straight at Dylan's dim form and give him a smile and a nod. I don't see him smile or nod back, but he does join in the applause.

Got him.

We play our break number and then I head for the back of the room. But by the time I get there his table's empty. I look around but Dylan's gone.

"Shit!" I say to myself. Missed him. I wanted a chance to talk to him.

I step over to the bar for a beer and the girl who was sitting with Dylan sidles over. She's wearing jeans and three shirts. Hardly anybody in the Village wears a coat unless it's the dead of winter. If it's cool out, you put on another shirt over the one you're already wearing. And if it's even cooler, you throw an oversized work shirt over those.